TRPG General Chat

19th c. Katar (punch-dagger) with 2 flintlock guns, India (948.1.124) #WeaponsWednesday https://t.co/63BLvMwjWW

Tweeted by rom_gwena on September 14, 2016 at 7:15 PM

@BESW I feel bad... I'm in on Ben Robbins' playtest, and my RL group hasn't met since the e-mail came from him with the new version. Of course, maybe it's Ben who's the jinx and who should feel bad...?

Clearly.

(Thing is, he seems like a nice enough guy that if I told him this he actually would feel bad.)

(And then my plan can move to phase 2...)

12:24 AM

hey there @nitsua60

@Shalvenay hiya

@nitsua60 how're things going?

sketching up a little neighborhood map of Ashur... leaving blanks, though, as DW demands!

@nitsua60 yeah, DW demands you develop everything in play basically

@Shalvenay no, not really

12:25 AM

@nitsua60 hrm, well, maybe not everything :)

I characterize it as drawing the important distinction between preparing and planning.

Prepare much, plan nothing.

But it brings up the novel question: given our group and its mandate, should I be thinking about something other than a map?

@nitsua60 I'm not sure, really -- that's something you'll have to work out with @VisuallyImpaired

Would twenty lines of text be a more-appropriate way to present "background" info?

Or is it a both/and?

maybe try a few different approaches and have her compare them?

(@BESW's professional thoughts would be good here, too, methinks.)

12:28 AM

Hmm. I haven't yet had to help folks with map-like technologies.

Closest I've come is the extremely clever technique of using your phone to check the local WiFi network names to find out where you are.

@BESW that's an impressively-creative solution.

12:40 AM

@nitsua60 One of my friends uses it as the equivalent of looking out the bus window.

@nitsua60 So, one potential solution is for you to make a map that can be read by TTS software. Perhaps a pdf with names of places positioned in geographic relationship to each other.

VI can use the arrow keys to move the cursor on the screen and it'll read the text underneath the cursor.

If she has a touch screen, she can just run her fingers across the screen for the same effect.

Relephant ten-page white paper.

I'd also be willing to take your map and turn it into a verbal description of relationships.

1:28 AM

@BESW I just shared a pdf with you through google drive--is that the sort of thing you mean?

@BESW Read it--interesting, but seemed like much more actionable suggestions if using map for purposes 1&2 (finding yourself and getting around) than 3 (educational); I feel like the "educational" use-case most-closely fits our needs =(

Let me turn on VoiceOver and see how it works.

@nitsua60 Agreed. Maps are used for so many different things, my searches aren't especially pinpoint useful yet.

@BESW I asked one of our history teachers today to distill for me the "essence" of a map: what are the purposes served in presenting information in that way rather than in others? (Explaining that the question of how to present the same information to a visually impaired "student" was the source of my curiosity.) The best I could wrangle out of her was "proportional sizes and connectivity."

Heh.

Maps are kinda like RPGs--you can't easily come up with a prescriptive definition without excluding something that really should be included, and/or including something that really should be excluded.

Just shared a pure-text version, too.

afk a bit

1:43 AM

It looks right, but it's being treated as a graphic so the mouseover reading doesn't work and the "read all text in graphic" command reads pdf text elements in the order they were created, not their visual order on the screen.

@BESW is that-all the first (hand-drawn) or second (pure text) you're talking about?

Yes.

I'll have to do some "how to make a pdf to be friendly for text readers" research.

> Accessible PDFs can be exported from Google Doc documents, but these must first be exported as MS Word documents and then converted into PDF format afterwards to preserve accessibility tagging. When MS Word documents are exported from Google Doc documents, some element types and formatting structures such as images and data tables need to be manually edited to ensure accessibility.

2:05 AM

So the work flow is GDoc -> Word -> pdf?

So far that looks accurate. The trick is you need a program that handles tagging well.

> Tagging adds a layer of information called “semantics” to a PDF document, which indicates what types of objects are included a file, for example: headings, paragraphs, images and tables. Assistive technologies, such as screen readers and magnifiers are then able to access the tagging and use it to present the information to disabled users.
If you do not tag your file, assistive technologies may not be able to understand what certain parts of your file are, in context, and present the user with a confusing interpretation of the file. In some cases, some items may not be presented at all.

