Messages

So...what do I win?

I hope it's pie.

The Commander
DIA

Its not pie

Why not?

Yeah, what do the prize givers have against pie?

The Commander
DIA

The same thing we have against tequila and stabbity stabbity whatever.

It reeks of Hugh.

Who is Hugh, and why is he hoarding all the pie?

The Commander
DIA

Have you seen what Roger does to toilets?  No way are we letting him near one.

You have a point. We still haven't fixed the gaping hole he left the last time he visited DIA headquarters. I have to travel all the way to the third sub-basement for my morning constitutionals.

The Commander
DIA

Hmmm....keep in mind that brains are not fully developed until a person is in their early 20s. If you assume they are essentially brain damaged until then, all their crazy behaviour and random emotional outbursts are less infuriating.

The Commander
DIA

So...what do I win?

I hope it's pie.

The Commander
DIA

Its not pie

Why not?

Yeah, what do the prize givers have against pie?

The Commander
DIA

Not all disorder is Holy, only creative disorder.

Get that through your thick skulls numb nuts.

17 years later, it's nice to look back on this and remember what happened to Tao immediately after this thread.



EDIT:  Thread is no longer 23 pages long.  Not sorry.

I remember Tao. Lost touch many moons ago. What, exactly, happened to him?

The Commander
DIA

So...what do I win?

I hope it's pie.

The Commander
DIA

Bella was killed in a high speed pursuit with the cops a few years back when the fuel transport she shot to create a barrier took the whole bridge out from under them.

Eris von tartarus kind of stopped posting here after her and her sister had a breakout hit with The Matrix and its sequels.

Roger is still around, we keep him in one of those Fritzle basements

Honestly, it's how Bella would have wanted to go. Either that or suffocated under a giant pile of kittens.

Do you at least let Roger out to pee? If you do, tell him I said hello and then give him a purple nurple. That was our secret handshake.

The Commander
DIA

It's been more than a few years since I have visited the forum and I notice all the folks I used to chat with are no longer active. Bella, EVT, The Good Reverend Roger, etc.

So...who are all you knew people and what did I miss while I was away?

The Commander
DIA

I read anthropology blogs outside of class, for fun.
I read fantasy novels, because fantasy is the shiznit.  I'm on book 2 of the A Song of Ice and Fire series.
I like to make beaded jewellery and the occasional bit of wire-working, but have not done it lately.
I like to write!  But I don't do it because school is all-encompassing.  I really ought to do it more.

Previously, I went to a private college for crazy hippies where I learned how to do spa massage, acupressure, reflexology, iridology, many 'intuitive' practices, hot stone massage, mani and pedicures, gel and acrylic nails, energy healing and reiki, and a bunch of other stuff.  My dad wanted me to go to the school.  All the certificates are useless because the field of spa crap sucks balls and has very little scientific gratification.  I am a much happier panda at University.

Facebook is my liiiiiife.

I keep deleting paragraphs because I am not sure they are interesting enough.  I'm a boring person beyond my deeply sexual feelings for Anthropology.  If Anthropology were a chick and I had a wang, I'd bone that field so harrrrd. 

Sounds like you went to Antioch College in Yellow Spring Ohio.  I love that town.  I never went to school there, but I was stationed at Wright-Patterson not too far away and used to run around Yellow Springs and the Antioch Campus acting like a goofball.  Good times. 

Many of my agents are from there.

I am the Commander of the Discordian Intelligence Agency.

I am Herr Wolfgang Guntherssohn a minor lord in 1500's Schwarzwald outside of Baden-Baden as well as a fencer and a bard.

I am A'rance, Barbarian/Cleric/Fighter Angel, worshiper of Zora'ath and leader of a rebellion whose aim for the past 5 years has been the overthrow of the tyrannical Dragon Empire.

I am Agent Oliver Wendal Holmes, code name Menagerie, a superhero with multiple super personalities which I have little control over.

I am Farquar Balthazar raver goofball. I dream of being Farquario the Latin Lover. I dance like a muppet on fire.

