TRPG General Chat

12:00 AM

I suppose "interstellar" can also mean places not in space, but those are the tiny minority of places it can mean or imply

BESW

12:14 AM

...nope, update did not fix.

BESW

12:28 AM

@doppelgreener I've been thinking about asking the group to consider taking over more of the GMing responsibilities. I've got a lot that I'd like to run, but I'm also sorta burning out, and I'd like to learn more about RPGs on the other side of the table.

trogdor

I would certainly like to run some things myself

BESW

(And I'm quite happy handing over most of my campaign ideas to others to adapt and run as they see fit, too.)

trogdor

though the thing I have the most work/thought in is sorta meant for our ARRPG setting (after we have had time to rework what we want that setting to be like)

doppelgreener

@trogdor thankfully a lot of that funding is nowadays coming from private corporations, many of which are now considering it their responsibility to turn to sustainable power. google, for example.

there's also researchers figuring out how to handle creating steady power from solar power plants, especially during the night, such as a recent development to create an organic liquid flow battery. picture enormous vats of the stuff beside a solar power plant, storing energy that will charge during the day and emit its energy into the power grid at night.

trogdor

@doppelgreener yeah, and that is great, I just mean that a lot of the "uncool" looking bits of clean power are a product of a loooot of time before this relative time period with people feeling like they would lose too much money on research for something we "already have working technology for" and such

BESW

12:34 AM

**[Timely RPGery](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nKltjD1HJ954pS3QZZL-E_ckNaKEeedxMKn7XwdFiio/edit?usp=sharing "Click for full source doc; please suggest items to pin!"):**
[Hatmas!](http://meta.rpg.stackexchange.com/q/6615/4398 "The Hattening Approaches. Dec 19");
[Star Trek](http://www.modiphius.com/star-trek.html "Star Trek Adventures RPG 'living playtest' signup");
[UScons](http://casualgamerevolution.com/blog/2016/01/2016-tabletop-gaming-conventions-a-comprehensive-list "List of RPG conventions in the US.");

trogdor

and the fact that the research and the tech for cleaner energy has had any kind of problem just gave more ammunition to those with vested interests in not pursuing alternate energy sources

I am not trying to preach doom and gloom on it, but just trying to point out that issues up to this point, and possibly for a little while after now, can largely be chalked up to some pretty particular snowball effects

doppelgreener

@trogdor yeah that's true. and there's a lot of people who feel green power isn't viable because it isn't reliably available. (but there's things like marine current power that is reliably available, and then beside that enter enormous storage vats.)

Trish

@nitsua60 Evaluation 1 is here.... i.imgur.com/Wyio4xL.png

doppelgreener

@trogdor i agree with that

trogdor

@doppelgreener yeah, and reliability of availability would be much further advanced by now if people in, say the 70's for example, had been able to pursue the research for it more freely

BESW

12:37 AM

Mmm, part of sustainability in almost any context is decentralisation: there's not one clean energy solution for the whole world, each local area will be looking at multiple ways of generating its own power.

doppelgreener

in good news, Google's announced they'll be powered entirely by renewable energy in 2017

2

trogdor

(mostly due to funding or lobbyism or whatnot, not literal like, laws against it,... in most cases at least)

doppelgreener

> “We are convinced this is good for business, this is not about greenwashing," [Google European head of energy Marc] Oman told the Guardian. "This is about locking in prices for us in the long term. Increasingly, renewable energy is the lowest cost option. Our founders are convinced climate change is a real, immediate threat, so we have to do our part.”

trogdor

@BESW that is also fair, I bet most people don't fully understand that it isn't just like, solar, wind, and geothermal

maybe not most, but enough people might not know there are more than those three options

BESW

And then there's stuff like the bâdgir which doubles as a windcatcher and solar chimney depending on the weather, making a passive architectural feature effectively replace energy-consuming climate control in a building.

trogdor

12:45 AM

that is pretty dang neat

doppelgreener

yeah it is! brisbane could do with designs like this -- a lot of architecture in brisbane doesn't take into account climate needs

Trish

is it possible to add spreadsheets to answers?

doppelgreener

@Trish you could link to a Google Sheet, or use a code box, or MathJax table syntax (which is only good for tables of limited width)

BESW

@doppelgreener A lot of "modern" building concepts don't take the location into account in any practical "how can we make this work better?" sort of way. Guam homes often aren't even aligned with the trade winds.

There are a few pre-WWII houses still standing, and they're amazingly comfortable because they were built so their immediate environment is an advantage rather than an obstacle.

trogdor

yeah, houses here are seemingly just plonked down wherever it seems convenient to put em at the time

Adeptus

12:53 AM

@BESW bâdgir bâdgir bâdgir bâdgir...

BESW

Old ifit-wood houses with great big wind-aligned windows, shade plants on the sunny sides, raised floors with openings for air to move underneath, peaked roofs with high vents....

