TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

12:05 AM

lol

Kaz_king

1:25 AM

Ok so http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/3.5e_Environments
Baator is eqivlent to Hell
What is Heaven in That List?

*equivalent

Would it be Citadel of Celestis?

BESW

That list is incomplete and unreliable.

In 3.5, the hellish planes are generally concurrent with the domains of demons and devils (who dislike each other greatly, so don't share a single plane but battle over many): the Infinite Layers of the Abyss, the Grey Wastes of Hades, the Bleak Eternity of Gehenna, the Nine Hells of Baator, and the Infernal Battlefield of Acheron are where you'll find demons and/or devils most commonly.

Likewise the heavenly realms are multitudinous, divided amongst the various Good-aligned factions: the Heroic Domains of Ysgard, the Peaceable Kingdoms of Arcadia, the Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia, the Twin Paradises of Bytopia, the Blessed Fields of Elysium, the Olympian Glades of Arboria, and so forth.

The "Citadel of Celestis" looks like a fan re-working of the Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia.

Kaz_king

1:44 AM

Crap In The Campaign I am running it was gunna be Heaven Vs. Hell (Good Deities Vs. Evil Ones) But your saying they fight each other so I am lost now...

BESW

dandwiki is not a reliable source of D&D 3.5 lore information: although it builds on the (somewhat) openly available d20 System SRD, any setting-specific information legally belongs to the Wizards of the Coast. dandwiki can't rightfully reproduce much of it, so it tries to do fan-made equivalents.

The D&D cosmology is messy and doesn't map neatly to any real-world theological structure. It's a pantheon with irregularly-applied trappings of monotheism.

Bankuei

@Emrakul Well, the core mechanic is simple. Roll a bunch of D6s try to get a lot of successes. It's just that it makes up such a small amount of the whole in terms of the subsystems... on the other hand, a lot of folks also have claime "D20 is simple" for the same reasons.

Kaz_king

So how can I solve this issue?

In The Campaign I am running it was gunna be Heaven Vs. Hell (Good Deities Vs. Evil Ones) But your saying they fight each other so I am lost now on what to do...

BESW

[shrug] You can always ignore the D&D cosmology and replace it with your own. Or you can study the D&D cosmology through more reliable sources and discover how the various factions fall out and which competitions you can take advantage of for your story.

Shalvenay

o/ @Bankuei

BESW

1:59 AM

Everything I've told you is just lifted from a dozen pages of the 3.5 DMG, which has a lot more information as well. I think you'll find that it's still possible to run your concept, with some fine tuning of the participants.

BESW

2:14 AM

Today in Why Are We Making Things Up? it's explosive frozen bubbles floating in a Canadian lake.

@Mazura Hi!

Shalvenay

o/ @Mazura

user61230

@Bankuei Yeah, that's sorta what I mean. I'm starting to design an application that handles and helps with character burning and actually running/tracking things in-game.

user61230

That's why I say it's not simple at all. :P

user61230

There are so many little exceptions buried everywhere

BESW

Exception-based mechanics seemed so elegant when I first started RPGs.

user61230

2:29 AM

Hmm... how are you using exception-based mechanics?

Magician

3

bah

BESW

@Emrakul "Always use this rule." "Except when X. Or Y. Or Z. Or on alternate Tuesdays when the humidity is high."

user61230

Ahhhh, that makes sense. Yeah, Burning Wheel has a couple of those, but what I really meant is just... large decision trees.

user61230

There aren't really exceptions as much as there are an inordinate number of things to track and account for.

user61230

Though sometimes it feels like they're exceptions because they only come up once or twice...

BESW

2:42 AM

Bookkeeping!

Mazura

Hi all. Just seeing if anyone ended up here talking about that fumble table question. Sounded like that DM played too much Fallout...

user61230

@BESW Pretty much. The reason a helper is so needed is because, well... Imagine if you needed to record every time you rolled in Fate, which skill you rolled, whether you spent Fate points on that roll, and what the difficulty of the roll was. Then, after this, you need to check to see if any number of things have triggered.

user61230

They're not exceptions, but that doesn't make it any less humanly unfeasible to keep track of.

