TRPG General Chat - 2016-10-21

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12:10 AM

Okay, MLP experts, help me out for a sec. I'm casually aware as my daughters watch an episode here and there. But why are they suddenly all human? (Albeit, occasionally with wings and upward-pointed forward-facing ears.)

@nitsua60 Short answer: Toys.

Good answer =)

But what's the in-universe deal?

There's a portal to a high school AU kept inside the royal palace. Every once in a while it opens. Sunset Shimmer, one of Princess Celestia's former apprentices, fled there. At some point she comes back through and takes an important magical artifact in, and that's the setup for the first Equestria Girls film.

So they transmogrify into humaniods when passing through the portal?

Yup.

Except Spike--he turns into a dog.

12:16 AM

(as is proper)

But that's not all!

But... is there something where they're still on the other side of the portal, still equine, simultaneously?

Most of the characters in the Equestria Girls films aren't humanified ponies. They're the human universe doppelgangers of the ponies.

So... like a Phaze/Proton thing?

Roughly, yes.

If a pony travels to the human world, they get humanised to look like their human counterpart on that world.

12:18 AM

My daughter liked MLP:FIM for... 6-12 months. Then it became uncool. (She liked the earlier MLP series, when she was younger)

@BESW But the Rainbow Dash humanoid we're seeing isn't Rainbow Dash having come through the portal, just the human-world's original Rainbow Dash?

@nitsua60 Right.

Whereas Twilight and Sunset are actually travellers?

If you're watching the first film, only Twilight, Sunset, and Spike are travelers.

Got it.

Amazing I couldn't get that out of a four year-old....

12:20 AM

Extra confusing: in the third and fourth films, the human Twilight is the human AU Twilight native and not the humanised pony visitor Twilight.

So there's two humanoid Twilights running around in those ones?

(This is even confusing in-universe, especially for the poor kid who dated pony visitor Twilight and then met human native Twilight later.)

@nitsua60 So far they haven't met much, if at all.

(Understandable, as anyone who's ~~scheduled two RPG groups the same night~~ dated twins knows.)

PVT doesn't really factor into the later films, and most recent one has no universe-hopping at all.

[amused]

Hey! @LibrariansTNT seasons 1&2 are streaming on @hulu now! watch, and get me and my friends some residuals!

Tweeted by NobleRorick on October 20, 2016 at 4:29 PM

Anyone seen "Horace and Pete's"? I'm wondering if, after buying episode 1 a la carte it'd be possible to buy the rest of the season at its price minus that of ep.1, or if I'l have to buy all episodes individually after doing so on the first.

12:28 AM

@BESW Season 3 is coming soon... 20 November was the last I saw for the US launch

@Adeptus [song and dance]

...How did I miss that?

user image

1 hour later…

1:52 AM

Does anyone know if our "shopping" close reason is custom/customizable?

hey there @Nitsua60 -- I don't know offhand though :/

hiya

I suspect it is, due to the link to one of our own meta questions; I guess I'm wondering how customizable it is. Think I'll have to take it to meta to really find out.

how're things going?

A little hectic. We've got two different student exchange groups coming the next two weeks (back-to-back) which I'm in charge of. And I'm behind on having everything lined up for them.

And I just learned today that my final oral examination isn't due before the end of the semester (mid-December), but rather (arbitrarily) before the first week of November's up. So that's got me scrambling a bit, too.

But the boy's strep is almost over-and-done with, so that's very good.

And I got to tour a Mormon temple yesterday; probably the only chance I'll have in my life to get inside one of those =)

Ooer.

2:01 AM

ah. got my computer parts in today

@nitsua60 and nice :)

good news -- I was able to get them put in and almost all the way together

bad news -- I need a fan extension in order to plug the front fan in

@Shalvenay =\

Here's a bunny for your troubles.

@GuidingLight :p

I think that snek is going wabbit hunting ;)

@GuidingLight That bunny is not cute!

(alright, it's kinda cute.)

afk a bit

2:45 AM

0

Q: How long has [tour] automatically linked to the tour page?

I was linking to the tour page as I usually do in Markdown (square brackets followed by parentheses) when I noticed that typing "[tour]" was linking to the tour page by itself and the link in parentheses was just being displayed as plain text. Is this a recent addition to the site, or have I ju...

discussion markdown

3:30 AM

@doppelgreener I recall there being a reskin of lasers and feelings into a d&d flavor, with the axis being swords and scrolls

@BESW I wouldn't throw out a blanket statement like that because laws can and will vary by country

also, in the last week I seem to have made nine converts to Great Ork Gods (me twice, plus eight players)

@JoelHarmon In those cases, they just have different rights to start with. They still retain whatever rights they had in that other country that they don't explicitly grant.

it varies enough from one nation to another that I wouldn't dare to put out a general statement

that is, I wouldn't bet that "They retain whatever rights they didn't explicitly grant." is true in every country; some might say that whatever you post online for free you've given up all rights to.

as per usual with this kind of question, the right answer is only trust a lawyer that you're paying

4:18 AM

I'll admit that I don't know for sure that that is the case everywhere, but I'm certain enough that I probably would bet on it.

