Back to the OP. 

While I'm no fan of woke-ism or their arguments for sanitized games with no mention of hardcore crimes, I do recognize their right to do so. 

Their table, their rules. 

That is why that post is so baffling.  If you want a game to have Greek Gods who have strong morals, just do it.  It's not even hard.  It's all make believe, right?

But, the core tenet is your table, your rules. 

I just won't ask to play in that game of touchy-feely because I want horrible crimes to happen so we have something to do. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on May 08, 2024, 10:35:53 AMBut, the core tenet is your table, your rules.

On the contrary, the fact it isn't is the problem.

The entire purpose of that post was to impose their standards on others, all while engaging in the very same problematic behavior they were calling out. Folks like this demand games be changed to suit them, all while claiming others can always ignore the parts they don't like. They're inherently narcissistic and profoundly hypocritical. And I've seen what happens when a community tolerates such behavior.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on May 08, 2024, 02:33:47 PM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on May 08, 2024, 10:35:53 AMBut, the core tenet is your table, your rules.

On the contrary, the fact it isn't is the problem.

The entire purpose of that post was to impose their standards on others, all while engaging in the very same problematic behavior they were calling out. Folks like this demand games be changed to suit them, all while claiming others can always ignore the parts they don't like. They're inherently narcissistic and profoundly hypocritical. And I've seen what happens when a community tolerates such behavior.

Greetings!

*BOOM*! Damn right, Anon Adderlan!

It never occurs to these morons that *they* can ignore whatever books they don't like or are "offended" by--and play however they want at their tables.

No, no. They *need* to reach out and scream, and force everyone else to change their games to suit *them*. It is arrogant, insulting, and terrible in every way.

And these kinds of morons wonder why there is so many angry people? *Laughing* They keep stacking up straws, and wonder why they get ferocious blowback from this or that. Whaa. It is because people are absolutely sick and tired of all of this thought policing and tyrant-mommy BS in every book, in every game, in every hobby.

Ultimately, these morons need to be screamed at, shamed, and jacked hard. They need to be driven into the sewer, or the basement, or whatever crag they crawled out of, and forced back there. They need to be mocked, and savagely reminded that they are the evil, psychotic, mommy-slave, and they are not welcome. THEY need to stay in the margins and shadows, and leave everyone else alone.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

On the RPG related subreddits its whatever the mods allow. Which apparently some of the subs are a mess.

I poked into one of the D&D ones and one of the mods apparently does not even know D&D and keeps spouting "play another system!"

But then you get the occasional idiot there stating things like "D&D can not handle low fantasy!" and other bits of negative wisdom.

Interestigly least on the subs I poke at due to search hits. Theres been very little wokeness. Aside from the blaring LGBT flags and such. Maybe Im just getting lucky and missing it.

Quote from: Omega on May 11, 2024, 12:53:46 AMBut then you get the occasional idiot there stating things like "D&D can not handle low fantasy!" and other bits of negative wisdom.

When you add up the different releases going back to Chainmail, there are eight editions of D&D. Though granted, the various iterations of Basic aren't all that different from one another. They did not all handle low fantasy equally well.

3.X is particularly shite at handling low fantasy. 5E can do it fairly well, but looking at all of the classes and races that have some kind of spellcasting or magical abilities, one does get the impression that 5E is not the system to use for low fantasy.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 11, 2024, 08:28:24 AM3.X is particularly shite at handling low fantasy. 5E can do it fairly well, but looking at all of the classes and races that have some kind of spellcasting or magical abilities, one does get the impression that 5E is not the system to use for low fantasy.

They say that because apparently they can not imagine restricting race and class selection. And toning down monsters or even going no monsters at all. Just people and animals.

Quote from: Omega on May 12, 2024, 05:26:03 AM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 11, 2024, 08:28:24 AM3.X is particularly shite at handling low fantasy. 5E can do it fairly well, but looking at all of the classes and races that have some kind of spellcasting or magical abilities, one does get the impression that 5E is not the system to use for low fantasy.

They say that because apparently they can not imagine restricting race and class selection. And toning down monsters or even going no monsters at all. Just people and animals.

Most people don't buy a game and then think it would be a great idea to cut out 90% of it.

