TRPG General Chat - 2013-11-05 (page 1 of 2)

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1:12 AM

@Shiester If it's for a monster I'd model it over the Fleshraker, a dinosaur from MM3.

Using regular hounds it's just an attack. The dog will be trained for war so he has the wolf's trip attack included in the bite. Unfortunately he has no more attacks for that round (having only one natural attack and having moved too) so he can't estabilish a hold.

If you gave him some extra HD he could learn improved trip and be able to make an attack on a successful trip, which could in turn be used to grapple (in the same round)

1:53 AM

Successive successful grapple checks can pin the opponent, which places them on the ground without imposing further penalties to the guy on top.

2:25 AM

Tweets to Campaign By embarks on a noble pilgrimage.

I wish to find the person responsible for this savory waffle and worship them as a god.

Tweeted by UrsulaV on November 4, 2013 at 6:17 PM

1 hour later…

3:30 AM

Transplanting Beavers by Airplane and Parachute

3:46 AM

where can I find an easily-searchable 3.5 errata?

@Emrakul But not, strictly-speaking, legal.

user61230

....whoops, I forgot about that bit :/

user61230

Shouldn't have posted that.

@waxeagle Can we get a purge on this, please?

@Alyksandrei In what sense do you need it to be easily searchable?

@Emrakul Oh hi. Any more thoughts on the BW resources discussion we had previously?

3:55 AM

@BESW just looking for references to "archery 'trick shots'": Distracting Attack, Precise Shot, Manyshot, Rapid Shot, etc.

Got a dispute with my DM I'm researching.

@BESW Don't want to have to wade through dozens of pages of text just to find what I need.

Fair enough. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any legal 3.5 errata collection which puts them all in one document.

It wouldn't be illegal to collect them that way and make it public, the problem is that such collections usually also include the material being errata'd, most of which is not OGL/SRD.

So what do you have? even if it's not easily searchable?

user61230

@AlexP I've come to the conclusion that it's a fundamental assumption that the game makes which drastically changes the game.

user61230

That bothers me a lot, because Burning Wheel is a brilliant game, but it would be hard to slice that one component.

@Alyksandrei D&D 3.5, 3.0, Minis, and d20 Modern errata, downloadable by book.

4:00 AM

@BESW thanks, I'll take a look.

I think this link contains most of the same content, but there may be bits that don't overlap?

@Emrakul Well, what's an example of where the resource thing is causing you the most problems? I've found it works alright for most commoner characters, and high-end wealthy characters can be utterly swimming in money.

Ditto the wizard LPs tend to be pretty generous to help you get some sweet spells.

user61230

Hold on, this one's going to be a long response. Need to write out some LPs.

@BESW I totally forgot Minis used to be its own thing!

user61230

Okay, here. You have a person, Born City => Student => Apprentice => Journeyman for a sum of 29 years and 38 RPs.

user61230

4:12 AM

They take: Clothes, Gear, Shoes, Skill Kit, Cash, Rent (which is generous in this case) = 22 RPs

user61230

Hm. Wait. That one actually works out well.

user61230

(I swear I was having problems with managing this before. Seriously. >_>)

@BESW Based on those two links, there appears to be no errata relevant to my dispute. Thanks for the help.

@Alyksandrei Sorry it wasn't more useful.

user61230

@AlexP I guess it just seems odd to trade off relationships for things your character would have. Like, either your character owns a small business, or they have a close cousin. (I had a good numerical example before, but I don't know what happened to it. Reworking...)

4:15 AM

@BESW It was. I needed to know if the information printed in my copy of the books was later errata'd. And it wasn't.

@Emrakul Obviously your character is a Mafioso.

user61230

HA!

Back

Well, a close cousin is 4 points or less.

(1 point if you have a forbidden romantic relationship with him.)

user61230

The tradeoff between them, though. It takes two incomparable values and tries to relate them.

A relationship is a resource, though.

user61230

4:28 AM

A significant part of the character is in who they know and who they're affiliated with, which is captured accurately by Rel/Affil, but is highly limited by the things you need.

This'll be making the rounds, I'm sure: video of skydivers jumping as their planes collide. Everyone survives!

One of the "BWHQ" people did say they really wished they separated out the relationships/reputations a bit.

Which, naturally, made me think of a Feng Shui game I've played, because that's how my brain works nowadays.

user61230

That's fair. I have yet to truly see how it plays out in a game, since, well, I haven't actually been a player for BW.

But in general I think it's not that big of a problem. Mostly what happens in my experience is that every character starts out wanting something. But you can easily be financially okay and just kinda eager to make your name.

So, characters I've made and how they worked out:

user61230

4:37 AM

Which is an assumption the game makes, and I don't necessarily agree with it. I'm okay with the game making that assumption, though.

Olrun (Peasant - Hunter - Strider, that I linked) - that shadow relationship is pure gold and totally worth starting her out in utter destitution.

user61230

But the decision to start out in utter destitution is a metagame decision, which may not necessarily fit who your character is.

user61230

(Not saying that's true in this case, but rather that it isn't true in all cases)

A duelist/crappy actor - enough resources to buy a flat (rent), a good weapon, and some minor crap like a relationship with a loan shark.

@Magician I know at least one guy who's using Fate Core structures to map out his NaNoWriMo.

(This may be my fault, as I linked him to a blog entry about Fate last month and told him it was applicable to his writing.)

4:40 AM

A sheriff (noble - page - squire - bailiff) - horse, sick weapons, reputation, and a sidekick; no heavy armor but that's kinda natural for someone who has fighty skills but really isn't in a fighty career

@BESW Heh. I'm starting to get ideas for a new campaign, and wondering if I'd be better off writing it as a novel/comic/something...

Also one time my wife and I made a 7-LP monster of a Magnate with a palace and a giant trade network and a big-ass extended family and like Resources G7.

@Magician I've had at least one campaign fail because it should've been a short story, and at least one story fail because it was better as a campaign.

Although on reflection, the campaign that failed might've been okay in Fate rather than D&D...

Also (last one) a 4 LP sorceress using some Rogue Wizard LPs - some pretty sick magic (like three Art Magic schools), a magic item, plus a leaky shack fluffed as a crypt in the graveyard :D

@BESW The Diaspora connections-rolling thing is kinda handy for that, too. For creating a small string of places with relationships between them.

user61230

I don't know why, then, but I've never gotten it to work out that wonderfully.

user61230

4:45 AM

I don't know if it's something with how I'm handling chargen, but it looks like it probably is

user61230

I wonder what it could be, though :/

@BESW Interesting, isn't it, how we now can see the impact the system has on the game and the story the game tells. This must be one of the most important things a rulebook communicates: what the game is, and how it plays.

@Emrakul It's a bit awkward because, well, it's a part of the system that involves some system mastery right in chargen. But I think it helps to remember that Circles already includes, like, having family and professional connections and stuff; relationships are there for instant connections with important people. Also that the medieval-ish implied setting really doesn't expect you to have lots of STUFF, with rare exceptions.

Also we always interpreted "traveling gear" (which is already a steal, btw) to include a tool knife or walking stick freely.

(I.e. if you start using it as a weapon, you have a poor-quality knife.)

user61230

But Circles very rarely starts above 1 or 2. 3 is somewhat rare. That makes people inherently difficult to find.

user61230

And that makes traveling gear much easier xD

4:53 AM

I mean, I won't lie: it's hard to have everything you want. But usually I find a way to have exactly what I need.

And also the system won't break if you say something like "everyone gets 10 extra rps for relationships/affiliations/reputations at chargen."

Just don't go too big with it.

That said, my most successful character hands down (Olrun) was very much developed using tight constraints to fuel creativity. ;)

@Magician Or.... doesn't communicate, since I honestly thought D&D 3.5 would be an appropriate platform for a character-driven allegory inspired by The Phantom Tollbooth and The Magic Flute.