In this case, they were talking about WotC's free PDFs that they have put online, that don't have an open license. WotC are based in USA, so they are covered by US copyright laws.

5:01 AM

@BESW I vaguely remember you once came up with a bunch of homebrewed items - one was similar to the bag of holding. It could hold any amount of items, and once a day, you could pull out an item that matched your requirements. Do you remember what it was?

2 hours later…

6:57 AM

Aug 21 '15 at 7:30, by BESW

> Bag of Holding. Your ability to carry objects is unrestricted by size, weight, or number. Once per session you can have exactly the object you need regardless of how unlikely.

7:09 AM

@JoelHarmon It's not a general statement, though. It's a pretty specific one: made in a chat by a known US citizen to a known AU citizen with a clear implicit understanding that US copyright is the assumed default unless otherwise stated.

I'm not throwing the claim out to the universe without context.

I'm responding to someone I know in a setting we're both familiar with.

@BESW Also, it applies to all Berne Convention signatory countries, so it's pretty widely applicable anyway.

Yeah, copyright is labyrinthine and idiotic, but among global market forces it's not exactly a monkeypuzzle of conflicting policies.

2 hours later…

8:57 AM

@ToshinouKyouko @Ash If either of you are around, would you mind unfreezing the dice playground?

Good morning.

Eyo.

@BESW What time are the games with VI?

@eimyr 11am my time.

Oh boy

so that's 2am at mine, eh?

weekdays or otherwise?

9:06 AM

Tuesdays.

So it would be my Mon/Tue night. I was wondering whether it's possible to join for a one off or something.

It looks... difficult.

Yeah, probably easier to join my Geek Nights.

[is composing an LCQ question for mainsite]

Geek Nights seem to happen on my weekends.

7pm my Saturday.

That's probably early your Saturday morning.

10 am my Sat so I can maybe join you tomorrow but not next week and so on

9:18 AM

As you know, one of the basic principles of Geek Night is its flexible attendance.

So you're ready to have me tomorrow?

Let me double-check that the other players would be cool with that.

HA!

wait, I expected a different answer

[wave @trogdor, @doppelgreener] If you've got any concerns, questions, or complaints about Eimyr joining us for Geek Nights on a very irregular basis, talk to me in Skype or Discord about it and we'll see how things need to resolve.

I see no issues

I would ask how often he could make it, but I assume that can't be pinned down exactly

9:22 AM

I'm gonna go with, "Irregularly enough that we will be pleasantly surprised to ever see him again."

mm

I'd say "Any time I'm either not-home on a Saturday or home but my GF is working"

which I imagine will be about every third week

...I will lug my iMac out to the living room so there's screen space for everyone, I suppose.

are we expecting,... all three of our off island members to show up at once at any point?

that might be a little tricky to work with

not necessarily insurmountable though

I have no idea what's up with Dan these days.

Last I heard he was guesting a menagerie of temporarily displaced pets, and that's all I know.

9:43 AM

@BESW I'm fine with that. :)

Toshinou Kyouko

@Miniman ur wish is my command

@ToshinouKyouko Thank you!

Also, I wish for a million more wishes.

Toshinou Kyouko

@Miniman ur wish, not wishes - you used your one chance up

Ah, well played.

Toshinou Kyouko

user image

getting back into a campaign after a hiatus tonight :)

looking forward to it

9:50 AM

yay

10:01 AM

@BESW Did you get your LVC copy or is it from the PDF?

@eimyr PDF.

Still waiting for the mail.

Been studying it in the hopes of maybe running a game tomorrow.

I could run, having previous playing experience, if im joining you.

[waffles] On the one hand, it'd be great to have someone with experience facilitate the game. On the other hand, it might be kinda bumpy to try and facilitate a brand-new telegroup?

@eimyr I've added you to the Geek Night room on Skype.

10:30 AM

I didn't say you could do that :P

10:56 AM

Just found a cool stack feature on a different Stack site: in the Japanese Language stack, answers can provide English or Japanese versions, and readers can choose which one to read (See the top right of that answer)

11:16 AM

hmm

neat

@BESW @Miniman it's still labyrinthine and idiotic enough that I wouldn't be comfortable making those assumptions without explicit qualifiers in the statement itself (if only for bystanders who lack the context you both have). Perhaps you're simply a braver man than I when it comes to this stuff.

Ahoy.

oi

@JoelHarmon I can at least confirm that in both Australia and the USA, distribution of a product for free does not equal relinquishing copyright and putting it in the public domain. All of a person's works are implicitly always copyright until such time they license it or relinquish copyright.

There are certain countries however where copyright must be explicit and isn't considered implicit -- distributing a work without proper copyright notice in those countries is the same as releasing that product into the public domain (you didn't claim any copyright over it, so you don't get any, duh!). Thankfully that's neither of these countries, but a proper copyright notice had best be included anyway.

