Sorry, i guess a joke wasn't in order.

Truthfully what i think it is:

I have a....strong personality. I also have a tendancy to cut deep with sarcasm. That really pisses some people off...a lot. One of my ways of doing that is turning back peoples posts on themselves. Thus the kernel of truth in my joke. But it isn't that people don't like themselves, it's that they don't like there words thrown back at them. And they don't like being teased about it.

I also don't have the good sense to keep my head down when the crap hits the fan. So here on the board i have become a lightning rod for any irrational anger directed at FanPro. Patrick was the other lightning rod and you see what that got him.

Of course i'm generally speaking a slayer, and to do that you can't just duck and cover when things get a bit nasty. The difference between a troll and a slayer is sorta like the difference between a vampire and something like Blade. They share enough similarities that they are easily mistaken one for the other, afterall you find them in the similar types of fights.

Unfortunately slaying trolls (and related beasts) only has a point when the board isn't completely pathological. This board is near completely pathological at this point, most people that aren't driven by anger at Fanpro have stopped posting or post very little.

Perhaps you haven't looked far enough yet to see the sanity? It's a long journey. Sorry i gave up before you got there, i just don't have the energy or time for it right now.

SR4 haters.

EDIT: There is a chain. Uncertainity lead to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to blindness. But this chain can be broken, and the first link is a good place to do it.

I suspect the dev team seems potential for improvement, and that can come across as dislike for SR3.

The magic system is a great example of this. Potential for improvement is what drives house rules. Do you play with no house rules? WireKnight is a great example of thinking the system needs to change but not realising it. He has done a rework to awakened character creation and the magic system. He aimed to create modularity so that the basic magic skills and metamagics. In FAQ #5 FanPro basically said the same thing. Factor in that you now have variable starting Magic and they are adding the flexibility to the system that WireKnight thought should be in SR3. FanPro is creating a standardisation of something WireKnight thought should exist.

Now FanPro is building it the other way around. They aren't getting rid of the skills, they are putting all the skills in up front. Then metamagics become something a bit lighter weight, hopefully so that they only have stats and not rules (see my earlier explaination to Ellery about the difference).

If you object to edges and flaws at all, because they were introduced in SRC instead of the main book, then perhaps you have a point. Otherwise, your "Ummm. This is where I give up on you." seems to me to indicate an inexpressible feeling rather than an actual reason for your position. Because, if you look back, you have actually offered zero reasons for your position on this. Go back and count. You've said it's obvious--that should make it simple to give a reason, right?--and you've said you're giving up, and you've claimed that you have to build magicians from the ground up (which contradicted the description of the system).

Giving up after zero arguments is often a sign that a position is held for emotional reasons (or other reasons) instead of rational ones. And I do mean "instead of", not "as well as". Sometimes, when the emotional reason speaks to the very core of what it is to be human (e.g. Declaration of Independence "We hold these truths to be self-evident" (i.e. they are expressing no reasons for them), it's okay to simply appeal to the emotion. With something as minor and abstract as whether a rule is an addition to or change of the basic system, it's pretty ineffectual.

So maybe you can mention why this is so terribly different from, say, Connected, Poor Link, Mysterious Cyberware, or Ambidexterity.

What happens if you hit someone with a stun baton with a strength of one? (Or imagine what would happen if you could hit with a strength of zero.) Any damage applied? What's the effect on armor?

Likewise, with the acidic sword?

Normally, I'd leave this as a rhetorical question, but I'm going to spell it out: If you have a strength of zero, you can still do shock damage from shock weapons (6M or whatever). This damage is resisted by half impact armor, rather than full, indicating that for a shock weapon, as compared to a fist, making contact is relatively more important for doing damage. Likewise, the very same mechanic works for an acidic sword, an acidic flaming sword, an acidic flaming shock baton, or whatever.

The point is that in both cases, you are just as able to dodge the attack, but you are hurt more if it hits and you rely on armor. That's a hallmark of a system that can distinguish between a touch-requiring attack and not.

And, while it's not perfect, it's better than having to try to figure out how much of your AC is armor-based and how much is not, in order to resolve attacks of different types. And if you want improvement, you can use multiple damage codes with different armor reduction, which is the same as you'd do in D&D except that again you don't have to keep track of two different ACs.

