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When I started playing RPGs way back when (my first was an extremely basic game played on the computers at school) I had a good enough command of the English language to skip the descriptions of the basic stats without completely hamstringing my ability to play the game. For instance I knew that rogues would want dexterity, warriors would probably benefit from strength, and wizards need intelligence.

Over the years I have learned of other things from playing RPGs. Immolation: setting things on fire. Vellum: a type of parchment, usually made from lamb's skin. The difference between a katana and a wakizashi.

Yesterday I met a rogue in WoW who did not seem to understand the correlation between her class and the Agility stat.

Has anyone else ever run across a player, either online or pen and paper, who honestly did not know the meanings of the basic terms involved in playing?


(I wasn't sure if this should go here or in G&C. If a mod sees fit to move it, I won't complain)

As games move into broader audiences, it's not surprising that people don't know the 'conventions'. In a game like WoW a rogue is a dps guy (I believe) and so a player with no background might well decide strength is good to increase damage. This isn't surprising though, because people who play WoW generally DIDN'T play shitass DnD craptacularness (ps DnD sucks) in highschool.

Let's put it this way. I used to be on a fairly large, fairly active roleplaying chat until it closed down a couple months ago. Often we'd have people popping in wanting to make characters who didn't know we used a moderated system based on a book, and wouldn't even know what books we used, despite the fact it's plastered all over the main website. This happened at least once every couple of months.

I thought this thread would be about "Have you ever had your general knowledge frame of reference expanded by playing a tabletop RPG with people who know things you don't know about?" To which I would answer yes, because the people I've met at role-playing game clubs happen to be in university doing engineering or science or medical degrees.

But it seems this thread is about "Have you ever met any players who are really fucking stupid" to which, I would also answer yes. Yes I have.

Like Stark, I think WoW has a lot to answer for. Rogues being the DPS guy? Paladins for motherfucking buffing? If I want to play a Paladin it's because I want to be goddamn Lancelot in his shining silvery armour with his big fuck-off longsword who gets the Queen with the fantastic rack, not "Captain McBuffster" who just... sucks. Fighters whose only reason to live is to absorb damage in some sort of grotesque, sadomasochistic display of "Oooh I've got huge HP, your feeble weapons only leave a scratch, but keep hitting me... oh yeah, do it to me bitch..." because you need to have a 'tank' to pull monster 'aggro' so that the 'DPS' and 'crowd control' guys can do their thing...

Hmm... I think I understand why Stark complains about everything under the sun. It feels very cathartic to get these things off one's chest.

I like being a rogue. I'm slice-and-dice man, raining down ungodly amounts of damage that come near to approaching the levels inflicted by those walking-nukes we call 'wizards'.

4650 dps in Naxxramas last night, baby!

Let's be honest, to compare what WoW claims as a class and what PnP RPGs try to do is comparing milk with air.

WoW has three designations and finally brought their idiotic forums up to par. It's Damage Dealers, Healers, Tanks. Most classes can pretty much do one or two...or if really special and stupidly powerful? Can do all three, with talents. And finding stupid in WoW is like kicking over a rock and finding dirt underneath.

And to make the thought worse...the supposed pure damage classes are not the best at damage. No, that honor goes to the warrior or the death knight. A retarded dumbass can likely do 3-4K in a raid, a good one 4.5K, if you have the best gear currently, I max around 6-7K. I won't comment on the humor I see in this particular of the game aside from the humor that two classes which are supposedly hybrid in Blizzard's mind are the best of the damage dealing and better of the two tanking classes.

Don't look for Intelligence or Balance in a modernized Computerized RPG. Except possibly as stats.

I am an avid D&D player, but I can't stand most computer RPGs. I couldn't even get through the first chapter of Neverwinter Nights (mainly because I wanted that damn Paladin to just get to the fraking point).

I enjoyed Legend of the Red Dragon, the first Final Fantasy, and I think I played the Eye of the Beholder trilogy.

The rest? Garbage. Pure and simple. Especially the Multi-Player Graphics RPGS like WOW and Everquest.

Why? All flash, all flare, no brains.

Which is a real shame. I can imagine a properly thought out and done MMG-RPG based on a solid table-top system would be a massive revenue stream.

