![latest[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/P0uKikS.jpg "latest[1].jpg")
What really sets you off in tabletop storytelling, /tg/?
Pic related - I can't fucking stand it when the villain is said to be some amazing military genius but actually just cheats and metagames as a cover for the GM being unable to come up with an actually coherent plan. It inevitably turns into the GM wanking about how amazing the character is when in reality his only talent is being written by the GM.
I'm not expecting GMs to become military strategists just for the sake of writing but you can at least learn enough to fake it before going on about how fucking amazing a character is at something, right?
>>46929216
OP, why are you upset about something thatisn't canon?
>>46929216
>I'm not expecting GMs to become military strategists just for the sake of writing
I don't know, that seems to be exactly what you're asking for.
>>46929428
You can read an article or two on the basics of military strategy without signing up at West Point.
>>46929216
not really tabletop but more writing in general but i really hate hyper competent villains who literally plan 1000 steps in advance and even when you stop him or her everything still goes according to their plan.
it pretty much makes the story pointless because nothing matters and it makes the villain look like a mary sue, special snowflake or whatever you want to call the writer's pet character and the writer look like that kid who makes up shit when he's playing pretend so he doesn't lose.
>>46929667
Or, that's part of the point of the story.
Not every video game, TTRPG, movie, or book you consume needs to be geared towards your self-indulgent power fantasies. Especially if you're not going to actually produce content yourself.
>>46929667
Put that way it's just the military themed expression of a common vice of poor writers the world over - of ass-pulling the twist instead of setting it up.
In this context, the "strategic genius" just has some advantage or asset that's been withheld from the players, so it comes out of nowhere.
>>46929695
Not that anon but I can understand his position
I mean, if you have a normal villain that doesn't mean you WILL succeed but there is the possibility for it. Even the best plan can fail and if it does it's of course sad. But afterwards you can say "well we tried" But if you have one of these ultra villains there isn't even a chance to win. So if there is no chance to win at all, why play then? Nothing you will do could possibly save you. With normal villains there is at least the possibility of winning.
>>46929216
Same shit goes for captain America
>>46929695
> villain literally only succeeds because of asspulls & writer fiat dictating he can never lose
>"Not everything you consume needs to be geared towards your self-indulgent power fantasies. Especially if you're not going to actually produce content yourself."
like i said that's not being a good writer (or even a good DM in the topics case) that's being the kid on the playground who makes up shit as he goes so he doesn't lose whatever game he's playing
>>46930011
>assblasted ironfag
>>46930022
I mean, give me some examples. I might only be thinking of good cases here. Like Ozymandias in Watchmen.
>>46929667
>not really tabletop but more writing in general but i really hate hyper competent villains who literally plan 1000 steps in advance and even when you stop him or her everything still goes according to their plan.
real life villians plan their steps ahead too, search for reece comitee and then new order of barbarians
INB4 wikipedia
>>46930142
Look at the OP pic.
He at one point explains how an entire battle will go because the enemy commander's race makes art in a certain way. It's the biggest mary tzu shit ever.
>>46930142
>I mean, give me some examples
zombies from world war z movies
>>46930180
>mary tzu
Okay I laughed, I'm gona have to rember that one.
>>46930193
Everything the hero does in that movie was pure luck anyway.
>>46929695
What's it like to be that far up your own ass?
>>46929428
... is this a real thing?
Please let it be a real thing.
>>46930142
the pic i posted is a pretty good example of a bad example...
the game itself has multiple choices but everything you do in the game basically amounts to nothing because he planned it all in advanced and he basically wins regardless of the ending
bad ending = killing him makes him a martyr to his cause and incites people to revolt despite the fact that he's a known terrorist confessing to the whole world that he hijacked the world's military drones to attack major cities in a global terrorist attack
good ending = he rots in a prison cell and basically gets what he want because regardless if you stop his cyberattack to escape or not it was obviously part of his plan
Player entitlement is my biggest peeve.
You're not entitled to a certain amount of wealth or XP because the book recommends it. In a module? Sure. Makes sense in order for you to not die. But in a homebrew campaign, don't you start that wealth by level shit with me or you can go find another game.
>b-but you're infringing on my player agency by not allowing me to explore my character's full potential!
Explore your asshole with a fist or something.
