On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 13:29:33 -0600, Jhulian Waldby
<wichitajayhawks@msn.com> wrote:

>Kyonshi wrote:
>> On 11/19/2024 10:27 AM, JAB wrote:
>>> On 19/11/2024 01:31, Jhulian Waldby wrote:
>>>>>> All I know, and excuse me if I'm repeating this story for the 19th
>>>>>> time,
>>>>>> is that my Irish Catholic grandmother bought me a first print 1e
>>>>>> *Deities
>>>>>> & Demigods* for freaking Easter. I asked for it, and she was all
>>>>>> "Yup."
>>>>>> So no, I don't think her priest was railing against Satan in D&D.
>>>>>>
>>>>> I'm pretty sure it was an American phoneme.
>>>>>
>>>> I guess the concern is that players may become unable to
>>>> differentiate the truth from the water elemental.  I've noticed this
>>>> in some Dungeon Masters who argue rules as if it were a physics
>>>> laboratory.  Not one hint of "this is fiction" or "we can't find a
>>>> rule for that."
>>>>
>>>> Funny though, I haven't heard anyone mention Satanism in D&D for yrs.
>>>> That all stopped a week before I picked up Basic Dungeons & Dragons.
>>>>
>>>> Who were those people?  I couldn't tell you, I've forgotten.
>>>
>>> I did read a 'discussion' in I think White Dwarf many, many years ago
>>> about whether sharp weapons should do half damage on skeletons based
>>> on whether they had an 'energy body' keeping everything together. My
>>> thoughts were who cares either way as long as the game world is
>>> internally consistent.
>>>
>>> I play Call of Cthulhu and someone decided to rewrite the firearms
>>> damage to reflect muzzle velocities and projectile weight. Was it more
>>> realistic, yes but they had made it so that instead of combat just
>>> being dangerous, and best avoided where possible, it was outright
>>> deadly and one hit is time to roll a new character.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> I don't want to yuck anyone's yum, if they think it's a good idea for
>> their game and their players like it...
>>
>> On the other hand I also feel one-hit kills might be driving players off.
>
>This might be kind of digressive, but one of the few times I tried my
>hand at being DM, the party was fighting a colony of bats when one of
>the guys asked, can't this go any faster? Is there a way to abbreviate
>combat for players that don't like to focus on that aspect of the game?
>I felt silly sitting there enjoying it while they were more story-focused.

I just had a flashback to facing off against a roomful of mongbats in
Ultima V....

[Sorry, had to drag the thread back on-topic
just a little bit. Force of habit.]

With tabletop roleplaying, finding a group who likes playing the game
the same way as you is probably the most important thing. Some people
love the mechanical aspects of it; min-maxing and rules-lawyering is
the fun part to them! Others want the power-fantasy; killing hordes of
monsters, getting amazing amounts of loot, and winning the hand of the
prince (or princess) at the end. And some like the drama of the game;
they like the role-playing.

[Me, I'm in it for the world-building]

None of them are wrong in how they are playing the game, but if you
put a min-maxer next to a power-fantasieer and play it with a
drama-nerd, none of them are going to have fun. You need to find a
group which matches your -and the GM's- personal style.

Sadly, most people are a mix of these archetypes, which makes finding
the perfect group even harder. But if you find one, never let them go.
;-)

But I'm sure there are some groups who love one-hit kill encounters.
More power to them. It's a perfectly legitimate way to play the game.
It's just not the _only_ way.

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 18:03:54 +0100, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Kyonshi wrote:

>On 11/18/2024 11:20 PM, candycanearter07 wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Probably, that tracks with how American christians are sometimes.
>
>
>There are few things as confusing as talking to an American Lutheran as
>a European Lutheran.

Hey, that's my vocation!

