@BESW There are also countries like Japan which had a heavy belief in Signs, without - I think - much religious connotation to it. (But I don't know much about Shinto so I might be wrong.) There are stories with a person expecting assassins to strike, and then he wakes up with a spider dangling above him on its thread trying to lower itself to the ground. He concludes his assassins are already coming for him. They are.

There are other individuals who would see, say, a fish struggling for something. Their clan symbol is a fish, so they identify with this and see it as a sign. And then a hawk swoops down and takes the fish, and they wonder whether something's trying to tell them they're doomed.

In other words: everything has meaning to those people, the world around them isn't coincidental, the interaction of symbols is a real and meaningful thing.

That's belief in a certain kind of magic without any necessarily religious connotation.

@eimyr ^

well, shinto kinda was a religion

it just didn't work in a way that ,... excluded other religions

there were shrines to things, literally shinto shrines

just to rivers and other things that you might not normally think would have it's own shrine

it was certainly not greatly similar to many "religions" but it entirely depends just on how you define the descriptive word

there are few single descriptive words that could work even as well to describe Shinto than religion

the only two word one I could think of is "belief system"

which has a very similar meaning honestly

I mean, it has it's own name, and it contains the belief that all things have a "spirit" or "soul" or whatever word you want to use for it

people made shrines to specific things, landmarks and rivers and even bridges and mansions in some cases

the fact that it was able to co exist with some other religions does not disqualify it, it just marks it as lacking a flaw that some religions, or at least practitioners of some religions, have/had

it was certainly, at any rate, pretty different from a western idea of a religion

or maybe still is, it's just that I would think nowadays "western" ideas of things might be just a little more flexible than they used to be

The "tailed emperor" caterpillar:

ooooh

I love the way that thing looks

(source)

where does it live?

ah, Australia apparently

well, I was having ideas today, and now I have to include this wonderful animal XD

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I think a session I run will include a large dragon that looks much like this

not sure how large exactly, but certainly much larger than this size XD

@trogdor would we call that a wyrm?

yes

exactly XDXDXDXDXD

I am so glad someone else thought of that joke in relation to it XDXD

:D

@doppelgreener Did you see Linkara's answer? This is a great start, with good links out.

@BESW I've seen it now!

I've seen that before, but couldn't remember enough to re-find it.

I am feeling frustrated.

Recent issues tackled in Meta seen messier than they usually are.

oh

:(

A question category where the answers get changed gets ruled off topic. A CW suggestion regarding it is turning weird. The RAW thread acquired lots of noise all of a sudden, after previous discussions over it went not very smoothly.

I don't know if this is how things usually went but I'm not enjoying this.

(I also don't know if it's just environmental. Many things are a little stressful right now, and this is just one of them.)

[patpat] I've been only giving meta the most cursory glance lately, for similar reasons.

I have never been very active there

it isn't even due to any of this, I only see meta as useful to visit when I actually have,... a meta question I need answered

which I am pretty sure has only happened once

@Magician @Adeptus Have you noticed Chat failing to load for you from around 7-10pm daily recently (as in the past 2-3 weeks)?

I haven't been around the last few days. But it seems fine so far tonight?

Ah. No, can't say I've noticed anything.

Can anyone think of an example of D&D specific monster that has its own tag other than aarakocra?

tarrasque

fair enough

@Tritium21 I'd agree with you that it's ridiculous to have a tag for aarakocra, though.

@Miniman I am not going to do anything about it right now, even though it is kinda silly.

I'll admit I had to look that one up.

So yesterday I asked (the wind) in here if I should explain what those dice are and see if I get some traction. I have my answer heh

...so tempted to comment with a Monty Python reference.

Dont know which to choose! Two good answers - one with graphs and more expected values, the other with base math principals. >.>

@Tritium21 When in doubt, choose my answer.

Eh, tagging is an emergent, lightly-curated folksonomy. The arrakocra tag isn't making any trouble, so I'd leave it be.

How tagging works: Let people tag what makes sense. Address it if it makes legitimate trouble. If it's causing no trouble, and you're considering whether it should exist, you've already spent too much effort in thinking about it.

Whether it takes too much effort to curate is a form of legitimate trouble though.

Yo

Does someone know the Saga where “[His] limp has provided [him] with the opportunity to become an expert in the convoluted Icelandic legal system”, and tell me whether the timing of “Small, seemingly insignificant comments allow [him] to manipulate justice for years after [his] untimely death.” is as written and how that works?

