Quote from: jeff37923;877540Yeah, because it really helps immersion when all of the PCs are nothing but Blank Slates prior to the game. Might as well be playing Chess.....

You don't have to like what he likes. But complaining and misunderstanding is what I don't get. It's a straightforward approach and it works for people who like it. If you don't, that's fine. Play something else.

Personally I like characters with a little back story if that story explains why the PC is doing whatever the premise of the game is about doing and if their story connects that PC with one or more other PCs. (The WEG templates were good for giving simple, short suggestions for back story character connections.) But as a GM I'm not going to remember much more than a few bullet points so any overly lengthy, detailed background is just going to be forgotten and ignored by me. And I usually run a pretty detailed setting where consistency matters so anything you created that doesn't fit will be overruled. If your love of back story isn't disrupted by it being ignored and potentially overruled at any time and if you give me bullet points for the highlights or underline the half dozen important phrases so I don't actually have to carefully read pages of fiction, then write away.

Quote from: rawma;877557Bren has...

OK, Bren has ...

OK, Bren seldom does ...

... Bren knows ,,,

So Bren doesn't ...

Seriously, the most wariness I've ever had for various disruptive player types was when I was planning neither to play nor to GM.

rawma, who is so fascinated by everything I say that he mines four different threads to track it, has played with tens of thousands of people. He has the stats to prove it. Somewhere. And he knows that the legendary basement dwelling neckbearded lesbian stripper ninjas is totes for real. And he knows lots of transgendered people. Because he is hip and edgy (just look at his avatar). But unlike Jeff, rawma isn't afraid of playing with basement dwelling neckbearded lesbian stripper ninjas. He likes playing with them. Because he's hip. And edgy.  :rolleyes:

Quote from: Opaopajr;877719/dumps oil and popcorn into cauldron in the center of flaming topic.
/clutches cauldron atop flaming self while screaming.
"Bring your own salt, motherfuckers! Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Aaaaaagh!"
:popcorn:

/comes to check out thread's progress...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V0TYIO6yv4

Quote from: 3rik;877727Me neither, but they shouldn't expect me to actually read their backstory novel.

I wouldn't expect them to. Most of the time it's more for the players to get a better understanding of who their character is and their motivation behind adventuring aside from DM-driven plot hooks.

Quote from: Batman;877638Then that's not really Multiclassing, that's just being an ass and cheating. So yeah I agree that ass-hats that cheat are bad.

Cool, so then NOT multiclassing. Glad we cleared that up.

1: Its multiclassing without the limiters. Which was the point you were missing.

2: ...and seem to still be missing... Or are just trolling for trollings sake.

Quote from: Opaopajr;877719/dumps oil and popcorn into cauldron in the center of flaming topic.
/clutches cauldron atop flaming self while screaming.
"Bring your own salt, motherfuckers! Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Aaaaaagh!"
:popcorn:

We can extract all the salt we need from the tears of everybody weeping because I don't like multiclassing or character backgrounds.

:popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:

The real answer for me is: Anything the Player presents more in terms of what they can do than what they are... more as a cluster of mechanical FX/Powers than a real character concept. That's when I roll my eyes... but not necessarily forbid.

Quote from: Omega;8777951: Its multiclassing without the limiters. Which was the point you were missing.

2: ...and seem to still be missing... Or are just trolling for trollings sake.

Or it doesn't matter.  I've seen how multiclassing works in 3.5, Star Wars d 20, and Pathfinder.  I don't like it.

I've never liked multiclassing, never have, never will.  Anybody who objects to me having this opinion needs to go outside and play a while.

Quote from: Bren;877729You don't have to like what he likes. But complaining and misunderstanding is what I don't get. It's a straightforward approach and it works for people who like it. If you don't, that's fine. Play something else.

You'd think?  The obvious answer to "I don't like this" is "I do. Different people like different things."  Or the answer to "every player I've seen who tries this wants to take more than their fair share of the spotlight" is "I'm sorry your players suck."  Or, hell, use the Ignore List.  There's a reason it exists.

But there is this desperate, farcical, pathetic need to prove my purely subjective, personal opinion WRONG.  Mere disagreement isn't enough.  I feel like I'm dealing with The Auditors; my opinion cannot merely be disagreed with, it must never have been.  Yeah, I'm tubby and have a white beard, but I didn't think I looked THAT much like the Hogfather.  No tusks, for one thing.

It's not even like I've achieved supervillain status.  Supervillains are at least exercising their powers when they cause pain, anguish, and suffering.  All I have to do is hold thoughts to unleash untold anguish upon the world.

Great Zot!  That's it! I HAVE ACHIEVED APOTHEOSIS!  I am become Cthulhu -- my thoughts are so black, so twisted, so horrific, so unutterably alien that the merest brushing of them against a mere mortal mind sends that mind into the shrieking, gibbering, howling abyss of deepest madness!!!

Crom's hairy nutsack, there has GOT to be a way to monetize this!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877804Yeah, I'm tubby and have a white beard...

Was that a beard or was it a pallid fringe of tenticular growths that seemed to wave in time to sound of some unholy piping?

QuoteCrom's hairy nutsack, there has GOT to be a way to monetize this!

Hey, I have an idea. Why don't you write a book and sell it.

Quote from: Bren;877812Hey, I have an idea. Why don't you write a book and sell it.

Heh.

I was thinking in particular monetizing my sanity-blasting thoughts.

"Pay Gronan $50 to NOT come to your gaming convention!"

"Buy sweepstakes tickets to have Gronan NOT visit your gaming group!"

