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That seems like a pretty unsubstantiated claim. How can you prove this? And is there a reason you're ignoring the part where I pointed out how they produced a book - as amateurs - that was at the time much better than the professional alternative?He's better than he would have been if he'd not gone into business.He's better than he used to be now that he's doing it for money.Practice makes perfect.It is an unsubstantiated claim. It's my opinion. (I was rewording it, since it seemed like you'd misunderstood my point).
I didn't address the follow up point because I have no idea if it was better. How did you determine that? The only objective measure seems to be sales.
Well let's see...
If you went to the WotC boards and asked about expansion material or Complete Psionics. 9/10 people on those boards would tell you to ignore it and get Hyperconscious and Untapped Potentil instead, citing it as better balanced, better written, and more useful, leading me to the conclusion that it was in fact better received by its audience.
Or you could conclude that in the forums that you were in, the people you remember talking to said what you agreed with...probably because you were all in the same forum.
So how do you determine the opinion of in the actual audience, made up of people who pay money for products. If only they kept track of sales...
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It's worth noting that Pathfinder is continually a work in progress. The devs continue to improve the game, solicit feedback from players on the boards, and encourage amateurs to submit to the RPG superstar contest.
One important point (in my opinion) is that a game should be judged based on how many different options can make a character fun to play, not level of optimization a build offers. I'm a fan of optimization and enjoy occasionally munchkin powergaming, but if the non-optimal builds are fun to play and don't get the party tpk'd that adds to the game.
I would love to agree, I really would, but I continually see absolutely worthless archetypes, prestige classes that don't do much of anything and have absurd prereqs, and don't do much to fix the problems they have. In fact I've seen several things that feel more like a malcontented "your doing it wrong" rather than help fix things.
There also aren't a lot of options. In fact some things that should be options in the first place are made into entirely different things. You don't see many options that break alignment restriction, you don't see options that really customize the character. No druid that really specializes, or even gets wild shape earlier if you want to be wild shape focused for instance. Separatist cleric for a more relaxed domain selection, takes a huge hit. There's no oracle archetype or alternate class without a curse. Alchemist look like a mess if you get into all the small little rules about them. Earlier there was talk of mobility and options for martials, which I'm not really seeing any push for inside of products.
And oh dear, went on a rant there. Anyways, Yeah, I'm okay with non optimal so long as it works. There are things that really feel like NPC gigs here and there, but I'm usually good so long as everyone has fun. A lot of people have their own little house rules to help here and there, I just wish I didn't feel it was necessary sometimes. I know you can't have every option available, but in the least you can help out and help make the game more fun for everyone.
There also ideas some of these people would never have thought of that are good. Every developer lays an egg sometimes, even after creating something that the masses loves, and even those of us who would never be consistant at putting out quality work will come up with something really good.There are many people here who wouldn't be caught dead publishing something like Prone Shooter, Vow of Poverty, Elephant Stomp, etc.
Is that why everyone is freaking out? 'Cause I mentioned that devs can write crappy rules too? Sheesh. Apparently everyone missed the entirety of the point. The point was that people are people. There's nothing about being a developer that makes you infallible. If there was there wouldn't be hundreds of unofficial bugfixes for various PC games all over the place (Bioware/Black Isle released some of the greatest RPGs of all time but there are many fan-released bug-fixes that make their games function as intended).
I haven't stopped buying Paizo products. I never said "lulz paizo sucks and dey can't write rulz". I made a passing comment about what Gnomersy said about them being human and commenting that there are lots of people out there who aren't professionals who have better material available and BAM, suddenly everyone's in a tizzy.
But then again I'm also not going to pretend like they don't write some pretty crappy stuff sometimes. And when I say "they" I mean "Paizo's staff (which includes freelancers)" because to my knowledge they don't stamp the name of the designer on each section that they wrote in a sourcebook, which means literally everything they publish regardless of who wrote it or why will reflect on Paizo. That's life.
It's also one of the reasons that I agree being a publisher would not be cake.
