Corathon's page

question: wasn't the skeleton neutral in a past edition of the game?

In AD&D skeletons and zombies (and all mindless creatures) were Neutral, because they were incapable of making moral or ethical decisions.

We've been treating addiction as a crime and a moral sin for decades. Where has it gotten us? Which worked better? Prohibition or AA?

I could be wrong, but I think that AA also treats alcoholism as a moral failing. At least it insists that the alcoholic is responsible for his situation.

Start treating it as a medical problem not a criminal one and maybe we'll make some progress.

Maybe. I'm not sure that this problem is simple enough to solve with just one strategy. Excessive criminal penalties are counter-productive, but a simple medical approach may not reduce the number of addicts by itself.

I don't get people. They choose to get offended over content in a game.

I mean, how do you get offended over something inside a game? It is a work of fiction. Just like a novel only more collaborative. And as do novels, it doesn't express opinions and attitudes of the authors, but of the characters.
So when I make an innkeeper a vile, sexist pig, that doesn't mean that I am such as well.
In my humble opinion, people who choose to get offended are so wrapped up in their self-image, that they can't see past it. And the problem is not the sexist innkeeper or the GM, but the player.
I am sorry, not every setting is a happy fun land filled with bouncy unicorns and free of prejudice. Either get over yourself or don't play in such a game.
Unless something is made specifically to insult a specific player, and it almost never is, I don't get what the big deal is.

Well, a novel (or a role-playing campaign) actually do express the opinions of the author (or GM), but I take your point that individual characters aren't the author/GM's mouthpieces, and may express opinions that the the author or GM might find abhorrent or laughable.

If your players want a game where nothing troubles them or hurts their feelings or offends them, that's their prerogative, but they may be in the wrong group.

IMO, the thought of playing in a game where every NPC (except, presumably, the villains) has the same enlightened ideology is kind of repulsive. This sort of thing is what made the first few seasons of ST:TNG so weak.

(and as you indicate Gregh, it does not take into account the possibility of self-destruction). A good share of those elements will be impossible to evalute until we have a larger sample size.

Actually, it sort of does; the rightmost term is usually a lifetime of sorts - the length of time the civilization will emit signals. If civilizations swiftly destroy themselves with nuclear war, environmental disaster, or swiftly retreat into virtual worlds, then L would be short.

The first Lovecraft book that I read was "At the Mountains of Madness". I loved the depths of space and time that the book plumbed. Even at that age I knew that the universe was immense and that world was billions of years old. HPL knew that to, and used it to his advantage, along with other scientific themes. In comic books, pre-human races looked just like humans, or nearly so. In "At the Mountains of Madness", the pre-human race isn't even bilaterally symmetric, and is described so clearly that the picture that I drew of one resembled the illustration that Erol Otus drew of them in Deities and Demigods.

Also, living in New England meant that many of the stories were set relatively nearby, and references to actual things (like the VT floods or the Moodus noises) added to my enjoyment.

I have literally never seen a Human in AD&D, for example, because they got absolutely nothing racially except a higher max level cap which everyone ignored anyway.

Your experience is different than mine. Most (about 60%) characters in my AD&D campaign are human. OTOH, I do enforce the level caps.

To speak to the original post, I have no objection to characters of an exotic race; I think that it adds spice. What does bother me is the "adventuring party as traveling freak show" trope. If everything is exotic, nothing is.

it seems like it happens a lot in RPGs where people decide that their character should be a racist misogynistic d-bag, and then use the "but its in my backstory" card when i ask them about it

why does every Barbarian or other fringe type PC have to be like that?
i'm all for coming up with compelling backstories, it makes my job easier. racism and misogyny is not compelling, its just offensive and tends to put gamers in a bad mood when the Barbarian wont listen to the wizard PC because "she's a southern wench"

I haven't really seen this. Its not too common in my neck of the woods I guess.

That said, a person might create a character with flaws that he will grow out of as he learns more of the world. Many years ago I created a character whose whole mindset was based on an article in Dragon ("The Elven point of View"). As a result he had somewhat bigoted attitudes towards dwarves. After meeting and adventuring with dwarves, these attitudes began to change. For me it was just a role playing thing.

Maybe the misogynistic barbarian will change his tune after the wizard saves his bacon?

They are in a pyramid of mega illusions and there are mysterious, non-explody runes on the walls. My gut reaction is, "That's not really them..."

+1.

Yeah, I mean... why would OotS ever have a DDoS?

I can only speculate. While some hackers attack sites because they disagree with the politics/actions/beliefs/whatever of associated entities, some seem to attack sites just for the thrill that they feel in causing harm.

A halfling or dwarf in the game is not a human little person.

Conflict between characters can be good. Conflict between players is bad.

They were actually 2 subcultures of the Nords.