@trogdor You may also find yakhchāls pretty cool. Literally. They use bâdgir and qanat (underground channels for water and air) technology to make and store ice. The really great ones can potentially freeze water in the heat of summer.

5

trogdor

neat

doppelgreener

@BESW wow, that's impressive

BESW

Those of us who use "modern" climate control often forget just how much impact a building's structure and situational awareness can have on its comfort.

doppelgreener

@BESW I attended a series of talks by various architects not long ago where they spoke about their work and philosophies. One of them was particularly interested in the ways wind could be conducted for natural air conditioning, and was once hired to design a whole new student boarding complex at a university.

trogdor

1:05 AM

@BESW I am guilty of this to some degree certainly

doppelgreener

In the designs he introduced small vents throughout the walls that would feed small channels of air into the rooms and then back out. He thought it would work pretty well to cut air conditioning costs, but he wasn't sure how well. About a year after it was constructed, he got a call from the university: "Where's the other electricity meter?" "Sorry?" "We've found one electricity meter, but it's recording less than half the energy usage of our other buildings. Where did you put the other one?"

BESW

Heh, nice.

doppelgreener

As you can probably guess: there was no second meter. He was quite happy with his accomplishment with that one.

BESW

Another simple trick is to just have a narrow space beneath the floor which air flows through. You can get the air flowing with whatever you want, maybe small wind chimneys.

Guamanian houses don't have cellars or basements, but all the old ones had crawlspaces.

trogdor

@doppelgreener that is pretty hilarious

BESW

1:13 AM

The original indigenous design elevated the crawlspace high enough to walk beneath comfortably, effectively turning the ground beneath the house into a porch space for storage and socialisation.

(And keeping out a lot of unwanted animals.)

doppelgreener

@BESW upright or hunched over?

BESW

@doppelgreener Upright if possible, depending on resources, status, and so forth.

Adeptus

@BESW This sounds similar to many older Queensland houses. They have the ground level as a carport or porch, with the house itself above. Apart from the cooling benefits, they're good in flood-prone areas.

BESW

It's hard to say exactly what they were like pre-contact.

trogdor

yeah, plus, even during contact, the Spanish were more interested in what they could get out of the island than in recording unadulterated unbiased truths about architecture and culture of "savages"

BESW

1:20 AM

We've found foundation stones that indicate it ranged from two or three feet high to... really really big.

Trish

@doppelgreener ok... used an image for now...

BESW

Indigenous houses were built of wood and woven mats, set on top of two rows of stone pillars with hemispherical capstones. The pillar-and-capstone structure is called a latte stone, and they seem to have been from two or three feet up to fifteen feet tall.

House of Taga

The House of Taga (Chamoru: Guma Taga) is an archeological site located near San Jose Village, on the island of Tinian, United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, in the Marianas Archipelago. The site is the location of a series of prehistoric latte stone pillars which were quarried about 4,000 feet (1,200 m) south of the site, only one of which is left standing erect due to past earthquakes. The name is derived from a mythological chief named Taga, who is said to have erected the pillars as a foundation for his own house. == The structures == The prehistoric latte stone pillars...

doppelgreener

1:36 AM

@BESW i'm re-evaluating the mental imagery attached to the thing you told me where people are careful if they come across abandoned sites with stones resting on each other.

i was just thinking, like, knee-level.

maybe hip level, piles of decently heavy stones making a stout support pillar.

BESW

Two feet is about the smallest I've ever seen that was a genuine Old Chamorro latte stone.

And yeah, it's always a tall stone with a wide stone on top.

trogdor

@doppelgreener yeah, it isn't just little rocks XD

BESW

The smallest ones aren't usually so carefully squared and rounded as the Taga House ones.

doppelgreener

@BESW I would be very supportive of this, BTW. I have ideas I'd like to do, so does Dan, and I don't want to see you suffer burnout.

BESW

If the capstones have fallen off, you might not recognise a latte site when you first stumble onto it.

doppelgreener

1:38 AM

I imagine so might you, @trogdor, and I know Ben has that zombie game.

BESW

I'd appreciate that. I don't mean to stop GMing entirely, but it would be nice to not be the majority GM for some time.

trogdor

@doppelgreener yeah, I mentioned earlier that I would certainly like to run some games

the main obstacle being that I have no current systems to put my ideas into

I don't know what to use for the next campaign I run, which I assume will possibly happen before the ARRPG one I already have ideas for and a small amount of work in

BESW

We can probably find a system for you.

trogdor

I don't doubt it

part of it is that I don't just want to look at our list and say "ok we use this now" without the input of the group

otherwise it probably wouldn't even be a real problem

BESW

Most of the group is pretty laid-back about systems, what do you have in mind?

doppelgreener

1:45 AM

@trogdor if you told me "i want to run this story" and it seemed interesting i'd be on board; if you told me "we need to use this system to do it" i'd say sure

trogdor

@BESW well, that is part of the problem, chicken and egg as it were. I like to form my ideas after I already know what system we are using and what kind of world it is set in