I am not freaking out, but your post did not come across the way you intended. :)
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That seems like a pretty unsubstantiated claim. How can you prove this? And is there a reason you're ignoring the part where I pointed out how they produced a book - as amateurs - that was at the time much better than the professional alternative?He's better than he would have been if he'd not gone into business.He's better than he used to be now that he's doing it for money.Practice makes perfect.It is an unsubstantiated claim. It's my opinion. (I was rewording it, since it seemed like you'd misunderstood my point).
I didn't address the follow up point because I have no idea if it was better. How did you determine that? The only objective measure seems to be sales.
Well let's see...
If you went to the WotC boards and asked about expansion material or Complete Psionics. 9/10 people on those boards would tell you to ignore it and get Hyperconscious and Untapped Potentil instead, citing it as better balanced, better written, and more useful, leading me to the conclusion that it was in fact better received by its audience.
The audience for RPG rules are people who play RPGs, not the hardcore ones who post on a forum. (Presuming your 9/10 statistic was accurate).
."Lots of people on the internet agree with me" is not actually substantiation or we'd be outlawing vaccinations.
Many of those spells were in core. Even in core the 3E had problems. Sure we didn't have divine metamagic, but we did have core druid with natural shape and divine empowerment! 3E also had some wonderful options for martials in complete warrior and adventurer. Many things, such as tactical feats, never made it into pathfinder. Tome of battle was mentioned earlier, and the warblade was loads of fun and had skill points and utility and all the classes in it had a mental stat to synergize with.
One build outshining another doesn't make it unplayable. What's important is that the first was viable in the first place. Speaking of which, I still have many problems with core fighter, rogue, and monk. Not saying they are unplayable, but I think they could use some love.
A big assumption, a particurarly annoying one for me, is that fighter should only fight cause if you give fighter some non combat utility then rangers and rogue would suck.
I don't usually like the assertion that X class should just be a build/subclass/archetype/whatever of Y class, but the one case where I feel like this could be applied is that the ranger could be a build/subclass of the fighter, because then it would eliminate much of that argument, since Fighters would be assumed to (at least in part) take some of the non-combat role of the Ranger.
The audience for RPG rules are people who play RPGs, not the hardcore ones who post on a forum. (Presuming your 9/10 statistic was accurate).
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"Lots of people on the internet agree with me" is not actually substantiation or we'd be outlawing vaccinations.
I'm not saying "people on the internet agree with me". Stop being foolish. I said that lots of people on the boards of the largest hobby company at the time, which had traffic funneled to them from their main website via many web enhancements and articles being put up constantly, under the psionics forums, where tons of psionics fans posted all the time, constantly recommended both Untapped Potential and Hyperconscious over Complete Psionics, and one of those was literally admittedly by the creator a fanmade work. And they recommended it for terms of usefulness, value, and balance.
However both Hyperconscious and Untapped Potential were not a wizards of the coast product and thus didn't get anywhere near the amount of coverage. You couldn't find them in your local bookstore or hobby shop for example (at least not in any usual way) so in many cases you had to hear about it from word of mouth. Word on the psionics board of Wizards was that these products were better. These were unsolicited reviews by people who have an interest in the products they buy.
The idea that sales records are an indication of the quality of a product is an extremely faulty premise and is often more reliant on marketing and financial backing than the actual quality of the product.
The idea that sales records are an indication of the quality of a product is an extremely faulty premise and is often more reliant on marketing and financial backing than the actual quality of the product.
Because those of us who buy books are too "foolish" to purchase what we want and instead just purchase what we're told to?
.What you value in a ruleset (consistency, balance, clarity, etcetera) is not what I value. You say "actual quality" as if that's some kind of objective measure, but there's no such thing.
I am not freaking out, but your post did not come across the way you intended. :)There also ideas some of these people would never have thought of that are good. Every developer lays an egg sometimes, even after creating something that the masses loves, and even those of us who would never be consistant at putting out quality work will come up with something really good.There are many people here who wouldn't be caught dead publishing something like Prone Shooter, Vow of Poverty, Elephant Stomp, etc.
Is that why everyone is freaking out? 'Cause I mentioned that devs can write crappy rules too? Sheesh. Apparently everyone missed the entirety of the point. The point was that people are people. There's nothing about being a developer that makes you infallible. If there was there wouldn't be hundreds of unofficial bugfixes for various PC games all over the place (Bioware/Black Isle released some of the greatest RPGs of all time but there are many fan-released bug-fixes that make their games function as intended).
