Welcome Lord Mhor!

Why did you pick LotFP among the various OSR games?

Do you feel its notably mechanically different than other OSR games or Old School D&D?

If so, how?

Let the judgmental pontification commence!

The encumbrance mechanics and spell lists are different. The Summon spell, available to magic-users at 1st level, takes up five pages and is worthy of study. The black powder weapons rules and early modern approach are a step away from the medieval standard of other systems. Spells are creepier. No fireballs. The annual Free RPG day publications are a nice touch as well.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;979375That's not to say Nihilism is inherently bad, because it isn't. But Nihilism only works when done right in a certain specific way. There is a time and a place for nihilism, but it must have some of kind of point or meaning to it.

Bwuh??

LOL

Quote from: Spinachcat;979440Have you reviewed the core book for Lamentation? If so, post a link. If not, email Raggi for a copy.

I read the PDF years ago and I don't remember seeing revolutionary rule changes, but I've never played LotFP so maybe I missed something major.

What are the revolutionary changes?

Why is it 2nd wave OSR? I though DCC was the poster child for that.

Or do you consider 1st wave to only be the direct retroclones like OSRIC, S&W, LL, etc?

Core book is available for free sans art.

Quote from: Spinachcat;979439ZakS, what's your thoughts on the Maze of the Blue Medusa being compared to Planescape?

Was that an inspiration source?

.

No.
To me Planescape just reads like "Hey: Neil Gaiman plus D&D planes".

But, yknow, Neil Gaiman was how--as a teenager--I found Thomas Pynchon and Maya Deren and a lot of other things I like better than Neil Gaiman so it's probably dishonest to say it was never ever an influence. I don't know about Patrick.

ZakS, do you feel comparisons to Planescape are valid for MotBM?

Or is it because both are considered "weird" fantasy vs. settings considered bog standard?

Also, what is your next project?

Quote from: Spinachcat;979440Have you reviewed the core book for Lamentation? If so, post a link. If not, email Raggi for a copy.

I don't think Pundit needs a review copy - he plays/played LotFP.

QuoteI read the PDF years ago and I don't remember seeing revolutionary rule changes, but I've never played LotFP so maybe I missed something major.

What are the revolutionary changes?

• The encumbrance rules. (I liked them immediately because they were very similar to the ones I use in my own heartbreaker.)
• The "skill system" is a logical application of another OD&D rule, the "1 in 6" roll. All actions (apart from combat, spells, or reactions - saves) are x in 6 rolls, for all characters, and only the Specialist (= thief class) can raise individual skills.
• Only fighters get better at combat. All other classes stay at their 1st level to hit chance.

Rules-wise it is one of the most elegant (house-ruled) clones available. I'd add in S&W's single save to make it my perfect version of D&D. (In fact, I did the reverse and added the skill system to my S&W version - the encumbrance was already in it.)

But the single best thing about LotFP is the organisation of the book(s), and the didactical structure. It is Mentzer perfected.
If only it wasn't written for the OSR crowd. With a different layout, art direction, theme, (and distribution...) it could be the best introductory RPG...

I like the LotFP ruleset but don't see encumbrance rules and other minor tweaks to fit the setting/playstyle 'revolutionary.' I also don't see it even remotely topping Mentzer as an introductory RPG.

Quote from: Spinachcat;979439I've heard the comparison to Planescape twice now, but I haven't read what are the elements that are similar?

[FYI, I'm a Planescape fan and I like ZakS' work]


ZakS, what's your thoughts on the Maze of the Blue Medusa being compared to Planescape?

Was that an inspiration source?




Doc, the problem wasn't the Goths or the Punks. The problem was that you gamed with pretentious douche nuggets.

Pretentious douche nuggets can be found in any subculture. It's true that Goths had an unfortunate number of pretentious douche nuggets among the fandom, but I met some really fun Goths and gaming & partying with them was a blast.