@doppelgreener that is great, but it doesn't address that same thing for literally everyone who could be involved

oh,... I do have a rough idea I never used

I don't know what exact system it would be in but it would probably involve space travel and aliens in it

either that or an alien ship that crashed to Earth

either or both could work

BESW

Mystery, horror, comedy, adventure....?

trogdor

Mystery

doppelgreener

we do have three systems we're currently familiar with that do mystery: fate, cthulhu dark, *gumshoe

trogdor

exploring the idea of unknown things, but not in a necessarily horrific way

@doppelgreener which are those?

doppelgreener

1:54 AM

just added those to the message :D

trogdor

cuthulu dark,... could work for it? but this idea isn't supposed to be about horror

I have ideas for working horror into it, but I don't know if I want or need those

BESW

Also InSpectres (but that one has the players decide what's going on) and Monster of the Week.

trogdor

I could do it, and I am not averse to it, but I don't know if the story is improved by it or not

Trish

Call of Cthulhu could work too, but it is a rather clumsy system... however it feels somewhat natural with the story vibe that is intended there...

BESW

Yeah, almost everywhere Call of Cthulhu would work, there's another system that'd do better: in this case Trail of Cthulhu, which is a Gumshoe game.

Trish

1:57 AM

(plus... I somehow like d100...

BESW

But there are other Gumshoe games which'd probably be better for not fronting the horror.

trogdor

@BESW this could work too, though I have no experience in it

not that I feel averse to gaining experience in it either

doppelgreener

@trogdor oh, sure, i'm just picking out our mystery systems regardless of their appropriateness (which is open to be examined).

Trish

@BESW you mean... the system of Old Man Henderson's victory against a GOO?!

trogdor

@doppelgreener oh, yeah I get that, it isn't a criticism of your choices, I am aware that you were just giving me the list of pre-existing systems that technically qualify

Trish

1:59 AM

@trogdor FATE always works... (though FATE is not meant to be played as a really large campaign I was told)

trogdor

@Trish this idea is still only at the stage where it is a one shot

I am not averse to expanding it to a campaign, but I also certainly don't have any investment in doing so either

SevenSidedDie

Roll for Shoes? :D

@Trish Did they say why? Fate is as well suited to longer campaigns as most systems, as far as I've seen.

trogdor

@SevenSidedDie I think that might be a different "fate" (I could be wrong though, it's happened before)

Trish

for oneshots the system should be easy and fast... how long does Chargen in gumshoe take? For FATE... 20 minutes for the whole group.

@SevenSidedDie they said, the (seeming?) lack of character improvement made it not well for trying to play longer than a short campaign.

trogdor

perhaps, indeed, I am wrong, sounds kinda like the same fate

SevenSidedDie

2:06 AM

@Trish For some people a sacred cow they require from their chosen system, but it's not technically necessary to have character numerical progress to have a long-running campaign. :)

BESW

[amused] Fate does have numerical progression and incremental mechanical additions.

Trish

@SevenSidedDie not numerical... at all. one player I talked to was never able to add or change anything on his sheet.

BESW

That's... not Fate.

In Fate you can change one thing on your character sheet every session.

And you get to add things at the end of story lines.

SevenSidedDie

There are some varieties of Fate that don't feature upward-moving numbers or any kind of mechanical character advancement. (Diaspora is one I can think of.) They are still quite able to support long-running campaigns.

nitsua60

@BESW Maybe the player had to leave early every session? =)

Trish

2:09 AM

@BESW unless you miss the end of story lines due to not being there for exams and having to leave earlier due to busses.

SevenSidedDie

(Diaspora especially. It's literally built to be Fate's answer to Traveller, also a game with little to no numerical advancement yet long-term campaigns.)

doppelgreener

@Trish not sure what version of fate you were using, but fate core provides minor milestones which ideally occur at the end of most sessions (and the accelerated text is the same)

Trish

@doppelgreener I guess it was accelerated, but that player, as said, had to leave early due to busses - so he likely was never able to benefit from milestones in 3 months or so of weekly or biweekly gaming.

doppelgreener

i would consider that poor and unfair treatment by the group

Trish

it is.

doppelgreener

2:15 AM

and nonrepresentative of how fate is intended to be played

SevenSidedDie

It's certainly not how Fate Accelerated characters are supposed to work. There's no reason those milestones couldn't have been processed between sessions or at the beginning of the next session, just like if you get enough XP to level up at the end of a D&D session but you don't have time to do it until next time or between sessions.

Adeptus

Yeah. Crap treatment by the group. system-agnostic

doppelgreener

Our group has specifically used Fate for a large long term campaign that has spanned over a couple of years, in which we've revised our characters in small or large ways. One quite enormous example is that I had a character who went through three wholly different rewrites.

nitsua60

If y'all's don't mind pivoting to a DW question, I was interested in the conversation troggy/ssd/et al. were having yesterday. Picking up the example of "there's no first aid move", say you're GM and don't just want to say 'yes, you splinted it great,' and you don't really want to zoom in on that triviality, what's the recourse?

