What do you think are the most damaging ideas in the hobby?

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Even just using the 1974 rules, the solution is obvious - the wizzie rolls to hit as a first-level wizard, regardless of their actual level, and maybe with a -1 penalty on top if I was feeling harsh. Easy.
Oh I do not disagree...AD&D would even have it you use it at -4 as non-proficient weapon...maybe as a 0 level. Yet there are those who seem to approach "wizards cannot use weapons x, y and z" as literal and holy writ, as if some magical force reaches out and seizes their muscles should they attempt to "use" such weapons.
 
Oh I do not disagree...AD&D would even have it you use it at -4 as non-proficient weapon...maybe as a 0 level. Yet there are those who seem to approach "wizards cannot use weapons x, y and z" as literal and holy writ, as if some magical force reaches out and seizes their muscles should they attempt to "use" such weapons.
Yea, such inflexibility is damaging to the idea of an RPG. If you really don't want wizards ever picking up swords, incorporate something into the setting, for example, at least some justification is given for clerics. If there's a justification in the setting it becomes possible to rationalize the response if the taboo is broken and the player may evaluate the risks or understand that it flat out can't be done because there really is a mystic force that will smite the wizard or make the sword immobile or whatever.
 


Kirsten Dunst doing a cosplay video in Akihabra. Context?

I have no idea. I discovered the video same as you're watching it

According to the interwebs it was done for an exhibition at the Tate Modern about a decade or so ago.


It was done by an artist called Takashi Murakami, who seems to be a prominent figure in Japanese fine arts.

Also, one of her earliest film credits was for the lead voice work in the English dub of Kiki's Delivery Service. So she just might be a fan of that sort of stuff.
 
Yea, such inflexibility is damaging to the idea of an RPG. If you really don't want wizards ever picking up swords, incorporate something into the setting, for example, at least some justification is given for clerics. If there's a justification in the setting it becomes possible to rationalize the response if the taboo is broken and the player may evaluate the risks or understand that it flat out can't be done because there really is a mystic force that will smite the wizard or make the sword immobile or whatever.
...or the sword would object and get up the wizard's...wait, nevermind:shade:!
 
You'd think but there is a whole forum (IIRC) where you'd be "schooled" otherwise. The wizard using a sword (edit: controversy) in D&D is almost as the old as the game...

Yup, exactly. As I said, something that soured me on D&D generally. Obviously many DMs don't swing that way, but there's always been a large school of thought that D&D is essentially a board game, with stylized rules which need make no more objective sense than does Monopoly or Stratego. That ain't my style, says Casey.
 
Yea, such inflexibility is damaging to the idea of an RPG. If you really don't want wizards ever picking up swords, incorporate something into the setting, for example, at least some justification is given for clerics. If there's a justification in the setting it becomes possible to rationalize the response if the taboo is broken and the player may evaluate the risks or understand that it flat out can't be done because there really is a mystic force that will smite the wizard or make the sword immobile or whatever.

Yep ... and if there is such a justification in the setting, I want to know about it in Session Zero so I don't waste my time with the game in the first place.
 
@ Ravenswing Ravenswing Sorry to hear you got a shitty DM.

In 5e anyone can use any weapon they want, they just don't get to add their proficiency bonus. It came up recently in my B/X game that I ruled a sorcerer could swing a sword in combat at disadvantage to the hit roll.

For my 5e weird fantasy heartbreaker rules, I grant Guild-trained Evocation wizards weapon proficiencies appropriate to their specialty as part of their Background. Pyromancers can use scimitars and falcatas. Cryomancers gain proficiency in handaxes, spears, and picks.
 
Blister in the Sun and Comfortably Numb I already had, but Sound of Silence and Eyes Without a Face are great - I've noted them for future inclusion

I considered She Bop, but I'm afraid I can't separate that song title from it's subject now that I know what it's about
Why would you want to separate it?
 
Oh come on! It's Raining Men is really a great spell. A bit messy but absolutely crushing to enemy morale.
Well, it doesn’t say the men aren’t warriors. But a better song for that would be I Need a Hero.
 
The highest level of all the spellsongs...
Creeping Death - When you absolutely, positively got to kill the first born son of every motherfucker in the country - Accept No Substitute.
 
