D&D V6 - Edition jokes don't really make sense anymore - Games

[QUOTE=SiberysTranq;50795205]How even does any of that make sense Like I get not liking scifi, it's not everyone's cup of tea, but 'too complex'? Like figuring out the implications for society of freakin' wizards and physical gods isn't? Unless you're playing with gurps vehicles or something[/QUOTE] In the vast majority of (game) fantasy settings, these things don't really fundamentally change society much, though. Maybe clerics use their cleric powers to heal people occasionally, maybe monsters ruin your farm instead of bandits or wild animals sometimes, and that's about it for the common person. Sure as fuck isn't as much of a game changer as say, the internet.

[QUOTE=elowin;50795686]In the vast majority of (game) fantasy settings, these things don't really fundamentally change society much, though. Maybe clerics use their cleric powers to heal people occasionally, maybe monsters ruin your farm instead of bandits or wild animals sometimes, and that's about it for the common person. Sure as fuck isn't as much of a game changer as say, the internet.[/QUOTE] And I personally think that just goes to show how lazy most fantasy is Literally telling physics to go sit down and shut up is absolutely mind-blowing. It can and should re-write the development of society from the ground up. Confirmed divinity, same sort of thing. It is not 'minor'. Sure it may not change much for a party if we're already accepting the existance of a class of people who are homeless weilders of power beyond explanation, whom regularly possess the financial resources to purchase items whose value is equal to entire towns or cities, but to say that magic would not have as dramatic social consequences as, to use your example, the internet, is to be a lazy writer to an extreme degree

[QUOTE=SiberysTranq;50795717]And I personally think that just goes to show how lazy most fantasy is Literally telling physics to go sit down and shut up is absolutely mind-blowing. It can and should re-write the development of society from the ground up. Confirmed divinity, same sort of thing. It is not 'minor'. Sure it may not change much for a party if we're already accepting the existance of a class of people who are homeless weilders of power beyond explanation, whom regularly possess the financial resources to purchase items whose value is equal to entire towns or cities, but to say that magic would not have as dramatic social consequences as, to use your example, the internet, is to be a lazy writer to an extreme degree[/QUOTE] I don't know about that. I mean confirmed divinity doesn't really make a big difference when everyone believed in some form of divinity in that age, anyway. It'd be a game changer for a more modern setting but not so much most fantasy settings. And magic in most fantasy (game)settings is not that powerful and not that common or powerful, either. Like in D&D, even very high level wizards and clerics are pretty limited in what they can do at a large scale. There's generally not that many characters of such high levels either, and most of them are busy dealing with all those dragons trying to set fire to everything. Technology changes the world because of how most things are mass producible, which magic usually isn't. And I mean, fundamentally I agree that settings that let magic change the world are a lot more interesting, and those do exist, but there's clearly a huge market for these simpler settings where you don't have to think hard about the social consequences of everything, and they pretty clearly exist to tap into that market rather than because of simple laziness.

Figuring out how magic changes a game world has been my past time. There's some really good threads with stupidly detailed mathematics and sociological simulations for the effects of magic and proven divinity. Most are well over a decade old though and on abandoned no-name forums, so they can be difficult to find. You'll always run into the problem that magic users should lord over everyone else, and that most resources are artificially finite in games with elemental planes. In a world that has a plane of earthly material of infinite size, metals and precious gems should never be rare—open portals and set up mining operations. Pathfinder actually handles magic and divinity better than something like D&D, which largely ignores the implications. After so many thousands of years of magic and literal gods creating cities and shit, it's written into canon that most people aren't overly surprised when Doomsday #71 happens. Shit, the Worldwound itself is the prime example of the Pathfinder world growing so used to magic and intervention from other realms that they figure that demonic invasion will just kinda sort itself like everything else did in the past. It has such a casual acceptance of magic actually that I had to change some of the fundamental lore to better suit my group's taste. None of us like it when magic isn't special, so finding a balance between the magic infused setting and still have common people be wary or in awe of magic users (or extraordinary feats otherwise) has been a challenging exercise. Magic users aren't very common in our game and most people are pretty average compared to the players, so they can still get a sense of wonder from the populace. Recently I added the Kineticist class to our game and have had those legitimately bring awe whenever they (very rarely) appear. Magic may not be very spectacular to the world as a whole, but [I]infinite[/I] magic is worthy of turning heads. Especially considering they're almost literally the [URL="http://www.d20pfsrd.com/occult-adventures/occult-classes/kineticist#TOC-Gather-Power-Su-"]Dragonball Z class[/URL]. :v:

[QUOTE=Axznma;50795646]One of the things I really disliked about Eclipse Phase was the super omega ultra voltron internet, which with the right implants can just instantly let you Google in your head and know anything that has ever been documented. The only mystery is that which has never been seen, which in that game world is stretching the realm of plausibility if you continue to say "You don't know what that is", aside from space horrors.![/QUOTE] It's only hab-wide, though, and no two habs are going to have the exact same info stored. If you're on a space station orbiting Jupiter that belongs to an aristocrat who's lived on it for decades, closed off from the rest of the system except for visitors, and you try to check the results of the latest space-baseball match, you're not likely to get anything. Meanwhile, if you're on a news station orbiting Mars, which is the de-facto Earth 2.0 iirc, and you try the same thing, you're gonna get hundreds, if not thousands, of results. [sp]The same goes for science and technology shit; if the hab owner has kept his windows shut, or even just been too lazy to update the hab's data, you won't find any information on newer shit.[/sp]

[QUOTE=Rats808;50796063]It's only hab-wide, though, and no two habs are going to have the exact same info stored. If you're on a space station orbiting Jupiter that belongs to an aristocrat who's lived on it for decades, closed off from the rest of the system except for visitors, and you try to check the results of the latest space-baseball match, you're not likely to get anything. Meanwhile, if you're on a news station orbiting Mars, which is the de-facto Earth 2.0 iirc, and you try the same thing, you're gonna get hundreds, if not thousands, of results. [sp]The same goes for science and technology shit; if the hab owner has kept his windows shut, or even just been too lazy to update the hab's data, you won't find any information on newer shit.[/sp][/QUOTE] Yeah, people kind of forget that in EP, pretty much everything is on the extranet somewhere, but bandwidth and speed of light means it could take you hours or days to get it

Personally I wouldn't want to play EP because I can't be a wizard.

[QUOTE=Nerts;50796124]Yeah, people kind of forget that in EP, pretty much everything is on the extranet somewhere, but bandwidth and speed of light means it could take you hours or days to get it[/QUOTE] And, just like the internet today, having too much info is just as impeding as too little, as you have to sort through what's actually true or not And that's beyond even EP. Traveller, even with FTL travel, still has it as a pretty big tenant of the setting that even at that speed, it takes a long time for news to travel. Also, to be fair, having internet access isn't that different from your archetypical d&d character with six knowledge skills who can know about almost anything with a little luck

[QUOTE=Axznma;50795646]To be fair neither of those are hard sci fi either (especially Bebop), so if you're really pushing that angle I can understand their point. Those are fundamental complaints that need to be addressed before game day though, a real lack of respect otherwise. One of the things I really disliked about Eclipse Phase was the super omega ultra voltron internet, which with the right implants can just instantly let you Google in your head and know anything that has ever been documented. The only mystery is that which has never been seen, which in that game world is stretching the realm of plausibility if you continue to say "You don't know what that is", aside from space horrors. [/QUOTE] Maybe it varies on the GM running it, but I tend to run the Mesh a lot like how the Internet of today works. Yeah there's vast amounts of information on it, but if you don't know what you're looking for, you're in trouble. Relying on your personal AI assistant isn't always feasible either. Writing an essay is probably still a pain in the ass in the setting, because I guarantee that universities are gonna find even [I]better[/I] ways to tell if you're bullshitting on them or not, omnipresent computer network be damned. Mystery's definitely in the setting, but in different ways. That derelict station you came onboard? Sure, you can figure out who built it and when it fell when the Earth got fucked, but you don't know who---or what---is still onboard. You have no guarantee of knowing [I]how[/I] the station fell, either: lots of data and records were lost during the Fall. Of course, if you'd want to play in or run an exploration into the unknown game, Gatecrashing is always your best bet. Not that this group I almost ran for fucking cares

[QUOTE=elowin;50796167]Personally I wouldn't want to play EP because I can't be a wizard.[/QUOTE] I tried to make an async in EP once. It was terrible. [sp]I ended up making an avian uplift with a blackbird morph, instead. The game died after 1 session.[/sp]

[QUOTE=LiquidNazgul;50795583]Clarification: the murder hobo quote wasn't verbatim, but basically it was, "in fantasy settings you can get away with more shit than you can in a sci-fi setting, because you have electronic security and surveillance and actual codified laws and shit. What's the point of doing adventurer stuff if you're just being watched all the time?" To be fair, one of the players in the science fantasy camp retorted for me, by pointing out that Firefly and Cowboy Bebop is a thing, ie outlaws/people on the fringes of society doing "adventurer things", whatever that actually means. The response being, "never watched those".[/QUOTE] A hard sci-fi adventure sounds cool as shit, mostly because I loved shows like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun. Space outlaws is a thing. In fact, space pirates are a presumed threat in virtually every sci-fi novel ever. There's also the difference between larger 'hive worlds' and frontier worlds.

[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;50796707]A hard sci-fi adventure sounds cool as shit, mostly because I loved shows like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun. Space outlaws is a thing. In fact, space pirates are a presumed threat in virtually every sci-fi novel ever. There's also the difference between larger 'hive worlds' and frontier worlds.[/QUOTE] Cowboy Bebop and Trigun aren't exactly hard sci-fi though. Especially not Trigun.