Just make the call on-the-fly "yeah, you splint it inexpertly. It's going to hurt like hell any time they move. And a -1 to each of strength and con until its properly dealt with."

("weak" and "sick" conditions, properly speaking.)

Trish

still, that is something that happened in our college club. Same GM also gave out half-boiled information about the game when telling about it. This information had been considerably revised and at parts completely overturned in game since weeks (and thus was... like not worth any at all) and then he handed out pregens with traits (?) that were mainly redundant in the group...

it's more a case of bad-gm

@nitsua60 DW=Dungeon World?

nitsua60

2:21 AM

@Trish [tag:your-text-here] will get the effect, even if your-text-here isn't an existing tag

@Trish yup

doppelgreener

@Trish Yes. It's not a Fate issue; it's a case of poor group behaviour using the letter but not intent of the Fate rules.

nitsua60

(the conversation I'm talking about starts here for anyone who's interested)

doppelgreener

(not even using the letter come to think of it; milestones don't say "these only happen for people present at the table when stuff happens".)

BESW

@nitsua60 This is, I think, where PbtA either comes into its own or breaks down.

nitsua60

or just bogs down?

Shalvenay

2:27 AM

hey there @nitsua60

BESW

The GM triggers are open and vague--they have to be. But specifically the "when players look to you for what happens next" trigger is so massively generic that it can be used practically any time the players are remembering the GM exists.

nitsua60

I had another group spend two months on something I thought should be, like a two-session thing. I mean, they were literally in the giants' crockery cupboard for three weeks. And here I am, all "trying to fill your lives with adventure" while you're trying to climb shelves, and see if there's any spare change in the bowl on the top shelf.

BESW

So it's less a trigger and more a justification for the GM to use one of his moves whenever he wants.

nitsua60

@Shalvenay hiya

@BESW I didn't interpret it so much as a justification as I did a responsibility. Telling an heroic tale, in a world full of danger, while being your fan, requires that things keep moving. (My interpretation.) If the players stop moving the ball down the field for a moment, you've got to hit back to either cause the fumble or get them to run another play.

BESW

Yeah, I think that's the intention.

SevenSidedDie

2:30 AM

@nitsua60 Yeah, you can do that, but it should be via a move: if they're a scout with first-aid training, splinting a leg badly isn't the obvious outcome. So you can Tell the Consequences and Ask:

“You're rushed, there's a monster out there, and you really just need this to be good enough to move move move. The splinting will good enough, but you know they'll pay for it later. Do you want to go ahead?”

BESW

But for a system which is about training good habits in GMs, that particular trigger is strangely reliant on the GM to have good habits.

nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie Tell the consequences and ask is certainly a good move that I know I don't (a) recognize and (b) utilize enough.

But that seems to fail the "I don't think this is worth zooming in on" test.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW That's where the “Be A Fan” guidance needs to not suck. It's the single most important Principle to ensure that when a GM is making a call like this, it's at least decent.

@nitsua60 If a question and response are too much zooming, then you simply can't have injuries that need first aid at all.

nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie Fair point.

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 (The GM also doesn't really determine what's worth zooming in on. They ask questions, and what the players dig into is where game goes.)

nitsua60

2:34 AM

@SevenSidedDie Except that we all know that sitting there with a secret sheet of moves/fronts, the title "GM"... the way you ask questions, which questions you ask, how you receive answers will steer a lot.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW One thing I've noticed about the “look to the GM” is that it happens more with other-RPG-trained players. Players who aren't used to waiting for the GM to canonise everything tend to jump ahead and just do stuff, without handing the initiative to the GM until they hit a thing where they need to ask the GM what happens next.

nitsua60

So the designers can sit there and say GM shouldn't steer, but it's sheer fallacy to believe that one's not. I think. So I try to recognize that I probably am, and figure out how to do it minimally, and to do so in a way that furthers Principles.

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 Yep, it's true, but the rest of the game means that you can only go where the players invest interest. :)

BESW

@SevenSidedDie ...so the game with a big focus on helping GMs rid themselves of bad RPG habits doesn't work as well if the players have bad RPG habits?

nitsua60

@BESW Having ported a group of 3.5/PF players to DW, I can say "yes, that makes it challenging, too."

BESW

2:37 AM

I'm starting to understand why most of the people I hear waxing rhapsodic about PbtA are GMs.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW It works OK with those players, but it puts the work on the GM to consistently respond according to their Principles and Agenda to redirect the players' habits.

It just works more immediately with novices to RPGs, because they don't bring preconceptions and happily work with only narrative.

nitsua60

@BESW and, I'd assume, are coming from at least the direction of--if not directly from--D&D/PF and their ilk.

Hi @Baskakov_Dmitriy

@Shalvenay hiya. (Sorry, just realized I never responded.)

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 but you did!

nitsua60

[wait for it...]