BESW

@Mazura I didn't notice much discussion on it. I mentioned a webcomic's take on fumble tables but otherwise I think the general attitude is that if fumble tables make your group happy they're great, but --like every other RPG tool-- they have no intrinsic objective value.

Magician

3:02 AM

I had a bizarrely detailed dream about a D&D-ish rule. The rule stated that a low-level spell that was cast using a higher level slot did the level difference in extra damage (if it did any damage at all). I was asked to analyse this rule, and I concluded that while there was some sense to it, most spells had in-built scaling already (you could prepare Fireball as a level 5 spell and it did extra dice of damage) and purposefully preparing a low-level spell was less efficient.

I guess the rule was meant as a consolation prize, in case you really needed a specific effect. More importantly, why did my brain decide to come up with it in the first place, and then have me criticize it?..

BESW

3:20 AM

Clearly it's a metaphor.

Shalvenay

3:31 AM

@Mazura -- I felt that that DM's fumble table was too heavy-handed in the degree of consequence it dished out, myself

@Mazura -- I've played D&D with crit fumbles, and never seen a crit fumble that extreme before

user61230

@Mazura It reminded me of the Shadowrun 5e personality traits table.

user61230

All of these are, in my opinion, horrendous, awful, and this table should never be used.

user61230

That doesn't mean someone else won't enjoy it.

Shalvenay

@Emrakul -- it's too extreme, basically

BESW

3:42 AM

Random tables of any sort need to be extra-careful about matching tools with goals.

David Wilkins

3:56 AM

2d8

Dice Service

3

2

Kaz_king

5:12 AM

What is the weakest monster in the demon group after Lemur

Shalvenay

@BESW -- I agree -- it's very easy to fubar things when the RNG gets involved

AgentPaper

Yay! Approved my first edit!

I feel so...powerful! MUAHAHAHA

BESW

Take deep breaths, it'll pass.

Iron Heart

> <Childe> Fate Core question: Could the Overcome action be reasonably replaced with Create Advantage by changing things like "overcome a lock" to "create the aspect [picked lock]," or would there be gaps in this approach?

BESW

The nature of the narrative surrounding the action gives it context. The group decides which action mechanic is appropriate based on that context.

Picking a lock could be a full-fledged conflict with attack actions inflicting stress on the lock, but that'd usually be overkill.

Using Create Advantage places narrative pressure on the unlocked door being a feature of enduring importance to the scene. Using Overcome indicates the door was an obstacle to be removed, and once unlocked it's no longer important.

Iron Heart

6:07 AM

thank you

BESW

7:08 AM

@doppelgreener Last night we mostly played Munchkin, but Raycia put together a Cthulhu Dark scenario that she's eager to run some time.

doppelgreener

Ooo. What's it about?

BESW

Spoilers!

I can say it'll start with looking for lost campers in the woods.

doppelgreener

Sounds thrilling.

BESW

Also, I think the question I want to ask for the space session is: "What is your character's Id like?"

doppelgreener

7:32 AM

oh boy i do not have an answer for that yet xD

AgentPaper

Looks like Reddit is starting up a living campaign world for DnD 5e.

BESW

8:14 AM

@doppelgreener What are Stellata's deepest fears or desires about herself, things she might not be consciously aware of but which resonate very deeply? Things she's afraid of being or doing--or things she really wants to be or do.

Shalvenay

8:31 AM

o/ @BESW

BESW

Hey.

Shalvenay

how do you deal with folks who seem to insist on taking your character's behavior personally? that's probably the ugliest part of the RP bog I'm in...

BESW

Well, first I want to look at myself and my behaviour. If I'm choosing to roleplay something connected to a real-life trauma they've experienced, for example, I need to back off.

