In reply to GammaBear (msg # 1153):

It is probably why they are still a law 'student'.  And if they are studying law then they should be emotionally stable to not need a 'therapy' animal.

I've had a few try to pull the same stunt with me over the years.  I simply state that I do not need to or required to validate them.  If they have such a problem it is not my concern as the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few.  If they cannot abide by the rules, I do not have to validate them.  that is as simple as it gets.

In reply to GammaBear (msg # 1153):

So my question is.  Other than training, what makes a pet a "service" animal?  My dogs are ridiculously well behaved, they don't wear a vest but they act like they do. I don't understand why some people get to bring pets into the places that others can't.
This message was last edited by the user at 02:19, Sun 13 May 2018.

I'm not sure you realize this, those two tendencies go hand in hand, one provokes the other. I played LG (Living Greyhawk--for D&D 3.x) and I HAD to by definition put on that hat, since it was one of the few sanctioned and therefore globally universal gaming convention games, there were others, but none I saw run as smoothly.

In home games, which was 70% of my gaming diet, that straw didn't come out. If anything I restricted my self "Oh you don't mind me cleaving on a n Attack Opportunity?! really? Okay, sure I'll take that AoO" and as a GM, as long as no player felt neglected, I let them powerhouse and destroy my world and NPCs, that was one of functions of that, is for the players' destruction. The PCs were "the straw".

In LG though, nope. It was totally different. You had a huge spike into thr high percentile mini-mods, which the group I was friends with wanted to do. I also got quite bit of free stuff from running mini-cons at the LGS, so of course I did, but that meant being nit-picky down to if you paid for your upkeep, or had sunrods versus torches. Those were not the same thing and were treated as differently as the game could consider it. People tried to cast sending in battle, people did all kinds of things, but I was quick to rattle off this obscure rule or that. Which I refrained from in home games unless the GM was truly curious and asked me (which yes, I did offer to help the GMs with page numbers if nothing else).

On the flip side, I played THE single highest intelligence PC wizard in Dyvers. I was hot straw. So when GMs would say "That's not legal" I would pull out my certs and explain to them how, by great amount of luck and persistence, yes in fact I do have a 33 Intelligence at 12th level.

Knowing rules and "tricks" is like knowing a machine. You can do things other people won't or even shouldn't. Look at some machine artists that make fine crafts with industrial equipment, or the contest with heavy machinery where they do things like backwards obstacle courses and popping a balloon on someone's head. The same is true of game mechanics. They "know" what is possible, and so are that much more strict outside their knowledge, and very well they could be in the wrong. I've memorized verbatim dozens of pages in game books, but even I sometimes get things wrong on other pages, I though I knew.

when they are players, these people almost unconsciously expect a GM to call "when" and will argue up and down like a court lawyer.

There was an asinine episode of a T.V. show I only saw three clips of and never spent more time on, called Pawn Stars. In it this guy walks into the pawn shop, where the T.V. show was centered on. Regular joe sells a baseball pennant. Pawn owner asks the normal questions, one is "how much do you want for it?" Which the guy names a reasonable price, and I kid you not, the pawn owner says "Yeah, that is actually fair, but I would feel bad if I didn't haggle" as if perfunctorily, and so undercuts the seller by 20% just to "haggle" and the guy was slightly upset. Rightfully so. There are players/GMS like that. They expect and NEED an out of game struggle between players and GM(s). But most people avoid that like the plague. These people don't pick and choose their battles. In like company it's great fun, but when they're the only one, it's a pain and everyone suffers, least of all including them.

That's the thing. Know your company. At least with the immediate participants. It's something my X-friend Greg didn't learn. He wanted every game to be about him, and his character and how he was getting away with murder, and flaunted how HE wouldn't have allowed stuff.

Maybe your friend likes the competition? Maybe he really is just overly excited and gets carried away? Maybe he truly doesn't know? But how is going to know if someone doesn't tell him. Though probably you have. All I can say is meticulous GMing to the point of being asinine and making "broken" characters share the same skill set. They very much go hand in hand. Though they don't have to, they often provoke the other.

For me, I had to part company with Greg. He was very competitive...but to boot was a chronic manipulator and liar. *chuckles* He'd invite me over to play cards, when in fact he was wanting a ride to his house from work, a ride to the gas station to get cigarettes, and a ride to bank, this and that. "I thought we were going to play cards, V" "Greg! I got you at 6 PM! it's now 2 AM, I dunno about you, but I'M GOING HOME!" "Well I can't walk from here" "Call someone else mate".

Being of a good temperament is only part of it. Service animals are trained to a person's needs. They might be taught to maneuver wheelchairs, help with crosswalks, recognize when their person is having a seizure and protect them. The training is structured around the need.
This message was last edited by the user at 13:19, Sun 13 May 2018.

In reply to PCO.Spvnky (msg # 1156):

Some people need a service dog to function, to guide them around obstacles they can't see, to hear what they can't, to monitor their serious physical conditions, etc.  However much you love your pet, however well behaved your pet is, that's not the same as a working and necessary service dog.