--
Zag

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 13:29:15 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 15:23:25 -0500, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
>
>>Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> looked up from reading the
>>entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
>>say:
>>
>>>On 11/18/2024 5:31 PM, Jhulian Waldby wrote:
>>>> Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>>>>> On 11/15/2024 12:37 PM, Zaghadka wrote:
>>>>>> Top post. First off, please knock it off with the non ANSI characters.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I've never had so much trouble posting a reply.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, 15 Nov 2024 09:32:27 +0100, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
>>>>>> Kyonshi wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 11/15/2024 1:11 AM, Justisaur wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 11/14/2024 10:55 AM, Ross Ridge wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Kyonshi  <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> At any rate, it is ironic see D&D go from Satanic Panic to being
>>>>>>>>>> installed somewhere in the Vatican in just a few short decades.
>>>>>>>>>> Never
>>>>>>>>>> let anyone tell you who you are.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I'm sure D&D was played in some form in the precincts of the Vatican
>>>>>>>>> long before Baldur's Gate 3 was released.  Maybe even during the time
>>>>>>>>> when the Satanic Panic thing was raging in the US and to a lesser
>>>>>>>>> extent
>>>>>>>>> the rest of the English speaking world, but not so much in Italy.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I don't know that it was Catholics going after D&D.  BADD was
>>>>>>>> popularized by evangelicals - specifically the TV kind.  Jack Chick
>>>>>>>> was
>>>>>>>> was some very weird offshoot of Baptist.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> And I think D&D was too niche back then to even touch some area like
>>>>>>> that (which is after all just the size of a small town, even in the
>>>>>>> middle of a metropolis), especially as a lot of inhabitants of the
>>>>>>> Vatican city are elder professionals.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> One would have to look up when DnD was released in Italian maybe.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> All I know, and excuse me if I'm repeating this story for the 19th time,
>>>>>> is that my Irish Catholic grandmother bought me a first print 1e
>>>>>> *Deities
>>>>>> & Demigods* for freaking Easter. I asked for it, and she was all "Yup."
>>>>>> So no, I don't think her priest was railing against Satan in D&D.
>>>>>>
>>>>> I'm pretty sure it was an American phoneme.
>>>>>
>>>> I guess the concern is that players may become unable to differentiate
>>>> the truth from the water elemental.  I've noticed this in some Dungeon
>>>> Masters who argue rules as if it were a physics laboratory.  Not one
>>>> hint of "this is fiction" or "we can't find a rule for that."
>>>>
>>>> Funny though, I haven't heard anyone mention Satanism in D&D for yrs.
>>>> That all stopped a week before I picked up Basic Dungeons & Dragons.
>>>>
>>>> Who were those people?  I couldn't tell you, I've forgotten.
>>>
>>>Something about some group of teenagers wandering around in the New York
>>>subway tunnels comes to mind.
>>
>>That's Rona Jaffe's Mazes & Monsters.
>>https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/
>>
>>The Satanism thing was Jack Chick;
>>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/25/jack-chick-christian-comic-cartoonist-death
>>
>>A snippet: "A lot of people hated Jack Chick. He wrote furious screeds
>>against Dungeons & Dragons, against Catholicism and against rock music;
>>he waged a long and ultimately unsuccessful war on Halloween. If you
>>were Jewish or Muslim or gay, Chick wanted you to be saved from the
>>fires of hell and wrote a comic to tell you so."
>>
>>A collection of his lunacy;
>>https://www.chick.com/products/category?type=tracts
>>
>>Specifically for D&D
>>https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=46&ue=d
>>
>>Xocyll
>
>
>I mean, it wasn't _only_ Jack Chick. The American 'Satanic Panic'
>thing was fairly wide-spread even before D&D; believers pointed to
>comic books, movies, rock'n'roll and all sorts of entertainment as
>malefic influences on the youth. D&D was a sort of easy target because
>one of its rulebooks featured a demonic idol on its cover. But of any
>one person could be pointed to as the driving force for the 'D&D is a
>tool of Satan", it's probably Patricia Pulling, nominal private
>investigator, author of "The Devil's Web" and founder of BADD
>('Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons', an anti-satanism campaign that
>specifically targeted tabletop RPGs).
>
>Chick was an end-times baptist nutjob who wrote a lot of corny and
>logically-inconsistent morality plays in the form of comic strips
>which reflected his very weird beliefs, of which 'Dark Dungeons' was
>only one of many. As far as I can tell, it came out in the mid 80s,
>some years after Pulling founded BADD and after the height of the
>Satanic Panic frenzy.
>
I played the DMG backward on a turntable. It created a shredded paper
golem that immediately said, "Hail! Satan!"

There is some credence to what was said.

