TRPG General Chat

BESW

12:40 AM

The town of Bad Kerning is close to Bad Ems--but not quite as close as it should be.

Adeptus

1:36 AM

@BESW Primeval spin-off? Why did I not know this was a thing? (How does it compare to the original?)

BESW

@Adeptus It's not really great. It stars the actor who played that annoying egomaniac who was supposed to be a heartthrob on Eureka, with... basically the same acting, but now he's supposed to be the sympathetic hero instead of the sexy jerkface.

Adeptus

@Dorian Bardbarian

BESW

And it's much more grimdark: instead of "Anomalies made my wife a supervillain," it's "Anomalies spat out an Allosaurus which ate my wife in front of me." No Wilhelm screams, lots of Break the Cutie.

Adeptus

[looks at time] Oh, that's why I'm hungry... lunchtime! Back in a bit

BESW

2:16 AM

> WTTW, which maintained its transmitter atop the Sears Tower, found that its engineers were unable to stop the hijacker, due to the high microwave signals that the hijacker was using, as well as the fact that there were no engineers on duty at the Sears Tower at the time of the hijacking.

Talk about burying the lede.

...aaand I'm back

Me too.

[wave]

~~

@BESW I nearly peed myself. I must share this.

BESW

@Adeptus New World was cancelled unceremoniously after one season, leaving many dangling plot threads which, frankly, did not distress me overmuch.

Adeptus

2:26 AM

eh, sounds like it's not worth the effort to hunt down

BESW

It has a couple cameos by Connor, being all Competent And World-Weary Secret Agent, which is terribly amusing.

For me, the show had three major flaws: it starred Niall Matter; it re-tread too much of Primeval's early ground, as the characters learnt things about anomalies that the audience already knew and had adventures the audience had already seen; and it was too savagely brutal.

They tried to spice it up with time-travel paradox plot arcs (which can be done well, but is also really easy to screw up--I'm not too hopeful about 12 Monkeys for the same reason), and I think the grimdark elements were meant to distinguish the new show from the old as well, but it didn't work for me.

@KitFox Glad you liked it. The Skin Horse comments are often at least as entertaining as the comic itself.

stizzle84

2:48 AM

Im trying to make an rpg game any suggestions

The Oracle

1

Q: How to build X in (a point-buy system)

In strictly point-buy systems (like GURPS and HERO System) you can build pretty much any character/vehicle/gadget you can think of if you know how to combine the powers and modifications thereof. Trouble comes of not knowing how to combine them appropriately. I'm wondering if those sorts of ques...

Adeptus

3:07 AM

> It was like ignoring the vegetable drawer of your fridge for a year, then opening it to find a bunch of very grateful sentient tomatoes busily working on their third opera

Starship Titanic "secret" forums

Miniman

Soupe Opera

Soupe Opéra is a children's television programme. It was created in France in the early 1990s, and was aired globally as distant as Australia, originally on free-to-air, non-commercial channel ABC1, but is now shown more commonly on sister channel ABC2 on the ABC 4 Kids lineup. == Visuals == In each episode, fruit and vegetables spontaneously exit a basket, moving by themselves, and cut themselves up to form animals and objects. The animals formed then perform actions, such as eating the left over food. In some episodes, the food comes out of a garbage bin to form the animal, such as a possum....

AgentPaper

4:03 AM

Just to let everyone know: I'm recruiting for a new campaign, tentatively called There Will Be TPK.

The idea is that the world is out to get you, and character deaths are very often.

Shalvenay

@AgentPaper -- hrm -- sounds like EVE Online ;)

AgentPaper

I'm hoping to get a better feel for how to push players to their limits without killing them, by killing them. A lot.

Recruitment thread is here: giantitp.com/forums/…

BESW

What system?

Miniman

@BESW The link says 5e.

BESW

Ahah.

AgentPaper

4:14 AM

dangit, I really need to get used to mentioning that.

BESW

....dangit. Doesn't look like Wacom ships to Guam.

AgentPaper

I mean, I can't even say, "Well it's the majority so you should assume it!", since if anything something like Fate is probably in the majority in this chat.

BESW

I'm not sure this chat has a clear majority.

