TRPG General Chat

12:01 AM

@SevenSidedDie When I was a kid we'd huddle around the radio during a storm, and we avoided buying electric telephones unless they also came with a wired handset.

Now when the power goes out, people without smart phones go find a neighbour who has one, to check the news feeds.

Wesley Obenshain

So, tell me if I should just post in meta but... is it advisable/good to add seemingly relevant tags to questions? I noticed that there is a [kids]/[children] tag but the tag seems underpopulated. Meanwhile there are a number of questions that seem to be asking about children that don't contain that tag. Would it be appropriate to look for and tag such questions?

BESW

If the question clearly needs experts on gaming with children, go for it.

If the fact that kids are involved is tangential to the question actually asked, don't shoehorn the tag in.

JohnP

is it gaming with children? Or gaming children? There is a difference.

BESW

Like hustling candy from a baby?

Wesley Obenshain

(I'm asking here because it seems like 90% of Meta Questions get responded to with "this doesn't need to be on meta" for one reason or another... so clearly I don't understand what's supposed to go there XD)

(My meta questions, I mean)

JohnP

12:04 AM

"I'll flip ypu for your snickers bar, heads I win, tails you lose".

Wesley Obenshain

laughs

BESW

@WesleyObenshain Individual initiative is encouraged, so long as it doesn't go overboard.

Wesley Obenshain

The tag seems to be about gaming with children.

BESW

Flip a few tags and then wait a while.

If nobody screams, flip more.

Wesley Obenshain

@BESW Thanks. I'll go through and see what I can find assuming I don't... oh, hey! A butterfly!

JohnP

12:05 AM

Gaming with children "Ok, I see your red headed stepchild and I raise you twin girls"

BESW

Wesley Obenshain

@JohnP You are a very silly person.

JohnP

I was serious. do you know how much twins are worth on the open market these days?

Wesley Obenshain

"No, on second thought, lets not go [here]. It is a silly place." runs

BESW

Awkward.

@JohnP Given that child slavery is, yanno, a real thing, it might be in the best interests of keeping the chat a comfortable place if we avoid the poker-face approach to satirising such subjects.

JohnP

12:16 AM

bah. the world is too uptight these days, but I'll abide.

BESW

Thank you. This chat has repeatedly demonstrated a group desire to be a welcoming and safe space whenever possible, and that means if people are uncomfortable about a topic, or the way it's being handled, we either drop it or move to another room.

BESW

12:54 AM

Now here's a line: "Where would science be today, if I constantly stopped to bathe?"

doppelgreener

@BESW that is one hell of a line

i suppose if you're semi-immortal and already over two hundred years old, in the grand scheme of things waiting a few weeks between baths isn't all that long

BESW

It's Sanctuary's version of Tesla, in a post-de-vamping bad mood.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Thanks for the edit, I hadn't noticed how incautiously I'd phrased that.

doppelgreener

@Miniman no worries :)

sometimes phrasing mistakes like that are amusing :D

BESW

...does anyone here know much about Tartuffe?

JohnP

1:06 AM

Moliere, comedy, not much more. I've read it a long time ago,but...

BESW

I've suddenly gone from making a poster for King Lear to making a poster for Tartuffe.

@doppelgreener I've moved from Photoshop to Illustrator for Stellata; I need to learn the pen in Illustrator, and I think, given the ambitious full-body pose I'm going for, it'll be easier to use a simpler vector style.

doppelgreener

isn't illustrator the vector based program?

i have never attempted to use a tablet pen with that one

Shalvenay

should we have a blogoverflow.com? I can think of a few folks here who could make productive use of such a thing...

also, @waxeagle -- sorry about missing you last night

BESW

ContentCreators.SE is in Definition.

Shalvenay

@BESW -- see diy.blogoverflow.com for an example

BESW

1:20 AM

@doppelgreener Yup. Paintbrush + calligraphic brush tips seems to be the key.

doppelgreener

@Miniman do you do D&D 5e?

i was under the impression it did not have playable thri-keens, is that correct?