--
Zag

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:01:07 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 13:29:33 -0600, Jhulian Waldby
><wichitajayhawks@msn.com> wrote:
>
>>Kyonshi wrote:
>>> On 11/19/2024 10:27 AM, JAB wrote:
>>>> On 19/11/2024 01:31, Jhulian Waldby wrote:
>>>>>>> All I know, and excuse me if I'm repeating this story for the 19th
>>>>>>> time,
>>>>>>> is that my Irish Catholic grandmother bought me a first print 1e
>>>>>>> *Deities
>>>>>>> & Demigods* for freaking Easter. I asked for it, and she was all
>>>>>>> "Yup."
>>>>>>> So no, I don't think her priest was railing against Satan in D&D.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm pretty sure it was an American phoneme.
>>>>>>
>>>>> I guess the concern is that players may become unable to
>>>>> differentiate the truth from the water elemental.  I've noticed this
>>>>> in some Dungeon Masters who argue rules as if it were a physics
>>>>> laboratory.  Not one hint of "this is fiction" or "we can't find a
>>>>> rule for that."
>>>>>
>>>>> Funny though, I haven't heard anyone mention Satanism in D&D for yrs.
>>>>> That all stopped a week before I picked up Basic Dungeons & Dragons.
>>>>>
>>>>> Who were those people?  I couldn't tell you, I've forgotten.
>>>>
>>>> I did read a 'discussion' in I think White Dwarf many, many years ago
>>>> about whether sharp weapons should do half damage on skeletons based
>>>> on whether they had an 'energy body' keeping everything together. My
>>>> thoughts were who cares either way as long as the game world is
>>>> internally consistent.
>>>>
>>>> I play Call of Cthulhu and someone decided to rewrite the firearms
>>>> damage to reflect muzzle velocities and projectile weight. Was it more
>>>> realistic, yes but they had made it so that instead of combat just
>>>> being dangerous, and best avoided where possible, it was outright
>>>> deadly and one hit is time to roll a new character.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> I don't want to yuck anyone's yum, if they think it's a good idea for
>>> their game and their players like it...
>>>
>>> On the other hand I also feel one-hit kills might be driving players off.
>>
>>This might be kind of digressive, but one of the few times I tried my
>>hand at being DM, the party was fighting a colony of bats when one of
>>the guys asked, can't this go any faster? Is there a way to abbreviate
>>combat for players that don't like to focus on that aspect of the game?
>>I felt silly sitting there enjoying it while they were more story-focused.
>
>I just had a flashback to facing off against a roomful of mongbats in
>Ultima V....

Oh yeah. That was a wtf TPW the first time I went to the underworld. I
laughed my ass off. Should have read that quest journal.

--
Zag

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 18:11:40 +0100, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Kyonshi wrote:

>On 11/19/2024 5:32 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Nov 2024 19:31:43 -0600, Jhulian Waldby
>> <wichitajayhawks@msn.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I guess the concern is that players may become unable to differentiate
>>> the truth from the water elemental. I've noticed this in some Dungeon
>>> Masters who argue rules as if it were a physics laboratory. Not one
>>> hint of "this is fiction" or "we can't find a rule for that."
>>
>> Tabletop RPG afficiandos always point to 'rule zero: the DM has
>> ultimate say in what goes, overriding even what the books say.' But
>> few acknowledge that there is --or should be-- a rule -1: the goal of
>> the game is to have fun. And if you, as DM, are pissing off your
>> players, you've broken the most fundamental rule of the game. ;-)
>>
>>
>>> Funny though, I haven't heard anyone mention Satanism in D&D for yrs.
>>> That all stopped a week before I picked up Basic Dungeons & Dragons.
>>> Who were those people? I couldn't tell you, I've forgotten.
>>
>> Almost entirely people who had not only never played the game, but had
>> never even read the books.
>>
>> Usually small-minded hypocrites who themselves have such difficulty
>> discerning fantasy from reality that they need an authority (usually
>> religious in nature) to tell them the difference and can't imagine any
>> one else not being so restricted in their thinking.
>>
>> Yes, these people existed, and they still exist; I had somebody
>> confront me on the game's supposed Satanic connections just a few
>> years ago. They're far less common (and, as mentioned, almost entirely
>> an American construct) but they're still around. And it's not just D&D
>> they have a hate for; Harry Potter, Twilight, tarot cards... it's all
>> burnable to them.
>
>Ah, Harry Potter recently has gotten into their good graces as JKR
>decided to come out hard against trans women. All of a sudden the
>previous arguments against HP were forgotten and witchcraft now is A-OK.

Yeah, sure. Maybe check what she actually said?

cf: The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling podcast. "Choke on my trans cock"
may have been said to her at some point.

She actually tried to start a discussion, raised some valid feminist
concerns, and got death and rape threats in return. At one point, she
made the mistake of retweeting someone who _is_ hard-core anti-trans,
probably in ignorance, as a twitchy response to all the threats. That is
the main source of the accusation. It is also understandable.

Too many people want to shut down discussion entirely, generally with
threats of violence. Me and a whole bunch of queer people (myself queer
included) had a reasonable discussion about it on a summer vacation. We
had reasonable differences on the matter and did not agree. Do not
believe the Internet. The LGBT community is diverse and thoughtful.

I don't want to have a debate here. I just want to indicate that what you
say is a common opinion, not fact. The Christian right still thinks she's
a witch. Basically, nobody in any particular "tribe" likes J.K., and I
think she's fine with that, because she's been horribly abused before and
is very resilient.

--
Zag

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten