« first day (1400 days earlier)      last day (3559 days later) » 

10:00 AM
@BESW I'm based in Watford, if anyone is UK based :P
 
BESW and I are in GMT+10, sorry!
 
xD
 
I'm UTC+3 ATM (daylight saving time)
It was funny going to Tanzania in 2012, because the timezone is the same but the time still feels very... different. As a Finn I had a hard time adjusting to the "it gets bright at 6AM, dark at 6PM" schedule the local sun had :P
 
@kviiri ah, equatorial rather than a heavy day/night variation? :)
 
@JonathanHobbs Yeah. In Finland, that time of the year is so short I usually don't even notice it. We have long days in the Summer and short ones in the Winter.
 
10:05 AM
I am sometimes able to carve out a chunk of time to run short-form chat RPGs here on the site.
Timing is often a challenge, but the chunks of time I can find are usually not at "standard" RPG hours so people in other zones may find them more normal.
 
A friend of mine works in Turku in Finland.
Said they were hiring. I'm tempted to apply.
I'm a programmer by trade.
 
There are some British Isles users on the site...
This guy drops by chat occasionally.
 
Right timezone, too far for local.
Oh dear, my GM is planning to cast dispel magic on my summons.
2
Q: Dispel Magic vs multiple summons

Tim BDispel magic says: If you target an object or creature that is the effect of an ongoing spell (such as a monster summoned by summon monster), you make a dispel check to end the spell that conjured the object or creature. If a summoner uses summon monster 3 to summon multiple lower level...

He tried protection from good the other day. Elementals be neutral :-)
 
....can summoned creatures with spell resistance use their SR against dispel magic?
 
they are the target
Spell Resistance no
So no
 
10:14 AM
aw.
 
You make one dispel check (1d20 + your caster level) and compare that to the spell with highest caster level (DC = 11 + the spell's caster level).
So exactly 50% chance if they are the same level as I
 
Reason #98 I dislike 3.PF.
 
@BESW the mathematics just mentioned, or the fact the players and the GM are, apparently by common culture, in a race to make whatever the other guy's doing stop working?
 
Yes.
 
but which one is reason #98
or are these subsections of reason 98, and your reasons list has gone fractal
 
10:20 AM
@JonathanHobbs I'm guessing the math, because the cultural issue is higher up the list.
 
@lisardggY i dunno, there's a lot of cultural issues to get past, he could have 97 of those
 
@JonathanHobbs There's a Jay-Z joke in here somewhere.
 
The problem we face in this game is that I am playing a master summoner.
And my GM has an issue with both my power and my versatility.
 
@Mourdos Ah, yes, we've seen that:
5
Q: Ways to solve balance problems with a Master Summoner

Tim BI'm currently running a pathfinder game and am running into balance problems with a Master Summoner. It's a low level game (started from level 1) and the summoner is currently level 4 but about to reach level 5 and I'm seriously worried. The player has been deliberately holding back in encounter...

 
From the get go, I've basically been limiting myself in how many summons I throw out, and I've been fairly frugal with them
Problem is, I'm a long term "Summon Monster" user.
So I know the various tricks you use
I asked my DM to ban the archtype before I chose it
As part of the whole ridiculess "charges" fiasco, I asked him to allow me to choose to dismiss existing summons as part of a new summons
Which is only fair enough
Ever since then, I have only ever used my summon monster ability when one is already active once
and that was when we were fighting the final encounter, because I was bored
I think I used a lightning elemental yesterday to bull rush someone in full plate off a ship
but the DM let he hold his breath before he hit the water
and he had a good swim score
Next level I fly everywhere.
For comparison, we have a gunslinger who crit for 89 damage on a touch attack yesterday
/complaining
Sorry
 
10:29 AM
Heh
Say, anyone have an idea for an action-packed setting for the one-off AW game, with mostly new players?
 
Its not the character that has the problem. I'm just getting bored of the game. Its resolved down into go somewhere, kill stuff. Go somewhere, kill stuff.
AW?
 