I haven't stopped buying Paizo products. I never said "lulz paizo sucks and dey can't write rulz". I made a passing comment about what Gnomersy said about them being human and commenting that there are lots of people out there who aren't professionals who have better material available and BAM, suddenly everyone's in a tizzy.
But then again I'm also not going to pretend like they don't write some pretty crappy stuff sometimes. And when I say "they" I mean "Paizo's staff (which includes freelancers)" because to my knowledge they don't stamp the name of the designer on each section that they wrote in a sourcebook, which means literally everything they publish regardless of who wrote it or why will reflect on Paizo. That's life.
It's also one of the reasons that I agree being a publisher would not be cake.
Sorry Wraith. I didn't mean that you were freaking out. I just made an observation based on Gnomersy's post and related a thought my brother had concerning games. PC games as I noted. The thought that many times you can find incredibly awesome fan-made expansions or revisions to games that are better than was actually present or released by the developer itself.
I noted that the fans who love it often carry it on and help keep the game strong through the community and often put out great work, and noted that many of them are leaps and bounds better than the worst Paizo has published (which by default shows they're capable of writing stuff worth being published if the stuff they write is better than what's published).
And apparently people seemed to take this mentioning as some sort of statement that I hate Paizo, or they are lazy, or that I want to take them out back like Old Yeller. I was trying to figure out what on earth got everyone so riled up and begin insulting everyone who writes anything that isn't Paizo. Bad form it is.
And apparently people seemed to take this mentioning as some sort of statement that I hate Paizo, or they are lazy, or that I want to take them out back like Old Yeller. I was trying to figure out what on earth got everyone so riled up and begin insulting everyone who writes anything that isn't Paizo. Bad form it is.
It's how things work around here, sadly.
This has been pointed out for many years now, right from the start. But instead of addressing it, paizo and its defenders just shouted back and turtled up like they were besieged.
There is no criticism. Just "attacks."
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The idea that sales records are an indication of the quality of a product is an extremely faulty premise and is often more reliant on marketing and financial backing than the actual quality of the product.The audience for RPG rules are people who play RPGs, not the hardcore ones who post on a forum. (Presuming your 9/10 statistic was accurate).
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"Lots of people on the internet agree with me" is not actually substantiation or we'd be outlawing vaccinations.
Uh...no it isn't.
People pay money for products that they believe are worth paying money for.
If people aren't willing to buy your product, the fact that a group of people on a messageboard forum thread you choose to frequent like it means pretty much nothing in the broad scheme of things.
To quote you toward someone else in the thread.
Stop being foolish.
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The idea that sales records are an indication of the quality of a product is an extremely faulty premise and is often more reliant on marketing and financial backing than the actual quality of the product.Because those of us who buy books are too "foolish" to purchase what we want and instead just purchase what we're told to?
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What you value in a ruleset (consistency, balance, clarity, etcetera) is not what I value. You say "actual quality" as if that's some kind of objective measure, but there's no such thing.
Quality vs Availability is a huge thing here. If 100 people would love X more than Y but only have Y available they are going to take Y. This doesn't seem like rocket science here. In fact I'm pretty sure most 9 year olds could tell you that.
I guess quality is merely an opinion. I suppose I could wear rocks on a string and consider it exceptionally high quality jewelry since I've got plenty of rocks and some string.
So there's not much to say past that. Your measure of quality or not quality seems to only extend so far as dollar signs are concerned, which means that we disagree on fundamental levels and there's not much point in discussing it further.
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There is a lot more to sales than whether your good or not. I've seen lots of products considered bad fly off the shelves, and I've seen many products that I love get stuck on them or never show up on them. Sometimes its a weird business quark that it never goes on a retail shelf, and sometimes its just not enough advertisement or the businesses themselves willing to put it up when more popular but less quality products happen to sell better. An example of this is Citizen Kane, which was a box office failure, is considered much more now.
Pet rocks flew off the shelves way back when I've been told.
Your measure of quality or not quality seems to only extend so far as dollar signs are concerned, which means that we disagree on fundamental levels and there's not much point in discussing it further.
That's not my measure of quality. My claim is that there is no objective measure of quality.
