Thread 96295017

>why are MODERN FANTASY worlds so unimaginative and lowbrow these days... I looked at the latest D&D sourcebook and I was astounded at how shallow and unintelligent it was, why don't they reflect the LEGACY of WESTERN CIVILIZATION and the DEPTH and GRAVITAS afforded to MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN LORE... only by being as HISTORICALLY ACCURATE as POSSIBLE could it be REAL FANTASY... Where is the rhyme and ingenuity of the Pearl Poet? Where is the allegory and pilgrimage of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?
You know, I've seen these Ignatius J. Reilly takes on /tg/ every other week, but I never see them in real life. Nobody at my table seems to give a shit about how deep and intelligent the setting is. Hell, not even Reddit has these kinds of takes. What makes /tg/ home to these kinds of fart-sniffing elitists?
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96189131/

>>96295017 (OP)
Anonymity lets people say shit they know, at least deep down, to be dumb and embarrassing without having to actually be embarrassed about it. Also lax moderation means we get people who've been banned everywhere else.

>>96295032
>lax moderation
Funny because there are at least three active troll threads right now. Weird how they stay up.

>>96295017 (OP)
Really? I hate the published settings. They all run on dream/movie logic, its impossible to sound out a reasonable choice unless you know the thought process and once you do everything becomes arbitrary

Okay, but my fantasy worlds have cute anime girls and smartphones.

/tg/ doesn't play games and so has lost sight of what makes a game fun. These people value games that are interesting to read about, regardless of how they function in practice. It's why we have so many threads that discuss settings instead of mechanics.

>>96295017 (OP)
Stopped reading when you were surprised at something D&D-related being shallow and unintelligent.

>>96295721
If you'd kept reading, you would've noticed that OP quoted another anon's take from some different thread and asked why such takes are seen so often on /tg/.

>>96295044
You don't know what "lax" means, do you?

>>96295017 (OP)
/tg/ has this weird culture now that holds that whatever is actually fun is BAD because it's WOKE or something

>>96295017 (OP)
normoids irl will just do whatever gets them away from their terrible lives for a few hours and redditors with wrong opinions get banned and their posts deleted so you never see them

Also the thread you linked was clearly bait and I'm not sure why you felt the need to make a new thread just to reply to that

>>96295044
No, anon, that's not weird at all, it's an obvious and expected consequence of the said lax moderation.

>>96295017 (OP)
I think you got too mad at a ragebait retard thread. Just post this there next time instead of stroking troll cock like this.

OP is Jewish.

>>96295044
>>96297042
It's more sinister than just being lax. They'll ban people who talk too much about the problem posters.

>>96295017 (OP)
The fundamental difference, OP, is that the guys at your table are there to play the game first and foremost. Settings are fun and help enhance the game, but you can still ignore or let slide a lot of the details if you just want to focus on the game. And sadly, more than a few people who exclusively post online don't actually play these games, which means they focus on the setting, which in turn makes them elitist and obnoxious.

>>96295017 (OP)
Lesser men lack the innate drive to lead others to betterment. When your players seem to not a give a shit about depth, greater men know that what their players think doesn't matter, because they're not the ones doing the work, they're just playing. It's your task, your duty to raise them out of their blank, generic, NPC perspectives and give them something better than shallow shit that they expect.

>>96295017 (OP)
>What makes /tg/ home to these kinds of fart-sniffing elitists?
Majority of the complaints on /tg/ are from people who don't play games, have never played a game, if they own any books, they've never even read them, and thus every fucking thing they have to say about the game is either roughly hewn with a dull axe from stale culture war bullshit. They are roughly approximating what they assume the problems are, based on memes and shitposts and lies from other retarded nogames faggots, and then their egos are too fragile to just admit that they are bullshitting themselves and others, so they insist on arguing like they know what they're talking about against people who actually engage with the fucking hobby in a way that informs them that, like you OP, has never encountered any of the problems these brainless faggots have imagined plague the whole experience.

The thing that makes it worse is that this whole site is dying and the mods and jannies don't know how to unfuck it, so they let active shitpost threads stay here for weeks, instead. The mods and jannies, likewise, don't know shit about the hobby and never will, so they don't know how to identify blatant nogames shitspam retardation, but appreciate and encourage anything that looks like healthy board activity.

>>96295017 (OP)
Fantasy settings being trash will only have the natural reaction of people wanting more depth, even if that depth is a little extreme. And modern D&D is as shallow as you can get as even the meaning behind spells, tradition, elves and heroes are completely lost and replaced with slop entertainment. So people want the opposite with extreme depth even if they themselves would regret having to play a game like that.

>>96297632
This is what I hate about this place the most. You can't even shitpost back at them without them losing their shit and getting you banned in return. It's at least a little better now when before it was 12 spam threads and before that it was 12 dragon threads with dragonfag.

>I’m rambling and have to get into church
We really need to come to terms with how tradfags are literally the exact same phenomenon as fedoras.

>>96298573
>Both sides are le same!
Every fucking time with you people.

>>96298586
When you're a pseud romantic railing against the sheeple through cringe archaic sensibilities( 50s fashion, m'lady, katanas), yes, you are the fucking same. It's the exact same kind of person.