I am a SSgt in the US Air National Guard.  I have been shot at with rockets and did not enjoy it.

I am a low level watch officer and Intel analyst who makes far more money than he is worth but not as much as he desires.

I am a former atheist and current member of the Baha'i Faith.  I am an elected member of the Local Spiritual Assembly of Fairfax County Northwest.

I am a singer in search of a band.  A former world traveler and minstral with stagefright so bad my knees knock together.

I am an only son, but also an older brother.  I am a Papa and a husband who doesn't see his family often enough because I work 12 hour shifts both day and night.

I also like pie.

I think the point about having to see him on a regular basis even if things kind of turned sour is a pretty valid point. 

The whole scenario brings back memories from my cultural anthropology class when we talked about different concepts of incest.  I specifically remember when we talked about how in some cultures you are not considered related to half-siblings if they are half siblings via your father.  It made me think about my own half-sisters and wonder "Would I hit it?"

I decided to quit thinking along those lines before I got myself into trouble. I was ruled far too much by my libido at that time...

It's not like every character is equally skilled at every task. Everybody still has a niche. But you no longer get told, "Sorry, this is the rogue's encounter, why don't you just hang back so you don't fuck everything up?"

I guess I don't have a problem with the standing by and waiting.  Half the time we are still consulting as a group anyway, so it is actually pretty rare that I have *nothing* to do.

There are still a million ways to build a character that is poor at combat encounters. Like you could build a fighter with a 10 in strength, or just take feats/powers that won't come up too frequently. Or choose a suboptimal fighting style, like a rogue with a two handed sword (can't sneak attack), or a fighter who insists on using a dagger.

If you want to play in a campaign where you're constantly talking your way out of combat, that sounds like something that you'd discuss with your GM as a part of campaign concept, not necessarily character build.

To build a 4e character specialized in avoiding combat, I'd take skill training in diplomacy, bluff, and sneak.

But these ideas strike me as building a character who is poor at combat despite the game rules and not in concert with the game rules.  However, I concede the difference between the two is pretty subtle.

Ahh, I had assumed you were talking about the removal of some of the more obscure Lore skills from the skill system. Like in 3e, you could spend skill points to be well versed in heraldry and nobility. In 4e, if you want to be well versed in heraldry, you just tell your GM that you're well versed in heraldry... there's no need to spend anything on it.

A lot of people carry around this idea that if you're really into role playing, your character sheet will have a lot of "role playing" skills (as opposed to skills which can be used in combat). I agree that tjpse aren't mutually exclusive. This is sometimes called the Stormwind Fallacy. The gist of it is that a game's rules do not prohibit roleplaying - how much you role play is up to your group, it has barely anything to do with the game's rules and how you build your character. So to say that a system limits role playing is a fallacy. Again, I hold up the campaign I'm running which has an emphasis on RP and almost zero likeness to WoW. The only substantive difference between my 4e campaign and the numerous 3e campaigns I've run is that the combat is more interesting (IMO) and moves a lot faster.  

My thoughts on this are kind of similar to what I mentioned above.  I'm sure I can role play the hell out of a game no matter what the rules are.  But I don't want to do so despite the rules.  I want the rules of the game to enhance and facilitate and reinforce the roleplaying that I do.  I'll admit, I've only had limited experience playing the game when it initially came out, but my initial impression was definitly that the rules were not designed to enhance that aspect of the game.

Okay, just to clarify:  It takes a certain mood to write horrorology, and the cookies & pie shit kills it.  

So it's not a matter of being pissy, it's a matter of being knocked out of the zone.  I am asking nicely, please limit that shit to other areas of the board.  Mittens and praise are not the object, here.  The object is to get on a streak and stay there as long as possible.

Ok..chastisement well deserved and accepted.

Sorry bro.

You forgot cookies & pie, stabbity stabbity.

Not sure why the fuck I bother, to be honest.

Talking about The Commander's posts.

There's nothing that fills me with hate faster than pounding out a rant NOT meant for Apple Talk, and then having some pineal fuckwit shit on it.

Ah yes, I understand your pain!!!  But hey, it does help your actual point in the rant right?

