Typo of the day: "uniformed subordinates" becomes "uninformed subordinates."

@BESW "We're answering to whom now? What were we supposed to be doing? Why is everything on fire?"

HotDQ question anyone?

o/ @Pixie

also, fire away I suppose @DavidWilkins

My players are in the hatchery, there should be a couple high ranking officials there...anything wrong with my group killing them?

@DavidWilkins -- if it's the hatchery near the beginning, your group can go right ahead and kill 'em

Cool...was hoping so

@Shalvenay Hello.

@Pixie how're things going?

@Shalvenay Alright. How are you?

@Pixie doing better here, finally beginning to get a better hang of things I feel even

@Shalvenay Ooh, that's good.

@Pixie -- "having the flick", so to speak, is tremendously helpful when it comes to not completely obliterating other folks' plots

@Shalvenay Having the flick?

@Pixie -- knowing what the situation overall is

and why things are happening

Ahh, I see.

@Pixie It's air traffic controller lingo.

yep @BESW

It means you've got an accurate mental construct of all the moving interacting bits of the scenario.

Like "seeing the big picture," but with more dynamic change--so it's more like a movie (flick) than a picture.

exactly

@BESW That makes sense. "Big picture" is what came to mind when it was explained.

@DavidWilkins They're meant to be killed this time.

I understand the downvote there, but the close as "unclear" makes no sense:

Must have been due to lack of system tag, but even that is obvious from the text and easily fixed.

I can see a potential confusion.

Are they asking about using cards with 4e mechanics, or about using the 4e power card format for 3.5 mechanics?

@BESW I don't really see it. If they're looking at a pack of Power Cards for sale and wondering if they can use them, this is the question that might be asked. If they are wondering about format, that requires a much more informed perspective that would have been reflected in the text.

I agree. But I can see where someone else might have read that ambiguity into it.

@BESW Right! Yes, I see what you mean.

I still think it was the missing system tag though. The close-votes for missing system tags has gotten pretty... violent? lately. I get the sense lately that people are more quickly opting to close when the necessary information is there, but improperly arranged, than to just edit the post.

It's easier?

And we have had some rather aggressive instances of "did not read carefully" answers, too.

@BESW True. Voting and answering carelessly would be a worrying site culture trend if it continues.

@BESW Hey, I just recognised your avatar. I read an article about that painting yesterday.

@SevenSidedDie It's a great painting, but you probably know more about it than I do.

I saw a reproduction of it on the wall in Emerson's study when I visited Concord, and everything else I know is from Wikipedia.

On clerics and environments, or "It appears to be a nonreligious stove."

@BESW That's as much as I know about it, too. :) I passed the Wikipedia link on to a friend who's an artist and fan of art history. If she gets enthusiastic about it and digs anything up, I'll pass it on.

Cool.

One reason I like it is that it's exactly the spitting image of my first ever player character.

Hello

Can I steal anyones time to join me on twitch to check the quality of my video?

Welp, I've got a new NPC to work into a game some day.

@TheOracle Why can't I upvote this more? It's clear and eloquent, non-confrontational, and invites analysis rather than demanding a specific conclusion.

@BESW A high-quality meta question to counteract the flood of really crappy questions we've been having on the main site.

We've also had some rather poor responses to questions--voting habits have been all over the place the last few days.

@BESW Bad questions tend to cause that, though.

yeah, but we've had poor responses to non-awful questions too.

An overreaction, perhaps.

@BESW I'm deeply personally offended.

@Miniman And I'm deeply terrified.

@BESW Oh? Why?

Because portals to the Plane of Infinite Spiders can only mean bad things for the universe's entropy balancing?

Also there will doubtless be a horrible crash in the street value of multilegged-monster films.

Everyone just wants to forget the entertainment industry crisis precipitated by the 1971 incursion of the Vampire Dimension, but if we don't learn from our mistakes, we'll get another Blackula.

35 years from now, we could have romantic thrillers about glittering multipedes fighting were-silverfish for the affection of a bland self-loathing lead.

I finally got told one of my problems with in-character interaction during roleplaying. I - and my characters as a consequence - read too much into what other people say, getting offended for what others perceive to be minimal things or not-even-things.

Now

...how the hell am I supposed to fix this [è_é]

@Zachiel Figure out some "triggers" for your character?

Decide one or two things that the character will always be offended about, regardless of magnitude. Then don't take offense at anything else, unless it becomes super blatantly problematic.

I really hope that Cataru tells us about how his campaign train wrecks.

@Zachiel -- interestingly enough, I have the opposite problem -- I don't read enough into the interactions of other characters, and thus miss a bunch of social cues

Maybe they're two facets of the same problem

Shall I tell you what happened? Maybe it'll help the two of us (maybe not)

sure, go ahead

I got word that a guy called "the blade" is looking for troubleshooters. He works for this "lady of frost" and is gathering people at this small town. I go there, and I meet him. He asks who I am and tells me to dismount my nag, because his neck is hurting (I'm a cleric with the animal domain and my horse is perfectly fine). He also calls the builders he's watching over with derogative names. My deity believes in leading by example.

interesting -- I wonder if he meant his own neck, not your horse's neck?