You need a program that has a save-as feature like "Document structure tags for accessibility" when you save a PDF.

I just now got into good-looking .edu and .gov.uk sources, which are usually the best kind of sources. [reads]

gov.uk on accessible pdfs; hhs.gov on accessible pdfs.

I'm looking at washington.edu/accessibility/documents now...

Auntie Beeb has a 14 page pdf on making accessible pdfs in Word and Acrobat.

[reads]

2:24 AM

I like that they call digital/online platforms "future media."

@BESW as in "this is where your future is, folks"

I just wish that the media players would start taking back the ad world, so to speak

and doing the ad-agency functions in house once again

if StackExchange can do it, why can't Forbes, or NYT, or the BBC, or $media_platform?

@Shalvenay Over the last ~15 years the British government has been pushing the BBC to dedicate more resources to online presence over television presence, for a variety of reasons. It's a horrible idea, but feels inevitable.

trogdor

2:43 AM

@nitsua60 let the darkness of being kinda-a-jerk consume you XD

4:26 AM

@BESW If you enjoyed Oregon Trail, you may enjoy the parody Organ Trail (which features a zombie apocalypse and an old station wagon)

@nitsua60 The history of the London Underground map is pretty neat. I also saw a cool map of Napoleon's foray into Russia which featured a surprisingly readable amount of information depending on length, width, and color of arrows

@BESW Also, I'm still interested in discussing DW bonds, but it appears that time zones are hard.

/me sneaks off

[waves confusedly]

8:20 AM

Hi guys, I'm a new dm and I have a very quick d&d (5e) question:

How does Dwarven Plate work

can you wear it over other armor?

Hi! Glad to have you. I'm not a 5e expert myself, unfortunately. @Miniman, @nitsua60?

@BESW Thanks for helping out :)

No problem. Do consider asking it on the main site, too; if you can point at the bit which confuses you, it'll make for a good question.

8:48 AM

Stupid social contract problems, and stupid camel's nose.

[fumes]

@Zachiel This non sequitur has been brought to you by the letters S and C.

We continued our Call of Cthulhu yesterday. Lost only one of our four investigators, yay!

Old Kathylulu only rolled a 1 on his 1d3, eh?

Well, it was a scenario where the evil being was lurking on an attic, where it was kept in place by magical wards. The investigator we lost went to see what's in the attic.

Went in heedless, came back headless.

Apparently we could've just cast the spell we had researched before, but it was more fun this way!

In many Mythos games, casting spells turns out worse than just walking in.

8:54 AM

Yeah, that's what we figured too. My Guy would've just burnt the house down when the creature's presence in the attic was confirmed, but that'd be a boring way to resolve problems.

@BESW XD

Initially I went in a skeptic because, even though I had seen some crazy stuff before, the creepy thing in question had supposedly been in the attic for half a century.

Eldritch horrors are like first edition comics, lost episodes of Doctor Who, and fine wine: they get better with age.

And my PC made a sane assumption that nothing can survive in a small attic for that long. Of course such sane assumptions tend to be wrong in CoC.

@BESW Would explain why the best ones are The Old Ones.

(An unruly player in my D&D game has stopped smoking and has started vaping. Since vaping indoors isn't considered off-limits by most people he's arguing he's not doing anything bad except maybe bringing funny odours in, which he solves by sending the vapors out of the door of the room we meet in. It helps him that we don't play in the house proper but in a tavern that's under the car box.)

8:58 AM

@BESW unfortunately I'm a bit under time pressure, it would seem like I'm not the best planer

@kviiri Exactly.

To be honest, I would rather have a player vape on the table than take smoking breaks for actual cigs. But your mileage may vary (I have enough vaper friends to have become quite desensitivized to the peculiar smells they spout and also the privilege of not being sensitive or allergic to the odour compounds).

@BESW Our first session with this CoC group managed to spook even the GM. We were investigating the house of a childless couple who had gone bonkers and claiming the house was evil. When we entered their dining room, the GM just described the room by the book. The table was made for three, which drew our attention, and we were all like "Three plates, for two people? Spoooookyyyy"

@kviiri As long as he doesn't vape in the room with aromas that the other players don't like, I would be fine with vaping. I just have no idea what dad and mom would say to him (and to me!) if they found out. (Also, maybe that hanging salami next room will taste weird?)

