TRPG General Chat

Sounds complicated, limited, and not very useful.

user507974

@BESW in theory, but allows for some mean crowd control

who'd run into a forray of fire

How is it crowd control? You've only allowed the person to choose a single target to attack multiple times.

If you want a spray-and-pray cover fire type of ability, I suggest modifying the Knights of Invasion "Wildly Inaccurate" stunt for 5e.

> Wildly Inaccurate (Shoot): You’re rubbish at firing your weapon accurately, but you make up for it with enthusiasm. Whenever you attack with your laser gun or heat ray, the defender gets +4 to defend. Then, until your next action, if anyone moves into or through the zone you were shooting at, you attack them without rolling and produce a Great (+4) result.

user507974

hmm that sounds pretty good actually

though at least until level 5 this sounds like it replaces his main means of attacking

since now his regular attack has become kind of crap

but i feel like there is certainly something good

there

that can be massaged out

thanks BESW

still, for 5e what attack penalty would you say becomes cripping

crippling*

11:56 AM

@Anaphory [wave]

12:06 PM

Hey there!

How's life?

I wanted to buy shoelaces this morning, instead I found a new board games cafe in town!

12:47 PM

@Anaphory going quite well, thanks. How have youu been?

@nitsua60 we playtested X Marks the other day

1:11 PM

@GuidingLight really depends on whether the GM actually applies cover rules. By the book, melee combatants' AC goes up, sometimes waaaay up because of interposed bodies. But I've not yet met another GM who makes much use of the {+2, +5, untargetable} rules. (PHB 196)

@Shalvenay hiya

@eimyr oh, cool--how'd it go?

@nitsua60 Quite well. It was definitely fun. There were things we noticed, but overall it was working. Did you have a chance?

@eimyr Have been out of town to meet friends in Germany this weekend, going to the UK for LARPing next weekend, and generally busy – both good and bad busy – until probably two weeks after Christmas…

@Anaphory are you larping at the same place as last time?

@eimyr Not yet. I run our school's exchange program: we had a rowing crew in last week (between Head of the Charles and Head of the Fish) and we have two other groups in this week. It's the busiest fortnight of the year for me! (And there're pumpkins to carve, a wedding to plan, my bride to murder, and Gilder to frame for all of it. Frankly, I'm swamped.)

a bride?

1:32 PM

Wait... of all the words in that parenthetical, it's "bride" that caught your eye?

@eimyr No, this time it's a player-organized event in York Danelaw village

@nitsua60 well, I thought you a married man.

@Anaphory sounds awesome!

@eimyr I am. But I'm also not actually planning to murder her, nor am I planning on framing a fictional country for her death. (It's a Princess Bride quote, roughly.)

@eimyr I'm very much looking forward to it, it was awesome last year!

@eimyr (youtube.com/watch?v=fUKO_Y6RqEk)

1:42 PM

(I never watched Princess Bride and somehow I'm not drawn to it)

@Anaphory is it located in Yorkshire?

yep, not very far outside York.

I used to not be thrilled by people telling me about the Princess Bride, but I found it excellent when I first watched it, and would be happy to watch it again!

@Anaphory Have you read the Morganstern?

Unfortunately I haven't yet! I'm hardly reading anything but papers and a small number of webcomics these days :(

It's one of the few examples where the book is better than the film only because there's so much more of it. The film captured the essence of what makes the book good quite well, despite necessarily changing a good deal and leaving out even more.

2:00 PM

@BESW I backed my first KS today

Ooer.

well, technically, yesterday

but NOT from your list!

kickstarter.com/projects/347698129/…

Language- and World Building, you say?

I might back another kickstarter, which I haven't done in ages!

it's written by bona fide linguists

so I imagine it's something right up your alley, @Anaphory

should play like Microscope in some regards

[squint] Looks interesting, I'd like to get it in front of some experts who are actually from cultures with dying languages.

2:10 PM

I for one prefer Og, a game about how language is developed and the people developing it die (horribly in the mouth of a gigantosaurus)

(actually in truth i haven't played it and it looks overburdened by classic game design methodology that doesn't suit it)

@BESW Even without that, I'd still be interested in looking at it. Just like I collect (to some extent, no need to possess, but at least to read and play and know) games on evolution.

@doppelgreener the review looks promising and then Meat Value is introduced at which point it loses me.

They also seem to have Sign on the emergence of sign language.