@BESW That's what I mean, yeah. It should be the first thing you see when you open the book. OK, perhaps second, after a page on "roleplaying, wtf".

Fate Core does this very well.

@BESW I thought it might :)

Dogs, Do, and MLWM all do their level best, with varying degrees of success.

DFRPG, sadly, fails somewhat miserably by being both too specific and too vague, and relying heavily on its tone rather than its content.

user61230

5:00 AM

@AlexP Hmm, that's fair. I have yet to be a player in BW, but I'm not sure it's something I'd personally like.

I've generally found that the less D&D-like a system is, the more conscious it is of the need to define its scope.

@BESW That's likely to do with D&D being the default system.

<omar> Oh, indeed. </omar>

One interesting thing, though, is that it provides a rough barometer for what developers think is D&D-like.

For example, the Stargate SG-1 RPG is a d20 System Spycraft mod.

They spend several pages talking about how they're not interested in supporting gritty realism, but rather are focusing on television logic.

And they single out a handful of things that are different from D&D (although they don't say that out loud) as examples of how their system works toward that end.

But these are things like using a vitality/wounds system instead of hit points.

They're positioning themselves as "not D&D" because they're simulating shiny modern heroic fantasy rather than gritty medieval heroic fantasy, and to do this they... introduce more realism-simulating elements, like vitality/wounds, armor that by default provides DR instead of AC bonuses, and exploding damage from guns.

@BESW Well, wounds&vitality are meant to make the hit points less abstract, but not necessarily more realistic. They've been used in many d20 systems as a "cinematic" alternative.

Yeah, and I'm not really buying it.

The key to "cinematic" damage is not that you can take "damage" without being injured: it's that you only get injured when dramatically appropriate.

And vitality/wounds don't do that.

5:16 AM

Agreed. But that way of thinking was alien to the authors.

You get injured at the whim of the dice (critical hits) or because the other guy has superior resources (weapons/features that bypass vitality), not because it's dramatically appropriate.

So watching them claim it's "cinematic" is exactly what I'm getting at: it's not a D&D mechanic, so it must not be a D&D kind of game.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Hey!

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

just passing through. Procrastinating like hell

How're things?

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

... ungood

Oh, dear.

[proffers tea]

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

5:20 AM

thanks. cheers.

We're discussing the way rulebooks tend to feel the need to discuss how their systems differ from their developers' concept of what D&D is, rather than talking about their system itself.

(Not that they mention D&D most of the time, but that's the benchmark and the context.)

Also, you may have seen that I've started a Tweets to Campaign By tumblr.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

I don't know the numbers, but I get the feeling that D&D is, still, the baseline that the most roleplayers are familiar with.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Aye, and it's not just a matter of the number of people playing D&D.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

And I will now spread the tumblr far and wide. You know why? Because of awesome.

So long as other RPGs compare themselves to D&D--and especially attempt to mimic those elements of D&D they think brought it success--D&D will be the baseline whether you've played it or not.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Glad you like it.

If you run across any Tweets that should be Campaigned By, please let me know; I'm always in the market for more material.

(Credit in the hashtags.)

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

5:29 AM

I see you have some @TlfTravelAlerts there. I love that twitter account.

Indeed.

TweetsOfOld is definitely the major contributor, as it's the original inspiration for the concept.

5:41 AM

RPGnet jokes about "Warning Signs That You May Actually be a Character in an RPG".

Some highlights:

> Your personal history takes longer to read than the actual amount of time you have been alive.

> Upon consideration, you are a bit hazy as to whether you have ever used a bathroom, for any purpose.

That sounds about right.

Tweets to Campaign By is sure a quest will procure just the thing to cheer them up.

There is an ineffable sadness to manatees.

Tweeted by RevMord on November 4, 2013 at 5:02 PM

6:09 AM

Our own SSD makes one of the best posts I've seen about making sense of the D&D adventure environment.

@AlexP [amused] It's the Everfree Forest.

6:44 AM

@AlexP Solid-state drive?

