TRPG General Chat

Examples from my flag list:

BTW, on comment-deletion: mods are a lot less likely to burn comments that have been upvoted. Keep this in mind and generally try not to upvote comments that have limited shelf lives.

12:49 AM

This issue came up for me yesterday, hooray for independently reaching the same conclusion as BESW! (Although my custom comment was rather long and unwieldy.)

@Phil I like custom comment flagging comments. Otherwise it's a brief look to see if any should be spared from the purging flames, or just a quick delete if I'm really busy.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton [takes notes]

Also, I finally went and learned AnyDice! I dunno why I'm excited about this, maybe it's just cos I haven't learned a new programming language in a while.

@Miniman Woo, someone else who can help me when I want to do something that isn't desperately simple.

But yes, a comment with "entire thread is obsolete" is excellent, a comment with "answer in comments" is really really really excellent, a comment of "well delete everything but this other comment" is great, a flag of "delete everything but this comment" is really annying and I had to deal with all of those yesterday

12:54 AM

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I'm not picking up on the nuance between the last two.

@BESW Well what I did was pretty simple, so don't assume I'm instantly a guru. But having an actual problem to work on is the best way to learn, so ask me any time!

If you flag a comment and say "delete all but this one" there's an annoying number of clicks involved

it's very easy for us to "purge all" and delete individuals. But "purge all, but undelete this one" requires ... more clicking

Is it better to individually flag all the others, in that case?

Or just accept the collateral?

@BESW Well, few comments are really worth saving, and if there's a significantly upvoted one, I may preserve it like a special snowflake from the mouth of my flamethrower.

Optimal case is flag the most egregious and just say "whole thread is obsolete" If there's one that is indeed worth keeping, note it in the description rather than using it as the flag.

oooh, I see the distinction now.

12:57 AM

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I love the mental image this presents.

cause that breaks moderator mental flow of "wait, I shouldn't delete this comment flagged for deletion?"

Flagging the comment you don't want deleted, with a custom line about burning everything else, is... silly.

@BESW exaclty

That's downright counterintuitive! The Fairy Nuff is aghast.

And now back to work.

12:59 AM

(Having been killed by the ridiculous premise, and then resurrected by its perversity, she now stalks the Stack looking for stragglers to eat.)

Dyndrilliac

1:57 AM

Would someone mind checking my AnyDice script? I'm trying to compare the average damage of all 2-handed/heavy weapons in 5E with GWF and an assumed STR modifier of +3. anydice.com/program/4a65

Maul/Greatsword = 2d6, Glaive/Pike = 1d10, and Greataxe = 1d12

2:10 AM

This is getting ridiculous rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/50320/…

@MrJinPengyou I'm assuming his previous, ironically slightly less ridiculous, question was deleted?

Yep

@MrJinPengyou I can't even work out what to call my close vote.

Me neither

I flagged it

I've put a VTC in as opinion-based, since the only answer to the question is the opinion of every person who upvoted that comment.

Oop, never mind, he self-deleted.

2:16 AM

Deleted

Either this is asking for an explanation on the tropes of a paladin or this is like "Why are people making fun of me".

I think it's a blend of the two

The original question was definitely a "Why are people making fun of me", not sure what to call that crazy replacement question.

"Would everyone who upvoted this comment please leave an answer saying why they upvoted? Yes, I'm aware that that's 25 answers."

And I think TV tropes explains it really well (see the fourth paragraph)

@MrJinPengyou I can't look at TVTropes at work. The potential consequences are too staggering to even contemplate.

LOLL I understand

I'm a generous God (actually I'm Canadian)

Tabletop Games have a special relationship with the paladin, particularly Dungeons & Dragons, which codified many paladin tropes. Tabletop paladins are stereotypically exceptionally prone to being Lawful Stupid or Stupid Good, and Jerkass DMs are extremely fond of encouraging this by setting up Sadistic Choices invoking To Be Lawful or Good. As noted above, the correct answer is "good", but don't expect that to make much difference against determined GMs.