It's one thing to say, "5E went off the rails with Tasha's," or something like that. Pick your favorite 5E book that you think is trash, it doesn't matter. You're suggesting someone also not use the Monster Manual, three entire PC classes, and at least three subclasses of the remaining classes.

You can do that. The system allows for it. You can totally play low fantasy in D&D, as long as you don't play D&D. That's such a fantastic argument. It's not even the first time someone made it. I remember back in the '90s, these guys had this game about vampires. Then they came out and said, "You know what would be a great idea? What if we took this game about vampires and got rid of all the vampires?" And it worked! People still buy that vampire game to play it with no vampires.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 09:26:33 AM

Quote from: Omega on May 12, 2024, 05:26:03 AM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 11, 2024, 08:28:24 AM3.X is particularly shite at handling low fantasy. 5E can do it fairly well, but looking at all of the classes and races that have some kind of spellcasting or magical abilities, one does get the impression that 5E is not the system to use for low fantasy.

They say that because apparently they can not imagine restricting race and class selection. And toning down monsters or even going no monsters at all. Just people and animals.

Most people don't buy a game and then think it would be a great idea to cut out 90% of it.

It's one thing to say, "5E went off the rails with Tasha's," or something like that. Pick your favorite 5E book that you think is trash, it doesn't matter. You're suggesting someone also not use the Monster Manual, three entire PC classes, and at least three subclasses of the remaining classes.

You can do that. The system allows for it. You can totally play low fantasy in D&D, as long as you don't play D&D. That's such a fantastic argument. It's not even the first time someone made it. I remember back in the '90s, these guys had this game about vampires. Then they came out and said, "You know what would be a great idea? What if we took this game about vampires and got rid of all the vampires?" And it worked! People still buy that vampire game to play it with no vampires.

I'm really surprised that people still buy that and haven't made OSR-style replacements. Vampires are a public domain concept and there's no reason you can't just make your own urban fantasy games about playing them.

I personally would love an urban fantasy game where you could play vampires, shifters, wizards, ghosts, angels, dragons, mummies, etc. who go on wacky adventures a la What We Do In The Shadows. You could introduce a flashback mechanic where characters remember living through various historical eras a la Highlander: The Series, allowing you to invent pretentious lore and make it personally relevant to the PCs.

Quote from: Omega on May 11, 2024, 12:53:46 AMBut then you get the occasional idiot there stating things like "D&D can not handle low fantasy!" and other bits of negative wisdom.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 09:26:33 AM

Quote from: Omega on May 12, 2024, 05:26:03 AM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 11, 2024, 08:28:24 AM3.X is particularly shite at handling low fantasy. 5E can do it fairly well, but looking at all of the classes and races that have some kind of spellcasting or magical abilities, one does get the impression that 5E is not the system to use for low fantasy.

They say that because apparently they can not imagine restricting race and class selection. And toning down monsters or even going no monsters at all. Just people and animals.

Most people don't buy a game and then think it would be a great idea to cut out 90% of it.

It's one thing to say, "5E went off the rails with Tasha's," or something like that. Pick your favorite 5E book that you think is trash, it doesn't matter. You're suggesting someone also not use the Monster Manual, three entire PC classes, and at least three subclasses of the remaining classes.

You can do that. The system allows for it. You can totally play low fantasy in D&D, as long as you don't play D&D. That's such a fantastic argument. It's not even the first time someone made it. I remember back in the '90s, these guys had this game about vampires. Then they came out and said, "You know what would be a great idea? What if we took this game about vampires and got rid of all the vampires?" And it worked! People still buy that vampire game to play it with no vampires.

This ends up being one of those borderline useless conversations, because no one can agree on what the definition of "low fantasy" is. Wikipedia defines it as "a subgenre of fantasy fiction in which magical events intrude on an otherwise-normal world". D&D could do that, though I think it's worth noting that none of the official D&D settings match that definition. Anyway, I don't think that's what most people mean when they use the term.