I think the character type x must have maxed out stat y is largely a D20 / D&D thing. But then again if rpgs are designed to simulate their own brand of reality which somewhat follow laws of physics from ours, it makes sense you want your thief to be dextrous/agile/whatnot.
What I usually find completely broken is the balance between learned skills and stats. I have recently started leaning heavily towards systems that favor skill over stats. Which is one thing that has kept me from trying Dark Heresy. A friend of mine says he'll run DH in the near future and I'll take part if I can get over the crappy system.

And I'm with Stark, D20 and anything related to it sucks. The only thing makes the D20 crowd redeemable is that they usually play with other systems too and atleast it's not WoW.

-Gunhead

This is way more gaming than OT.

I still don't understand why some people were/are so down on the D20 System / DND 3.X

I've played a fairly large cross-section of RPGs, and it's the best system, hands down.

At least, compared to
pre-3rd Edition DND
Palladium Game System (i.e Rifts et all).
Call of Cthulhu (non-D20)
Marvel Super-heroes
GURPS (Yes, I went there) - mind you, I've only played 1 session of GURPS, and I'm pretty sure the GM didn't really know the rules....
Star Wars D6
Death Maze
Star Trek FASA (mind you, I think it's ship combat system is massively superior to any D20 Space Combat system I've seen, 3rd party or WOTC published)

Gunhead wrote:And I'm with Stark, D20 and anything related to it sucks. The only thing makes the D20 crowd redeemable is that they usually play with other systems too and atleast it's not WoW.

Wow that is a major generalization, since I have played a huge range of games in both D20 and non-D20 systems the only thing that makes or breaks a RPG is the game master.

You can have the best system in the world and with a bad GM it just sucks the fun right out of playing.

You can play with a made-up hacked together set of rules (say 1970's Palladium games or Rune quest ) and a good GM will make the game the most fun ever.

With Pen and Paper RPG's it is not the system, it's the people.

Gunhead wrote:And I'm with Stark, D20 and anything related to it sucks. The only thing makes the D20 crowd redeemable is that they usually play with other systems too and atleast it's not WoW.

I have personally found D20 to be a decent way to introduce someone to tabletop RPGs. It has a pretty gentle learning curve and rather low overhead in its most basic forms (defining basic form as Player's Handbook only with sessions that consist of dungeon crawls and killing goblins).

If you want to teach someone how to write a computer program, for example, you teach them with BASIC. Once they understand the fundamental concepts involved, you can move on to more advanced languages.

Experienced programmers will never use BASIC unless they want to be retro or are dicking around. Likewise, in my experience, when I see experienced gamers playing D20 they are either trying to be old school or they are practicing min-maxing.

Civil War Man wrote:

Gunhead wrote:And I'm with Stark, D20 and anything related to it sucks. The only thing makes the D20 crowd redeemable is that they usually play with other systems too and atleast it's not WoW.

I have personally found D20 to be a decent way to introduce someone to tabletop RPGs. It has a pretty gentle learning curve and rather low overhead in its most basic forms (defining basic form as Player's Handbook only with sessions that consist of dungeon crawls and killing goblins).

If you want to teach someone how to write a computer program, for example, you teach them with BASIC. Once they understand the fundamental concepts involved, you can move on to more advanced languages.

Experienced programmers will never use BASIC unless they want to be retro or are dicking around. Likewise, in my experience, when I see experienced gamers playing D20 they are either trying to be old school or they are practicing min-maxing.

I don't think that's necessarily a valid comparison. D20 isn't inherently more or less advanced than other gaming systems; but as long as the setting is lameass hack and slash shit with no more depth it's going to suck. (Unfortunately it's hard to gear d20 for much more than hack and slash).

Well ok maybe I was a bit too harsh on the D20 crowd. I don't really loathe people who use D20 .
I won't go into a long tirade on "Why D20 blows". I'll just say this. I prefer systems that are made to a specific purpose.
If I was playing fantasy I might give D20 some consideration. But for almost anything else I'd choose something completely different.
I also think it's complete bullshit that GM is the magic button that can make it all better. GM can smooth out a lot of things, but if he has to all the fucking time fumble the system to make it work, well then its like trying to open a bolt with a pair of pliers. Sure it can be done, but usually it's just a waste of time and effort.

I don't have a great deal of personal experience on the Introductory value of D20. I usually done it with GURPS, which seems to have worked just fine. I think GURPS is a fairly simple system. Sometimes it seems that people are put off because the character creation can be a bit time consuming.

-Gunhead

I find D20 has one real advantage over many systems - versatility. It's a general system that is appalling for doing anything very specific (except fantasy) but is capable of working with near any style or genre if you add a few house rules.

