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"3rd ed is the game of choice for assholes"

Started by Benoist, August 14, 2012, 03:12:18 PM

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estar

Assholes play every system and the same issues that afflicted 3e fans afflicted 1e fans back in the day.

My strategy to deal with these type of gamers, when not inviting them back isn't the clear choice, is to let them have their "fun" build but within context of my Majestic Wilderlands. I find most of these build oriented gamers have issues in being able to deal with the type of campaigns I run.

Most of the adventures I run are such that even you kill everything the issue that prompted the adventure still is unresolved. Also for the powers that be, their characters are not the first bad-ass they dealt with nor they will be the last.

For a while they rampage through the Wilderlands, but eventually their sins catch up with them and they pay the price. One particularly memorable character played elves who liked to cast fireballs indiscriminately.  He made same type of character for a GURPS campaign I ran. The players groaned as he killed indiscriminately with fireball and other fire spells. But eventually he went too far, he torched an entire village. The elves sent a squad, took him out, and then as punishment turned him into a donkey. He was led to the city gate where he is offer rides to anybody that passes by for the next 100 years.

My basic trick is that I present the little details of life as I run sessions. No one thing stands out but the combined effect is that my players look at where their characters are as a real place. This checks their behavior because they now realizes there are cops, mililtary, and others which add up a lot people that can take them out. So this acts as a break on the "rabid dog" syndrome. Sure the PCs will still main and kill but they will think it through and cover the angles in my campaigns.

Again this if the situation is such where I just don't invite the person back to my table.

deadDMwalking

What a welcoming community of gamers.  I'd think that with the concern that this hobby MIGHT be dying, we'd be nicer to each other, even when we disagree.  

Because there's no way someone who was on the fence about trying gaming would be turned off by the kind of vitriol in this thread.  :)
When I say objectively, I mean \'subjectively\'.  When I say literally, I mean \'figuratively\'.  
And when I say that you are a horse\'s ass, I mean that the objective truth is that you are a literal horse\'s ass.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. - Peter Drucker

CerilianSeeming

Quote from: deadDMwalking;571499What a welcoming community of gamers.  I'd think that with the concern that this hobby MIGHT be dying, we'd be nicer to each other, even when we disagree.  

Because there's no way someone who was on the fence about trying gaming would be turned off by the kind of vitriol in this thread.  :)

You think the hobby might die because of the vitriol in this thread...

...but the reams of people who complain, moan, sigh, bitch, and whine when someone picks a fighter as their first character or go out of their way to tell them how useless the fighter is and how he won't contribute...are somehow good for it?
A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make. - E. Gary Gygax

Benoist

"OMG NO NO NO NOOOOO!!! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. Fighters SUCK! HERE. LET ME REBUILD YOUR CHARACTER FOR YOU."

Exploderwizard

Quote from: deadDMwalking;571499What a welcoming community of gamers.  I'd think that with the concern that this hobby MIGHT be dying, we'd be nicer to each other, even when we disagree.  

Because there's no way someone who was on the fence about trying gaming would be turned off by the kind of vitriol in this thread.  :)

No one who isn't a fairly dedicated gamer even knows about boards like this.
Quote from: JonWakeGamers, as a whole, are much like primitive cavemen when confronted with a new game. Rather than \'oh, neat, what\'s this do?\', the reaction is to decide if it\'s a sex hole, then hit it with a rock.

Quote from: Old Geezer;724252At some point it seems like D&D is going to disappear up its own ass.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;766997In the randomness of the dice lies the seed for the great oak of creativity and fun. The great virtue of the dice is that they come without boxed text.

Tahmoh

Any Dm worth his viking hat(for you can tell the good dm's from bad by checking the length of horns and such on there hat) should know the easiest way to stop players from twinking characters via 'builds' is to tell them not every feat they want is available in the town/city they call home this will either make them throw a tantrum and quit whilst sulking about you being unfair, or will spur them into wanting to find trainers for these skills which should in theory allow you to develop a campaign where they play nice whilst slowly getting their toys at your pace...and hey if they dont get those precious feats of choice at the levels they wanted it's not exactly your fault, afterall the trainers are hard to find and may not even want to train them without some sort of reward(and some may even be dead).

Xavier Onassiss

Quote from: Sacrosanct;5714903e is the game where players ignore spell limitations, and then complain that the MU is horribly overpowered.

Oh darn those naughty 3E players. Darn them all to heck.

This also happened in 2E. And 1E. And every single fucking edition of D&D I ever played, with the exception of 4th edition, for obvious reasons.

Planet Algol

Quote from: deadDMwalking;571499What a welcoming community of gamers.  I'd think that with the concern that this hobby MIGHT be dying, we'd be nicer to each other, even when we disagree.  

