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Messages - BG_Josh

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1
Gaming Advice / Re: What is a "Gamer?"
« on: January 03, 2012, 01:50:27 AM »
I love being ignored. I want to change my vote :(

And on top from last page I'm not sure that that really 'is how things advance.' Or atleast not for most of the world.

You can't change your vote.  The software does not track votes other than to tally them. 

And you are right.  Most of the world does not advance with intellectual exchange.

2
Other RPGs / Re: Can you suggest a good gaming system?
« on: January 01, 2012, 01:35:24 PM »
It's actually pretty easy to give a complete list of good "high tech" games

Strongly Reccomend

Action Adventure
Battlestations

Science fiction
Shock Social science fiction
Misspent Youth
Freemarket
Apocalypse world
Microscope
Burning Wheel: Burning Sands (Dune)
Burning Empires

Weakly reccomend

Action Adventure
Savage worlds(the high tech worlds are kinda crappy)
Fate: Diaspora
Fate: Starblazers

Mystery
Ashen Stars

3
Gaming Advice / Re: Not Giving Advice
« on: December 30, 2011, 03:26:20 AM »
This is the reason I started a podcast.  Most problems even contain the solution.

Q: My players are bored with DnD.  How can I spice it up?
A: the other players are bored with DnD.  Play another game

Q: I have a DMPC.  I know they never work.  How can I make it work?
A: You can't make a DMPC work

Q: I don't have time to make adventures for DnD
A: You don't have time.  Play another game or let someone else DM

Q: I know this guy who is a real pain and I can't stand him.  How should I invite him to play?
A: Why would you, you can't stand him? (as a side note usually the GM is equally culpable in the problems of this relationship)

Q: I spent a year crafting my home campaign world.  It is perfect but no one will play in it.
A: It's not perfect if no one will play in it.

4
Board Business / Old Boards
« on: December 30, 2011, 03:11:32 AM »
Sooner or later the old boards need to go away. 

There may still be some migration issues.  So does anyone have any concerns?  Does more stuff need to be moved?  How long do they need to sat up? and so forth.

5
Board Business / Re: Clearing up any confusion
« on: December 30, 2011, 03:06:14 AM »
Looking for feedback.

As I expected, it happened.  Here is the thread

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2264.0

This is the post I erased

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2501.msg28485#msg28485

Here are the facts
It's a discussion on what the term gamer means
Soundwave presents his ideas.  Hes incorrect, but there's nothing wrong with that.
He simply repeats his "point" over and over and Does not listen to anyone and makes no attempt to learn why.

My personal take is a structural approach.  That's why the "no harping" rule exists.  It makes it so people are forced to make new points of reexamine old ones differently.  This would be a non issue, a natural solution.

So, what would you do?  Keep in mind the idea is to foster discussion. 

(note: Soundwave is wrong(period).  Its actually funny that in such an abstract topic he could manage to be so absolutely wrong.  That being said, if you think he is right.  Discuss that in the actual thread, not here.)


6
Creations & Ephemera / Re: Cityscape RPG
« on: December 30, 2011, 12:39:41 AM »
Re: Over saturated

My point is, you don't need to make the d20 system.  Someone already made it.  And your system has lots of little things that are standard known issues. (you can't use a sliding scale like d20 with 3d6explode, you don't want xp for temp or for permanent and so forth)  You are much better off making a system from scratch and building it up into a game, rather than what you are doing.

Of course you are standing on the shoulders of giants.  Learn from d20.  But if you want a boat, you don't modify a car, you design a boat.
The difference here is, I don't see d20 system as the car, I see it as the gas engine. I'm taking only the barest base-core to build from, and I'm taking it in different directions. You're objecting to me not pulling out oars and sailcloth.
Analogy illustrates, it does not demonstrate.
In this case this is a standard metaphor used in engineering.

