I'm upgrading to 10 in a few weeks after the press brings about its results.
"Whoops, sorry, we'll turn off all that phone-home stuff that's meant to be off when you switch it off in the settings." "Whoops, we'll fix that start menu upper limit bug." etc
The IT guys at work have been playing around with it for a bit, and they said they don't mind it. I'm still using XP on my home laptop though, I don't think it could run anything higher if I tried :\
And that includes your child having a WIndows account set up as a child account and not an administrator that the parent knows about, and agreeing to the monitoring in an email. It's still unfortunate that kids for whom these things could be dangerous could be coerced into it, and it's bad that they have to know not to agree. But parents will find a way if they want to monitor their children. P:
In some cases, though, like LGBTQ+ children with homophobic or transphobic parents or generally kids in bad family situations, for whom the internet may be the only source of support, it is very dangerous.
I've got my dad set up on a "child" account for the blacklist/whitelist features because he's lost the ability to make good choices about what he does online.
@IronHeart We have a person who's able to cast sending herself here.
About windows 10, I hear its license is based on your current PC configuration and is invalidated if you change a board (except RAM maybe) and that you can't choose if updating it or not or which additional content to install or not.
I'm no expert and this comes from someone who claims to be.
@Zachiel This was an inaccurate reporting. See this windows 10 FAQ, ctrl+F for "What happens if I change my motherboard?". The license is only invalidated for OEM licenses and only if you change your motherboard.
OEM means you bought a prebuilt computer that came with Windows 10 installed on it.
[sigh] Dear Microsoft: You're handing out your new OS for free because you want to increase platform standardisation. Any restrictions on its use that make people fear they're going to lose access to their OS will obstruct that goal. This is why folks are still using XP, and folks still using XP is why you're doing this!
People are generally willing to pay reasonable amounts of money for a good product, but being asked to jump through hoops they perceive as unreasonable will make them more inclined to seek easier but less legal/safe channels.
Whether it's keeping your old OS or pirating a new one.
@Bankuei Hi! I'm glad you posted on that "making strangers a friendly group" question and I'm looking into the games you mentioned; I've only played Lady Blackbird before.
@BESW I often spend a lot of time trying to rein myself in before answering a question and going too far into "You can't make people do anything" because that's a lot of what I want to tell folks, for many questions. I spent a lot of years of wasted, bad gaming experiences trying to do otherwise.
Heh, yeah. I've had a lot of good experiences creating environments where folks feel comfortable and encouraged to behave certain ways, but if they don't want to buy into it, it won't happen.
The variety of games gets you a chance to actually being able to talk about what you like or don't like and compare it to someone else who might be into something different.
"just roleplay more!" "Focus on story!" "Be a good gamer!" that kind of stuff was meaningless, so you end up having to point out "what does that mean though?"
Oh yeah, I wanted to comment on something on your answer for that, @BESW. Open-ended questions like "If you could talk to anyone in the world, who would it be?" can work, but they can also really put people on the spot. Having been through this kind of activity a lot in various groups, it was almost never an effective icebreaker and usually led to awkwardness and embarrassment rather than bonding. I'm sure you've had a different experience, but that stuck out to me because of my own.
@Pixie The reason it's worked for me, I think, is that you can be flippant about 'em if you don't want to be serious or emotional with that group or your brain's just not in that place.
@BESW Glad that you have! It's just something I'd be cautious about if initiating. Flippantness is just one reaction to that situation which might not occur to someone if they're overwhelmed or embarrassed by the question, suffering stage fright, especially shy, feeling obligated to answer in a certain way, or too out of their element.
Being really clear that answering is optional and giving a good variety of questions helps mitigate it, I think.
@BESW I've got some new formative groups online - which means we're swapping people often. Trying to communicate the tone is a bit more difficult given our variable people.
My group has a core of semi-regular folks, but any given week I can only be sure of one player and we might get new people sometimes. It's led to attempting episodic story forms so we can shift things each night if necessary.
@Bankuei Yeah, I've been struggling to articulate what it is about Stargate SG-1 that I want to see in a game, so I can find a good system for it.
@Bankuei Almost half my regular players join my living room with theirs via Skype. If you've got any learning about making that communication smoother, I'd be happy to ask a main-site question for you to answer.
@doppelgreener, @trogdor, I'm writing up a question asking for help facilitating group communicaton/dynamics in a "Skyping living rooms" situation like ours. If you have any concerns you'd like to be sure I address, let me know.
@BESW Hm. We handle it pretty well, I think. One of the issues can be whether or not we get heard - we hear you loud and clear, but it's easy for a raucous discussion to go on without anyone noticing we're trying to get your attention, sometimes. That does not happen often at all, and you also seem to manage it well by issuing a sort of priority to us: if we're talking, everyone falls quiet to listen.
I remember those occasions where you've put your hand up to get everyone's attention toward us as well.
Who was it that did those short youtube videos about various weird animals that were funny and sorta educational, and had the line "this is how the X do."?
wait, if I'm watching you and what you're writing with binoculars while you're writing, does that mean they explode horribly in your face the moment you're done?
> Explosive Runes: You trace these mystic runes upon a book, map, scroll, or similar object bearing written information. The runes detonate when read, dealing 6d6 points of force damage. Anyone next to the runes (close enough to read them) takes the full damage with no saving throw
On a side note. What if I had prepared Runes earlier and slipped them into doppel's pocket. Would his reading of another casting explode those actually on his body?
