"Hey, DM, I want a Combat Wheelchair - my Monte Cook contract says I can demand it..."
For reference to how this works ...
TL/DR - it's pure bullshit by so-called "Woke" tourists out to WRECK Dungeons and Dragons and the TTRPG hobby in general.
It's also proof of how uncaring they are about the game, the hobby, the source material and how vain they are with their "Identity Politics".
I've waited a while to type this - they want anger and angry reactions so they can scream "Hallp! I'm being oppressed!" And why NOT allow such in a game of high fantasy that superficially at least resembles our ideal past and romantic dreams of them?
Several reasons and I'll put them here:
FIRST - it just doesn't FIT.
Ever see the first D&D movie where they had Beholder monsters that were used as Guard Dogs but had seemingly a 10 degree field of vision and the ones leading them seemed to have a 30 degree vision? If you don't get that you are a TOURIST. This isn't "Rules Lawyer" stuff. It's "Maan, this is PAINFUL to watch!" or "Cringe" as the "Woke" tourists call it when something hurts their Fee Fees...
SECOND - "If they can make it they don't need it"
The best way to explain it is that like a "Difference Engine" in real life - if you can build it you don't need it.
They technically can be made now and I think a few have. Oh, back to the Abacus and that set of gears found in a Greek shipwreck from antiquity we've had them forever. I mean the equivalent of a computer we are using today or early 70s home computer - it has memory, it can take instructions, it can run programs, it can change what it does based on memory and instructions. The program can do anything from "Hello World" stamped out on paper or etched on plates or displays via a complex set of flapping cards on a plaque for an analog but digital screen or sent to an automata hand with a quill that writes in elegant Victorian Cursive writing...?
Babbage never finished it during his lifetime. There were some issues with the man I won't get into but one of the big technical details was that even in the industrial revolution he simply could not get enough parts made to the precision required. The tiny brass gears he needed were either way too expensive at the scale he needed them AND/OR they were NOT made to the level of precision. The modern age it's been 3D modeled and simulated, it would have worked though note his first device was to print tables for businesses so clerks and conductors who couldn't READ but could do numbers could gauge time, weights, prices...
Still - in today the information age, rather decades ago the Nuclear/Diesel age we had the technology. And we had better fuel than coal and reliable electronics. The technology to make a one ton nightmare of delicate gears that pulled more power than a dishwasher and oven to work at 1/10th the speed of an Apple 1 allows modern computers which are a fraction of the price and thousands of times the speed and memory.
It simply is not practical - I've even looked into tech to make it at the "Nanoscale".
HOWEVER - to make it you need nanotech of a very fast and accurate control but able to sculpt at insane rates of speed at the macroscopic scale. We are getting there...
BUT - and this is the sad spoiler to the "Steampunk" fans; IF you can make that you can make an "Atomic Spin Computer". Excuse me, I'm feeling like a kid again reading old OMNI magazines... We call them "Quantum Computers" these days and at last are making them.
The difference? Easier to construct and imagine an Apple 1 compared to today's best super-computers. Not a "Cray" of the 80s we have that on our desktop in the 2020s if not our phones... A supercomputer of today worth billions compared to a 1970s DIY kit with kilobytes and kilahertz clock speed...switches to program binary... At least...!
That's the difference in raw speed even if the Quantum one spends 99% of it's time error correcting. Now imagine an AI working that out and figuring out an algorithm to eliminate some of the 99% of time needed...? Then, the AI works out ways to use the Quantum Foam and stuff just under or outside what we see as reality. It might help answer a last question... Anyone get that last bit?
Going to the TTRPG world of the "Draconic" game - well you might hear how Tolkien fans complain it stole from him. They had to name Hobbits into Halflings among other issues. However the Tolkien stuff is the paint job. The grand castle comes from many giants not the least of which is Jack Vance. Read his Dying Earth especially Mazarian the Magician stories. It sounds like someone put their D&D session to a story. Except it was 20 years before the first D&D!
