Irrational Hatreds in RPGs

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Playerside, I hate the clever puzzles and "logical" quizzes that can be found haphazardly in D&D dungeons (and dungeons from any RPG, for that matter).

You know the type :

Dungeon Master : "In this room there are blue tiles, yellow tiles and black tiles. On the wall opposite the way you come, someone has scribbled above the steel door - with blood - "Beware the Indigo" ! What do you do ?"
Me : ... [retreating behind the other PCs]
...
(speaking to the other PCs in a confident and somewhat dismissive tone) "Well, have you figured it out too ? I mean: we don't have all day, you know ?! "

Strangely, I appreciate a good and deadly puzzle DMside. Totally irrational :-P !
 
Dunno about that. Was too busy shooting mutant cultists to figure out the interpersonal stuff.

Krugs, I love you man, but you are way out of your comfort zone here. It’s like a story gamer discovering B/X D&D has Morale rules and subsequently declaring that it’s a game about chasing monsters down. Forest for the trees and all that.
Oh, I perfectly understand that most people who love the hell out of the game just flushed the Sex Moves the same way that people ran Trenchcoat and Katana games with Vampire, or a Supers game with the combined WW library.
Still, you can’t completely ignore the author’s intent and the games systems when talking about the game - Rule Zero Fallacy and all that.

You get your Battlebabe and Gunlugger, blow up some mutant cultists, take out the evil fucker who runs the slave city, find the Tech MacGuffin that cleans the water and call it a campaign as you retire ruling the valley. It’s a Gonzo Gamma Western, and I mean that as a compliment.

That’s not how the game is treated though, by many online, who give it a gravitas as a Post-Apocalyptic game exploring the human condition through the Interpersonal Mechanics - which brings us back to the playbooks as Post-Apocalyptic Archetypes...including the signature Sex Moves as part of the archetypes - which aren’t PA archetypes at all.

Compare with Deadlands: Hell on Earth. You’ve got a nuclear holocaust followed by an Honest to God religious Apocalypse, with destroyed cities surrounded by storms of screaming souls, and the literal Four Horseman of the Apocalypse walking the earth. There’s some serious meat in that setting you could use to run a mature, deep campaign in, dealing with enormous philosophical issues. Really the same with Rifts if you wanted to play it totally straight. No one is going to point to HoE or Rifts or Gamma World as a serious exploration of the PA genre.
AW on the other hand...:angry:

But, notice, I did specifically rant about this in the Irrational Hatreds thread and not the Sex Moves thread. :hehe:
 
Why do you feel the need to punish each other in this way?
 
Playerside, I hate the clever puzzles and "logical" quizzes that can be found haphazardly in D&D dungeons (and dungeons from any RPG, for that matter).

You know the type :

Dungeon Master : "In this room there are blue tiles, yellow tiles and black tiles. On the wall opposite the way you come, someone has scribbled above the steel door - with blood - "Beware the Indigo" ! What do you do ?"
Me : ... [retreating behind the other PCs]
I once put my players in a room, with white and black floor tiles. The white tiles were lit from below. Some of the black tiles were cracked. There was a door on the other side of the room that they needed to get to.

They spent five minutes trying to work out which set of tiles were trapped.

There were exactly zero traps in the room.

You can't pull this off often, but when you do, it's hilarious.
 
The lock that bested Houdini was the regular one that no one locked.
 
Ok, so what about every other Playbook? Even if you only allow one of everything, it still means that archetype (which isn't an archetype) always has the same sex move.

It's like a morality play from a culture/religion that doesn't exist.
Yes, there's one Sex Move per archetype. With the move made to fit and reinforced the archetype, it only makes sense to always have the same move, IME.

Well, unless you choose and Advancement that lets you pick a special move from another Archetype, of course :tongue:!

which aren’t PA archetypes at all.
Wait, what? The "I Shoot You" Guy isn't a PA archetype? The Medic cris-crossing the wastelands ain't a PA archetype? The Crazy Cult's Main Leader isn't one you remember from PA movies? The "Guy Who Woke Up After Being Crio-Frozen"? The Biker Gang's Leader?

I mean, sometimes they might be secondary characters, but I can pretty much name movies or books for most of these dudes. And PA isn't even a genre I really indulge in :devil:!
 
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Where in Post-Apocalyptic/media literature are these archetypes, and their signature approach to Sex and Intimacy?

I'm mystified; I have never played Apocalypse World, only a couple of other PbtA games but after a quick search for its archetypes I could fairly easily find each of them in the Mad Max world or other post apocalyptic fiction. Which did you have trouble with? Or is it just the specific mechanics and especially the sex moves? It seems unreasonable that that should ruin the game any more than wizards not being able to use swords would ruin D&D; at worst, they are just pregenerated characters with some room for customization.

The Post-Apocalyptic aspect of the game is the thinnest of skins draped over an interpersonal mechanics game. That's why people always yammering about it in threads about PA games grinds my gears.

Dunno about that. Was too busy shooting mutant cultists to figure out the interpersonal stuff.

Krugs, I love you man, but you are way out of your comfort zone here. It’s like a story gamer discovering B/X D&D has Morale rules and subsequently declaring that it’s a game about chasing monsters down. Forest for the trees and all that.

I think The Butcher has it right.
 
you can’t completely ignore the author’s intent

I can, and I will, because I care little or nothing about authorial intent in elfgames, can’t figure out for the life of me why anyone else does, and view any games I acquire as existing solely for my entertainment.