To explain it plainly.  When you want to design a game you figure out what you want and then build a game that does that. 
(yes there are other ways to design a game, but they would confuse this issue)
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Re: Cool

A game about needing to use magic and the magic somehow warps and twists you is cool. 
That doesn't answer my question. I'm asking what I'm supposed to *do* with that. I still haven't seen how what I'm doing obscures that objective.
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Re: 90% action

A game 70% action has 30% to fit in fantasy and horror.
Horror, maybe, but fantasy's right there in the material, and isn't contrary to the existence of action. That's like asking me to make a boat (to borrow your analogy), and then objecting when I make it out of steel rather than wood. (And I think I've overstretched your car->boat analogy far enough, but I hope you see what I mean by it.) Whether that action is through the use of guns, swords, or lightning bolts, it's still action, but it's that existence of fireballs, trolls, and dragons that is all I need to make it 'fantasy'.

I'm grateful for your opinion and advice, but I'm still not understanding why you think what I'm doing is so incompatible with the foundation I use. I'm starting to infer you just don't like the d20 system, and I know for a fact you dislike WoD. I'm wondering if your bias against them is hurting your opinion of my concept. I'm trying to draw you out into some reasoning, but you're giving me nothing here.

Does anyone else have any comments? I respect Josh's opinion, but (no offense intended) it's still just that one opinion. I'd like to hear others.
DnD isn't fantasy.  I like it just fine, in fact I like it quite a bit.  But it is an action game.

My suggestion is to try some good games to help you with your design.  A good idea in any case.
Here is a short list.

Shock Social science fiction
Misspent Youth
Freemarket
Apocalypse world
Microscope
Burning Wheel Gold
Don't rest your Head
Zombie Cinema
Mouseguard
Inspecteres
Dread
My life with Master

7
Gaming Advice / Re: What is a "Gamer?"
« on: December 29, 2011, 03:18:33 AM »
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Now the question must be answered to how regularly one must play to describe their gaming habits in the present tense.

How about a person who may have limited time but plays a game in a "hardcore" fashion, are these people any less gamers then someone who plays more often?

I have and continue to assert that this line of reasoning is too subjective to provide anything meaningful.
I don't know what "hardcore" is.  But no one is saying they are not, so what is your point?

And yes, you keep saying that.  And it is constantly clearly demonstrated otherwise.  So drop it, you are wrong.  Every response from every person proves that statement is wrong.

If you think you are correct, demonstrate something.  Take an example and prove it wrong OR provide an example of how or why

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Actually, we can objectively begin to draw a line between the shades of gamers.

Such as gamer being a broad category and their being sub categories of nuance contained therein? Like "subtypes" of gamers if you will?
No.  Subtypes would indicate differences in kind, rather than differences in value.  A subtype of gamer is, for example, a larper.  A larper is not fundamentally more or less of a gamer than any other sub type.

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Some of it is pointless, but some of it is good discussion.. The prime question is "Is there a difference between people who play games and Gamers? If there is a difference, then at one point does one become a Gamer?"

Obviously, there would be degrees of gamers, just as there are shades of red. But between red and orange there's a threshold where a color stops being a shade of orange and starts being a shade of red. We're simply debating if such a threshold exists for Gamers and what it would be.

An excellent summary. This is also something that has already been mentioned several times previously in this thread I used the word subtypes to describe it.

How do we arrive at a line drawn between shades so to speak?  A more varied poll containing a larger breadth of options concerning playstyles? Playtime? Type of play?

What makes any one of these aspects of gaming more valid then any other?

If some of these aspects are considered less important to qualify for the moniker why? and so on
And here you hit on the entire point of discussion.

Intellectual discourse creates the answer.  That's the entire point of discussing it.

I set the entire groundwork of this discussion.  I knew that gamer could mean "person actively playing" and "person with an extreme interest" however it was SneeR who looked at the issue with fresh eyes and said "aha" and came up with something interesting.