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And apparently people seemed to take this mentioning as some sort of statement that I hate Paizo, or they are lazy, or that I want to take them out back like Old Yeller. I was trying to figure out what on earth got everyone so riled up and begin insulting everyone who writes anything that isn't Paizo. Bad form it is.It's how things work around here, sadly.
This has been pointed out for many years now, right from the start. But instead of addressing it, paizo and its defenders just shouted back and turtled up like they were besieged.There is no criticism. Just "attacks."
I wasn't even being critical of them which is the amusing part. I was remarking about the quality that many of the fanmade products have. Large or small.
Then I said Pathfinder is a big d20 mod (which it is).
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!
Also, as I once said of the Fighter:
In general, the most popular of anything seems to be the most generic and bland option. Coke/Pepsi for soda, vanilla for ice cream / pudding, regular hershey bar is the most popular chocolate bar, plain potato chips...
Fighter is the vanilla of D&D. It's not very good, but it's so lacking in style and flavor as to be immune to outright hatred (except from anti-establishment types) and is thus the most popular thing to the masses.
By being dull and uninteresting, but passable, a product can become the most sold/"popular." Not because it is the best, but because no one has particularly strong feelings against it, but everyone is able to at least tolerate it.
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Is there more to quality than sales? Yes.
Does the fact that some guy says that some guy on a messageboard thought it sucked mean more than consumer demand for a product.
Nope.
Also, Pro-tip, when you call someone a fool and compare them to a 9 year old, you don't get to claim the moral high ground in the debate.
The more you know...
Creating a rule book is much more than creating rules. As an amateur you don't have to make the hard choices around space constraints, broad appeal and (crucially) deadlines.This is precisely why amateurs often write better rules.
Publishing is not game design and the needs of publication, deadlines in particular, are contrary to the needs of good game design. Amateurs don't have deadlines. They can release when they're done. They can revise when they or their audience find problems. They can fix problems without worrying about word count preventing serious errors from getting locked in. Amateurs can iterate freely. Professionals have to get it right the first time, or at least get it wrong in a fashion that happens to use as much page space as getting it right would. Professional game designers aren't enough better than amateurs to overcome that limitation.
I think there's no doubt that amateurs can write better rules than professionals. My only dispute with what you've written here is the word "often". Einstein did a lot of great physics work as a patent clerk - yet there's a reason that physicists and mathematicians discard (without reading) all the unsolicited submissions from amateurs claiming to have unified the forces, proved that all perfect numbers are even or similar.
.In general (I claim without argument) amateurs are usually worse than those who do it for a living. The stakes are so high for those whose livelihood depends on it whereas there's nothing but internet-pride on the line for the amateur. Potential homelessness is a decent motivator.
What that means is that, if you find yourself as an amateur consistently disagreeing with the professionals, you should factor in a serious dose of self-doubt. You might be Einstein, but you could be the nutter with the perpetual motion machine.
Your measure of quality or not quality seems to only extend so far as dollar signs are concerned, which means that we disagree on fundamental levels and there's not much point in discussing it further.That's not my measure of quality. My claim is that there is no objective measure of quality.
I guess quality as I see it is whatever is more useful as a product. When I see things like prone shooter, elephant stomp, antagonize, and similar things in the books I buy from professionals, I am forced to look at things that actually work from other writers - many of which are fanmade products with no price tag - and accept that they are at least of equal or greater quality.
YMMV.
Your measure of quality or not quality seems to only extend so far as dollar signs are concerned, which means that we disagree on fundamental levels and there's not much point in discussing it further.That's not my measure of quality. My claim is that there is no objective measure of quality.I guess quality as I see it is whatever is more useful as a product. When I see things like prone shooter, elephant stomp, antagonize, and similar things in the books I buy from professionals, I am forced to look at things that actually work from other writers - many of which are fanmade products with no price tag - and accept that they are at least of equal or greater quality.
YMMV.
Mileage potentially varying is precisley what I mean by there being no objective measure of quality.
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@Atarlost - The problem being that many people think they write good rules, but as RPG superstar shows, many people are deluded.
So we are left to discuss objective measures of quality.