So you are hoping that metamagics won't actually let you do anything new? Rather, they just provide +dice and -penalties and +other stuff that's already been defined? So, for example, if they don't have room to put divining and tracking in the main book, then they won't add them because they add rules? Likewise, if they can't get all the variants of shielding in, all of which add (minor) rules, then you hope they don't add them?

Or are you instead hoping that they can put all interesting variants of metamagic in the main book? Won't that make the main book awfully large, or the rules awfully vague?

That doesn't bother me at all. I have no problems with plenty of people who have much stronger personalities than you do. I can't speak for everyone, of course.

However, what does annoy me is the tendency to try to "cut deep with sarcasm" instead of actually addressing the points of contention in a discussion.

I'm not sure why you post with people. Is it to kill trolls and win (rhetorical) points? Is it to share information? Is it to reach an understanding between yourself and others? Is it to amuse yourself? Is it typing practice?

Personally, I am fond of trying to share information and even if agreement cannot be reached, at least understand other people's positions and help them understand mine. If you want me to justify my reasons for thinking that this is an appropriate use of discourse--and more appropriate than the others I listed above--just ask.

Laughing is fine. You can laugh and still make a point, however. Leaving out the second part is what triggered the response, I think.

Sure. That's reputation. That's accountability.

Whether or not you believe it's deserved in this case, it's a key factor that separates anonymous posting from identified posting. My perusal of unmodified boards suggests to me that when people can post something without any fear of recrimination, they are a lot harsher and nastier than they would be otherwise. They don't have to worry about the consequences, so they just vent.

The lasting targeting, where people jump on a poster for relatively minor comments, is in some ways necessary to encourage civil discourse, but it can also (and very frequently [i]does[i]) get out of hand. The point, ultimately, is to try to encourage the poster to change their behavior, I imagine. But, instead, people often end up feeling combative, taking sides, seeking every opportunity to slight one-another, and so on. This is not terribly productive. It's why I try, every now and then, to actually take a post apart and explain the reasons why I think it's inappropriate or doesn't work well, and spell out some of the behavioral changes that I think would be an improvement. That way, at least the information is available to the poster; if they change or not, or agree or not, is up to them.

....or perhaps i've run short of time and patience and energy.

Ok, i'll squeeze in last paragraph. Then you can read my response to mfb, which is really also for you:

Look at the first paragraph of Edges and Flaws, page 15. Then take a look at the Edges and Flaws. They are ment as tweaks to characters. An extra die here, a bit lower/higher TN there. Edges were not intended as defining access or not access to a Skill/Metamagic. Calling it an Edge is a misnomer that superficially covers over the change to the chargen.

Ya, but i kept holding out hope for you.

So why do you think Eyeless could see the reason for the "LOL" but you couldn't? Is Eyeless "batshit insane"? Are you dumb? I answer no and NO! I think it is in a blindspot you have.

I got confirmation at lunch that i'm picking up a third rig, so i'm definately gone for a good while after this post. I can't exactly explain why, it's not because i'm unlikely to see any of you again because i'm sure i will, but this just feels like the best thing to do. A one-post, one-time peek into my parts of my methodology:

'Slayer' is my own term since i've not really seen another good description of what i'm trying to hang a name on. The best way to define 'slayer' is to give some insight to the techniques used. I got confirmation at lunch that i'm picking up a third rig so i'm definately moving on, so it doesn't much matter. Not that i won't be back at DSF, or that you won't be here mfb (you've been here since i have i believe), but...well i don't know, i just feel its the thing to do. So here is a one-time, one-post only explaination of how a slayer works:

The slayer sees a poster that she feels is acting determental to the whole board or even just the poster themself. They could be a troll (my personal favourite), or something else entirely. They might not even be a 'bad' person, or aren't nessasarily unintellegent. That poster is mark as the target and is studied to identify their weaknesses. Successful study requires careful listening to develop a deep understanding of where the target is at. Sometimes the main weakness is obvious because it is also the main reason the slayer picked the target. But there are usually more and those are important too.