It has taken a considerable effort on my part to fight through the morass of anti-intellectual bullshit you have been throwing out.  You (Soundwave) almost trashed what has now become (to me) extremely interesting.  So I am now telling you, you are wasting my time.  And you are wasting the time of everyone here.  That is the number one sin of this board. 

So no snide comments or off topic bullshit.  Participate or go away.

8
Creations & Ephemera / Re: Cityscape RPG
« on: December 29, 2011, 02:55:32 AM »
Re: Over saturated

My point is, you don't need to make the d20 system.  Someone already made it.  And your system has lots of little things that are standard known issues. (you can't use a sliding scale like d20 with 3d6explode, you don't want xp for temp or for permanent and so forth)  You are much better off making a system from scratch and building it up into a game, rather than what you are doing.

Of course you are standing on the shoulders of giants.  Learn from d20.  But if you want a boat, you don't modify a car, you design a boat.

Re: Cool

A game about needing to use magic and the magic somehow warps and twists you is cool. 

Re: 90% action

A game 70% action has 30% to fit in fantasy and horror.

9
Creations & Ephemera / Re: Cityscape RPG
« on: December 28, 2011, 08:50:33 PM »
So, this game is a complicated mess.  So let me just cut through the cruft and get to the major points.

First, it is based on an IP.  That is the hardest type of game to design.

And second, you are making a basic traditional Action Adventure, Skills and combat, player vs environment game.  That's the most over-saturated part of the market. 

Also, a game is the mechanics.  If 90% of your game is fighting mechanics, your game is 90% fighting.

This game:
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The basics of the setting are that it's the modern world as we know, but with a hidden underworld of elves, dwarves, goblins, trolls, vampires, werewolves, demons, dragons, and more. Magic is a real force, with a good deal of pseudo-scientific background to explain it. Magic is driven by spirits in a parallel dimensional space, who live off the energies generated by thought and emotion, and are able to return some of that energy to our dimension, in the form of magical effects. We can communicate with them through altered states and rituals, and they can be bound to people or objects to perform magic on command. Your soul is another kind of spirit, and can be 'awakened' to learn how to perform magic as well, but it carries consequences, in the form of deviations, magical mutations which confer some of the nature of the magic you're trying to perform, often in the form of animal-like aspects. Stack these changes up over time in a magic-using community, and you wind up with the other magical races. Go too far with these changes, and you lose control of yourself to your instincts, and become a monster.

Sounds like the start of something cool, but it is not DnD.

So, you can change this to be "characters fight critters and take their stuff" or you can make a game that's like this.

also, check out this article: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/

10
Gaming Advice / Re: What is a "Gamer?"
« on: December 28, 2011, 08:05:10 PM »
Actually, we can objectively begin to draw a line between the shades of gamers. As Josh said, we see gaming as nuanced while others do not. I would argue that a gamer is even defined in the minds of nongamers, for they do not see themselves as gamers!
Let me put it this way:
What does he mean?

a) Nothing.  Everyone who has ever played a game is a gamer, so he could have said "my brother is a person".
a) - I hope everyone can see this is not the case.  This is the position soundwave has taken.
The option A is actually incorrect based on what the general public has decided "gamer" means. Read the definition again, noting my emphasis:
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gam·er/ˈgāmər/
Noun:   
A person who plays a game or games, typically a participant in a computer or role-playing game.

So, the intellectual authorities who may or may not be gamers have decided that "gamers" are people that play games, not have played games. As such, we can objectively say that someone who plays games often enough to say they "play" in the present tense is a gamer.

Now the question must be answered to how regularly one must play to describe their gaming habits in the present tense.
Good point.  Thinking in terms of your "present tense" idea creates an interesting paradigm. 

11
Gaming Advice / Re: What is a "Gamer?"
« on: December 28, 2011, 11:43:11 AM »
Lets stay on topic.  Skydk andTW  have raised some interesting points and I for one would like to discuss them.  If you are not interested you can not read.  If you have an issue with anything structurally feel free to post about it on the board biz board.

So I will stay completely on topic from here.

