Using that as an example might not be the best way to make your case
The murderhobo's not necessarily evil—he might even be a paladin—but he is basically a vagrant with a shotgun. In a good party, he's a well-meaning vagrant with a shotgun.
Love that movie. Was so happy to see Ricky from Trailer Park Boys in there too.
Perhaps I define "murderhobo" differently. I see the murderhobo as a guy who doesn't look after his lodgings and makes his living killing things.
The murderhobo's not necessarily evil—he might even be a paladin—but he is basically a vagrant with a shotgun. In a good party, he's a well-meaning vagrant with a shotgun.
I tend to go with "someone that is being played with an overriding aim to kill things and take their stuff, for the reason of the player wanting whatever stuff/XP/other awards come from killing all the things"
(Basically, what I do when I play Fallout: New Vegas the third or fourth time around ;) )
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AKA The "Wild Card" ending. =)
If I used the term "Toon" rather than PC, what would you say? What arguments would you use for or against it?
Thus far, one of the more convincing arguments I've heard is that using lingo from a different type of game (in this case, MMOs) could cause confusion; however, this particular word doesn't seem all that egregious—most people, even having not played an MMO, could pick up from the surrounding context that "Toon"=PC.
Thoughts?
I would ask what classes are available for this Animaniacs game.
Hey, bbt, if I came up to a group and asked them if they could help me flesh out a concept for my latest "toon," then proceeded to make it clear that I was talking about a PC, and a member of that group said, "Gee, I was going to help you until you used the term 'toon,'" how should I interpret their reaction?
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Hey, bbt, if I came up to a group and asked them if they could help me flesh out a concept for my latest "toon," then proceeded to make it clear that I was talking about a PC, and a member of that group said, "Gee, I was going to help you until you used the term 'toon,'" how should I interpret their reaction?
I'd interpret it as a mixture of...
1) they're being rude and/or snob; find some friendlier gamers.
2) the term offends them and they think you're being rude to them - for legitimate or imagined reasons - enough to turn you down as a fellow gamer.
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The author of this thread knows full well that "toon" IS very well an offense to those who take the art of roleplaying as a meaningful value unto itself
Obviously not, or he wouldn't have asked.
I also had no idea people could get so worked up and insulted by a word with no inherent negative connotation.
All around the planet animated films are considered amusements for children. In the mainstream United States culture, they never rise above that status... And as a result, they're inferior in writing, it's why they're called... cartoons.
There is so much wrong in this segment.
First off, using what the "mainstream United States" thinks as a basis for deciding a word is offensive (for very odd reasons as well, assuming all cartoons are inferior in writing to...something, you gave a comparative statement without giving something to compare it to) is pretty funny when up until relatively recently D&D was code for Devil Worship to the "mainstream United States".
By your logic the hobby should have just quietly allowed itself to die, since they were insulting the mainstream US culture by using a term "everybody knows" is offensive.
Secondly, I'm very baffled as to where you got the idea cartoons are called cartoons because they have inferior writing. You mind citing a source for that statement?
Because last I heard it was a bastardization of an Italian word for certain kinds of drawings, which then came to be associated with political cartoons/satire (some of which are considered genius for their time), which finally translated to animation for being a form of "moving comic strip".
Thirdly, seriously? With cartoons like Frozen coming out and grabbing the attention of both kids AND adults, can you really even say the mainstream US only sees them as amusements for children now? There must be at least SOME market for adults there.
Fourthly, back to the first point, even assuming any of what you just said is true (which none of it really is in a significant sense), how does any of that translate to "Using the word toon is denigrating my hobby because...reasons I guess".
MMORPG players who think of the characters they play as "toons" embody this attitude. And when someone brings that to a venue dedicated to roleplaying, it's no different than when you hear it on World of Warcraft.
Yes, it IS no different. Which makes your resistance to it even more confusing.
"These people who use the word toon are using it in the same manner as people who play WoW do! TO REFER TO THEIR CHARACTERS! Therefore, it is OFFENSIVE! Because _______."
You have yet to fill in that blank. Because...why? WoW players don't use the word "toon" to denigrate their character, so I'm completely confused as to wher eyou're going with this train.
I mean, all confusion clears up if I go with the explanation that it's just another round of "MMO's are teh sux0rs, TTRPGs 5lyfe" blind hatred but I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt and let you explain yourself before jumping to that conclusion.
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Lol. Whatevs. I have a long and storied grognard pedigree, 35 years and counting. I hope I never get my nose jammed so far up my nethers that I get offended by new slang
If anyone took me to task for using 'toon' I'd be glad. At least I'd have an early warning that their play style would be humorless and pretentious. It would keep me from wasting 2-4 hours of my time at least.
And any character that wanders from place to place making a living killing things? Murderhobo. Dress it in pretty intentions all you want.
Weren't it for me seeing this thread, having someone at my table refer to anything as a "toon" would just make me think of cartoon characters.
I never heard it in MMO context.
Aside from the confusion I honestly don't care what you call your anything as long as it is clear what you mean (that includes some consistency in your terminology as well as limiting it to a manageable amount) and you don't start casually throwing around racial or sexual slurs or the like.