Shalvenay

I don't think it's the example you gave (RL trauma)

BESW

And if my character's behaviour is impinging on their character's agency in the game, in most groups that's also something I need to stop.

Things like backing them into corners by limiting their options so they can't do anything the player is happy with, essentially forcing the player to have a bad time in the game. That's not good.

Shalvenay

8:37 AM

@BESW -- what do you do when a player insists on limiting their own options to the point where they can no longer deal with the situation you are presenting to them?

because that's the sense I get, 9 times out of 10

BESW

Based on our previous conversations, I'm guessing that's not exactly what's going on.

Shalvenay

you have a point...I am beginning to wonder if part of the problem is that the problematic character basically lacks any notion of context -- all the world's a battlefield to them.

BESW

Scenario: I'm playing a game where every PC's primary solution mode is beating up hordes of weak goblins who are only threatening in massive numbers.

My GM brings up a new fight, and there's just one goblin. He's making grand threats and looks fierce.

We run in to fight, and the goblin kills us all.

The GM blames me for my character's death, because I chose to fight instead of run.

Shalvenay

interestingly enough -- I feel like I have an easier time being diplomatic in D&D -- because it runs contrary to the typical expectations of that game

BESW

In the context of the game we were playing, running was not a reasonable option to consider.

@Shalvenay This is actually because of a similar framing problem, in reverse: D&D provides such unsophisticated and insufficient social mechanics that most groups rely on RP instead of mechanics for that part of the gameplay.

Shalvenay

8:44 AM

I can see where you're coming from, but I also see it as there's much less expectation that people solve problems diplomatically

BESW

Aye. It's a complicated thing that varies from group to group.

But going back to your original issue:

I don't discount that some players are selfish prima donnas who throw fits when things don't go their own way.

However, if the problem can be described as "People get upset by what I do," it's valid to first examine the "what I do" part of the situation.

(Especially since in your case we've previously established that there IS some pretty major missed messaging going on among the players.)

Shalvenay

yeah...the problem is, I go to examine what I do, and can't find a cogent, rational argument against it

BESW

And once again we return to the bit where I say that's not a problem with a gaming solution.

If you're not willing to accept peoples' priorities and values whether you understand them or not; if you think that people should change their behaviour unless they can justify it to your satisfaction; that is a challenge far beyond the scope of games.

Whatever harmony and peace humanity has ever managed to acquire is predicated on someone, somewhere saying "I don't understand why you do that, but I'm going to assume it makes sense to you."

5

Shalvenay

...you have a point there...

although I'd like to go back to the middle of this convo and bring up the concept of context again...

BESW

Also, um. Going into anything with the assumption that "Prove to me why I shouldn't" is going to make anyone happy to be around you? Might cause some problems.

A basic unit of successful social interaction is that "Because it makes me uncomfortable" is sufficient and valid reason to look for another way to behave.

(One of the problems I have historically had to deal with when engaging with someone very close to me is that he thinks he can logically explain why I shouldn't feel a certain way, and that'll make me stop feeling that way.)

But yeah, context.

Our past conversations have uncovered several major context disconnects in your gaming groups, regarding the reasons people play, the kind of goals their characters have, and the solution groups they leverage.

Shalvenay

8:59 AM

yeah

I find goal-setting for my characters particularly hard because I often give them goals that are either too trivial for them to accomplish standalone, or require them to exert an excessive amount of agency over their surroundings

BESW

Personal and eternal goals are good.

Shalvenay

the problem with the personal goals is that they don't engage other player characters

and the problem with the eternal goals is that in an environment with hard bounds on world agency, they're basically impossible

Bankuei

@Emrakul The Character burning is actually THE most complicated part of Burning Wheel. I honestly think most folks would get more from playing 3-4 sessions with pregens rather than going through the full process to start.

Shalvenay

it seems that there's a desire to make goals conflict-centric; but when I do that, it leads to all sorts of trouble because I drive the conflict far too hard

BESW

Example: My character wants to learn to control his impulsiveness and be more patient.