One of the players asked for sci-fi.
@Mourdos Apocalypse World (although we'll be using only the rules, possibly ditching the post-apocalyptic setting)
 
XComm, aftermath?
Isn't AW that game .. no, that is DE
Isn't AW that game .. no, that is DE
 
Apocalypse World on itself is rather poorly suited for one-off play. Many mechanics happen on a "per session" basis, making them only meaningful for longer campaigns.
But the rules are simple and translate well to different settings - one of my groups plays AW in the Shadowrun universe!
Currently, I've been thinking of making this a steampunk bank job.
 
Are you going for the "weird science" or the "we never really 'got' this newfangled computing" style of steampunk
Aka, Girl Genius style or not :P
 
10:39 AM
A mixture - I don't want to scrap the psychic powers of Apocalypse World, so that'd be the weird science.
 
In that case, you can probably replace most electronics skills with the "wierd science" skill
and effectivly just make it a flavor change
 
There's no electronics skills :)
 
Fair enough, even simpler
 
By the way, whenever I do something with steampunk, or cold war -punk, there's always a supercomputer involved.
 
Ah
Castle Hetrodyne exists once more
That would make a wonderful setting
 
10:41 AM
In Steampunk, it's Babbage's Analytical Engine.
or its successor.
 
I have a Castle Falkenstein game I need to write.
Luckily it's for a con that's only in October, so I got time.
...too much time. So I'm procrastinating.
 
I have notes for a story about a supercomputer created in the 60's (alternate history from that point onward) that a secretive organization is trying to make a benevolent dictator of the world. It's a twist on the "evil komputor mastermind" trope in that the computer just does what it's programmed to do, with no malice: it's the people who accept the programming who are fools.
 
Isn't that the premise for Paranoia?
 
I don't know, I thought the Paranoia computer is... well, paranoid.
 
Actually, that is mostly because of the Ultra-violet clearnance programmers
Who basically program the computer to do conflicting things
as a result, the computer ends up working against itself
and being paranoid
 
10:47 AM
Okay, my computer isn't exactly concerned about its own well-being or anything. It's frankly a quite impersonal little (room-sized) device.
My CALF (yes, I like Biblical name theming and this is the Golden Calf of the organization) has a complex algorithm that allows it to decide "right" from "wrong", given a morality problem as an input.
 
How black/white is it?
 
CALF, or the story?
 
CALF
 
CALF is just a machine, it has literally nothing apart from the right/wrong algorithm.
 
What I mean is, does CALF understand that there are shades of grey in morals, or does it simply output a binary response to the question "is the following moral? "
 
10:50 AM
It's a binary response. You can just ask it "Should I ..." (properly encoded, of course) and it answers.
 
Interesting. So " Should I kill one healthy man to save two dying?"
Would respond true.
Since 1 < 2
Or false
Because the rights of the individual
 
@JonathanHobbs I'm okay with a competitive playstyle of mutual agency denial (I don't want to play it but I recognise it's a popular, valid playstyle). But it's yet another example of Trap Option design where the Fun Options ("I summon a swarm of bees the size of horse!") are the Bad Choices ("I have a generic spell which trivialises a wide swathe of your Fun Spells but provides no Fun of its own").
 
Yes, except more specific. Many plot points would revolve around questions like "Would Senator Andrew's death be good for mankind?" and the computer, with its "infallible algorithm of good vs evil", answers.
None of my players watch this chat, so I can spoil this somewhat: as I said earlier, the main "villains" (not actually evil, just doing heinous things for what they believe is the greater good) are the people who constantly query CALF for advice on how the world should be ran. The problem is, CALF itself is fallible, and it, in a way, knows that itself.
 
I guess the question that needs answering is "Should we destroy CALF?"
 
Indeed!
 
10:55 AM
Does CALF believe itself a force for good?
Although, for the most part, it is irrelivent.
Since the PCs will barge in and explode it
eventually
 
It doesn't believe anything, it's just a computer. But it would respond that "yes, stop listening to me" because the algorithm, despite its flaws, knows that listening for a computer for foolproof advice isn't always for the best and can cause terrible results.
 
This kind of reminds me of a game of M&M we played
We as the players basically stumbled across one of the enemy agents meetings by accident.
And then choose to follow one at random.
All we knew at this point was that they were kidnapping mutants with regerneative powers.
We stole his laptop, found the base
and skipped the entire plot line by turning up and destroying it the day two days after we started investigating
The DM had written out their entire security procedure
 
@kviiri I like this concept. However, the exact nature of the question would give very different answers.
 