Magician

...or "racial classes". As opposed to "class classes" which would presumably be Shadow Monk which I'm not sure exists in 5e either.

Could be a sublcass, I guess?

Miniman

@doppelgreener Yep

doppelgreener

@Miniman this needs your attention, it's mentioning all kinds of things which i suspect don't even exist yet in 5e

Miniman

@doppelgreener Yeah, I took a look. It's just all over the place. That user seems to not understand D&D or SE.

Magician

1:25 AM

I kinda suspect it's a new player who either just took thri-kreen from the MM and wants to play that, or found a 3e savage species thri kreen write-up.

doppelgreener

i have asked a bunch of questions but without specific domain knowledge; you might want to ask similar stuff if you have better insight in those spots

@Magician yeah, or found a thri-keen something or other on dandwiki

BESW

Also: "thri-kreen."

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay no, we will not have a community blog.

22

Q: We're no longer starting new individual site Community Blogs - here's why

We've learned a lot by creating these per-site blogs for any site which asked for them. However, we at Stack Exchange have not been doing enough to make blogs work - neither for the contributors nor for the communities that are associated with them. On our network, any site will have generated s...

Miniman

Aaaaaand, then there was this.

Seriously, I'm gonna get done for serial downvoting at this rate.

Posit: It's the return of GLANTH.

doppelgreener

@Miniman absolutely definitely not him.

Shalvenay

1:48 AM

@doppelgreener -- got it -- I don't follow the main meta.se

doppelgreener

even i do and i only found out about this thing a couple of weeks ago

BESW

2:05 AM

JohnP

2:29 AM

@Miniman I DV as well, it's not so diguised rant against his GM

Shalvenay

2:39 AM

DV and flagged as unclear

doppelgreener

2:59 AM

@BESW yeeessss

[small edit to fringe line]

BESW

Would you prefer a scruffier line?

[edits out helmet]

Scruffier:

doppelgreener

what is scruffier there?

BESW

I used a rough brush instead of a calligraphic one.

doppelgreener

i am not so much a fan of the frizzy edge is all and wondered what it might look like if there wasn't an edge; the concept art features bold leaves coming down like the sides and top of a helmet for instance.

David Wilkins

Anyone on who has run HotDQ episode 1?

JohnP

3:12 AM

anyone ever used campaign cartographer or any of the attendant other programs? Dungeon designer, etc?

Miniman

@DavidWilkins Yo

Although you might be looking for someone else

David Wilkins

Specifically, I am curious about a map for an encounter

Miniman

As I recall, the author was hosting maps of some of the missing areas

David Wilkins

I am interested in the Sally Port

Miniman

theredepic.bigcartel.com/category/…

I'm not sure the Sally Port is there

You may have to just make one up

Or Google it, someone might have made their own and put it up somewhere

David Wilkins

3:21 AM

Yeah...all I got from google was fighting over what it was

I do have the keep, so I can extrapolate

Was just hoping to see how someone has done it already

JohnP

@DavidWilkins Hey, do you have a couple extra mins to look at something for me?

David Wilkins

Sure

I got ya

JohnP

Thx.

gak. boy is slobbering down my neck.

David Wilkins

Lol

First off, I love the bow for an end-game item that scales

I assume you get it around 6

JohnP

If you have opinions on the feat, send those via email please.

David Wilkins

3:33 AM

Maybe before

JohnP

Probably 4 or 5. I'm 3 now.

David Wilkins

Ok...looking at that now

Gimme a min to let Maggy out and re-read....I will email

JohnP

no worries, I've got plenty of time on that one.

David Wilkins

@JohnP you got mail

BESW

4:02 AM

Colours aren't right yet, but...

JohnP

@DavidWilkins Responded. :p

doppelgreener

4:34 AM

@BESW green face pl0x!

lookin' cool though :)

BESW

I'm a lot less fluent in Illustrator than I am in Photoshop, so colouring is... awkward.

