So recently I discovered that my blog post from back in 2012 making fun of Doctor Who has been picking up steam in the Whovian crowd.
Amusingly I wrote an earlier post making fun of Harry Potter and nobody seemed to notice.
But one blogger in particular felt the need to yell at me and condemn me for not citing sources or having evidence to back up my claims.
I have a simple response to that:
This is the internet, I don't have to.
More specifically, this is a opinion blog. I'm writing for free, whenever I feel like it. I have no editors to respond to, no deadlines, and no need to cite sources.
The only source I have most of the time is my own opinion.
The reader can choose to believe me, or they can believe that I'm completely full of shit. Both are entirely possible. Hell, I will freely admit that sometimes the things I post are complete bullshit.
In the earlier version of this blog, back when it was just a spare Livejournal account, I posted a bunch of guides to dating back before I had any real experience in the dating world. Well, I had some, but not enough to stand as any sort of authority on the subject. I later revisted one of those posts and took apart my own writing to see what had changed in my perspective.
But here is the real point:
Things you read on the internet are not facts. They are opinions.
It's all a matter of whose opinions you trust.
People often cite wikipedia as the infallible source of all knowledge. And in truth, it is largely accurate. But not 100% of the time.
As a birthday gift one of my former roommates edited wikipedia so that my other roommate's boyfriend was listed as the lead singer of the band White Lion.
We all had a good laugh, but the page stayed that way for over a month before somebody fixed it.
So, not always accurate.
Furthermore, you need to always question when someone lists something as "Fact". That's one major difference between the older generations and the younger ones. The older generations are convinced that they truly know many details about the world. Hell, if you asked them how many planets there are in the solar system they would automatically respond with "Nine".
Depending on how much they keep up with the world around them they might remember and change their answer, but they were trained from birth to believe that there are exactly nine planets in the solar system. This is a fact.
The younger generations are more cautious when using the word "fact". We know that facts aren't always facts. They are beliefs, theories, assumptions, but unless you have personally witnessed it yourself, it is not a fact.
I know that I am wearing black shoes today. That is a fact for me. But for you, it is an assumption. You are assuming that I am telling the truth. I could be lying, my shoes could be brown, I might have decided to go barefoot all day. You don't know because you didn't witness it yourself.
So don't use the word fact unless you witnessed something for yourself. Everything else is just your belief that the source that is providing the information to you is doing so correctly.
History is a great example of this. If you look at the history of many major events, the story is very different depending on which side you are on. The American Civil war is a great example of this. In K-12 school they tell you that it was a war over slavery. In college they explain that it was a war over economics (like most wars.). But if you look at the documentation at the time they were painting two more different pictures. The south claimed to be fighting for the sovereign rights of the individual states, while the north claimed to be fighting to protect the country as a whole. Four different versions of the same event.
Which one was right?
Who knows? We weren't there. All we have are assumptions based on what documentation we can find from the period.
Big lesson:
Don't get butt-hurt over someone's opinion on the internet. It's an opinion, not a fact. Facts directly affect you, opinions directly affect them.
I could say that it's my opinion that the sky is actually purple. That wouldn't change the fact that it looks blue to you.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
The future of Dungeons & Dragons
Ok, this is going to be a nerdy/technical column. So if you aren't a gamer, you may want to skip this one.
Ok, so currently Wizards of the Coast are Playtesting their new system "D&D Next". It's usual NDA stuff, so I can't discuss specifics, but what I can do is talk about what went wrong with D&D 4.0 and what should have been done to fix it.
Ok, firstly, let me state that D&D 4.0 was a combination of the last version of 3.5 (commonly referred to as 3.75) and World of Warcraft. Some things were great changes, others were terrible.
1. Stop with the power creep in every additional book they release. Happened in 3.5 and 4rth. If you didn't own all of the latest books there was absolutely no way to compete with those who did. The Core books should be all you need to play, the splat books should be for additional flavor, NOT increased power.