>>46929216
The best bait always has a grain of truth too it.
Yet no one jumped on it! Must not be a Star Wars night.
>>46929216
The "you were the bad guys ALL ALONG" twist.
I get enough of that in real life. I play tabletop to ESCAPE my existential guilt.Why, GM? Why do you keep reminding me of the reasons I beg for death?
>>46929216
For me it's getting too much in to the story. GM's make mistakes when storytelling without sometimes realizing it, because they have only themselves to consult. But when the players come they have to then adapt that. This isn't bad, people do unexpected things. The problem is when the GMs don't realize this. I have met quite a few bad GM's who are not able to compromise with that, and without even talking to the players, will just keep trying to stick to their plan.
I had a GM who once did not account for the fact that we would move on to the next area to complete our mission, instead of sticking around to level up (we actually had a sense of urgency). The solution? Make us take a quest that leads us back to the starting area and seal the exits out so that doesn't happen again. The campaign just ended there, as everyone realized that the GM wasn't going anywhere and was not going to talk with us about it.
Seriously, just talk. It breaks immersion when you talk in metagame about what you are playing, but it makes everything so much more enjoyable if everyone is on board.
>>46931568
Ugh, this kind of GM really needs to just take it to NaNoWriMo and stop using their players as ghostwriters. Your story should be guided based on the decisions the party makes.
>>46929216
I hate people who trash concepts without seeing an execution first. Any character can be made to sound like shit, what matters is how the player plays them
I hate when innocents die and no one gives a shit or reacts realistically outside of "shit, that sucks"
I hate when any villain's mental illness is portrayed as the sole reason they are evil
I hate RPGs that stat Cthulhu and/or similar monsters
I hate the idea of takebacks- if you make a mistake you have exactly three seconds to undo it, after that you live with your fuckup
>>46930960
why would it be bait the star wars EU garbage. that's a fact.
>>46929335
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
>>46930180
I thought it was an interesting take on military strategy, though obviously stupid based on how the setting pigeonholed races into being a race of X because some background or minor character was X in it once. Essentially, Thrawn was read up on the setting's rules.
Still, he was ultimately killed because he overestimated his adversaries, which led to a snowballing of stuff happening outside of his own projected outcomes.
>>46932842
> "why would it be bait the star wars EU garbage. that's a fact."
Words that will echo through the ages.
>>46932968
>Essentially, Thrawn was read up on the setting's rules.
That's exactly why he was a poor character though.
He wore the trappings of being an amazing strategist through logical deduction and observations, but Zahn - who is otherwise one of the EU's better writers - really failed to actually give him clever deductions and reasoning, instead falling into the trap of simply sharing meta-information with the character.
Also, his death came entirely because he failed to note the Noghri would rather serve "Lady Vader" than him. It's the hallmark of a villain sue when their downfall comes not due to finally being bested by the heroes' direct efforts, but due to some contrived circumstance right at the end. Honestly, the insane Jedi Master was a much cooler villain than Thrawn was. At least his character arc was consistent, smooth, and included a rise, peak, and then fall at the hands of the heroes' own efforts.
>>46932842
Thanks for humoring me, anon.
>>46932701
>Any character can be made to sound like shit.
Ding ding ding! Answers 90% of posts on the board.
>>46929667
Did someone say Tzeentch?
>ALL ACCORDING TO PLAN, NEY-HEH-HEH-HEH-HEH
>>46933074
>all stories must follow the classic hero arc with the hero defeating the villain.
Ok
>>46932842
People like you seem to always conveniently forget exactly how much content is considered EU and therefore non-canon.
What, for example, are Grand Moffs, exactly?
EU:
> "Grand Moff was the title given to the Regional Governors of Oversectors. These sectors, also called Priority Sectors, were locations that were of special interest to the Emperor... he passage of the Sector Governance Decree (19 BBY) gave Palpatine the power to carry this process forward and appoint governors-general over the Republic’s 1,024 regional sectors, establishing a new permanent administrative class answerable to him only. With the inauguration of the Empire days later, the honorary title of Moff was announced for these new regional governors. The use of this title was calculated; many peoples of the galaxy still retained a sense of identity that had been derived from the traditions of the ancient Allied Regions, and they cheered the revival of this title in a new capacity as a check to a Senate most derided as corrupt. The first of these Moffs were installed within weeks, accompanied by a full regiment (2,304 soldiers) of stormtroopers."