Once we registered as "people interfering" on their radar, they would take a couple of days to organise survailance on us, and then a week later their base would be on full alert.
@BESW Its also sounds like a game where the characters would need to care about morality and philosophy
 
@Mourdos I'm reminded of Aeon Wave.
 
11:00 AM
Because one the players' characters get it into their head that they are good and the enemy is evil, their motivations are mostly irreverent.
 
@BESW Yeah, I've got the entire sage of the CALF worked out inside my head. I just can't think of a proper outlet for it. It could work as a Metal Gear Solid -like videogame, or as a movie or a comic, but my principal mode of art is poetry and epic poetry is dead anyway...
 
If its only a short campaign, I would make the players the ones with acess to CALF
access*
 
Aeon Wave's final encounter culminates in the decision whether or not to unleash an AI with god-like power. The decision ultimately hinges on whether the party believes the AI's claim that it will be a benevolent dictator, and if they're okay with that.
I've run it twice and both times the party has freed the AI, but for totally different reasons.
 
Have them start out believing that CALF will make the world a better place, and have the plot resolve around them learning that computers don't make the best moralists.
 
I could work it into an RPG as a whole, but the story as I've planned it spans several decades and the protagonist changes thrice (people die in that universe).
 
11:03 AM
The first time was a solo session with @trogdor, whose character's primary goal in life was to do something that the entire world would notice and remember. So he unleashed a godlike supercomputer on the world, hardly caring what its motives and goals were.
The second time was a slightly larger group, and it culminated in taking a vote. The primary reason they voted to release the AI was that both the party and the AI thought the AI's programmer was a jerkface.
 
That... seems odd.
 
Hm?
 
How long does the session take to run?
I'm familiar, just about, with Fate
Might look into running it
 
Took a couple hours--um, three to five.
But the Aeon Wave adventure book provides lots of side content for expanding the adventure or making more adventures in the same world.
 
Can you give me a brief overview of the module? I'm guessing its a couple of fights and a lot of interaction?
 
11:06 AM
Let me pull it up.
Fate adventures aren't like D&D adventures, really. They're a lot more freeform.
 
I know someone who is into his moralistic choices. And another couple of people that have completely opposite views on how things should work. I want to throw them into a party and see what they decide.
And if they shoot each other
 
Here's the table of contents, then I'll give you a bit of rundown.
 
Looks nice and brief
 
So it gives you a starting scenario, the semi-apocalyptic cyberpunk version of "you all meet in a bar."
There's a location, some NPCs, and some info that needs to get conveyed. The party gets their mission and gets attacked.
 
The CALF saga, as I've planned it, starts from 60's when the computer is created, and an "operative unit" is assigned to carry out its will actively instead of just offering access to it to influential people. Then there's an incident with a certain CIA agent, who feels angry that some extragovernmental secret society is exercising their morals on in his country. After the incident CALF's operative unit gets rather... paranoid, to the point where some of the members split off.
 
11:10 AM
After that the adventure gets much more open-ended: there's a clear end goal defined by their mission, but how the party reaches that goal is up to them.
The whole rest of the adventure boils down to "break in, get to a particular room, have a confrontation and make an Important Decision."
 
The protagonists are all people who, at some point, decide to cut their ties with CALF.
 
The book lets you improvise this by giving you a sense of the setting rather than of the movement.
So you get the building and its environs (descriptions and location aspects for floors and important rooms); statblocks and character notes for major NPCs (goals, relationships, abilities and responsibilities); minor NPC statblocks; and some notes on what to make sure the party runs into/finds out--mostly a series of partially-decoded journals that the party finds while they're hacking various terminals.
The first time, Trogdor's character had a chameleon suit. He disguised himself as one of the people who tried to kill him in the first scene and used their helicopter to fly back into the building he was supposed to infiltrate. Then, still disguised as a security mercenary, he staged his own infiltration as himself and planted evidence he'd broken into the room he wanted access to... so that he would be granted access to it so he could go hunt himself down.
The second time, they got in through a combination of palmed keycards, getting captured, and sneaking in through the sewers, depending on each character's strengths. They met up inside and bluffed their way into the goal room.
 
