TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

12:00 AM

(some say Tiamat has been trying to eat wax eagle's internet)

Ben

Ahh, no good :(

Shalvenay

12:22 AM

@Ben yeah...OTOH, I did attend one of the local cons, that was kinda nice :)

Ben

12:37 AM

Oh yeah :) We had one recently too, which I didn't attend, though I heard it was pretty cool; lots of cosplay :)

Shalvenay

@Ben yeah -- there was lots of cosplay there -- I do want to cosplay my EVE main for next year xD

Ben

Nice :) I'm not big on cosplay. I leave that up to others because I'm terrible at it haha.

Shalvenay

@Ben I think it'll be a nice change of pace, although he's the kind of person who could upset a few IC applecarts xD

BESW

1:49 AM

Stop me from recreating my classic D&D character, Tangent Cosine the mathemagician (re: bard) in 5th ed.

Tweeted by bclevinger on July 27, 2016 at 7:37 PM

Yutyrannus huali was a “beautiful feathered tyrant,” as it's name suggests: http://bit.ly/2actn1o https://t.co/5JmFJRrB4A

Tweeted by AMNH on July 27, 2016 at 11:01 PM

trogdor

those don't look so much like feathers as uneven hairs

BESW

2:05 AM

Feathers are just uneven hairs with a good PR team.

3

trogdor

2:25 AM

fair enough

Ben

@BESW Charisma Check:

d20

Dice Service

1

Ben

...welp

trogdor

and that is why I don't like using D20's anymore

Joel Harmon

d20

Dice Service

2:33 AM

16

Joel Harmon

didn't know that was a thing we had here

d17

trogdor

it is

just don't spam it too much

Joel Harmon

I think that's it for me poking it; I assume it's just the usual polyhedrals and that's enough for me

Shalvenay

@JoelHarmon hey there

Joel Harmon

hey @Shalvenay

how are things?

Ben

2:35 AM

@JoelHarmon you can go to the dice rolling room and spam away

Shalvenay

@JoelHarmon alright here, as for you?

Joel Harmon

pretty good here

thanks, @Ben

Shalvenay

just LMK in the NAB if you wish to pick up our earlier convo btw

Joel Harmon

I should be going for a walk soon

I think about this time tomorrow should be better

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@SevenSidedDie Thanks for the help with this question. rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/84831/… Really, you improved it's quality so greatly. It feels now like an obvious way to edit it, but I am sure that all of my upcoming questions will still be plagued with unneeded info. I see now that it's really an important skill to ask good questions.

BESW

2:46 AM

[wave] Hi!

One of the secondary goals of the Stack Exchange is to help people develop their asking-and-answering skills, so I'm glad you're thinking about that.

nitsua60

Hi @Miniman: I've got a question about this comment of yours, whenever you've a moment.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Go for it!

There was another comment I left that explained what I meant a bit better, but it got cleaned up.

nitsua60

@Miniman I'm not sure I've got the context right for the comment. When keithcurtis said "it is RAW that it [Disciple of Life] is triggered [on a casting of goodberry]," was he talking about the Sage Advice entry for DoL + goodberry?

(Also, as an aside: holy set-the-stack-a-twitter, goodberry. I'm just catching up on the day's activity, and who'd-a-thunk that a stupid 1hp spell that nobody's ever taken seriously (except as a way to avoid tracking rations on long trips) would cause so many problems!?)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Yep. You can see that in this comment - he doesn't see it as purely-by-the-book RAW either.

Shalvenay

hey there @nitsua60

nitsua60

2:59 AM

Because if so, are you saying that Jeremy's clarifications in SA aren't RAW, but instead "only" RAI?

(I don't necessarily agree or disagree; I'm just honing my understanding of what people even mean by RAW and RAI. Those weren't really things when I played pre-3e.)

@Shalvenay hiya

Miniman

@nitsua60 Well, yeah. They're official, but they're not "rules as written", because the rules aren't written that way.

And Sage Advice specifically refers to itself as a collection of official rulings.

Errata changes how a rule is written, so it's RAW, but Sage Advice doesn't do that.

nitsua60

@Miniman Interesting. So the RAW exercise is the almost-Talmudic exercise of taking the corebooks as they are and embracing them, even their inherent contradictions, despite later statements that "no, that's not really what that means!"

Or another way of looking at it: when Jeremy/Mike want to inform RAW they issue errata, when they want to inform RAI they SA it.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 I think that's about right

BESW

Yeah, RAW is based on recognising that everyone's game table will be different, so treating the rules themselves as the only universal baseline from which to make mutually useful statements.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Unfortunately, there's no official definition of RAW to draw on here. But going by the literal meaning (applying "as written" to itself), yes.

nitsua60

3:05 AM

It's intriguing me that Sage Advice can sit in this sort of grey-space where perhaps some scholars would consider them source for RAW, some not. It's the people who wrote the rules, saying "we didn't realize it wouldn't be clear in the first instance when we wrote X, so here's an expanded explanation of X."

BESW

Well, RAW (unlike its most obvious parallel, canon) is a fan-made artifact rather than a construct of the creator.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Yeah, it's pretty weird. I normally treat it as official - it's rarely worth making distinctions this fine.

BESW

It's emergent from a need of the consumer.

nitsua60

I don't actually care all that much. I'm just amused by the futuristic head-canon I'm playing with now: five hundred years from now, a schism among historical D&D scholars that rises to the level of Protestant-Catholic disagreement over inclusion/exclusion of the deuterocanonical texts into/from the canon.