Glad you like it.

JohnP

What a silly question that is.

@BESW I like it a lot, but I think I like the black/white line better. Something about the patterns between the brown wrapped around the limb and the leg/arg is not quite right for me.

Miniman

@JohnP It's a bit beyond the ridiculous, yeah.

JohnP

It doesn't quite make sense. The readied action takes place when he sees the goblin. The readied action should then occur before goblin attack.

And there is no mention of who is hiding for his quoted text. One would assume it's the PC, but if he's hiding, how is the goblin seeing him to attack?

Miniman

@JohnP No, you "give away your location when the attack hits or misses" rather than when it is made

JohnP

4:40 AM

@Miniman Right. You being the PC.

1. PC hides, readied action to attack on sight of goblin. 2. Goblin launches attack against...? hidden PC?

Miniman

No, the goblin is hidden, not the PC

JohnP

As soon as the PC sees the goblin, why wouldn't the readied attack take precedence?

ah, gr0k. Reread the first part aggain.

How does that get 2 upvotes already?

Miniman

I've got to admit, I'm stumped on how to write an answer to it.

JohnP

I think my comment covers it pretty clearly. :p

Miniman

"I took an arrow to the knee, can I throw my javelin before I stop being an adventurer?"

doppelgreener

4:45 AM

@JohnP people saw it and figured it was a good question

one of them was me ;)

it seems like quite the conundrum

like, the trigger occurs right in the middle of an action

different perspectives have different answers here

Magician

@BESW ...is that a sylvari?

BESW

@Magician Greener used sylvari concept art as inspiration for his tree woman PC, of whom that is an illustration.

Magician

Cool!

BESW

(Pictured here having grown an arm-mounted leaf cannon for shock and awe tactics against a cultist attack.)

JohnP

I posited an answer.

I think (and I answered this way) that no matter how you slice it, if the attack hits, the PC is taking damage. The only way to avoid it is either have the attack miss (And reveal the goblin), or be able to preclude the attack completely.

And precluding the attack isn't possible unless you can detect the goblin before it fires.

doppelgreener

4:51 AM

@Magician (so, indirectly, that is... sort of... a Sylvari)

JohnP

w00t. more rep. Vote that sucker up, peeps!

:p

Miniman

Yeah, I'm not sure there's any possibility for the PC to even damage the goblin, but you presented the possibilities well, so I upvoted.

Magician

@doppelgreener Close enough :)

JohnP

@Miniman Yeah, that's why I threw the DM houseruling out of pity in there. I think someone died and is not happy about it, hehehe.

doppelgreener

@JohnP i do not think comments like that are becoming of you. that comment just had the opposite effect on me to what you probably wanted.

@BESW Exploding leaf pod cannon.

BESW

4:56 AM

@doppelgreener I still haven't figured out what the end of it looks like.

doppelgreener

(I wonder if I phrased it such that it could've been compelled to explode...)

@BESW big round barrel-hole, leaves either side like a crab claw.

JohnP

@doppelgreener Comments like what?

My hammer comment?

And if a chat comment about a player being not happy causes you to devalue an answer, then ::shrug:: not sure what to say to that.

doppelgreener

@JohnP The one I responded to right here in chat.

Miniman

7 mins ago, by JohnP

w00t. more rep. Vote that sucker up, peeps!

doppelgreener

Yes, that one.

JohnP

5:00 AM

So...then someone needs to explain the arcane rules of chat, where longtimers are allowed to poke fun at questions and newer ppl get called out on it.

I thought it was a rather innocuous comment, that I can see a player losing a character, having a round and round discussion with the group, and taking it to RPG for a resolution.

doppelgreener

Mainly for me it is a turn-off in the form of being presumptuous that an answer is awesome and necessarily deserves upvotes. I can and will reward excellent answers, but I don't want to reward having ego around them.

That said, it is a pretty good answer, and so I will upvote it.

