User talk:Spazalicious Chaos/Options- What Weak GMs Eliminate First

Hear, Hear, Brother!

I'm totally on board with this. I realized that options are the only way to go for both the player and GM alike. That's why I just allow access to every spell, ability, and magic item at 1st level. Why not? Restricting things like that are just arbitrary and useless rules that exist purely as a straitjacket. --Aarnott 21:43, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Sarcasm noted and laughed at. Access granted should be accross the board, including monsters and npcs. Everything available to your players is available to the GM as well, as the "be evil with monsters" section demonstrates.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 19:32, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

That's true, Spazalicious Chaos. Ice Assassin should be a first level spell, and scrolls of Ice Assassin should come packaged with strands of god hair at every sales booth in the world. The DM will have no reason to complain about the 17 Vecnas the players have at their disposal, since he can plausibly let the Minor Pickpocket archvillain have 15 Torms and 12 Pelors at his command. --Foxwarrior 20:27, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

IF it is a first level spell and IF you can buy magic on the market. Your complaints have added a ammendum.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 21:28, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

“	let go of assumtions about what the game is supposed to be	”
—Faildas

That line alone contradicts pretty much everything you wrote, by the way. It is also probably the only line of text you have ever written that the community here probably agrees with as well. The whole point of good homebrew is to allow more fun for the actual group using it. Less options can often be more fun. Consider this analogy: my goal is to get a small, white, round ball into a hole. I could simply place that ball into the hole and be done with it. However, in order to make it more fun, I grab a set of metal clubs, start a few hundred yards away, and try to get the ball in the hole with the fewest number of hits from club to ball. You can feel free to keep playing golf by picking up the ball and dropping it in the hole if that's what your group finds fun. --Aarnott 14:24, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, except for some people golf is the most dreadfully boring sport in the world. Consider THIS evolution- what started out as a simple game of wall dodge ball starts to change when the people up against the wall are allowed to use and bring cover. One kid from a fencing class gets a lucky parry and hit the thrower. The thrower is now ruled as "out", but a replacement is needed. It is ruled that whoever can pick up the ball fiirst is the new thrower. Again, the fencer is able to beat the other kids to the ball due to his training, so the other kids starting applying their skills- baseball players use bats, a kick ball player improvises an extended shin guard, a few get really good with a shield, etc. However, the thrower is also getting out more and more often, and thus he is allowed to have his tool ready when he throws. When it is time to change throwers, a melee breaks out and the kids are beaten, bloody and sore but ultimately they have invent the best thing since xbox.

By saying yes to new options and refusing to be bound by what a game is supposed to look like, you can invent and create a new animal that is more fun for your friends. Some people need a box to hide in to feel safe, but some of us live outside the box. I write homebrew for those people, because it is those people I prefer to game with. Whitewolf gaming industries has one thing in all their books that they call rule 0- have fun. If a rule impedes fun, ditch it. If a mechanic does not make sense, change it. If there is something they don't cover, create it. That is true gamer spirit as far as RPGs are concerned. This is why in my mind White Wolf > Paizo > Wizards of the Coast. Options and adaption make a game, which is why the qoute is not contradictory but a summary- the game is what you make it, not what it says.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 22:06, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

If I were to add a TL;DR to this, I would probably make it say "Screw the rules, the game's about fun." Save that shit for free form RPG's. Most of the point of making homebrew is to make something that works within the confines of the rules of the game as they stand, only changing the rules when doing so is advantageous to the game experience. And even when the rules are changed, it is resetting the barriers instead of abolishing them entirely. What you're proposing is dangerous to game balance for all the reasons others have already done a more than adequate job of pointing out, and ultimately is lost in what comes across to a reader (i.e. me) as whining about new rules that you don't seem to like because you'd rather play a constantly escalating arms race of power-creep. - TG Cid 22:31, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think he's proposing anything particularly damaging actually. I think Spaz is saying that you can add new things to a currently running game and should accept exploits that pop up in currently running games, but that crying foul and attempting to remove things from a running game is bullshit. Which I don't even disagree with in general, if you agreed to start under a set of rules and want to pull some later you don't get to do that unilaterally. I can't tell what Spaz would suggest if you ran across a truly game breaking bug during play, but I don't think that a "group discussion to see if it can be removed by the group, not the DM, to increase enjoyment" would be out of line.