Nice
Sounds good. I'll give it a try at some point.
 
The manual goes over the commonly-expected strategies, but gives enough setting info to roll with whatever they come up with.
 
I like that its not linear, but gives you all the information you need.
I take it you still need the core fate rules to play?
I have a copy of them, but I'm looking to see how much the players need to read up
 
11:19 AM
Ah, yeah. The GM should know the core rules enough to help the players along.
There are pre-made character sheets with about half the info filled in, and on-sheet guides for filling in the rest. For example, the High Concept has you add an adjective to a phrase like The ______ Gunslinger, while your Trouble aspect is chosen from a list of suggestions like Stim addict and Former Red Sea employee (Red Sea is the company you infiltrate during the mission).
Three of your highest skills are pre-filled-in, and one stunt has been chosen based on your character concept.
They suggest you fill in skills as you play, and choose your second stunt before you start (they have a list of stunts to choose from) but choose the third during play.
I used Aeon Wave as the first Fate game for a new player, alongside two players who were familiar with the system.
It was very easy for her to pick up.
(It was her first non-D&D-style game, actually!)
Overall I found Aeon Wave to be a very high-quality adventure which really understands how Fate games need pre-made modules to be constructed.
@RobertF Hey.
 
11:42 AM
it was a fun system
nice setting, decent mechanics
and I definitely enjoyed the group I played it with the second time too
 
11:53 AM
@trogdor @JonathanHobbs Okay, the party starts at 4, so I should be able to get back by 6 no problem. Usually we get some takeout before we play, which I can pick up on my way back. Let's say... starting to game 7ish feels very comfortable.
 
mk
what is the plan for what we are playing?
 
Ummm.
Probably CD, but I don't have anything totally prepped yet.
 
not having one is a valid response
lol
 
There's always RFS.
 
yeah
true
anyway, I am certainly good with both options
 
12:06 PM
I think Daniel's interested in having a CD PC go insane and joining the monster.
 
I kind of remember a player making ask a wish of a bound deamon we came across in a game. The other players were evil, neutral and neutral. I was lawful good. Didn't know the evil guy was evil. The deamon was one who wanted to bring evil into the world, so all the wishes are subverted to make them evil. The player basically says " I want you to make the dragon evil"
The DM told me he was changing me from LG to NE, because he didn't trust CE players
I found that amusing
 
Heh.
I've seen CE and CN used as the "I can do whatever seems most amusing/most personally beneficial and nobody can argue it's out of character, so praise me for my RP while I nuke the plot and make my friends miserable" alignment.
 
Ugh, I hate the Chaotic Neutral stereotype.
 
Yet another reason I am baffled how the alignment system has survived so long.
 
I'm glad it was removed from the 4e-and-onwards alignment system.
 
12:18 PM
I think its simplicity has given it a certain appeal. Where things really go badly is when it starts to get applied too rigidly, and even outside the system.
"Batman is Lawful Good!" "No, he's Chaotic Good!" "Lawful Neutral!" "Lawful Evil!"
 
I really don't want to get into the age-old "is the alignment system good or not". It's too big and loaded a topic. But given that it's there, I'm glad they removed the ones that were consistently abused, like CN.
 
Hehe
 
@BESW I had a relatively similar interest with my ships cook
 
Oh, I thought 5e had stuck to the 4e schema. Seems they're back to the old one. :-/
 
12:21 PM
Yeah, I think the 4e alignment system makes more sense by merging some of the similar alignments.
 
@tnegherbon Hi! You'll need at least 20 rep on any one Stack Exchange site before you can type in chat rooms, but you're welcome to hang out until then.
 
@kviiri Batman's alignment is clearly "The goddamn batman"
 
The Dark Knight, the Black Paladin, the Shady Chevalier...
 