@ANaphory OH REALLY?!

@eimyr food value, yeah. that isn't the issue though. @BESW opened it up and found some very thoroughly defined animal stat blocks for many, many different animals, varying by small amounts. we've played in games that summarise that kind of thing in a couple of paragraphs, there they'd approach this by saying "pick an animal name and one or two of these qualities", teaching you how to fish and setting things up so you can come up with dinosaurs on the fly.

2:16 PM

I didn't get that far.

this game seems like it should be one of those games, but it's one of those games defined by someone who never saw Lasers & Feelings and figured a D&D 3.5e level of mechanical definition was the best approach.

or at least seems that way

it's 2007 though

@eimyr Hm, that looks mostly like it goes in the direction of Set and other match-making games, without saying anything on evolution.

@Anaphory it's a taxonomy-themed game, not necessarily evolution-themed

@eimyr yeah, so that's kind of understandable. i'm given to understand microgames at that time were only just sort of emerging.

it's amazing to think that a decade ago, the gold standard for an RPG was to be an enormous complex behemoth like D&D 3.5e.

that's like if every board game weren't considered "done" until it was as nebulous as Twilight Imperium 3

2:21 PM

"It's not a strategy video game, it's simpler than Victoria II!"

(which, for the uninitiated, is a board game for which a "short" session is six hours, the first of which is mostly taken by setup for new groups.)

A decade ago, Fate was 3 years old, Trollbabe was 4 years old, Fudge was 6 years old...

@eimyr 'what's with this "platformer" thing? this has less moves than civ 2! you can only jump and run!'

@doppelgreener "It must be for kids or something"

BTW, I LOL'd when you changed the numeral.

No Kickstarter for me right now, my UK debit card is locked. Again. Dear Bank, I have told you a hundred times, including every time you locked my bank card in the past, that I do buy stuff in Europe because I live in Europe, and you in fact know my address is in Europe, and I have ticked the online banking box for “I will be abroad in Europe”, and I have asked you to notify when you lock my card. And yet, once again, I find my card not working for an online payment.

2:35 PM

@Anaphory I'm tempted to ask which bank is responsible for this amazingly exhilarating SNAFU, but it's none of my business.

I could go on ranting in Not a Bar. I feel like it.

I've never had my card locked, but instead I got a polite call of "Hey, I noticed you are Humbly Bundling, surely it's not you?"

and it was because I purchased HB twice in quick succession.

anyone here knows Spelljammer better than knowingit is D&D in space? There's a question about something that might be "your answer is Spelljammer". rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/89848/…

@Trish I knew and loved Spelljamer in 2e; no idea if it was ever ported to 3.5 or whether it did/would work well.

Which is why I asked... I had no idea it was 2E and not 3.x

2:44 PM

A few months ago I found a decades-old spiral-bound notebook full of deck plans for Spelljammers =)

but our RPG club owns a full Spelljammer collection - as in the books.

@Trish That looks like a very broad question.

Actually, I think it may have been made for 1e (?) but we pulled it into some 2e campaigns.

could be, he asks if there are rules for that stuff and that stuff...

Nope. Original to 2e. And there were some attempts, it looks like: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

3:29 PM

Is anyone here going to start a NaNoWriMo?

4:38 PM

kickstarter.com/projects/averyalder/monsterhearts-2

Monsterhearts 2

5:22 PM

@eimyr put that in one message so I can star it?

6:03 PM

actually I'll do that, I noticed something in there to highlight.

Monsterhearts 2 Kickstarter. Discounted for queer teens & folks in poverty. It's a game about the emotional struggles of being a teenager who's in high school, experiencing their body changing in puberty, and who's secretly a monster who transforms at the full moon and stuff like that. May be confronting (sort of supposed to be), has a full chapter on having a safe story.

2

@eimyr Oh, I thought Avery had left gaming for good!

Nice to see they are back

6:21 PM

> The biggest changes being implemented for Monsterhearts 2 are:
> (...)
> - a new chapter centred on boundaries and vulnerability, based on Safe Hearts (written 2014)
> - new sections on belonging, the nature of violence in the genre, sexuality, asexuality/non-attraction, and texting.

these are really nice things to add.

Is that a specific meaning of texting, or why is it in that list?

@Anaphory dunno, but probably because it's a new section, and texting's probably connected to sexuality in the game.