Is a messageboard one? No, because each thread will attract like minded people to discuss a product they like. If you look hard enough you can find a pro-F.A.T.A.L. fanclub thread somewhere on the internet that talks about how the foolish 9 year olds don't "Get it".
So what can we use. Sales are a great place to start because unless you have a very wealthy family, the purchase is going to be from strangers who are giving you money because you think the product is of high quality.
But, if you put out a product and people don't buy it...it is probably because people didn't think it was worth the money.
Because you personally like something doesn't make it actually a good product.
But we also should look beyond specific sales of a single product (as the Pet Rock once sold well...) to sales over time, increases in sales, etc...
Green Ronin is a great 3pp by this measure, as although they aren't as high volume as some other publishers, they get consistently good reviews and the people who work there are well respected by other designers.
Leading us to the root of this issue. Glass houses. It isn't that it was an attack to say the people who design the games aren't perfect. It is rather to ask if it isn't...well...damn arrogant to sit in the back of the room and throw spitballs?
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I guess quality as I see it is whatever is more useful as a product. When I see things like prone shooter, elephant stomp, antagonize, and similar things in the books I buy from professionals, I am forced to look at things that actually work from other writers - many of which are fanmade products with no price tag - and accept that they are at least of equal or greater quality.
YMMV.
Because you don't like X idea from a publisher, therefore ideas from people who can't get published are "at least of equal or greater quality."
This is your argument?
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And apparently people seemed to take this mentioning as some sort of statement that I hate Paizo, or they are lazy, or that I want to take them out back like Old Yeller. I was trying to figure out what on earth got everyone so riled up and begin insulting everyone who writes anything that isn't Paizo. Bad form it is.It's how things work around here, sadly.
This has been pointed out for many years now, right from the start. But instead of addressing it, paizo and its defenders just shouted back and turtled up like they were besieged.There is no criticism. Just "attacks."I wasn't even being critical of them which is the amusing part. I was remarking about the quality that many of the fanmade products have. Large or small.
Then I said Pathfinder is a big d20 mod (which it is).
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!
My response was more in response to how many people criticize Paizo, not the fact that they do. I don't mind telling Paizo that there's something wrong with their rules (Antagonize is a good example for me). But, I'm not going to start insulting devs and outright demanding an immediate response and change. My point it that people are so quick to throw the devs under the bus when there's a rule they don't like, when many times, they do read the responses patiently and listen to people. At least for me, I don't get riled up by rules issues because as much as I love this game, I still understand that it's just a game. And posting angrily at the devs, demanding blood tribute and sacrifice for their transgressions is just not my style.
I'd rather save that for when I want good harvest :)
Mileage potentially varying is precisley what I mean by there being no objective measure of quality.Your measure of quality or not quality seems to only extend so far as dollar signs are concerned, which means that we disagree on fundamental levels and there's not much point in discussing it further.That's not my measure of quality. My claim is that there is no objective measure of quality.I guess quality as I see it is whatever is more useful as a product. When I see things like prone shooter, elephant stomp, antagonize, and similar things in the books I buy from professionals, I am forced to look at things that actually work from other writers - many of which are fanmade products with no price tag - and accept that they are at least of equal or greater quality.
YMMV.
I'll be sure to remember that quality doesn't exist then. If "being functional" vs "being nonfunctional" is not a near universal measure of quality then we can deduce that quality is a myth.
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I'll be sure to remember that quality doesn't exist then. If "being functional" vs "being nonfunctional" is not a near universal measure of quality then we can deduce that quality is a myth.
I had a friend who had a beater car with a leaky radiator. When it overheated he would pull over to the side of the road and pee into the radiator.
That was a functional solution not at all reflective of the quality.
Functionality is not an equivalent to quality. And functionality itself is certainly subjective in any discussion of role playing games, both at the system and table level.
I again revert to the question I ask so often in these discussions. Why should we ask someone who is having trouble in their game for solutions?
Wouldn't it make more sense to ask people who aren't experiencing problems how they are so successful?
It would be like asking my friend where he got his car while he is standing on the side of the road with his pants down, peeing in his radiator.
The Developers of the game are people so good at running games, that people pay them to teach others how to do it. Literally, that happened.
3pp are people so good at designing games that people pay them to read their ideas.