Ideally a Paladin's fall from grace should be a terrible punishment for choosing to perform either a genuinely Disorderly or Evil act, not the result of forcing a sadistic choice.

2:31 AM

Ah, TVTropes. One of the few embodiments of the wiki that actually...you know...work.

Yep. Surprisingly reliable

Q: Isn't the tag game-recommendation purely subjective?

3:48 AM

This is the half-formed answer I was composing earlier, pre-deletion:

> It's not the general concept of paladin which is considered ridiculous --though a paladin who *must* succeed on his quests is not going to work well in RPG with randomised failure mechanics. The big issue is the expression of the paladin through systems like D&D 3.5, where his goodness is not rewarded but his weaknesses are brutally punished.

The paladin's code mechanics create a complicated and messy relationship with the rest of the party and the kind of story the group can tell. It's touched on in Rich Burlew's essay [*Making the Tough Decisions*](http://www.giantitp.com/articles/tll3…

The Oracle

4:04 AM

0

I'm a new user and I have been taking time to read through some rules, set up my account, and just generally get a feel for the sight(I like it a lot btw) So I just got trough reading the Good Subjective, Bad Subjective, and I couldn't help put feel the tag game-recommendation is purely subjectiv...

4:14 AM

@BESW And it doesn't help that the reward for being this paragon of virtue is... underwhelming when compared to a cleric which gets all of the upsides and none of the downsides...

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Except the mount, which is the only reason I would ever consider playing as a Paladin.

Microscope (microscope) is amazing and cool. I played my first game lastnight, not everyone liked it as much as me (mostly my friend who is always hard to please), but i thought it was great

Yeah, it's a weird little game but it does what it wants to do really well.

(But when I tried using it to do something even slightly different, it kinda fell apart.)

tell more?

A: I want to run an RPG inspired by Monáe's 'Metropolis' concept series

4

If I understand this correctly, Metropolis is really a collection of ideas and concepts rather than a formal setting. In that case, I'll suggest a system that might just be perfect for your game: Microscope. Microscope is a GM-less game where all players collaborate to create and flesh out the h...

4:26 AM

We came to the agreement your aerage game of microscrope would not make something suitable for a setting.

for play in a normal RPG

I've heard/read about people using it for that successfully: to generate a setting and history which the players then use a different RPG system to play inside. It works if you're used to playing in pre-established settings like Faerun, I think.

But using it to flesh out an existing setting, however vaguely defined at the start, failed miserably.

50,000 sacred objects discovered beneath the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent https://plus.google.com/107641644844416388566/posts/2LsEz2My1zJ http://t.co/9gwGiAKiil

Tweeted by EarthPyramid on October 30, 2014 at 10:43 PM

I think it would depend alot on players.
I think alot of out weirdness came from one player trying initially to get everyone to build the setting he wanted.
So he tried to force that in the theme and then with the palette.
I think we'll do better next time.

Oh, yeah, that can be a problem.

The whole point of Microscope, I think, is that anyone can change the frame of anyone else's contribution without changing the contribution itself, leading to a bizarre and totally unpredictable combination of giving everyone equally untouchable authority and equally inviolable freedom.

For example, our last game was about a technovirus that nearly wiped out humanity.

But you are ment to negotiate the Big Picture and the Start/End period

So no negotiations after that point (which I made really clear), was good.

We established that there was a war at the beginning of the timeline, and somewhere toward the middle there were dragons.

It was only later that we discovered dragons were the winners of that war, and it was the dragons who accidentally unleashed the technovirus.

Prior to that, we'd assumed dragons were the result of the technovirus mutating animals, but it'd never been made part of the history.

