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Hasn't this poor dead horse been beaten enough?
110: For beating dead horses.
These are for when GMs need to get booted from the table...
111: Does a happy dance and points there finger at you yelling "In Your Face!!!" every time he/she kills one of the characters.
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112: For animating a dead horse, if they were told they are not allowed to play an evil character.
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107. Treating the game as something you try and 'win'
Back in the early 80s when i was a wee lad and just getting into gaming, the local store owner at the store I learned to play at had a rep for being a textbook "killer GM". He told me and a couple of other people that in a tabletop RPG, the GM is a general and the PCs are the enemy that the general has to defeat.
He wondered why no one played in his games.
112: For animating a dead horse, if they were told they are not allowed to play an evil character.
Who says this must be an evil character? :-D
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113. Mythos inflexibility (i.e. refusing to accept that necromancy isn't necessarily evil just because they're rooted the mythos of a completely different game where that's a given - then there was that guy I mentioned on Page 1 who seemed obsessed with Warhammer Dwarves and declared before he'd even made his character that he hated Chaos, necromancers, and elves, and would kill them if he encountered them).
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Um...horses are pretty obviously sentient. You have to get down to the level of creatures like ants, sardines, and jellyfish before things stop being sentient. Note the difference between "sentient" and "sapient", which is what you might mean - but even that's a pretty flimsy border. IQ-wise, gorillas, dolphins, and even some parrots might be as smart as a typical human.
IQ-wise, gorillas, dolphins, and even some parrots might be as smart as a typical human.
Umm... no. While these animals (and chimps, and possibly elephants, pigs, and giant squid!) are highly intelligent compared to the animal average, it is really reaching to say they are as smart as a typical human.
Maybe as smart as your typical fan of the Kardashians, but not your typical human.
In any case, I wouldn't say you have to be evil to reanimate dead. Nongood, sure, but not evil. Especially if you stick to mindless undead like skeletons and zombies, and keep them firmly under your control.
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Umm... no....
No? A movement has already formed to grant dolphins legal personhood based on frank observation of their demonstrated mental powers in order to provide them with rights that a being with such faculties ought to be entitled to (and the government of India has already signed on). Similar efforts have also been made for chimpanzees (there was a court case to that end not long ago here in the US; it lost, but that's how these things start most of the time). I'll admit parrots may be the weak link here, but it would still merely be 'a generous estimate' rather than "really reaching," considering that they apparently demonstrate many of the hallmark cognitive abilities that would define intelligence, and the famous Alex the African Grey was considered both to be on par with a human preschooler, yet merely average by the standards of African Grey intelligence. I can personally vouch for gorillas - Koko the Gorilla, who has taken IQ tests on which she received a score of 90, within the range of an average human, is someone whom I personally met years ago due to my mother's work at the Gorilla Foundation. I didn't actually get to enter her trailer, but we played with toys together through the glass pane between us. ^_^
No? A movement has already formed to grant dolphins legal personhood based on frank observation of their demonstrated mental powers in order to provide them with rights that a being with such faculties ought to be entitled to (and the government of India has already signed on)
Wait. Does this mean that dolphins who commit "sapient rights violations" against other dolphins would need to be punished for those actions?
Because if so, hooooeey, NATO's gonna have its flippers full.
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No? A movement has already formed to grant dolphins legal personhood based on frank observation of their demonstrated mental powers in order to provide them with rights that a being with such faculties ought to be entitled to (and the government of India has already signed on)Wait. Does this mean that dolphins who commit "sapient rights violations" against other dolphins would need to be punished for those actions?
Because if so, hooooeey, NATO's gonna have its flippers full.
Presumably, the dolphin courts will handle it.
All that matters is what the GM and possibly the rest of the players define as evil.
Dolphins and cats are beyond static moral concepts such as laws and courts.