He has to seek out situations where his patience is tested.

This means interacting with other people, and it means having a ready-made reason to help them with their goals.

He can constantly improve, but he'll never be "done" with his goals. It requires neither trivial effort nor great world agency: just engaging with the world and advancing.

Shalvenay

9:09 AM

yeah...to formulate my problem child's goal in that way: My character wants to learn to how to behave like a well-adjusted member of society.

So, my character seeks out social situations

BESW

Also: being impulsive AND being patient can increase or reduce complications depending on the situation.

Shalvenay

which of course means interacting with other people

Bankuei

@Emrakul What I find is that the character sheets BW gives are actually LESS helpful than more helpful - the spots for "Let it Ride" or "Artha spent" next to each skill simply devour space and make it a messy hell. My easy solution is: Line paper w/the skills, the exponent, and Routine/Difficult/etc. listed. Most characters usually have actually 6-12 skills, which isn't too bad to track.

BESW

By contrast, being ill-adjusted to society will rarely reduce complications in ways that other players find empowering, and being adjusted is... frankly kinda anti-climatic for an adventure game.

Bankuei

@Emrakul OTOH, can you get your PLAYERS to go in with it, is a different question. If you have players who are not willing to track things, BW is not a good game for them.

user61230

9:18 AM

@Bankuei Mostly, the point of writing this is so that people don't have to track things, honestly. I do recognize that tracking is a critical part of the game, but there's so much tracking that it can frequently interfere with what's going on.

user61230

Character burning would be smoother if something handled skill, trait, point, etc. aggregation automagically; Fight! would be smoother if a program coordinated what rolls needed to be made for each volley, tests would be smoother if a program worried about tracking how many you've made...

user61230

And yeah, a part of it is just how the information is presented.

kviiri

10:46 AM

I find people are quite poor at tracking stuff in real life, I don't want to impose that on them in an RPG myself!

BESW

> Player characters might be able to win a fight with the Big Boss villain, but they should never be able to win an argument with them. Enforce this rule for all it's worth. (source)

kviiri

Which reminds me, Big Boss' adventures will be continuing soon...ish.

BESW

@trogdor @doppelgreener No pressure, but when you've figured out your PC's Id monster, let me know so I can work it into the prep.

trogdor

mk

I am trying to think of it

but part of the issue is that he already looks like a monster himself

so I feel like I have to be a little creative

BESW

What are Doctor Light's deepest fears or desires about himself, things he might not be consciously aware of but which resonate very deeply? Things he's afraid of being or doing--or things he really wants to be or do.

They can be things which, in moderation, are fine and healthy and even good, so long as they're things which resonate with him on a gut level.

doppelgreener

10:58 AM

@BESW I'll think out loud for a bit: Stellata probably does not fear turning back into a plant, or turning bestial, because she enjoys the bestial side of herself and is confident she won't, say, lose herself to it.

She does, however, fear the possibility that she may one day become regarded as one of the weird things that needs to be Dealt With, by Amaterasu or someone else.

BESW

That sounds like fear of Living In An Evil World.

doppelgreener

People are after all very good at killing plant matter.

BESW

I could work with that very well.

doppelgreener

Probably another fear she has is that people around her could die from something she can do nothing about. Monsters? OK, cool, she can fight those off. Zombie outbreak? Not so cool, probably outright terrifying if and when someone among those she knows gets infected and it spreads. Horrible disease or mental illness goes in there too.

BESW

...the terrifying plant woman who can spontaneously grow grenade launchers is afraid of zombies. I love it.

doppelgreener

11:03 AM

The zombies are fine, what the zombies will do to people is terrifying.

(By extension, the zombies are probably not fine.)

BESW

So--Evil Threatening Others and Living In An Evil World.

doppelgreener

She probably also has a fear of being alone, or an outcast. It's good that Doctor Light is also a plant person, because even if he's a completely different kind, then at least Stellata is not the one and only of her kind alive.