The entire discussion can be summed up in my last few posts. So I build on that.

Re:SDK it is absolutely true that people might call themselves or others gamers and others may not. I think this may be a case of information.  I know how much I like games, but other people may not.  And it may be the case that I don't realize how passionate about games I am compared to others.

Re:TW there is no reason you cant. But, some people don't and others already do.

You cannot control what another person is going to say to you (typically).  And it may be unessasary to add that detail.

Something we have here is called (iirc) narcissism of specilization. That's where people who are in a specialty (like gamers) see it as highly nuanced.  While outsiders see it as a uniform mass.

12
Gaming Advice / Re: What is a "Gamer?"
« on: December 28, 2011, 01:39:45 AM »
Mere personal attacks? 

Disappointing :(

I love how you are so delusional that I present 5 or 6 distinct points and you just see personal attacks. (naming someone Anti-Intellectual is not an "attack" it is merely descriptive.)

And, you are off topic (as am I in this case)

So to bring it back on topic.  Lets look at this:

You meet a new co worker. As you are chatting at the water cooler he says to you "You should meet my brother, he's a gamer."

What does he mean?

a) Nothing.  Everyone who has ever played a game is a gamer, so he could have said "my brother is a person".
b) His brother is a ping pong player
c) His brother is an avid player of games.  So much so they are part of his identity.

a - I hope everyone can see this is not the case.  This is the position soundwave has taken.
b - We do not have this kind of information, so we cannot assume specialty.
c - Clearly this is what he intends.  This is a statement that I see all the time.  It flatly exists.  Whereas I have never seen/heard of anyone meaning a




13
Gaming Advice / Re: What is a "Gamer?"
« on: December 27, 2011, 11:23:59 PM »
Hey wait, that sounds familiar.  Could a gamer be "someone playing a game" and also be "someone specifically devoted to gaming"?  (It could)

Do people use it that way? (they do)   
Um...
There are many types of gamers to be sure
There are subtypes of gamer related to frequency as well as genre and many others
Aren't you agreeing here?


Here's an analogy. You're looking for some person or animal and the only thing you have to go by is it's "one who breathes". That's useless.
But let's say you're in a temple for some reason, and there's a monk meditating and breathing in a controlled fashion. In this case it's obviously referring to him.

So, while the term gamer could refer to anyone, if you refer to one person from a group as a gamer then it will be the person most devoted to games.
If you're in a crowd and one person is a kid with a Gameboy in his pocket, he's "the gamer". If you're in a group of kids with Gameboys and one of them owns twice as many games, he's "the gamer".


EDIT:
A baker is a person who bakes.  But if you are describing a person you only refer to them as a baker if that's their job, or prominent hobby. 

(to disprove you would need to show that it is common to refer to people who have ever baked as bakers)
Put simply, EVERYONE is a gamer even if they might not consider themselves as much.
Soundwave said that a gamer is a person who games, and nothing about whether anyone would refer to them as gamers. In fact, he has implied they wouldn't (bolded for emphasis).
Your arguments are entirely compatible.

No.  Soundwave specifies that gamers can only be defined as people who game.  And that there can be no argument that it is otherwise because the dictionary says so. 

And then becomes obsessed with the irrelevant notion of "subtypes".

Also, your points are actually good.  They are considering the nuance.  If everyone has a gameboy, is the guy with twice as many games the gamer?  That I don't know (can't possibly know), but that's where it is interesting.  Anti-intellectuals (like soundwave) want to eliminate the conversation with "the authority says x".  Intellectuals are more interested in the shakedown, because that's how things advance. 

PS- also he fails in terms of rhetoric (logos) because he never addresses most of my points and then never addresses my dismantling of his points.




14
Gaming Advice / Re: How to tell a would-be player no.
« on: December 27, 2011, 11:09:30 PM »
You are aware of all the problems, so you are really 90% of the way there.