4:35 AM

Also had a pallete issue, (which I might make into a full SE question).
So we settled towards post appollipice (thought it took alot of arguing to determine how far teck had once gone).
Where that player had banned electronics, and he wanted there to have never been electronics.
Where as another player had banned the "spread of technolgy" that is, while people may invent things, they will never go far and become common place. And he mean he didn't want technology to be spread in game, but it could have happened before. Ie he didn't want "spread of technology" to be an element of the story w…

Later on we also discovered that the threat to humanity was not being killed by the technovirus, but being immune to it while the rest of the creatures in the world were getting beefed up into powerful technomutants, and humanity finally succumbing to the virus is what let them survive.

@Oxinabox Hmm. Communication issues and maybe insufficient negotiation?

probably, as i said will do better next time.

Cool thing happen.

@BESW yeah I remember that... I had to go back in my head and re envision all the characters we role played as dragons instead of humans.

@Oxinabox Definitely a game that takes a little adjusting to, I think.

Out end period was "The last human dies",
and it quickly gained a event that "The last demon weeps over the body of the last human." (demons were on the palette)

Was very satisfying

to me at least

4:40 AM

Cool.

Those were both Light Cards.

(which was some initial sillyness but turned out to be meaning full in the end, as it tiurned out the last human died, because he was prevviously the first/only Human King of the demons, and to be the king of demons was eternal suffering. He died when it was removed returning him to human form.)

---
Also i think out focuses were a bit lame, again will do better next time.
It was like:
"Humans interacting with demons"
"Demons-demon politics"
"Gaia rises"
"The world without humans"
"The last demon"

Next time i want to use a focus like "Romance"

Good focuses, I've found, are broad in scope but specific in theme.

So take "humans interacting with demons," and give it a theme like "Humans making bargains with demons" or "Humans being friends with demons" or "Humans being tricked by demons."

How long ti doing a full roun take for you?

We have 5 players and in the nght we got 1 turns lens each, so io think once we got the setup phase done each round took a average of abot an hour.

Depends on how familiar everyone is with the rules--ten minutes to half an hour, I think, with... I think it was four players.

But if you play out scenes, obviously that adds a lot of time.

5:59 AM

...12 flags in 20 minutes. I should take a break so the mods don't get overrun.

(Every so often I go into my comment history to delete my obsolete comments, and I always run into a lot of other stuff that needs flagging too.)

yesterday, by Brian Ballsun-Stanton

to those members of chat on a flagging campaign on answers in comments and generally shitty comments in general: thanks!

@BESW Cute.

Time for me to head home, I think. Have a good weekend, RPG.SE!

Votes to re-open since I removed the "and also tangential stuff!" bit.

And you too, @BESW.

6:07 AM

@Miniman ttfn

@BESW I was looking at that, not convinced it's sufficiently specific even with the edit.

Q: How do I make a touch attack?

Experience-based makes it a lot better.

It's looking for accounts of actual attempts to mechanically homebrew a relatively specific effect within a particular system.

[shrug] I'll let the votes sort it out.

doppelgreener

8:25 AM

oh hey.

example of the checkmark being totally detached from votes: my own question.

3

I'm a newbie to Pathfinder and the general D&D 3.x area, having only played a small number of sessions ever. Following a recent question I dove into the touch attack rules, since I realised I didn't know how they worked, having never seen them in use. What I have learned is: I have absolutely no ...

pathfinder spells

(this just hit 1k views apparently)

apparently tridus's answer is a bit more popular, but kryan's is the one that made it click for me

@doppelgreener A thousand views before it hits four upvotes. Nice.

to be fair

the same person viewing it keeps counting

that being said, I don't think 4 people visited a thousand times between them

doppelgreener

yeah XD

when i google 'how do touch attacks work' it is result #4

Dyndrilliac

8:48 AM

So the damage calculations for the Greatsword Bladelock are ridiculous if you exploit Devil's Sight + Darkness. It makes Power Attack from 3.X look like a love tap.

If you trigger the bonus attack and hit with all three, that's 95 damage from just your Pact Weapon.

Hey there.

Dyndrilliac

That's seven rounds to drop a Tarrasque, just to put that in perspective.

