The TRULY Lazy Person's Guide to a 15 Runer

[rebthor]

I'll tell you later, it's too long to type.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

TL;DR author is a loonie why you so type lengthy

[twelwe]

thats fine no one would read it anyway

[Mankeli]

My guide:
1) don't read guides
2) win

[Frelus]

My guide:
1) don't read guides
2) win

I failed step 1 :/

[rebthor]

The game.

Spoiler: show

You just lost.

[Amnesiac]

The TRULY Lazy Person's Guide to a 15 Runer:

Spoiler: show

It doesn't exist

[Mankeli]

My guide:
1) don't read guides
2) win

I failed step 1 :/

Actually nobody should read my guide because they would lose.

[One-Eyed Jack]

The advice was bad but some of you guys are really mean sometimes

[Amnesiac]

You are mean for pointing out that is was bad. Let's just believe it's an innocent silly joke.

[and into]

The advice was bad but some of you guys are really mean sometimes

Eh, I got in the first post, which had a bunch of criticism listed out, but I wrote in a very neutral tone, and I even *asked* the guy to give some more advice (or just relate his experience) a bit more because I haven't run too many Gargoyles yet. Maybe I should have softened the criticism a bit cause it was like, the guy's first post, but as you say, it was pretty bad advice. The guy got defensive and made a lame dick joke. I got the feeling he was a bit upset that people weren't really impressed or something, and that's not really why you should be posting a guide in Advice, you should be doing it to be helpful and/or to get (constructive) criticism, which is in fact what he got (along with a few digs, but that was hardly a one-way street).

That thread should probably be moved into CYC, as well, actually.

EDIT: Probably not moved to CYC, on second thought, just checked it and saw a bunch of numbers Siegurt and others posted, looks serious.

[Lafaros]

EDIT: Probably not moved to CYC, on second thought, just checked it and saw a bunch of numbers Siegurt and others posted, looks serious.

What? That's just more reason it should be moved here. This is where all the highly intellectual discussion of the Tavern actually takes place!

[One-Eyed Jack]

I didn't have a specific person in mind and I am not going to defend anyone but I've noticed an occasional trend of people being unkind to other people who have less knowledge of the game (and/or are devs)

I mean it's not hard to phrase advice in nonconfrontational ways (for example crate does this very well) compared to something like "you'd have to be insane to do X"

And you can always make fun of them on irc later anyway

[moop]

What a strange, negative and toxic place. I guess I rocked some boat or rained on some parade here. I don't have a lot invested in this - gave DCSS a try a few years ago and thought it was a fun way to procrastinate (and was refreshingly tough). Finally overcame a few challenges in the game and decided it might be fun to share the experience and engage the community.

Some of these old gaming communities are a refuge of fairly well adjusted people, but you throw something pretty light up on here and it's like you're on the dregs of a YouTube comments section all of a sudden. You'd think with the recent resurgence in the popularity of roguelikes that these communities would have better ambassadors - in an actual attempt to get people involved and maybe grow an audience, or at least keep it vibrant.

Good natured digs are great... but in following the convention of the board and trying to have an open mind (and looking forward to some positive discussions) -- it just seemed like a lot of responses were pithy or pedantic ramblings that were strangely mean spirited... over an obviously light, tongue-in-cheek, thematically consistent (in its refusal to be overly slavish to Crawl orthodoxy) primer on how you can have a fun run with a certain class. I never professed to be an ultimate authority and was receptive to correction (at the same time standing by my own experiences... as I've won the silly thing in myriad fashion and can at least claim a methodology that succeeded). Not sure how that invited so much vitriol... but hey, welcome to the internet, where every fat guy behind his computer screen can be Judge Posner all of a sudden. I can take the bloody thing down as it seems to get a lot of Swamp Sloggers, Abyssal Accountants, Shoals Sycophants, and Quidditch Internationals pretty riled up.

And most of all - that was a perfectly serviceable dick joke given the setup. You can't leave a softball like that hanging over the plate.

[and into]

If you just want to share the experience with the community, the CIP and YAVP forum is for that. I think you posted in Dungeon Crawl Advice without realizing that it is somewhat more serious than what you were looking for.

Whether or not Advice takes itself too seriously, though, I will say in our defense that no one on the thread made any of the sort of personal attacks you've made repeatedly. Even if you've intended your insults "in good fun," no one has called you a sociopath, a fat guy behind a computer screen, etc. etc., they just criticized (reasonably so in most, if not all cases) the advice you gave. Some more harshly than others, but it was directed at the advice, not at you. Which you didn't handle well at all and are now calling the forums "toxic" when you talked more trash than everyone on the other thread combined. So try to have a little perspective about that.

I really didn't mean for my post to sound mean-spirited, it certainly wasn't written in a mean spirit. If you post in DC Advice, even if you are intending to give advice, you're going to also *receive* a lot of advice, including unsolicited and perhaps unwanted advice. Probably also there will be a bunch of digressions into number-crunching and a lot of other stuff. Even if you know what you are talking about and are a good enough player to have won Crawl before, this is gonna happen. Nonetheless, even in the short time I've been on the forums, the fact that other forums posters have challenged things that I took for granted has made me a more circumspect and better, overall, player. (I've been playing for longer than my time registered on the forums would imply, but I'm by no means excellent at Crawl, and even those who are great players can always improve further.)

A lot of people like posting numbers and whatnot, the same way that sports fans talk about people's batting stats: It is just people geeking out a bit about something they like, you don't need to know those numbers or slavishly optimize your play to suit them, even the people posting those numbers don't do that. Most of the squabbling about this or that is given (and usually taken) in that spirit.

And fine, for the record, the dick joke wasn't that bad.

[DracheReborn]

@moop, it's too bad your first few posts in Tavern got such a negative reaction.

It's true IMO that the DCSS community can be a bit hostile to newcomers. It reminds me a lot of a scientific community - there's an accepted orthodoxy of the "best" way of doing things, and it takes a lot of objective data to change minds. Hence the heavy emphasis on numbers and code. Btw, you don't know true vitriol until you've presented a paper on an obscure topic at some niche research conference

But if you've followed the board for a long time as you say, you must have realized that the Advice section is pretty serious. If you've posted in CYC or YAVP, you wouldn't have gotten a hostile reaction. Whatever your intentions, your post was taken seriously and criticized as such.

While it's true that a lot of the responses you got were mean-spirited, it doesn't mean that they were wrong. You would almost certainly die less often if you follow that advice. Now, "die less often" is part of the orthodoxy around here that maybe isn't a goal for you. That's perfectly fine as well, but keep that in mind when considering the reactions you get.

[Galefury]

And most of all - that was a perfectly serviceable dick joke given the setup. You can't leave a softball like that hanging over the plate.

I think I missed it.

[and into]

I think I missed it.

That's what she said.

[Confidence Interval]

I think I missed it.

That's what she said.

She didn't miss much.

[and into]

I think I missed it.

That's what she said.

She didn't miss much.

Which is why it was easy for the Missus to miss.

[rebthor]

Your own fault for leaving your soft balls over the plate.

[Amnesiac]

Yep, welcome to the internet. But think if people really need your advice or you are doing this for satisfying your desire to be popular