(To any who hold those texts sacred--and I'm one of them: I intend no trivialization by comparing them to game-books.)

Miniman

@nitsua60 500 years in the future? Really?

nitsua60

3:11 AM

Oh, I'm certainly not implying that it hasn't already started. I'm just amused by the thought that it'd still be going in 500 years.

And, if today's any indication, goodberry's going to be at the center of it all! Allowing it to trigger Blessed Healer will be known as a "GM's indulgence," which can be bought and applied retroactively to dead characters.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Oh, by the time of D&D 105e the fans will have become way too splintered to form any kind of coherent schism.

nitsua60

@Miniman Methinks revisions will quiet down soon. When some powerful nation adopts one particular edition as their "game of state" and the purveyors of that edition start purging others.

(Met any Apollinarianists recently?)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Well, yeah, but in the aftermath of that war a new version will be released to unify the victors with the defeated. Just like real life, really.

nitsua60

@Miniman Meanwhile, @BESW--having merged with/become the chat mind will still be heard on the wind... "you know, the system you're using isn't really designed to accomplish that."

Miniman

@nitsua60 [snorted my drink, lucky it was only water]

trogdor

3:22 AM

@nitsua60 accusations and libel

BESW has a physical form like all the rest of us

nitsua60

@trogdor "a" physical form?

Miniman

@trogdor I find the "us" in that sentence somewhat suspicious.

trogdor

@nitsua60 I don't see what you see wrong with this

@Miniman I also don't see what you see wrong with this XP

Miniman

@trogdor I'm just saying, there's been some evidence in the past of "trogdor" being part of the greater "BESW" whole.

Adeptus

@Miniman But D&D 105e isn't real D&D... The last real D&D was 102.7e

4

trogdor

3:26 AM

@Miniman I don't know what exactly you would take as "evidence"

I have been accused of it once or twice, but I have never seen "evidence"

I think it is fair to say that I am not near responsible enough to be BESW

though I have found it hilarious on occasion when such accusations happen

Miniman

@trogdor I'm not suggesting that you are BESW, just that you might be part of BESW.

And I just worked out why you were spun off from the whole, too.

trogdor

@Miniman there isn't much of a distinction there

Miniman

We've all thought to ourselves "Man, I wish I could play that game again for the first time." Therefore, I posit that @trogdor is an aspect of BESW created in order to be able to play Wizardry 8 with no prior memory of having played it. J'accuse!

nitsua60

Hoping that somewhere in Seattle there's a WotC employee printing out this line, scribbling "in case of" and "break glass" above and below it, and pasting it to a glass-fronted wall-cabinet.
Which contains an empowered, maximized, embiggened, huge-ified, glyph of stop-the-madness.

trogdor

@Miniman wow that one would actually be pretty neat, not gonna lie

you missed the part about how I have myself played plenty of games he doesn't know the first thing about though

so that theory is rather flawed

Miniman

3:32 AM

@nitsua60 Nah, by RAW applying metamagic to glyph of stop-the-madness only affects the glyph, not the effects of the glyph.

@trogdor Well of course! In order to get a full game experience, you had to have played games before. And by subtly manipulating your life so that you played different games, you get a different perspective on the game that was the whole point.

It's all so obvious!

nitsua60

@Miniman "@BESW turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the third age by some, an Age yet to come, an age long past, @trogdor rose. trogdor was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings or endings to BESW. But he was a beginning."

2

trogdor

@Miniman that is the silliest thing I have heard all week

Miniman

@trogdor [bows low, doffing tinfoil hat]

trogdor

welp, I broke chat

took me long enough

nitsua60

@trogdor "it's an ending" =D

Miniman

3:36 AM

@nitsua60 I'm going to use this. I don't know where, or for what, and I'll have to change the names, but I'm definitely going to use this.

BESW

@Miniman It's a misquote from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW The best misquote.

nitsua60

@BESW It's the original version, before those 102.7e bastards got to it.

(@Adeptus you're back up to the plate)
=D

Miniman

@BESW Let me guess, Robert Jordan thought it was the fourth age?

BESW

> The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the third age by some, an Age yet to come, an age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
- Robert Jordan, "The Eye of the World"

Miniman

3:40 AM

@BESW I think I'll retain the headcanon where the entire Wheel of Time series is predicated on a BESW-based cosmos.

nitsua60

And each of the books start with a similarly-structured... quote? reflection? observation? omniscient foreshadowing? The variable elements--where the wind rises from, or blows to, or passes over--lead us into the prologue scene. It's a pretty neat device.

BESW

Wheel of Time had a lot of promise, but over time its flaws overtook its qualities and I gave up.

Miniman

@BESW Sounds like its prose is pretty good, at least.

nitsua60

@BESW Sanderson redeemed it. Last three books finished out as if the RJ of books 1-5 had written them.

BESW

@Miniman Eeeh? The characterisations were pretty weak and got weaker.

And the plotting was more like plodding.

Miniman

3:43 AM

@BESW Fantasy authors often seem to struggle with this.

nitsua60

Not enough that I'd necessarily recommend the entire series to someone if they hadn't started it on their own, but enough that I recommend anyone who'd gotten to 9 or 10 should slog through 11 and then rediscover their love as we accelerated to a well-written and satisfying ending.

BESW

At a certain point four different women were distinguishable only by the nervous tick they had when upset, and the entire book was nothing but people going on about what they'd do in the next book.

nitsua60

@BESW "characterisations were pretty weak" is the nicest possible way to put it.

I was downright offended at times by how poorly-conceived and -executed just-about every female character was.