Yes, I suppose there's that.  It's still a pain in the ass, though.  I mean, it's a deliberate slap in the face.

I've given The Commander a lot of leeway, because he's one of the old school crowd, but this is the end of the fucking line.

Ok...didn't mean to press your buttons dude.

What do you want me to say?  It's certainly a well written rant...but that's nothing new to you.  Surely you don't want me to kiss your ass and praise you for how great a writer you are and how justified you are in your anger.  You don't need that shit from me.  You already know it.

But you also know I'm not the type to intentionally be an ass and try to get some lulz by telling you its a piece of shit and trying to pick a philosophical fight with you that even I don't believe.

So I go right for the punch-line and the pie and the sillyness.  Sorry if this comes across as me being a dick. Totally not my intention.

Yeah, part of the design goal for 4th edition was to remove the situation where one character solves the encounter while everybody else waits. This meant actually balancing the classes in terms of both in-combat and out-of-combat usefulness. Gone are the days when the party bard does all the talking and the rogue does all the searching... now, everybody plays in every encounter.

It used to really irk me how when I was running a dungeon, most of the dialogue at the table was between the DM and the rogue. Then when we get into combat, everybody can play again.

I understand the desire to balance play. I've certainly been in my fair share of games where I've sat around while someone else was busy because they had the skills and abilities needed at that time.  But isn't that the point of having different classes to begin with?  Bards are supposed to do the talking because thats what Bards do.  Rogues do the sneaking, wizards do magic, and fighters do the fighting.  You pick a certain class specifically so you can specialize in something that no one else is as particularly good at, otherwise, why bother?

It also used to irk me that a character could become bad at combat just by choosing certain conceptual combinations. I ran a campaign where one of the PCs was a thief who ended up becoming ordained as a cleric of the thief god. But it turns out that picking up a few levels of cleric ultimately makes you both a bad rogue and a bad cleric. The multiclass rules are now a bit more permissive of building weird concepts without becoming either game breaking or game losing.

I can understand being concerned when the results of multiclass combinations result in unintentionally reducing the effectiveness of the character.  But I've always seen that as the point at which the player and the GM get together to figure out how to address the issue.  Perhaps you rework the character completely, perhaps you fudge some of the rules and abilities to balance things a little better.

But what about intentional choices to become bad at combat?  There is more to adventuring than combat...and I like the flexibility that 3e provided in terms of being able to create a character with that in mind that could still be useful.  But lets take it a step further...what if I want to create a character who is terrible at everything, but has a fun personality or that provides challenges for the party to overcome?  The new system prohibits that from ever being an option.  When looking at the system and playtesting it, I saw no way I could intentionally create a "skill monkey" or a "charisma monkey" who only entered combat as a last resort.  I remember asking someone about it, and he said "But why would you want to be bad at combat?"

In terms of the skill system limiting character concept / role play ---
There is nothing stopping you from having a character who is well versed in some certain topic or skill - for example, you can have a character who is a shipwright even though there is no "shipwright" skill on the sheet. Those types of skills usually have little bearing on combat, so I think it was a good design choice to not make people choose between character concept and combat efficacy.

I guess I am confused by this.  I dont see it framed as a choice between concept and combat efficacy...they are not neccessarily opposing qualities. Combat efficacy is part of character concept, not in competition with it, just like skill competancy or magic ability is part of the characters overall concept.

If anything, the "role playing" got taken out in the jump between 2nd and 3rd edition, when they made stuff like Diplomacy into a skill check instead of entirely basing it on a conversation between player and DM. A good change, if you ask me.

I thought the skill check tool was a good way to handle situations where, for instance, a characters ability in something far outstips the players ability.  For example...When trying to intimidate an enemy...if I am playing a character who is much smarter or more charismatic than I am, I can tell the GM what affect I am going for with my opponant..."I say such-and-such...only much prettier", the GM can then use my subsequent role to help gague just how effective I was, rather than just relying on my own personal intelligenceand charisma.  I don't really see it as taking away from role-playing, but adding to it.