The socialisation she gets with other people is important in grounding her and giving her a place in the world.

kviiri

Mankind's fear, hate, other chaotic thoughts create a psychic force the sensitive can tap for knowledge, but at the same time these thoughts manifest into an incorporeal, unknowable, almost Lovecraftian demon that severely debilitates poor minds that are exposed to its existence. Does this sound sensible?

doppelgreener

This would make zombies scary too: what if everyone dies?

BESW

@kviiri Why does chaos and negative emotion create a font of knowledge?

@doppelgreener So, all of this really boils down to different scenarios that touch on one core fear: being abandoned.

doppelgreener

11:08 AM

@BESW Yeah, good thinking.

I was about to say - I think a major grounding element of Stellata's identity is that she is someone who can do good for others, and things which would make her unable to do that is incredibly threatening to her. She was brought into this world and found meaning in keeping Doctor Light grounded and safe and alive, and then started doing the same for others.

kviiri

@BESW I was thinking of something Lovecraftish where knowledge almost invariably equals lunacy :P

If you know a deep truth, you either fear it or hate it. And most of the time wish you didn't know it in the first place.

doppelgreener

A certain degree of knowledge in the right ways begins to beget lunacy, but a lot of people would find knowledge gives them sane grounding - even the buddhists, who through enlightenment obtain peace and serenity.

Miniman

@BESW I just read that [holyshitblownaway]

doppelgreener

@kviiri You may be better served by a concept of a mental aether to which many kinds of thoughts contribute, but certain types of thoughts beget a certain type of being.

kviiri

Hm, my players have already tapped this psychic force to obtain more neutral knowledge too (such as the location of a city)

So maybe it could be so that all thoughts contribute, but the evil, fearful, loathful thoughts are much more resonant and potent.

BESW

11:12 AM

Yeah, consider the font a kind of collective psychic reservoir which is coloured or polluted by the nature of the thoughts which feed into it.

kviiri

From a mechanical POV this is the "psychic maelstrom" in AW. (which I'm of course free to ignore as the GM!)

doppelgreener

There's also the Warp in Warhammer, to which all thinking, feeling beings are connected (I think), and certain kinds of feelings and thoughts culminate in various entities being born.

BESW

> "...every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead."

kviiri

The mechanical constraints for it are pretty non-existent, the game explicitly lets the GM barf forth the necessary Apocalyptica about the workings of this force. However, the upgraded move promises the players, on an extra hard hit (9 or more on 2d6 with maximum bonuses) a glimpse of what's beyond the maelstrom. And I find the idea of an imaginary, but still alarmingly real Hate-God living there to be intriguing.

With the aftermath of the Apocalypse, the fear and hatred is enough to create a miserable little spirit of its own, small but capable of propagating its own growth by influencing more suffering.

BESW

Were it me, I'd either have a single demon stalking the font, spawned and powered by [negative stuff]--or a swarm of demons, each spawned by a single [negative thing].

Either way, I'd keep a possible development option that the swarm coalesces into a single demon, or the demon shatters into a swarm.

kviiri

11:19 AM

The swarm option also crossed my mind. I thought I'd keep the demon behind the scenes as something of a grey eminence until the players actually go out of their way to research it, but in that event I'll spout out some lore that allows the players to destroy or contain it in some way.

BESW

A single demon gives you something to interact with socially, a swarm gives you something more everpresent.

kviiri

But a single demon feels more powerful and unique than a swarm.

BESW

Aye.

It all depends on the kind of nemesis you want it to be.

kviiri

I'm going to use the L-word again but I guess the negotiation detail could be solved by making it Lovecraftian enough! :>

It's so far beyond the player characters that they simply can't reach its mind. Not even for a casual chat, let alone serious negotiation.

But then again, I could have both

By using your shattering idea.