BESW

When he first published "Eye of the World," some people described it as "Tolkien, but with women!"

trogdor

lol

BESW

3:45 AM

And in the next few books he added many more Strong Female Characters.

Joel Harmon

@BESW I gave up on Wheel of Time around book 6, when I heard it really slowed down around 8

trogdor

@BESW that is a warning sign right there

Joel Harmon

but friends I trust inform me that Sanderson really recovered the ending, and I'd believe them

BESW

...so many that he seemed to have lost track of them, and they all blurred into a homogenous blob of alternately lusting after and being offended by the main male characters.

Miniman

@trogdor I thought that, but then I was like "No, wait. It's a warning sign about people who read fantasy, not the books themselves."

nitsua60

3:46 AM

@BESW women who, it turns out, all are scheming, manipulative, untrusting egomaniacs who believe that no man can do anything right on his own.

BESW

@nitsua60 The fact that in Jordan's world that last point seems to be kinda accurate notwithstanding.

trogdor

@Miniman I would not go so far as to say the Authors couldn't possibly have similar problems to their Audience

nitsua60

Jan 5 at 14:25, by BESW

Generally the answer to "Why does this booming industry exist even though I don't care about it?" is "You're not the target demographic."

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Sanderson actually made (affectionate, but pointed) fun of Jordan's slipping depiction of those women, right there in the WoT books he wrote. He really did the series justice and redeemed many of its faults.

But I concur with nitsua60 that it's probably not worth wading through the middle to get to them, if one hasn't already.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Except I am part of the target demographic, so...

nitsua60

3:48 AM

@BESW Right. That's what bothered me: that he created a world in which all named female characters shared those qualities in spades. (Except Aviendha. Never Aviendha, dear Aviendha.)

Of course, for all my griping I live with an 8 year-old who can name all of the Forsaken. (And their reincarnations, where applicable.)

(I'm pretty sure that's more of a reflection on me than on him, that is.)

trogdor

@nitsua60 which Forsaken? there are a lot of those

nitsua60

yes.

@SevenSidedDie I hadn't noticed. But perhaps I was so deliriously happy at the resumption of the plot-clock ticking by that the finer points of Sanderson's execution escaped me.

Miniman

@SevenSidedDie Incidentally, since you're in chat anyway - sorry about the number of comment fights I've gotten into lately.

Joel Harmon

I've been advised to just read the cliff's notes on the middle section of the series

nitsua60

8 mins ago, by nitsua60

Not enough that I'd necessarily recommend the entire series to someone if they hadn't started it on their own, but enough that I recommend anyone who'd gotten to 9 or 10 should slog through 11 and then rediscover their love as we accelerated to a well-written and satisfying ending.

trogdor

3:52 AM

@nitsua60 what I mean is, there are a lot of things that have people or things called "the Forsaken" in them

nitsua60

@trogdor oh, sorry. These Forsaken are thirteen(ish) servants of the Dark One in the Wheel of Time series.

trogdor

I do not believe for a second that your kid knows every Forsaken anyone ever dreamed up :P

@nitsua60 ah ok

SevenSidedDie

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Asking good questions is surprisingly hard, but it gets easier with practice!

@Miniman Nitsua60 just gave the same apology recently! Let me quote myself:

Jul 18 at 20:29, by SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 No problem! They all show up as one block in the UI, so it's not even slightly troublesome for many comments in a set being flagged.

Joel Harmon

I'm a bit late, but I did manage to dig up what I'd consider to be the BESW-amalgam's origin story

Miniman

@SevenSidedDie All the same, thank you as always for all the stuff you do!

2

nitsua60

4:00 AM

hear, hear.

Joel Harmon

thirded

trogdor

yep, I have had some of my answers edited by you, and their quality always goes up 110% @SevenSidedDie

XD

BESW

@JoelHarmon I once ran a campaign with a people who believed they were all the reincarnations of the last two of a very wicked group that nearly destroyed the world. They'd been cursed to be reborn until they'd atoned for their group's wickedness.

Joel Harmon

the players or the characters?

trogdor

@JoelHarmon the characters

XD

Ben

4:04 AM

@JoelHarmon If it was the players that's some hella good DMing

Joel Harmon

just checking; I feel like I've heard weirder

SevenSidedDie

@Miniman Thank you. Welcome, I mean. But thank you. :)

Miniman

@Ben I think that's known as psychological torture rather than DMing.

Ben

@Miniman labels... :P

Joel Harmon

that's it for me for now; bye all

Shalvenay

4:06 AM

hey again @Ben

Miniman

@JoelHarmon Cya!

Ben

@JoelHarmon o/

@Shalvenay \o

BESW

The characters. It was a group of NPCs that the PCs interacted with regularly.

Shalvenay

@Ben so, I've been thinking about this, and I have concluded my EVE main could very well be the perfect guy for utterly deflating your average racist elf.

Ben

I'm sorry, but you've lost me.

BESW

4:09 AM

(D&D 3.5; they were originally rakshasa who nearly destroyed the world through misuse of magic, but devolved themselves into catmen first. The catmen developed myths about needing to atone for the sins of their ancestors.)

Ben

@BESW Khajeet swears to do right; Khajeet must atone for his sins.

Shalvenay

@Ben ah, I take it you're not familiar with the trope of racist elves who stick their noses up and sneer at anyone without pointy ears?

Ben

@Shalvenay If you're talking system/genre agnostic, then yes, I do get that gist from elves in general

Shalvenay

@Ben yes, I am talking system-agnostic (it's not so much a thing with the way I play elves, but I've seen in other folks' elves, sometimes to quite an extreme degree)

SevenSidedDie

@Shalvenay John Wick's take on such elves in Orkworld is great.