After the game the GM said he was spooked too, because the book didn't have any immediate explanation for the third set of dishes. It remained a mystery...

I'm kinda wary of the "atomised vapour is safe because the liquid is safe before being atomised, what do you mean heat changes chemical composition" crowd. It's one thing to say "Has not yet been found to be hazardous but there aren't many studies and obviously none are long-term" and quite another to say "Vaping's safe, yo."

9:05 AM

@Zachiel Aye. And I'm not saying it shouldn't bother you. Is the player, err, addicted or otherwise insistent on using their vaporator?

But yes, that's irrelephant to the basic notion that if some folks at the table are unhappy, it needs to be acknowledged and addressed in a way that everyone can live with.

"You're wrong to be uncomfortable" is just bad faith, so I think you're right in identifying this as a social contract issue rather than a vaping one.

@overactor No, it's a complete suit of armor itself.

@kviiri I've semi-regularly done that on my own, just describing things inconsistently by accident and then rolling with it if the players notice.

@kviiri possibly addicted. The fact that he can now "smoke" indoor and for cheap has removed the primary limitators that cigarettes had.

@Miniman and it has the same dc as studded leather?

9:09 AM

If the player really feels the need to use their vaporator, you might want to either prepare for smoking breaks or a better ventilated venue.

He is vaping out of the room or out of the window (mostly), but he refuses to go out like he gladly did for smoking. And he's quite burly so it's not like we can scare him into doing it (not that i'd like to have to go to that lenghts, mind you).

Needing to physically dragging other players out would make vaping a pretty minor problem in comparison!

Yeeeah, if someone's only behaving in a non-jerk-facéd manner because he's afraid of physical repercussions, that's not gonna end well.

If it ever gets that far... well, don't let it.

That would not a guy worth having at the table.

Sounds like he bought into the idea that vaping would make his addiction more acceptable, and is resisting the realisation that for many folks, it's made him more of an outsider.

If you can address this by separating how the group feels about him from how the group feels about his addiction, that might help defuse the situation.

@kviiri Yeah, I was just noting that he's -using- his size to exert acceptance. What is the worst part is that, apart from this problem, he's fun to have at the table. (So yes, the things are already separated, and yes, I think he is resisting the realization BESW talks about.)

The Guide player jokingly tried to menace not healing him (ahd he's playing defender) if he doesn't quit it. I know it's jokingly because I see no grudge and then he heals properly and with a smile.

@overactor No, it's standard full plate with an extra +2.

9:20 AM

(It's weird, but at least around here people smoke in groups but vape alone.)

@BESW O.o

Social stigma?

I'm not sure.

Not, you know, really being part of the nicotine culture.

I think part of it is logistical.

In most places you can't smoke inside or near the entrance, so smoking spots have been identified by smokers over the years and smoking is a congregational, social activity.

@BESW I used to do youth work (~15 year olds) with a local church. Summer retreats, clubhouse nights, all that stuff. Here, you have to be at least 18 to legally smoke, but the people in charge figured coercing kids to fume in secrecy wouldn't be productive, so instead they decided to strip the social dimension of smoking by saying that the smoking spot was open for a single person at a time. No groups.

Vapers have fewer hard limits on where they can vape, and many of them are vaping to try and avoid regular smoking.

So they avoid the smoking areas and don't have any replacement congregational space.

@kviiri That's kinda clever.

I may mention that to our Junior Youth Empowerment Program coordinator.

@BESW Yeah, it worked quite well. Sometimes a properly devised discouragement works better than a poorly thought-out ban.

9:26 AM

Indeed.

afk Trogdor is here.

@Miniman ooh

There was another motive to that too, I guess - most of the retreats are in the middle of woodlands. If there's a week or so with little rain, the forest can get dry at which point there's a risk of a forest fire. It doesn't take a genius for a 15 year old smoker to realize one can smoke without risking getting seen if "going out in the woods for a walk", at which point they're a walking fire hazard.

@overactor Total AC of 20, 22 with a shield if you use one.

@Miniman okay, thanks for the info

@overactor Sorry for the slight delay.

9:30 AM

@Miniman no worries at all

you're giving out advice for free

@overactor I'm glad you mentioned that - let's talk about my fee.