DuckTapeAl

6:57 PM

Hmm. I helped out a newer user with a question of theirs last night, and they seemed appreciative, but now it's deleted.

For the 10k+ crowd: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/89829/…

It's a tad vexing.

UrhoKarila

@DuckTapeAl I'll be a member some day...

DuckTapeAl

I believe in you, @UrhoKarila.

7:48 PM

alright, people: help me understand transatlantic travel. I'm looking at a flight from NYC->London. Flight there is 12 hrs on the clock, flight back is 3 hrs on the clock. Now I get there's a time difference asymmetrically built in, but shouldn't the difference in clock-durations be an even number?

If the natural flight times are equal, and no DST shifts etc. happen in the meantime in one place but not the other, yes.

@nitsua60 Also, factor in asymmetric actual travel time. Going one way most reputable airlines will take advantage of jet streams and air currents.

it's for February, so no time-shift during either flight.

this can easily shave an hour from flight time

@eimyr Would that really be an hour? (A half-hour each way, I suppose.... Okay.)

7:55 PM

yeah, these are some pretty strong and stable winds (also, no, they only blow one direction - the other takes a different route to avoid them)

so you're saying you in London in February, huh?

This really screws with my usual method for figuring out east-coast American time vs. England time: "it's either 4 or 5 hours, depending on DST, and I can never figure which so call it 4.5 and always be off a half."

@eimyr Yup. Well, Oxford mostly, but we'll spend some time in London.

cool

@nitsua60 Between flights would be sufficient. (Just saying.)

I don't imagine you'll have RPG time, but if you will, let me know

@eimyr I don't imagine so, either--chaperoning a school trip =\

8:06 PM

oh

a school trp to Oxford?

I imagine that would be very interesting and quite wasteful when you consider lost opportunity to go somewhere better at a similar price

@eimyr Not to the university, just to the city. We have an exchange with a school there, Radley College.

(Though I suppose we'll likely visit the university one day. It depends: do they have bell-ringers?)

(they probably do!)

City of Oxford is a nice historic place, but it's no Paris and neither it is Berlin.

I assume some one of these groups must be affiliatedwith the university.

@eimyr All I know is it's free room and board for a week for as many as we'd like to bring over =)

Are you a famous bell-themed school?

There appears to be also a university student society (of course there is a student society): ouscr.org.uk

8:15 PM

@eimyr We are currently the only high school in North America with an active ringing program. (Groton's the only other one with bells, but in the last decade we've rung their bells more than they have, and there's no one on staff there who knows how to ring.) I don't know if that makes us famous or not....

bell ringing is one of the activities that I know little about and that somehow doesn't catch my interest

@eimyr No worries. It's a... peculiar hobby.

but if someone would run a bell-themed RPG for me I'm sure i'd make insane research into this

there was a carillon where I lived previously

afk a bit

carillontower.org.uk

8:31 PM

@eimyr If you're at all math-minded, the challenge of a peal might... appeal to you: run through all 5040 permutations of seven bells, never repeating a permutation, while never moving a bell more than one position in the order.

8:43 PM

@DuckTapeAl It has been undeleted by the author!

CBredlow

I've got a monster question. I've got a guy who runs a caravan to a remote village to a larger town. The village is high in the mountains, and the man supplies the villagers with vital items. Would that sound like someone who is a werebear would do?

This is for dnd 5e, and according to their info in the monster manual they are good, and tend to be loners

Depends on that setting, and whether he can maybe even do the caravan partially run as werebear!

> The reason for [a flight going west-to-east going faster] is an atmospheric phenomena known as the jet stream. The jet stream is a very high altitude wind which always blows from the West to the East across the Atlantic. The planes moving at a constant air speed thus go faster in the West-East direction when they are moving with the wind than in the opposite direction.
-- http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/40-our-solar-system/the-earth/climate-and-weather/68-why-do-airplanes-take-longer-to-fly-west-than-east-intermediate

CBredlow

@Anaphory so my story is setup like this: The group finds this vendor, and he's hiring extra guards (still need to figure out why the guards never stick)

and he takes them to the village. That night when everyone is settled (the group is in little bungalows that the mayor puts them, and the caravan guys are in the inn), a kua-toa raiding party attacks the village. The caravan leader is defending the tavern as a bear when the group comes to help

This is all from an adventure I've written, and did a short test play yesterday. I thought this change might make it a bit more interesting