Shalvenay

4:13 AM

@SevenSidedDie oh? link? haven't seen/read it

BESW

@Ben In their myth, the First Ones tried to kill the land, and as the land bucked and shook to rid itself of its enemies, the sky wept for her. The last two surviving First Ones fall in the sea of Sky's Tears, drank of her sorrow, and knew land's pain, and begged for compassion. So the land forgave them and bound them to itself, to be forever reborn until they had atoned for the pain they had caused the land.

Miniman

@BESW The more I think about this, the more I think it's the sort of thing rakshasa would deliberately do to their descendants just for the heck of it.

BESW

The PCs ran into a devout group that tried to do good and serve the land, and heretical splinter groups which rejected their origin myths and felt no compunction.

SevenSidedDie

@Shalvenay It's old-ish and hard to get now; it was his first attempt at self-publishing, before indie was a name and a decade before Kickstarter. Let me see if I can find a review though.

Shalvenay

@SevenSidedDie ah.

BESW

4:15 AM

@Miniman Well, the Rakshasa had found a mineral which absorbed magic, and which they could use to give their spells a massive boost in power (free metamagic feats you don't even know!). But using it that way siphoned off a tiny bit of XP each time, so the whole civilisation accidentally level-drained itself down to catmen.

Ben

@SevenSidedDie Side quest: find a tale of John Wick and the Elves of Orkworld

Miniman

@BESW Ok, that's 100-proof awesome.

Adeptus

@Shalvenay I sort of adapted this with a character I played. An elf ranger, with favored enemy: gnoll. In Pathfinder's Katapesh region, where gnolls are treated as people. I played him as racist/bigoted against gnolls. I retired him after we finished the gnolls-as-BBEGs phase of the campaign, because he was very much a one-trick pony. Shooting Gnolls? Fantastic! Doing anything else? Not so much...

nitsua60

trivial nomenclature question: in 5e, what's a good term for the collection of WotC-published books outside of the coreset? "Supplements?" "Supplements (SCAG, Volo and D'ology forthcoming) and APs?" Something else?

Shalvenay

@Ben it actually makes me wonder what that'd meeting would look like....

BESW

4:18 AM

@Miniman And the Rakshasa Queen had them build her a giant stasis chamber of the mineral, constructed to pull magic from all over the world into a vortex with herself at the centre. It'd take thousands of years to restore her power, but she would be epic levels again.

Shalvenay

@Adeptus ah. I've actually had thoughts of playing a Nobanionite gnoll cleric -- "Cleanup in Aisle 9" :P

BESW

Our campaign started as the "traditional" D&D lands were seeing magic lose its power, and had just found a new continent across the sea with catfolk, and magic! And a mysterious pyramid in the middle of the desert that nobody wanted to go near...

(Magic was stronger as you got closer to the Queen's tomb, just like water is deepest near the drain in the bath.)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Well, WotC's product page describes SCAG as a "Sourcebook" and Volo's Guide as a "supplement".

BESW

@nitsua60 Asterisks.

Ben

@BESW Asterix?

nitsua60

4:22 AM

I might go with "supplementary materials"

BESW

68

A: Origin of the term "Splat Book"

It came from the fans of White Wolf's World of Darkness games. "Splat" is another name for the asterisk character ('*'), which is often used as a placeholder or "wild card" in a name by technical types of people. Someone somewhere starting referring to all of WW's various Clanbook/Tribebook/Guild...

Ben

Well that's my bit of random knowledge for the day. I can go to bed now.

nitsua60

@BESW I guess I associate this term with the shelves and shelves of books one has for some systems. But we're certainly trending in that direction, with three more 5e hardcovers due this year... =\

Miniman

@nitsua60 Btw, as I understand it Dungeonology isn't a D&D supplement, it's a children's book that happens to be D&D-themed.

nitsua60

@Miniman Cool. Then I guess my son and I'll have to fight over whose bookshelf it ends up on =)

SevenSidedDie

4:28 AM

@Ben @Shalvenay Quest failure. I found one review that says a lot about the game, but only gives us a glimpse of the elves twice in many words. And reading through it means I'm out of time before this kitchen needs attention. ;)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Well, if/when you get it, I'd love to know what it's like - it's firmly in my "would like to read, and then probably buy" category atm. Which is tricky, since I don't see the public library getting a copy.

nitsua60

@Miniman ping me when it's in print, 'cause I'll remember that someone was curious, but I won't remember who =)

Miniman

@nitsua60 C'mon, it's only 5 months.

The Oracle

5:05 AM

0

Q: Have the pros and cons of Badges been reevaluated recently?

I'm apprehensive about asking this, because I'm very new to the site myself. However, I'm wondering if others have considered the possibility that certain badges on the site might be encouraging counterproductive behaviour. If I'm being completely honest, this has come about because I keep seein...

discussion

WrongOnTheInternet

Now to figure out a way of making death a penalty for high level characters without something like a System Shock roll.

Miniman

@WrongOnTheInternet Why?

WrongOnTheInternet

Because otherwise all challenge exits the game, and with that, interest.

(This is a Basic/Advanced hack)

The silver lining is that the players have been exploring low level areas they weren't able to before with lower level characters.

Miniman

@WrongOnTheInternet I'd argue that death is a penalty with roughly the same impact at all levels.

WrongOnTheInternet

@Miniman Not when you have a cleric that can cast Resurrection whenever he feels like it.