BESW

That's what it's there for!

kviiri

11:24 AM

Or perhaps it's something that seems like a swarm, but is actually one. Like multiple cults and sects with their own deities, who all turn out to be the same god of hate.

doppelgreener

there's a lot of build-up options beyond them just seeing one demon. if they glimpse just one, and it's just one in a swarm, these demons are A Big Deal at least for now and you can work out if there's more with them later depending on what they talk about.

BESW

That's a common tactic for horror monsters.

doppelgreener

you also have the option of a swarm plus one big bad, or a swarm plus a small number of big bads who may be working together or contesting each other or really not care that much about each other.

BESW

Attack the Block comes to mind.

doppelgreener

oh yeah.

the thing here is desensitization, and avoiding it.

BESW

11:25 AM

And the transition from Alien to Aliens.

Aliens is actually a good example: in Alien there was a single terrifying xenomorph. A second film had to escalate or the audience would be desensitised to the monster.

doppelgreener

JAWS is a great example of this. you don't see any blood in the first attack, then there's loads of blood in the end. in the first attack someone just disappears cleanly, then it begins getting more confronting. you don't see the shark in the beginning, you begin to see hints of the shark, then you see the shark. starting with the shark and the blood would have two problems: (a) people shut down before you have your chance to wiggle into their psyche, and (b) there's no room to escalate.

BESW

So Aliens introduced swarms of xenomorphs... and then a queen, so there would still be a single "face" to the enemy.

kviiri

For build-up, I'll go with various cultists name-dropping the demon(s). Their names popping up all over the place might prompt the players to research.

BESW

@doppelgreener JAWS is also a good example of horror by proxy. For most of the film the shark was represented by something else, sometimes something as non-threatening as a pier.

In Alien and Aliens, the xenomorph is often proxied by a beeping dot.

kviiri

Again, this is a bit Lovecrafty. You go from "what the heck is this Cul-hul-too thing you're all talking about" to actually realizing its power.

doppelgreener

11:28 AM

trust that we are both familiar with lovecraftian themes

(just in case you're saying that out of concern we may not be)

kviiri

I kinda assumed you were :>

doppelgreener

\o/

user61230

I just spent an hour and a half writing code for one paragraph of the Burning Wheel rulebook. I am flustrated.

kviiri

I've got Lovecraft in my mind a lot recently. Me and a group of friends have picked up Arkham Horror for the joy of losing as a team (as opposed to Pandemic where we actually won quite often)

BESW

I can't recommend Nightmares of Mine enough.

kviiri

11:31 AM

I find Arkham Horror to be quite frustrating as a game though, not because it's difficult to win but because it's hard to play for the wrong reasons.

doppelgreener

@Emrakul [backrub]

kviiri

@BESW It's that book on GMing a horror RPG, right? I think a friend of mine has a copy.

BESW

Yeah.

user61230

[heavy sigh] Thanks, @doppelgreener >_>

user61230

I might just put this section of the book in comments in code, because it's hilariously specific.

BESW

11:33 AM

@Emrakul You should totally do House of Leaves style commentary as you go.

user61230

@BESW NO.

user61230

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

user61230

AGJOIRSHBLIHJSGLIGVJHB

kviiri

Have you guys played Final Fantasy X?

doppelgreener

I have played a bunch of it and I think I saw the ending

BESW

11:34 AM

A friend tried to get me to play the one where everyone looked like plastic and there was way too much waterball.

kviiri

Me too. Me and my brothers had a shared save, we grinded (or is it 'ground'?) a lot and just button mashed through the bosses.

user61230

@BESW sorry, impulse text reaction >_>

user61230

it's late

kviiri

@BESW Sounds like X alright (or maybe X-2).

trogdor

@BESW ugh yeah that

I still remember hating that they inserted that game into a game I otherwise liked

kviiri

11:37 AM

I find myself thinking back to FFX a lot when I'm doing this sort of worldbuilding thing. There's a monster that's not really evil but has a destructive impulse it can't control, driven by something that used to be a human but has lost all traces of its former self to the point where it isn't even evil anymore. It just is...

trogdor

it basically cut you out of the combat bits

user61230

@doppelgreener If you're curious, this is the paragraph I'm referring to. So. Many. Little. Exceptions.

kviiri

My little brother actually liked the blitzball minigame. A lot. There wasn't a lot of mandatory blitzball but he kept on playing until we got all the special unlocks.