Miniman

@JohnP @doppelgreener wasn't objecting to "I think someone died and is not happy about it, hehehe.", he was objecting to "w00t. more rep. Vote that sucker up, peeps!"

doppelgreener

Mainly the second sentence. People come in here with "woot! sweet reps!" and so on sometimes and I don't mind that at all, rep is neat.

JohnP

Ah, ok. Again, that's just my sense of humor, which probably doesn't translate well. I still ahven't gotten the hang of linking or following links back

I'm just pleased I was able to answer before SSD or BBS got in there, they are quickdraw awesome answerers.

2

Miniman

@JohnP With 5e waxeagle is the one you have to worry about the most, I find.

JohnP

5:05 AM

@Miniman Add him to the list too. :)

@doppelgreener Apologies, I can see how it might sound. Really wasn't meant to come off that way.

Miniman

Although SSD is a bit keener on the more subjective questions

JohnP

Ok, well now that I've managed to irk most of chat at one point or another tonight, I think it's time I went to bed. :)

Miniman

@JohnP Cya!

(If I ever seemed irked, it was probably due to RL)

doppelgreener

@JohnP No worries. I figure it was possible it just came out really badly. But... it did come out really badly. :P I figured it'd be better to tell you now to avoid it becoming a repeat thing.

SevenSidedDie

5:41 AM

@Miniman It's true. Every once in a while a subjective question just grabs me and I get right into it with a passion. Sometimes I feel like (a far less smart) Sherlock going "boring. boring. bor — wait. interesting."

Not that most or even many of our questions are actually boring; they're just often already well in hand. :)

Miniman

@SevenSidedDie Yeah, I tend to answer the "boring" ones and steer clear of the "interesting" ones, as a rule. I'm far better suited to cleaning up trivial rules questions than dealing with actual problems that require any real thinking.

SevenSidedDie

@Miniman Don't sell yourself short on those though. They're often thorny, or require careful reading. I've started to counter-answer a few of those you'd answer, only to realise that you'd already done a much better reading of the relevant rules.

Miniman

@SevenSidedDie Hey, thanks!

SevenSidedDie

@Miniman Props where props belong. I am a bit jealous of your [dnd-5e] rep, but it's all well earned.

doppelgreener

@Miniman i am fond of a mix

for D&D 4e it was really satisfying digging into rules issues and sorting them out

but so is digging into social problems

Miniman

5:50 AM

@SevenSidedDie Definitely not all well earned :P It annoys the hell out of me how some crappy answers on crappy questions have garnered way more votes than answers I actually spent serious time on.

doppelgreener

and ask me about the elemental chaos and I will gush SO MUCH.

Miniman

But that's the unpredictability of the site :(

@doppelgreener I did, and you did!

doppelgreener

oh! well. good!

Miniman

@doppelgreener It was quite a while ago now, but I recall it well.

doppelgreener

i don't, but then again i barely ever remember conversations.

Miniman

5:51 AM

@doppelgreener Incidentally, have you taken a look at 5e cosmology yet?

doppelgreener

i haven't! is there anything about it in the free materials?

Miniman

@doppelgreener No, only in the DMG :(

doppelgreener

welp :'3

Miniman

Essentially, (as far as the Elemental Planes are concerned), the distinct elemental planes are back, but they blend together at the edges

doppelgreener

BESW and I might have a one-shot session of it eventually just to try it, but we've yet to see any free adventures we can play.

and i've yet to want to provide any money for it.

Miniman

5:53 AM

So there's a bit of the separate planes and the elemental chaos in there

SevenSidedDie

@Miniman Unpredictability of the site, and the difference between "you worked hard on X" and "this is useful and enlightening to me!" Votes tend to be much more for the latter.

doppelgreener

@Miniman so, back to great wheel, but with the planes not being isolated?

Miniman

@doppelgreener As far as the elemental planes are concerned, yeah

the outer planes are separate again (were they joined in 4e?)

doppelgreener

@Miniman See image.

