Pro tems are appointed by the CMs, elected mods by the community. Elected mods also generally have more to do than pro tems, since they have to manage bigger sites.
The requirements to become a pro-tem moderator are things like "Willing to curate the chaotic mess that is a beta site" and "Hasn't ticked off the CMs."
@BESW That's pretty much it, yes. Having done (well, technically am still doing, because Pets is still a beta) the pro-tem thing a few times, its pretty chaotic sometimes
@KorvinStarmast FYI that user complaining on meta about their question closure is found to probably be the same troll who was complaining last time, found to be a sock puppet, and got their account destroyed. Best not to bother engaging. They have no interest in acting in good faith.
So guys, we have reason to believe that our troll has created a great number of socks. Unfortunately many of them aren't "provably" him. But there's no need to get overly wound up when some new account gets like this. He's trolling specifically to upset you, so don't play that game. Do the initial round of helping, and when they start to flip out, just walk away.
I've seen a strange question and it's accumulating poor responses from its owner. Stuff like this is happening to me or someone else:
left a comment asking for a clarification, and got a response from OP. But the response didn't really address my request, and raised new issues to sort out.
left...
@nitsua60 that guide should probably say something about disengaging, avoiding engaging in the first place (even if one is sure they'll be helpful), and not engaging once the dust has settled so that it can stay that way and not stir back up again.
The concept of trolling here still mildly confuses me. Like, either someone will find the question interesting enough to answer it anyways, they'll think it violates one of the hold reasons and vtc, or it'll still be a passable question and might actually help someone else out eventually anyways.
It seems like a horribly ineffective site to get your trolling jollies from.
pretty good in the RPG department. I've got Phoenix: Dawn Command this weekend, Dungeon World starting next week, and a to-be-determined date for Lasers and Feelings
I guess. I just kind of generally assume trolls get their fun out of making people mad, and I pretty much only see people here range from helpful to clinical. Just seems like a really inefficient route for trolling. Must be a particular taste :-P
Trolling on here takes a lot of work though and mostly just involves wasting the time of people who are just being consistently patient and helpful. Trolls tend to get bored after a while.
I've been thinking about that question about what to do about the party that 180ed from murderhobos to peacenik diplomats, and I think part of the problem is that people assume that RP falls along that line (from murderhobodom, which gets linked to Gamism in some eyes, to the peacenik diplomats, which get linked to Narrativism in said eyes)
Either they are a troll or they have a very severe case of "I am right and absolutely everyone else either agrees or is wrong" and still persistently want our help. But it's most likely a troll and there's no functional difference at this point.
and my tendency when I want to push away from murderhobodom is to either a) radically change mob behavior if I'm in the DM seat (see: giant fruit bats, harpy victory serenade), or b) push my characters into a deep, geeky, technical immersion in some facet of the world their in, which is orthogonal to both story/character-centric diplomacy and combat-centric murderhobodom
but, that puts a high strain on everyone involved to keep up with the depth of that immersion
@Shalvenay As you know, I've got no problem with the giant fruit bat example. I think it was an excellent bit of reasonableness in world-play. But when you use the word "harpy" you're communicating a lot. If you don't want them to be assumed to be evil, antagonistic, nasty, vile, filthy ne'er-do-wells, you need to describe them as "flying combination bird-women," not "harpies." Otherwise you're just being mean to your players.
@doppelgreener I added a little bit on that note, but I'm wont to recommend people not engage in the first place. I know it probably borders on foolishly naive/pollyannaish, but I think "assume good faith" would argue against recommend people restrain their first instinct to engage.
@nitsua60 I only called them harpies because that's the MM stat block attached to them :P and part of the subversion is making their behavior not fit their name ;)
@Shalvenay but if you're using a canonical descriptor while changing the underlying referent, you're not "subverting" things, you're just lying to your players about what they're facing.
If you describe a flying half-woman, half-bird and give it non-threatening behavior, then players assume it's evil, filthy, nasty, &c. and act accordingly, then somehow learn of their mistake... well, now you've subverted something.
yeah, I think you overread what I was intending -- I wasn't intending to portray them as paragons of good :P but more as "moral positioning doesn't free you from mundane problems"
@nitsua60 you should be able to go to that post and retract the errant flag
(I flagged a comment as "answer in comment," but really it's "you could do this, this, or this, but we can't know any of that until you give more info." Which I knee-jerk flagged halfway through.)