2. @will and Encounter abilities were a good idea. Run with those. Daily abilities of any kind are a terrible idea. We hated them in 3.5, we hated them in 4rth. Just stop it already. We want our characters to go to sleep when we start getting to exhaustion penalties, Not when we run out of Daily spells or heals. Healing surges were a great idea, but just give a per-encounter limit, not a per-day limit. Daily limits break the logical flow of the experience are insanely frustrating. Most parties just pump out their daily abilities as quick as possible, then go to sleep to recharge them. It's stupid.
3. Make utility powers @will rather than encounter or daily. It makes zero sense for a party to go searching for random squirrels to kill so they can get more uses of their encounter powers.
4. Make the Paragon & Epic paths more significant. They were useful, but there should be a significant power jump when a character reaches level 10 and 20. Those are significant numbers, make the upgrades significant.
5. Make fewer magic items, make them scale automatically, and make them more generalized. The Adventurer's vaults contained entire books filled with multiple versions of the exact same item but scaled for different levels and worded differently for each class. That's stupid, just make them generalized and make them scale.
6. Make @will attacks scale faster. There is a large number of levels in 4rth where you absolutely only use your @will powers when you are completely out of encounter or daily spells. Make them a more viable option.
7. Give more and more interesting utility powers. 3.5 got this right. There were a million utility powers and most of them were awesome. They made you feel much more super-hero-like when you used them. In 4rth damn near every power was combat-only, which meant that when you were outside of combat your character was basically a normal guy. Which is not the image you want for high-fantasy roleplaying.
8. Get rid of racial bonus stats. In 3.5 & 4rth the large majority of players picked the race that gave them the statistical advantage. That's not how you should be encouraging your players to play. Their race should be for RP reasons, not stats.
9. Shift the combat focus away from encounter/daily abilities and more towards @will abilities. 3.5 made the great decision of allowing characters like Warblades and Warlocks access to their primary attacks for the majority of the combat. 4rth made the @will abilities mostly worthless and focused on abilities with long cooldowns. This is a bad game design. Players want to always be able to do their primary attacks, they don't want to have to wait to be effective.
10. Ongoing condition saves. This is a stupid system, it added a weird random factor to every battle. Just give the conditions a set duration, not "lasts until a successful check". It drags out combat entirely too long.
11. Loosen the range and movement restrictions. 3.5 could be played entirely without a battle map. 4rth required a battle map for all combats. Find a happy middle ground. You shouldn't need a battle map to fight one opponent. You just need to remember how far away from them everyone is.
12. Fix the invisibility rules. Any opponent that could become invisible became a huge pain in the ass.
13. Reduce the number and complexity of all abilities that players have. Part of why combat took so long was because it took forever to pick the right ability, set up the placement, and then roll out all of the attacks and effects. Make it more streamlined so that combat doesn't last for three hours.
Things that worked in 4rth that the should keep or alter slightly.
1. Half level skill progressions. This gave everyone atleast some ability in every skill. But get rid of the trained only skills. It makes perfect sense for an adventurer to pick up minor ability in things they deal with every day. For a fighter to be unable to identify that zombie despite having killed hundreds of them before because they aren't trained in Knowledge Religion is just stupid.
2. 1 hit point minions. Low hit point minions make combat more interesting. But get rid of the rule where they are immune to AOE. AOE was designed for taking out low level mooks. Let them do their job.
3. Rituals. These were a great idea. It helps to add distance to the game for the party to require ten minutes to set up the teleport spell before teleporting. Plus it makes teleporting away from combat impossible.
Ok, so currently Wizards of the Coast are Playtesting their new system "D&D Next". It's usual NDA stuff, so I can't discuss specifics, but what I can do is talk about what went wrong with D&D 4.0 and what should have been done to fix it.