Only 11 hours to go on Minister of Chance. Not looking good.

@BESW You've run a cyberpunkish game recently, haven't you?

[thinks]

I've run Lady Blackbird, and Doctor Who, and I'm gearing up for Atomic Robo.

8:59 AM

A couple of months ago, I think.

I'm trying to get a sense of the current cyberpunk RPG marketplace.

The Storium gearpunk/Atlantis game?

oooh, Aeon Wave! I totally blanked on that.

Yeah, that's the one.

I was trying to remember hte name, and my mind kept spitting out Eclipse Phase.

aeonwave.com

Yeah, I found it.

And the Kickstarter page might help get an idea about its popularity?

9:06 AM

Found that as well. :)

My googles are too slow! [weeps]

If you need testimonials, I can provide those, as can Trogdor.

How did you like it, then? Did it feel cyberpunkish on one hand, but not dated?

Well, I don't have a lot of experience with cyberpunkery, but it did feel very high-tech super-spy. There wasn't a lot of sense that the PCs were underdogs, but the story was very much "taking out a corrupt corporate/political hybrid power."

Ok.

I might make an appearance on a friend's podcast as the resident cyberpunk expert. :)

Ooer.

As for being dated... I'm not sure I have enough exposure to cyberpunk to tell.

9:18 AM

Did it feel futuristic today?

Regardless of "original" cyberpunk.

A lot of the original cyberpunk technology feels very dated when looking back. The various matrix/cyberspace systems don't fit what we have today in terms of computer networks, and in general, the way we use computers.

There was plenty of remote-access wireless nanotech tomfoolery, for sure. Everything was small and unplugged, it was set in an Asian city in a world ruled by corporate superpowers, and "seeing the system" was not a default mode of play.

Instead there were a lot of cyborg integration powers, both raw physical enhancements and using available wireless information to guide physical action.

(Like being able to hack security cameras to take impossible blind around-the-corner shots.)

Cyberspace was a thing, but it was not how you hack computer systems: it was more of a background "some people do this" element.

That's nice, because it harks back to the original-original meaning of cybernetics.

(One available Trouble aspect is that you've plugged into cyberspace so much that you're no longer sure when you're in it. If you don't take a character like that who does cyberspace, you'll probably never encounter it.)

The final confrontation of the plot is about judging humanity and making a risky choice: keep things the way they are (having seen "the way things are" isn't too great, and might wipe out humanity in a couple generations), or change things in a way which might produce utopia, or might kill everyone right now.

It's a genuinely good moral dilemma, and hinges on whether the PCs feel humanity can or should be responsible for itself, or if we need an authority keeping us in line.

Nice. It fits in well with some cyberpunkish themes, but the good ones that ones that don't feel as dated.

(Having just spent the scenario seeing humanity be untrustworthy, selfish, and generally jerkfaces, all of my groups so far have made the choice to change things: utopia or bust!)

Oh, and the adventure material tells the GM that it's totally up to the GM to decide what scenario actually plays out.

In both cases I've left it relatively open-ended, concluding with the PCs leaving the corporate building as the world is being reshaped around them.... cut to black.

Because I think the adventure makes it clear that it's the choice which matters, not the fallout.

The only reason to explore the fallout is if the group wants to continue adventuring in the same world, taking the one-shot out into a full campaign.

(Which the adventure material supports, with a lot of sketchier supplemental setting elements.)

9:41 AM

So, a kickstarter just got $18,000 to produce small plastic rectangles shaped like phones.

And yet Minister of Chance is tanking. [falls to knees in the mud, raises hands up to the boom camera, screams wordlessly as the camera pulls away in the rain]

kickstarter.com/projects/nophone-usa/…

doppelgreener

10:14 AM

@BESW I'm disappointed by that too T_T

11:51 AM

I watched the trailer for minister of chance

it wasn't very good

hence I didn't back

(but then I've never heard of the show before so had no loyalty incoming)

Yar. It's got great actors and a good story, which can cover for a multitude of sins. But honestly, there are some actors who I'm happy to watch in awful films if they're having fun, and several of them are on this project.