Attend the royal court. The speaker arrives with the morning's mail, unfurls a scroll and speaks as he reads through it. "Your majesty, the Duke of Fronce doth declare to you his unyielding loyalty, and the explosive runes he prepared this morning." [boom]
King and courier stand in limbo waiting for the explosion that never happens... In the mean time, the treasury is now empty, and the kingdom lies in ruins. The palace hasn't been touched...
And then the king insists all mail be checked by scribes in separate rooms. What about using the prisoners instead, most of them aren't literate and the explosive runes will work all the same, the frightened scribes suggest.
I should really work on putting a campaign together of some description, try and actually write something instead of just trolling boards waiting for people to do something...
6 of one, half a dozen of the other? Trawling boards and trolling them in a vain attempt to incite others to post.
I love to idea of adapting Roll for Shoes as a basis and generating a basic system but that actually is usable for combat. Still allowing characters the ability to develop exactly how they'd like... Every time I look at it though, it ends up 10 times more complicated :\
Funnily enough, it seems the online definition of trolling or inciting flames seems to actually be based on that exact definition. I just do it to incite activity of any type, not just negative.
Trolling (as in trying to get a reaction out of people) is almost always used negatively, to describe users who are being malicious jerks who cause trouble and everyone would rather they were not there.
So if you mean you're just trying to get helpful responses, you might want to think twice about calling that trolling.
Well, in that case. I should spend less time trawling message boards for helpful and insightful responses and more time creating my own adventure to inspire them.
@doppelgreener Kind of. From Urban Dictionary: "troll - One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument". "flaming - An online argument that becomes nasty or derisive, where insulting a party to the discussion takes precedence over the objective merits of one side or another".
They're definitely related, but one can be a flamer without being a troll. Question of original intent.
@doppelgreener IIRC, the term started on Usenet, as posting a contentious topic that veteran users would know to ignore but novice users would react to.
@Magician I am not saying anything at all about the trolling/flaming overlap or lack thereof
I am just saying Nyoze shouldn't be calling himself a troll unless he wants people to think he's being a resounding jerk, and commenting on the apparent reaction it didn't always mean that. :P
Yeah. It's a fine word to use - if someone said "I was trolling the garbage heap for those robots" - they're going to understand the other sense or go look up what the heck that means.
If you say you're trolling various forums though, that is a good candidate for miscommunication.
@doppelgreener You could even use it in this context, but phrased differently: "I'm trolling for a good game." wouldn't be so confusing. But "trolling boards waiting for people to do something," that is rather suggestive of the unintended meaning. xD
@Miniman There's nothing saying that I actually exist, and am not instead a cat walking across a keyboard with no concept of what those weird clickly-clacks he steps on are actually doing.
@Nyoze If someone sat a thousand cats at a thousand typewriters, one of them would eventually produce the internet identity Nyoze. (The other 999 would be busy climbing around and knocking over the remaining typewriters.)
Suddenly I have an idea: an NPC who's a leading expert in chaos (or possibly causality, or the universe, or cats, or something), and has harnessed cats themselves as the driving mechanic in an enormous calculation machine.
Back to that explosive runes campaign - I'm imagining a scenario where the party discovers that a particular letter has both explosive runes, and extremely important information the party needs. It's also a very official letter. It misses its original assassination target because people keep only partially reading it and then sending it on elsewhere by horseback. The party is eternally a day or so behind, but thankfully they have not turned up to find anywhere in ruins yet.
It's a very bureaucratic letter or something, and there's usually someone else who should be dealing with it.
Exactly, someone reads the first line, can't be bothered dealing with it and sends it to another city to deal with instead.
The reason there are explosive runes is because this is the second letter then've sent, the first one actually disappeared into a void along with all the lost socks.
Once you read it, runes transfer to your body and start glowing brighter and brighter. The only way to get rid of them (barring paying a cleric to cast Remove Curse) is to make two copies of the letter - the runes will flow from you onto the page. Their outline remains until you've sealed the envelope and dropped it into the mailbox.
> This magic was once known to trolls long long ago, and caused the destruction of their entire civilization, leaving them the mindless brutes we know today. Upon reading a costing of Enchanted Runes, the target will gain the ability to cast Chained Enchanted Runes 1d4 times. If the target does not expend these uses in 5d6 minutes, the runes will explode dealing 6d6d20 damage. (Roll 6d6 for the amount of D20 to roll)
Shameless Plug for anyone interested: Attempting to add custom rules to RFS and create a playable game. Check out the game on RPOL and join if you want. It's my first time trying to GM anything as well, so any feedback is always welcome :)
@Nyoze Dammit, now I'm curious. Would you mind saying what your current level of education is? I think we learned basic statistics in high school, but I could be mistaken, and it was a different country.
I passed maths in Year 10, failed Stage 1 the same year, (Maths Methods 4c or something now it's called I think), then dropped out of Stage 2 in year 11.
But since I left school, my knowledge of anything more the algebra and arithmetic has just degenerated to next to nothing. Statistics and Probability always confused me, even when I was doing it.
I didn't actually know what standard deviation meant either (at least not exactly), but I am terrible at math and had no education in statistics at any point.
I know that in any statiscal expiriment, there is a bell curve of possible outcomes, but I never knew what the actual name of it was. Or if I did, I forgot.
It's the... I don't @#$%ing care. It's a number that can be arbitarily large that one in 10 million rolls, but for the average roll would end up at about 220 damage around level 18, across multiple targets. I'm happy with that. It's not designed for combat anyway, just for pure chaos :)