Next the weapon(s) is(are) selected based on the weaknesses identified, and of course also based on playing to the slayer's strength and trying to avoid the slayer's weaknesses (know thyself).

I won't go into all the weapons, but i'll cover the basics of the passive trap. This is where the slayer makes a statement that is sound and defensible. However it has been purposefully designed to sit in the target's blindspot. To them it looks like a big fat juicy target. The trap is enhanced if the target feels animosity towards the slayer, so a bit of abrasiveness helps get the targets attention. It also helps if the target feels intellectually far superior to the slayer. There are ways to get the target thinking that they are, but often the target starts out assuming that so the slayer just needs to hide any clues to the contrary.

So the trap post is made. If the target doesn't see deep enough and attacks the trap...*smack*! If the trap is still too far into the blindspot for the target to see they are likely to attack again....*smack*. This continues until the slayer has mercy, the target sees past their blindspot (hopefully learning something positive in the processes), or the target shuts up in anger/fustration/humilitation.

The third possible outcome is usually only a moderate, and sadly usually temporary, success because the target probably still thinks they are correct in their assertion that the slayer is wrong. I personally find a job incomplete because the liberal in me is a big proponent of learning. Plus it can end up as a repeating situation, and that is emotionally draining.

The passive trap can also end up looking like a common troll, especially to the target if they never reach the end of their blindspot. The main difference, besides motivation, that the passive trap is much more targeted than a troll because a troll poster is largely indiscriminate in their prey. Further trolls are often going for the response only, perhaps just as an excuse to say mean things. For those kinds of trolls indefensible statements are as good as defensible ones, the former being easier to create and draw responses to.

Sometimes passive traps are not created intentionally, they are more adhoc. I'm not -quite- arrogant enough to believe i'm seeing that far into the conversation or can look into people that deeply that quickly. An example is quickly turning my poor spelling into an adhoc passive trap. I don't spell poorly to create the trap, it happens as a result of a "time spent writing a post" trade-off. Another example (that actually happened in this thread) is my use of the shortened version of "brevity is the soul of wit". It has happened before, and likely will happen again. A poster with a bit too much literary knowledge for their own good thinks they've got one over on me. They think of me as some sort of drolling, uneducated hick not realising that i am fully aware of the original and its context and have a specific thought out reason for shortening it.

EDIT: BTW i ran out of time to get around to directly addressing Ellery's comment about accuracy. He of all people should realize that extra accuracy beyond what gets the job done can be an expensive waste of resources.

P.S. I'm not alway in the role of a slayer. The slayer is something i call out in response to a situation. A slayer is a very tough role to maintain. So i enjoy switching away to other 'friendly' conversations even in the middle of the 'hunt', and am perfectly happy when i can safely stow the slayer away.

I like how reading the definitions of those two words and applying cold, hard logical analysis is "dogged, literal, narrowly scoped readings" as if there is some place out there where brevity and wit are the same thing. This just proves mfb, Critias, et al. right. You're just making things out out of whole cloth without regard to the fact that what you said is logically false? That explains a lot. Thanks.

There are a lot of things in the world that only differ in a few ways, but the implications of the small difference are huge. Among other things....i was exploiting your blindspot to try help remove it. Sadly i had failed, and probably just did again.

P.S. I still hope that by me pointing out that the blindspot is there that you'll take the time to see through it.

Actually all the things you mention where added in SR2. I said SR3. Splitting up the basic abilities of magicians into swappable pieces is a core rule change. It is not a major change, but it is a change.

No, but it seems like you like to attack sentences rather than arguments.

They might be new concepts, but they don't have to be. If they are it is hard to introduce them. It has been done, SOTA2064 for instance added a lot of new concepts, but it wasn't easy to make them fit with what was already written.

It is a long list of how most possible culture variations of magic should fit into the SR rules, but full of factual mistakes and misconceptions. Trying to clear up the misconceptions and mistakes afterwards is difficult without outright contradictions.
Also the short descriptions listed gives no real feel for how to play any of the cultural variations listed, so it is actually useless.
MitS in general is a summing up of all concepts already introduced in SR2. It tries to make it into a general whole, but IMO it does a poor job. Instead of trying to cover the whole of it, it should have left the field open for others to add things later. It seems to me from the FAQ that they might get it right in SR4.