@doppelgreener that more or less matches my understanding of things. I'm still just skittish about making such statements because I'd ask questions about what happens when you access that from, say China. If their law (hypothetically; I have no idea) says you don't retain any rights, then you may be surprised to find that your content is re-hosted in China and you have no rights at all around it.

... which is another way of phrasing what you said (stupid asynchronous communication)

11:29 AM

@JoelHarmon China, Russia, and various other parts of the Eastern world definitely have different ideas and enforcement laws around copyright. Thankfully though, almost everywhere is a Berne Convention signatory (all the blue sections), which has for the most part standardised copyright law.

Suffice to say that in a world where crossing multiple international borders is as easy as typing this sentence, I'm very hesitant to make any binding legal statements. In particular because I'm not a lawyer.

@JoelHarmon You may be interested in reading this answer for our community's generally-accepted ideas on sharing legal advice:

16

A: We are not lawyers. Why do we allow law topics?

Because, despite what some lawyers might like most of us believe, it's not actually illegal, counter to good sense, or constituting practising law without a license for creators and users of copyrighted materials to share their knowledge about copyright and how it impacts their works and uses of ...

I'll add that to the queue, thanks

Many of us are engaged in professions involving the creation and distribution of creative works, so a keen understanding of copyright law is sometimes a necessity for us. Several of us are even directly involved in RPG publishing! So we've got a lot of knowhow to share, and despite the common idea around it, it's quite reasonable to share legal knowledge.

(But then, the preview of that answer mentioned as much.)

Yeah, nobody here is making binding legal statements, nor claiming any authority. If somebody's silly enough to wander in and take our word as legal gospel despite the obvious lack of credentials, that's not my problem. I'm not going to stop the flow of a chat to adorn a simple and useful response with caveats, addendums, and edge cases on the off chance somebody down the road deliberately ignores its context.

11:47 AM

general wisdom shared in this context is that we can give general advice (because we've studied things at a general level) but anyone who foresees a necessity of legal action or proper legal protection in their future should go see a lawyer who can give them comprehensive expert advice. anyone intending to make significant earnings off their product, for instance, should invest in suitable legal protection via an IP lawyer.

i can share knowledge about cooking with friends, parents share knowledge about the laws of the road with their kids or certain other aspects of the legal system -- why do I need to be hesitant to share what I know about the copyright landscape? there's no special hands-off zone around it, it's just another part of worldly wisdom. it's a nebulous area of specialisation, but thankfully copyright is at least reasonably simplified for creators' sakes in the big picture.

"Reasonably" might be excessively charitable. [wry]

2

yes. i say that with a hefty amount of internal laughing because copyright law is so messed up.

but at a surface level it's still something we can give general advice about.

Aye.

It's complex and weird, but not generally inconsistent.

If a particular country outside the Berne Conventions thinks differently about copyright, whether you sold the thing or gave it away is really unlikely to matter.

12:18 PM

I feel like delving into the logic behind Rolemaster tables would be a viable Lovecraftian horror story.

12:32 PM

That feeling when you write an answer and Word of God appears to pat you on the back.

12:49 PM

Yeah, it was pretty much what I figured the answer would be, but it gave me enough pause that I figured it was worth a mainsite question.

Yey, rep.

Why didn't you answer yourself then?

Because I had nothing but speculation to back it up.

No experience, no sources.

I see.

Well, my answer was backed by a single game of LVC, but it was quite obvious

1 hour later…

2:03 PM

VTC unclear

2:40 PM

@Anaphory hi

Hey, and congratulations!

on what?

confused.com

oh [bleep] that's a real site

@ANaphory ?

Joshua Aslan Smith

3:05 PM

@sardathrion making me want that witcher rpg

3:21 PM

@nitsua60 i've updated it based on the poster's comments

Joshua Aslan Smith

4:03 PM

0

Q: Re-visiting whether D&DNext needs it's own seperate tag

As D&D Next and eventually 5e were coming out there was a discussion about whether or not questions from the playtest should be tagged separately than questions about the edition upon its release (How should we tag the "next" edition of D&D?). The winning answer and policy we went with was Magic...

discussion tags

@doppelgreener please feel free to edit/improve my question I dont have time right now to compile a real list of all the questions that would fall under the (this is only about the playtest and not a general question during the playtest about rules we have books for now)

0

Q: Re-visiting whether D&DNext needs it's own seperate tag

As D&D Next and eventually 5e were coming out there was a discussion about whether or not questions from the playtest should be tagged separately than questions about the edition upon its release (How should we tag the "next" edition of D&D?). The winning answer and policy we went with was Magic...

discussion tags

Joshua Aslan Smith

sigh sometimes it feels like mxy goes out of his way to create as much friction as possible

4:43 PM

@JoshuaAslanSmith yup.

7 hours later…

11:20 PM

hey there @nitsua60

@inthemanual Hi!

hey as well @inthemanual

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Oct '1621

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