When I start getting bothered by MMORPG terminology is when you use it to reduce characters to some kind of combat role. Things like "tank", "dps/dpr", "healer/healbot" etc. Unlike MMORPGs pen and Paper RPGs are actualy role-playing games where each PC is a living breathing individual (well, unless they are undead or constructs i guess) and stats merely exist to give them an easily moderated way to interact with their environment. They are characters, not numbers dishing out numbers against other numbers or numbers taking numbers from other numbers in order to prevent yet other numbers from having numbers dealt to them.
That being said I also discourage this type of party balancing that says "we have a fighter, a rogue and a wizard, so you need to play a cleric or something else that is suitably different in playstyle from what is already there", if the party has three barbarians already and the fourth player also wants to play a barbarian, then I let them. I will simply adjust the campaign a little bit to accomodate such a party (and that usually doesn't take much).
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Come on, every adventurer is basically a vagrant with a shotgun? You may as well call everyone who ever carried a weapon a vagrant with shotgun. In either case, it's overly simplistic, and the comparison becomes meaningless.
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I don't care what word a person uses. We are here to have fun, not be terminology pedants. Besides, if I were a real stickler like, say, Hama, most of you would be kicked out of the game for using 'GM' instead of 'DM' ;)
Why? "DM" is a protected term owned by the Hasbro subsidiary WotC. I do not currently play a game that has a "DM", as I am not currently playing anything published by TSR, WotC, or Hasbro. "GM" has been a term for someone running a non-D&D game since the '70s. If I'm playing D&D, the guy running it is a "DM". If I'm playing anything else, the guy is either a "GM" or a "Storyteller".
Find me one instance of "Dungeon Master" or "DM" in any Paizo rulebook ;-)
Perhaps I define "murderhobo" differently. I see the murderhobo as a guy who doesn't look after his lodgings and makes his living killing things.
The murderhobo's not necessarily evil—he might even be a paladin—but he is basically a vagrant with a shotgun. In a good party, he's a well-meaning vagrant with a shotgun.
These characters are especially common in "chill roleplaying" adventures like dungeon crawls.
I see it as a hyperbolic term. Obviously, you're not a "murderer", but "murderhobo" sounds funnier than "honorablecombathobo".
That term is "adventurer' and has been around for ages. No need to get people riled up with a new term with insulting & derogation terms loaded with negative connotations.
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Hey, bbt, if I came up to a group and asked them if they could help me flesh out a concept for my latest "toon," then proceeded to make it clear that I was talking about a PC, and a member of that group said, "Gee, I was going to help you until you used the term 'toon,'" how should I interpret their reaction?
I'd explain that our group, being mature, experienced roleplayers, do not play with "toons". Nor "murderhoboes".
people associating a term with a 26 year old movie versus its usage for years in massively multiplayer online roleplaying games
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Actually, for me, it's a century-old association with one artform v. a decade-old (if that?) association with another.
(Although 26 years is a long time for a particular individual to get things thoroughly associated. :D)
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people associating a term with a 26 year old movie versus its usage for years in massively multiplayer online roleplaying games
Different generations, different formative experiences, different cultural influences.
There's a reason we all know what to say when someone asks if we are a god.
people associating a term with a 26 year old movie versus its usage for years in massively multiplayer online roleplaying games
Number of times I've seen said movie: I wore out 2 videotapes of it, so at least a couple dozen.
Amount of time I've spent playing MMOs: 20 minutes on a friends WoW account.
If someone called their character "toon", I would seriously not understand them at first. After that, I would feel it would be a problem in trying to establish mood and allow for roleplaying in a campaign and would ask them to stop. Some people can't resist doing silly, especially when others are trying to keep things serious, and in some styles of campaign, they can be very disruptive.
If the same player keeps blathering about DPR, tank and spank, mobs, trash, loot, adds, need or greed, instances, PVP, groups, grind, and so on, I would tell the person to leave if there was no particular reason not to. Someone like that is not going to want the things I am interested in when running a campaign.
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don't have any problem with everyone referring to our fighter as a "tank."
We had a fighter the rogue ended up calling "Brick" which I suppose could have been taken as a variation of "tank". Part of it was a bit of an OOC jab in good humour at the player's choice of hobbies before moving into tabletops.
In the drop-in group, the term 'toon is accepted. I cringe at it. But the guy who uses the term most often came to gaming through World of Warcraft and some mutual friends, I believe. So the fact that he plays PF and uses MMORPG terms is understandable. However, the dude has moved from wanting to play a basic "tank" with little discernible personality to playing pun-themed characters with some fairly impressive role-playing and good stats. I'm actually impressed.
There were some folks in another group I played in who didn't know the term "PC" except as "personal computer". So it's all kind of relative. I kind of wonder what PF terms WoW players find offensive.
Come on, every adventurer is basically a vagrant with a shotgun? You may as well call everyone who ever carried a weapon a vagrant with shotgun. In either case, it's overly simplistic, and the comparison becomes meaningless.