Vance's world (and Wells, Hodgkin, Clark Ashton Smith) is our world but the far, far future. The sun is either gigantic in the sky and Earth has been moved outwards or it's a dim red ember. Somehow humanity survives this far out and is on the surface the same. However while many cycles have come and gone it seems on the surface a mystical medieval world. How does it have "magic" if in the real world? And not some rich drug addict more trying to summon Priapus than some angel or demon in a mansion but only really summoning scandal? The Magic works, wizards can do many incredible things... How? Clarke's third law - "Any technology, sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic"
The setting of the world is that there is a REAL working magic and the "Gods" are real and thus clerical spells can heal people. Sure you could get Gnomes to make a wheelchair that might somehow handle rough terrain and go through a dungeon with kooky devices to bypass simple pit traps and goblins sneaking up from behind... BUT it would cost at least TWENTY times the Gold Coin it would take to go to a temple of a "Greater God" and get a healing of major wounds and restoration done. And NO they aren't cursed or "special" not to be healed. They can go to an EVIL god and at least pay a fortune (or promise dark deeds) if they PO'd a "Good" god.
A more fitting item would be at a low level campaign some pre-rolled "Wretched" zero level characters have various flaws to overcome like a prostitute who's face got slashed by a rich client with a magical dagger or a desperate peasant who has a sick daughter who needs healing magic so they will go into the dark dungeons that are ruins from up to many thousands of years ago to try to find coin. That could start them to the path of adventure and make the players feel more for their sacrificial zero level characters in the "Meat Grinder" mission to get them into the game and flush out the snowflake 'woke' tourists.
THIRD - It's brutal brainwashing out of 1984
"How many fingers am I holding up, Winston Smith?"
I think the ONLY book they for real read in the Debt Factory aka a modern "College" that excretes the so-called "Woke" social justice warriors or whatever... 1984 by George Orwell. They see it as UTOPIA, just as long as the BOOT in the FACE of humanity forever is RAINBOW colored from ethically sourced materials... Dripping sarcasm here.
The "Woke" corporate backed fake Culture War is based around hammering their party line in one form or another until it becomes truth. It is forcing by various means such as threats of being seen as racist, sexist, ablest ... whatever - to accept one of their stupid, ill thought out inserts. It is a means of controlling the argument. It is a means of trying to force a set of legacy on future players who try to pick up the pieces once the corporate behemoths move on to feed elsewhere.
The reaction against "Combat Wheelchair" and other madness like full flying PCs at Level 1, forced insertion of various mental and physical disorders is about keeping the hobby something that people will play on their own without a corporation saying its popular for a few years then shelving it. These "Woke" will be gone soon, leaving some very ugly legacies and the true hobbyists will have to try to rebuild.
So resisting the "Sparkle Troll" lies and agitprop is critical to us who want our freedom and expression in our games (and comics, video games, etc.) by denying their stupid ideas. Sure there probably ARE "Combat Wheelchairs" somewhere or DMs that let a first level character FLY but somehow didn't wreck the campaign balance. Fine. It's still sane to resist the base game having this garbage meant to ram in their stupid fake ideals so they can virtue signal to their friends. They are just adult babies and cry-bullies who want to break another's toys with some parent or elite corporate figure protecting them.
No - that's not a call for violence - rather ever hear of "The List"? For bad RPGs that are ruined by them? Going to get it expanded (or an alt list made) that follows the so-called Writers and some of the Illustrators who have helped the corporate pigs wreck a decade of entertainment and hobbies. When their Parents are gone aka the Corporation - well they'd better hope there is room for them to publish and stock RPG books (and comics, games) in some Seattle Coffeshop next to the college they went to. Except woke don't buy their own "Change!" products - that tip jar is NOT that big. Any company that wants to make MONEY will hear tons of complaints about them - no lies just "There are lots of other options, this person did this - proof - so I won't buy unless you dump them." - and they'll talk to them "There are a MILLION other artists, writers, managers out there all better than you and that's not even counting AIs. Bye."
Considering they openly try to "Cancel" anyone they don't like and have indeed tried to cancel me and my friends and things I like - it's only fitting.
---So - in your OWN campaigns have all the ridiculous sh-t you want. But let's not let these sparkle troll vandals wreck our hobbies by turning it into a Cauldron of rainbow Monty-Haul and sparkle troll coffeshop university!
Maxx Feral
No comments:
Post a Comment