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Umm... no....No? A movement has already formed to grant dolphins legal personhood based on frank observation of their demonstrated mental powers in order to provide them with rights that a being with such faculties ought to be entitled to (and the government of India has already signed on). Similar efforts have also been made for chimpanzees (there was a court case to that end not long ago here in the US; it lost, but that's how these things start most of the time). I'll admit parrots may be the weak link here, but it would still merely be 'a generous estimate' rather than "really reaching," considering that they apparently demonstrate many of the hallmark cognitive abilities that would define intelligence, and the famous Alex the African Grey was considered both to be on par with a human preschooler, yet merely average by the standards of African Grey intelligence. I can personally vouch for gorillas - Koko the Gorilla, who has taken IQ tests on which she received a score of 90, within the range of an average human, is someone whom I personally met years ago due to my mother's work at the Gorilla Foundation. I didn't actually get to enter her trailer, but we played with toys together through the glass pane between us. ^_^
IQ 90 is laughable.
Koko doesn't do math so she didn't have any questions involving the patterns of numbers in her assay.
Koko has a vocabulary of about 1000 words so she didn't have any analogy or patterns of words questions in her assay.
Koko doesn't recognize abstract shapes so she didn't have any geometric pattern recognition questions in her assay.
Her IQ assessment test was basically putting a picture of a banana on a screen, then offering her a banana or an orange to eat, she chose the banana and got the answer "correct."
Umm... no....No? A movement has already formed to grant dolphins legal personhood based on frank observation of their demonstrated mental powers in order to provide them with rights that a being with such faculties ought to be entitled to (and the government of India has already signed on). Similar efforts have also been made for chimpanzees (there was a court case to that end not long ago here in the US; it lost, but that's how these things start most of the time). I'll admit parrots may be the weak link here, but it would still merely be 'a generous estimate' rather than "really reaching," considering that they apparently demonstrate many of the hallmark cognitive abilities that would define intelligence, and the famous Alex the African Grey was considered both to be on par with a human preschooler, yet merely average by the standards of African Grey intelligence. I can personally vouch for gorillas - Koko the Gorilla, who has taken IQ tests on which she received a score of 90, within the range of an average human, is someone whom I personally met years ago due to my mother's work at the Gorilla Foundation. I didn't actually get to enter her trailer, but we played with toys together through the glass pane between us. ^_^
All this, and you forgot about pigs.
For shame...
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Dolphins commit rape and kill for fun.
I honestly could not care less about them, disgusting creatures.
Almost as bad as Humans.
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IQ 90 is laughable.
Koko doesn't do math so she didn't have any questions involving the patterns of numbers in her assay.
Koko has a vocabulary of about 1000 words so she didn't have any analogy or patterns of words questions in her assay.
Koko doesn't recognize abstract shapes so she didn't have any geometric pattern recognition questions in her assay.
Her IQ assessment test was basically putting a picture of a banana on a screen, then offering her a banana or an orange to eat, she chose the banana and got the answer "correct."
That's better than about half the people I used to work with. They'd have tried to eat the computer screen.
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How does any thread beyond the first have more favorites than the first?
Stinky gamers are an epidemic. A plague among our community.
I will continue to take every opportunity to say the following:
"SOAP AND WATER ARE CHEAP, AND SHOWERING TAKES FIVE MINUTES!"
Selfish bastards, inflicting their stench upon others out of laziness.
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I've told this story before, but it fits the stinky gamer trope. I was at a bookstore back in the 3.5 days looking over a book with my son (he was about 10 at the time). These two guys walk up and began talking about D&D, then inquired if I had any spaces in my group. I looked around and my son had disappeared, leaving me to deal with a guy with lice visibly crawling in his beard and a guy who smelled like rotten meat. I diplomatically told them my group had all the people I could handle and then found my son and gave him noogies for running off and leaving me.
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I've told this story before, but it fits the stinky gamer trope. I was at a bookstore back in the 3.5 days looking over a book with my son (he was about 10 at the time). These two guys walk up and began talking about D&D, then inquired if I had any spaces in my group. I looked around and my son had disappeared, leaving me to deal with a guy with lice visibly crawling in his beard and a guy who smelled like rotten meat. I diplomatically told them my group had all the people I could handle and then found my son and gave him noogies for running off and leaving me.
I'm with your son in that situation, he made his perception check, saw the monsters coming, and bolted.
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We had a gal at the FLGS that we gamed at that, for reasons I care not to speculate on, had poor feminine hygiene. She knew it too, but apparently did not feel the need to take steps to fix it.
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We had a gal at the FLGS that we gamed at that, for reasons I care not to speculate on, had poor feminine hygiene. She knew it too, but apparently did not feel the need to take steps to fix it.
** spoiler omitted **
Well, that's assault.
It's sad that someone allowed themselves to become such a creature that any comment in earshot may be seen as a personal attack, but it was her choice to have poor hygiene, so there's no sympathy here.
Dolphins commit rape and kill for fun.
I honestly could not care less about them, disgusting creatures.
Almost as bad as Humans.
You said it yourself. If we're going to be charitable, we could assume that dolphins are at a similar place to our Dark Ages, where such behavior wasn't exactly uncommon. Dolphins live in a hostile environment and aren't as smart as humans. Moralizing is harder.
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No, no, the police can solve all our problems. A player tried to use my dice last night. Today he shall be awakening behind bars where he belongs.
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We had a gal at the FLGS that we gamed at that, for reasons I care not to speculate on, had poor feminine hygiene. She knew it too, but apparently did not feel the need to take steps to fix it.
** spoiler omitted **
Well, that's assault.
It's sad that someone allowed themselves to become such a creature that any comment in earshot may be seen as a personal attack, but it was her choice to have poor hygiene, so there's no sympathy here.
It is assault [and there really is no sympathy for the chick here in regards to her self-inflicted-mental-vulnerability] but from the context of the post I'm assuming it wasn't the sort of assault that one should press charges over.
You know, the kind of 'I'm annoyed with you jerk' torso taps.
That's it exactly. She weighed 105 soaking wet, and couldn't have done any damage if she tried, TAE KWON LEAP not withstanding...
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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114: You think that regardless of differences in time investment, experience, aptitude, style, etc; as long as two given people both have the goal of just "having fun", then they will somehow magically always produce comparably-powered characters to each other. Therefore, you figure as soon as you hear someone call out damage number or save DC that's higher than yours by any significant margin, you immediately conclude that they must obviously be trying to 'win' Pathfinder, or trying to compete with you, or don't understand how the game was intended to be played, etc. You believe that two people who are both just there to have fun roleplaying with friends will always have about the same numbers on their sheets, so his is bigger than yours, he's clearly done something wrong and earned at least three places on this list.
You forgot that his roleplay also sucks because his character is better.
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IQ 90 is laughable.
Koko doesn't do math so she didn't have any questions involving the patterns of numbers in her assay.
Koko has a vocabulary of about 1000 words so she didn't have any analogy or patterns of words questions in her assay.
Koko doesn't recognize abstract shapes so she didn't have any geometric pattern recognition questions in her assay.
Her IQ assessment test was basically putting a picture of a banana on a screen, then offering her a banana or an orange to eat, she chose the banana and got the answer "correct."
What's your source for this? Because mine is someone who personally worked with Koko for years, and this simply isn't true. To say she can't recognize abstract shapes is particularly ridiculous - she's even learned a tiny bit of reading!
First of all, Koko's tests were all done in 1975 and 1976, long before she got her custom Apple touchscreen. Second of all, you're implying they gave her bogus questions that she'd "get right" regardless. That is not true; they used (multiple) tests designed for very young human children, and her results were between 75-90 (I double-checked with my source), AND they actually gave her the detriment of the doubt; when she gave answers that were correct for gorillas but not humans, they scored it wrong - for example, one question asked "which of these is good to eat?" and she picked "flower," which of course was not supposed to be one of the correct answers, but is if you're a gorilla (and heck, depending on which human culture you're talking to, some flowers may be appropriate human food as well!).