[knows it's actually sevensideddie]

SevenSidedDie, Vancouver, Canada

46.5k 4 93 227

dnd-3.5e gm-techniques system-agnostic game-recommendation savage-worlds dungeons-and-dragons pathfinder

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

7:26 AM

Started reading the post, jumped from there to the posts he links to, decided that I really need to work, and put it aside. Looks interesting.

user61230

"A role-playing game where you hide from priests while being torn between the forces of good and evil."

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Also, I'm on the work computer and I don't have the SOBadger script installed here and it makes me sad.

user61230

Your pundit badger could not come fast enough, Avner.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

It wasn't me, it was the will of the badgers.

They speak through me.

user61230

Are the Precognitive Badgers devouring your mind?

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

7:33 AM

They... are... not... the... badgers... are... my... friends...

2

user61230

THE BADGERS MUST BE IN YOUR MIND. HURRY, I MUST MAKE LOUD NOISES AND TRAP THEM UNDER LARGE POTS!

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

What? What are you talking about? There are no badgers, in my mind or anywhere. Ha, ha, what great jokes we make. Badgers? No badgers here. No badgers anywhere. *blinks rapidly in Morse*

user61230

But... but I can see one... you have a gold badger, clinging into your skull... do... don't you feel it?

user61230

7:53 AM

A-Avner...? Are you feeling okay?

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Avner is feeling fine.

user61230

Y-you don't uh... sound okay...

user61230

Are you sure you're thinking clearly...?

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Avner has never been better and is certainly not undergoing a mental battle with the Badger High Comman- crap

1 hour later…

9:26 AM

Hullo.

Heyo.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Yo.

10:17 AM

Today I learned Spider-Man has a theme that can only be found in the Marvel/Capcom fighting games.

Hmm?

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

11:14 AM

@AlexP I've been thinking about this post (and the linked post, about the Two Towers of Fantasy), and decided that way too many posts in SciFi.SE are simply people being exceedingly classicists, trying to fit an event in a narrative into a coherent world-view. (cc: @SevenSidedDie)

11:31 AM

Hm.

I'm not sure what they mean by "noism," but the subjects are somewhat related to a concept I was pondering earlier today relating the use of esoteric language in D&D to the RAW/RAI split.

Not because the language is ambiguous --although it sometimes is-- but because the use of unusual words and phrases can be taken to have one of two major intentionalities:

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

I think that's just the name of the writer of the linked-to blog. monstersandmanuals.blogspot.ca/2008/09/…

> "this is where the irreconcilable conflict between the banalifying systematiser noisms and the romantic mysterious dreamer noisms is fought out."

(from the page you just linked.)

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Oh, I missed that.

With an author-first reading, the author chose those words very carefully with an eye to precise meaning which the reader is meant to study and eventually understand.

With a reader-first approach, though, the act of study is more significant than the precise understanding reached: in that attitude, the use of esoteric language invites speculation and personal interpretation.

These two approaches to reading difficult text then translate directly into an attitude toward rules: how to interpret them, who has the final authority on the game's mechanics, and how acceptable it is to modify them.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Interesting. This also makes you think whether classicist-fantasy settings subtly discourage shared-creation games, like Fate, whereas a romanticist approach might encourage vague and underdefined cosmologies that allow players more leeway.

11:38 AM

I'm not saying the attitudes wouldn't exist if early D&D had used more accessible language, but I think Gygax's language choices had a strong influence on them.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Oh, indeed. By contrast I think classicist settings better support problem-solving play styles.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Regarding your linguistic point, though, to make sure I understood - do you feel that the language chosen for something as basic as the ability scores - Strength, Intelligence, etc - encourages a fully-defined classicist/scientific outlook where this is what there is and the readers must understand it.

Whereas choosing language like Power, Psyche and Presence for ability scores might lead to more vague interpretations, encouraging the reader to imbue it with his own meaning?

I think so--and in each case there are strengths and weaknesses to that particular approach.