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener It's more like, "back to the Great Wheel... but only if you want, and all the 4e planes are in there too... so here, mix and match to taste." It's all in the DM's worldbuilding hands rather than canonised, with support for all prior cosmologies.

Except the crystal spheres. I don't think it mentions those. But those are kind of Material Plane anyway. Sorta.

Miniman

5:57 AM

@doppelgreener Ah right, I think I knew that at one point (it has an upvote from me already), must've forgotten

doppelgreener

4e had no outer planes. There was "above", "below", the world's echoes, and the realm beyond the material which has driven insane most people who've had a glimpse of it.

Miniman

@doppelgreener My house?

doppelgreener

@Miniman it might be a little worse than your house, i suspect

Miniman

@doppelgreener If only you knew...

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener The Far Realms, right? Those had been hinted at before 4e but never solidly stuck into the cosmology.

Miniman

6:00 AM

Anyways, I gotta head home

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie i have mixed feelings about this.

@SevenSidedDie Yes. There's various bits and pieces, but as I understand it, it's the realm beyond the realms, beyond the stars, beyond everything.

... which is kinda fun to work with.

are we beside it? is it a parallel plane? what's that mean if it is? are we inside it? in what sense are we inside it? if we're inside it, how does that resolve with the above/below planes being infinite (as far as people attest)? how far does the far realm go? is it everywhere around us? are we a bubble inside it? is there stuff beyond it? are there other bubbles?

all of these are awesome questions that i'd love to explore.

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener I like that they put in explicit support and approval for all the different kinds of planes over the game's history. It's unfortunate that they only way they could pull it off was by declining to define any canon cosmology. On the other other hand, it follows their "the DM is the boss of the world" design.

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie that DM-is-boss design they've taken on in various ways is something i am not comfortable engaging with on many levels (and not just 'cause I'm now used to Fate)

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener Have you read any/much Lovecraft? It's very much inspired by the Cthulhu mythos. Which is, itself, full of exactly those kinds of interesting and potentially unanswerable questions. :)

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie I have read just about none, but I know a bit about it.

As far as I recall, aberrations generally come from the Far Realm, like the illithids.

And the Star Warlock, I think, is a Warlock who looked up into the stars and saw the eye of something from the Far Realm blinking back at them.

SevenSidedDie

6:06 AM

@doppelgreener Yeah. That's new in 4e or 3e (I forget, but 4e made it really explicit, if it wasn't the first).

@doppelgreener Getting powers from Things that Mortals are Not Meant To Know goes back to a little-known wizard variant in 2.5e. It's neat to see it back.

doppelgreener

(basically I have a lot of Opinions I could express about that handling of the planes but I am going to leave them bottled :P)

@SevenSidedDie Could you tell me a little about that wizard variant?

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener The planes are the subject of many holy wars, both online and in canon. ^^

@doppelgreener The Alienist, from the Player's Option: Skills & Powers book, I think. I don't remember exactly what made them mechanically different, but they got their knowledge from a being outside space and time (like the Far Realms), and risked madness using it. Much more Lovecraftian than the Star Warlock, and a lot of potential to take a campaign in chaotic directions. But super full of flavour.

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie this is more in the context of them making an edition to appease players of all other editions and get them buying books again, combined with the burden they put on the DM in rules interpretation, combined with the enormous amount of power they put on the DM, combined with the guidance they've historically provided or not provided in how to wield that power (and they appear to continue the trend in the free rules I've read), and so on.

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener The DMG is pretty good about it, this time around. It's a big kit of how to run the game, and how to brew these ingredients together.

doppelgreener

having not been able to read the proper DMG, i'll take your word for that

@SevenSidedDie that sounds pretty cool. :)

BESW

6:14 AM

My personal interpretation of the 4e Far Realm was that all the 4e planes were an encapsulated cyst in the body of the Far Realm. Their notions of physics and ethics, magic and alignment, were treated as an infection to be purged by the Far Realm's defences: madness, abominations, manipulation of fate, are the Far Realm's immune system acting to break down reality itself.

