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Post by tdenmark on Sept 11, 2021 20:08:33 GMT -6
Rules lawyers are the best players. I would never want to play with someone who didn't respect their contributions to the game table. Interesting take. In middle school/high school we hated rules lawyers. As an adult DM and long time player I am much more amenable to appreciate the person who really knows and understands the rules. |
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Post by captainjapan on Sept 12, 2021 6:37:12 GMT -6
rsdean, I'm sure the reason for that is that they are YOUR sons. Having an old school gamer for a parent probably means they've been exposed to your homebrew rules before any published game. It means that you've already established for them that rpg's can be based on original material. You'll correct me if I'm wrong. I was thinking more along the lines of someone that comes into gaming with no idea what it's all about; someone who would ordinarily be reading comic books or watching movies. That person is going to be coming to the hobby like I did, by lingering over published gamebooks at a store. My parents would have no interest in gaming. I only came around to the idea of writing campaign content in the last couple of decades. It seems to me that if I had to get a group together, today, from scratch, I might be putting licensed characters, locations, and equipment into their first adventure. And, if I don't, they will be asking for it (at least, in some knock-off form). Wasn't the story that Gary Gygax introduced Lord of the Rings monsters into his medievals game because that's what was going to keep his players at the sand table? He could have homebrewed creatures based on mythology or folklore (which is something he would argue that he was actually doing), but it appears that the core of Dungeons and Dragons characters are really Tolkien characters. Elves, dwarves, hobbits, wizards, dragons, ents, etc. were what brought a new bunch of high school and college age kids around to the idea of roleplaying before many purchasers even knew what it was they were supposed to do with the game. That's a powerful boost. And, it's all established lore through Tolkien. My daughter writes scads of original gaming material, but often, it's just derivative of whatever sci-fi she's watching/reading; sci-fi in which she is the undisputed expert and I am not.
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Post by captainjapan on Sept 12, 2021 6:42:51 GMT -6
Here's an excerpt from the rules lawyer entry at TV Tropes that reminded me of a few of our first referees:
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Post by jeffb on Sept 12, 2021 9:03:42 GMT -6
Here's an excerpt from the rules lawyer entry at TV Tropes that reminded me of a few of our first referees: Killer DMs are just the opposite side of The Rules Lawyer on the Bad Faith Players Coin. Both are problematic (to put it kindly) |
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Post by tombowings on Sept 12, 2021 9:12:47 GMT -6
Here's an excerpt from the rules lawyer entry at TV Tropes that reminded me of a few of our first referees: Another simple fix: don't participate in bad games. If you don't enjoy the referee's style, start a campaign yourself. |
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tedopon
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Post by tedopon on Sept 12, 2021 12:55:28 GMT -6
Hmm, as the DM, I would have called out his alignment change to Chaotic Evil and is status as an anti-cleric pretty quickly. We traded off running the game, and when I was GM I did cut him off twice. The potion thing happened right after he had been reinstated one time. |
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tedopon
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Post by tedopon on Sept 12, 2021 12:57:21 GMT -6
Years later the same guy showed up to a game that some of us were involved in. This was 2e era. He showed up with a character that had an 18 in everything on the sheet and claimed he had rolled it legit. I still can remember that character sheet more clearly than most of my own over the years.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2021 19:16:04 GMT -6
Years later the same guy showed up to a game that some of us were involved in. This was 2e era. He showed up with a character that had an 18 in everything on the sheet and claimed he had rolled it legit. I still can remember that character sheet more clearly than most of my own over the years. You want all 18's, roll them in front of me with my dice. Then you can have it. |
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Post by jeffb on Sept 13, 2021 7:01:11 GMT -6
Years later the same guy showed up to a game that some of us were involved in. This was 2e era. He showed up with a character that had an 18 in everything on the sheet and claimed he had rolled it legit. I still can remember that character sheet more clearly than most of my own over the years. I believe him! He just rolled it as 10d6 keep best 3 per score. |
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tedopon
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Post by tedopon on Sept 13, 2021 7:13:53 GMT -6
I believe him! He just rolled it as 10d6 keep best 3 per score. Feels so weird to be piling on this guy years later, but he also was the only person I've played with in decades of gaming who everyone would watch him to keep his rolls honest. He had a habit of scraping dice as soon as they hit the table then reporting a high number, but also making a show of when he had a high number and pointing to it and shouting so everyone would look at the die on the table. Also liked to make a show of it when someone else screwed up a roll in a clutch moment. Which was funny because the person who rolled it always either just rolled their eyes and smiled or laughed about it (most people I've gamed with over the years are equally entertained when they succeed and fail, because, you know, it's a game and it's fun), but he would turn it into a circus and spout one liner insults. A real Renaissance Man of Gaming...he ticked off many of the boxes people warn you about and did all that work himself. |
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Post by Desparil on Sept 13, 2021 11:27:58 GMT -6
Years later the same guy showed up to a game that some of us were involved in. This was 2e era. He showed up with a character that had an 18 in everything on the sheet and claimed he had rolled it legit. I still can remember that character sheet more clearly than most of my own over the years. I believe him! He just rolled it as 10d6 keep best 3 per score. The funniest thing is that, as ridiculous as your suggestion is intended to be, a character with all 18s is still a one-in-several-thousand occurrence when taking the highest 3 of 10d6. It only becomes very likely if you do that and roll twelve scores and keep the highest six. |
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Post by scottenkainen on Sept 14, 2021 10:36:08 GMT -6
I just recently, legit, rolled up a character with two 18s, rolling only 3d6 once for each score. That only took 40 years!