>>96298615
I will retract what I said and agree if what your point is that both sides are emulating something without fully understanding what is being emulated.

>>96298573
This faggot 100% asks his discord if he should become Orthodox because not hearing a latin mass is just not spiritually fulfilling.

>>96295017 (OP)
Because most of the people posting those things are just wanna be "literary" authors with no interest in playing games

>>96295017 (OP)
This complaint can be brought up from many different angles some more valid than others.
Appeal to some castrated form of tradition is also the current russo-republican psyop.
Funnily enough those muh "traditions" TikToks which are on the forefront of this, never use traditional music and are incoherent montages, of footage taken in a dozen often rivaling cultures

>>96297709
>>96295595

This is pretty much it. DnD players don't complain about the same stuff as fa/tg/uys because they play the game. Meanwhile people who play other games don't complain about DnD at all because it doesn't affect them.

>>96295017 (OP)
>Nobody at my table seems to give a shit about how deep and intelligent the setting is
Because the depth in TTRPGs comes from actual post. But /tg/ doesn't play games.

>>96295017 (OP)
It's quite simple : We're just genuinely superior to everyone else, and far more intelligent and refined.

>>96301025
you sound like a tourist nogames

>>96301227
How the fuck do you get got by that

I mean, it would be nice to see more authentic medieval bestiary shit like sword swinging rabbits and horrifying snail creatures.

I once ran a sandbox game in a setting I developed using Medieval Demographics Made Easy. The starting kingdom was the size of France and inspired by the Kievan Rus. There existed a proper social hierarchy that was adhered to, the players' first adventure was escorting a salt merchant and fighting a pack of wolves that attacked their group.

It was fun, but the more indepth you go the more you realize that real world scale is just insane to handle. This kingdom had something like 68 castles, that's 68 unique lords, not even counting the villages and hamlets, the towns and occasional cities. I had a blast making the thing, but my players didn't care much to delve into it.

Only put that kind of effort into a setting if you have history nerds that would enjoy it too. Most DnD players are generic fantasy nerds that just enjoy hearing stuff like "The orc kingdom is invading!" and its standing army is a few hundred guys that they fight a dozen at a time.

>>96295017 (OP)
Because most players in most games barely use the setting as anything other than fantasy window dressing

>>96303700
A lot of modern world and setting creation advice trended towards vague handwaving over large swaths of the world because there's really no way to meaningfully simulate an entire world, let alone a single country or kingdom, to a table full of players. They won't read a loredump setting primer document. They're not going to go to all 68 castles and meet every lord and their courts. They won't remember most of the names you tell them and it won't improve the game if they did anyways.

The autism demon inside our minds adores the idea of fully simulating a living, breathing world that moves on its own and naturally evokes feelings of immersion and naturally responds to prodding from the players with realistic reactions... But that's so much work for, like you said, people who will be just as happy with "orcs attack the kingdom"

>>96298615
>50s fashion
I WILL wear a three-piece suit to work. So long as I think it looks good, I couldn't care less what others think.

>>96303839
Yeah, ultimately the Gygax method of making settings (at least for DnD) remains the best
>Every nation is like 1-2 cities, double that in towns, you can ignore villages outside of starter quests

>>96303839
It's also too much work for any human DM. The real benefit of creating specific characters/locations is that you can play off of them to create your own. When the PCs are traveling, maybe they stop by a small village on the way. It's not on the map, and it's not in the "setting book." But the conveniences of the story and logic of the setting combine to justify creating one, and thus the world feels bigger.

>>96303858
It'll help you stay historically accurate, too. People tend to overestimate the size of historical towns and cities, so big cities will tend to be enormous while towns will be city-sized.

>>96303039
mad cuz bad

>>96303949
>It's also too much work for any human DM.
The frustratingly common belief that being a DM/GM is too much work comes from the belief that anyone running the game must have names for every NPC, maps for every town, history and political squabbles for every region.

>>96303839
Speak for yourself. I fully simulate the external and internal lives of every single living thing in the entire universe in real time.

>>96295017 (OP)
A good setting is like a good character. A lot of what makes them good isn't even going to be known to players. The good aspects are dolled out on a routine basis in organic ways.

>>96295017 (OP)
what do you mean op?

>>96295032
I kissed my cousin once

>>96298790
desu it's worth going Orthodox just because the black&gold robes are cooler. They got better hats too.

>>96303839
The fundamental issue is also just people misunderstanding what makes a setting feel "alive". You don't need a billion NPCs with detailed daily routines or pages upon pages of lore.
You just need shit to happen. Events should advance with or without the PCs and they should be able to organically discover both the consequences and then reasons if they want to. Don't map out a fucking timeline, but just have a list of major events and have the world change to reflect that parallel to the party, don't have everything conveniently freeze while your PCs are dungeon diving.

>>96321731
Clerical vestments tend to be white and one of the seasonal colors. Generally, it's gold, but you'll also see red (Advent), green (after Pentecost), and purple (Lent).
My church doesn't really sport black robes during services. The only black robes I've seen are the ones the priests wear when they're not in vestments, which are pretty plain.

t. Antiochian Orthodox

>>96321810
>Antiochian Orthodox
wtf is that?