@Shalvenay So I tried, within a dozen seconds, but clicking on the (now red) flag does nothing.
but yeah. I'm personally confused by how to handle troubleshooting-back-and-forths in the Stack format
because the intermediate steps often aren't a fully-formed answer, but they often can lead to an answer without an actual answer being posted at the same time
especially if you have to play the 'have someone try things and see what works" game
Speaking of comics. I've started reading Unsounded again. First time I left after few pages. But this time I became addicted. Every evening I sit and read this till bedtime. Sometimes even few hours past bedtime. I love it.
I had a big pause in reading any kind of fiction: whether comics or books. I feel that I need it now, because when I see such examples I understand that my brain became less creative. I work mainly with cliche and classic tropes, when I can have so much fun with worldbuilding and fiction.
> Now this free abundant use of [William Blake's] creative power made him one of the happiest men who ever lived. He wrote copious endless poetry (without the slightest hope or concern that it would ever be published). For a time he thought that if he wrote less he would do more engraving and painting. He stopped it for a month or more. But he found on comparison that he did more painting when he let out this inspired visionary writing. (Brenda Ueland, "If You Want To Write")
some website building (which is technically still what I am doing but,... a data entry aspect of it) and some 3D modling of buildings, and learning a small amount of coding
@RollingFeles yeah, more or less, and I have been drafted most recently into checking other people's work because I have gained some kind of reputation for quality
I don't know where they got that idea but I roll with it XD :P
I am proud of my work, but at the same time like,... it is not a "fun" activity by any means
Meanwhile I'm proud of my work but I wish they'd let me have more influence. Though I can't expect to be the lead anything with just, like, three months of work under my belt.
Yeah, but with social anxiety (from what I understand of it when I have it) makes that a disadvantage because, at least for me, it overemphasises the bad
True, I can speak from experience that live presentations can go completely awry, resulting in a series of stumbles and mumbles and embarrassment.
So, whether or not charisma was your dump stat, you can learn to control your audience while you present. If they can't catch you off-guard or cause you to stumble, then they're very unlikely to show a negative reaction.
In the first campaign I ever played, the GM didn't really know the rules and never looked at the rulebooks. He made up the story as we went along and didn't have a sense of balance, so things fell apart very quickly.
It was fun, but I would not consider him a good GM
The how of safe-and-happy is all the tools of the GM's trade. It might involve system balance, if that's a thing the group values. Many do. But many other groups consider system balance an obstacle to fun.
For me, it boils down to not being a GM, but being a facilitator for a group of friends who play games together.
When that means I take up the mantle of GM, I have to figure out what systems will be good for the group's goals and styles. Which means talking to them about their goals and styles.
Trogdor likes fiddly bits and playing unexpectedly reasonable or unreasonable characters. Doppelgreener likes soap opera drama, clever solutions, and playing capable characters who get in over their head.
I like social improv, grand setpieces, and minimal bookkeeping.
(The Venn diagram overlap for systems which accommodate "minimal bookkeeping" and "fiddly bits" is pretty small, which is one reason we play a lot of Fate. Trogdor can make his character very complex without it changing anyone else's experience.)
And we do that. We play a lot of one-shots, almost everyone's GMed something at least once or twice, and there are a handful of ongoing campaigns we revisit as the mood strikes.
I like fiddly bits, leader characters, epically heroic stories and, very importantly, visual aesthetics (however that works in a text-only environment)
I didn't realize that the SE community members actually participate in a single campaign. I figured that everyone was independently coming here for Q&A.
@MikeQ Not everybody all at once, no. Trogdor is a meatspace friend of mine, and Doppelgreener joins us via Skype sometimes. RPG.SE has also held in-chat games like beta-testing Fate Accelerated or trying out Roll For Shoes.
A few months ago a handful of us got together in Discord to help a visually impaired Stack user figure out what systems she'd be able to play in effectively with voice-only groups.
Anyway, on Direct: There was Fire Emblem Warriors (seemingly like Hyrule Warriors but, well, with Fire Emblem) on 3DS and Switch in Fall; the next installment in the main series in 2018 on Switch (which is good because the scope can be much bigger than on the handhelds); and, more importantly: Fire Emblem Gaiden (the second one, it's very different from most of the series) remake on 19th May on 3DS; and Fire Emblem Heroes on 2nd February on Android, iOS probably later
it employs strategy combat, which I am fond of, with the twist of every unit being a unique character who can die forever, and the system of combat is nice too
Fire Emblem Gaiden you might particularly like. And out of the newer ones, try Fates: Conquest. The plot is the best among the 3DS ones (though still kind of stupid), the actual game mechanics and map design are really, really great, and the fan-service is... there. You don't actually need to pay much attention to it, though it helps.
Other than that, it's most just folks talking in chat and every now and then the stars align and the effort is put into doing a session or three of a game.