@Anaphory I'm guessing his influence spreads far and influences the decisions of many for years to come.

I couldn't tell you, and my guy big into Norse mythology couldn't either, apparently.

@GuidingLight That's what I assume. But I'd like to see how it happens.

Among other things, because it sounds like a fun thing to steal for a game of sagas of the icelanders.

@Anaphory will you feature followers of Vidarr?

hey guys! Someone starred something I said in chat and I got a medal for it being my tenth :)

nice, grats

It was All the lurkers...

grats

:> thaa-aanks

also I made a wicked-cool proposal on how dinosaurs can survive in the arctic

top notch answer, if I do say so myself

WB?

Welcome back?

Weedle = Bug?

Where's @BESW?

Well Bragged?

worldbuilding

OH! Yeah :)

@Polyducks BESW was at a Ruhi study group, like every Tuesday night.

Yay, another answer with a completely untested houserule \o/

@Wibbs yaaaayyy! downvote it and request they discuss how they've used it and how it's worked out!

been there, done that

they deleted the question

Typical loser's way out!

This dungeon question really feels like "please do my homework for me", but I can't figure out how to word the comment. I want to say "if you don't know how to evaluate the difficulty a priori, ask that question. If you've tried something but it's not working, describe that. Otherwise, do your own homework." Any suggestions for the nice way to say it?

Or do I just leave it at the comment I've already posted...?

@nitsua60 yeah, I know what you mean. They need to pull out why they can't evaluate their dungeon themselves so they don't have to come back and ask the same question about every dungeon they make

@eimyr I don't know enough about his followers, but ritual vengence should be a feature, yes. Tell me more about him, and I'll throw it in given the chance.

@Anaphory ∆∆∆

@eimyr that question turned out so well

This is a great question that's getting just overrun by chatty comments.

(Also, it's been edited by three people and still has a their/there error.)

@KRyan It's pure brilliance. One of the reasons why it's worth coming to RPG.SE.

@BESW Remember Lovecraftesque?

@BESW Nominated to the Golden Geek, man.

I'm late to the party, but following it closely now.

Not i remember what you mean. But I have hardly any sleep and am on lousy wifi at the doc.

Are you OK?

Yeah, taking my dad in.

I see.

So, as The Distractor, that Lovecraftesque GM-less diceless card-based RPG was nominated for Golden Geek.

It makes it doubly interesting in my eyes, especially it has not been published yet

Oooh. That's... Interesting.

Also: it's not Mythos based. It aims to convey the feel and mood, but not the content.

I do appreciate that a lot.

ALSO: it aims to get rid of *isms inherent to HPL's writing.

I remember that now.

Dear Herbert was not a saint in that regard.

And for full disclosure I incidentally know the authors.

V. Interested when it comes out.

You can't hook me up with a prerelease, huh. [grin]

I don't know if I can hook myself with a prerelease.

But perhaps I can see how it works through a game and recreate?

Don't do anything to violate an NDA or tick off your friends.

Definitely not.

But if there is a way to let them know of the glorious RPG.SE community I will.

Yey!

I am already making death stares at people who disregard RPG.SE at the club :P

not that they do

but they only occasionally use it as "oh, it came first in google"

... These docs have the best names. "Radish," "Seago."

what?

I know, right?

Are you sure they are not professors?

Because they will totally give you a pokemon and kick you out after their grandson assaults you.

Heheh.

lol

Gary is the worst

You mean Douche?

lol

I forgot what I named him

I think it was actually unsuitable to say in the chat XD

I never liked naming my pokemon

I didn't name the pokemon, I named the idiot/jerk grandson

Piñata 001, Piñata 002...

he even cheated, and he still couldn't win

"Tracy" - wat? what kind of a pokemon can th- oh, Lickitung. Figures.

@trogdor I know, I'm just referring to pokemon as a non-sequitur

mm

I didn't see a reason to name most of them

Especially that the names are already quite cool

they were all soldiers and meat sheilds in my war against overly intrusive people

"oh you are just trying to walk past me, how about I force you to duel me?"

for money

yeah

also, the innuendo

wtf is this BS XD

Bullshit would be a great name for a pokemon actually.

definitely would not be at all acceptable behavior IRL

Let's be careful with our words here, eh.

I had to force myself to stop naming everything when I started doing shiny breeding projects. You run out of names eventually.