The Nords were any "Northern" Tribe that came from beyond the Roman Empire's Border. Weirdly, Nord means "One with the Blood made of Ice".

The Norse were the Settlers and stationary of the 2. The Vikings were the Nomadic Tribes. They did cross over but only in certain cases.

Where are you getting the distinction between Norse and Vikings? My understanding is that going "viking" was a Norse way of saying "going on an expedition or raiding mission". A man might thus be a "viking" for only a part of his life. Not really 2 cultures.

Unless the monster looks just like something else (e.g. the giant and miniature animals in 1E AD&D) a picture is very important. Worth 10,000 words as the old saying has it.

I used to love the history channel. But I haven't had television for years.

Has it seriously devolved into nothing but conspiracy theories? That's... sad.

Many cable channels are running away from their original premise. SciFi (now SyFy), MTV, Discovery, Cartoon Network, and, yes, the History channel. It's not solely conspiracy theory nonsense (they recently had a program called "Mankind" that aimed to give a sweeping overview of all of history) but there's quite a lot of crap and very little history. Sad.

Anything like this ever happen to you?

Recently a player creating a new 1st level PC created a very interesting and involved backstory for his PC. I complimented the player on the backstory, but reminded him that 1st level PCs are fragile, and that his PC might easily die. In the first session, it almost happened! The PC was critted and reduced to -9 HP; fortunately the other PCs managed to save his life. I would've felt bad if the character had died like that - but it wouldn't cause me to change the outcome.

I would be peeved if (knowing how things stand going in) the PC tried to claim plot immunity on account of his backstory.

Walter Leeuwen wrote:

How to avert the same problem with evil campaign that always occurs.

PC kill eachother cause they R evil

Even evil people can be fond enough of someone to not want to kill them. And if they can't be friends, they can still be desparate allies, only keeping each pther around because of how they help each other achieving their goals.

I've played enough evil adventures to know how this works.

Agreed. In the evil games that I've run the player characters a) weren't enemies and b) needed each other to accomplish specific goals. This kept the group together.

I have seen the intraparty conflict amongst evils too, and its not pretty.

Another problem with evil games is the atrocity contest, in which the PCs participate in disgusting (and often foolish) acts of one-upmanship to show how EEEEVIL they are. Can be both repellent and tedious (and can lead to TPK if they are foolish enough).

IMO, the gods are not unbeatable, just powerful. The gods of the ancients weren't regarded as omnipotent or omniscient. The Norse gods faced eventual defeat and destruction at Ragnarok, Zeus wanted the Trojans to win against the Greeks but the Fates decreed otherwise, etc, etc.

Plus, a lot of the fantasy that underlies Pathfinder involved humans fighting gods. The Eternal Champion is often in conflict with deities, and sometimes kills them (although that is merely a banishment rather than total destruction). Its sort of the point of the Silmarillion that elves and men cannot triumph over Morgoth without the help of the Valar - but Fingolfin fights Morgoth and gives a pretty good account of himself before being defeated. And so on...

That said, I don't think that I've ever needed a god's statistics in 32 years of gaming. The nature of their religions is more important.

Some NPCs should be dishonest con men/grifters. Some should be scrupulously honest. Others might be dishonest, but afraid of crossing a band of armed and magically powerful killers. A lot of PC parties that I've seen would try to hunt the thieves down and make them pay.

The description in the OP sounds like an "every NPC is an untrustworthy @$$+0|3" game. Maybe I'm assuming too much here, but I've been in a campaign where every NPC would betray you sooner or later and its not a good thing.

In Friends, Seinfield, and How I met your mother, the characters are fairly normal.

I've never watched "Friends" or "How I Met Your Mother", but in Seinfeld, you think the characters are fairly normal? George is normal? Kramer is normal? Come on.

Love the show.

Of course the characters are ridiculous caricatures, its a sitcom. However, a good caricature exaggerates something that is really there, and this show does too. I never knew a physicist that was like Sheldon - but I did know one that requested that people raise their hands when using sarcasm around him.

Plus, they generally get the physics stuff right.

I think the consensus appears to be: "No, but yes."

Don't be ridiculous; the answer is "Yes, but no." ;)

The DM can do whatever he wants to in his campaign - but he shouldn't be a tyrant, or a dick. First of all, because being a tyrant or a dick is just wrong, especially when you're doing it to your friends. Secondly, because the players can always "vote with their feet" and leave the campaign.

Having your game degenerate into an atrocity contest is usually both disgusting and tedious.

I busted out the old Player's handbook to tidy up on some old rules. Wow the magic of the old days came back to me with that old Player's Handbook back. I started rereading the book and forgot so much of the game but it's all coming back to me, coming back to me. I used to venture in the Forgotton Realms, and Ravenloft. I am eager to venture back to these places to catch up with some old friends.

How about AD&D 1st edition? I'm running a very long-lived 1E campaign.