1) DM-Player

You already know this is a bad idea.  So don't do it.  It screws up the game.  The reason for this is the Czege Principal, " if the same person generates the adversity and also its resolution in an RPG, the result is boring."

2) 2 players are cliquey

OK.  DnD is a cooperative game.  Cliquey is fine.  I assume you mean they act like jerks to other people when they get together.  You should discuss that with them. 

Anyone you cannot discuss behavior with is a child.  Actually a spoiled bratty child. 

The real question is, do you want to play with them?

If you had a player who stabbed you with a knife every time you played, you would not want to play with them.
If you had an interesting, cultured player who was charming and handsome, lets say Neal Patrick Harris, you would always want to game with him.  So lets imagine a continuum between Stabby and NPH.  What is the turnover point?  and where do your two jerky friends fit?

I don't know.  That is something you need to figure out.

3) If something is bad, then you can point it out

If there is an issue, something specific can be cited.  Like chewing too loudly.

15
Gaming Advice / Re: What is a "Gamer?"
« on: December 27, 2011, 09:42:37 PM »
re: Soundwave

Well can't say I didn't try.  But as they say, can't fix stupid.

Re: Anyone else

Let me get away from the penis showing contest here.

Consider this a sort of reboot, to increase clarity by re evaluating what has been said already.

The word "gamer" means something, when used by most people.  As in Person A will refer to person B as a gamer to person C and that will mean something.  It will be an aspect of person B that person A has communicated to person C.

(For educational purposes I will include the required counter to this concept.  For this to not be true you would either need to show that no information is transmitted, or that few or no people do this.  Unlikely given the dozens of times this has happened to me, not to mention all the blogs, tv shows and comics that mention this kind of thing.)

QED, gamer means something.  Thus, an enthymeme we can derive is that gamer cannot mean everyone.  And since everyone plays games.  A gamer cannot simply be a person who games?  Right?

Lets look at an example from life.

A baker is a person who bakes.  But if you are describing a person you only refer to them as a baker if that's their job, or prominent hobby. 

(to disprove you would need to show that it is common to refer to people who have ever baked as bakers)

So what about the dictionary?  Sometimes words don't mean the same things all the time.  Look up the word "cleave" it has usage that is exactly opposite "to cling" and "to cut".  Some words mean a thing in the general and in the specific.  Like dancer means anyone who dances and a person who specifically focuses on dance. 

Hey wait, that sounds familiar.  Could a gamer be "someone playing a game" and also be "someone specifically devoted to gaming"?  (It could)

Do people use it that way? (they do)   

16
Brilliant Gameologists Podcast / Re: What Games Are "Good Enough"?
« on: December 27, 2011, 05:43:47 PM »
Have you ever played Shadowrun, Josh? If you have (I'm assuming games you've played that aren't mentioned are purposefully excluded), what would say are its biggest failings? I've only played 3rd edition once, so I can't legitimately analyze it, but I did enjoy that one session. Though I'm curious about the general sentiment of that game.

4th edition shadowrun is basically a cut and paste of every shitty trad game of the last 10 years.

And that is unusual because 3rd had some different, and interesting, ideas. 

What I imagine is that the "design" department tried to play to the middle.  And like in politics all plays to the middle are not good for anyone, they are failures for everyone.


PS - the same thing happened to "ares magika"

17
Gaming Advice / Re: What is a "Gamer?"
« on: December 27, 2011, 03:50:44 PM »
Soundwave you are wrong, and I AM trying to explain why to you.. if you are interested in learning, here it is...

How do words get into the dictionary if, by your logic, the only words that exist are in the dictionary?

PS - the strawman of my "personal interest" is getting tedious, a) it's a strawman b) even if it were true it is irrelevant to the discussion.

18
Gaming Advice / Re: What is a "Gamer?"
« on: December 22, 2011, 09:39:01 PM »
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I definitely think that it would be appropriate to say that there are gamers, people who play some sort of game as a hobby (whether that be RPGs, video games, or Farmville), and there are hardcore gamers, people who really get into the culture of their particular brand of gaming and seek to have a deeper understanding of their chosen games.