What is this nonsense? You want a background, but we don't even yet know whether the character is strong, intelligent, good looking, whatever?

A writing sample would be one thing, but what is up with people asking for backgrounds before you even know what your character is? Am I writing Twilight fan fiction and I'm supposed to write a backstory about Gary Stu who has no real description of his physical/mental capacity or what he actually looks like other than that he smells good?

Take that character to the forge, hammer out their stats, what race/class they are, then write up the background. Otherwise you end up with something like:


Maybe this could work for a first level character, but for a higher level character?

And yes while it can be fun to play a bumbling professor striving to be a paladin, I'm kind of looking to feel like I could actually contribute something to a party.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:35, Mon 14 May 2018.

Ugh, that drives me nuts in games. How can you write an actual background if you have no idea what your character is actually capable of?

I suppose you can write about their childhood and how they were super-plain-average at everything?

In reply to Genghis the Hutt (msg # 1160):

Part of the reason I use point-buy. I also don't require, or even prefer a great deal of bio until AFTER my players have been admitted.

It's quite a time-sink to write character bios and if you don't get in, it can really make that background useless of other games. Especially with custom snowflake unique worlds and creation rules.

Things like that lead to very generic backgrounds for me. I got a set number of plots for them and don't include any World information.
I do agree asking for such a bio with the limits given above is most annoying.

In reply to ShadoPrism (msg # 1163):

form  my Semi-D&Dish game.. i want backround to give a feel  of the character.In the Description  i tell the players  to only  put  down  what people see and feel when they meet , the rest comes  from RP

 My space  game and football game  is done  with  My Own  system, that lends  well to  a Heavy RP game  , as well as  allowing  characters  to 'get better".

 the backround also helps the   DM/GM checvk reactons  for NPCs  and such...  it  works well, in my games, at least.

Why can't people realize that their experience isn't the standard that everyone else's lives are based off of?

I like to think I'm a reasonable guy. I know that people like to talk about things, and that sometimes you reveal something without meaning to, but, you know, when I'm talking about something in a public forum or chatroom and it gets into spoiler territory, I mention that there are spoilers. From time to time (and by that I mean pretty much every time I do this), someone will make the comment "lol, it's ten years old. You don't need to spoiler tag it."

Fruit you, sir.

Do people not recognize that, I don't know, something being slightly old doesn't mean people haven't seen it before? Shakespeare's work were a good deal older than 10 years old when all of us were born, but did that mean we should automatically know about them and couldn't, you know, maybe want to read them ourselves? Maybe we don't know the ending to Hamlet when we're five, or fourteen, or twenty-six, but that doesn't mean we're not halfway through it when you decide to give away the last bits. Just because a video game or a movie was released two years ago doesn't somehow mean that everyone who is going to want to experience it has done so. Some people don't have the money. Some people have had other things to do, because more content is produced by humanity every day than a person could reasonably see in a year.

In fact, it's probably a lot more than that, but I'm going to be reasonable about this and cut out 99.999999% of the estimate on that page. That's only 25 billion bytes of data (25 GB). Per day. Every day. I'm certain you can get to everything you want to get to within a year or two, and that your tastes won't change or evolve so you become interested in something else. No way something might slip past your watchful eyes or, you know, be put off for a bit while you have other priorities. No. None. Never. Not you. Not anyone. Who could possibly miss something when it's only that much? But wait, what about the first couple years of your life when you couldn't really experience content meaningfully? Or the near-decade after that when you probably didn't have full control over what you could experience either? And what if you were born somewhere else and recen- NO ONE CARES.

"Oh, so you don't want to let anyone talk about anything?"

When in the name of all that is holy did I ever say that? I just want people to take the TWO SECONDS out of their lives to indicate, especially when talking about something made within their lifetime, that it's possible no everyone in the room will know what they're talking about. Two seconds. Every day, in the U.S. alone, 10,000 people learn about something for the first time. And that's being very generous with the math. So generous it's actually provably untrue, but, hey, I'm being reasonable. So, you know, maybe take the time to place the warning, or, when someone comments on it, DON'T BE AN APPLE ABOUT IT AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THERE ARE SPOILERS.

I get it. I do. We live in a world where everything moves really fast, and people like to make memes and share funny things while they're relevant, and that's fine. I get it. It's a risk you take being alive nowadays. But when someone complains? When someone mentions that they still haven't seen it? When someone politely inserts a spoiler tag for something because I don't want to assume that bananas, maybe you could just accept that and not point out that your ego is so massive that you can't believe someone hasn't experienced the things you've experienced? You know, maybe?

Or, maybe not, and you can go fruit yourself.

I may have done this rant before... but hopefully it wasn't here.

tl;dr: I haven't seen Infinity War yet, but people are talking about it in a chat I hang out in and have no respect for anyone who hasn't seen it.

P.S. Anyone who replies with joke spoilers, or "everyone knows these so it's not spoilers" spoilers, like...

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
Romeo and Juliet are characters in Romeo and Juliet, lol.

