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12:44 AM
what sort of enchanted gunpowder weapons have you fine people created?
 
 
3 hours later…
4:08 AM
**[Timely RPGery](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nKltjD1HJ954pS3QZZL-E_ckNaKEeedxMKn7XwdFiio/edit?usp=sharing "Click for full source doc; please suggest items to pin!"):**
[Bundle of Holding](https://bundleofholding.com/ "Great bulk deals with bonus charitable donations!");
[Hatmas gallery](http://meta.rpg.stackexchange.com/q/6640/4398 "The Hattening is upon us!");
[Star Trek](http://www.modiphius.com/star-trek.html "Star Trek Adventures RPG 'living playtest' signup");
[UScons](http://casualgamerevolution.com/blog/2016/01/2016-tabletop-gaming-conventions-a-comprehensive-list "List of R
 
4:26 AM
@BESW [wave]
 
[wave] What's new?
 
@BESW Back to school today--good to see the kids again.
 
Yey!
 
My oldest, though, basically imploded this early-evening. The transition from vacation-time to school-time was just too rough for him.
 
Aw. Transitions can be tough.
 
4:31 AM
He did not like school-alot today =)
 
I feel his pain.
I'd frequently get sick at the beginning and end of the year, for similar reasons.
This Kickstarter advertises adventures usable with "any table-top system" by virtue of system-to-system conversion charts. I'd like to link them to our "scope of the RPG landscape" meta.
2
 
@BESW psychosomatic, you think? Or just that the stress would get you worn down and "real" sickness would creep in?
 
@nitsua60 I'm not sure there's a lot of difference, practically speaking, between stress-caused illness and stress-caused illness.
If I had to pick, though, I'd go with the latter.
Stress-lowered immune system, plus a sudden change in peers means new bugs to pick up.
There was often a definite anxiety/depression element separate from the physical illness.
 
@BESW please do!
 
@BESW Maybe that's what I was tiptoeing around...?
(Not sure, though. Maybe just not thinking too clearly.)
@BESW Ugh. Reading their pitch made my eyeball hurt. Some of those sentences I couldn't even parse.
 
4:39 AM
I also tended to over-exert at the beginning and end of the year--proving myself in new classes, catching up at the end.
 
@nitsua60 You might try resetting his biological clock with the time sink that is an RPG binge; it always works for me
 
@BESW The new bugs thing is huge--working an a boarding school we see it every school break. The kids go away, they come back, and four days later half the school's got the sniffles.
 
Which, again, stress and anxiety. But the transition thing was definitely a big player.
 
@JoelHarmon He's currently binging Axis&Allies. I can't complain =)
 
@nitsua60 Force-feed 'em orange juice and zinc pills for the first week?
 
4:40 AM
original or revised?
 
@JoelHarmon Original.
My copy from when I was a kid.
 
@nitsua60 Also, enforce not sharing writing implements. It's amazing how much that reduces the transmission vectors.
 
@nitsua60 I've still got mine, too; it's right near a half dozen different versions of Risk that I don't get to play enough
 
@BESW Just to clarify--my son's not sick at all. He was just an emotional wreck for an hour.
 
@BESW the way some people chew on them, or tap on/near their mouths that makes quite a bit of sense, actually
 
4:42 AM
Now he's fine. (Which is to say, 'he's unconscious.')
 
@nitsua60 Yeah, now I'm riffing more on the general "sniffles after break" thing.
 
@nitsua60 you might want to check for hallucinations as well, there
 
@nitsua60 One thing I found late in high school was that I needed Creative Introvert Time at least once a week all year, and it helped reduce my bi-yearly meltdowns.
 
@BESW I didn't even scroll down before closing that one. Those are two things I love: one I've spent thousands of hours studying, developing, explicating, and sharing, all while it gives me a framework and understanding for making the world a richer and fuller place; the other I have a couple of degrees in. I'm not gonna let some crank ruin either or both of them for me =)
 
yeah, there's only one new RPG Kickstarter that I'd even consider adding to the pin, and it's just a high-quality Call of Cthulhu adventure.
 
4:54 AM
Alright. Night, all!
 
ttfn
 
 
4 hours later…
8:53 AM
Tonight's dinner is fish burgers fried with a spicy calamansi/soy sauce.
 