Miniman

@BESW I'm reasonably sure you personally represent the majority of this chat.

4

BESW

I mean, my group usually plays Fate. But by far the system I've got the most experience with is D&D 3.5, and this weekend we'll probably play Cthulhu Dark.

in Not a bar, but plays one on TV, Nov 12 '14 at 11:08, by doppelgreener

BESW is actually a hive mind of like a dozen and a half people

Joshua Aslan Smith

4:23 AM

@miniman

**By RAW you would simply have the proficiency from two different sources**

This would not result in a double proficiency bonus, but would simply be a wasted proficiency. Also, by default you can not change the backgrounds, but with DM approval the PHB does provide a guideline for creating custom backgrounds.

>**Customizing a Background**
>You might want to tweak some o f the features of a background so it better fits your character or the campaign setting. To customize a background, you can replace one feature with any other one, choose any two skills, and choose a total of two tool prof…

maybe add the bit about customization to your answer

Im wrong in the first paragraph and you beat me to the draw anyway

@mxyzplk Not sure if merging makes sense

The playtest had some differences in how it handled backgrounds

and that question is definitely about the playtest

Adeptus

Should questions about D&D playtest/"next" be marked as obsolete now? Or updated to 5e?

Miniman

@JoshuaAslanSmith I thought there was a duplicate, but I couldn't find one when I looked.

Shalvenay

@Adeptus -- updated to 5e I suspect

BESW

@Adeptus Oh, sweet Blueblood on a biscuit, let that sleeping dog lie.

We do not need another schism over the relationship between 5e and the playtests.

user61230

4:52 AM

I want to make a Burning Wheel character burning and/or game-helping-running program (because this can be horrifyingly complex to track). Any interest from the denizens of this chatroom?

Shalvenay

I have NFI about Burning Wheel @Emrakul

BESW

"NFI," clearly, stands for "Need Further Information."

Shalvenay

heheh

or No Freakin' Idea

BESW

"The New Fraggle Ideologies" would be a good name for an album.

Probably from a post-new-sincerity nostalgia band.

AgentPaper

So, related to my campaign: Any ideas on how to work the story for a game where character death and even TPKs are the norm?

BESW

5:07 AM

Depends. Are we talking frequent character resurrections, or frequent character turnover?

Dorian

Ugh... the /tg/ drawthreads on 4chan are nearly intolerable now....

AgentPaper

5:29 AM

@BESW Frequent turnover, most likely.

AgentPaper

5:55 AM

Hm, this might make a good question actually, now that I think of it.

AgentPaper

6:12 AM

Or would it be too opinion-based?

doppelgreener

6:37 AM

@Emrakul Interest: piqued. Ability to create a fork of myself that will have the time to assist you: not yet acquired.

@AgentPaper "I have a campaign where my characters die all the time. How should I handle the story?" is going be closed as unclear or opinion-based because, well, what do you need help with there? You handle it how you want. Are you having a problem we can provide a solution to?

If you say "I am trying to achieve this specific effect and don't know how," that presents us with a better site question.

like, are you trying to make the story still have gravitas when it is, in reality: a bunch of people threw themselves at this obstacle and like a hundred of them died and eventually a few of them succeeded and the corpse-pile clean-up bill was enormous?

user61230

6:55 AM

@doppelgreener What language(s)/IDE(s) do you prefer? (In case you ever find time, I'd like to use something you're familiar with)

doppelgreener

7:44 AM

@Emrakul I'm unlikely to find time in the near future due to having my own personal projects and not being on schedule for those either, so don't base that off my comfort levels! However in truth I tend to learn whatever is suitable or being used for the job. I like C# and I'm very familiar with it, I'm familiar with the web front-end trifecta - html, JavaScript, css - and I like python and ruby but I've never done anything serious with them.

The only actual IDE I use is visual studio, and if I'm not working in that I'm probably using sublime text.