@Miniman I don't have any gold anymore. I just spent it all on a dwarven plate.

3

@overactor @Miniman well played, both of you.

9:58 AM

@BESW Thanks for sharing me that scenario construction kit for CD earlier this week. I brainstormed with some of my friends and I've got something (hopefully) good now. I'll show it to you once it's done in the 5-layer model!

What sort of things do your players roll to do in the lighthouse scenario, by the way?

12:27 PM

@overactor just to flesh out the references, from the listing on DMG p.167 ("Dwarven Plate Armor (plate)") you can tell it's plate armor itself; there isn't actually a rule against layering armor, but by the AC rules on PHB144 (see also PHB14) it doesn't gain you anything as you just choose which AC to use.

1:55 PM

@BESW I never got a hold of you about your chat message

hey there @JoelHarmon

hey @Shalvenay, how are things going?

@JoelHarmon alright here, looking forward to DW session 0.5 on Monday, as for you?

looking forward to trying to convince (and be convinced) some friends to play some RPGs

@JoelHarmon hrm, what system?

1:58 PM

I'm thinking about pitching a DW campaign and one-shots in Lasers and Feelings as well as Great Ork Gods

one friend is pitching new 7th Sea

not sure who else is pitching what, but I'm excited to find out

interesting

which part?

@JoelHarmon Yar. It's late, but I've got a little while.

I'll need to re-read quickly, but I remember being most surprised at your assertion that players can declare things to be true about other players by making a Bond

(also, thanks for staying up late)

@kviiri Tell if someone is sincere; check an engine for tampering; dissect fish to determine cause of death; search a room for things that don't belong; barricade a door; fix a rowboat; calm someone down; interrogate a prisoner; get out of the way before something explodes; examine a strange thing...

@JoelHarmon While you're right that a bond can be interpreted as one character's delusions about another character, that seems like an edge case that isn't expected as a general rule.

When I choose a bond that says, "____ has trusted me with a secret," or "This is not my first adventure with ____," it's reasonable to expect that to be at least minimally true.

2:07 PM

I dislike the idea of forcing something onto someone else's character. I know the char gen section says "You’ll want to go back and forth and make sure everyone is happy and comfortable with how the bonds have come out."

@JoelHarmon Absolutely. But "make sure everyone's okay with it" is different from "you can't do it."

the only other way to get a bond that I know of immediately is end of session level up, where (on a re-read) it's only implied that a bond should follow what's already narratively happened

in which case, the other player should have had some say already, such as giving some backstory that the other player interprets as a personal secret

or asserting that yes, they were together on the last story arc

The gist of my comments, though, were that (a) your answer was focused on number analysis in a game where that's very much one half of a whole, and (b) it seemed weird to call out bonds as being not-special and supposed to face inward like all other stats, when they're the only thing on a character sheet which faces another character sheet.

I disagree that it faces another character sheet; it faces a character in the narrative world regardless of what's on that sheet

Okay, same smell for the comparison.

2:12 PM

and I admit that answer was grasping for straws largely because I consider the grammar ambiguous (and thus dislike the other answer to the question, regardless of what the stack thinks of it)

Stats like +DEX and +CHA are inward-facing. They describe the character on the sheet without pointing at anything particular in the game world outside of the character.

every move points to aspects of the game world that the player tends to interact with, or does so in a special way, and I don't see bonds as being different from that

Bonds aren't moves.

You don't roll+Hack and Slash.

true

let me swap out "every move" with "everything on the character sheet"

Bonds are more like moves than the other stats, though, and that's why it stood out to me that you were treating their being identical to the other stats as a rhetorical question.

"STR" isn't a narrative push like "____ doesn't trust me, and with good reason" is.

I don't mark XP for roleplaying STR, because it doesn't give me any specific cues for the kind of story I'm telling.

2:18 PM

you'd mark it (potentially) for using it in the world, like Bend Bars Lift Gates

That's a "failed roll" trigger which rolling +bond would also grant, as would anything else, without a particular callout for the roleplaying of the stat.

Bonds feature prominently in the End Of Session move as a purely RP, not-rolling-and-failing, form of XP marking.

Rolling+bond seems, to me, to be an edge case use of the bond mechanic. Overall it's treated more like alignment than like STR or CON.