((Is this thread considered thread-jacked at this point?))
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Post by jeffb on Sept 14, 2021 14:48:57 GMT -6
I just recently, legit, rolled up a character with two 18s, rolling only 3d6 once for each score. That only took 40 years! ((Is this thread considered thread-jacked at this point?)) I did the same thing, but nearly at the beginning! Way back when, my first character who went on to actually survive to high levels (moving on from bastardized OD&D eventually into bastardized AD&D and then back to a bastardized OD&D game ) was a Paladin that I was able to roll legit. I don't think we rolled 3d6 in order...we were not that strict... but I was creating a new character for my fave DM's game and I got two 18s. That became my Paladin of Odin, and I placed an 18 in Charisma, and another 18 in Strength. I'm guessing none of us got the subtleness of Gary's Greyhawk's Paladin description and just assumed Paladin was a Fighting Man but better- so I rolled for percentile strength and I ended up rolling really high. I don't have the sheet now because it's in storage, but I think he was like 18/73 STR. I can still see those pink and white low impact percentiles rolling in my minds eye, just not the result!  |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2021 17:58:45 GMT -6
To me, "Rules Lawyer" doesn't merely imply a player who has memorized the rules. There's overlap but the Venn Diagram isn't a circle there. There's a certain attitude and approach to the game that a real Rules Lawyer has that's considered antithetical to the RPG experience. He's the mirror opposite of the "jerkwad DM".
Now, I'm not sure what I'd call them, but there are players you can ask "What's the range on this spell?" or "How much damage does this polearm weapon do?" and they can rattle it off the top of their heads, right? But they don't have that confrontational attitude or desire to hijack or break the campaign. They just pay attention and remember things. That's not a Rules Lawyer in my book. That's something else.
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tedopon
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Post by tedopon on Sept 14, 2021 21:50:02 GMT -6
Two nights ago was the first session of a new game for us. Humans roll 4d6 drop assign and nonhumans roll 3d6 down the pipe.
The Hobgoblin rolled:
STR 14
INT 10
WIS 10
DEX 12
CON 16
CHA 10
...and I said "that's legit the most badass character I can remember rolling 3d6 in order."
Then the Dwarf rolls:
STR 14
INT 15
WIS 15
DEX 15
CON 16
CHA 05
so within about five minutes I saw honestly the two best 3d6 down the pipe characters I have ever seen and there was a King of the Hill scenario.
After the Dwarf's scores, I thought about how many characters in any D&D using any method of stat generation I could remember that I played over the years and I have had only one character I can think of that had better scores and that was using 4d6 drop assign reroll 1s.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2021 12:31:13 GMT -6
Rules lawyers are the best players. I would never want to play with someone who didn't respect their contributions to the game table. In what way is doing your best to ruin the evening for everyone, considered to be respecting anyone contributions to the game table? Rules lawyers are anything but "the best players." They have this insane belief that btb is the ONE TRUE WAY! and fun be d****d. I want players whose prime motive is not to screw everyone else with their rigid btb agenda. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2021 12:33:05 GMT -6
I just recently, legit, rolled up a character with two 18s, rolling only 3d6 once for each score. That only took 40 years! ((Is this thread considered thread-jacked at this point?)) I have seen player roll up to three 18's on more than one occasion in front of the group with the same dice other people are rolling characters with all stats in the single digits. So it does happen. |
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