@doppelgreener NEVERTHELESS!

doppelgreener

that doesn't apply here!

nitsua60

2:41 AM

Anyone else notice that at one point today @Miniman had a +11 answer to a -11 question? Couldn't help but feel like that was a wasted hat-portunity.

@doppelgreener [ahem]

@doppelgreener NEVERTHELESS!

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 it hasn't hit the requisite +20 yet

(assuming we're talking about a gold badge hat)

nitsua60

@doppelgreener (I'll stop it, if you'll promise to imagine living with it for four years of college. Maddening. John Maddening.)

@doppelgreener I was thinking more like last year's 007 badge, where some rare numerical confluence would trip a hat.

Trish

@doppelgreener I should look to turn that!

anyway... what threshold of negativity needs to be breached to disallow someone to ask questions?

Shalvenay

@Trish I think it's more of a repeat offender thing for questionbans

Trish

3 questions: -5, -7, -13, all of them seem somewhat along the lines of "I am too lazy to read the book"

BESW

2:57 AM

101

A: What can I do when getting "We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account"?

Why am I getting this message? As stated in the about links on every page, Stack Exchange is a network of question and answer sites, not help forums. This implies that all posts are expected to have some value for later visitors too. To enforce that, and to prevent help vampires making the answe...

SevenSidedDie

@Trish The exact formulae are secret even to mods, but yeah, this ^^^

BESW

> To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret, but it is partly based on downvotes cast by other members of the communities. If the other members of the site consistently give your posts a low ranking, you should try to identify the reason(s) for this.
Once you have posted too many poorly-received questions or answers, you will be banned from posting more, and you will see the error message.

Trish

ok, so at some day, he will get the bill

SevenSidedDie

@Trish The system also includes rate-limiting before a full automatic ban, so it's entirely possible to get temporary question bans that last only a certain amount of time. That's one reason enthusiastic users with poorly-received questions don't flood the front page with a dozen questions a day, and instead are only seen in one question every week or two.

trogdor

3:11 AM

@nitsua60 lol, he can't tell those people not to vote till hattmas though

Miniman

Please don't remind me about The Thing That I Did Last Hatmas.

BESW

"I Know What You Did Last Hatmas"?

Trish

Oh, are you not proud of all your hatmas presents?

trogdor

I think he feels he got sucked into the whole thing a little too much

Miniman

I used a bounty in a very dodgy way in order to get a Reversal badge for the gold badge hat.

Trish

3:26 AM

"there was a BOUNTY on that question? How did somone spend points on that?"

nitsua60

@Miniman Oh... I didn't remember that. (Or might not have even known.) I really just saw the +11/-11 and thought of the 007 I grabbed last year.

Miniman

How did the 007 work?

Ah, found it.

That one's more than a mathematical coincidence, though - it encourages non-contentious questions and answers.

trogdor

well, the way I see it, all of the hats are supposed to encourage extra activity, but not discouraged activity

so like, if it gets a less active member of the comunity, such as myself, to post an answer or a question, or upvote more things that I would noramally upvote/downvote if I was normally more active, then it is working

SevenSidedDie

3:43 AM

@trogdor Pretty much!

nitsua60

@trogdor Yeah, I'll admit I'm looking at those 62 copyedits I need... I'm not going crazy looking for them, but perhaps it's nudging me to be a little more forward that I might otherwise be. (And making good edits is a behavior that's desired, so it's working.)

trogdor

yeah

obviously, some of the behaviors that happen due to hatsmass are not as desireable, but that doesn't encompass all extra activity

I personally shy away from trying for some hats because the ways I could conceivably get them seem like discouraged behavior

thankfully, some hats are easy to get in ways I would either normally act, or in ways I would most likely act if I was more active than I normally am

so those work for me XD

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@nitsua60 Hey

Trish

@trogdor precog you! I can't know the hats!

trogdor

there are also outlier hats that are basically impossible to get without upvotes from other people, those ones are harder to game

@Trish I speak simply from general experience from the Hatmasses that I have seen before

it isn't a prophetic statement of the future, it is a reflective statement of the past

Trish

3:50 AM

@trogdor False Claim, prophet! You MUST be a prophet of Yog'Hattoth!

trogdor

the individual things being done to get some hats have changed, but in every hatmass so far I have had at least a few hats I could get with either some or a lot of effort, but which I still felt I wasn't "gaming" for either

IA IA HATOGIIN

(no one will believe you :P)

Trish

Of course nobody believes me, but that's because I tell the truth!

Baskakov_Dmitriy

BTW, as there are too few questions about games by White Wolf, I seriously think about learning some other system just to answer questions here. Would 5e be a good idea? Seems to get a lot of them.

trogdor

5e does seem to be one of the top ones

Baskakov_Dmitriy

Or would Pathfinder/3.5 be better?

Shalvenay

3:59 AM

if you had to pick a D&D edition to learn, I'd go with 5e

it's far easier to learn than the morass that is the D&D 3.x system-family

Trish

@Baskakov_Dmitriy white wolf... as in the OLD ones? White wolf technically is no more...

if you want something popular, pick PF/3.5e/5e

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@Shalvenay Can I ask for more details please? :3 I mean, why is it harder?