I sure agree there

And that's why it seems weird to ask why are bonds different from stats as if it's a silly question where everyone knows the answer is "they aren't."

it similarly seems weird to ask for a roll +thing that you can't get from looking at your own sheet

That's a good point.

It's comparing roll+ to roll+, not comparing +stats to +bonds.

2:24 PM

that's the point I was attempting to make, which I apparently did poorly

You said that +bonds are like +stats, not that roll+ is like roll+.

Hmmm...

I said "First, all of the other + stats in the game are on your character sheet. Why would this be special enough to include something from someone else's?"

would you have been more comfortable with "First, all of the other Roll +<thing> in the game are on your character sheet. Why would this be special enough to include something from someone else's?"

Yes.

I'd still have a lot of things to say about why it's special, but I'd be more comfortable with the logic of the comparison.

@JoelHarmon That's an interesting way to put it. I've already upvoted your existing answer, but that's an answer that would get my interest, too. I agree that the highest-voted answer is probably a good reflection of actual play, and contains good advice, but it doesn't strike me as founded in much more than assertion.

@nitsua60 that's what bothers me about it; I think it's founded largely on how he chose to put emphasis on the sentence

2:27 PM

Personally if I were GMing a DW game I'd be interested in using +bond to encourage spotlight sharing.

(I.e. it asserts that the asymmetry of bonds is intentional, but lacks support for that statement of intent. As far as I can tell the authors have not been shy about stating their intent in the book; here it seems to me they didn't.)

@BESW I'm comfortable with that on the grounds that you're doing something awesome to help someone else do something awesome

Allowing all bonds going each way to count for +bond would dramatically reward teamwork --and team dissent-- and shift the play toward intraparty character arcs.

@BESW True. It'd be an interesting houserule to consider.

I think that PbtA games tend like like intraparty character stuff, which makes me think an inclusive interpretation of +bonds is defensible.

2:30 PM

The "dramatic reward" part is what I was trying to get at with part two of my answer; there's no way to indefinitely get more than a +3 to any roll without spending some limited resource (money, Carouse)

But on the other hand, DW is invoking the Sword & Sorcery/D&D genre, which tends to a lot LESS interested in intraparty arcs.

I suppose +Bond could do it if you chose to make 4 bonds with one character, notably to the detriment of the rest of your party

@JoelHarmon Yeah. I'm okay when weird edge cases where the players are deliberately futzing with the system for mechanical benefit don't fit the general pattern of intended play.

@BESW I'm not convinced that the genre isn't interested in inter-party stuff, but some systems are clearly less so

And I totally agree that an inclusive interpretation of +bond could make Aid or Interfere kind of a powerhouse. I'm just not sure that's necessarily good OR bad.

@JoelHarmon Point. Those systems are clearly where much of the DW inspiration is coming from, anyway.

2:34 PM

dammit. I'm working on edits, and I'd actually written "First, all of the other +<something> stats in the game..." but it got turned into formatting. facepalm

@JoelHarmon Try using \ to indicate that the symbol following it is not markdown. It works in chat, I dunno about mainsite posts.

\ didn't work; < did

@BESW just whipped up an ugly third version of the map, following the BBC guidelines you linked.

Yup, my phone just ticked at me.

Laid in small portions of the map as images, with alt-text and descriptions. When you've got a chance I'd be interested to hear if that works any better.

2:36 PM

seems like yet again much confusion and heartache could have been saved by proofreading

I'd like to post two maps to discord today; to the extent that I can make them the most useful to all, that'll be nice.

@JoelHarmon True--I always think of Sturm and Raistlin, or Caramon and Raistlin, or Tanis and Raistlin, or Tas and Raistlin, or Chrysania and Raistlin, or Takshisis and Raistlin....

(hmm... noticing a motif there)

Kit and Raistlin...

sadly, that reference is lost on me as I've never read Dragonlance

Everything I know about Dragonlance, I learned from Blind Guardian.

(That's an exaggeration, but only slightly.)

@BESW thanks for staying up late to clarify your view for me

No problem.

@nitsua60 Voiceover is being stubborn.

Will have to try this again in the morning when I have more brain and patience.

2:44 PM

I have this idea of testing Fourthcore with citizens, in chat, but the fact that it would disseminate spoilers around the Internet irks me.

I'll also write up some descriptions, eh?