As a spinoff of TristramEvans TristramEvans idea of a spell-list based on the titles of rock songs, I've long wanted to run a X-Files-ish game based entirely on Paul Simon's album Graceland. The initial track, The Boy in the Bubble," seems to have everything you need for such an endeavor: terrorism, surveillance, weird medical experimentation, alien visitors or watchers, a conspiracy of the rich and powerful, distant locales, hints of an underlying mythic element set against a greater probability of a purely materialistic universe (the "automatic earth") and premonitions of a coming apocalypse...:

[
It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shopwindows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long-distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby don’t cry
Don’t cry

It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long-distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in the corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby don’t cry
Don’t cry

It’s a turnaround jump shot
It’s everybody jumpstart
It’s every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
Thinking of the Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
a loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires, and baby

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long-distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby don’t cry
Don’t cry, don’t cry
/SPOILER]
 
Even just using the 1974 rules, the solution is obvious - the wizzie rolls to hit as a first-level wizard, regardless of their actual level, and maybe with a -1 penalty on top if I was feeling harsh. Easy.
The only mechanical effect in the 3 LBBs was the inability of magic users to use magic swords. Every weapon did 1d6 damage
 
As a spinoff of TristramEvans TristramEvans idea of a spell-list based on the titles of rock songs, I've long wanted to run a X-Files-ish game based entirely on Paul Simon's album Graceland. The initial track, The Boy in the Bubble," seems to have everything you need for such an endeavor: terrorism, surveillance, weird medical experimentation, alien visitors or watchers, a conspiracy of the rich and powerful, distant locales, hints of an underlying mythic element set against a greater probability of a purely materialistic universe (the "automatic earth") and premonitions of a coming apocalypse...:

[
It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shopwindows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long-distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby don’t cry
Don’t cry

It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long-distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in the corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby don’t cry
Don’t cry

It’s a turnaround jump shot
It’s everybody jumpstart
It’s every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
Thinking of the Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
a loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires, and baby

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long-distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby don’t cry
Don’t cry, don’t cry
/SPOILER]

Resurrection spell could be 'Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down.'

The original recording.



Cash's version.

 
It's worked for me for over 20 years with no issues, nor desire to be a Cyclone Ranger.
I think the later is the benefit of the spell...everyone around you becomes a Cyclone Ranger, everyone :smile:
 
I once used the tracks on an Iron Maiden album as the titles for sessions of a Firefly RPG. The only thing I can remember is the first ep - Tail Gunner had, unbeknownst to the crew, an Alliance hating weapons systems built into the stern of their ship.

Which they discovered trying to sneak through an Alliance check point. Hilarity ensues.
 
I once almost wrote my first novel based on Hammerfall titles.
Then a HDD lost all the info it contained, and guess where said novel was:grin:!
 
I've considered doing this for Queensryche's Rage for Order album and a cyberpunk game. The titles are perfect.
I've done that before- it can get a bit dodgy if they don't just fit, but when they do it can help get people into the feel of the adventures.
 
Not obsessive at all, Jim. Heck, when I got my first CD-R drive, I not only made backup copies of all my gaming files, but I sent copies to my mother and my grandmother both. Not even a disaster would get everything.

Proved semi-prescient, in the end.
 
I'm sorry but there is no way some Anime owns Lemmy. Jeebus H! Are we avacodo toast hipster millenials?!?!?!?! No! We're Gen X and 'Killed by Death' has to be the Uber version of the spell because Lemmy!
Yeah, I kinda expected this reaction, too...:grin:

Truth be told, "I kill the fight" should be more of a protective spell, now that I think of it ("it" being a scyscraper falling on a human who just keeps going afterwards:thumbsup:).
 
I'm sorry but there is no way some Anime owns Lemmy. Jeebus H! Are we avacodo toast hipster millenials?!?!?!?! No! We're Gen X and 'Killed by Death' has to be the Uber version of the spell because Lemmy!
Not anime... but Motorhead is in a pantheon with some other non-anime.
 
Well, it doesn’t say the men aren’t warriors. But a better song for that would be I Need a Hero.
So, do you summon Shrek on a white charger, or Kevin Bacon on a tractor?

Re the OP:
One True Way/Rules Lawyer/Canon Lawyer.
1) "Welcome to the FLGS new GM! We're going to tell you our set of house rules and insist you go with the same interpretations!"
2) "I've memorized every line in every book published! Let me tell you EXACTLY and at great length how you are doing it wrong."
3) "We're playing a Star Wars campaign? Do I get to be Luke?"
"Eh, no."
"Then I sit back and watch Luke blow up the Death Star. That was a fun campaign. What now?"
 
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