The difficulty being that if you approach a descriptor like "presence" from an author-first perspective, you try to read authorial meaning into the word when the author's intent may have been to create room for your own interpretation.

And by contrast, it's easy to say "Intelligence" means so many different things that we are free to interpret it as we choose, when the system intends it to represent something quite specific.

I think one reason There's No Such Thing As D&D is that when we are faced with something unfamiliar we have such a wide range of responses:

"I know what that means so I won't look it up" (but I may be right or wrong)
"I don't know what that means and I don't need to"
"I don't know what that means so I'll look it up" (but I may not understand the definition in context)

And so forth.

And I'm not just talking about "I know the grapple rules, you don't have to check them." I mean "cantrip" and "adjudicate."

The only reason I know half of those words is D&D.

D&D didn't invent the word "prestige," or "orison," and it uses them in ways that are alien to "common" applications of the terms.

Faced with that kind of unfamiliar vocabulary being used in nonstandard contexts, it's no wonder we fossilize into rabid camps about how to interpret the texts.

The text itself is teaching us that words have specific and significant meanings, but that we cannot rely on outside sources for guidance.

I'm reminded of the World of Warcraft player who didn't know the word "Thrall."

One of the most well-known figures in Warcraft lore was a slave whose master called him only "Thrall." When the slave gained his freedom, he kept the name as a reminder of his past.

Thrall eventually became the political and then the spiritual leader of one of the largest political groups in the world, and was still called "Thrall."

This is powerful stuff... but how much less so if, like this player I met, you think "Thrall" is just a made-up fantasy language name?

11:57 AM

True. Also, obligatory gazebo reference.

5

(I have a tangent about when WoW introduced a "queue" for instanced encounters, and voice chat filled up with people kwoo-yoo-ee-ing.)

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

This brings to mind the whole topic of names in fantasy literature (and in literature in general, but let's stay on topic), and especially names in translated literature.

"Kway-yoo? Kwee-yoo-ee?"

I don't recall particular issues, but I'm sure I've misinterpreted rules for the first few years, and have definitely noticed people doing so later. Ah, ill-defined rules of a confused system for make-believe games using unconventional vocabulary of a language you don't quite understand.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Apparently people who know both English and Russian get a lot more amusement out of the Erast Fandorin novels.

I can't remember if @Magician reads them, though.

12:01 PM

Nope. Akunin's writings have somehow missed me, due to no reason in particular. Of recent Russian authors I can recommend Max Frei.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

As a Hebrew speaker who reads almost entirely in English, I fnd it hard to read fantasy in Hebrew.

The same names that seem exotic and mysterious in English, seem awkward in Hebrew.

And I'm perfectly aware of the fact that it's my own biases showing, not something inherent in the language, but still.

Many fantasy authors run into appropriation problems, where they take words that actually mean something to a portion of the world and use them as if the words were made-up fantasy nonsense.

Labyrinths of Echo is a great series that eventually turns entirely too metaphysical. But first few books are worth reading either way, an unusual dream-like world, urban-magic-detective stories.

I confess I've done it in my games, but I'm always very careful to avoid it in my writing.

@Magician I think the only other contemporary Russian fiction I've read is Metro 2033.

@BESW Any good? I'm very wary of Russian bestsellers.

12:05 PM

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan I think it's true for everyone: their native language feels less exotic than languages they are less intimate with.

@Magician Well, I read the English translation. But yeah, I liked it.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan I think it's one reason that English authors tend to use fantasy languages.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Yes, to distance the reader.

@Magician It was less a futuristic dystopia and more a futuristic Gulliver's Travels.

Good to know. I'll check it out then.

You know that genre where the protagonist is less an agent in the story and more a vehicle for exploring a variety of philosophical microcosms in travelogue format?

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Take some books I've read in Hebrew, in my youth: Lloyd Alexander's Prydain cycle used Welsh names and retained its fantastic flavor. Dragonlance used some English-based names (Brightblade, Burrfoot) which were translated into Hebrew equivalents, and felt silly.

12:07 PM

@BESW I know what you mean, yeah.