It's probably more profitable to talk about "low vs. high magic" rather than "low vs. high fantasy", since that's at least a little closer to being quantifiable. What I don't understand is how people can argue that D&D was ever meant to be a "low magic" game. In every edition of the game as written, magic is 1) extremely useful, 2) readily available to the players at minimal cost, and 3) assumed in the character and game progression. Of course the game has gotten more "high magic" as the editions have gone on, but that's always been there. You can homebrew it out, but it takes a substantial re-write of the game, at least on the level of something like Lion & Dragon.

Personally, I think that if you're going to go to all that trouble to strip magic out of D&D, you might as well just use a system that was less reliant on magic to begin with, but that's a matter of taste. Some people clearly like the underlying D&D system enough to make the effort worthwhile.

This reminds me of an odd sort of conversation I have seen and been involved in many time over the years.  I have seen it it in every venue I have been a part of where ttrpgs are discussed but it as most common at TBP and usually involved whatever the current darling was.

Someone will post and ask for a system to do some specific thing.  What's a good system for gritty, low-powered fantasy.

Several people would pop up to suggest the current darling no matter how poorly suited it was to what the person wanted to do.  "Have you considered Exalted?" as a suggestion for everything was so common that it became a meme.  I want to do a gritty spy thriller set during the Col War.  Have you considered Exalted?  That was a real suggestion.

Someone with an ounce of sense chimes in to say that the darling isn't really made to do what the OP wants and suggest something else.  Maybe WFRP for that gritty fantasy game or maybe an OSR title.

People start defending the nonsensical suggestion.  Exalted can totally do low-powered fantasy/gritty cold war spies/fucking everything.  Usually, what they say if self-evidentially true.  That's not what Exalted is written to do.  It says so right in the fucking book. 

After a bit of discussion, it comes out that the person saying that X game can totally do Y thing is either ignoring great chunks of the game or has house ruled it to the point where it is only nominally the same game.  Exalted works for low-powered fantasy if you take the basic resolution mechanic and the scant rules for playing mortals and discard the entire rest of the game.  In other words, if you don't actually play Exalted.  People seem to think that this is actually a sensible suggestion instead of using a system that was actually made to do that.  Every time I mention this, someone will pop up to make a case for why suggesting Exalted for a gritty cold war spy thriller totally makes sense and isn't an incredibly idiotic suggestion.  I could use the core resolution mechanic and build my own spy game around it.  On the other hand, I could not be an idiot and stupidly waste my time doing that when there are several games designed to do what I want to do. 

I'm clipping off most of the text to save space. I fucking hate walls of nested quoted text.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 09:45:32 AMI'm really surprised that people still buy that and haven't made OSR-style replacements. Vampires are a public domain concept and there's no reason you can't just make your own urban fantasy games about playing them.

I'm not surprised at all.

The OSR community doesn't want to play Vampire, they want to play B/X and 1E. In early TSR era D&D, you didn't get to be a vampire. That's not how it was done. Meanwhile, all of the WoD players are playing WoD because they don't like D&D. They don't want to roll a d20. They don't want to have classes. They're never going to play an OSR Vampire game.

Of course there's no OSR replacement for Vampire. It's a waste of everybody's time.

Quote from: ForgottenF on May 12, 2024, 10:53:45 AMPersonally, I think that if you're going to go to all that trouble to strip magic out of D&D, you might as well just use a system that was less reliant on magic to begin with, but that's a matter of taste. Some people clearly like the underlying D&D system enough to make the effort worthwhile.

I think they argue that because if you look at the 1E AD&D books, Gary seems to have a huge hate-on for spellcasting classes. There is an undercurrent of, "Magic-users and clerics are NPCs only," that flows through the books. Did Gary actually want magic to be NPC-only? I don't think it was deliberate. I think it was subconscious. In the books and movies that inspired D&D, the wizard was always the Bad Guy. Nevertheless, there is certainly a subset of players who took this and ran with it, and they're always looking for an excuse to have a world where none of the PCs have magic.

It usually goes something like:

1) Wizards are overpowered
2) I don't want to allow wizards
3) Low fantasy gives me an excuse to ban wizards
4) Now my wizard villain is super scary

As for why they don't play a different game, most people just want to play whatever version of D&D they started with.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 11:47:47 AMI'm clipping off most of the text to save space. I fucking hate walls of nested quoted text.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 09:45:32 AMI'm really surprised that people still buy that and haven't made OSR-style replacements. Vampires are a public domain concept and there's no reason you can't just make your own urban fantasy games about playing them.