Most people on these boards are hardcore gamers.
I would argue that casual games cannot have hardcore gamers because you can't go any deeper (just get better), and there is no culture associated with the game besides "people who are bored."

I agree, but these are still sub types of gamer.

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I would argue that casual games cannot have hardcore gamers because you can't go any deeper (just get better), and there is no culture associated with the game besides "people who are bored."

Defining such a thing is far to open to personal bias, what you consider casual another may not.

I consider Word of warcraft quite casual but many of its mechanics are quite complex and some of what I may consider casual would instead list themselves as hardcore.

It's simply too subjective.
no, and you simply repeat yourself. 

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The dictionary was considered linguisticaly conservative before the internet.

For a coloquial term you might as well quote the bible as the dictionary.  It would be as accurate (zero accuracy btw)

Also bothe my points stand.  Even if you are making a valid assertion of authority you should still be able to address these points.  (Because a valid authority can never, bey defenition, disagree with a valid point)

I dont mean to offend but both points are irrelevant to the end definition in question as its definition doesnt change simply because its a colloquialism. The colloquialism has its definition precisely because that is how it is used in modern culture.

The comment about the source and subsequent claim of inaccuracy is likewise irrelevant to what is.
You may not like nor agree with the source but there it is. In a book whose sole purpose is to do precisely what we are discussing. Defining words.

People who play games are gamers.

Once again you are trying to argue subtypes. If you want to engage in such a discourse I'm sure we could define all manner of "types" of gamers.
That's what colloquial means.  There is no dictionary definition.  There is no definition for dudebro for example.  Its something people say.

19
Game Design / Re: Character Attributes & the Options Built On Them
« on: December 22, 2011, 09:26:24 PM »
So, the third question, of Jared Sorensons set of questions to ask about RPG's, is "how does your game go about rewarding that".  But, your second questions answer needs some feedback, in a new thread.

Getting back to attributes:

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Modifying one thing to create another isn't any less valid than trying to build something from scratch. That's a mistake I see a LOT of young, trying-to-define-themselves artists make, they think that just because you used a pre-existing reference or concept, or borrowed a technique, or a particular detail concept, that it makes the resulting work any less worthy. We all build what we know from what we've seen before, it's just a matter of how finely we break down the elements before we re-assemble them.
The game can be valid. 

But, when you take a game and modify it, you are usually just creating a lesser derivative work.

The best example is Apocalypse World to Dungeon World, and Dungeon world is clearly a lesser and derivative game

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In your example, Gamma World has a purpose, to be an adventure game. The context is a post-apocalyptic mutant world, but just because the game it was modded off of was a fantasy adventure game, doesn't mean it's any less successful at its purpose than someone trying to make another post-apocalyptic adventure game. Nobody said it was trying to be a survival game, or a horror game. Some might try to play it off as that, but that's them.
Gamma world *was* supposed to be post apocalyptic.  And it was never popular or successful. 


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If a design, or a concept, WORKS for its purpose, then taking that concept and adding new material, or modifying it to fit a new context, doesn't make it work for that purpose less than something someone else constructed entirely from scratch, trying to work in a void. Nine times out of ten (in my experience), it actually works better than that scratch-built concept, because it's still had the end-goal of purpose in sight while it's been rebuilt.
I am hard put to think of many "good" games that are derivative.

Spirit of the century, Dungeon world, (I have not played thou art but a warrior)  that's a pretty extensive list.


 

20
Gaming Advice / Re: What is a "Gamer?"
« on: December 21, 2011, 01:31:13 PM »
The dictionary was considered linguisticaly conservative before the internet.

For a coloquial term you might as well quote the bible as the dictionary.  It would be as accurate (zero accuracy btw)

Also bothe my points stand.  Even if you are making a valid assertion of authority you should still be able to address these points.  (Because a valid authority can never, bey defenition, disagree with a valid point)

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