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener I have a beat-up copy of the book around somewhere. I should dig it out and take a look. Lots of neat stuff in there, precursors to the explosion of options in 3e.

doppelgreener

@BESW Yes! This is a really cool interpretation of the Far Realm and its relationship to the 4e cosmos.

@SevenSidedDie I had a few sessions of AD&D 2e a couple of years ago. I played a wizard. Had I known about the Alienist, I might have played that. :D

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener Definitely read some Lovecraft. Go to the source! :)

BESW

A little Lovecraft goes a long way, but he is the seminal authority on Going Mad From The Revelation.

The Call of Cthulhu and At the Mountains of Madness are good places to start, I think.

SevenSidedDie

Now I can't find my Player's Option books. My collection is getting out of hand. Or out of cabinet, more to the point.

@doppelgreener I'll let you know if I find it, though.

doppelgreener

6:29 AM

@SevenSidedDie [imagines this being a fantastic cabinet of holding, because the implications of even that being unable to contain it are amusing]

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener Ikea's Incredible Cabinet

'Kay, I've gotta be up early tomorrow; time to call it a night. G'night everyone!

BESW

ttfn

Hmm.

What's the most famously docile fantastical creature you can think of?

(Aside from yetis, obviously.)

doppelgreener

6:54 AM

@SevenSidedDie i'm now imagining how they'd pictorially illustrate the instruction to never put a sphere of annihilation into it.

@BESW megasloth

Megatherium

Megatherium (/mɛɡəˈθɪəriəm/ meg-ə-THEER-ee-əm from the Greek mega [μέγας], meaning "great", and therion [θηρίον], "beast") was a genus of elephant-sized ground sloths endemic to South America that lived from the late Pliocene through the end of the Pleistocene. Its size was exceeded by only a few other land mammals, including mammoths and Paraceratherium. == Discovery == The first fossil specimen of Megatherium was discovered in 1788 by Manuel Torres, on the bank of the Luján River in Argentina. The fossil was shipped to Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid the following year, where...

[thinks on actual famous fantastical creatures though]

BESW

If I say "yeti," my IRL players will collapse on the floor laughing and moaning.

But you and Dan probably won't feel "Yetis are gentle and timid creatures" is quite so painfully hilarious.

doppelgreener

yeah

i'm not coming up with much at the moment

western creatures are generally not docile

unless we're talking about specific dozy individuals in fables

BESW

7:37 AM

Then, changing tack, what is the most ridiculously hilarious fantasy creature to claim is exceptionally docile?

(Amusingly, Sanctuary has already pulled this with werewolves.)

doppelgreener

i don't think i can get a most but i'll think about it. maybe minotaurs.

BESW

7:52 AM

...gosh, this Gutenberg translation of Tartuffe is awful.

> You are extravagant, and it wounds me, I guess,
To see you sashay about dressed like a princess.

Pixie

8:04 AM

@BESW Ouch.

BESW

@Pixie The whole thing reads like that.

[desperately seeks a decent filmed version of it]

And I really really hope the theater I'm making the poster for has a better translation.

Also hi!

But also bye--must dash, errands.

ttfn

Pixie

Hi and bye!

At any rate, translations that attempt to match a rhyme scheme are rarely very good because it's really hard to simultaneously translate a text accurately with words that fit the right scheme and meter.

There's really no way to translate those two lines that way without reaching for something to toss in there that rhymes with "princess," because in French, that's "me blesse," so "wounds me." No way to wrangle that into a rhyme. But "I guess"? And sashay?

Miniman

8:21 AM

@BESW Charybdis. The thing just sits under a rock drinking all day.

Pixie

8:45 AM

I can't think of any exceptionally violent mythical creatures right now. Many are just omens of death or enchant/curse people to their doom rather than outright attacking them, so the inversion isn't that humorous. Werewolves (and other were-things) are the most obvious unbridled killers.

