Kichae

No one complains more about a product than long-time fans of the product. They’re the ones who have had the time to feel betrayed by something, be it minor design choices, or things the owners have done, and who also feel a deep sense of ownership over the product.

Haters are just fans that feel alienated somehow, and can’t move past it.

The baker’s dozen is 13, because one of them is sacrificial.

Win if you can, lose if you must, but always TPK.

Sute, but the thing they like is “D&D”, and D&D isn’t just a game anymore, it’s an identity signifier. Pointing people to other games before establishing yourself as firmly not attacking their identity is going to trigger a fight.

alexanderthedead@lemmy.world said in A lesson so many need to learn: > Anyone who wants to make the claim that the system is bad will have bang their subjective arguments against the steel wall that is its popularity.

Yes, but this is a thing that people want to do. They want to try and dent that popularity, and they want to shift some of it towards their own preferences. It doesn’t matter that it’s a subjective opinion on what is better or what is bad, it doesn’t feel subjective to the person interjecting.

They believe their preferred game is better, they probably have had this discussion numerous times with people who have ignored them or chewed them out for trying to evangelize, and they are infinitely frustrated that others won’t see the light.

People who leave popular things behind for niche things often just have this habit of having to bury the thing they left behind. It can’t be good. The new thing is better, but the new thing is better both because it is better, and also because the old thing was just objectively bad.

People do this with a lot of things. TV shows, ice cream flavours, toys they used to play with as kids. There’s a sense of shame attached to having liked the old thing, not just a sense of joy of having found the new one. It’s one of the reasons the people they evangelize to get so defensive: They can sense that they are being judged.

But they definitely can do the thing, because it’s a game of make-believe. Again, this is not hammering in a screw, it’s mental systems for deciding how imaginary doings transpire.

They didn’t ask the wrong question, though. You’re seeing a solution they do not want and do not care about then blaming them for not listening to the unsolicited advice.

The problem isn’t on their end.

It’s not on them, though. They didn’t ask if there was a Dragon Age RPG, they asked if they could play Dragon Age in D&D.

Those are different questions.

And here’s the thing. You can’t really tell them “no”, because they know it’s an imagination game where the rules are whatever the table decides upon. They’re not asking if, they are asking how.

The thing is, this applies much less firmly to an imagination game where you can easily bolt on a sub-system to do that one thing you wanted to do differently than, say, if someone wants to beat in a screw with a hammer.

And yes, maybe there are people who want to gut their whole game and rebuild it from scratch for some reason, just because they really love sailing on their ship of Thesus, and would be better served by trying a new system. But if they don’t want to do that, someone trying to redirect the conversation in that direction are going to be viewed as hostile and smug, not helpful.

The downside of PF2 is if you try to engage with the core of the online community with this “rules for if I want/need them” attitude, someone will come out of the shadows to shank you.

There’s a rabid “by the rules, and all the rules” cohort within the community, and they are pretty effective at chasing new players away.

People are very bad at explaining what they like about things, because usually they like things in contrast to things they don’t like. And people who do identify what they like positively often just get told that their input isn’t welcome, either.

The problem isn’t whether someone is focusing on negative aspects of what you’re playing or the positive aspects of what they are, it’s that discussions about minority systems are often just puked up onto people who weren’t asking. The conversation is often:

“Hey, how can I do [thing] in [game I’m playing]?”

“[Game you’re playing] sucks at [thing]/isn’t designed for [thing]. You should play [something else].”

“But I like [game I’m playing], and don’t want to convert to a whole new system.”

This means not only is the asker’s question being totally ignored, but they’re being hit with – sometimes even bombarded by – value judgements they weren’t interested in.

You know how it’s “RPGMemes” and not “D&D 5e Memes”? You’re making assumptions about where the joke is rooted.

Enemy Perception DC? 25

His name translates to Ubermensch!

Touché! A truth I have really started to take for granted.

You’ve triggered my trap card. I’m going to do the special interest info-dump now. Apologies in advance.

It’s good. It’s written a little weird – it uses inheritance, like computer programming, which can be a little more difficult to wrap you head around than it needs to be if you’re not at least a little familiar with coding, and it’s written as if it’s doing everything possible to shut down rules lawyers, so whatever doesn’t read like API documentation reads a bit like legalese – but the actual system is nice.

It’s highly balanced, which is an awful word that its fanbase doesn’t seem to understand, but it means that it totally shuts down winning in character creation, and shifts the power game to one of tactics rather than build. The result is that much of the discussion about the game treats it as if it’s exclusively a tactical combat game (because most discussing the game are crypto-power-gamers), rather than a fantasy RPG, and the most enthusiastic players push back hard against any kind of reframing. But it has a ton of support fo roleplay focused tables, and it pares down easily for casual tables.

Plus, you know, it’s free! And it’s fairly easy to convert from 3.x/PF1, meaning that there’s a whole generation of content out there for it beyond first party offerings, for just a little more effort than standard prep.

Yes, exactly. Consistency is important, because it builds and reinforces trust. The GM just saying “nah” is the other side of the player showing up with a homebrew bullshit build.

I get a lot of pushback from the Pathfinder 2e subreddit for promoting the idea that the system is really great for character-driven, fiction-first tables, because everyone just looks at the number of rules and goes “it’s so obviously a gameist system, why would you ever try to run it as anything else?”, and the answer is it’s a fantastic physics system. The rules provide clarity and consistency where it’s really useful or important, and are easily ignorable where it doesn’t matter.

Thankfully, no one at my table knows what a bugbear is. And that’s also just not the way English tends to work. A bearbug is clearly a small, hairy beetle.

Well, I was going to have the party meet an owlbear, but a bugbear it is, now.