What I don't get is how you can call out homebrew as "bad" or label DMs as "weak" while saying things like "you can invent and create a new animal that is more fun for your friends" and "the game is what you make it, not what it says". If your group actually doesn't want options on the table or wants a different set of options on the table, because those are more fun for them, and you start the game like that and let people learn to exploit them, what is the problem? - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:48, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

This could stand to be clarified in the article, but my stance is weak GMs are GMs who use and/or create homebrewed rules that outright eliminate options. This is where I start losing (non-existant) friends on this site- gamers that prefer strong limits are weak. If you can not handle having more than a handfull of options, I say stick to WoW and let the real gamers have the floor. Thus, homebrew in and of itself is not bad, any more than a gun is a magic death stick that possess people. But used wrong, more spefically used by weak gamers, it can be very bad and can out the most powerful asset any creature can have- his mind.

This is the crux of this argument- any rule that can take an awesome idea, especially an idea that could work anywhere else, and remove it from the equation is bad homebrew.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 05:18, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Teleport Changes Complaints

If you have actual complaints about the changes to teleport being tossed around, take your own advice, "stop being such a chicken shit", and post them on their talk pages instead of hiding them in your little corner of the wiki. If you think the game is being hurt by them, say something where it matters. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:52, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

You may also want to consider the ramifications of omitting the word "not" in a sentence. Apparently you believe in murdering your players because they are smarter than you are. - TG Cid 23:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

That explains more things than is comfortable. - MisterSinister 03:56, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I posted this here because this is not just an issue with one rule, but an entire rule building philosphy, hence the posting here as my stance on this philosphy rahter than handing it out over and over to people who frankly will get sick of it after the umpteenth time on repeat.

And thanks again for catching that critical miss typo.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 19:35, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Options, and Entropy

There exists a phase space for possible universes. In that phase space is a proper subset: The possible universes that are living, where living is defined as "between the border of chaos and order". And in that phase space there is another proper subset: The possible universes in which a coherent storyline can be maintained. Rocket Tag & Scry & Die practically kill any chance for a universe to be in there. When anybody can do anything, very little can be maintained. If you come back in a week, you can find the world under completely different, impossible to predict even knowing what everybody was doing before you left, conditions. Those, and other abilities that screw with entropy make it so that people trying to break the storyline can. And players do that, a lot, for both IC & OOC reasons. So trying to limit those allows a storyline to properly exist. You actually need a limiting force for a story to occur. Flight removes the limit of gravity. Rocket Tag replaces the limit of mundane survival with the luck of a die. Scry & Die removes the limit of proximity. Time travel removes the limit of history. Ect. Ect. --Havvy 01:17, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, so the cold war, when two superpowerful nations had the will and readiness to destroy all possibility of life for the other, was not at all able to produce stories, because clearly having such awesome and terrible might in the hands of anyone would just kill any possible potential for an interesting and dynamic narrative, because the very existence of power and if people could use it is what defines a story.

We live in the world of rocket tag and scry n' die as our day-to-day existence. We have people who fuck things up because they can- assholes. And there are people who already can deal with them without escalating the destruction and without breaking the world- heros. But clearly the modern world is without narrative, because we have the tech for what would have been considered scry and die tactics 60 years ago.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 01:47, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

In the real world, narratives are forced upon the world after the events. In role playing, a general narrative is agreed upon that affects the world. The power of narrativitum does not exist on Earth, but is prevalent in most fiction. And if you have no consequence for your actions other than 'the story ends' (and not 'everybody dies, including me' like in the real world), people are bound to use it. The world we live in, it takes not-so-fun effort to avoid scry-and-die (anti-DDoS measures for example) that if ported to a game, also usually makes it not fun. --Havvy 02:11, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Narratives are everywhere in reality. Events don't just happen, they have a history. If a meteor were to strike earth or your fantasy world, there would be along and expansive history behind how it formed, what gravity wells changed it's path to line up with earth, what everyone in the world who knew would do, etc. It would all be logical, but it is also all a part of a story. Narrativism is in the real world- what you do and how others react has long reaching consequences later and a lifetime of history behind it.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 02:42, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Meteors are caused by bored plushies. Science has nothing to do with that one. -- Eiji-kun 04:55, 31 January 2012 (UTC)