Just some stuff about RPGs
Dec. 12th, 2018 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethToday I have been reading, ish, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting I bought the other week, but I haven't got very far and I have also been reading things and realising I'd read them before and then skipping forwards a bit to something I'm sure is new aaaaand repeating the process. So. I am not at my most concentrate.
There's lots of neat stuff to generate story with though.
I think RPG settings are good at stuff that I tend to leave out when I'm inventing places. Like, you know, story engines, conflict drivers, where the grinding places are. But I tend to disagree muchly with their likely solutions. I mean, these DnD/Pathfinder things spend so many pages on combat stuff (so many) and like a paragraph each on social skills (is it? I need to actually understand rules at some point). GURPS has a couple different supplements all about social skills, but sooooooo many guns. I just feel like you can have a perfectly satisfying game without killing things.
Like Pandemic. Lots of cooperative keeping people alive there. Good game.
Which I am not playing tonight because nobody needs my ill. Also because at this rate I'd not concentrate well enough for even the easy ones.
I'm sure what I want from games is available, it's just things I pick up at random are like 'Here's a bazillionty ways to kill!!! ... and also you could talk to them?'
I just feel like if most RPGs had to take place within the constraints of reasonable local law the party would be locked up before they level.
But I guess that's what undead are for. Guilt free destruction.
But as a Soulful Spike fan that's just... no.
I have a big long coherent-when-I'm-well speech about how human rights are rights we give as humans and it shouldn't matter a damn if someone is or ain't human we need to respect them anyways, and, also, as soon as the law has any loopholes, it covers no one. If there is ever a portion of the population it is 'fair' to kill on sight, we no longer have useful law. If you can treat one section differently because you believe from visual clues they're a particular category, big mess ensues every damn time. This gets a lot closer to home than actual factual vampires, but I can argue it about vampires.
And like, yes, vampires need to stop killing people, but in universe with Buffyverse they (almost) none of them have the kind of employment opportunities others take for granted on account of being legally dead, which makes it difficult to participate in the regular economy, though evil law firm seems to have some hand in fixing that for the few. And vampires have significant disabilities that bar them from most work during regular working hours, without presumably expensive fixes like the glass at W&H, because that sun allergy is lethal, and next to nobody trusts them enough to give them a job any way, so you end up with the crime lord types who accumulate resources by means probably foul, and the rest of them living in crypts and scavenging for junk. And given all that, how on earth are they meant to keep themselves fed? Cow blood isn't free. ... is it? I don't know, what do they usually do with it? But like, they have specific dietary needs and no legal means to fulfill them, that's a significant structural barrier to change.
... though again, obviously, they need to stop killing people. That's. Obvious.
And so many supernatural or fantasy races have the same problem. People drive orcs out of their traditional homes into the wastelands, then call them cruel and vicious when they go raiding for resources. Evil races live where the sun don't shine and crops don't grow, so what are they living on? Imports at sword point. A problem they probably don't have a whole lot of options to work around. Fix the structural stuff, then see if the label still hangs.
... I get so annoyed with fantasy settings, it's ever so unhelpful.
... I mean if I'm going to play one and like it, I'd have to play one with no Alignment mechanism and no thing like in Warhammer where you get physical signs of moral degeneracy, and really, some tropes are so baked in to so many corners of this mess... GURPS lets you redesign all the parts, but it's a lot of work, and I don't much like their Banestorm world so I'd want to an entire world from scratch. One with a lot more women and less assumptions that patriarchy is somehow going to turn up as a theme on every planet.
... I get so annoyed about that, even systems with goddesses don't think it through on a values level, how you couldn't get away with treating women that way if actual literal interventionist goddesses had actual literal things to say about it. Except then sometimes the ones that do empower women to do something about being wronged get tagged Evil! Preposterous.
Erm. Anyway.
Wasn't planning to get into this one.
I have thoughts but they're rambly and annoyed and probably would make more sense on a different week.
So.
Er.
Have a nice day?
There's lots of neat stuff to generate story with though.
I think RPG settings are good at stuff that I tend to leave out when I'm inventing places. Like, you know, story engines, conflict drivers, where the grinding places are. But I tend to disagree muchly with their likely solutions. I mean, these DnD/Pathfinder things spend so many pages on combat stuff (so many) and like a paragraph each on social skills (is it? I need to actually understand rules at some point). GURPS has a couple different supplements all about social skills, but sooooooo many guns. I just feel like you can have a perfectly satisfying game without killing things.
Like Pandemic. Lots of cooperative keeping people alive there. Good game.
Which I am not playing tonight because nobody needs my ill. Also because at this rate I'd not concentrate well enough for even the easy ones.
I'm sure what I want from games is available, it's just things I pick up at random are like 'Here's a bazillionty ways to kill!!! ... and also you could talk to them?'
I just feel like if most RPGs had to take place within the constraints of reasonable local law the party would be locked up before they level.
But I guess that's what undead are for. Guilt free destruction.
But as a Soulful Spike fan that's just... no.
I have a big long coherent-when-I'm-well speech about how human rights are rights we give as humans and it shouldn't matter a damn if someone is or ain't human we need to respect them anyways, and, also, as soon as the law has any loopholes, it covers no one. If there is ever a portion of the population it is 'fair' to kill on sight, we no longer have useful law. If you can treat one section differently because you believe from visual clues they're a particular category, big mess ensues every damn time. This gets a lot closer to home than actual factual vampires, but I can argue it about vampires.
And like, yes, vampires need to stop killing people, but in universe with Buffyverse they (almost) none of them have the kind of employment opportunities others take for granted on account of being legally dead, which makes it difficult to participate in the regular economy, though evil law firm seems to have some hand in fixing that for the few. And vampires have significant disabilities that bar them from most work during regular working hours, without presumably expensive fixes like the glass at W&H, because that sun allergy is lethal, and next to nobody trusts them enough to give them a job any way, so you end up with the crime lord types who accumulate resources by means probably foul, and the rest of them living in crypts and scavenging for junk. And given all that, how on earth are they meant to keep themselves fed? Cow blood isn't free. ... is it? I don't know, what do they usually do with it? But like, they have specific dietary needs and no legal means to fulfill them, that's a significant structural barrier to change.
... though again, obviously, they need to stop killing people. That's. Obvious.
And so many supernatural or fantasy races have the same problem. People drive orcs out of their traditional homes into the wastelands, then call them cruel and vicious when they go raiding for resources. Evil races live where the sun don't shine and crops don't grow, so what are they living on? Imports at sword point. A problem they probably don't have a whole lot of options to work around. Fix the structural stuff, then see if the label still hangs.
... I get so annoyed with fantasy settings, it's ever so unhelpful.
... I mean if I'm going to play one and like it, I'd have to play one with no Alignment mechanism and no thing like in Warhammer where you get physical signs of moral degeneracy, and really, some tropes are so baked in to so many corners of this mess... GURPS lets you redesign all the parts, but it's a lot of work, and I don't much like their Banestorm world so I'd want to an entire world from scratch. One with a lot more women and less assumptions that patriarchy is somehow going to turn up as a theme on every planet.
... I get so annoyed about that, even systems with goddesses don't think it through on a values level, how you couldn't get away with treating women that way if actual literal interventionist goddesses had actual literal things to say about it. Except then sometimes the ones that do empower women to do something about being wronged get tagged Evil! Preposterous.
Erm. Anyway.
Wasn't planning to get into this one.
I have thoughts but they're rambly and annoyed and probably would make more sense on a different week.
So.
Er.
Have a nice day?
no subject
Date: 2018-12-13 01:48 am (UTC)