The Gorilla Foundation has gotten a lot more flak than it should in a large part because Dr. Penny Patterson has never been as good as she should be at publishing her research (particularly early on), which is a nasty thorn to have in one's side in academia, no matter how good your research is.
More specifically:
- She took 7 different IQ tests in 1975 and 1976 when she was between 3-5 years old. Her scores ranged from 73.0 on the McCarthy Scales of Children's test to 91.7 on the Stanford-Binet test.
- She took the Assessment of Children's Language Test; her results at all modes and levels of difficulty were "significantly better than chance," and there was no significant difference in her comprehension whether the instructions were given in English, sign language, or both at once.
- She examines her teeth in the mirror.
- She lies to avoid getting in trouble.
- She plays make-believe, with others and even by herself (more than can be said for some people on here).
- She remembers and can talk about past events in her life.
-She understands time-related words like "before," "after," "later," and "yesterday," and uses them appropriately herself.
- She laughs at jokes (her own and those of others).
- She has feelings, and talks about them.
- She mourns dead loved ones.
- She can talk about death and what happens when one dies, and becomes visibly uncomfortable when asked to talk about the idea of her own death or of those she cares for.
I remember reading Koko cried when she was told Robin Williams had died. He'd met her a few times and they apparently bonded.
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I remember reading Koko cried when she was told Robin Williams had died. He'd met her a few times and they apparently bonded.
Why would you remind me of that, then bring up a crying Koko?
Are you trying to ruin my day?
IQ 90 is laughable.
Koko doesn't do math so she didn't have any questions involving the patterns of numbers in her assay.
Koko has a vocabulary of about 1000 words so she didn't have any analogy or patterns of words questions in her assay.
Koko doesn't recognize abstract shapes so she didn't have any geometric pattern recognition questions in her assay.
Her IQ assessment test was basically putting a picture of a banana on a screen, then offering her a banana or an orange to eat, she chose the banana and got the answer "correct."
What's your source for this? Because mine is someone who personally worked with Koko for years, and this simply isn't true. To say she can't recognize abstract shapes is particularly ridiculous - she's even learned a tiny bit of reading!
First of all, Koko's tests were all done in 1975 and 1976, long before she got her custom Apple touchscreen. Second of all, you're implying they gave her bogus questions that she'd "get right" regardless. That is not true; they used (multiple) tests designed for very young human children, and her results were between 75-90 (I double-checked with my source), AND they actually gave her the detriment of the doubt; when she gave answers that were correct for gorillas but not humans, they scored it wrong - for example, one question asked "which of these is good to eat?" and she picked "flower," which of course was not supposed to be one of the correct answers, but is if you're a gorilla (and heck, depending on which human culture you're talking to, some flowers may be appropriate human food as well!).
The Gorilla Foundation has gotten a lot more flak than it should in a large part because Dr. Penny Patterson has never been as good as she should be at publishing her research (particularly early on), which is a nasty thorn to have in one's side in academia, no matter how good your research is.
More specifically:
- She took 7 different IQ tests in 1975 and 1976 when she was between 3-5 years...
There in lies the rub eh?
If you don't submit and subject your research to peer review it isn't Science, it's trained tricks. Independent peer review followed by independent replication of results via the same methods is how you get to make a definitive statement.
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Just because she hasn't been good at publishing doesn't mean she hasn't.
And the "trained tricks" remark isn't scientific thinking at all, it's bigotry. Are you one of those people who there's some kind of magical collective crown that sets humans completely apart from other animals and reserves the province of the mind to us alone, or what?
Elephants apparently have long memory spans. I wouldn't think it impossible for a gorilla to have one.
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Just because she hasn't been good at publishing doesn't mean she hasn't.
And the "trained tricks" remark isn't scientific thinking at all, it's bigotry. Are you one of those people who there's some kind of magical collective crown that sets humans completely apart from other animals, or what?
Um, yes?