 
1 hour later…
10:01 AM
@BESW my primary concern is how do they plan to ship me my dragonbone armor for that stretch goal? Is there enough bone to go around? How are they getting it? What are the customs fees like?
 
wow, dragonbone armor huh? really?
you don't think maybe some people will be upset by that little practice?
nooooo one at all?
XD
 
I'd be concerned about finding an overseas shipper for "fire weapons."
 
@BESW oh yeah, that's a problem
@trogdor hmmmmmmmmm... Might be there's some ethical issues...
 
lol
 
Perhaps it's just armor for guarding the exposed bony bits on dragons.
 
10:06 AM
it better be :P
 
11:02 AM
I've been thinking about list questions on SE. For example, this question is clearly one of them. rpg.stackexchange.com/q/10834/30214 However, it is good, it's knowledge is useful -- it is just very unlikely that this list ever gets completed.
What about such a policy on list questions:
1) There may be only one answer, which becomes community wiki.
2) If you want to add something, you add to the answer.

Basically it makes list answers work like normal wiki article.
And removes the problem of infinite list of answers appearing.
 
31
A: List questions: Community Wiki?

Robert CartainoThere's nothing inherently wrong with your "I need a comprehensive list" question; It's just that we specifically forgo asking these types of questions because they are not a good fit for this type of Q&A site. Stack Exchange is well-suited to asking very specific questions that represent real ...

> ...the Big List™ breaks down the whole premise of why we created these sites in the first place — to vet and deem the information contained in the post as useful. Marking a question as "community wiki" does not take away from the inherent randomness of the discussion that becomes the thread.
Putting all the answers in one post breaks voting, removing the "neatly sorted" part of the Stack's goal to be a neatly sorted collection of answers.
(I found that by searching Role-playing Games Meta for "community wiki list" which led me to this discussion of list questions that linked to this question on Meta Stack Exchange. It also reminded me of this useful overview of our history with CW on RPG.SE.)
 
 
3 hours later…
1:43 PM
@Baskakov_Dmitriy I feel like the problem of an infinite list of answers is best tackled on the front-end: users with experience and privilege(s) close questions that are like to generate that sort of activity, rather than relying on answerers exercising restraint/judgment or even knowing what expectations are.
 
@nitsua60 He's trying to find a way to change what questions are likely to generate that sort of activity.
That is, he wants those kinds of questions to stay open but recognises that so long as they're infinitely listy they'll get closed.
Unfortunately, he's reinventing the wheel; the Stack network in part and in whole has spent a half-dozen or more years trying different permutations of system and culture to make 'em work.
 
I'm not sure why the one he linked is infinite... surely at some point changes will stop coming?
 
@nitsua60 Fractals - when you ask for a list of changes, you get answers covering the major changes, then answers covering more specific details, and so on until every number that's changed is mentioned.
(I actually experienced this process in the comments on this answer.)
 
@Miniman [amused]
@nitsua60 At this point I'm just considering these interludes to be Dmitriy asking us to review the literature for him.
 
@BESW ...a lot of them have been deleted.
 
1:53 PM
@Miniman I remember them.
 
2:29 PM
mornin
 
'fternoon
 
@Zachiel 'brb, restarting laptop
 
makes sense =)
Well, as much as fractals ever do!
 
I know I could ask those things in English.Se but... I'm in the middle of translating a RPG product, I ain't no time for clarification-through-comments.
 
@Miniman "But you left out 'flurry of blows'!"
 
2:38 PM
When a train pulls into a station, does it mean that it slowly and autonomously enters the area?
 
@Zachiel For a given value of "autonomous".
 
@Miniman I mean, as opposed to "some other vehicle pulls it"
 
@Zachiel Then yep.
 
I guess it'd be "gets pulled into", if that was the case.
 
Cars "pull into" parking spaces the same way.
 
2:41 PM
The English language surely uses a lot of different words to express slightly different ways of doing things (while Italian uses lots of adjectives)
 
Honestly, English is kind of a mess.
 
This damn train now is said to have crept through a bridge. I guess this means trying to be unnoticed
(which would make sense in the context)
 
Sait? I'm guessing you mean said?
@Zachiel In this context, crept would just mean that it went very slowly.
 