And beyond.

trogdor

it should have just been made as a separate game, the waterball stuff wasn't horrible, it just wasn't what I signed up for when playing Final Fantasy

kviiri

To be honest I don't really like the gameplay of Final Fantasy in general. The story was decent though.

There were a lot of things that seemed arbitrary at first but made a lot of sense in the end.

trogdor

11:40 AM

mm

I did personally like it

but to be fair, I probably would not play it anymore

especially since each consecutive Final Fantasy in the "series" as it were seems to be getting worse and worse

my brother, sister, and I made the mistake of picking up X2,.... then we played 12

I did actually like 12, to be honest

kviiri

I only played X-2 after X. I respect their ambition to make a more open-structured JRPG but it didn't really work too well with me.

trogdor

might have had a lot to do with the way you could basically program your party to do stuff automatically

I did enjoy that 12 had something that no game I had played before it had

user61230

anyway, sorry about that >_> I'm going to head to sleep

BESW

ttfn

kviiri

X-2 is also quite mish-mashy in terms of emotion. It's all rainbows, bare skin and grrrrrl powaaaah except when it's about depressed brothers-in-arms, faction wars and doomsday weapons.

doppelgreener

11:47 AM

@Emrakul that doesn't look too bad. (famous last words just before programming it.)

trogdor

I didn't personally like X2

never even bothered to finish it

to be fair, it was enough like X that I was willing to give it a shot for a bit

BESW

Hmm. 12 Monkeys is implying an interesting time travel conceit that I haven't seen much: Time travel has no ontological inertia, and energy is actively and constantly required to keep something in a time other than its own.

kviiri

Me neither. The concept of having most of the content as optional was great but the implementation fell short.

trogdor

and I kinda liked the robot boss you could fight repeatedly to make it stronger

BESW

This... actually helps San Dimas Time make sense.

doppelgreener

11:53 AM

@BESW I need to see that movie again

BESW

@doppelgreener There's a TV show now.

user61230

@doppelgreener Most of my frustration came from the fact I'd forgotten this paragraph existed when I started writing the LP computation engine?

doppelgreener

@BESW say what?

BESW

12 Monkeys (TV series)

12 Monkeys is an American television series on Syfy created by Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett. It is a science fiction mystery drama based on the 1995 film of the same name, directed by Terry Gilliam, which itself was based on Chris Marker's 1962 short film La Jetée. The series premiered on January 16, 2015. == Premise == Time traveler James Cole (Aaron Stanford) travels from the year 2043 to the present day to stop the release of a deadly virus by the enigmatic organization known as "Army of the Twelve Monkeys". That virus, in Cole's original timeline, caused the death of 93.6% of the world...

doppelgreener

@Emrakul whoops

that'd do it

@BESW here's hoping it does the job well, this is a movie i would really not like a TV show undermining

BESW

11:55 AM

So far it seems to be doing okay.

doppelgreener

good!

user61230

not a simple change; each of the eight parameters has something different happen to it over each repetition.

user61230

verifying each of them... hour and a half, boom

BESW

The biggest change seems to be that the Army of the 12 Monkeys actually IS connected to deliberately releasing the plague, in ways which are not yet clear, but frankly given how disjointed and ambiguous the film is, that's not necessarily a change but just a revelation. (And it's still not clear exactly what they want anyway.)

user61230

anyway, it is now 4 AM, and I do not know how it came to be 4 AM, so I shall sleep

user61230

11:57 AM

Goodnight!

doppelgreener

Goodnight!