Because there's no way someone who was on the fence about trying gaming would be turned off by the kind of vitriol in this thread.  :)
...I don't imagine very there is significant number of people that are "on the fence" about gaming reading this messageboard there Einstein.
Yeah, but who gives a fuck? You? Jibba?

Well congrats. No one else gives a shit, so your arguments are a waste of breath.

Planet Algol

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;571509Oh darn those naughty 3E players. Darn them all to heck.

This also happened in 2E. And 1E. And every single fucking edition of D&D I ever played, with the exception of 4th edition, for obvious reasons.
To be fair it's not so much as a genuine ad hominem as a quip regarding certain other current assertions on this board.
Yeah, but who gives a fuck? You? Jibba?

Well congrats. No one else gives a shit, so your arguments are a waste of breath.

Caesar Slaad

What a bunch of butthurt.

And I see we're even drawing in butthurt haters from TBP.
The Secret Volcano Base: my intermittently updated RPG blog.

Running: Pathfinder Scarred Lands, Mutants & Masterminds, Masks, Starfinder, Bulldogs!
Playing: Sigh. Nothing.
Planning: Some Cyberpunk thing, system TBD.

Benoist

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;571509This also happened in 2E. And 1E. And every single fucking edition of D&D I ever played, with the exception of 4th edition, for obvious reasons.

These "obvious reasons" aren't so obvious to me. Care to state them?

Doom

I'll reckon it's because 4e "wizards" don't have "spells" in the same sense as other editions.
(taken during hurricane winds)

A nice education blog.

Piestrio

Quote from: estar;571496Assholes play every system and the same issues that afflicted 3e fans afflicted 1e fans back in the day.


The difference being that back in the TSR days the game was on the side of sanity and let everyone know in no uncertain terms that those were bad players who suck the fun and joy from everything.
Disclaimer: I attach no moral weight to the way you choose to pretend to be an elf.

Currently running: The Great Pendragon Campaign & DC Adventures - Timberline
Currently Playing: AD&D

Rum Cove

Quote from: Piestrio;571526The difference being that back in the TSR days the game was on the side of sanity and let everyone know in no uncertain terms that those were bad players who suck the fun and joy from everything.

Right, and 3e created a whole generation of misguided players.

I'm pretty sure a poll of ages taken in the Wizard vs. Fighter thread will prove enlightening.

Benoist

#44
Quote from: Doom;571522I'll reckon it's because 4e "wizards" don't have "spells" in the same sense as other editions.

Duh! I brainfarted. Thanks for pointing that out, Doom.

I thought for some reason he was saying that there were asshole players in all editions, but 4e, which made me go "huh". For the record, I think that is totally true, that there are assholes playing any and all editions of the game.

My personal experience in moving on from 3rd ed is twofold, however: (1) from a game play standpoint, I was just tolerating the math and multiple modifiers and recalculating all the skills you put ranks in and all the nitpicky "do your taxes" aspects of the game, and one day woke up wondering "why the fuck do I care about all this shit?" as I stated before. This part has to do with the game's design and I had no assholes at my game table to speak of, BUT the wake up call came in part from my discussions online, which leads me to (2).

(2) the discussions online surrounding 3rd edition became gradually all about the rules, and nothing but the rules. Anything and everything was scrutinized from a mechanical standpoint, and the circle-jerking, though initially confined IME on boards like ENWorld spread all over the gaming internet, down even to Okay Your Turn where I was hanging out for the most part in those years. You literally couldn't have a discussion about anything 3rd ed related without having it devolving into a discussion about rules and game balance and twinks and bullshit.

That obviously carried over in the design of 4e, but for some people still holding on to 3rd ed and Pathfinder, like the denners in some strange "everything sucks and needs to be fixed" way, or others who keep whining about stuff like the fighter versus wizard and how the game is broken blah blah blah, that outlook on "the game are the rules and the rules the game" is still very much alive, apparently, and I don't think it can just be blamed on a "misunderstanding" of the 3.0 rules. I think the game's design involved elements which these OCD rules lawyers CharOp types just held on to immediately, which led to the understanding that CRs are RULES, not guidelines, that if it's spelled out in the book you can do it, if it doesn't say it you can't, etc etc.

All the bullshit displayed on the Wizard v. Fighter thread, basically.

So if 3rd ed is far from being the only edition with its assholes (one could talk about the 1e DMs who thought Tomb of Horrors was the basic game mode and that you should screw the players at every turn, the thespian types playing 2e railroading the hell out of you, and the 4vengers, obviously), 3rd ed sort of breeds and encourages its own special breed of assholes, so to speak.