KorvinStarmast

@SevenSidedDie That question on "crush" by a dragon got me looking in the attic. Besides Companion rules, I found four original Dragonlance modules, three still in the plastic wrap. Uh, I have a crap load of old D&D and AD&D modules. I am not sure if I'll ever use them, but only a few are unopened.

Trish

@Shalvenay Stay away, you 5E Demon! (ok, I answered a few there, but only on the SRD basis...)

SevenSidedDie

@KorvinStarmast Neat!

Shalvenay

4:03 AM

hey there @KorvinStarmast

@Baskakov_Dmitriy 3.x is extremely sprawling and has a long history of extremely technical interpretation as well

KorvinStarmast

@SevenSidedDie Problem is, that half an hour of digging got the wife wondering "where'd you go of to ... oh, THAT!" :(

Trish

@KorvinStarmast that stuff might be worth a tiny fortune to a collector...

KorvinStarmast

@Shalvenay Howdy, just checking in. That question onDragon Crush got me all motivated to figure out whwere it came from. Thankfully, someone found it in Rules Compendium so I knew where to look. I knew I'd seen that before, ages ago ...

@Trish Yeah, I should probably ask around. If I sold them my wife would be very pleased. One of many piles of things she thinks we don't need.

SevenSidedDie

@Trish White Wolf survived as a legal person during the ownership by CCP, and has been resurrected as an active legal being as a subsidiary of Paradox Interactive.

Shalvenay

@KorvinStarmast ah. mind popping into The Hangar briefly?

KorvinStarmast

4:06 AM

@Trish As for my collection of about 2000 miniatures ... I keep them out of her sight. Too bad I could never get her to play/enjoy.

@Shalvenay Sure, will drop right in.

Shalvenay

@Trish wha? is there something wrong with 5e?

SevenSidedDie

@KorvinStarmast eBay or Noble Knight are the two places I would think of first.

Trish

@KorvinStarmast you mean... like 10 cubic meters of RPG material is not nessecary to breath?! HERESY! ;)

@SevenSidedDie I know, but as a publisher they are pretty much... dead.

SevenSidedDie

@KorvinStarmast Ah, that's a shame. There's little better than gaming with one's partner.

@Trish Just sleeping. (*shhhhh…*)

Trish

@KorvinStarmast start with... boardgames... or sharade... or theatre. Maybe you can hype her.

SevenSidedDie

4:09 AM

(Last I looked, PI was going to have WWP publish new oWoD stuff as WoD, which is why OPP had to rename their stuff to be allowed to keep publishing.)

Trish

@SevenSidedDie you mean the "new WoD" = CoD... OP ALSO publishes the WoD 20th Century Edition...

KorvinStarmast

@Trish She loves board games. D&D not so much.

Trish

@KorvinStarmast play 3.5 with her. That is almost a boardgame... or Descent...

KorvinStarmast

@Trish 3.5 aint gonna happen while I'm alive. I traded those book in to second hand books some years ago. Descent ... hmmm, need to look that one up. I seem to recall there was an online game called Descent (ascent?) that was popular late 90's ish?

SevenSidedDie

@Trish oWoD became WoD, nWoD 1st and 2nd became CoD, oWoD v20 is… in a weird between place, always called WoD and now still called WoD.

Trish

4:18 AM

Descent or something is this almost-RPG Boardgame.

nitsua60

yeah, that's Descent.

Trish

has a campaign offshoot even... what was the name...

KorvinStarmast

Journey's in the dark?

SevenSidedDie

@KorvinStarmast Descent the videogame was a spaceship shooter thing. Descent the boardgame is like Milton Bradley's HeroQuest but on protein powder and a regular gym routine.

KorvinStarmast

@SevenSidedDie All I see on amazon in second edition.

SevenSidedDie

4:20 AM

@KorvinStarmast Probably for the best. I have the 1st edition of the boardgame and it has some rough patches. I hear 2nd quite improves on it.

nitsua60

boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/104162/…

@SevenSidedDie funny, I was thinking about HeroQuest, too.

KorvinStarmast

@SevenSidedDie Haha, maybe a christmas present? We played the Hobbit Board game a few weeks ago, was good fun. (That's not a great game, though, be we had a good time).

SevenSidedDie

Not that 1st edition was anywhere near bad.

Adeptus

@SevenSidedDie Pining for the fjords

nitsua60

Wondered if it'd be a better gateway-game, as it's a little lighter both in tone and in complexity? (But I haven't played HQ in, probably, 25 years, so not sure how I'm remembering it.)

SevenSidedDie

4:22 AM

@nitsua60 Ooh, brag moment: I got HeroQuest for Christmas some 20-odd years ago. Later a friend gave me their used set. I still have both, and have introduced my gaming group to them, to much enthusiasm.

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 Is Journey into the dark the 2e game, or an expansion?