>>96321857
One of many Eastern Orthodox churches, just Syrian rather than Russian or Greek

>>96298790
to be fair the non latin mass is an extremely historically recent aberration in the history of christian mass

>>96303700
The fact of the matter is that your players don't actually give a fuck about your world until they're powerful enough to affect it and/or matter. Their characters should be the most important people in it, because that's the fucking point of a roleplaying game.

DESU I kinda get this feeling, many DMs aren’t trying to up the ante anymore

>>96319681
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AHAHAHAHAHA
OH FUCK
captcha: S0YR2

I'm at a point where I just want unusual fantasy settings. Give me something like Mirrodin or Dark Sun, I don't want another Not-Europe or Not-Japan
>>96321985
I saw Traditional Mass in person, but even that doesn't compare to partaking in Divine Liturgy during Great Lent

they don't read books

>>96295017 (OP)
So how did your last gaming session go op dear?

>>96303700
>This kingdom had something like 68 castles,
Did they build the 69th?

>>96296959
Woke things are the antithesis of fun, so that's definitely not true.

I haven't been to /tg/ in a while, because the board ran out of interesting things to talk about around 2013, but holy shit why are 40% of the posts just harping on about how no one plays games.

>>96330879
now that people have played games it's very easy to tell when someone hasn't

>>96330910
I've been playing games every weekend since 2005, and I've been accused of not playing games three times today. You people have no clue, and I suspect you may be bots.

>>96330917
Have you seen how many retards are shitting up the board these days? Gatekeeping is the best survival tactic we have.

>>96295017 (OP)
The world is a lot bigger than the few people who choose to play at your table.

I wouldn’t expect the lesser mind of an inferior race to appreciate the true european fantasy of AD&D 1E. I love being white.

>>96331863
Gatekeeping might work if the would-be gatekeepers weren't blind retards who frequently try to keep the natives out. I've also experienced what >>96330917 talks about. No games accusations are thrown around completely arbitrarily here, and anons who do that demonstrably have no sense whatsoever for who actually plays games and who doesn't.

>>96332577
I'll admit that even if I do believe there are plenty of people on 4chan who spend far more time talking about games than actually playing them, I mainly call people "nogaems" cause it seems to really piss some people off, even if by now it means so damn little it's about as effective as calling someone a fag on this website

>>96321766
>The fundamental issue is also just people misunderstanding what makes a setting feel "alive".
That's why you shouldn't trust the autism demon. It promises an evocative, living, breathing setting if you give into the 'tism and catalog and sort and document all the minutia. But that's just feeding the autism demon. It's not actually running a game and making the world feel alive to the players.

>>96331863
>>96332577
Gatekeeping will never work in this hobby, nogames tards. You can't gatekeep when all you need to play is the game books (of PDFs) and someone to play with. What is shitting up /tg/ is dumb fucks like you whining about what people you will never meet are doing in their games.

>>96303523
That's just monastic furry porn.

>>96321857
I've heard that they make hand grenades.

>>96295017 (OP)
>ignoring the meta culture war bait part of OP's post
Like other aspects of good design, a deep and intelligent RPG sourcebook isn't something you should notice unless you're interacting with it beyond a surface level. Your players almost certainly won't notice how the names of characters from each culture are constructed, the motivations behind background NPCs, the byzantine labyrinth of noble titles in the kingdom, or the hidden metaphysical properties of magic in the universe in a standard game; and a perfectly fine game can be had in a shallow pastiche of lazy tropes and stereotypes. However, things like the GM being able to casually reference hidden depth in the world, having the world change dynamically based in part on player actions, or being able to induce certain facts based on details the players observe often do make the game better for the players and make you as the GM feel smug af. Is that worth the time and effort it takes? I usually don't think so when doing my own prep, but if I'm paying real american dollars to buy someone else's RPG work it's not crazy to demand that they put in that level of effort and editing into it.

>>96295017 (OP)
Huh?

>>96332627
>cause it seems to really piss some people off
Right, and what does that accomplish aside from pissing off the people who actually play games and came to have a discussion?

>>96341014
>I came here to have discussion
>I will instead spend my time arguing with random retards over how many games I totally play
Not beating the allegations, as the kids say

>>96333437
Only one of the posts you replied to is advocating gatekeeping.

>>96341118
It kind of puts a damper on discussion when someone randomly starts calling you a nogames.

>>96341014
Nothing, like I said I just say it to piss someone off who seems far too up their ass rather than be productive. Or just for banter’s sake. I’ve been called “nogaems” and “D&drone” despite playing games that are emphatically not d&d, but eventually I realized I have nothing to prove to any of those anonymous people, so why should I or anyone else feel upset?

>>96322950
Tell me when you play something other than critical role style dnd

>>96342991
Modernity is when there's one blue guy. Tradition is when there's zero blue guys.

What do you call it when there's a green guy?

>>96344762
I assumed half-orcs were some diluted shade of green and they were around in '78.