Miniman

5:21 AM

@WrongOnTheInternet In general: At low levels, death keeps you out of the fight for the duration of the combat, whereupon, one way or another, you're back. Often as a new character, but back nonetheless. This is still true at high levels, it's just the "often as a new character" clause that gets removed.

And if the group dynamic is such that characters are important enough for becoming a new character to be a significant penalty, the GM will often find a way for the character to be revived/to have survived.

WrongOnTheInternet

@Miniman New characters are made at half the max XP of any character that player played, unless the player actively wants to start at 0 XP (which happens sometimes). Death is a bit of a penalty for low level characters, but basically a speedbump for high level characters.

Miniman

@WrongOnTheInternet Wow, that's harsh. Doesn't that give you death spiral problems?

Adeptus

@WrongOnTheInternet Which system is this in?

Miniman

7 mins ago, by WrongOnTheInternet

(This is a Basic/Advanced hack)

WrongOnTheInternet

@Miniman Not really, my players just get better at planning fights and reading situations/traps. There was a long period in a similar campaign where I was a player where most of us were level 1 for a year, and then we got good enough to survive to higher levels.

Adeptus

5:26 AM

So, old-school D&D?

WrongOnTheInternet

Obviously, death shouldn't be as severe a penalty at high levels when someone has access to Raise Dead/Resurrection, but there should be some negative that makes the game more interesting.

@Adeptus Pretty much.

nitsua60

@Miniman posted. Feel free to hack at it as you see fit. (I've requested a CW conversion, but who knows when a mod will get a chance?)

WrongOnTheInternet

@Miniman Also, Half Max XP is the most lenient death penalty in this particular group. Our other DM's use Half XP of previous character (allowing for death spiral), and Start from level 1, period.

Adeptus

@WrongOnTheInternet Do Raise Dead and Resurrection have the same "lose a level" penalty as in 3.x?

WrongOnTheInternet

@Adeptus Nah, those penalties were added in that specific version of the game. Previous games had system shock rolls (to see if you could come back from death) or limited resurrection amounts per character. I don

't like either of those solutions, particularly, I'd like something that forces gameplay. A curse from the resurrecting deity or whatever.

doppelgreener

5:32 AM

I've only sparingly played old school D&D and I recall this effective immortality being brought up a couple of times before here in chat... personally I've been playing in various systems recently where death pretty much is never a likely outcome but that doesn't stop things from being challenging and dramatic.

WrongOnTheInternet

@doppelgreener That's a fair point. I am creating a dungeon that's designed to be fought at these levels, so that hopefully will give more challenge.

Miniman

@WrongOnTheInternet I actually did something like that recently - the Bard died, and in the process of resurrection was sworn into the service of the deity as a Paladin.

With the player's enthusiastic consent, of course.

WrongOnTheInternet

Due to some of the changes I've made, high level fighters are basically chainsaws, and when they fail, there's still casters in the back.

doppelgreener

We've got a campaign where we're trying to collect five mythical swords which when combined form a superweapon, and we're racing against evildoers to prevent them from gathering the swords and completing the set. Any defeat along the way means risking losing the race, losing a sword we've collected, and the evildoers possibly completing the set.

WrongOnTheInternet

@Miniman The real issue with this is that our high level cleric worships Christopher Walken, god of Pies. They'd be making pies for the rest of their life.

doppelgreener

5:37 AM

We've got other games where someone's trying to escape, find information, steal something valuable, or we're trying to investigate matters and losing the fight means we hit a significant roadblock in our investigation.

WrongOnTheInternet

@doppelgreener Macguffin collection races are always fun.

Miniman

@nitsua60 I never noticed that before - I wonder what "of Wizards of the Coast" is meant to mean?

nitsua60

@Miniman I suppose it's "of" WotC in the same way my desk is "of" wood? I.e. the material cause of Sage Advice (twitter) is Wizards of the Coast?

WrongOnTheInternet

@doppelgreener The other issue with this, though, the compounding issue, is that the game is a pretty solid sandbox. I can always add triggers that force these kinds of things, but without that, the game defaults to "clear the hex, explore the dungeons"

I could add a d20 table of "Events that happen to Southport (the main city) this month"

hmm...

Miniman

@nitsua60 Better than anything I've come up with!

doppelgreener

5:42 AM

If you've got a significant revolving afterrlife door problem, by the way... are you aware of Inevitables? In D&D, they're embodiments of Law who enforce the natural order - and there's a type of Inevitable devoted to keeping the afterlife door firmly one-way. Traditionally they're also extremely powerful, because The Order of the Universe can't really afford less against those powerful enough to defy the natural order.

Miniman

@doppelgreener I'm not sure they existed pre-3.

doppelgreener

Well! They're a thing that's available.

WrongOnTheInternet

@doppelgreener That... helps me out a lot. You die too often? You lose Hallow (part of a replacement alignment system). You die more often than that? Death Angels start hunting you down.

doppelgreener

Sounds nice. Yeah.

There's a bit more you can do though too. Inevitables are smart creatures, though they're totally single-minded toward their purpose. I like the idea of creatures that start causing trouble for you merely being alive, but in a game that's designed to have you defeat the monsters, that can sometimes be a bit simplistic. You could also have an Inevitable start Having Words with the patron god on behalf of the Embodiment of Natural Law (also effectively a deity) about the hassle they're causing

You could also have the Inevitable work in the background to interfere with their matters in the mortal world without directly trying to kill them.