Also, I am a confused about pretentious and punk in the same sentence. Is it an old school punk vs. new punk thing? I'm an Anthrax & Slayer fan since their first albums and in high school I hung with the metal/punk kids and "pretentious" wouldn't survive long in that scene.  BTW, early 80s had punkers and headbangers at same shows, bands of one genre opened for the other, etc.  Thus, the slam dance / mosh pits.

I think it is a new vs. old thing. The new school punks I LARP'ed with hated metal and were very smug overall.

Yeah, Planescape seems to fit nicely with all Zak modules, from Vornhein to Red & Pleasant to Maze. A plane hopping crew from Sigil wouldn't feel out of place at all. I'm surprised it wasn't a direct inspiration.

Quote from: Spinachcat;979511ZakS, do you feel comparisons to Planescape are valid for MotBM?

If you were trying to describe the game to me--no. It would give me the mistaken impression it:

- was written in faux-dialect

-had far more whimsical art than it does

-movement was less physical

-more about magic portals and

-engaged ideas where different traditional mythic views of reality self-consciously existed in one multiverse.

But I don't need the module explained to me, I made it.

So: if someone's mind is divided up different than mine, then maybe "Planescape" is the nearest equivalent they can find. Maybe the "D&D" part of their mind is divided into "orc in a 10' room" "conan fighting a giant snake" and "weird things, like Planescape" in which case the Maze might seem more like the 3rd thing than the others.

For me, Maze is basically a vanilla D&D adventure with the bare minimum inventiveness I'd expect in a dungeon that large (as Vornheim was a vanilla fantasy city):

-There is a wide variety of monsters in the dungeon.

-It's really big.

-The design is nonlinear so you that you can end up doing the dungeon in any number of different ways.

-There are traps. These traps make sense considering who built them and what they were protecting.

-There are weird nonstandard tricks--these things are weird but they have a reason they're there. If all else fails its some kind of "test" and if even that fails then maybe it was designed by an insane wizard.

-There are enough traps that PCs look at every single thing in the dungeon sideways. Therefore every detail--even if harmless--is potentially important.

-The culture(s) that built the dungeon aren't the ones who live in it now (that's why there are traps and tricks guarding ancient hidden treasures rather than just guards in front of what amounts to a bank vault.)

-There is more than one intelligent faction living in the dungeon and controlling what goes on there (that's why 3-8 random adventurers have a chance of getting in and out--the enemy isn't inept, they just have to simultaneously deal with other shit besides you.) (That's also why there's more than one kind of trick and trap.)

-The whole dungeon functions together. A lever or key in location A can affect things that happen in location B. You have to go back sometimes to find these things.

-Dangerous features of the dungeon can be used against the dungeon inhabitants by clever PCS.

-The tricks and the traps alternate with monster fights but--more than that--they are integrated with monster fights so that they can work together. You never fight the same monster twice because environmental factors make a difference.

...many TSR and WOTC dungeons disappoint on these scores, but this is what I expect.

QuoteAlso, what is your next project?

I am currently working on a Patreon-funded crime/horror game built from scratch called Demon City:

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/03/demon-city.html

...and my most recent project for LotFP is in layout, and will probably be out before that, a wilderness crawl and wilderness-crawl kit titled either Black Metal Amazons of the Devoured Land or maybe just Frostbitten and Mutilated:

Previews:

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2015/03/amazons-of-devoured-land.html

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/02/paintings-black-metal-amazons-of.html

I waited for my toothache to get real bad before reading Zak's reply. As I expected, that was a good choice:).

Quote from: Zak S;979351It's only a lesson if their eventual fate (death or success) conforms to some moral principle and/or the narrator pronounces a judgment on them that we need to be sympathetic to in order for it to work as intended.

You can't draw lessons from things that weren't preached explicitly? Poor you.
Me, I don't need the lessons spelled, thank you;).

And that means that your example sucks, because it can easily be seen as conforming to a moral principle.

QuoteYour paladin saves everyone: D&D is working as intended.

Your paladin gets bit by a rat and dies in a ditch at first level and everyone laughs: D&D is still working as intended.