Even the longer version still it has intracacies that are not fully spelled out in those few words. So the layers upon layers of symbols go to get back to the underlying idea. You know the longer version, and immediately recognised the shortened one as refering to the longer. So the symbol works.

"Stupid"? No, that is a troll. Sometimes (and this isn't every post i make by a long shot) i say something that is a challenge for the target to understand. The optimum is to set a challenge to the highest point they'll rise to meet. Then it's all good.

EDIT: ....and civility generally gets paid in kind. Gotta let people come down, or they won't.

It's a nasty job, but it is intended for people that are being nasty. It's advantage is that it can keep self-moderated boads (no admin at all) to a near-civil level.

I showed up here and there was a lot of nasty going around. So the slayer came out to play. Frankly i didn't even have to actively and intentionally create much in the way passive traps. That's a sign much correction was needed.

EDIT: Or to put it another way, Patrick problably wasn't doing anything like this. He was damn civil in fact, until he snapped under the barrage, and look at the dumping on he got even before that.

As for "Brevity is Wit", three quick words is a nice size to focus on because it's quick and small but still a real phrase/sentence. You don't like it? So be it, but it's still not "incorrect".

Take care.

I thought we were discussing things that were added beyond the main book--that these were either "additions" or "changes". Apparently we were thinking of different things, and thus not communicating well.

My point was supposed to be: if you can take the SR3 magic system and add MitS rules on to it--which, mind you, don't rewrite much of anything that is in SR3--then perhaps the original system actually was extensible enough after all. Maybe it didn't need reworking. Maybe it should just have some of the best extensions collapsed into the main book, and people could work on extending it again.

But if you think MitS rules clash with the SR3 rules, then it's an argument that the whole edifice is unstable and in need of complete overhaul.

Aspected magicians already split up the abilities into crudely swappable pieces. These just make the pieces finer. So as far as changes go, it's not that drastic.

So, okay, let's suppose we call this a change. Is this bad? Is this an example of the type of change that shouldn't happen in a game system? Something that illustrates that the magic system is inflexible and doesn't accommodate new rules without barnacles and bailing wire?

I assume sentences have meaning, so yes, sometimes I dispute sentences. In this case, I was genuinely unsure of what you meant. So I offered both interpretations that came to mind that would support what I thought was your argument.

We do seem to be getting somewhere, though. I'm curious whether the difficulty of adding new material is actually based in rules or based in the setting, though. It's difficult to, for instance, add lots of new major magical traditions because the SR setting fairly strongly emphasizes the hermetic/shaman split, implying that those are the dominant forms of workable magic.

So do you think the constraints were rules-based or setting-based?

I can understand changing the SR4 magic system because it has to be changed because the core mechanic is changing. And I can understand changing it because the setting is changing to allow more magical traditions (and, likely, to make the distinctions less important). But I don't understand why the existing system was so hard to extend unless you don't like the setting.

Okay, I agree with that assessment. But that's not a drawback of the rules for the magic system, is it? That sounds more like the author didn't do enough homework on the cultural variations and/or didn't flesh out the descriptions enough to give a good feeling for the different variations.

Okay, apparently stupid. I haven't noticed many successful traps you've laid where you said something that was too complex for the target to comprehend. I have noticed traps where you explained yourself poorly. But this doesn't reflect badly on the reader unless you can demonstrate that the only sensible interpretation of your remarks is your intended meaning, and not their interpreted meaning.

That's a hard thing to do, and I haven't seen you engaging in it. Maybe some people have a natural reaction to be humiliated--but that's hardly appropriate unless it's a failing of theirs, and unless their interpretation is clearly flawed, it's not their failing. Anger and frustration at your (intentional!) inability to express yourself clearly is also an appropriate emotional response. It's not nice to try to communicate with someone who is intentionally making themselves hard to understand!

If you look up the dictionary definitions of "Brevity", "is", and "wit", you'll notice that it is false to say that "Brevity is wit". I'll go through in detail if you wish. So "Brevity is wit" is incorrect.