Ok, firstly, let me state that D&D 4.0 was a combination of the last version of 3.5 (commonly referred to as 3.75) and World of Warcraft. Some things were great changes, others were terrible.
1. Stop with the power creep in every additional book they release. Happened in 3.5 and 4rth. If you didn't own all of the latest books there was absolutely no way to compete with those who did. The Core books should be all you need to play, the splat books should be for additional flavor, NOT increased power.
2. @will and Encounter abilities were a good idea. Run with those. Daily abilities of any kind are a terrible idea. We hated them in 3.5, we hated them in 4rth. Just stop it already. We want our characters to go to sleep when we start getting to exhaustion penalties, Not when we run out of Daily spells or heals. Healing surges were a great idea, but just give a per-encounter limit, not a per-day limit. Daily limits break the logical flow of the experience are insanely frustrating. Most parties just pump out their daily abilities as quick as possible, then go to sleep to recharge them. It's stupid.
3. Make utility powers @will rather than encounter or daily. It makes zero sense for a party to go searching for random squirrels to kill so they can get more uses of their encounter powers.
4. Make the Paragon & Epic paths more significant. They were useful, but there should be a significant power jump when a character reaches level 10 and 20. Those are significant numbers, make the upgrades significant.
5. Make fewer magic items, make them scale automatically, and make them more generalized. The Adventurer's vaults contained entire books filled with multiple versions of the exact same item but scaled for different levels and worded differently for each class. That's stupid, just make them generalized and make them scale.
6. Make @will attacks scale faster. There is a large number of levels in 4rth where you absolutely only use your @will powers when you are completely out of encounter or daily spells. Make them a more viable option.
7. Give more and more interesting utility powers. 3.5 got this right. There were a million utility powers and most of them were awesome. They made you feel much more super-hero-like when you used them. In 4rth damn near every power was combat-only, which meant that when you were outside of combat your character was basically a normal guy. Which is not the image you want for high-fantasy roleplaying.
8. Get rid of racial bonus stats. In 3.5 & 4rth the large majority of players picked the race that gave them the statistical advantage. That's not how you should be encouraging your players to play. Their race should be for RP reasons, not stats.
9. Shift the combat focus away from encounter/daily abilities and more towards @will abilities. 3.5 made the great decision of allowing characters like Warblades and Warlocks access to their primary attacks for the majority of the combat. 4rth made the @will abilities mostly worthless and focused on abilities with long cooldowns. This is a bad game design. Players want to always be able to do their primary attacks, they don't want to have to wait to be effective.
10. Ongoing condition saves. This is a stupid system, it added a weird random factor to every battle. Just give the conditions a set duration, not "lasts until a successful check". It drags out combat entirely too long.
11. Loosen the range and movement restrictions. 3.5 could be played entirely without a battle map. 4rth required a battle map for all combats. Find a happy middle ground. You shouldn't need a battle map to fight one opponent. You just need to remember how far away from them everyone is.
12. Fix the invisibility rules. Any opponent that could become invisible became a huge pain in the ass.
13. Reduce the number and complexity of all abilities that players have. Part of why combat took so long was because it took forever to pick the right ability, set up the placement, and then roll out all of the attacks and effects. Make it more streamlined so that combat doesn't last for three hours.
Things that worked in 4rth that the should keep or alter slightly.
1. Half level skill progressions. This gave everyone atleast some ability in every skill. But get rid of the trained only skills. It makes perfect sense for an adventurer to pick up minor ability in things they deal with every day. For a fighter to be unable to identify that zombie despite having killed hundreds of them before because they aren't trained in Knowledge Religion is just stupid.
2. 1 hit point minions. Low hit point minions make combat more interesting. But get rid of the rule where they are immune to AOE. AOE was designed for taking out low level mooks. Let them do their job.
3. Rituals. These were a great idea. It helps to add distance to the game for the party to require ten minutes to set up the teleport spell before teleporting. Plus it makes teleporting away from combat impossible.
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