GURPS is also good for this.

As an actual OT post, yeah, I've encountered a lot of dumb shits. Like DKs who think it's a good idea to fucking Death Grip the boss of an Instance off of the tank. When they're DPS specced. (I've accidentally done this, but these are people who did it every fucking time. Funnily enough, they tend to be the ones with a Death Grip macro that yells 'GET OVER HERE!')

loomer wrote:I find D20 has one real advantage over many systems - versatility. It's a general system that is appalling for doing anything very specific (except fantasy) but is capable of working with near any style or genre if you add a few house rules.

GURPS is also good for this.

As an actual OT post, yeah, I've encountered a lot of dumb shits. Like DKs who think it's a good idea to fucking Death Grip the boss of an Instance off of the tank. When they're DPS specced. (I've accidentally done this, but these are people who did it every fucking time. Funnily enough, they tend to be the ones with a Death Grip macro that yells 'GET OVER HERE!')

I prefer WW's storytelling system over d20 for terms of flexibility/versatility etc. There's no stupid leveling or classes to deal with, and the amount of modifiers is kept to reasonable levels so min/maxing is generally not as encouraged. Some of the skills might not quite match what we'd expect in reality or otherwise be useless, but I find they're far more pleasant to work with than d20 in that regard.

Solauren wrote:I still don't understand why some people were/are so down on the D20 System / DND 3.X

I've played a fairly large cross-section of RPGs, and it's the best system, hands down.

At least, compared to
pre-3rd Edition DND
Palladium Game System (i.e Rifts et all).
Call of Cthulhu (non-D20)
Marvel Super-heroes
GURPS (Yes, I went there) - mind you, I've only played 1 session of GURPS, and I'm pretty sure the GM didn't really know the rules....
Star Wars D6
Death Maze
Star Trek FASA (mind you, I think it's ship combat system is massively superior to any D20 Space Combat system I've seen, 3rd party or WOTC published)

There are games out there that are worse than D20. That doesn't make D20 good. I'm not going to get into an anti-D20 tirade and to be fair there are some applications where it's fairly good (Black Company, Arcana Evolved, and Alternity), but as an game mechanic it has horrible flaws when it does anything other than hack and slash fantasy (Alternity being an exception, but its a bastard child).

General Zod wrote:

loomer wrote:I find D20 has one real advantage over many systems - versatility. It's a general system that is appalling for doing anything very specific (except fantasy) but is capable of working with near any style or genre if you add a few house rules.

GURPS is also good for this.

As an actual OT post, yeah, I've encountered a lot of dumb shits. Like DKs who think it's a good idea to fucking Death Grip the boss of an Instance off of the tank. When they're DPS specced. (I've accidentally done this, but these are people who did it every fucking time. Funnily enough, they tend to be the ones with a Death Grip macro that yells 'GET OVER HERE!')

I prefer WW's storytelling system over d20 for terms of flexibility/versatility etc. There's no stupid leveling or classes to deal with, and the amount of modifiers is kept to reasonable levels so min/maxing is generally not as encouraged. Some of the skills might not quite match what we'd expect in reality or otherwise be useless, but I find they're far more pleasant to work with than d20 in that regard.

I actually tried Storyteller, but it didn't quite click with me. I'm not sure, since it does seem perfectly valid.

General Zod wrote:I don't think that's necessarily a valid comparison. D20 isn't inherently more or less advanced than other gaming systems; but as long as the setting is lameass hack and slash shit with no more depth it's going to suck. (Unfortunately it's hard to gear d20 for much more than hack and slash).

My contention was that bare-bones D20 is effective at teaching someone how to play RPGs because it is simple and accessible. The class-based system helps automate character creation and advancement. Tasks are accomplished by rolling a die and adding your bonuses. If you roll higher than some number, a winner is you. It's not a challenging system, but if you are running a campaign where none of the players have ever participated in an RPG before, you do not want a challenging system. You're going to want to use a system that is easy to understand.

Name recognition also plays a role in using D20 as an introductory system. Dungeons & Dragons is a name that is known by pretty much everyone who is aware of the concept of roleplaying games. It adds an extra layer of accessibility that you don't necessarily have with systems like GURPS or White Wolf.

Idiots? Don't talk to me about idiots. I'm currently running at an open games club- with the wonderful acronym of DWARF- and the difference between an idiot and a novice is that novices learn. Then again, sometmes you get novice idiots.

And sometimes the people who think they know what they're doing are the worst of all.