The only languages I'm truly averse to are Java (tolerable) and PHP (I might do it anyway and wonder how I got into this mess and why the developer chose this language)

user61230

8:01 AM

PHP is superior to all! Ia! Ia!

user61230

@doppelgreener I've only mild experience with C#, but it's very familiar. I'm going to pick up C# In Depth soon anyway, so may as well start with that!

user61230

Hell, it'll help learn me a C#, and maybe even for great good.

user61230

(Though I might not start for a while anyway - a stack of about six textbooks on my desk, transfer applications, and transfer examinations.)

user61230

(Also, the application logic is horrendous in some places.)

doppelgreener

8:19 AM

@Emrakul application logic of what?

user61230

It's mostly that BW makes hundreds of little exceptions in the most annoying places, honestly

doppelgreener

Oh! The logic of the program?

user61230

Yeah.

user61230

It mostly gets nasty in weapons and armor.

doppelgreener

uh oh.

a-are you using component oriented design

if you're using regular inheritance-based OOP that's going to get pretty nasty

but components might make it a little easier to deal with minute exceptions

user61230

8:24 AM

I did a draft of this in Java for an AP compsci project a while back, and I thought the entire thing would be very straightforward without all these strange recurring modifiers, so I did it pretty much solely on inheritance.

user61230

Which is, uh, yeah, where it got rather nasty.

user61230

Because I didn't realize how many exceptions there actually were?

user61230

Missile weapons have different statistical distributions (on the "Die of Fate"), different values for each of these distributions, different values if you decide to throw things, different values depending on how far away you are, two other modifiers, and if they're arrows the heads can arbitrarily change different things about the result.

user61230

Most of my problems came from making assumptions about the requirements of the project that turned out to be, um. False.

user61230

so much arbitrary calculation

user61230

8:30 AM

Here's an overview of how this works, if you're curious.

user61230

First, you pick lifepaths, which require a certain number of years, give you resources, adjust either mental or physical stats. This can be either mental +1, physical +1, or mental or physical +1 - and in one case only, it's a -1 to mental or physical).

user61230

Lifepaths can lead to certain settings. Lifepaths are categorized by setting, and you can only pick lifepaths in your current setting or anything this lifepath leads to. If you pick something the lifepath leads to, you add one to the time it takes.

user61230

Lifepaths also give you general skill points and localized skill points, as well as trait points, a required skill and trait (or plural, if the LP is repeated), and optional skills and traits.

user61230

If you repeat a lifepath, though, your resources repeats once, but drops off after that.

user61230

After that, you take all the numbers and aggregate them. Use your age to get your base mental and physical pools, then add modifiers to those, then split those up into stats.

user61230

8:35 AM

The problem I had here was that I didn't realize how much interconnectedness there was between lifepaths and choices made, so I only had very minimal ways for things to access and modify each other.

user61230

Things like "resources diminish with repetition" didn't actually occur to me to write the program for, which was horribly confusing when I realized I needed it. Same thing with mental/physical minus one (though that wasn't hard, just irritating).

user61230

The worst part of this is that it can't be dealt with in integers in places - Burning Wheel uses its own counting system.

user61230

Anyway, that was a lot longer than I meant it to be.

user61230

In short, before this project could even be started, it needs to be thought through somewhat meticulously.

doppelgreener

oh wow yes.

I can imagine a lot of design or iterative prototyping.

well, both at once actually.

user61230

8:42 AM

yeah

user61230

I get the feeling like it'd be really fun, but it's definitely not a small project

user61230

if it weren't fun, I wouldn't want to do it ._.

doppelgreener

9:06 AM

yeah, I'm the same ;)

Dorian

10:08 AM

Still need ideas for charismatic leaders for character inspiration :/

user61230

@doppelgreener Well, if you ever have time, it'd take longer by myself than with help :P

user61230

but for now, sleep

user61230

2AM sleep + 8AM class = unhappy Emrakul

doppelgreener

10:22 AM

@Emrakul goodnight! time for turbosleep

BESW

10:59 AM

> Dragging the Speaker of the House of Commons:

> When a new Speaker of the House of Commons is elected, the successful candidate is physically dragged to the Chair by other MPs.
This custom has its roots in the Speaker's function to communicate the Commons' opinions to the monarch. Historically, if the monarch didn't agree with the message being communicated then the early death of the Speaker could follow. Therefore, as you can imagine, previous Speakers required some gentle persuasion to accept the post.

doppelgreener

11:10 AM

@BESW HA. I've seen this process happen! (The dragging part, not the death part.) Now I understand.