/me waves
 
12:23 PM
I remembered there being an array like that! Hah! :)
 
yeah took me slightly longer than I thought to find it
 
New troll topic. Hilter was clearly lawful good. Discuss, with a bias towards proving this true.
I like the batman chart
apart from Chaotic Good. Which I couldn't read
 
@JoshuaAslanSmith "I think I'm starting to sound more like Moriarty than Sherlock Holmes" takes on a whole different tone after Moffat's Sherlock.
 
Yes, Moriarty was hilariously insane. or is that inane? Possibly a mixture.
All hail the hat detective.
 
If I had to run with an alignment system I think I would just want the corners.
No neutrals.
\
 
12:31 PM
If I recall correctly, the original Moriarty was retconned in the series by the author in a sense. He was this supposed nemesis of Holmes that he'd never said a thing about.
@Oxinabox Sounds good, because usually neutral winds up being "chaotic, but not quite".
 
I thought Moffat's version of Moriarty was... a kind of sad throwback, actually. I thought we were getting over Sissy Villains.
 
I might keep the center box too, true neutral is distinctive enough if you remove all the other neutrals.
And lo, we have 4e alignment system.
 
Morning
 
Actually I think True Neural is better replaced with Lawful Neural
 
@Aaron [wave]
 
12:35 PM
@Oxinabox Oh? To me, that would lack the "every man for himself" which true neutral would represent.
 
Every man for himself is Chaotic.
 
But we don't have that.
 
True Neutral is often poorly defined too. Sometimes it's a druidish "balance above all", sometimes it's a "none of the above".
 
Lawful Neural is the machine sage.
I have cleans myself of emotions, Eg Tech Priest.
 
I didn't feel that Moffat's version of Moriarty was overly sissy. He mostly felt like an under appreciate wage slave gone a little bonkers.
 
12:37 PM
We have "soft TN" and "hard TN", like "soft atheism" and "hard atheism".
 
He was alittle sissy thinking back
 
@lisardggY That actually, somewhat surprisingly, stayed intact in 4e. It's been bugging me all the time.
 
I have a soft TN character
 
but the alignment system is inherently ungood.
for things I want to play
at the moment
 
@Oxinabox I agree, but that's explicitly out of scope for this discussion. :)
 
12:39 PM
Mostly because he has at various points done the following: LE defense of killing 20 dwarves, Worships a NG god of nature, and done things just because he feels like it CN.
 
My WoD morality 9 character (former promethan), is going to become a werewolf sooner or later.;
This is going to mean a change from "Not allowed to be selfish" (Let alone hurt anyone.)
to "Murder is no sin"
in mechanical terms
 
I like how DnD 4e's alignment system considers alignment not just your character's behavior, but in a sense their cosmic affiliation.
 
Infact it is going to give him the requirment to kill (animals) for food.
 
@kviiri This Moorcockian view of alignment is the only one that works for me.
 
Meaning that Chaotic Evil is the demonic side, everything else the divine side.
 
12:41 PM
@kviiri: That was better in earlier editions when there were more plains.
^Planes
 
@lisardggY What's that?
@Oxinabox Oh yeah, there was a plane for every alignment or something?
 
@kviiri In many of Michael Moorcock's novels, Law and Chaos aren't abstract ideologies, but concrete factions. You were either aligned with the Lords of Chaos, like Arioch, or with the forces of Law.
@kviiri Yeah, there was. It was... a bit silly. You had a Chaotic Good plane where people would basically lie around lazily being nice to each other.
 
Well, that makes alignment rather concrete. I dislike it when it's just a wacky constraint on how your character is expected to behave.
 
@kviiri It also works better when it's not a constraint, but a guideline.
 
@BESW You Sir, are a villain of the highest order. I do not need to lose my afternoon.
 
12:45 PM
Consider Mass Effect, if you will, where your alignment (either Paragon or Renegade) isn't a preset definition, but the current state of your morality, based on the sum of your actions so far.
 
yep. And each had a creature type.
You had the Lawful Good Archons, IIRC Angels were chaotic good.
Lawful Neutral had these constructs (They were kind of angels of keeping oaths or something), and had a plane that was made of cogs.
Devils were lawful evil, and demons chaotic.
 
Inevitables. "I AM the law"
 
^^ those guys ^^
Consider WOD: where your Alignment, is your morality, which repressents the things you are willing to do. Without feeling bad.
 
