What do you like that 'everyone' hates?

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Not only has NZ disappeared, there's no Tasmania on that map as well!

This conspiracy runs deep
:grin:
Dude, Japan’s not even on that map. :shock:
 
No Iceland either.

How am I going to move my armies between Europe and North America without Iceland?
 
On the whole Mooks rule concept, I think if used in pulpy cinematic games that have a big narrative focus, then they are a really useful way of placing emphasis on certain NPCs.

In games with heavier simulation emphasis, I don't think they work well as stats need to be more objective - if an NPC is a pushover it is because they have weaker stats.

As such I don't think Mook rules work all that well in systems like Mythras, but I'm fine with them in games like Fate.

(PS: I try not to use GNS game design terms too much, but occasionally they can be useful as brief descriptors)

This is about where I fall. For some types of game, they work for creating a certain. For Two-Fisted pulp action, I find they tend to fit. There are some battles which aren't as 'serious' or are big set pieces meant for main characters to look cool and wisecrack while making their way through a crowd of 'lesser' opponents maybe with Lieutenant or two (tough Mooks or named characters, to use the jargon). Yes, it is sometimes driven by "story' or genre, but neither I nor my players have an issue with that. Making games that feel like the fiction we enjoy but with interactive and chance elements added Its not rolling dice for no reason for us. Its doing so because it adds fun to the game.

On a more practical level, "mooks" can serve a 'purpose. Battling them can cost time, resources, distract even soften up PCs or but their enemies time or provide some information about the characters abilities. As has been mentioned, minions aren't automatically loser and can pose a legitimate threat, particularly in associations with a Named Character. Some of the deaths in my Exalted game were dealt by some elite extras.
 
Never heard of it! Is if any good?

Not really, no. But it has a special charm for those who like so-bad-it's-good films. I like to consider it the unofficial prequel to Logan's Run
 
Never heard of it! Is if any good?
As a kid I somehow/somewhere saw the trailer for the movie and it haunted me for years... scenes of some woman running after a charismatic guy and getting caught up on a barbed wire fence before being dragged away screaming.
It wasn't till a long time later that I found out what it was... and that it's more of a satire than a serious drama, let alone the horror movie I'd taken it for.
It's not a 'great' movie, but it is an interesting reflection on its time... and a chance to see a young Richard Pryor... and apparently the main song from it was a solid hit on the charts of the day.
 
The phrase "Don't trust anyone over 30" goes back to Jack Weinberg of Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964. He was being interviewed by a newspaper with leading questions implying they were a front for the Commies. Weinberg replied that they didn't trust anyone over 30 in their group, trying to make the point that they weren't a front for anything. The newspaper clipped his larger point down to the quote, "We have a saying in the movement that you can't trust anybody over 30," leaving out the context of the question and making it the centerpiece of the article.

From there, the phrase caught fire in a SWORDREAMesque fashion, both among those who embraced it and those who saw it as an easy way to show that the youth movement was their inevitable enemy. My mother used to use it all the time, increasingly ironically as she got older. The phrase got additional weight as the Vietnam War draft went on, with the implication being that you can't trust anyone who isn't facing conscription. By 1968, it was popping up in movies as a hip reference.

Weinberg's take on the whole thing: "I've done some things in my life I think are very important, and my one sentence in history turns out to be something I said off the top of my head which became completely distorted and misunderstood. But I've become more accepting of fate as I get older. "
 
This is about where I fall. For some types of game, they work for creating a certain. For Two-Fisted pulp action, I find they tend to fit. There are some battles which aren't as 'serious' or are big set pieces meant for main characters to look cool and wisecrack while making their way through a crowd of 'lesser' opponents maybe with Lieutenant or two (tough Mooks or named characters, to use the jargon). Yes, it is sometimes driven by "story' or genre, but neither I nor my players have an issue with that. Making games that feel like the fiction we enjoy but with interactive and chance elements added Its not rolling dice for no reason for us. Its doing so because it adds fun to the game.

On a more practical level, "mooks" can serve a 'purpose. Battling them can cost time, resources, distract even soften up PCs or but their enemies time or provide some information about the characters abilities. As has been mentioned, minions aren't automatically loser and can pose a legitimate threat, particularly in associations with a Named Character. Some of the deaths in my Exalted game were dealt by some elite extras.
Too be fair, the games I run/play tend to be pulp, fantasy and/or superhero, which means mook/minion rules are more or less the standard. I can understand that in other games, like intrigue based thrillers, fantasy Vietnam, so on and so forth, they wouldn't fit.
 
Too be fair, the games I run/play tend to be pulp, fantasy and/or superhero, which means mook/minion rules are more or less the standard. I can understand that in other games, like intrigue based thrillers, fantasy Vietnam, so on and so forth, they wouldn't fit.
I run games in similar styles, adding what I call the action movie idiom with things like Cyberpunk and Star Wars. Never felt the need to use mooks/minions myself.

That said, I'm a firm believer that some things don't get tougher, you just get more of them. Stormtroopers and zombies being the classics for this approach.

The way I see it, if a 'normal guy' can give a Superhero, a two fisted pulp adventurer or the kind of character that has words like 'thews' in their description any kind of a fight, they aren't normal.
 
Too be fair, the games I run/play tend to be pulp, fantasy and/or superhero, which means mook/minion rules are more or less the standard. I can understand that in other games, like intrigue based thrillers, fantasy Vietnam, so on and so forth, they wouldn't fit.

Yep, my point exactly. You use the right tool for the job. Every tool doesn't fit every job, or every craftsman for that matter because I find minion/mook/thug rules useful and fun doesn't mean they're for everyone.
 
