I really do enjoy certain kinds of schadenfreude, including TPKs in Call of Cthulhu caused by an excess of dynamite.Old Man Henderson?!
Nope. Some bad sanity rolls in a cavern in Kenya and some bad decisions (such as bringing in a satchel full of dynamite in the first place).
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Rolling for stats always produces better average stats than is statistically possible. Nearly every player will throw away "sets" of rolls that are not high enough as "practice" and start over again.
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Lovecraft was a very strange, isolated and sheltered young man, living at a very difficult time. His views where a little outside of the norm, but not very. His position is actually understandable, if not admirable, given the time, place an circumstance in which he lived.
There is also some evidence that his views where softening towards the end of his life, though not all agree.
It also worth noting he married a Jewish woman.
He's hardly alone in being a writer of that era who had uncomfortable relationships with race. An easy example is Virginia Woolf. She wrote her jewish character is broad, stereotypical strokes and commented "I do not like the Jewish voice; I do not like the Jewish laugh.", yet she married a Jewish man and came to admit that her anti-semitism was snobbery
The literary history of the early twentieth century is replete with writers, who's personal views are complex and uncomfortable.
Honestly, there are bigger problems with liking lovecraft. His writing is often SHOCKINGLY BAD.
Yet even that fails to take away the fact, that Lovecraft has had a profound impact on modern horror writing.
He spawned it.
Without Lovecraft's "At the mountains of madness", there is no "who goes there". Without "Who goes there", there is no "The Thing". Without Lovecraft, there is no Steven King. His influence touches Gaiman and Stross. Goes through gaming culture like a knife, to the point where it is unclear if you'd even have games like eclipse phase, without his influence.
The stark, bleak, cosmic horror which he evoked in the best of his work has had profound impact, and I for one am very glad the weird little man and his can of beans existed.
I'd like iron gods to get a lukewarm reception. (Not poor enough to do damage, but not well enough to encourage more science-fantasy).
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Back to rolling styles for a mo...
How about 1d8+8, arrange as you will?Wouldn't 1d10 make more sense?
Str: 1d10 + 8 ⇒ (2) + 8 = 10
Dex: 1d10 + 8 ⇒ (1) + 8 = 9
Con: 1d10 + 8 ⇒ (10) + 8 = 18
Int: 1d10 + 8 ⇒ (6) + 8 = 14
Wis: 1d10 + 8 ⇒ (2) + 8 = 10
Cha: 1d10 + 8 ⇒ (3) + 8 = 11Uh...huh...I got nothing but I'm hard to kill.
Ooh, nice. Barbarian, ftw.
More on topic, no matter what system I play, I always see Charisma (or its analogue) as a dump stat.
Despite owning all the Discworld books, I've never read one.
I like Magic Item crafting.
I always focus defensive stats over offensive ones.
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I'm just pointing out the folly of imagining that point-buy is entirely controlled by you and that random rolling is entirely random
Did anyone actually suggest that was the case? As I said in my previous post both methods have limitations imposed and some choices the players can make, but the random roll method is the only one that introduces a random element - its that element that I believe some people don't like (I don't particularly like it).
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I'm just pointing out the folly of imagining that point-buy is entirely controlled by you and that random rolling is entirely randomDid anyone actually suggest that was the case? As I said in my previous post both methods have limitations imposed and some choices the players can make, but the random roll method is the only one that introduces a random element - its that element that I believe some people don't like (I don't particularly like it).
I am saying that. i can control fully where i put what numbers in a point buy. It is fair and consistent for all player and they can pick what they want to make the character they want. Dice are inconsistent and can result in wildly different power levels at best and can make it impossible to play most any character many times.
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I hate FFVII and believe it is responsible for the downfall of the series.
The only Final Fantasy that I ever played was the one on the Nintendo 64.
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I hate FFVII and believe it is responsible for the downfall of the series.
You are an evil, tainted person and should be fed to smelly otyughs. Slowly.
Despite all the bashing that goes on in the Gaming Den every day, I prefer that forum over this one at least to some extent.
I find Lovecraft's works to be highly overrated, and the notion of Cthulhu being unbeatable despite losing to a steamboat ridiculous.
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I hate Final Fantasy VIII, but I really like VI and IX.
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I am saying that. i can control fully where i put what numbers in a point buy. It is fair and consistent for all player and they can pick what they want to make the character they want. Dice are inconsistent and can result in wildly different power levels at best and can make it impossible to play most any character many times.I'm just pointing out the folly of imagining that point-buy is entirely controlled by you and that random rolling is entirely randomDid anyone actually suggest that was the case? As I said in my previous post both methods have limitations imposed and some choices the players can make, but the random roll method is the only one that introduces a random element - its that element that I believe some people don't like (I don't particularly like it).
Point-buy means that players can pick what they want to make the character they want?
