artofcheatery's page

Dude, I was flat out called on the carpet and publicly flayed for suggesting the thread was getting nasty. The whole "self-moderation" is apparently only something part of the forum is aware of. There are too many posts and Paizo simply cannot read them all. This is what happened last two years and sadly I imagine it will happen again next year. I will continue to flag bad posts and speak up, but I would hope that we would back one another up when it gets ugly.

Maybe it is best to just keep your snark private among your closest friends and be done with talking about stuff here.

Moderation needs to be impartial. You might have looked at it as 'Hey guys calm down' but it was coming off as more 'Everyone shut up and stop being mean [to me? to people?]' It's hard to tell as you were part of the ongoing conversation.

I'm a moderator on another website and probably overstepped myself, but moderator alarms were ringing in my head - your posts were warning signs of someone pissed off for some reason and you were venting at everyone. Even when moderating, we look at it as a 'polite note' to remind people of the rules, not rant at the entire thread about how they are being 'nasty'. If someone is being 'nasty' you need to tell them in private, not make a spectacle. How often do you tell off strangers in public?

And either way, You shouldn't moderate* a conversation you're part of, because it means you're elevating yourself above the other participants. (yes, I kind of broke that rule). Self-moderation is where you calm things down before they become too heated and if they do anyway, you bring in the actual moderators to determine if any rules have been broken. As GM_Solspiral suggested, flagging posts, I don't know how the Paizo system works but sometimes enough flags suppresses the comment.

I still state the worst of the borderline rule breaking post(s) were the scavenger hunts. And the rant thread was no where near as bad as some of the other threads throughout the forum.
-Xander

Looking for crappy spells and no one has mentioned skinsend?
I honestly have an aneurysm just reading it.

Your skin leaps off your body and does stuff with half your hitpoints while you are helpless. Anyone can come and stab you and you are dead. If someone prevents your flimsy wizard skin from returning while it's out on the town, you wake up flayed (at 0 hp and unable to heal) and have to get a regeneration or heal spell to fix it.

If it gets destroyed, you're dead!

There are like two pros for this spell, and endless cons.

A Ringbearer, carries the ring, but does not wear it.

It's when you look at the item and realize that it just really shouldn't be a [sword] it's intended to be cloak. It has standard cloak abilities, gives standard cloak buffs, but the designer is claiming it's a [sword] and you think "if you just called it a [armor], I might not have noticed"

Or worse, when they do make it an [armor] but it billows dramatically in the wind like a cloak and claims the free cloak that comes with it is essential to it's powers.

It is getting super ugly in here. Voter fatigue is setting in and some of you need a break in the worst possible way. We're not solving world hunger or creating cold fusion here, this is a game and you're electing to play it. If you aren't having fun playing this game, please walk away, no one will know if you take the night off or the rest of the voting for the Top 32.

Neil Spicer even warned you, the words you type up and post here are seen by a lot of people, people that will pay you money to design gaming stuff. Do you really want prospective publishers seeing you act like this?

I know it's frustrating - how dare they not have formatted their item using the template; that is someone else's intellectual property; or the audacity of 15 people to have the same design idea, the very nerve of them! Well, no one is making you stay here to vote. This isn't your job. If you aren't enjoying yourself, please take a moment to figure out what the "you" problem is here and decide how to fix it.

You are all awesome people who bring great things to the conversation, please stop bringing the pointed vitriol and nearly rule breaking commentary about specific items to the boards. You can type whatever you like into the little blue box, but no one said you had to post it. Self censorship is a crucial skill.

Most of the negative comments ended awhile ago, most of the comments have gone to "These items again?" or "I swore I wouldn't vote for that, but now I have no choice!"

Yes, someone coming in and not knowing this is the venting thread might be insulted, but if they can't take criticism this isn't the contest for them (even if it's tongue-in-cheek criticism since we can't do anything more complex without mentioning the item).

Considering how you're snipping at other posters for trying to make light of the situation, maybe you're the one who need to take a step away from the thread.

+1 armor that after the special abilities cost enough for me to get +10 armor and still have money for a decent sword

I have to die to use this?

Not superstar for me - Elixir of Love - way too low a price makes it so easy to abuse, just ask my players :P

It's charm person in a can. Some characters can do that multiple times per day without paying anything.

Apparatus of the Crab - interesting but too complex. Makes for a lot of work for the GM. Most likely a plot device.

Bag of Tricks - monster in a can and for the most part, crappy monsters in a can.

Necklace of fireballs - SIAC. And it's here ten times? The weakest fireball can't actually be cast normally!

Scarab, golembane and Bag of holding - makes adventuring safe

Golem manual - too easy of a way around the difficulty of making a golem.

Mirror of life trapping - I can see a villain wanting this, but never a PC.

Wings of flying - too expensive for PCs to ever get.

Of course there are numerous items in the book that are important to the game but aren't superstar. All potions are SIAC, but the game would fall apart without them.
-Xander

All Other 31: none of the rest strike me as particularly cool, useful, or desirable. I'd like to have a hit of whatever they were smoking in the judges chambers when they picked these, maybe then i could see their mojo. I'm not saying the mojo isn't there, just that i personally don't see it.

They sat in the night monarch vardo smoking a mixture of sunblossom, bottled time, liquid sunlight, and dustings of darkness while drinking resurgent flame (out of Cayden's cup) and watching a silhouette of the phantasmagoria duke it out with a shadow box. They plane shifted when they thought the cops show up, but it was probably just a teenager with a vexing spirit lamp.

-Xander

I need to post to make sure this is real...
-X

We all are freaking out about this to a degree, but the important thing to remember about the short deadline is that if were actually contracted to work on this we would have a short deadline.

They ask you for a organization to be the antagonist for the next [insert adventure format here], they expect it probably within hours, maybe the next day if they ask for it in late afternoon. And it still must me awesome.

We must be quick and subtle. That is the ancient law of the RPG Superstar.
-X

I'm not fan of the creepy eyes thing, but I don't mind the tall elves. Harkens back to the days of Tolkien and the Sidhe which he based his elves off of. Less human, more mysterious and strange. I thought you wanted to play something that wasn't human???
-X

I think I might have done something more with having the urn itself be magical, with any ashes able to produce the negative-energy channeling effect (probably too class ability-in-a-can for Superstar, but something I could see players liking for a home campaign). Then maybe add an additional power if you add ashes from a sentient creature?

I'm imagining a list of special effects from using the ashes of various classes. Vary depending on level and alignment. The villain wants to use the 20 level paladin ability (which would have to be awesome), so he has to annoy a paladin until it reaches that level so he can kill him and use his ashes. It's a campaign in a can! (Literally!)

The lack of pipes and smoking in modern gaming might have to do with the whole 'it's unhealthy for you' etc etc. Back when LotR was written you could smoke up a storm in a classroom and no one would look at you funny. Ever since the 'truth' about smoking has come out it's all but illegal to show someone smoking in the media.

That said, most of our characters probably do smoke, and probably get over charged my the damn halflings (cause according to Tolkien, all tobacco was farmed in the Shire. Meaning the Shire is really Virginia). Should count as part the monthly cost of living charge (if anyone ever remembers to do that)
-X