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You make my list.

In reply to Genghis the Hutt (msg # 1160):

Ummm, I think you are complaining about the wrong thing, the odds are highly in your favor that you will have AMAZING stats. You are keeping the best 3 of 5 d6s when 1s are removed.

If it was 3d6 in order, no re-rolls, then you should complain :)

If the GM assigns minimum stats according to background, fine. Otherwise, very hard to write a background...like shooting in the dark blindfolded with earplugs and a bad cold.

In reply to OceanLake (msg # 1167):

xD Agh, the cherry bullseye tastes like cough syrup. Seriously, that's a good one.

I do have to say while you're much more likely to get 13+ stats, I HAVE gotten three stats under 10 with that exact setup. The GM said "Fine! roll again" and I just chuckled ...but rerolled anyway... It was silly.

You underestimate how bad my luck has been when rolling stats.  I am ever hopeful that the odds will be in my favor, but they never have been.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:20, Thu 17 May 2018.

In reply to Genghis the Hutt (msg # 1169):

roll 1,2,2,2 so the roll is 6. I did that before. Rerolled the 1 and got another 2, just to add to how bad it was.
That was a game where the GM had us roll in order for stats (str, dex, con, int, wis, chr order) that roll was for Intelligence.

*whistles* I once had a game where my character average stat was 10 or less so many times, that the gm just assigned me stats. RIP so I know your pain.

One could try the effect of 3d6 six times, rerolling any result lower than 10 and a guarantee of one chosen stat being at least 14.

So, something great happened to me earlier tonight. The fiancé and I are playing Iron Banner in Destiny2. Normally I avoid PvP at all cost, but since Season 3, Bungie has given a huge middle finger to casual players, so I have to do what I have to do to get my light level up.

Since I suck eggs at PvP, I was using the best, and possibly cheesiest, equipment I had. My power weapon was a 355 Colony. So in this match, I'm not doing horrible. I'm grabbing power ammo where I can, keeping an eye on my radar, and if a target gets too close, I pop off a couple shots from Colony.

Fast forward to the end of the match. The team I'm on wins (by a pretty decent margin). Shortly after, I get a message from some rando. It reads "The colony is of cowards" (I'm assuming they meant for) followed by another message of four thumbs down emojis.

This absolutely made my night. As horrible as I am in PvP, I must have been doing something right to get some random player salty enough to send me a hate message. ^_^

For those of you who don't play Destiny, it's a first person shooter MMO. While there are lots of PvE options, a lot of people do play it for its PvP. The Colony is an exotic grenade launcher that launches insectoid grenades that will hunt down the nearest target.

In reply to GammaBear (msg # 1173):

Don't play the game, but love the sound of that weapon.

I play GTA online - trust me, they have enough insane players and 'griefers' (people who kill others just cause they can) and hackers, to fill several rants. (yet I and many others still keep going back cause its fun when those sorts are absent).
Getting the covetted Cheese Award for using an in game item to its potential is a great thing. Congrats on annoying someone.

In all fairness, just recently I rolled stats and actually got rather decent stats with no stat that was actually bad. It was wonderful. I've never done that before.

for the dice  roll thing?  In   my D&Dish game  they start at 4th level, and I will ajust a very poor roll.. the characters  are supposed to  be heroes...but..nothing   wrong with being a hero  with middle-of-the -road  stats.

 In the Game I use  my own system, its  geared for  folks to all be average, then add points  to what they want to focus on and  build the character  through RP and activity.

 I can't see  a DM/GM making  some one in here..play a bad  'roll up"..too many other game  to play here,

I don't know which games are yours, but I'd put that in the text with something like:  "Stats are 4d6, drop the lowest, but if it's less than X just reroll it" where X is 6, 7, 8, whatever is "too low" for you.  That's my opinion. :)

 well?  the  whole thing  for me, is I want  heavy RP..not Minmaxes loking for arena Games. When they comeinto the game   and   they  show me thier rolls, I'll fix something and tell them  why..it they don't need fixed?  it doesn't matter.

 My system ( such as it is) is Point   based..try to  keep the rolls, out of Role play..but?  you still need  rolls  for   random stuff  ..and it  keeps it interesting. but focusing  on dice, is more  for board games in my view.

In the past, I've had very bad rolls for stats.  Like 1, 1, 1, 2, etc.  A couple other people shared similar experiences.  If I see a game that just says to roll stats and there's no point-buy option listed, or something else qualifying it in a good way (like if there's the dreaded, "you can reroll, but if you reroll then you must take the second roll no matter what qualifier), I usually won't apply.

That being said, I'm not a fan of arena games -- I prefer chatting.  I prefer writing long posts.  I also kind of like not being the weak link of the party, if you get what I'm saying -- I want to be a "contributing member".  I mean, I've played a literal bard before and just wrote poems and songs about what the group was doing -- I've played truly ineffectual characters before, but usually when I play a character I want to be able to contribute a little something in the roll department, as well as the role department.

I don't know, that's my opinion. :)