Half of this may be my fault, but- introducing a new player to the system and the world, a very, very old hand in general- Norm'll be celebrating his third complete decade in roleplaying later this year. Foolishly, I assume that during that time he'll have learned something, and hand him the character sheet of someone who until then had been a semi- major NPC.

I tried to bring him up to speed, and evidently I left out more than I thought- give him the who's who of the various sides involved and what's happened so far. Essentially,the characters are a semi- renegade noble-hero type bunch of elves and their human allies, attempting to retrieve the keystone artifact of an impressively gargantuan ritual of variable doom tm (not really) from a cavern full of svartalfven. Drow, for those of you who don't have issues with product identity.

Now, no problem with the opening bit- characters are moderately intelligent about sneaking in, they disguise themselves and act the part, until Norm reverts to type. he goes hack- and- slay. (this after leaving his most powerful weapon behind because he didn't think it'd fit in the tunnels.) He gets a severe case of ramrod spine, refuses to hide any longer, and tries to lead a banzai charge to retrieve or destroy the artifact.

I don't mind when players try to be heroic and do the grandstandingly heroic thing, but I do try to respect and reward sensible tactics. There are times when total commitment, to-the-hilt desperate heroism pays off, and this was never going to be one of them. They're outnumbered three thousand to one including minions.

From my point of view; the cavern's falling apart. The subsidiary houses have grown too strong and the centre too weak, and open breakdown into civil war and anarchy are not far off. Stealing the artifact in the first pace was a desperate attempt by the matriarch to regain some stability, and has made the situation actually worse. Divide and conquer, arranging for the houses to blame each other, deception and diversion- that would have worked. 'Grrr, argh' didn't.

He metagamed; assumed that because I seemed to be offering them an opportunity for crazed heroic slaughter, that's what I wanted them to do and that's what the plot would reward. It really, really wasn't. They got creamed.

I dumped them in gaol- he was important enough to be worth slowly and publically executing, and his minions with him- while I desperately tried to think of something, some principle slightly more rational and respectable than an act of god, that could save them.

I came up with internal rivalry. An 'ambassador'- priestess/wardancer- from the main alternative cavern sees political capital in them and decides to use them as a diversion from her own attempts to do something about this artifact; promises them their lives, even, if they agree to work with her. Not for, with. Alarm bells should have been ringing at this point.

They did, the wrong ones. I set up this ambassador as something definitely unusual; she's an empath. In dark elf society, someone who can feel others' pain is going to be a natural misfit. She's competent but obviously strange- far too nice to her minions. To be honest, I had intended to have her defect, and break them out as a gesture of good faith.

Norm, mainly- backed by the more paranoid of the PC's- decides to have nothing to do with this. The difference betwen life and death, success or failure, as clearly signposted as you like, and he succumbs to xenophobia. She's inherently evil by reason of being one of them, totally untrustworthy, have slave collars on us all as soon as look at us, it's a trick. No self respecting elf would agree to this. Better to die hideously long drawn out deaths by slow torture in front of a crowd of thousands than compromise.

I start banging my head off the table at this point. I'd have banged Norman's head off the table, but he's bigger than I am. This redefines 'suicidal idiocy'. This is total perspective failure. Clinging to outdated categories and concepts from a different goddamn' system in the face of everything the character wants and is supposed to stand for. Clearly the lesser of two evils- with neon signposts fifty feet high saying 'the lesser of two evils'- and they'd rather die than deal. Deep breath time, plan B.

Subsequent events have more than a little tinge of deus ex machina about them- a svartalfven strike team breaking into an elven ritual by pretending to be, in order, elves cunningly disguised as svartalfven as a test of the security; watchers returning from an attack on the svartalf caverns- they had to go in and out in masquerade and they haven't had time to disrobe yet; part of the ritual team- they're going to be playing the part of the foul enemy who is righteously and nobly overcome, it's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it.

At this point I am trying not to roll on the floor laughing, I'm largely talking to myself, this is NPC to NPC, but I'm having so much fun playing it out that I almost forget to take revenge for stupidity and reward the characters who do help, take part and generally show some sign of something other than rocks in their heads. Almost.

Norm and his side, faction and allegiance are comprehensively humiliated by the way things play out. They lose so much political capital that he is reduced to a cipher- worse yet, a cipher who actually owes the svartalfven his life.

Sometimes you learn from roleplaying games, and sometimes what you learn is wrong.

tchizek wrote:With Pen and Paper RPG's it is not the system, it's the people.