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 HQ is...interesting. it's basically a dungeon-crawl-construction-kit-board-game :P

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast Have you tried the Legacy games?

SevenSidedDie

@KorvinStarmast Journeys into the Dark has always been its subtitle in both editions. I don't know of any expansions, but that is almost certainly the base game.

@nitsua60 I would also suggest HQ as a gateway game, but sadly it's long, long out of print.

Adeptus

Our DM uses Descent minis for D&D monsters

SevenSidedDie

4:23 AM

@nitsua60 It stands up surprisingly well.

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 Board games? Legacy? Wasn't that a MMORPG popular in Korea?

nitsua60

@Adeptus we've been using descent minis for Kingom Death:Monster.

@KorvinStarmast It's an overlay game for popular board games, and is amazing.

SevenSidedDie

@KorvinStarmast Risk Legacy, Pandemic Legacy, and there's a new one. They're games where the rules tell you to permanently alter or destroy playing pieces as the campaign unfolds. Play once, epic, then done.

nitsua60

(Except "play once" is 12-24 games of the underlying game.)

KorvinStarmast

@SevenSidedDie That sounds interesing, and my son might like that. (Heh, we have the Starcraft board game... I like the pieces, but after about five tries it faded on us).

SevenSidedDie

4:25 AM

@nitsua60 Yes. :) I've played through Pandemic Legacy Season 1 (alas, the only season so far published) and it was fantastic. An experience well worth the price tag, even without replayability.

nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie Yeah, "no replayability" is kind of a strange criticism, when it gets you to play the game twenty times. I mean, how many board games do you/me/we-all have that haven't seen a half-dozen plays? Or that saw a dozen five years ago and haven't been touched since?

Honestly, the idea that this version gets me to (a) play the game more, then (b) throw the thing out--that's a win-win, as far as I'm concerned.

BTW, anyone else played Kingdom Death: Monster?

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 It kinda is. (But recycle!) We had a regular Wednesday night Pandemic night to play it, which gave us months of intense enjoyment.

Trish

@nitsua60 catan saw... 35+ replays at our family table, Dominion managed to be played about... 50+ times including expansions...

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 My brother and I played AH 's Waterloo at least two dozen times of the years. Settlers of Cathan I think will be long lasting at our house. Lots of variations.

nitsua60

I'd argue Catan is an outlier. As is [you favorite game here]. However, for each of those there are also those that saw two plays, but you don't want to get rid of because you dropped $50 on it.

SevenSidedDie

4:30 AM

Yes. The peak games of the industry get a lot of play. Compared to the bulk of it though, they're odd outliers.

nitsua60

Or because it might come out again to flourish in the sun five years from now.

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 It's even worse with RPGs…

KorvinStarmast

@SevenSidedDie I still have the 8 game SSI set (pools of radiance and such) that never got play beyond ...pools of radiance.

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast I don't think I ever got out of the first town in pools of radiance. I just found the interface very unintuitive. And I couldn't keep myself spatially-located.

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 Needless to say, I rarely throw anything away ...

nitsua60

4:32 AM

@KorvinStarmast I might be coming down to Bryant in the spring--maybe I'll take those boes from the attic off your hands for you =)

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 The Interface suxored. To be sure. (I never did complete Myst ... and I think I have Riven somewhere)

@nitsua60 Heh, I'm in Corpus, not Bryant.

SevenSidedDie

… I may have recently bought Riven from Steam…

To be fair, only after finishing Myst recently.

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast hmm... not sure why I thought you were up there....

KorvinStarmast

@SevenSidedDie Hmm, I got to level 7 in Sword Coast Legends and then our group broke up. Didn't really like playing taht alone. Steam ...

BESW

@SevenSidedDie Oooh. I eagerly await your thoughts/frustrations.

KorvinStarmast

4:34 AM

@nitsua60 Where you?

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast New England.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW It's infamous, I know. ^.^

BESW

I consider it one of the best video games I've ever played.

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 I lived in Conn for three years. Glad to be back in texas, but it was nice to be that close to NYC in cased I wanted to go.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW And famous. It has a multifarious and well-deserved reputation, as I understand it.

BESW

4:35 AM

Speaking of the Myst franchise... @trogdor Unwritten might be a good hack for a mystery game if you want to run a Fate mystery.

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast where in CT?

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 Shelton.

nitsua60

No ****? I'm not far from there at all.

trogdor

@BESW ok, is it some kind of Fate Myst hack?

nitsua60

(You weren't with Sikorsky, were you?)

SevenSidedDie

4:36 AM

@trogdor Precisely.

trogdor

ah, ok cool

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 We left in 2001, I was with the USN at Sikorsky then.

BESW

Yup. It's based on the URU worldbuilding, though.

Trish

There's no such thing as new england. There is Insmouth, new R'leigh... and the other New Cthuloid States...