There was a terrible spell, call Inevitable.
Which cost XP, and Inevitables sucked
 
Consider my typical system, where alignment doesn't exist, and each character (pretty much like people IRL) aren't categorized into boxes by their morals.
 
12:51 PM
Consider; we should talk about something different
Are the ShadowRun books any good>?'
 

 Not a bar, but plays one on TV

I'm not a place to unwind after work, but I play one on TV.
Alignment discussion might want to move over there, if it continues.
 
I like what I have heard about shadowrun, but I want to read somefiction before i did too deep into the rules.
 
I'm almost totally unfamiliar with ShadowRun; I didn't know there were books.
 
I recommend not digging deep into the Shadowrun rules. Who knows what abominations you might unleash in these murky depths no mortal eyes have beheld before. (or cybereyes, for that matter)
 
I own a few but haven't read them yet, cos they are deep in the series.
 
12:54 PM
@kviiri Spsh. I've followed 3.5 into the bowels of epic levels, and rolled six deadEarth characters. Bring it on.
 
lookrobot.co.uk/2013/10/14/ten-things-hate-shadowrun there's this one, originally linked by someone else (so statistically, BESW)
 
Ha! Well they are like the black magic of mathematics anyway ;)
 
I have now run 2 ecplise phase campaigns.
Rules can not hurt me.
Systems being bad can not hurt me.
Settings having no reason for PCs to exist can not hurt me
 
@Oxinabox Sounds like someone needs to be deadEarthed.
 
1:00 PM
no, not that that can still hurt me.
(maybe another day though)
 
[bangs silverware on table] deadEarth. deadEarth. deadEarth.
> I must not RAW. RAW is the mind-killer. RAW is the little-death that brings total nonsensification. I will face the rules. I will permit them to pass over me and through me. And when they have gone past I will turn the inner eye to see their purpose. Where the rules have gone there will be nothing. Only narrative will remain.
6
 
I played Shadowrun 4e
Can I roll a character for death Earth?
I have no access to the books, but it seems hilarious
 
@Mourdos If I recall correctly, the books are available online for free. BESW might remember the link.
And also, there's a dedicated room for rolling deadEarth chars!
 
I just want to roll some dice and kill some characters :P
 
@Mourdos You roll three characters at once and choose the one you want to play with. This is because sometimes characters don't even survive being created.
Links are at the beginning of the transcript:

 deadEarth: The Chargenning

Where characters are rolled but never played
 
1:08 PM
@besw I agree, I think making villains gay or merely effeminate is a bit old
 
@BESW @trogdor i have texted dan to see if he would like to join us
 
@JonathanHobbs Way ahead of you.
I'll be doing a Curse of the Lake Monster adventure: modern-day Cthulhu Dark, heavy on the investigation, based on a really really bad Scooby Doo live action made-for-TV film.
He's excited.
 
@BESW Enough with that crazy game... jeez.
 
@BESW You spoke to him yourself about it? :o
 
@InbarRose The chargen has the same perverted appeal as Dwarf Fortress.
 
1:16 PM
How did you manage this feat? Was he on Skype?
 
@JonathanHobbs Aye.
 
I usually have spotty ability to get in touch with him, haha.
He is not reliably online on any protocol, and his phone has weird issues with not being very noisy.
 
@kviiri: I play dwarf fortress for fun.
 
Sometimes for !!fun!!
Today, I discovered adamatium, by my military dodging an attack -- into a volcano
 
1:21 PM
I dislike Dwarf Fortress myself, but wind up playing a game or two anyway whenever a new version comes.
 
> Dwarf vs Goblins, Humans, Elves... Seizing goods from a friendly caravan will often lead to large shipment of fun next time the traders visit. Remember, it's not paranoia if they are out to get you.
I like the writing on this page.
 
I've yet to try 0.40.x though. It seems 0.40.05 is finally somewhat playable.
 
TIL: why my favorite bagel shops iced coffee is so good. instead of room temp or cool coffee poured over ice, it's a triple shot of espresso drawn directly over ice. I approve of this.
 
@besw great analysis of the term, also a great example of imitators watering down the original concept
 

« first day (1400 days earlier)      last day (3559 days later) »