BESW

CERBERUS IN A CAN: Defeated & canned, 1244 BC, by Heracles in the Peloponnesus.

@Emrakul Go back to bed.

BESW

11:39 AM

@doppelgreener Please note, the tongue-in-cheek understatement of that blurb is taken directly from the official website of the UK Parliament.

Quick chat poll: What is for you (and without looking him up), the most essential (iconic/representative/memorable/definitive) thing about Max Headroom?

If you don't know Max Headroom without looking him up, that's also a useful response.

trogdor

I either do not know or do not remember a Max Headroom

doppelgreener

@BESW I noted this. :)

@BESW I do not know this man, and will make an uneducated guess that it's his head room. (Or the room in his head.)

BESW

11:54 AM

@doppelgreener In a sense, they could be thought of as one and the same.

To avoid contaminating the poll, more detailed discussions of Max Headroom should probably adjourn to the NAB.

If you want 'em, of course.

Dorian

12:11 PM

stabby rip stab stab

BESW

12:27 PM

@doppelgreener, @trogdor If I were to ask you what your PC fears about themselves, would be hard to come up with an answer?

doppelgreener

@BESW yes

but i could probably come up with one

BESW

What if I expanded it to "greatest fear," without the self bit?

doppelgreener

That is probably easier. (Now that you've asked it, I also want to figure out an answer to her fear about herself.)

BESW

12:46 PM

@doppelgreener I'm reading various horror RPG guides/manuals/articles/etc.

Dorian

@Aaron I just started watching the anime Log Horizon. Gotta say, this is gonna get me soo hyped for your game lol.

doppelgreener

@Dorian looks kinda cool. :)

@BESW Oh yeah? I guess that'd point out this being pretty important to know. :) Let me know if it has more to say on the topic.

BESW

One useful article (which draws heavily on Nightmares of Mine) categorises fear into (in escalating order): Evil Threatening Us, Evil Threatening Others, Creating Evil Ourselves, Being Evil Ourselves, and Living in an Evil World.

doppelgreener

@BESW Also, do you want an actual answer to what that fear would be, or just whether we might be able to say what it is?

BESW

@doppelgreener I will be asking everyone in the group this question, or something similar to it, over the next week.

Dorian

12:48 PM

@doppelgreener Definitely, only one episode in and it's already awesome. And it has very similar themes to the game.

doppelgreener

(I'm also having a little bit of trouble because there's a lot of things that would be very scary for Stellata if they happened, but are not necessarily things she thinks about, so I wouldn't say they count among her fears.)

BESW

@doppelgreener Ah, this is also cool: don't worry if it's not something she worries about.

She doesn't have to know she has a fear until she's confronted with it.

doppelgreener

Okay. :D

BESW

If she has some deep subconscious fear of reverting to an unthinking plant, she doesn't have to recognise the fear to be affected by it.

Likewise, Doctor Light may have a deep horror that Stellata will run wild and hurt people, but it may never actually occur to him to think of that.

(And, when those categories talk about Evil, it's "bad things happening" sort of evil.)

So if Stellata fears losing her mind, that's Evil Threatening Us. And Doctor Light's fear that Stellata will become a villain is Creating Evil Ourselves.

Or maybe Stellata just fears aphids.

@doppelgreener Specifically, I think our Aether session will have Forbidden Planet style adversaries: Monsters From The Id.

So I'm putting together some questions about fears and desires and so forth in order to better craft appropriate monsters.

doppelgreener

1:04 PM

@BESW I have no idea what you mean when you say forbidden planet.

But I get Monsters from the Id.

BESW

It's the 1950s film that coined the phrase "Monsters from the Id."

It's kind of a combination of The Tempest and Beyond the Mountains of Madness, but IN SPAAACE.

On a distant planet, an extremely advanced and utterly peaceful race once devised a machine to eliminate labour and want by reading the mind of everyone on the planet and physically creating whatever they wanted. It worked great until they went to sleep and their uncontrolled dreams killed everyone and everything on the planet.

The film is about humans discovering the planet thousands of years later.

...and the machine is still working.

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