It's like that, but very very Russian in its attitudes, and with some solid horror elements.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Oh, there were so many debates about the translation of names in LotR, so many different versions published.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

@BESW What, like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… ?

Reading the original Dragonlance trilogy after having played D&D, it's amazing how clearly you can see it being a novelized D&D adventure.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

@Magician What, like this? rinkworks.com/bookaminute/b/weishickman.chronicles.shtml

12:10 PM

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Well, Prydain is Welsh in ways that most fantasy settings don't manage to be anything except "nondescript English with the labels filed off."

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Man, I'm amazed this website still exists.

@BESW True, it's just that the Welsh labels were kept on in translation, and that kept it foreign.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Looks like it, yeah.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan You really can hear the dice. It even has an annoying omnipotent DM PC that's mostly used for comic relief with occasional plot advancement and deus ex machina thrown in.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Does Hebrew have "regular words compounded into names" as a common thing in real life?

@Magician They killed him in Death Gate Cycle.

....Several times.

@BESW Hah. I've only read the 2 main trilogies.

12:13 PM

The Death Gate Cycle is not actually part of Dragonlace.

It's a totally separate seven-book series which I highly recommend.

And I say this as someone who failed to read more than one book in any other Weiss or Hickman series, ever.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

@BESW There was a trend, about 60-70 years ago, when many Jews immigrated from Eastern Europe, some translated their names into Hebrew. So a lot of Goldbergs were now literally "Gold Mountain" (in Hebrew, of course). It's still a bit jarring.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan That may be part of it, then.

Smashing two common words together to make a name is very common in the English world.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

First names almost always have a prosaic meaning (names of trees, animals, flowers, etc) but are so common they're usually disassociated from their roots.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Aye, we're the same with our common-word naming conventions.

user image

A cougar chasing down a Deere.

12:35 PM

@BESW done as requestede

@waxeagle Appreciated.

I know it's relatively insignificant in the scheme of things, but I think it sets a good standard for the chat.

Although the chat isn't bound by the format rules of the main site, it seems appropriate that we follow the content and behavior guidelines.

@BESW I agree in general

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

What guidelines?

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan the things in the legal in this particular case

In this particular case:

12

Q: Links to "D&D Tools"

I've noticed lots of links to dndtools.eu lately. That site seems to have verbatim text from a lot of non-OGL D&D stuff. Obviously, that's really useful as a reference! But the site itself is presumably violating copyright, and if it ever gets taken down, all those links become useless. Is th...

And yes, Wax has the general guidelines.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

12:45 PM

I see. `k.

We also have behavior guidelines which include things like "Be civil and tolerant," and "Don't swear."

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Important, certainly. I myself was considering being intolerant until I read that.

It's not rocket surgery, but it is a different atmosphere from some of the places which conduct RPG conversations online.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Then I'm glad we brought it up.

Perfect for the cold weather...... http://t.co/f2TzZ3WurM

Tweeted by irarchaeology on November 5, 2013 at 10:44 AM

user image

@BESW nice, I could actually use something along that line.

I'll sometimes get a winter cough I cannot get rid of and have to breathe through a scarf or somesuch when I'm outside for a few days/weeks

Ouch.

You have my sympathies.

Growing up on a tropical island, I thought South Carolina summers were dry.

A good and proper winter would probably make me shrivel up into a weakly coughing husk.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

12:57 PM

While I also grew up in a city where you don't so much walk as swim through the air in summer, I find that I love a good, cold, snowy winter.

@BESW lol yeah, and we don't even have it all that bad here. It gets relatively cold, but not severely so

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

As a tourist, at least.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan I liked the South Carolina winters. It was cold and wet, but it only snowed once every couple of years.

There were icicles in the early morning.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

It snowed here in Tel Aviv.

in 1991.

Good Morning.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

1:03 PM

I still remember it.

But I'm probably the only person who ever bought long underwear because they moved to South Carolina.

lol, they don't even sell it around here that I've seen

at least not in normal stores, maybe in a sports store

heh.