Not all, but many people on the messageboard posting "fixes" are quite often more similar to my friend. They apparently have a broken game, and they want to show you how you can to!
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And apparently people seemed to take this mentioning as some sort of statement that I hate Paizo, or they are lazy, or that I want to take them out back like Old Yeller. I was trying to figure out what on earth got everyone so riled up and begin insulting everyone who writes anything that isn't Paizo. Bad form it is.It's how things work around here, sadly.
This has been pointed out for many years now, right from the start. But instead of addressing it, paizo and its defenders just shouted back and turtled up like they were besieged.There is no criticism. Just "attacks."I wasn't even being critical of them which is the amusing part. I was remarking about the quality that many of the fanmade products have. Large or small.
Then I said Pathfinder is a big d20 mod (which it is).
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!
My response was more in response to how many people criticize Paizo, not the fact that they do. I don't mind telling Paizo that there's something wrong with their rules (Antagonize is a good example for me). But, I'm not going to start insulting devs and outright demanding an immediate response and change. My point it that people are so quick to throw the devs under the bus when there's a rule they don't like, when many times, they do read the responses patiently and listen to people. At least for me, I don't get riled up by rules issues because as much as I love this game, I still understand that it's just a game. And posting angrily at the devs, demanding blood tribute and sacrifice for their transgressions is just not my style.
I'd rather save that for when I want good harvest :)
I don't insult the devs and demand immediate changes either. I'm more interested in playing and discussing my favorite game. I enjoy discussing both the good and the bad of it. Acknowledging a lot of the bad points is the reason we have moved forward in a lot of ways in Pathfinder. In much the same, there was a thread where someone collected some data about unbalanced classes and as it turned out the general consensus is that X, Y, and Z were commonly considered underpowered and at least one class was commonly considered overpowered.
There are things in the rules I'm not a fan of but I have often defended Pathfinder on the grounds of what sorts of things they improved (though according to Steve Geddes I was wasting my breath defending Pathfinder since there's no way to suggest what is quality and I nor anyone else is apparently qualified to say "hey, Pathfinder doesn't suck"). I did so right here in fact.
I'm just irritated at how much backlash I got for suggesting that Paizo is anything but infallible. >:(
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I don't insult the devs and demand immediate changes either. I'm more interested in playing and discussing my favorite game. I enjoy discussing both the good and the bad of it. Acknowledging a lot of the bad points is the reason we have moved...And apparently people seemed to take this mentioning as some sort of statement that I hate Paizo, or they are lazy, or that I want to take them out back like Old Yeller. I was trying to figure out what on earth got everyone so riled up and begin insulting everyone who writes anything that isn't Paizo. Bad form it is.It's how things work around here, sadly.
This has been pointed out for many years now, right from the start. But instead of addressing it, paizo and its defenders just shouted back and turtled up like they were besieged.There is no criticism. Just "attacks."I wasn't even being critical of them which is the amusing part. I was remarking about the quality that many of the fanmade products have. Large or small.
Then I said Pathfinder is a big d20 mod (which it is).
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!
My response was more in response to how many people criticize Paizo, not the fact that they do. I don't mind telling Paizo that there's something wrong with their rules (Antagonize is a good example for me). But, I'm not going to start insulting devs and outright demanding an immediate response and change. My point it that people are so quick to throw the devs under the bus when there's a rule they don't like, when many times, they do read the responses patiently and listen to people. At least for me, I don't get riled up by rules issues because as much as I love this game, I still understand that it's just a game. And posting angrily at the devs, demanding blood tribute and sacrifice for their transgressions is just not my style.
I'd rather save that for when I want good harvest :)
I understand, my response was just in general, not really directed at anyone. I remember the whole monk debacle, where suddenly Paizo was the white whale, every monk fan Captain Ahab, and the monk their leg. Suddenly, everyone is crying blood and thunder at the horrific atrocity that Paizo hath wrought on the poor monk. Darfur? Forget that. The Holocaust? Not even close. Like, somewhere in a dark corner, Hitler was crying deeply, tears streaming down his rosy cheeks, eating a large tub of chocolate ice cream and watching The Notebook while Stalin, Osama Bin Laden, and Vlad the Impaler were all trying to console him because for that whole time with the monk, Hitler was no longer the most hated person in the world. It's that reaction that makes me and my friends think so little of this forum and the people on it. Which is a shame, because there are some cool people here and I want to like this place.