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast Heh. Small world. Well, glad you liked our tiny corner of the continent =)

BESW

4:37 AM

Basically, you play modern-day people exploring the ruins of D'ni and the thousands of worlds which made up the D'ni empire--most of which are abandoned and mysterious.

trogdor

I have to admit not playing too much Myst, but I am still intrigued by Myst type stuff, if partly because BESW talks it up, and it is also one of the only video games my mom has ever played

if you don't count some Facebook ones that is

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 WIfe loved the seasons, schools were good, cost too much to live there, but the Italian food was great. Good delis there too.

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast Yeah, I'm popping down to the city next week to bring my son to see Rogue One with his godpas.

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 I feel obliged to watch it with my son, even though Disney is becoming the antichrist to me ... Han Shot First!

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast The seasons are what I like best, too. Each one grabs you by the lapels and kicks you in the shins repeatedly, then gives you one nice week of "whoa!" then the next one grabs you....

BESW

4:39 AM

@trogdor I have... all or almost all of the Myst games now, in forms playable on modern machines.

KorvinStarmast

@BESW Mine was dos/windows 3.1 era. Pretty sure I can't play it now if I wanted to.

trogdor

@BESW but the last time you lent me one, I embarrassingly lost it

or at least I think that is what happened

BESW

@trogdor This time, except for Myst IV Revelation, they're all on GoG.

trogdor

ah

Trish

my best gog deal ever was Fallout 1 & 2...

KorvinStarmast

4:41 AM

@BESW UH, what's a gog?

BESW

@KorvinStarmast Good Old Games. It's like Steam, but friendlier.

More focus on legacy games, multi-system compatibility, and less DRM hair-pulling.

KorvinStarmast

@BESW I better be careful, all these game ideas and I ain't off until the 23rd. Must resist opening pandoras box...

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast speaking of which, maybe @BESW will be kind enough to pin a "please don't spoil"note tomorrow?

BESW

[goes hunting for spoiler room to link to]

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 Good Night all, must work in the am and the missus summons. Make those saves!

BESW

4:45 AM

ttfn

nitsua60

night-night

Wait a minute... he's a time zone west of me. I really should get to bed, too.

BESW

Good call.

trogdor

lol

Trish

@nitsua60 you are all west of me! we all should get up as it is morning :P

trogdor

you are all west and east of me depending on which way you go first, and how long you want to take to get here, we should all sleep and never sleep and sleep again

Joel Harmon

4:52 AM

@BESW Have you considered tweaking the shape and color of the nodes on the graphviz images to convey intrinsic things like gender, introversion/extroversion, and wealth?

Shalvenay

hey there @JoelHarmon

Joel Harmon

hey @Shalvenay

Shalvenay

how're things going?

Joel Harmon

looks like I missed some good PbtA/DW convos, due to being busy with non-RPG stuff

Shalvenay

ah

I'm shaking my fist at the absolutely terrible voting habits on DIY.se

Joel Harmon

4:55 AM

I feel like I'm barely maintaining a hold on rpg.se, and I have a list of other ones I'd like to keep an eye on, much less participate in

Shalvenay

I keep a sharp eye on DIY and something of an eye on EE

Worldbuilding, Aviation, and RPG (the actual Stack, not the chat) are more intermittent for me though

my thing is I am trying to push for 10k rep on DIY by the end of the month -- I'm only 460 rep away

but my main area of expertise there is in a tag where the voting habits are particularly abysmal

Joel Harmon

sorry, gotta run - AoC is unlocking again, and it's a problem.

(that is, Advent of Code; unlocks Midnight Eastern time)

Joel Harmon

5:18 AM

ok, time to head out for real. Later!

Adeptus

5:31 AM

@nitsua60 I think I have a new favourite impressionist. I've been listening to this guy for about an hour...

Masakan

hello?

anyone here?

SevenSidedDie

@Masakan Quiet in here. North America has mostly gone to sleep and Europe is only just about to wake. Not a lot of RPG.se users in the currently wakeful parts of the world.

BESW

8:02 AM

@Answulf Hi! You'll need 20+ rep to type in chat, but you're welcome to hang out until then.

BESW

9:30 AM

No Rogue One spoilers! Take them here.

7

Rogue One Spoilers

No Bothans died to bring you this information.

trogdor

yep fair enough there XD

I guess it's already out some places?

BESW

Yeah, early previews and such.

And it's coming out... tonight, here, I think?

trogdor

ah

BESW

9:47 AM

Tonight I'm frying some Alaskan pollock burgers, with Lazy Flavour™: spicy mustard mixed with garlic powder and watered down, spooned onto each side of the burger as it fries.

trogdor

watered down?

BESW

To make it more spreadable.

trogdor

I don't understand what the "serves as fries" were

cause all you named was flavoring

BESW

I didn't say "serves as fries."

trogdor

oh, to fry it in

BESW

10:39 AM

BTW, @trogdor, @doppelgreener, tubey clear I'm still quite happy to run anything that I've already prepped, which means anything where we just need another session or two to finish up a storyline. One Hot Summer, the Swords That Go Boing, and Morts come to mind.