Nucanon:
> REEEEEEE REEEEEE REEEEE LE "RESISTANCE" REEEEEEE
>>46933112
Well for starters, it *is* a Star Wars staple. Before TFA came out a lot of fans considered the Thrawn trilogy an unofficial eps 7-9. Zahn mimics a lot of the OT's style, such as having a Star Destroyer in the opening "shot" of each book in the trilogy.
But aside from that
>WELL I'M JUST BEING DIFFERENT BRO
is no excuse for lousy writing. Having a villain start off "cool" and different in the most snowflakey manner possible (such as being the only alien Grand Admiral because he's just that good), have them prevail every single time they do anything, and then abruptly die right at the end through no direct fault of his own other than not being actually omniscient is poor writing.
>>46933184
>Well for starters, it *is* a George Lucas staple.
He doesn't write every book.
Why do you assume that intelligent, varied writing is "lousy"?
You attribute things that people enjoy to being snowflakey. Are you saying it as a compliment? Just like in RPGs, movies, games, and other popular entertainment, people love the character that has their one unique thing, Thrawn's was that he was an alien, extremely discriminated against, Grand Admiral.
see
>>46932701
>Any character can be made to sound like shit
>>46933184
>>46933074
Thrawn made several mistakes and calculations, namely his treatment of the Noghri. He did have clever deductions and reasoning, it's just that with 25 years of time between now and the books original release, his reputation has been inflated to the point that Zahn himself wrote books where characters pointed out that Thrawn wasn't actually that good.
>>46933121
And people like you seem to forget that the old EU had literal decades to build all that information - and that's when it doesn't openly contradict itself. I don't begrudge the "new" canon for having a lot less content considering it was basically made up last year.
>>46933242
Yeah, the core of Thrawn was that he was great at feigning casual omniscience, as demonstrated by the fact a bunch of desperately panicking frauds with an internet connection were able to convincingly imitate him.
>>46933242
You're not listening to his post, he clearly said that Thrawns mistreatment of the Nogrhi leading to his own death was no fault of his own.
It was a different Chiss Grand Admiral who did all that planetary poisoning with no foreshadowing whatsoever.
>>46929216
Having never actully read anything about Thrawn, what was his metagaming and cheating plans?
>>46933121
Old movies: "Well, they're somehow important in the Imperial government. They might be the kind of regional governors Tarkin mentioned. All we need for story purposes is that they are big and bad."
Legends: *seventy thousand words worth of autism denoting their precise rank and function in the imperial bureaucracy and some twenty-seven different contradictory depictions of same over the course of thirty years of random writers making them whatever they wanted them to be this week to suck more disposable income out of nerds.*
NuCanon: "They were somehow important in the Imperial government. Anyone who still claims the title is probably a real wierdo or a relatively powerful holdout."
>>46933241
Did you even read that post before replying to it? As I said, Zahn explicitly mimics the OT stylistically, so it's fair to criticize it for pulling off certain expected elements poorly.
>intelligent, varied writing
He at one point wins a battle by blatantly abusing metaknowledge, specifically how every non-human race in Star Wars is basically a one-hat race. A lot of his scenes are just Pellaeon marveling at how great he is. That's not "intelligent, varied writing." That's just lame writing.
Seriously, re-read the trilogy for yourself. I think you'll find as I did re-reading it last year that he really doesn't hold up even compared to the other characters in the trilogy. I find almost everyone else more interesting than him - C'boath, Mara Jade, Talon Karrde, even Pellaeon.
>>46933242
>>46933280
>It was a different Chiss Grand Admiral who did all that planetary poisoning with no foreshadowing whatsoever.
Which worked great until it was proven by the heroes, which Thrawn had no way of knowing about. The only reason he didn't win the final battle is the Noghri betrayed him because of something he had no way of knowing about. His only flaw was not being omniscient.
>>46933296
He abuses meta information about how the Star Wars canon works. He literally wins a battle once by studying a race's artwork and declaring that all members of that race would prefer certain types of tactics because of the way they paint paintings or some shit like that. It gets rather silly.