We don't have it either, although amusingly our chain stores like Kmart and Macy's get a scaled-down version of their autumn and winter clothing.

1:56 PM

What does the Fawkes say? 'downe with the king' 'light you buggre light you buggre' 'alas we are discover'd' 'ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch'

Tweeted by Cavalorn on November 5, 2013 at 10:10 AM

6

An interesting but trivial observation: to make that joke in text, you're better off saying "What does the Fawkes say?" to be clear that it's a reference to the song; to make that joke in speech, you're better off saying "What does Guy Fawkes say?" because your cadence will make the song reference obvious but people will be confused by the homophone.

3

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

My blog really took off when I managed to accept that fact that "trivial" doesn't mean "not interesting".

Just because I'm not writing about earthshattering discoveries doesn't mean it can't make for a good blog post.

2:44 PM

@BESW No neck covering. Useless without a scarf.

@Zachiel Modular winter clothing is kind of a thing--hence the existence of scarves.

3:04 PM

I have never worn a scarft

I was always given those itchy annoying ones instead of soft comfortable ones.

3:30 PM

-1

Q: Can evil and good character play in the same team?

can evil character be played by player Does the statem allow that? And what kind of advantures can fit to those? Did any of you try it?

character-creation character

I am not sure if I should take pity and edit or direct him to writing.SE

Then again English might not be his first language.

How do you edit questions?

No just close it

We don't know what system he means

When or if it's clarified, we can edit the question to neaten it up, but until then it's not worth editing and better to just be welcoming of them.

Including welcoming their writing! People sometimes take their posts being edited as a negative signal. When it's clarified, we can welcome them with an edit and answers.

or close it as a dupe of something else and say "Hey this is already answered so go here you are".

4:11 PM

Is anyone alive?

@Aaron No.

Zombies?

I'm here...but brains?

@Aaron Probably.

@RedRiderX Time to get the zombie slayer

user image

4:13 PM

@Aaron That's quite a shtick

Or... SnK?

It's a little vague.

that's a $140 wiffle ball bat...wth

for the folks who take wiffle ball entirely too seriously

I just googled wiffle ball bats.

What are those flat bats called?

@Aaron cricket bats

cricket?

@waxeagle Ah thank you.

it's a sport

4:16 PM

That is originally what I was going to google cause those things actually hurt.

Never been hit with a wiffle ball bat before so not sure how much they hurt.

@Aaron that one is made of polycarbonate, I'd guess it'd hurt pretty good

@waxeagle What is something else common made of the same material?

@Aaron plexi glass?

Elephant.

Google is just giving me a bunch of images of buildings

@waxeagle Sturdy stuff.

4:22 PM

@Metool Dang

@Aaron yeah, and as a plastic it's probably variable in it's hardness based on how much plasticizer and whatnot is added

4:35 PM

Hey @waxeagle you know you are still in the SharePoint room?

@Aaron lol, unless I explictly exit I'm there until the next time my home machine reboots :)

There is a sharepoint room. Is it a sad and desperate place?

@DampeS8N seems more lonesome than desperate. Aaron is trying to give it friends though

@waxeagle @Aaron I had not taken you to be a super villain..

@DampeS8N I am trying to breath life into SharePoint chat

@DampeS8N Super Villain?

4:38 PM

What is your plan? To kidnap the CEOs of corporations and force them to convert to sharepoint?

@DampeS8N SharePoint is already widely used and the SharePoint questions are very active with one about every 5 min but the chat is dead for some reason.

@DampeS8N no need to kidnap...CEOs are astoundingly easy to convince

@Aaron Yes. Because those poor souls are riding a slow ghost train into the Nine circles of Hell.

@DampeS8N Most of SE chat feels rather empty and abandoned.

@DampeS8N Ok i can't read all of that right now what is it about?

4:43 PM

@Aaron Front End dev for Sharepoint. And fighting demons.

@RedRiderX This is all too true.

@DampeS8N Is front end dev that bad for SharePoint?