And we did not so much deliberately “flush” the sex moves as they just didn’t come up at all. Because our PCs were too busy with PA stuff to bone each other.

I also dispute that trenchcoats & katanas is not how MR*H intended V:tM to play, and/or that it’s somehow incompatible with the angsty stuff, but that’s a topic for another thread.:shade:
 
There's that moment when the bard playing badly in the corner of the evil king's courtroom gets up with as sigh, and borrows a sword from a surprised looking henchman and turns towards you and, says, "I don't suppose you'd consider doing this another time? I was almost getting that right. A Flam is patient (in the corner, a string on his harp snaps) but Pachabel's Cannon is quite frustrating. Never the less, a Flam is a welcome house guest
Playerside, I hate the clever puzzles and "logical" quizzes that can be found haphazardly in D&D dungeons (and dungeons from any RPG, for that matter).

You know the type :

Dungeon Master : "In this room there are blue tiles, yellow tiles and black tiles. On the wall opposite the way you come, someone has scribbled above the steel door - with blood - "Beware the Indigo" ! What do you do ?"
Me : ... [retreating behind the other PCs]
...
(speaking to the other PCs in a confident and somewhat dismissive tone) "Well, have you figured it out too ? I mean: we don't have all day, you know ?! "

Strangely, I appreciate a good and deadly puzzle DMside. Totally irrational :-P !

I deploy a sheep.
 
Uggh... I belong to a few RPG and Worldbuilding Facebook groups and what I have developed an irrational hatred for lately is "Inspiration"

What o you do for "Inspiration"?
Here is something for "Inspiration"
That makes me so "Inspired"

WTF is with this new buzz word? It just seems childish and I can't put my finger on why. I want to pull my hair out after seeing that Gods be damned word for the seventh time on my newsfeed today

Just Uggh.
 
Used often or the wrong way, I could see "inspired " grating like a motivational poster .
 
Uggh... I belong to a few RPG and Worldbuilding Facebook groups and what I have developed an irrational hatred for lately is "Inspiration"

What o you do for "Inspiration"?
Here is something for "Inspiration"
That makes me so "Inspired"

WTF is with this new buzz word? It just seems childish and I can't put my finger on why. I want to pull my hair out after seeing that Gods be damned word for the seventh time on my newsfeed today

Just Uggh.
I prefer to use the phrase 'nick ideas from.' 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration and all that.
 

I try and avoid even mentioning bards at our gaming table, as they are immediately followed by "You're barred!", funny the first time, not the 100th time. Similarly, I avoid mentioning that someone is elvish, preferring elven, otherwise I get "There's a chap down the chip shop swears he's Elvish".
 
Is that another Sex Move?

When you Stick it to the Man roll +any Stat. On a 10+, you stick it however you describe. Choose 2 outcomes, below. On a 7-9, you stick it, but the man sticks you back. The GM chooses one outcome, below, and you choose one. On a 6- or less, the man sticks both you and himself. The GM chooses all the outcomes, below.

*You're fucked. The man is pleased. He takes your shit.
*The man is pleased. He still takes your shit.
*The man takes your shit, which pleases him.
*The man asks for another stick. He's still pleased, though, so you can keep your shit.
*The man opens up an investigation into your entire lineage, eventually taking everyone's shit. He's pleased, and and asks for anther sticking.
*The man is unaware you've stuck it to him. He goes off, pleased. You keep half your shit.
*You end up sticking it to yourself. Take all your own shit to the dollar store. Trade it all for chewy Nerds. You are ultimately pleased.

Obviously, not a sex move.:-)
 
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When you Stick it to the Man roll +any Stat. On a 10+, you stick it however you describe. Choose 2 outcomes, below. On a 7-9, you stick it, but the man sticks you back. The GM chooses one outcome, below, and you choose one. On a 6- or less, the man sticks both you and himself. The GM chooses all the outcomes, below.
Thinking about it, the "both sides get something" result for a sex move should really be triggered by a 6-9.
 
Used often or the wrong way, I could see "inspired " grating like a motivational poster .
I could almost bet someone would find the poster inspiring, though:thumbsup:!
 
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So, the last time I was inspired, I thought "I'm going to design a mega-city. Awesome!"

Still WIP. I just re-hashed the streets on a lot of the tiles - you can see the ones I've fixed up vs, the ones I haven't touched yet.

This is just one area, and still 9 tiles and two major passes (major features and designing and jacquaying the starports) to go. Ikeep telling myself this will be a highly re-useable asset.

10% inspiration. 90% perspiration. It's not the ideas, it's the execution.

MegaCity.jpg

This one involved a lot of figuring things out from scratch and making and backtracking to fix mistakes. One hopes the next one will be faster.
 
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I really don't like making decisions that my character wouldn't be able to make or even know about. I play for immersion. I would rather have my character die in great pain than make an above-the-table decision, as if it were a board game, to use a luck point, fate point, momentum or whatever, to save him or her.
 
Another one: when a PC fails an attack roll and the DM narrates it as “haha you whiffed like a completely incompetent moron hahaha” because they don’t understand that AC is an abstract value representing the opponent’s defensive opposition. Like, maybe the orc dodged, parried or the blow just glanced off his plate armor.

Don’t get me started on rolling a natural 1 which seems to be an immediate invitation to explain the failure as over-the-top slapstick, often with awful secondary effects like “you fall on your ass lol” or “your sword breaks lol”.

Extra points if rolling a natural 20 doesn’t invite nearly as much attention.
 
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