>>46933296
the idea was that he could read just how far someone was willing to push offensive and defensively, forming a psychological profile of them, through studying their species' art and the kind of art they collected.
you may rightly ask "hey wait wouldn't finding a way to fake being able to shoot turbolasers through shields get -anyone- to surrender, not just a bunch of people whose art you say means they don't handle surprises well?"
to which the good admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo would respond by holding a finger to his lips and winking
>>46933296
He looked at other species' artwork and deduced weaknesses in their military strategy based on that.
The one I remember above wall was when he looked at some statute (I think) and worked out that the defending species in a star system went into some kind of torpor during their night cycle. Or something like that.
It's not only ridiculous, because any species with that kind of metabolism would account for it in their defence strategies, but completely stupid because they were on freaking spaceships. There is no day/night cycle beyond what they arbitrarily decide, none of which is ever detected on Thrawn's ships.
>>46933393
again, it is worth noting that in a follow-up written years down the line, Thrawn is convincingly faked as having come back from the dead by a Royal Guardsman, a shitty Moff, and a con artist, who all manage to pull off the same "hmm. yes. your art demonstrates i should do this to counter you" thing by instead just using the equivalent of Google.
"oh hey who nearby has bought a bunch of unmarked ships in recent history"
"okay great what did Thrawn do against them in his first engagement"
"hot damn we look like geniuses now"
lolsorandumb players.
I don't mind players fluffing out their characters with small, mostly useless details. In fact, I like it. It's entertaining. Sometimes they can come up unexpectedly and we'll have a good laugh about that.
I don't mind player hijinks, to a degree. If they want to go off and do something mildly silly, then sure, why not? As long as it's entertaining.
Going off on your own to comb an island for a sex store is only mildly annoying. Listing off the various nonsensical fetish items you want while giggling like a lunatic is fairly annoying. Trying to rope the other PCs into some kind of plot to kidnap old people because "everybody expects kidnapping kids, nobody expects kidnapping the elderly" is pushing it.
Planting tacos (in hopes of growing a taco tree) outside the house of some strangers who were kind enough to take you in when almost the entire world hates your guts is where I get annoyed.
>>46933272
And you think the new canon is actually going to re-elaborate on something like the Moffs, or COMPNOR or the Imperial Guard? Do you actually think this new line of canon material is going to run for several decades? Do you actually think they'll ever actually do anything without leaning on EU material to fill the massive gaps in their worldbuilding while people shriek about how much the EU sucked?
>>46933074
I always took his miscalculation with the Noghri as him assuming his arrival would cause Leia, or whoever he thought the republic representative was, would flee before they could work their diplomacy. Instead Leia did the dumb thing and hid, risking getting caught, and as such was able to convince the Noghri to side with the Republic. Not really Thrawn thinking the Noghri were absolutely loyal and getting fucked over by "Lady Vader," but thinking Leia would do the smart thing when she instead panicked and did the dumb thing, which started the snowball of stuff working behind the scenes.
The rest of your arguments are valid, though. I might disagree with a few but I can sympathize with them and understand just where you're coming from.
Though Thrawn's best moment probably comes from treating his own crew; executing the one who failed and refused to acknowledge his failure while acknowledging the next guy who failed was up against a no-win scenario but tried something new anyways.
>>46933272
Sounds a lot like arguments about fluff in other mini games by comparing everything to 40k.
Let's say you have a human kingdom. One of the facets of this kingdom is it's human only. Other races aren't really well-received, and are never seen in their high command. This is very repeatedly pointed out in every source.
Except for one of their field marshals. He's an elf. He's the kingdom's greatest general, and so nobody gives him shit for being an elf. Why? Because he's the greatest general ever. He's such an amazing general, he can defeat pretty much anyone. He can singlehandedly turn the tide of wars due to his amazing elven genius.
Does that character sound like he's probably a mary sue? The character that breaks some established "Rule" of a setting simply due to being soooo amazing and awesome is almost always shit.
>>46933330
This is applicable to many old fandoms as well, as time and needing to push out product boosts the resolution to ridiculous and autistic levels.
>>46933520
> any character can be made to sound shit
>>46933470
>Though Thrawn's best moment probably comes from treating his own crew; executing the one who failed and refused to acknowledge his failure while acknowledging the next guy who failed was up against a no-win scenario but tried something new anyways.