While I wasn't even talking about D20 (I know, I'm old), this is a pile of shit. Yes, you can burn time and effort to make any game 'fun' or 'enjoyable' by ignoring 80% of the rules or making up better ones, but this IS A NEGATIVE REFLECTION ON THE RULES. Some systems require less house-ruling or rules-ignoring or systems-simplification and are thus better. DnD 2 was a pathetic retro-fitted hackjob full of extra nigh-useless rules glued onto old as shit and fucking horrible rules built on look-up tables and was crap, the end. The fact you could have a 'fun game' with the system is irrelevant.

Cool. Complete derail.

Stofsk wrote:I thought this thread would be about "Have you ever had your general knowledge frame of reference expanded by playing a tabletop RPG with people who know things you don't know about?" To which I would answer yes, because the people I've met at role-playing game clubs happen to be in university doing engineering or science or medical degrees.

But it seems this thread is about "Have you ever met any players who are really fucking stupid" to which, I would also answer yes. Yes I have.

In all honesty, it was a bit of both. Mainly because I have had my general knowledge frame of reference expanded by playing RPGs, but also because I have run across the occasional person who is unwilling to put even fairly basic effort into their gaming experience.

Another example. There was a kid at school way back when who actually had to read the stat descriptions to figure out how Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma would affect his character. But at least he read them. Some people don't want to put that much effort into it for some reason

phred wrote: Another example. There was a kid at school way back when who actually had to read the stat descriptions to figure out how Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma would affect his character. But at least he read them. Some people don't want to put that much effort into it for some reason

RPGs don't always make what the stats do entirely obvious. Stamina could affect your health, but it could affect other things that are less obvious, like size or the ability to resist attacks, for example. It depends on how the exact mechanics of the game in question are set up.

Indeed in many games strength and fitness together determine damage and hitpoints or in other systems it might be weighted more heavily one way or the other.

Stark wrote:

tchizek wrote:With Pen and Paper RPG's it is not the system, it's the people.

While I wasn't even talking about D20 (I know, I'm old), this is a pile of shit. Yes, you can burn time and effort to make any game 'fun' or 'enjoyable' by ignoring 80% of the rules or making up better ones, but this IS A NEGATIVE REFLECTION ON THE RULES. Some systems require less house-ruling or rules-ignoring or systems-simplification and are thus better. DnD 2 was a pathetic retro-fitted hackjob full of extra nigh-useless rules glued onto old as shit and fucking horrible rules built on look-up tables and was crap, the end. The fact you could have a 'fun game' with the system is irrelevant.

I too am old and I strongly disagree, let me explain.

Ignoring the rules has nothing to do with it, if you like and get along with the people you are playing with the time spent learning the system is worth your time. If you don't like and or don't get along with the people you are playing with it does not matter how good the system is you will have a shitty time.

For example, DragonQuest (does anyone still remember DragonQuest? assume not) as complex and hacked together system as was ever created. Some of the fondest memories I have of some of the most developed characters that I ever played happened in that system. Because of the people who I was playing with were willing to take the time to actually develop the characters and world. Act in character and treat the world like it was real.

During the same time period I played in a GURPS campaign that was pure meta-gaming, power gaming, hack and slay nonsense. I kind of remember trying to develop this character and could never stay interested. While GURPS is by far the better game system, and I have had fun with other groups playing GURPS that group almost destroyed my interest in GURPS as a system due to the people.

I agree the original three book set of D&D, through first and second edition sucked as a game system and screamed for "house rules" and "fixes". And I agree that this is a negative reflection on the game system...however with the right people you can have a good time with even the worst game system - even unmodified 3 brown books D&D. Which was my point that the game system helps but does not make the gaming experience.

And having a fun time is far from irrelevant, if you are not having fun why are you playing RPGs? If you are having fun why do you care what "game system" you are using?

Now, I may start another thread to discuss the apparent dislike of D20 in general that has been expressed in this thread, rather than hijacking this thread.

Since I happen to like D20 in general and frankly find it a great improvement over most of the systems that I have played....including GURPS .

To get back to the original question...

phred wrote:Has anyone else ever run across a player, either online or pen and paper, who honestly did not know the meanings of the basic terms involved in playing?

Sure, especially when teaching new players. Lots of people have trouble understanding the terms, and usages that RPGers take for granted - Statistics, Skills, the Dice rolling conventions of various games. More with pen & paper but that is where most of my experience lies.