Paladin saves everyone: the moral lessons that can be drawn are numerous. Which one, if any, one does draw, is up to the players.

Paladin gets bitten by a rat and dies in a ditch: Was he trying to save people, avert some evil, or otherwise doing a Good Thing?

If yes, he died as a paladin should, and the moral lessons that can be drawn are numerous (and also, he went to the plane of Lawful Goodness, in many versions of D&D, so there's a moral pronouncement right there).

If not, he died pointlessly, and there are many moral lessons that could be drawn from that, too. Or maybe it was just a failure of the roleplaying part of the system (a.k.a. the player). But that's not D&D's fault.

QuoteYou assume a lot of bullshit. It wastes the time of everyone who is kind and generous enough to read what you write. You should ask questions before assuming things--especially if assuming them would require whoever you're talking to logically contradicting themself.

I also assumed positive stuff about you. Rest assured, you're doing your best now to dissipate those assumptions;).

QuoteJust because a character or player thinks a deed is righteous doesn't mean the game agrees.

Do you need the game to tell you whether a deed is righteous, or can you make moral judgements for yourself?

QuoteD&D is only moralizing if the game of D&D makes a judgment as to whether the deed is righteous and then declares the deed worthy in some way. There is no guarantee it will.

There's no guarantee it won't, either.
If the game makes the judgement, say by having the dead paladin go to The Heavens of Lawful Goodness, it did pronounce a sentence on it. And I'm not claiming all D&D games are not-nihilistic. I'm claiming your statement that D&D is inherently nihilistic is false.
(As an aside, I'm having lots of meta-fun right now, because I'm defending a system I don't really like against one of its better known proponents:D).

QuoteThis is the question Is D&D nihilistic? Or moralizing?

It pronounces no judgment, in the vast majority of playstyles anyone honestly attests to, on the righteousness of actions. It is therefore nihilistic.

"The vast majority of playstyles"=/=all playstyles".
If even one playstyle pronounces a judgement, the game is not nihilistic. It's the players that might make it so.

QuoteIf your good deed guarantees you go to heaven, it would be moralizing. It isn't.

It does guarantee that, if it's an alignment-changing deed.

QuoteThat's because there is no god and life actually is meaningless and if you are smart and accept this then you might very well be called a nihilist.

If you agree there's no god, you're an atheist, not nihilist. The conclusion that life is, therefore, actually meaningless, simply doesn't follow from this.

QuoteYes, because a person is not a fiction. A fiction's philosophy isn't drawn from what one of its characters do or believe, it's drawn from what the fiction does to them for believing it and whether that fate is approved by the narrator.

Actually, that might be disputed.
To me, a fiction's philosophy is drawn from what the reader sees in the fiction. And it might well be different for every person.

QuoteAn obvious example of moralizing non-nihilistic fiction is Dante's Divine Comedy: The characters believe a wide variety of things. Some are punished, some are rewarded and it's al done in a way the author clearly approves of (or at least appears by most interpretations to approve of).

And yet,

QuoteA player in D&D can try to live or play according to a moral principle, but the game and table won't necessarily reify it. So while you can say "Fred is a moralizing D&D player" it is inaccurate to say "D&D is itself moralizing".

But that's not what I'm saying. It's also not what I've been saying from the get-go. If you had been reading with as much attention you pretend to be paying, you'd have noticed that I admitted from the get-go that there are games and tables that wouldn't reify the principles Anton's character(s) are following.
But they might. And if they don't, it's their choice to not do so.

QuoteNo, you missed the incredibly, epically mind-bogglingly obvious:

A lone author can believe in a moral philosophy, like "Dolphins punish people who steal" and then.....they can write an ending where the person who steals is eaten by dolphins and the narrator goes "...and it was good they were eaten by dolphins, because that's the moral". In D&D you can't--that's the whole point. The PCs' destinies are not determinable by anyone except via a confluence of multiple authors and randomness. You read what happened to who and there is not going to be any moral cause and effect.