I just keep thinking about Pokemon, which are largely way scarier if pokedex entries are to be believed.

user61230

@BESW That's horrifying.

BESW

10:51 AM

@Emrakul Yeah, rhyme-driven translation is hard, I appreciate that, but this is a special kind of bad.

@Nick Hi!

Nick

11:15 AM

@BESW :D Hello there!

BESW

What's new?

Nick

Is this like a Dungeons & Dragon's room?

BESW

Dungeons & Dragons is one of the tabletop role-playing games that RPG.SE covers, yes.

Nick

@BESW Is chess included?

C'mon you have to admit. That is kind of role playing.

BESW

Mmm, not on topic for us. "Role-playing games" is admittedly a fuzzy thing to define, but we have a boardgames Stack and a chess Stack for things that fall closer to that end of the spectrum.

Nick

11:18 AM

@BESW Gosh, humanity is obsessed with games.

I don't play much (Yeah, this Jack's a dull boy)

Well. there's no time like now to start. Could you recommend a good one? Something popular. Something you like.

BESW

Popular and that I like? Fate Core.

Nick

@BESW Perfect.

BESW

It's free, easily adaptable, and currently very vogue so it shouldn't be too hard to find a group to play with.

Nick

Thanks :D

@BESW hey, have you ever heard of habitRPG?

BESW

I have. It's a clever gimmick, and if it works for people I can't really knock that, but I have reservations about its long-term effects on a person's habit-forming ability.

You may find this helpful in your exploration of RPGs:

65

Q: Where can I find other RPG players?

I'd really like to learn how to play pen-and-paper RPGs. I know that it takes a few players to actually sit down and play, but I'm not at all sure where to find more gamers. How do I find existing groups to join? Or, are there any resources online that may help me find existing RPG groups or pl...

new-players social

(I think games are a very valuable part of society, and play a crucial role in the advancement of the individual and of civilisation, but "gamification" isn't a universal good in all situations. I haven't looked at habitRPG closely enough to speak to its scope and application.)

Nick

11:28 AM

@BESW I almost feel like I'm talking to the pope of gaming.

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BESW

[grin] I have Opinions.

Nick

@BESW Excellent opinions.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Reading those kinda questions and answers are always funny to me. :P

They are absolutely useless in a rural place like Denmark.

Nick

Toodles, nice meeting you. This is now a room that I like :D Glad I stumbled onto it

BESW

@Nick [wave] See you around!

@William'MindWorX'Mariager yeah, Guam is kinda similar.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

11:31 AM

Yeah. Finding other players is pretty difficult when the population is really small.

And even if you find other players, next is trying to find some that share your game philosophy. Are they roleplayers or rollplayers? Strict or relaxed? etc.

BESW

Most of the RPG groups around here are D&D-only and generally have a military composition so they already have a coherent group and won't be around for too long.

I know of two groups that play 3.PF with a fairly large college contingent--one students, one professors.

I know of one group that feels RPGs peaked with AD&D.

(Some day I'm going to run that group through a Fate game, just for the shock value.)

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

I know a guy like that. He has some strong opinions about 4E considering he never tried it :P

BESW

I was that guy once.

Until I finally got plumb wore out of forcing 3.5 to fit the needs of my group as best it could (which was poorly) and tried 4e in desperation.

My only justification is that when 4e came out, I was running with people who seemed more informed than I was and I relied on their understanding of 4e's qualities instead of doing my own research.

[shame]

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Heh

I think 4e does what it does well. Combat is resolved much faster than 3e. But it doesn't give you the same freedom in roleplaying. Just my personal opinion.

BESW

4e, for me, was better for roleplaying because its non-combat mechanics were so scant. We felt freer to just freeform it.

(3.5 had a lot of non-combat mechanics, but none of them were satisfying.)

4e had a "tactical combat" agenda, and it did that really well and then got out of the way for everything else.