But time zones make it very hard.
And everybody's different schedules make it nearly impossible to do anything regularly consistent.
@trogdor Well, I wouldn't say it's minimal, you can just play the game without engaging in it much. I mean the "look at how quirky this character is" kind of fan-service. The only issue is the Avatar being the be-all end-all, but eh, one can live with that.
For example, it's a near miracle that we were able to get four people together regularly enough to run a single Dungeon World adventure on Discord, and the last two sessions happened after a month-long hiatus while the GM had Real World Responsibilities.
@trogdor I don't think it's odd. Not spirit, maybe, but it's something a lot of players like. The 3DS took a step to popularise the series and while that did bring some problems, it's also the reason they can remake the older games, for example. So all in all, net plus for me.
well, I mean, typically as I have seen it, part of the point of the series has been to engage with characters for their particular traits, not to basically be the most important one yourself
@Anaphory It's not courses, it's part of the main course. Just the first semester though.
As for distance uni being hard... better than being bored at full-time uni. Not like I really want it anyway, just caved in to the pressure of my relatives and fiancee. As long as it's free I'm gonna keep doing it, nothing lost
@BESW All true, but I think it takes a lot of (social) confidence to be able to look past the fiddly bits. It's easy to get too focused on the trees and miss the forest. (Esp. in some systems where the trees are bordering on "wall of thorns"-level undergrowth. Like the most popular few!)
That's a good idea, thanks. Probably not gonna use it though because, knowing myself, I really don't want to start on the slippery slope of extensions.
It's showing in the game I'm gonna run soonish already - I already have plans to use 4e with a conversion that strips down a lot, some of my own houserules and also Fate for macro stuff.
If you are using a standard browser and keep it running all the time, you could probably also just use its HTML inspector/java script console/... for a one-time command to not show that thing.
Oh, that sounds better. I only rarely turn off my PC or close the browser.
@DForck42 That's cool. My use of Fate is going to be rather different though - it'll handle the macro colony-building stuff without making it too fiddly (since I want everyone to participate) or time-consuming
Seems my semiregulars are composed of 2 very reliable regulars and 3 people who can make it only very rarely. I assume we'll play Fate or Cortex Plus or some other player-empowering system to reduce the creativity burden on me, the GM.
(If the average number of expected players was higher, the burden would alternatively be shared by their input, but this makes me not pick *World etc.)
Now, how do I recognize setting elements that work well with such a group and setting elements that don't?
@KorvinStarmast Thanks for pointing out in your answer that the players are basically just responding to what the GM said, and changing insight or taking it as a challenge to explore different kinds of play, and that it shouldn't be surprising this is happening at all. I think you're the only one that actually even said that.
@DForck42 I was following this proposal and now I can't remember what spurred me to do that, but it was something...
@doppelgreener Well, given how players have responded to me during my period of growth as a DM/GM, I recognized somewhat the interaction from a few painful lessons on the DM player relationship not being PvP for a better game. Someone started an answer with "you don't handle them" but it seems to have been deleted
@doppelgreener I think that response was along the same lines as mine, if worded differently.
@doppelgreener Yeah, looks like my memory is of a different question that had "you don't handle them" as a lead in to the answer. Oops, old age creeping in again.
i have just learned by accident: grapes are delicious when eaten quite warm. (i washed them thoroughly in very warm tap water because i wanted to warm my hands up too.)
@doppelgreener Latin was an elective course at my pretty average public high school. Strangely, Latin, Spanish and French were offered but not German or Italian.
I suspect it's partly a regional thing. Most people where I live are either of Irish, English, French, or Hispanic descent. While there are people of German and Italian lineage in the area, those languages aren't used; on the other hand it's pretty common to hear people speaking in French or Spanish, and of course Quebec is only a few hours to the north.
Yeah, probably regional. it's just not in Australia's public school curriculum, and it's apparently offered by some private schools but they can do whatever they want.
yeah I think you could do AP latin at my highschool as self directed study but in general its not available in US public schools at least in the mid atlantic and NE though of course parochial schools have it
debating if my comment on the question should be an answer
I dont have any source material other than experiential and gut data but my comment seems answery
@JoshuaAslanSmith well it's not suggesting improvements or requesting clarification, and it's speculating the answer is "no" without the rigour to disprove a negative; it's sort of a non-comment and non-answer-answer.
I've seen a strange question and it's accumulating poor responses from its owner. Stuff like this is happening to me or someone else:
left a comment asking for a clarification, and got a response from OP. But the response didn't really address my request, and raised new issues to sort out.
left...