Oh please. If you can't imagine how you can make a principle like, say, "you will get what you give to your lessers" come into play, it's your fault for lacking imagination.
(Since we know you're not lacking in that department, I'm now - generously - assuming that you're either trolling, or just pretending you can't in order not to lose rhetorical points;)).

QuoteAny lesson D&D teaches will only ever be tactical, not moral.

On your table.

QuoteNarrative games were:

1. Specifically designed to copy the way "theme" works in 3-act drama. A PC's fate is often meant to be related to something that came up earlier. This can lead to the game enforcing a moral idea, as in Dogs In the Vineyard.

2. Designed by hippies.

...so they were, in some cases, right to say their games could preach a moral better than D&D.

...OK, thanks.
Hey, Internet? I got Zak S to agree with story-gamers! Yay?

(Just kidding, that's not actually an achievement. Now, maybe I should try it with Pundit...)

QuoteThey were just wrong to think of nihilism as a bad thing.

Not really, but that goes beyond the scope of a debate about pretending to be a wizard. We also don't need to pronounce ourselves on the matter to decide whether a D&D game can be not-nihilistic, or not.

QuoteThey thought this because they were hippies, that is: morons.

Not all hippies were/are morons...but that's also beyond the scope of said debate.

QuoteFor example:

"
I realize I'm asking a classic story games newbie question: "My players keep pushing the game to be about killing monsters and taking their stuff, but I want it to be about philosophy and relationships and the things the Buddha taught! How can I trick them into playing how I want them to play?"
"
http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/18263/my-little-savages

OK, that's just funny:D!

QuoteA game is a party--parties shouldn't moralize, and aren't good at it when they try.

Well, we can at least agree on the parties.

[QUOTE="Doc Sammy;979381]Not really. I just really hate Goth and Punk things and felt like venting.

Ask anyone on this forum familiar with my posting history and they can confirm that my immense hatred of all things Goth and Punk is a hatred that knows no limit.[/QUOTE]
I can confirm your hatred of all things Goth and Punk knows no limits:D! Happy now?
Mind you, I'm not sharing your hatred.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;979388Goth chicks are sexy

I can confirm that, too...oh wait, you didn't ask for confirmation. My bad:p!

Quote from: AsenRG;979617You can't draw lessons from things that weren't preached explicitly? Poor you.

Irrelevant.

We're not talking about whether lessons can be drawn from D&D. We are addressing whether D&D is by nature intent on teaching them.

If you draw lessons that weren't explicit then it is you who are locating the moral, not D&D presenting it--that is, the game isn't moralizing, you are attempting to learn from experience.

An earthquake is not moralizing--but you can learn from it.

Before you move the goalposts again, I need to know if you grasp the logic of this.

Please answer before I continue.

If you aren't able to grasp this or at least address it, then you aren't intelligent enough to have a conversation with and I will stop talking to you.

I think Zak's point seems simple enough. There's nothing in D&D's mechanics or system that enforces a moral viewpoint and so the system could be considered 'nihilistic.'

I have read some of the evangelical criticisms of D&D and one was that the game was built on the assumption of killing monsters and collecting loot to gain greater and greater power. Obviously the XP system reinforces that. I know there is the argument that you were 'supposed' to avoid monsters and get the loot but I have serious doubts about how many people played D&D that way.

Of course the first thing people did when they got D&D was to play it in all kinds of ways beyond just hoovering up gold coins for XP.

But still the gold for XP mechanic could be argued to have a moral aspect, one in condradiction to the presence of the likes of the Cleric and Paladin. But so much of D&D was built ad hoc instead of some grand master plan that some seem to assume.

But what about alignment? This is something almost unique in D&D. There is no alignment in T&T, Runequest, Traveller or even CoC. Or any modern game I can think of. Does alignment even count as a 'mechanic' or it is more a setting, character or 'fluff' as it tends to have no mechanical effect. Except for those pesky Clerics and Paladins.