For anyone wondering: 12 Monkeys is an absolutely brilliant movie and you should probably see it if you like... movies.

(i would be a bit more specific but i very much need to sleep)

trogdor

lol

never heard of it

BESW

It's based on the 1962 short La Jetée, and is about Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt having way too much fun being in a Terry Gilliam story.

trogdor

but I shall see if I can track it down and give it a shot

doppelgreener

(and that's more or less what i'd say anyway, i'd just narrow it down slightly compared to movies like Austin Powers)

ok! sleep time for me too now. goodnight!

BESW

12:06 PM

(I actually did not find it quite as engaging as Greener seems to, but it was definitely a good film.)

I generally don't find Gilliam films as personally engaging as many people seem to, but I do love watching Bruce Willis have fun in a film.

trogdor

12:23 PM

welp, I will turn in as well

I will probably be waking up relatively early tomorrow

BESW

I'm teaching MS Word tomorrow.

One of the students is blind, apparently. I have no idea how this will change the class.

David Wilkins

1:42 PM

My only qualm with the movie 12 monkeys is the soundtrack. It is done entirely in accordion

kviiri

Accordions are awesome

Rohan

2:37 PM

Hi guys, quick question. I'm in a DND session and my group just defeated a flameskull. They're resting so the flameskull will revive during their short rest back to full HP. Will it get its spell slots back

?, this is the fifth edition btw

Miniman

2:51 PM

@Rohan Nope, an hour isn't long enough. It taes it 8 hours just like anyone else.

Rohan

3:03 PM

Alright, thank you

One more question, does the party gain exp from a rejuvenated enemy?

JohnP

3:37 PM

@Rohan - Technically I suppose, but I would not as a DM award full XP. It's not at full strength, and it isn't really a separate encounter. Also, I might punish them for sleeping where an enemy will rejuvenate. :p

Kaz_king

D&D 3.5 What is the Weakest Demon/Devil following Lemur and Derro?

Rohan

@JohnP Thank you, Il just award 20% of normal. Seems like a fair amount

Shalvenay

4:29 PM

o/ @mxyzplk

mxyzplk

4:47 PM

@Shalvenay yes?

Shalvenay

5:30 PM

how's it going over there?

Joshua Aslan Smith

@Mala let me say Id like to help you, but my prerogatives as a user require me to VTC your question

Mala

No worries

but

It seems it should be possible to reformulate so it is better, so if you can help me achieve this that would be the best of outcomes.

@JoshuaAslanSmith forgot to tag you

Bankuei

5:59 PM

@Emrakul Chargen is the biggest hurdle, second is the fact that in Fight!, there's like maybe 5 options people use all the time, and the rest are secondary options people sometimes use - and but it's presented as this massive menu of 20-odd choices that make people go "Oh fuck this". Personally, if I don't want to do the full burn rules for characters, I just tell everyone "Your attributes are 4, pick a skill at 5, three skills at 4, and three skills at 3, gimme your Beliefs, let's play."

user61230

6:38 PM

@Bankuei I mean... you're actually just describing problems this thing is trying to fix?

doppelgreener

10:53 PM

Atomic Robo's webcomic has hit 1 million page views. From their blog post beneath that comic: "One million. You did that in just ten days. Oh wait the site was dead for three days while we scrambled to upgrade everything because you guys killed the original server."

Bankuei

11:31 PM

@Emrakul Yeah, I get it. I hope it goes well! The LPS are... a lot to deal with. You will probably find coding "-wife" rules to be a pain - getting part of the husband's skill and Resources means it's going to have to look up a sub-LP to the actual wife LP as well...

user61230

11:51 PM

@Bankuei Thanks! I hope so too [grin]. Honestly, for LPs with weird rules like that, I'm just going to leave it blank and say "no, you fill it in."

user61230

The only requirement/exception for LPs I'm actually going to track programmatically are prerequisites for lifepaths. For everything else, it'll just show up in an "other rules/exceptions" doodad.

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