Roosh Valizadeh — the pickup artist and would-be video game media mogul — is still trying to convince gamers that even though he’s not one of them he’s on their side. Earlier this week, Roosh reached out to GamerGaters with a paid advertorial in The Ralph Retort, a GamerGate-centric internet tabloid, in which he tried to explain who he was and why gamers should trust him.
But he couldn’t even make it to the end of his little spiel without insulting the dudes his new video game website Reaxxion is trying to appeal to, contrasting the escapism of video games with the difficult but necessary work he and his followers do. By which he means the hard work they do trying to convince drunk women to have sex with them.
[A]ll guys devote a certain amount of time of their day to consuming entertainment that breaks up the drudgery of life. Meeting girls, make no doubt about it, is work. Approaching women and dating them is difficult and takes a serious devotion of energy and mental resources. Playing games, on the other hand, while tactically challenging, is more relaxing for men in that it’s a method to unwind from life’s stresses.
Also, if you’re trying to pick up women, you have to remember to clean out the boogers in your nose and wipe your ass. And we know how Roosh feels about that.
OMG, a tank cozy and a tea lifestyle guide! My day has been made. 🙂
@contrapangloss, very nice! But I think troll-type 2 should have it’s own common name. Like the sealion subspecies, but distinct. Walrus? Narwhale? Or something…
@kittehserf: Oh, how I pine for the days of superdogs and extended lectures on the Spanish alphabet! He came back, once, a few months ago, but all he did was scoff once and bugger off again. I’m not sure how to find it, we talk about him plenty enough to confuse any Google search.
The tank cozy is, perhaps unsurprisingly, an anti war protest.
Those were the great trolls of legend, weren’t they, Falconer? Dr Pell with his multiple academic qualifications, his hospitals, his helicopters that flew him from Harvard to Princeton for his same-day lectures, and not least, his Uncle Monty … Owly with his alphabets, his superdogs, his frothrage at women being able to get anything by sitting crying on the kerb … Meller, who was frankly creepier than the pair of them combined … Antz, with his plans for virtual sex to combat the terror of his wife walking out on him, and dividing the US along the Mississippi (or was it the Missouri?) … ah, the trolls of today cannot touch them.
Puddleglum – couldn’t be narwhals, at least, ‘cos they are the chosen steed of Sir Catspian, after all.
Falconer,
In Jade Empire you fight the DUDE who started you on your quest. Okay, also the spirit lady, but only if you’re evil. Excuse me, I meant only if you’re a follower of “the way of the closed fist” which is totally a real philosophy and not at all a paper-thin rationalization for being a douche.
—
I’m curious: what level did your tiefling wizard start at?
@Orion — 3rd level.
We joined the campaign in progress, because it was a couple old friends of ours, the younger brother of one of those friends, and a couple of his friends … and they all made characters that appealed to them, which meant a fighter, and a thief going for assassin, and like that. The older sister, one of said friends, had a bard and was having a tough time keeping the group going just with a couple cure light wounds every day, especially when the group would make a plan and then totally ignore it, get separated in combat, and end every fight with at least one person down.
When Beloved and I joined, we made a world of difference.
@kittehserf — Kids these days don’t know how good they have it! Whippersnappers!
Just played my first round of tabletop RPG ever. After a choir concert, the game folks in the group decided we really, really needed to play a campaign of Pathfinder with all bards. They roped me in (even though I’m clueless about games) by saying that I could kill people softly with my songs.
I live for puns and music jokes. Sorry.
We bent the rules a little: it ended up being 4 level 1 bards and one level 1 Skald. The Skald was named Bard though, so we still technically had 5 bards.
Never played Pathfinder. I was surprised that it took off so well when it came out. I guess a lot of people got irritated with 4E.
Bards are great, but my friend who was playing one started to get a little frazzled. She felt like the party’s success hinged on how well she performed as the face of the group. I wish she had said something during the course of the campaign, and I could have made sure to try and take on some of those tasks.
Ooooh, I just remembered: We played a little X-Crawl, which is what if D&D was an extreme [blood]sport, and my first character was a multi-classed fighter/bard, who presented in-game as a gnome luchadore. The bard levels were there to represent his ability to work a crowd and talk smack. He got done in by a cloaker, so I replaced him with a single-classed wizard who could substitute elements and was able to cast frostball. That didn’t help when it turns out formian ant-centaurs are highly resistant to almost all elemental damage, so he got torn apart.
Still no clerics.
Falconer,
You were in a spot where level adjustment works reasonably well, then. It works super badly at the very lowest levels — if you’re level 1 when everyone else is level 2 or 3, then you’re extremely likely to just randomly die. If you play up to really high levels, your natural abilities matter less and less. A 12th level wizard really doesn’t care about having small energy resistances and the ability to cast darkness. In the middle band where you have enough numbers for your core compentencies and the special abilities are noteworthy, level adjustment can work pretty well in that the characters are cool and can be played without noticeably upsetting the game. If you crunch the numbers you’ll find that being a Tiefling is substantially worse than being a human is at any and every level, but not so much that you can’t play one.