@Aaron Like having IE6 sitting behind you making lewd sexual comments whenever you make changes.

@DampeS8N Sounds more entertaining than annoying.

@DampeS8N But I think I understand what you are saying.

@Aaron The trouble is that, as a microsoft product, Sharepoint is tested first in IE and not often well tested in anything else. And it contains large swaths of older modules that were designed to work with IE6 and nothing else.

@DampeS8N I agree with that. Except for the fact it only works well in IE I have not had any issues with it.

4:54 PM

That's a pretty big issue

I don't develop in it though only support currently.

@Aaron I've had the misfortune. As with all things MS, there are things it does really well. And anything it doesn't do really well is a nightmare.

@DampeS8N Yup.

And considering the general developer-centrality of SE, I would expect the Sharepoint chat to be empty. It isn't going to be something that most people are that passionate about.

The chats in general have a steep bent towards the fluffier topics around SE, generally.

I mean. I love PHP, but the idea of spending time in a PHP chat sounds like one I should drown in a sack.

@DampeS8N As someone who knows first-hand that MS Word is such a lousy program that it'll mess up its own formatting just by closing and re-opening a document, I bitterly submit that "things MS programs do very well" is often a much smaller circle on the Venn diagram of "things they really ought to do in order to qualify as a program of the type they claim to be" than seems reasonable.

5:02 PM

@BESW This is true. Sharepoint is newer and has less elephantiasis, but it will one day succumb to the Square-cube law.

MS Word has cruddy functionality which can be done better in its sister program Excel, but it manage its own primary features in anything approaching competence.

"Making the program consistently achieve its basic functions" should be a priority over "needless duplication of functions which are performed better by a program we usually bundle with this one."

I had a client who insisted that I use Word instead of InDesign for the layout of a 200-page anthology.

@BESW Word is particularly bad. It is the oldest and therefore the most mutated and deformed. One day the beached corpse of it will be violated on youtube for the amusement of our children.

Microsoft could buy me a pony and a place to keep it and I wouldn't forgive them.

Bloat can't be blamed for the atrocity that is Tabs On The Ribbon, though.

@BESW Even in Japan where you could marry, consummate that marriage, and then have slaughtered and eat that pony?

Especially not then.

5:11 PM

@BESW Your world is a bleak and pony-sex-burger-less one.

"So I was thinking about our users that complain it's hard to find a particular feature in the drop-down menus, and I had a BRILLIANT idea: we can replace the drop-down menus with tabs that cannot be found unless you're ready to use them!"

"Wow, that's amazing! Users won't complain about having trouble finding features if they don't know the features exist until they find them!"

@BESW I like to think they are just incompetent rather than evil.

Certainly. I'm a big believer in Hanlon's Razor.

But their incompetence is staggering.

They removed Clippy, but learned nothing about the reasons he was hated, so that the ghost of Clippy haunts the system with his ethos of taking control away from you in the name of helping.

@BESW Not that staggering. Seems pretty par for the course to me. They have hiring practices that optimize for myopia.

Tabs on the Ribbon creates the illusion that your features are more accessible, but it takes up so much room they can't fit everything in... so they create invisible tabs which can't be found at all until you discover the magic "open sesame" context.

Which means that instead of knowing you have to look for features and being clear where you need to dig, Tabs on the Ribbon creates the illusion you don't have to search and hides where you might look if you wanted to.

5:25 PM

I hate the little popup thing, too. That you sometimes get when editing text or copy-pasting or whatever. It's not a bad idea overall but it's always there when I don't want it.

@AlexP The first thing I teach my classes is how to disable it.

And I end up mis-clicking on it constantly while just trying to move the focus a bit.

Tweets to Campaign By takes notes for Insomnia: The Avenging.

I am awake. Why am I awake? Someone will be held accountable ...

Tweeted by Nash076 on November 5, 2013 at 2:02 PM

5:53 PM

@Kethryweryn Hi!

Hi !

What's up? Anything in particular on your mind?

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