That was probably my favorite moment of his. Worth noting that Lando tries the exact same trick in the "Hand of Thrawn" series and it doesn't work for this exact reason. That's a hell of a hanging gag.
>>46933467
>And you think the new canon is actually going to re-elaborate on something like the Moffs, or COMPNOR or the Imperial Guard? Do you actually think this new line of canon material is going to run for several decades? Do you actually think they'll ever actually do anything without leaning on EU material to fill the massive gaps in their worldbuilding while people shriek about how much the EU sucked?
Yes, I think the new canon is going to generate a ton of comics, novels, video games, et cetera that will slowly fill in more and more. Maybe they'll borrow from the old EU, maybe they'll make up new stuff.
>>46933569
>I have no actual response to that, so I'll just acknowledge that sounds bad as if this somehow proves something
>>46933330
I'm sorry to say that your post exceeded it's recommended length and has therefore been deemed "autistic".
Wasn't Trawn supposed to basically be a Con-Man that was building this image of being a super competent commander to unite the Imperial remnant. He was supposed to come off as an arrogant asshole because he was lying through his teeth that he was super-ultra competent. Remember when he faces an actually experienced commander (Garm) He does fairly poorly
So would anyone just appreciate reading the book for themselves instead of taking someone's word for it who half-remembers the book from having read it as a teenager?
Heir To The Empire:
http://pastebin.com/49t276TX pt 1
http://pastebin.com/aQK2Ka3S pt 2
I can post the other two books if anyone wants them.
>>46933364
But he did have reasons to know about it. The last attempt to grab Leia and the twins were done by Imperial intelligence rather than another Noghri team was because he knew something was wrong there, something tied with Khabarakh lying to him and not being quite sure why.
He took the Moghri off of most duty, but not his body guarding, probably because he felt invincible.
And it's hardly his only miscalculation: he loses at Bulbeingi because he tries to blackmail that ship thief into working for him, despite the very reason he was able to blackmail the guy in the first place was him being a hotheaded idiot, and surprise, he fucks it up and the fringe guys band together to fuck him up.
And then there were the things with the mole miners, his treatment of Mara Jade, etc. it doesn't come out of the blue.
>>46933593
Let's hope the quality picks up, then.
>>46933743
Honestly, I've only read TFA's novelization and Aftermath, and I have to say the quality of both was unexceptional ,but still leagues ahead of the horrendous, fanfiction-tier quality that was common in the old EU. Much of the old EU was mostly good for being unintentionally funny, like when the galaxy got invaded by space BDSM enthusiasts.
>>46929216
What really sets you off in tabletop storytelling, /tg/?
Pic related - I can't fucking stand it when the player claims to be some amazing roleplayer but actually just whines and metagames as a cover for the player being unable to behave like a normal human being. It inevitably turns into the player wanking about how great the character is when in reality his only talent is being run by a fucking retard.
I'm not expecting players to become fully functional human beings just for the sake of gaming but you can at least learn enough to fake it before joining a game and filling the room with the funk of your faggotry, right?
>>46933520
That's not really be a sue, but a Snowflake. Mary Sues are actually very narrowly defined in original meaning, rather than "something vaguely overpowered/immersion breaking."
And it's not always bad, but it's often done poorly. Having a setting with very strict established rules is a great way to define a setting boundary to work in. But it's often interesting to explore what happens when someone/something breaks that rule, a male progeny from an otherwise all, or nearly all, female race, for example (Paul Atreides, Ganondorf...).
Ultimately, tropes can be executed poorly often but should never be universally thrown into the trash because of what they are. The nature of literature and narrative means that the rules are going to get broken all the time. Was Thrawn a poor execution? It's debatable. The fact that he was an alien near-human in a homogenized humanocentric empire was ultimately undercut by the suspension of disbelief you needed to maintain when addressing the idea that he can devise battle strategies against specific races by looking at art. Had he just been a brilliant strategist otherwise his execution as just an overall brilliant guy worthy of his title wouldn't have been as strained.
>>46929447
Where?
>>46933905
>Had he just been a brilliant strategist otherwise his execution as just an overall brilliant guy worthy of his title wouldn't have been as strained.