"GRONAN REPELLANT!  $25 per can!  Now with 75% more Backstory!"

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877813Heh.

I was thinking in particular monetizing my sanity-blasting thoughts.

"Pay Gronan $50 to NOT come to your gaming convention!"

"Buy sweepstakes tickets to have Gronan NOT visit your gaming group!"

"GRONAN REPELLANT!  $25 per can!  Now with 75% more Backstory!"

Yeah there might be something in that.

Also look at lawn and garden supplies. I think Get Off My Lawn Bug and Kid Repellent and Gro-Nan Lawn Fertilizer could be big.

Quote from: Bren;877816Gro-Nan Lawn Fertilizer

"Made with GEN U WINE GRONAN GROGNARD BULLSHIT!"

Quote from: Bren;877729rawma, who is so fascinated by everything I say that he mines four different threads to track it, has played with tens of thousands of people. He has the stats to prove it. Somewhere. And he knows that the legendary basement dwelling neckbearded lesbian stripper ninjas is totes for real. And he knows lots of transgendered people. Because he is hip and edgy (just look at his avatar). But unlike Jeff, rawma isn't afraid of playing with basement dwelling neckbearded lesbian stripper ninjas. He likes playing with them. Because he's hip. And edgy.  :rolleyes:

The amount of misrepresentation in so few lines is indeed truly eye-rolling. I will ignore Bren's pathetic attempt to distract from his contradiction fest and respond as if someone were seriously making these assertions.

I do not "mine" threads; I read them. That's a thing people do here, although perhaps less often before replying than they should. I bookmarked Bren's original response to jeff37923 to respond later, intending to write what came after "Seriously, " and to point out what Bren later pointed out in his post about how it was unlikely he would have met someone transgendered. I bookmarked the other posts because they contradicted and rebutted that first one in such a thoroughly hilarious manner. Often it's too late or too much work to reply to posts I've bookmarked, but the overall trainwreck here was too glorious not to share.

I have gamed with, at my most generous estimate, no more than 500 people; that's fewer than the number of people who attended the largest convention I ran, which represented a lot more risk than spoiling one gaming session. So one can perhaps understand why that generated more concern about disruptive people than my own gaming.

Yes, I've met a lot of outliers for playing with that few; they were mostly at open gaming tables and frankly the really unpleasant ones were from 1977 to 1982 or so. Probably geek social fallacies were at work. It doesn't change that I have met such people while gaming.

I've gamed with three transgender people; I would probably not be comfortable discussing transgender issues with any of them, but we had a good time gaming. And one I only know about because another player who does know her told me.

No, I don't like playing with people of the sort jeff37923 warned about.

Much as I might like to be thought hip and edgy, I don't even see it in my avatar; if it's in the avatar it's because an eighteen year old player made me that avatar at my request and put it there by mistake or as a joke. But maybe I am hip or can credibly claim to be! :cool: Everyone eating popcorn--send me a PM if and only if you think I'm NOT hip!

One thing I did omit in my previous post was mocking Bren for believing that his own experience (whether likely or unlikely) did anything beyond proving that jeff37923's extreme over-the-top hyperbole was not absolutely literally 100% true, which would hardly be a revelation to anyone. Most likely that's just Bren exhibiting such an extreme level of narcissism that it's sad and not funny.

Back to the popcorn. Opaopajr! Self-immolate another cauldron for me! No salt; it's bad for me.
:popcorn:

Quote from: Ravenswing;877668I've got the densest setting I've ever seen.  But even with that, I haven't come up with everything: I haven't named every village or every noble house or every institution or every clash of arms in the Serpentwar.  I'm fine with players filling in some of the blanks.  This takes some of the creative heat off of me, never mind the benefits of having more brains than mine on the job.

But do you need more than a couple of lines to describe it? Most lead characters in movies or novels can be described accurately and concisely in  two, maybe three lines, tops. For example:

Captain Blood:

• former doctor and naval officer wrongly accused of treason and sold into slavery


• wants to escape and get revenge against Colonel Bishop, but is in love with Bishop's niece

Two lines, twenty-nine words total -that's really all you need.

QuoteYes, I get that some people were touched in bad places by players who wrote backstories.  But it's not as if we neuter combat because there are players who are combat-obsessed, or eliminate loot because some players go completely over the top in treasure-grubbing, or eliminate religion because some players RP priests or paladins poorly, or ban character creation -- here, here's your pregen -- because there are a lot of munchkin mini-maxers out there.

As a GM, I love backstories. They provide plothooks, they provide motivations, they make it easier to introduce NPCs, they're good for getting past the awkward "Why in the heck do these people want to adventure together?" They aid me in helping the players create their characters -- certainly even the one-line stories that imply Greater Coolness than some of you prefer -- like "I'm an ex-gladiator who bought his freedom" and "The king ordered the murder of my parents" -- suggest skill sets, advantages and disadvantages obvious to many of you.

I don't ban it -hell, I don't even bust a player's balls for writing an extensive backstory- nor do I encourage it. I do roll my eyes because with a new 1st level PC there's a good chance the player just wasted his or her time, since the odds of being killed are pretty good (giant rats are capable of killing 1st level PCs in single combat).

Quote from: Omega;8777951: Its multiclassing without the limiters. Which was the point you were missing.

2: ...and seem to still be missing... Or are just trolling for trollings sake.

So, in other words, cheating. Got it. Because multiclassing, regardless of edition, has at least SOME requirements or needed investment (levels, feats, ability scores, sticking to favored classes, XP penalties, etc.) by the rules and ignoring them is wrong. Glad we clarified that.