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 Are you sure you want to make that a CW? RPG.se likes rewarding good self-answers, and this looks like an (obvious in hindsight, not obvious in forethought!) resource that will be appreciated quite a lot.

doppelgreener

5:47 AM

Also, Inevitables do sometimes just make demands such as recompense. For example: you got this life back, but you haven't earned it; we task you to do [great task] or [another great task], your choice, but don't delay or we'll be seeing to return you to the afterlife for not having earned your return here.

Inevitables that are out to right justices might simply demand that, say, a murderer take care of the victim's family, and visit sometimes to ensure that they do.

nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie My thinking is that it's one that may need significant maintenance over the years, and that lowering the bar to drive-by corrections/addenda might be useful. Kinda like my "what are the 5e races" post.

Also, I snagged "Epic" the other week, so I'm not nearly so concerned about rep-capping these days =)

Miniman

@doppelgreener Now I'm imagining the pickpockets from this strip as Inevitables who saw an easy way to prevent a resurrection.

doppelgreener

@Miniman That's an entirely reasonable interpretation. :D

nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie But if it didn't automatically jump out at you as "ugh, that should really be a CW" then maybe I'm thinking of them/the site differently.

doppelgreener

There's another concept you can leverage as well: in D&D 4th edition, there's a goddess called the Raven Queen. Can't remember where she got that name, but basically she and a few other deities and psuedo-deities ganged up to take down a corrupt god, and divided up his (all too far-reaching) portfolio because nobody should actually have that much power. She got the afterlife portion, so now she's the goddess of the afterlife, and is there to ensure souls go in the correct direction - onwards.

SevenSidedDie

5:51 AM

@nitsua60 The reasoning that anyone should be able to easily update it has some merit. Hm, well, maybe let's give it a day, and then re-flag it if you still are sure. Let it have its initial bump (and let just established editors craft its initial form)?

nitsua60

Sounds good to me. (Also, it's pushing 2am local and I've got to work in the... later-this-morning, so I should probably not be making decisions right now. "The Holy Spirit goes to bed at midnight," and all.)

doppelgreener

The Raven Queen considers undeath an abomination, and while she doesn't appear to have inherent objection to rituals that restore life to a mortal, it's reasonable she'd begin to take note and intervene when a particular soul just refuses to Move On.

nitsua60

I hadn't thought about how not being CW would "protect" it for a bit.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Interesting, that sounds weirdly like some stuff that happened in Forgotten Realms canon in previous editions.

doppelgreener

@WrongOnTheInternet You may have a different pantheon and not want to call this particuliar deity The Raven Queen, but a particular deity suddenly beginning to pay the party some unwanted attention may also make them think about resurrection and their own mortality somewhat more seriously.

WrongOnTheInternet

5:55 AM

@doppelgreener Mhoddey Dhoo. He sends his black dogs after you. Armok. He hates that you got an easy pass out of losing a struggle, and smacks you with a Quest.

Huh, I'm thinking of a table of things.

This helped a lot, thanks.

doppelgreener

Sounds reasonable! I don't know if the entire pantheon is theoretically meant to be known to the party in its whole entirety, but if they don't know the entire pantheon, you can reasonably create a new god they'll find out about now. Or, alternately, a deity they did know has a servant they didn't know who has their own agenda. "But that's not what your god does!" "Yeah, but it's what I do, and they're happy with that. So, time to pay up."

You're welcome.

WrongOnTheInternet

@doppelgreener They know the primary pantheon, but currently the party cleric doesn't worship any of them, instead choosing to worship Christopher Walken.

doppelgreener

Sweet. Loads of room for pantheon members who are not as well known, secondary in some way, or servants who are lesser deities / demigods.

Miniman

The God of Death's corrupt aide, who takes bribes in the form of diamonds in return for neglecting to put you onto his master's To-Do list. How did you think those spells work?

WrongOnTheInternet

@doppelgreener Different regions tend to worship different pantheons, but lots of them have quite a bit of overlap in domains. Usually the approach is to figure that different places just have different names for the same deity, but that actually doesn't explain a lot.

doppelgreener

6:06 AM

@Miniman That's pretty funny actually.

Miniman

@WrongOnTheInternet You mean like "If Zeus and Thor are actually the same guy, why are their personalities completely different? And why doesn't Zeus have a hammer?" sort of thing?

WrongOnTheInternet

@Miniman Exactly.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Thanks! That one just came to me.

doppelgreener

@Miniman "I see you've been paying our service quite a bit of patronage. It really is quite a lot of trouble keeping all the resurrections hush-hush. Might I suggest you upgrade to the premium service? There's a bit of a steep rate increase involved, but I'm sure it'll be worth it, or else who knows what might happen if we have to end our protections over you and let our good God of the Dead find out what you've been up to..."

Miniman

@doppelgreener Or even just "Hey Iago, why do you have a pile of diamonds larger than my entire treasure hoard? You're fired! And I'm totally keeping them."

doppelgreener

6:10 AM

@Miniman Hahaha.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Things could get even more complicated - if the Cleric's been casting it, the diamonds might have been going through his patron deity. Not for every campaign, but if you wanted to do some celestial politics anyway...

doppelgreener

@Miniman They're thinking of taking down Christopher Walken, but he's just so damn charismatic.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Plus, I heard he pretended to be connected one time. I don't want to have my pretend kneecaps smashed like ripe melons, if you know what I mean.

doppelgreener

(what's connected mean here? gang connections?)

Miniman

@doppelgreener Organised crime, yeah.

doppelgreener

6:18 AM

nice. :D

Miniman

And yeah, that one didn't work.

doppelgreener

"if we take down Deity Christopher Walken, Deity Al Pacino might become upset with us!" "But Deity Al Pacino was just an actor when he was mortal, wasn't he? He wasn't actually a ganster, was he?" "I don't trust that, that might just be what he'd want us to think!"