I'm not surprised at all.

The OSR community doesn't want to play Vampire, they want to play B/X and 1E. In early TSR era D&D, you didn't get to be a vampire. That's not how it was done. Meanwhile, all of the WoD players are playing WoD because they don't like D&D. They don't want to roll a d20. They don't want to have classes. They're never going to play an OSR Vampire game.

Of course there's no OSR replacement for Vampire. It's a waste of everybody's time.

I mean in the sense of "why has nobody made a replacement game like how One Page Rules is replacing Games Workshop?" Not literally using D&D rules.

There's absolutely no reason to touch Paradox's dumpster fire games. WoD is unplayable in every edition and you only buy the books to read the garbage lore, which was nuked in 5e anyway. CoD is unplayable because of course it is, plus it's canceled and you'll be bullied by the WoD cultists if you mention you like it in public.

I don't want to deal with that bullshit. I have no attachment to their garbage lore and I want rules that are actually functional.

That's fine, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground. As a general rule, OSR people aren't into Vampire, and aren't interested in recreating Vampire. The people who are into Vampire are still doing Vampire.

If there was going to be a replacement game that didn't use nu-WW's nu-WoD rules, it would probably be fueled by the end times, and you still wouldn't want to play it.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 04:51:45 PMThat's fine, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground. As a general rule, OSR people aren't into Vampire, and aren't interested in recreating Vampire. The people who are into Vampire are still doing Vampire.

If there was going to be a replacement game that didn't use nu-WW's nu-WoD rules, it would probably be fueled by the end times, and you still wouldn't want to play it.

I just want urban fantasy. No end times bullshit, no leftoid bullshit, no failed novelists tricking me into reading their shitty microfiction, no faux-gamer cultists worshiping said shitty microfiction, none of that. Is there really nobody alive who would be interested in an actual game, intended to be played, that features magical creatures living on a modernish Earth?

Quote from: SHARK on May 08, 2024, 03:30:29 PMUltimately, these morons need to be screamed at, shamed, and jacked hard. They need to be driven into the sewer, or the basement, or whatever crag they crawled out of, and forced back there. They need to be mocked, and savagely reminded that they are the evil, psychotic, mommy-slave, and they are not welcome. THEY need to stay in the margins and shadows, and leave everyone else alone.

I realize some degree of gatekeeping is necessary, but going full cancel culture is ultimately counterproductive. The entire problem are people trying to make these decisions for us after all. So expose them for who they are, and let everyone else decide their response.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 09:45:32 AMYou could introduce a flashback mechanic where characters remember living through various historical eras a la Highlander: The Series, allowing you to invent pretentious lore and make it personally relevant to the PCs.

Honestly surprised this hasn't already happened.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 09:26:33 AMMost people don't buy a game and then think it would be a great idea to cut out 90% of it.

And yet arguably most do exactly that.

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 12, 2024, 11:09:06 AMAfter a bit of discussion, it comes out that the person saying that X game can totally do Y thing is either ignoring great chunks of the game or has house ruled it to the point where it is only nominally the same game.  Exalted works for low-powered fantasy if you take the basic resolution mechanic and the scant rules for playing mortals and discard the entire rest of the game.  In other words, if you don't actually play Exalted.  People seem to think that this is actually a sensible suggestion instead of using a system that was actually made to do that.  Every time I mention this, someone will pop up to make a case for why suggesting Exalted for a gritty cold war spy thriller totally makes sense and isn't an incredibly idiotic suggestion.  I could use the core resolution mechanic and build my own spy game around it.  On the other hand, I could not be an idiot and stupidly waste my time doing that when there are several games designed to do what I want to do.

RPGs are ultimately a collection of procedures under a single umbrella, and so arguing when such ceases to be a particular game is rather pointless. That said this is easily the most frustrating thing I encounter as a game designer, as you cannot test your game if they aren't playing the one you designed, and if they've been exposed to other RPGs previously then they're likely playing that one by proxy anyway.