Weinberg's take on the whole thing: "I've done some things in my life I think are very important, and my one sentence in history turns out to be something I said off the top of my head which became completely distorted and misunderstood. But I've become more accepting of fate as I get older. "
I don't trust that statement. He's over 30.
 
Despite my dislike of 3.x, I really liked the Tome of Battle: Book of 9 Swords, or as it is known in some circles: The Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic.

Was it a bit ridiculous and anime as hell? Yeah. Were some of the abilities really badly written? Absolutely (Looking at you Iron Heart Surge)

Was it overpowered? Nah, still didn't bring martials up to the level of full 3.x casters anyway, Was it fun? I found it fun.
 
Despite my dislike of 3.x, I really liked the Tome of Battle: Book of 9 Swords, or as it is known in some circles: The Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic.

Was it a bit ridiculous and anime as hell? Yeah. Were some of the abilities really badly written? Absolutely (Looking at you Iron Heart Surge)

Was it overpowered? Nah, still didn't bring martials up to the level of full 3.x casters anyway, Was it fun? I found it fun.
I tried to bring that into the last 3.5 game that I ever played in, but another player was so deeply offended at the existence of the book that I let it go.
 
Despite my dislike of 3.x, I really liked the Tome of Battle: Book of 9 Swords, or as it is known in some circles: The Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic.

Was it a bit ridiculous and anime as hell? Yeah. Were some of the abilities really badly written? Absolutely (Looking at you Iron Heart Surge)

Was it overpowered? Nah, still didn't bring martials up to the level of full 3.x casters anyway, Was it fun? I found it fun.
I'd still play 3.5 if that and the Expanded Psionics Handbook were in play.
 
That was another good one. It's funny, as I generally dislike 3.5 for all the fiddly bits, but some of my favorite books are the ones that go all in with the fiddliness.
The later stuff got really good.
 
I tried to bring that into the last 3.5 game that I ever played in, but another player was so deeply offended at the existence of the book that I let it go.

Why where they "offended", if I might ask?
 
Why where they "offended", if I might ask?
I don't really know exactly what upset him about it. We were all making characters, and I raised the possibility of using The Book of Nine Swords. The GM wasn't familiar with it, and someone else protested that it was all broken garbage. I could have argued my case, but the guy wasn't typically argumentative and I had two more character concepts in my head at the time, so I just shrugged and let him have that one.

The GM was also my girlfriend and had jitters because she hadn't run anything in a long time, so forcing her to have to make a contentious ruling between two players on a book she hadn't read only five minutes into the campaign didn't seem cool.
 
I mean, did the options in the book pretty much invalidate the PHB fighter and monk from a game power standpoint.... well yeah. But it still didn't compare to CODZILLA, so I never understood why people freaked out about it.
 
I don't really know exactly what upset him about it. We were all making characters, and I raised the possibility of using The Book of Nine Swords. The GM wasn't familiar with it, and someone else protested that it was all broken garbage. I could have argued my case, but the guy wasn't typically argumentative and I had two more character concepts in my head at the time, so I just shrugged and let him have that one.

The GM was also my girlfriend and had jitters because she hadn't run anything in a long time, so forcing her to have to make a contentious ruling between two players on a book she hadn't read only five minutes into the campaign didn't seem cool.

Sounds like a reasonable choice of action. No need to rock the boat when its a big deal.
 
I was once in a Feng Shui game with a player who made the mistake of giving a mook a name... which, of course, meant he got a sudden power boost.
In my case it was some random one-off character who had taken a mutant power drug and became a super strong tank. After she put down my own brick, she became convinced that he was going easy on her because she was a woman. He kept denying it (And at the time, we didn't even know it was a she, that was a retcon) and the rivalry took off from there.
 
I'm not sure how to say this but I prefer campaigns that aren't "Sandbox". I don't prefer total railroads mind you just same with some focus and a set premise and structure though with some flexibility and ability for character changes to make differences. Games I've been that were described as "This is the world (X). You're a person living in it." haven't really caught my interest and often tended to go wrong in various ways.

Perhaps I just haven't encountered sandbox done well... But I do lean more towards the "Storygamer" side in some ways instead of Simulation side assuming that's the right jargon.
 
I'm not sure how to say this but I prefer campaigns that aren't "Sandbox". I don't prefer total railroads mind you just same with some focus and a set premise and structure though with some flexibility and ability for character changes to make differences. Games I've been that were described as "This is the world (X). You're a person living in it." haven't really caught my interest and often tended to go wrong in various ways.

Perhaps I just haven't encountered sandbox done well... But I do lean more towards the "Storygamer" side in some ways instead of Simulation side assuming that's the right jargon.

I think that it's really easy to run a "bad" sandbox, where the players just feel lost and like they're groping around blindly looking for something to happen or something to do. I imagine this is a large part of what initially inspired RPG modules to move away from Sandbox conceits. A GM has to provide "hooks" for players - it's not about not having plots (all my NPCs have plots), it's about letting players choose how to react to those plots and what they want to involve themselves in. A Sandbox can have some structure, it just means the world reacts to the player characters and their choices, rather than the Players reacting to a GM's narrative.
 
Only thing I didn't like was when Sam stopped being a character and became a writers mouthpiece, talking a bunch of nonsense. Other than that it was a fine wrap-up.
 
I'm satisfied with the events of the finale, but it seems so compressed compared to previous seasons.

It did suffer a bit for being rushed (Not as much as Penny Dreadful, IMO. *sigh*) but it was good to me. Certainly the screaming, howling disappointment some have accused it of being.
 
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