When in the name of the Great and Powerful Trixie did I say this?
That term is "adventurer' and has been around for ages. No need to get people riled up with a new term with insulting & derogation terms loaded with negative connotations.
Let's cut out the middleman (me) and simplify your statement: No need to get riled up about it.
Isn't that simpler?
Also, everything Rynjin said. Especially the stuff about animation. As someone who wants to someday make his living writing for animation, the comment saying cartoons have inferior writing really yoink cheeses me off.
Roger Rager: "You want morningstars? I've got morningstars! See?" *Kills a guy with an axe* *Kills a guy with a flail*
Eddie Valient: "Toons...
Everybody ignore the smurfold that you may or may not have noticed. I was reading up-thread and thought Chris's moderation was directed at my seemingly deleted "yoink'd" post. I need to learn to use the mouse wheel.
I'm going to tell myself this was the equivalent of a visit from the Ghosts of Paizo Threads Past and edit my post's objectionable content away anyways.
As someone who wants to someday make his living writing for animation, the comment saying cartoons have inferior writing reallyyoinkcheeses me off.
You have to admit, there's a lot of cartoons out there (especially a glut of stuff from Hanna-Barbera and most of the "we've got a new toy so let's make a cartoon to sell them" cartoons of the 80s) that do have terrible writing. Then there are those that are very, very good. The remake of Thundercats is Oscar material compared to the original series, for example.
I've seen it around but I never really paid attention to it. While it's true a lot of cartoons are still for kids, I think the idea that cartoons are ALWAYS for kids has come and gone. The massive success of things like Family Guy, Futurama, and the Simpsons went a long way toward breaking that ice, and then stuff like Avatar/Korra is starting the deep thaw.
It might be an idea to some people still (my former step-father was one of them), but it's slowly becoming less of a majority I think.
I will somewhat agree that standards for production on cartoons is less than for many anime. Even bad anime animation is sometimes better than the average to decent animation for cartoons.
As someone who wants to someday make his living writing for animation, the comment saying cartoons have inferior writing reallyYou have to admit, there's a lot of cartoons out there (especially a glut of stuff from Hanna-Barbera and most of the "we've got a new toy so let's make a cartoon to sell them" cartoons of the 80s) that do have terrible writing.yoinkcheeses me off.
Naturally. That's Sturgeon's Law. There's also a whole lot of adult programming that's crap.
Just gonna say, you're kinda misusing the term Animation Ghetto. It's about cultural perceptions, not quality. We've been making good animated movies for a while. We just haven't been acknowledging them.
Now, there is the fact that the US mostly makes animation for kids (with a few exceptions, like "9"). That's true. But kids movies don't inherently have inferior writing. It's just a different genre.
And, again, duh, the majority of animation is crap. The majority of everything is crap.
EDIT: I apologize, by the way, if what I say comes across as hostile. I'm very into kids' animation and often have to defend it from the naysayers, so sometimes I'm a bit defensive. However, I feel that you're mischaracterizing the state of American animation.
We have studios like Disney, Dreamworks and Pixar regularly producing quality movies—to say nothing of shows like Gravity Falls, Adventure Time, and that one I'm not supposed to talk about. Animation in the U.S. may not be as "adult" as animation in Japan, but it's no less high-quality.
EDITx2: Oh, and this is all ignoring the older high-quality shows like Batman (The Animated Series), Gargoyles, and Animaniacs. Seriously, freakin' Animaniacs.
Ok, guys enuf with the hijack about cartoon quality, please.
Right. Anyways, I think the Toon RPG is good, but...wait, what were we talking about, again?
Cartoons are drawn. Computer animated stuff like Frozen is awkward to fit with that label at best. Cartoons are slapstick and silly, and serious hand drawn stories again fit the label badly. Certainly, some feel differently, but it is still a problem that lies with the term and how it's been used in the past. Worse, I think, is that if you draw this term from WoW, the usage also implies that the appearance of the character is the important part of it. That is not how I like to think of my characters in any RPG I am playing.
Just because animation currently has a smaller envelope doesn't mean that envelope doesn't get pushed. Animaniacs didn't have bad animation. It had cartoonish animation. The level was as high as it needed to be.
Also, I'd agree that "cartoon" generally implies a light-hearted work, though that hardly makes it any worse. Would we say that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is lower-tier than Return of the King because RotK is serious and Monty Python is a comedy? I would hope not.
On the subject at hand, I wouldn't say "toon" because "toon" doesn't seem to have any meaning. What does "toon" even come from, etymology-wise?
Also, while I'm no expert on anime, I thought it had relatively the same level of animation quality compared to our own. Anime just prioritizes different parts of the body.
And whether or not anime is "better", US animation is still very good, and the writing is still very good. As such, your statement...
All around the planet animated films are considered amusements for children. In the mainstream United States culture, they never rise above that status, or worse used for nothing more than to market toys. And as a result, they're inferior in writing, It's why they're called... cartoons.
...remains irrelevant, and rather incorrect.
That applies to its real meaning. Not its meaning in MMOs (unless it's literally just referencing how MMOs are technically animated).