No! I've only ever made two PCs with point-buy, because both were for PFS. My first had two stats reduced to 7 in order to get 8 extra points to make my Str and Cha close to what I wanted. Yet I wished I could have had more Dex. Do you think I wanted Int and Wis of 7?
My second PC had 18/18/8/7/7/7 before racial mods to get the Dex and Cha I wanted. Do you think I'd have given her three 7s and an 8 if I wasn't forced to by point-buy? 'Choice' my arse!
When you roll stats, you choose where to assign them, and the fact that you can't swap points between them stops you from reducing the one's you don't need to 7.
Point-buy is a choice of how to assign points that are imposed upon you by the DM's point-buy total.
Rolling stats is a choice of how you assign the rolls that are imposed on you by the results of the dice.
I'm seeing much less difference between the two methods in regard to how much choice there is.
I hate Final Fantasy VIII, but I really like VI and IX.
Then you can join Freehold DM being eaten by smelly otyughs, only worse. FFVIII is a beautiful piece of art. It *may* have certain issues in the draw function, but otherwise, it flat out beats the rest of the series out of the water. IX was painful.
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FFI-VI is where it's at. FF VII was way over-hyped, and definitely where the decline started.
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I am saying that.I'm just pointing out the folly of imagining that point-buy is entirely controlled by you and that random rolling is entirely randomDid anyone actually suggest that was the case? As I said in my previous post both methods have limitations imposed and some choices the players can make, but the random roll method is the only one that introduces a random element - its that element that I believe some people don't like (I don't particularly like it).
You're saying that "point-buy is entirely controlled by you and that random rolling is entirely random" or that its the random element that you don't like?
Because as Malachi Silverclaw was pointing out, point buy isn't entirely controlled by the player, e.g. the number of points you get to use to buy abilities is usually decided by the GM, for a home game that may be 15, but for PFS it is 20 points.
Equally, random rolling isn't necessarily completely random, again the GM usually determines the dice rolling formulae, e.g. 4d6 drop lowest (Standard), 3d6 (Classic), 2d6+6 (Heroic), and most of the time the player gets to choose which Ability to assign each rolled result too. And in the Dice Pool method the player even gets to choose how many dice are rolled for each score.
So, point-buy is not entirely controlled by you (the player) and random rolling is not entirely random.
However, random rolling does have an element of randomness that point buy does not - and that is what I think some people (including me) dislike.
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Point-buy is a choice of how to assign points that are imposed upon you by the DM's point-buy total.
Rolling stats is a choice of how you assign the rolls that are imposed on you by the results of the dice.
I'm seeing much less difference between the two methods in regard to how much choice there is.
But hopefully the GM "imposes" the same number of points on each player, whereas the dice can "impose" a completely different number (and allocation) of points on each player.
That is the bit I dislike personally. Maybe random rolling wouldn't be so bad if every player had to use the same set of random results - its like the GM only allowing the players to use a specific array of scores.
But even then as a GM, even if I use different dice forumlae for the different types of campaign I want to run (e.g. 3d6 for gritty, 2d6+6 for heroic etc) the array I may end up with may not lend itself to creating characters that are suited to that type of campaign.
E.g. theoretically 3d6 for a gritty campaign could result in an array of 18, 16, 15, 14, 12, 12, whilst 2d6+6 for a heroic campaign could result in an array of 14, 11, 10, 10, 9, 8.
I hate Final Fantasy VIII, but I really like VI and IX.Then you can join Freehold DM being eaten by smelly otyughs, only worse. FFVIII is a beautiful piece of art. It *may* have certain issues in the draw function, but otherwise, it flat out beats the rest of the series out of the water. IX was painful.
FFVIII was horrible because of the draw system. If it wasn't for that, it would have been a decent game. FFVII is a good game, but people hold it so high as the god of the series that it gets annoying. FFVI is the same as 7. It's a good game, but people hold it so high as the god of the series that it gets even more annoying than those who do the same for 7. FFIX, FFI, and FFT are the best in the series, with FFX being in my top 5 (mainly because of Anima, a few monster designs, and the backstory of Sin and the final eidolons).
I personally think FFX was the last decent game in the FF series, but the last good game was FFIX, the final installment in the PS1 games.
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FFXIII stank to high heaven. FFXIII-2 was a good game, though. I really liked it. Perhaps this should go into Guilty Pleasures thread.
I never ever played D&D
I hate FFVII and believe it is responsible for the downfall of the series.You are an evil, tainted person and should be fed to smelly otyughs. Slowly.
strange. ..according to my driver's license and the name written on my pants tag, I am neither joss whedon, alton Brown or mark zuckerberg.
I hate Final Fantasy VIII, but I really like VI and IX.Then you can join Freehold DM being eaten by smelly otyughs, only worse. FFVIII is a beautiful piece of art. It *may* have certain issues in the draw function, but otherwise, it flat out beats the rest of the series out of the water. IX was painful.
....icyshadow is one of the legs of the Tripod of Evil!?! I shOuld have known!
Also, I love ffx2 for obvious reasons.