Miniman

@doppelgreener There's a philosophical question about deitic acting in there.

doppelgreener

@Miniman Deity Al Pacino appears to be the God of Gang Crime, but none of the deities are quite sure and there's no means to tell what his portfolio really consists of?

WrongOnTheInternet

@doppelgreener The thing is, this is a question that has a reasonable chance of coming up. Many deities in my game are real life celebrities, all due to the same player.

doppelgreener

6:27 AM

Lovely. :D

David Bowie, God of the Fabric of the Universe.

Miniman

@WrongOnTheInternet Well, if the deities exist because of a single entity, that kinda says something about said entity.

WrongOnTheInternet

@Miniman He had a milk worshipping cleric that was the highest level cleric in the party at one point. Died by drowning.

doppelgreener

@Miniman There's a comic series called FABLES, which features a multiverse composed of all the characters from all the fables told by people in our world. The comic itself is set in modern day New York, after hundreds of said characters (themselves called "fables") have fled their respective fantasy worlds to live in our own as a sort of safe harbor.

The fantasy worlds are, after all, being overtaken by The Adversary, who is a tyrannical emperor. A lot of refugees died in trying to flee the war.

They call this world the Mundane World, but at some point a few of them begin to consider the very serious ramifications that the humans in this so-called "mundane" world appear solely responsible for the very existence of the rest of the multiverse as they know it - and indeed the fables who are more popularly told have somewhat more power in some ways than the rest whose stories have been rarely told or mostly forgotten.

Some of the major protagonists include Bigby Wolf (aka The Big Bad Wolf), Snow White and her sister Briar Rose, King Cole, Prince Charming, Sleeping Beauty, Beast and Belle, Pinocchio, Little Boy Blue, etc.

Adeptus

That sounds a little like Once Upon A Time, and a little like American Gods

doppelgreener

As far as I can tell the author has really done their research, and makes use of very obscure versions and counterparts to various fables which mostly go unknown nowadays to flesh out character backstories as necessary and add details and etc.

@Adeptus I've seen a couple of episodes of Once Upon A Time, and that's quite a good comparison to make.

Fables started in 2002, it could reasonably have been influenced by American Gods!

Adeptus

6:40 AM

(FYI, an American Gods miniseries is in the works. I'm cautiously looking forward to it)

BESW

7:05 AM

Urrgh. I can't keep my plots simple.

[scribbles on notes angrily]

trogdor

lol

welcome to my world, it was your's first but it is also mine

Doomed Mind

7:49 AM

@doppelgreener I think there is also a computer game, Telltale Games: The Wolf amongst us

or something like that

doppelgreener

@DoomedMind yep, that's a Fables game staring Bigby Wolf

Doomed Mind

thought so

Handsome Unlimited

i feel like @SevenSidedDie should get a completely unique badge for turning a post that was effectively gibberish into a legitimate question

BESW

He'd have a lot of them.

Handsome Unlimited

no kidding though, i read through the original question about 5 times, and after all of that i felt like i was closer to having an aneurysm than i was to understanding that post

Doomed Mind

8:07 AM

yay, i can post comments now oO

BESW

Grats.

Doomed Mind

finally i can ask for a clarification xD

trogdor

@doppelgreener he isn't the main character in the comic right?

or is he?

doppelgreener

@trogdor the comic has lots of main characters. different chapters or stories focus on different people. he's one of the most common characters to receive focus or show up in others' stories. if i was to choose someone to call "the" main character I would in fact choose Bigby.

trogdor

ah ok

I am not familiar with the comic, all I know is the stuff I have seen other people do in the game

so I was curious

doppelgreener

8:34 AM

no worries :D

The Oracle

8:59 AM

0

Q: Are system tags only for directly rules-related questions?

This question is tagged with pathfinder. This suggested edit removes the tag, and replaces it with system-agnostic, on the grounds that the question does not directly concern the pathfinder rules. However, the asker in question is playing pathfinder. Should the pathfinder tag be kept on the basi...

discussion tags

BESW

9:32 AM

Tonight's dinner is falafel-from-a-box with fresh sautéed onion and carrot added, fried in sesame oil and served in pita pockets with a sauce made of Greek yogurt, peanut butter, sunflower seeds, honey, and lemon juice.

(There were going to be cucumber slices in a soy sauce marinade with the local hot pepper, but all the cucumbers at the store were bad.)

trogdor

nice

Anaphory

@BESW I still have some home-made falafel and pitas in the freezer, I should pin this for when I'm back from the UK and make something like that sauce.

BESW

@Anaphory I just looked up peanut butter and Greek yogurt on the Internet and read the ingredients for a bunch of recipes, then made my own from what I had.

Anaphory

Yep, that's always the idea.

I might actually buy pizza today, because my Fridge is blissfully empty before I go on a long weekend in the UK.

As mentioned earlier, I had forgotten that I would be here today, and not on a field in the midlands yet, so I did use up most of my fresh food before yesterday.

trogdor

an empty fridge is a good thing right before a trip I suppose

nothing in it can spoil for you to stumble into when you get back XD

Anaphory

9:39 AM

It is in general, but not when the trip starts a day later than you thought ;)

BESW

We have a whole-wheat no-rise pizza dough recipe, and we make a sauce from organic ketchup.

Top it with stuff like onions and vegan sausage.

(Blasphemous as it may seem to most Americans, cheese is not necessary for a pizza.)