Now we have to ask whether it is "incorrect". It is also not the traditional quote, which makes it an incorrect quote. The original quote also has the benefit of being witty in a brief way--because it is so true, and yet so brief (because of the clever use of the word "soul"). This version does not have that benefit--it is brief, but not witty. As I argued before, the phrase suggests an improper course of action in the framework in which you used it, so the advice is unsound. So I conclude that it is not just incorrect, but also "incorrect" (depending on what the scare-quotes are intended to mean).

If you only mean that "brevity is wit" is a grammatical sentence then I concede: it is not "incorrect".

How settling for being nicer to the next 'Patrick' that comes along?

That isn't it. Those are either my mistake (which happens, and i apologize for them) or a combination of my mistake of gauging the other poster.

I do cut slack when things are vague, for whatever reason. Sometimes it isn't just a single post. And civility is met with civility. But when people come in flaming when (IMO, it is a judgement call but i work hard to be fair) they should know better?

You think Shakespeare came up with that idea all by himself? That he was the first to think it? Those perhaps that is the first written text of it, or perhaps the first time those words were ever uttered. But as an idea????

The 3 word version is an idiom that is a symbol for the longer, and from there you go beyond. A symbol that apparently works as Crimsondude immediately recognized it. Was my first responce wasn't harsh?

"Others have mentioned that to me before. I know the original, but my version's shorter. "

...and then some more insight, to my thinking...

"Often people forget the actual character that has that line, and the character's perpensity for a preponderance of cumbersomely vast vebage. "

Solstice was a bit nastier right off, but that wasn't me.

But at any time it could have been let up, but it wasn't. I explain the symbology angle. I link to idiom (languisticly incorrect for its true meaning). Still people persist, as you do now. Would it have mattered if i wrote a 10 page essay on it? Probably not.

P.S. Would it have mattered if the entire dev team worked two weeks on an FAQ 10 pages long complete with numerous details instead of those first 4 FAQs were shaky? Maybe it would have help some, they were bad. But the lesson was learned i think and FAQ #5 comes down the pipe.....to what responce?

I'm always striving, so no i'm not there. Some times i'm closer than others.

Ackkk, i'm way over....the symbology works. Crimsondude recognized it.

Well, goodness, why stop there? Let's use "brevwit" instead, or perhaps "briefwit". In the style of "blog", we can then cut this down to "fwit" (which is nice because f evokes the word "fast" also), and then just jab at Jon and go "Fwit! Fwit!" every time he writes too many rules.

And I stand corrected. You did link to idiom. But that doesn't impact any of the points about "brevity as wit" being wrong--that it was referring to "brevity is the soul of wit" is obvious, and that it leaves out some of the most important parts is also obvious, and since you don't get to make up idioms on your own (because words do not gain meaning simply because you wish them to), it's only slightly more useful that "Fwit!" and a heck of a lot longer. Without the explanation of what you mean, you're liable to confuse rather than illuminate (which is exactly what happened, and justifiably so given that the quote was wrong and lost its soul, and convention is to quote quotes accurately), and you can explain "fwit" just as well.

Nah, just sloppy word choice there. I wasn't thinking about that reference.

Sorry that's not the best word to use there. Go ahead and insert the word you think it should be.

It's not "true", it just is. Idioms are like that. Has it 'failed' or are people are just looking to pick my ass?

P.S. Besides in the initial context of intended use it's more than fine.

I didn't just make it up. You don't get to make them up, you just tap into the collective (un)conciousness. That it is recognizable is good. That it needs explaination to fully convey the underlying idea? Yes. But so does the longer.

P.S. Yes, your thoughts on accuracy stand....or fall separately.

He has already assumed he knows what the other posters on this board are thinking, and that he can 'enlighten' them with regards to their mistaken thinking.

He's putting himself up on a pedestal above his target, acting as the intellectual superior. When that fails, he backtracks, throws smoke and generally tries to cloud the topic until

blackie, you're a troll. You intentionally attack others and try to verbally beat them into submission. If you feel people have blind spots, perhaps you need to examine your own.