(i.e. he was tired of looking up at you sitting astride your mount)

Yes that's what he said

But he called my horse a nag

The player later said his character has a colorful language and didn't mean to insult me

ah, basically, he was insulting your mount :p

or not.

when I told him how I'd treat the laborers he asked me if I was done poisoning the air, and that if he wanted boring suggestion he would have married

:P

So I took all these small things as indicators that he wasn't really nice (plus, he didn't want to tell me who he was working for, and he was whining because the laborers were not working under the rain, and criticized my idea of being nice to them

He tells me I'm reading too much into the situation - basically, he didn't mean to portray such a bad guy

I have the same problem, but the other way around, actually -- people read argumentative tones into what my character says quite a bit when I've given them no cues to indicate that my character is actually angry

although I suspect that trying to argue with someone who simply is rebutting your points matter-of-factly actually a) winds up the angry guy more and b) makes the character look a little...off from an engageability standpoint :P

....sounds to me like the player is having a rough time nailing down the "loveable" part of "loveable rogue." It's hard to make a character who is rude but likeable.

I would've also thought he was portraying an abrasive jerk.

And today he told me the same thing happened two years ago with our other characters. Why am I the last one knowing? XD

@Shalvenay By the way, I had this weird interaction with him where at one point I was angry enogh to punch him, but I tried to keep my temper. I asked him to pay more respect (he told me he didn't feel like he wasn't doing, which at the time I took as him being even more jerk) and then, seeing my clenched fists, he said "I've been called to lead this people because I'm good with weapons. I wouldn't try to attack me"

At that point I told him "Why don't we spar? I want to see how strong you are" and he avoided that by telling me he didn't fight unless needed, then sugegsted me to attack him if I wanted to see. "Luckily for me, your laws here would get you into trouble if you did"

I think he made it impossible for me to punch him in the nose without consequences

I feel like I've been tricked into not attacking him, is that bad?

And whoho, I'm at 100k XP

100,001 to be precise

Spam in the Stack! (Flag, don't downvote.)

@BESW Do our flags also downvote?

Yes, but it's a downvote from Community, not from you.

@Zachiel -- I don't understand characters who are strong fighters, but never spar

it's like "how do you train to become skilled without sparring at some point?"

@Shalvenay I guess he spars with people he trusts more than the last man coming to town

I suppose that could be true

Regardless of reasons, it often comes across as empty boasting.

@BESW -- ...yeah

That's why I wanted to spar. Either you're good, and then I'd learn something, or you're just bluffing, and I'm gonna get the satisfaction of hitting you in the face.

I think part of it is trying to emulate "lone wolf" heroes in films and novels, where actors' body language and tone, or internal monologue in text, help give dimension and justification to actions which are just silly or rude without context.

yeah

Another part may be the common D&Dism that conflict must always be earnest and deadly.

@BESW -- agreed. it's actually one of the things that isn't an issue for my problematic char -- she's the type to jump at any chance she gets to spar (although it has gotten her in a spot of trouble every now and again)

@BESW they sometimes are. When your sparring partner might deal you more damage than your full HP in one hit, you don't really want to spar with strangers.

@Zachiel Exactly: the D&Dism is that you can't pull your punches, or that society is so screwed up that it's extremely your partner won't try to not kill you.

Pulling punches? Mostly, you just don't use all of your feats to power the attack.

Alrighty, off to teach Word. Wish me luck.

@BESW will do

@BESW our thoughts are with you

@Zachiel I'm just coming into this conversation, but it sounds like that character was being an asshole. I don't think that this specific instance, at least, is you reading too much into what someone is saying.

You can totally have a person with a sort of insulting tone most of the time that isn't a jerk, but it sounds like that player went too far.

@BESW -- yeah. even my problem child char can pull her punches :P

@DuckTapeAl I read too much because I generalized what he said to his whole character - how one speaks is not how he is (but I told him that's why my first imprssion was bad)

I guess, but how someone speaks is very indicative of how they are presenting themselves to the world.

Like, if someone uses a racial slur, they're probably racist.

If someone insults a person they just met, they're probably a jerk.

He might not have wanted to portray his character as a jerk, but it sounds like that's what he did.

At the very least, I would have been upset if a fellow player treated my character like that when we first met.

yeah -- and my character's problems, sadly, aren't so obvious -- she starts off sounding nice, but then she starts getting pushy, more or less

as in -- she'll just sit there and calmly probe you with questions, and if you start getting evasive with her, she'll just press you and press you

Is the the same character that juggled a halfling PC once?

@DuckTapeAl -- not a halfling, but that wasn't her normal MO

it's far more common for her to be simply verbally pushy then get into the "over-the-top attempts at entertainment" mode