Anaphory

I'm not American but still like cheese on my pizza.

BESW

(We don't do organic for a lot of stuff--most things you can't tell the difference--but it matters with carrots, peanut butter, and ketchup.)

(though with peanut butter you can get by nicely if you just get non-organic that you need to stir.)

Anaphory

I do organic for most things, not that I do taste a difference in many things, but I haven't spent enough thought on what's actually sustainable, so organic is a good compromise. For peanut butter, I definitely prefer the stuff made from peanuts, not made from peanuts&sugar&palm oil&salt.

BESW

Organic stuff is super expensive here, so we have to pick and choose what fits our budget.

Anaphory

9:45 AM

Makes sense.

I do reconsider when it's not just ×2 in price, but ×4 or higher.

I guess in your place I would pay far more attention to how local stuff is than to how it was grown.

BESW

First time I made the peanut butter yogurt sauce, I used local calamansi. That stuff makes everything twice as awesome.

Usually I use it in my non-alcoholic mixed drinks for Geek Night.

eimyr

10:27 AM

@Anaphory Having done some research I am avoiding organic foods, as I believe that judicious use of *icides and synthetic fertilizers decreases the strain farming puts on the land and wildlife.

Not that I want my food to be doused in DDT, but I'm not sure going into the other extreme is a good option. I'm paying more attention to other markers of sustainability, such as approval of pro-env NGOs

BESW

10:40 AM

Yeah, the whole thing is far more complex than consumers would like it to be.

...or producers, for that matter.

Anaphory

That's why I tend to phrase my buying, cooking and eating habits as “X for now, possibly until I have spent some more thought on it.”

BESW

We used to buy a lot more fresh local stuff, but we just don't have the time or energy to prepare some of it now.

eimyr

@BESW Yeah. How do I tell my local Tesco's or Sainsbury's that I want bread from grains that have been fertilized with synthetic fertilizer and a pesticide but not-the-one-harmful-for-the-bees and also not from the deforested area and with from a non-monoculture farm? "Organic" doesn't cover half of it.

Meanwhile I have problems with eggs.

Because my ideal egg is a free-range, grass-kept, GMO-fed non-organic one.

This is not the usual combination.

There are either cheapo cruelty eggs or non-GMO, organic free ranges for health nuts.

nitsua60

1:22 PM

@BESW [sounds like a prompt for Botch Blog]

BESW

Right now I haven't learned anything.

eimyr

I imagined it as [burp]

BESW

Spent three years trying to learn how to plot for single-session games and I'm just as bad at it as ever.

eimyr

@Ash Hiya!

@BESW Meanwhile I simply can't start campaigns.

Why is it that my campaigns only get momentum halfway through?>

How come I can't get my players to act with confidence and coherence from, say, sesh number three?

BESW

That requires comfort and familiarity with the group dynamic, the system, the setting, and the GM.

They need to know they won't be stepping on each other's toes, that the system will enable their choices, that the choices make sense in the setting, and that the GM will support them.

If any of those is missing, a player's liable to just keep his mouth shut or his choices will seem incoherent.

This is where tricks like using Microscope to make the setting together come in handy.

Microscope doesn't just make sure everyone knows the setting equally well; it also kickstarts the group dynamics.

nitsua60

1:59 PM

@BESW this ^^

BESW

@nitsua60 See also Fate's worldbuilding, Bubblegumshoe's trick of building the town by making relationships and describing where those people will be found, etc.

eimyr

Again, you don't consider the situation when the setting is not built by the players.

BESW

Oh, I do.

I'm saying that it's harder when that's the case.

If the question is, "Why is it that my campaigns only get momentum halfway through?" then it's likely part of the answer is, "They're learning the setting through play and it takes them that long to get comfy with it."

eimyr

it's more along the lines of "why does it take so long"

BESW

Other possible reasons include that you're starting the story too far back / too lowkey and it takes a long time to ramp up; that the group isn't socialising outside the game time; that you're using systems which punish risk-taking...

One of the things I'm forcing myself to learn is to find the action point to enter the story, not the exposition point.

nitsua60

2:06 PM

@BESW I like Microscope for campaign-starting enough that I've used it both in its published, 1D (temporal) form and in a hacked 2D (spatial) form.

BESW

You'll have to tell me about that some time, but right now my bed is calling.

nitsua60

@BESW Then evil hat is my go-to for starting session 1 in media res. But get thee to a bedroom!

@eimyr do you find that the problem manifests across systems, or is this in one particular system that you have this trouble?

eimyr

I run games other than Mage rarely enough to prevent me from giving a fact-checked answer.

The Oracle

3:05 PM

0

Q: *Why* should this question be closed?

I think Idea for missing on a shapeshift roll for Dungeon World should be closed: it fits all the hallmarks for the things that make list/idea-generation questions bad. There are a number of good, non-overlapping answers with no real way to tell which is "better" than another for voting purposes....

discussion close-reasons

Derpy

3:45 PM

Just dropping by for a message, guessed someone here may be interested.

in Mos Eisley, 33 mins ago, by Derpy

I doubt someone will be interested, but here it goes anyway... Legend Of Equestria is doing some open server weekend test starting tomorrow - 29 July until Sunday 31 July. So, if anyone really want to go around running as a pony in a sort of MLP-themed mmorpg....

@besw fell free to move it to the other room or to delete altogether. See you around, Rpg-ers

nitsua60

4:55 PM

So, I tried to be good about gender-neutral pronouning in this answer. But I feel like it ended up pretty awkward. If anyone would like to take a whack I would welcome the assistance.

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