Its the internet. You get all sorts of opinions. That said, people get crazy about their hobbies sometimes.
I understand, my response was just in general, not really directed at anyone. I remember the whole monk debacle, where suddenly Paizo was the white whale, every monk fan Captain Ahab, and the monk their leg. Suddenly, everyone is crying blood and thunder at the horrific atrocity that Paizo hath wrought on the poor monk. Darfur? Forget that. The Holocaust? Not even close. Like, somewhere in a dark corner, Hitler was crying deeply, tears streaming down his rosy cheeks, eating a large tub of chocolate ice cream and watching The Notebook while Stalin, Osama Bin Laden, and Vlad the Impaler were all trying to console him because for that whole time with the monk, Hitler was no longer the most hated person in the world. It's that reaction that makes me and my friends think so little of this forum and the people on it. Which is a shame, because there are some cool people here and I want to like this place.
*claps slowly* I laughed so much. I also want to commend you because I never thought any post - ever - that mentioned Paizo, Monks, Hitler, Bin Ladin, Stalin, Moby Dick and Captain Ahab would make me smile and laugh so much. Hell, I never thought I'd see a post with all of that in it! (O.O)
You have brightened my day. (^.^)
Its the internet. You get all sorts of opinions. That said, people get crazy about their hobbies sometimes.
Indeed. *lays head on desk*
Mileage potentially varying is precisley what I mean by there being no objective measure of quality.I'll be sure to remember that quality doesn't exist then. If "being functional" vs "being nonfunctional" is not a near universal measure of quality then we can deduce that quality is a myth.
I think it would be silly to say quality doesnt exit.
I think it would be silly to say quality doesnt exit.Mileage potentially varying is precisley what I mean by there being no objective measure of quality.I'll be sure to remember that quality doesn't exist then. If "being functional" vs "being nonfunctional" is not a near universal measure of quality then we can deduce that quality is a myth.
Well if you can't talk about quality without people jumping down your throat about how insubstantial and ephemeral quality is, where functionality cannot even be a measurement of quality...
Well there's not much left really. The definition includes things such as
"high grade; superiority; excellence" which seems to be the exact opposite of rules that don't work (like prone shooter or antagonize or elephant stomp). Yet apparently it was such a big problem for you that I could suggest that someone else could have made something of a higher quality than the endless pages of garbage that haunts 3.5's reputation to this day, unless it had lots of dollar signs attached to it.
At least, that's basically what I took from your posts. Unless there was some sort of point you were driving at. It's very possible I missed it through the many posts grossly misrepresenting my commentary, or acting like I shot the Paizo golem or something.
If there was something other than just being contrary and trying to muddy any sort honest conversation that you were getting at then I'm all ears. Otherwise I'm just going to leave this conversation alone. Getting hammered by other posters for nothing leaves a bad taste in the mouth - especially when you're just trying to converse about not only your hobby but your community.
Yet apparently it was such a big problem for you that I could suggest that someone else could have made something of a higher quality than the endless pages of garbage that haunts 3.5's reputation to this day, unless it had lots of dollar signs attached to it.
Oh - you were talking to me about that "Paizo fanboi" stuff? Pathfinder isnt even my preferred roleplaying game so no, I wasnt objecting to any post you made suggesting that someone else might have done something better. I was objecting to any suggestion that quality was objective - I thought you subsequently agreed with that?
.My point has always been that, if you're an amateur, you should approach disagreements with the professionals from the point of view that you're probably missing something rather than from the perspective that they are.
At least, that's basically what I took from your posts. Unless there was some sort of point you were driving at. It's very possible I missed it through the many posts grossly misrepresenting my commentary, or acting like I shot the Paizo golem or something.
Misrepresenting? I thought this was your position:
.You think that Paizo do a fine job, but that they occasionally drop the ball. They're only human after all and everyone makes the odd error from time to time. There are various desirable features a ruleset (or subsystem) should have and there are many examples where the amateur fans of the game have produced something which is superior (by that measure) than the 'officially sanctioned' product of the comparable time.
Is that wrong?