Right now I'm staying up to do my weekly curation of my dad's tablet.

@nitsua60 "The Low Sea" seems like a kinda grandiose name for that body of water, or am I dramatically misreading the scale of that map?

(I'm totally okay with grandiose names.)

How else will you know you can't have any high seas adventure there?

> Or Raistlin and other Raistlin! Damn Raistlin! He rouined Raistland!

> "I'm not insane!" "That's how it seems though..."

@nitsua60 @BESW I've updated my answer, if you'd care to comment

3:08 PM

@BESW No worries. I'll post the pure-graphic version later today. Maybe I'll accompany it with a text-description of the whole thing?

I just sent you a first draft of a text description in Discord.

@BESW The only touchpoint I've got for scale is my assumption that it's a journey of many days, perhaps weeks, to cross the Low Plains.

Ah, I was assuming it was a slightly smaller space.

More... Prydain-sized.

(Perhaps hundreds of miles from the towering mountains to the step

Land's End to John o' Groats

For reference:

Land's End to John o' Groats is the traversal of the whole length of the island of Great Britain between two extremities; in the southwest and northeast. The traditional distance by road is 847 miles (1,363 km) and takes most cyclists ten to fourteen days; the record for running the route is nine days. Off-road walkers typically walk about 1,200 miles (1,900 km) and take two or three months for the expedition. Two much-photographed signposts indicate the traditional distance at each end. Land's End is the extreme southwestward (but not southern or western) point of Great Britain, situated in western...

3:11 PM

(If you want to peek behind the curtain, it's actually bathymetry from the continental shelf to the mid-Atlantic ridge, not Wales)

My thinking was that your character and Shalvey's are distinctly "not from here," so your "there"s needed to be sufficiently far from "here." =)

Yeah, I have a tendency to make my "area you'll probably be adventuring in" about the size of Wales.

I figured scary-tall mountains would be sufficient for Tacal to be "not from here."

(Also, I think Shalv's PC is from "here," he's just traveled that far in his wanderings.)

Whereas I have a tendency to make areas too large. But DW's undertake a perilous journey is a nice and "stretchy" way to cover lots of ground.

3:29 PM

If you want a comprehensive look at the earliest days of RPGs, Designers & Dragons Vol 1 is only $3.75 today only: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/138883/Designers--Dragons-The-70s?affiliate_id=24139

Tweeted by EvilHatOfficial on September 17, 2016 at 3:24 PM

SevenSidedDie

4:54 PM

@BESW This is a fantastic book.

6:45 PM

@BESW just to put your mind at ease, there's also a map of "Ashur and environs" I've worked up, which I imagined being more sized to your starting adventure. The larger regional map was just to have in my back pocket.

(i.e. the one I sent you I was thinking as "the map of the known world")

7:22 PM

Do you people recall that conversation about assuming people's sex on the Internet, and trying to use genderless pronouns like "they"?

Well, this time I was reading this question that had caught my attention on Parenting SE and I totally assumed the querent was female. Then a reply came and the answerer also did that, suggesting to fake a gravidance in order to show mom that there are worse problems than not getting all As at school. (I'm not sure that was great advice) And then the OP told the answerer "that would be weird, I'm male".
Ah, the tricks our brain plays on us.

I...uh, think I like generic fantasy mashups? I liked Eragon. SPOILERS AHEAD (Well, I liked the tale of his munadane and heroic cousin that gets to save the day more, but I mean... maybe the poor Eragon is a Gary Stus that later turns out to have made some huge mistakes because he played with powers he did not understand and the entire second book is him losing confidence and battles...
but the imagery that surrounds the story I like. Cursed child who grow into psychic savants in no time, elves that are incredibly skilled and basically outperform humans, the design of towns and societies...…

@Zachiel It took me longer than I want to admit to realize that "gravidance"="pregnancy"

7:37 PM

@nitsua60 I did it again, right? I anglicized an Italian word without realizing... >_>

user15026

@Zachiel I've never read the Eragon books. I feel like I should fix that.

@Ash They're better than the movie. I promise!

user15026

@Zachiel I was kinda wanting something fantasy as a break from teh romance novels I've been reading, so maybe I will check those out :)

On the bad side of the equation, the books don't have Jeremy Irons.

user15026

I will just have to imagine that they do in my head :)