I forget who put it this way first but honestly, things like technical expertise are often a good reason to violate "show, don't tell." Unless you are actually an expert in that field or you do a ton of research enough to fake being one (like Tom Clancy and The Hunt For Red October for example) it's better to just tell us they're an expert and move on with it rather than trying to show an expertise the writer himself lacks.
>>46933948
https://www.google.com/search?q=basics+of+military+strategy
>>46933952
True. When it gets down to technical stuff, sometimes it's better to tell than show, or at least give us enough show that we'll be reasonably convinced of it, otherwise don't bother. But showing when you actually can really blow your mind.
When you do a lot of telling rather than showing it can come out like... Well:
https://youtu.be/C_AmdvxbPT8
>>46933678
Dark Force Rising:
http://pastebin.com/34sUVjP2 pt1
http://pastebin.com/0yEBYVJU pt2
>>46934077
And finally, The Last Command:
http://pastebin.com/Sq4s4mYx pt1
http://pastebin.com/p621gvAb pt2
>>46933396
This.
>>46932968
>Still, he was ultimately killed because he overestimated his adversaries, which led to a snowballing of stuff happening outside of his own projected outcomes.
Also, this. Thrawn was defeated because of his arrogance. In the second book, he was all like, "Hmm, yes, they must clearly be doing this overcomplicated trick just to fool me!" which led toLeia going uncaptured and converting the Noghri to the Republic's side. And he kept Rukh around as his personal bodyguard when he was suspicious enough of the Noghri to use Imperial commandos instead. Thrawn was convinced that he had subjugated Rukh.
>>46930176
>Conspiracy Theories
Get da fudge outa ere
>>46933894
t. Berniecuck
>>46933678
>>46934077
>>46934105
You glorious bastard you. Have a spooky astromech I made as thanks.
>>46934321
Glad to know it's of use to someone. I have the Hand of Thrawn duology, too. Will upload shortly.
>>46934318
He's right, you know.
>>46934390
Specter of the Past:
http://pastebin.com/2t9020q7 pt1
http://pastebin.com/5v9uDsdE pt2
>>46934442
Vision of the Future:
http://pastebin.com/effcPjgm pt1
http://pastebin.com/RcH1Fxt3 pt2
http://pastebin.com/DxUz6mzB pt3
>>46934442
>>46934491
Thank you, my friend. I do have copies of the paperbacks somewhere around here... but finding them would be... problematic.
To quote a professor:
>There's a symmetry to my chaos, okay? My system is chronological by height.
>>46929216
But Thrawn is awesome, though...
>>46929216
Seriously. I purposefully give my villains limits.
The exception is stuff like Exalted's Deathlords, who virtually can never be competed with on a social or mental level due to Having All Charms, but only beaten physically (which is itself nearly impossible).
But I prefer arch villains of unbelievable and scary power that can still be tricked, misled, or just plain fuck up.
>>46935774
Villains who can be misled, screw up, or so on are the best because ultimately they're goddamn interactive.
If the villain is too perfect in their villainy there's not much you can do other than grind until you can kill them. I've had far more fun with more human villains with human goals like revenge or ideology which can be manipulated or lead to irrational decisions. I've come to find your typical villain who's prepared for everything and who can only be fought with direct action to be rather unimaginative in comparison.
Even a great demon warlord still has a mother to his children.
>>46933296
Someone pointed out to me that Thrawn and Pellaeon were really just Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in Star Wars. If you think about them in that way, it makes the series a little more fun.
However, I happened to like the Thrawn series. For Star Wars books, they were the cream of the crop.
>>46936698
>Not Wraith Squadron
>>46936769
I never got around to reading them. I have heard good things about them, though.Yub, yub, commander.
>>46932701
>no one gives a shit or reacts realistically outside of "shit, that sucks
have you gone outside
that is precisely how most people react
>>46933612
>pointless story to try and make well written character look bad
>point out how it's unrelated
>no, but the unrelated story makes the character look bad! you dont understand
It's fun to come into threads and see several anon dismantling one moron.
Fills me with cheer.
>>46934238
>>Conspiracy Theories
>Get da fudge outa ere
Oh yes, I forgot to tell you the size of those 2 texts and tell you to read the entire thing or not bother looking for it, instead of just looking at the title and etc and then complaining here...