Humans are the only extant species on this planet to:
Develop languages that extend beyond our tribal/pack units.
Write stuff down and thereby transmit knowledge from generation to generation.
Artificially construct tools.
Develop civilizations that utilize diversity of skills.
Leave the planet.
This is by absolutely no means a comprehensive list. So yeah, I'm one of those "bigots."
Edit: self moderation.
Koko had been dealing with serious depression following the death of her lifelong gorilla companion six months ago. Robin Williams was the first person to get her to smile. Also, Koko had evidently seen (at least) one of Robin's movies.
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115. Refusing to bend towards the game you are playing. example: you must always play a Star Fleet officer in any game you play, regardless of theme -- Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, Gamma World, Munchkin card game, Warhammer, Risk, Monopoly, WoW, etc.
117: Inhumane treatment of animals.
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Nobody f&&#s with Koko the Gorilla in my thread.
I remember reading Koko cried when she was told Robin Williams had died. He'd met her a few times and they apparently bonded.Why would you remind me of that, then bring up a crying Koko?
Are you trying to ruin my day?
Sorry, man. I didn't mean to bring anyone down.
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Intelligence is a continuum, BigDTBone. Just because one species has extreme intelligence doesn't mean that they're cut from a different cloth, which is the belief I was referring to ("the Lord made Us in His own image and we are sole Masters of the Earth," etc).
Humans are the only extant species on this planet to:
Develop languages that extend beyond our tribal/pack units.
Ironically, I'm not even clear on what you're trying to say here enough to judge it properly. How inclusive/exclusive is one supposed to be when describing "tribal/pack units?" Are you perhaps talking about cross-cultural communication, whether language-using animals can learn other languages within (or even outside) their species aside from what they grew up speaking? Apparently, crows can.
Write stuff down and thereby transmit knowledge from generation to generation.
Writing? I guess so, but that's not the only way to transmit knowledge from generation to generation, which is something other animals CAN do.
Artificially construct tools.
How high-tech must tool-making be to be "artificially constructing tools?" What about just chipping a rock to sharpen it into a cutting implement or taking a pliable found object and twisting it into a completely different shape? Animals can totally do that.
Develop civilizations that utilize diversity of skills.
That's a "necessity is the mother of invention" thing. Humans haven't had complex societies for most of the species' history, either - are you claiming that other species don't demonstrate varying talents among individuals? Anybody with a few pets knows better than that.
Leave the planet.
*insert Lovecraft joke here*
It amuses me that people argue for human superiority, by using exclusively human examples.
Does it not occur that non-human species may actually think and function in fundamentally different ways from Humans?
119: For going off topic too much. ;)
@I'm Hiding In Your Closet: The Koko stuff is pretty cool.
Is Koko a typical gorilla?
Human IQ, by definition, has a 100 mean. Average IQ is 100. If you take one gorilla, who might be a supergenius among her kind, and show that she *might* have an IQ one or two standard deviations below the average toddler, that doesn't argue sapience of gorilla-kind very well to me.
Does it not occur that non-human species may actually think and function in fundamentally different ways from Humans?
Sure. That's quite reasonable. And I'd argue, exactly what makes humans superior. We think and function in ways that allow us to advance, both individually and collectively. We develop new models and apply them. We learn from the world around us and apply that knowledge to improve things. We develop concepts of morality.
If group A contains the characteristics of group B and then moves beyond it, while group B never obtains the characteristics of group A, and if those added characteristics are good, then yes, group A is superior. Animals at best operate at the level of very young humans. For the most part, humans operate at that level, and then move beyond it to higher levels of thought - the concrete and then formal operational stages. Animals never do. So in terms of thought process, humans are superior.
EDIT to add: I have been getting my certification as a teacher, and much has been made about the stages of childhood development... but also on setting high expectations. I admit I could be wrong, and as far as I know nobody has ever *tried* to train an animal at the concrete operational stage, let alone the formal one.
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#120 For spending hours and hours of research to make the best character possible for the express purpose of being the strongest PC.