12:14 PM

I dunno, I just watched the teaser/trailer thing and it all just seemed so old and tired...no fresh ideas, no real sense of...well anything really

it was all just a bit bland

@waxeagle that 4e question, two fighter(weaponmaster) PCs sounds so bad

generic bad guy in red cloak. generic put-upon king. generic threat to wipe you all out...etc

Yeah... the trailer was not good at representing the story. Of course, that's not unusual for trailers.

12:34 PM

unfortunate when they trying to sell the project though

Aye.

I do have a certain dislike for trailers

Often enough, they convince me not to watch a movie that it turns out I would have liked

we saw a trailer for a comedy film back when I was at uni - it was funny so next week we rented that film (a group of us got together and watched a couple of films each week)

it was a terrible terrible film

every single funny bit was in the trailer

Because they show only the stupid **** that they think will attract the most people, along with stuff that isn't even actually gonna be in the movie

or even, as above, everything worth seeing is literally in the trailer and the rest is the opposite of worth your time

General rule of comedy trailers is the best bits usually end up in the trailer

wax eagle

3:34 PM

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah, they're going to trip all over each other.

good call on suggesting a Slayer.

yeah writing up an answer

stalled because I thought Great Weapon prowess was better than it is

I thought it was on the level of Githrazei blade master

GWP only gives 2/3/4 damage per tier and proficency with two handed simple and martial weapons

vs GBM which gives that same damage but proficency with things like a fullblade baked in

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah, it's blah

DPR is kind of a funky goal for a weaponmaster. It's doable, but they can do so many better things

exactly thats why I was like... slayer

Smurfton

5:16 PM

I thought I'd answered in comments only one time, but I just found ~5 times that happened. (Now deleted) :(

mxyzplk

6:43 PM

Happy Halloween!

toplessrobot.com/2014/10/…

@mxyzplk same to you

user61230

9:00 PM

@BESW The hunt begins for background music to the game...

user61230

9:18 PM

I'm looking at Apocalypse Now music, as well as some of the Myst and Riven soundtracks.

user61230

They have appropriately vaguely-disturbing tracks that... are slightly unsettling.

user61230

(The soundtrack to Riven is actually why I haven't played that game through yet.)

user61230

(It's beautiful, but it's so deeply and vaguely unsettling. Unconsciously, I keep trying to flee it, and going from room to room; it's one of the most unnerving things I've ever experienced.)

user61230

(Besides some LARP stuff.)

user61230

Gods this music is going to be wonderful. If you're curious, I can upload the music I'm going to use.

user61230

9:25 PM

I think I'm going to cycle it, but in particular, there are a couple Myst/Riven songs I want to use for the discovery process.

Tashio

9:52 PM

Background music to game with, check out Midnight Syndicate. They wrote some of the D&D music for various games and movies + other creepy movies

@Emrakul I believe I've used the soundtrack from Alien for Horror of Fang Rock.

I've also used Riven, Batman vs Dracula, and Dr. Dissonance, for similar games.

Also the music from Tomb of the Cybermen.

Kickstarters: Paranoia and The Black Glove.

2

(Minister of Chance is over, no need to keep it up there.)

user61230

11:20 PM

@BESW Great suggestions! :D

user61230

I'm probably just going to stick with what I have so far?

user61230

It might get irritating, though, since there aren't that many songs on the list, and it probably won't last all that long.

I used the entire Riven soundtrack (minus linking noise), and that worked out because it's music intended to loop.

The other stuff needs a bit more curating (a couple Alien tracks just don't work at all in loop).

user61230

I'm avoiding listening to the rest of the Riven soundtrack for now, since I want to discover it in-game.

user61230

Makes it hard to pick out the right songs, but I'll live.