Hell, I've considered re-running this game by recruiting right here on Facepunch. I've already told the other group I'm not interested in running for them. I've only really avoided asking here because all your guys' cool stories sometimes unnerve me with how...er...erratic they tend to be. But I've never actually played with any of you before (except for a handful a long time ago).

[QUOTE=Nerts;50795143]I'm afraid D&D hates crossbows, longbows however are the only weapon you can really consider using for an archer[/QUOTE] My first character used Crossbows, I only hit like 2 shots.

[QUOTE=LiquidNazgul;50796855]Hell, I've considered re-running this game by recruiting right here on Facepunch. I've already told the other group I'm not interested in running for them. I've only really avoided asking here because all your guys' cool stories sometimes unnerve me with how...er...erratic they tend to be. But I've never actually played with any of you before (except for a handful a long time ago).[/QUOTE] Most of the people around here I've played with aren't that crazy. Most.

[QUOTE=elowin;50796732]Cowboy Bebop and Trigun aren't exactly hard sci-fi though. Especially not Trigun.[/QUOTE] Yeah I can't actually think of any really hard sci-fi animes beyond Planetes, films would be 2001/Gatica/Stalker/Brazil though.

Wait, there's a new thread? I thought RPGs had actually died out like disco.

[QUOTE=elowin;50796732]Cowboy Bebop and Trigun aren't exactly hard sci-fi though. Especially not Trigun.[/QUOTE] I was just naming some space-faring examples with western feels, but what exactly is fantasy like in Bebop? That seemed pretty solid to me.

[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;50797072]I was just naming some space-faring examples with western feels, but what exactly is fantasy like in Bebop? That seemed pretty solid to me.[/QUOTE] I'm not saying it's science fantasy, just that it isn't hard sci-fi. [editline]29th July 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=DiscoInferno;50797065]Wait, there's a new thread? I thought RPGs had actually died out like disco.[/QUOTE] We haven't even renamed the thread or anything. Yet.

hard sci fi is sci fi that pays attention to scientific accuracy and technical detail. kinda like ex machina, gravity, 2001, etc

[QUOTE=LiquidNazgul;50796855]Hell, I've considered re-running this game by recruiting right here on Facepunch. I've already told the other group I'm not interested in running for them. I've only really avoided asking here because all your guys' cool stories sometimes unnerve me with how...er...erratic they tend to be. But I've never actually played with any of you before (except for a handful a long time ago).[/QUOTE] I only post the most erratic and outlandish things that happen [editline]29th July 2016[/editline] Like no one wants to hear about the run where everyone showed up in the van, we spend 20 minutes casing the place, stealthily take out the guards, break in, steal the stuff, run out, jump in the van and drive off.

[QUOTE=Nerts;50797341]I only post the most erratic and outlandish things that happen [editline]29th July 2016[/editline] Like no one wants to hear about the run where everyone showed up in the van, we spend 20 minutes casing the place, stealthily take out the guards, break in, steal the stuff, run out, jump in the van and drive off.[/QUOTE] Not that that ever happens. Instaed we spend 4 hours casing the place and then fuck up the execution.

meanwhile in pathfinder AAAAAAAA we discovered a deep conspiracy to infect the whole city with plague by means of the silver coinage aaaaaaaaaaaa and nobody believes us and we know how it got there and nobody will listen even so AAAAAA

Wouldn't the silver kill the microbes?

i just realized that i could make my bard an insult comic and it would technically be completely mechanically sound that's tempting

[QUOTE=gufu;50797817]Wouldn't the silver kill the microbes?[/QUOTE] [url=http://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/018/816/its-magic-i-aint-gotta-explain-shit2.jpg]Does this really need to be said?[/url]

[QUOTE=gufu;50797817]Wouldn't the silver kill the microbes?[/QUOTE] it's freakin' magic dude I don't know it's literally a completely unknown disease that showed up in a completely illogical place, and our only real lead is that patient zero fell ill shortly after discovering a mysterious coffer of silver that washed ashore at night after the sinking of a ship bearing a quarantine signal trust me when I say I'm completely paranoid both in and out of character and that is too convenient both dramatically and logically not to be a lead

[QUOTE=SiberysTranq;50797840]it's freakin' magic dude I don't know it's literally a completely unknown disease that showed up in a completely illogical place, and our only real lead is that patient zero fell ill shortly after discovering a mysterious coffer of silver that washed ashore at night after the sinking of a ship bearing a quarantine signal trust me when I say I'm completely paranoid both in and out of character and that is too convenient both dramatically and logically not to be a lead[/QUOTE] It's okay, don't be afraid. Fire can fix ANYTHING.

I'm agitating a revolution to get the attention of actual revolutionaries and I don't know why I'm expecting it to work, there's a riot starting now.

[QUOTE=Nerts;50797979]I'm agitating a revolution to get the attention of actual revolutionaries and I don't know why I'm expecting it to work, there's a riot starting now.[/QUOTE] I think it worked perfectly all we needed to do was shout 'the queen is out to get the poor' and we got exactly what we wanted