But then, 4e had a LOT of "not 3.5" in its favour for me by the time I tried it.

After about a year and a half in 4e--which was a lot of fun--it started to chafe again, and I realised that the problem wasn't 3.5: it was D&D.

So now I play other RPGs that don't have the qualities endemic to D&D which get in the way of my kind of gaming fun, and I have a lot more fun because I'm not having to bat those things away all the time.

Aaron

1:03 PM

Morning

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@BESW Yeah, it's always better to find a system that suits your style. Trying to adapt other systems gets tedious fast.

Me and my friends have been playing my own homebrew system for a long time. But we're trying out GURPS as it has much more content and seems similar to my homebrew. :)

David Wilkins

Gutten morgen!

good grief I need to actually get some sleep one of these nights

Joshua Aslan Smith

1:19 PM

Herro

David Wilkins

I predict unconsciousness by 2:00 PM

:P

BESW

Hah. Sleep.

Speaking of not sleeping, second pass on Stellata, head only:

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Plant head? :P

Looks cool

BESW

Doppelgreener's PC in our campaign is a plant woman.

David Wilkins

I think it is cool that you didn't go the "Poison Ivy" route

My only problem with that image is the left eye

BESW

1:34 PM

The face needs a bit of finishing.

But yeah... she's a plant that was uplifted into a sapient humanoid, not a woman who was turned part plant.

Aaron

Anyone know much about the Dark Heresy system?

David Wilkins

2:45 PM

I hate my Cargo Cult IT department

Aaron

@DavidWilkins ?

David Wilkins

Cargo Cult is a term for what native pacific islanders did in the aftermath of WWII

They saw our guys waving glowing lights and all of the sudden supplies appeared

JohnP

Good morning chaps. I hope all had a pleasant rest and are refreshed for the day?

David Wilkins

So the idea is Cargo Cult IT guys have seen something work before, even if they don't know why, that's the first thing they try when there's a problem

BESW

Melanesians, specifically. It's a charisma cult based on the notion that mimicking the trappings associated with a desired outcome will cause the outcome, a kind of misplaced cause-and-effect deal.

JohnP

2:55 PM

@DavidWilkins - Thank you for the feedback.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@DavidWilkins ah, but you see, I dont need to understand the physics of gravity to know if Throw a rock at a certain arc it will hit a target

David Wilkins

No problem John, I enjoy reading your ideas

Joshua Aslan Smith

part of the issue is that IT support departments are generalists asked to support a wide range of specialists

In my case I do IT support for a system of university libraries but am not a librarian in any way shape or form

David Wilkins

@JoshuaAslanSmith Ah, but that is an easily reproducible cause-and-effect circumstance

Joshua Aslan Smith

thus when I get support tickets for their specialty software that I never ever use I can't walk in and know how to look up a solution because I dont even know what the problem should be described as

because the specialists are never power users and definitely not IT staff they cannot describe it accurately either

David Wilkins

2:57 PM

The easiest way to know that your IT group is not a Cargo Cult IT group is if they first analyze a problem as opposed to first asking you to reboot your computer

Joshua Aslan Smith

So I sit down and I ask what the end result they want is and then spend 15 minutes relying on my machine intuition of system design to work it out. If I fail then I have some rudimentary info to then begin a targeted search with

JohnP

@JoshuaAslanSmith Mmm...you have the front line generalists, but there are always niche specialists on the back end.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@DavidWilkins except that fixes a ridiculous amount of PC issues in actuality because of how Windows is written

and when you support a lot of surface area it can save wasted time on a trip to fix a simple issue

JohnP

@JoshuaAslanSmith Absolutely true. It's a joke because it's true.

Joshua Aslan Smith

There are a lot of services and processes that can fail for any number of reasons but upon a reboot will function properly without issue.

David Wilkins

2:59 PM

There's still a difference between saying "Oh, you have a memory leak and windows is confused. Reboot" and " I dunno what's wrong, reboot."

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