@Miniman My fingers are failing me.
Working with flashlight signals, a long line of men emerged from darkness. Is that electric torches? Did they have electric torches during WW2?
This part is making me go crazy
 
Flashlight means an electric torch.
 
2:53 PM
@Zachiel the first us patent for a flashlight was filed in 1899
 
TFW you realize the Engineer is the Driver
 
@Zachiel hmm?
 
@DForck42 American English
I was also convinced that the fireman was some sort of firefighter. It's the guy who feeds coal into the train.
And why is the guy who checks the tickets called "the Conductor"? I guessed that was the Driver.
False friends, I hate you all.
 
3:13 PM
@Zachiel I'm so confused...
 
@DForck42 You know, false friends, those words that closely resemble words in a different language but have a completely different meaning.
 
@Zachiel ahh, I had never heard that term before
and now rereading what you said, I understand it now, lol
 
@DForck42 Magic!
XD
 
@Zachiel lol
 
 
3 hours later…
6:04 PM
@Shalvenay I'm afraid I won't be here for the dungeon this week either. Roleplaying convention ahead, and I don't think I told you.
 
6:58 PM
@Zachiel what dungeon, and which convention?
 
7:23 PM
@DForck42 Shalvenay was running a D&D 3.5 short dungeon for me. I inherited a RPG convention that I managed for a while and that I currently just help coming true by moving tables and cleaning floors
This year I'm running two little known games by Jason Morningstar - a committee game and a slight hack of Archipelago II
 
@Zachiel neat
 
The hardest part is that I'm translating the manuals and I need to print them out tomorrow but I still have to do the cards
The cards will be a pain to print so that the backs match the front
At least it will be easier than in the original version, where one of the pages is laid out differently than the corresponding backs.
And where the back of all RESOLUTION cards spells out "RESOLUTON"
@BESW I think RESOLUTON would be a great name for a power metal band
 
8:25 PM
@Zachiel oh my
 
9:07 PM
I don't think my software can handle creating those cards T_T
 
[wave]
What's the benefit of cbr vs pdf for a comic?
 
pdf is more portable (obviously)
but cbr will give you features that only a comic book reader can give you
I don't know what those features are but I assume they exist
simulated ink stains on your fingers maybe
3
I guess it's similar to the benefits of epub vs pdf
epub will, for example, format text to best work with your display
while PDFs are static
 
@LegendaryDude I don't think that .cbr files can do that since according to Wikipedia all they actually are is an archive (like rar or zip) with image files inside (like jpg or png)
It does list some benefits as 'Comic book archive viewers typically offer various dedicated functions to read the content, like one page forward/backwards, go to first/last page, zoom or print. Some applications support additional tag information in the form of embedded XML files in the archive or use of the ZIP comment to store additional information.'
 
If the PDF has vector text instead of rendered raster text, that'd be a definite plus for PDF over CBR. But I don't know in this case.
 
9:23 PM
@Zachiel what software are you using?
 
@BESW I think PDFs by default are vector-based? But it's been a long time since I took print design/graphic arts
 
PDFs are just a generic wrapper for most any file type, making it more accessible to people regardless of their system or software.
 
Right, portability is the name of the game
 
A PDF is exactly as vector as the file it's wrapping.
While a CBR can't be vector, because it's a fancy zip file for raster images. But that means it's a lot more tinkerable by the end-user.
A PDF can potentially be a lot better, or be exactly the same as a CBR, but whatever it is, I'm stuck with it. With a CBR there's a lower ceiling for awesome bells and whistles but I can fiddle with the content if I'm dissatisfied.
 
@DForck42 OOo-Writer
Yes, yes, I know
 
9:34 PM
@Zachiel I dunno that one
 
@DForck42 OpenOffice.Org Writer
It's an open source word processor, similar to MS Word
 
@LegendaryDude ahh, had never seen that abbreviation
I haven't used that one in... years
 
I'm fond of OpenOffice and its forks (currently LibreOffice seems to be the most active version that's not been subsumed by some group that doesn't get its goals).
 
I've been using MS Office ever since my employer gave us home installations with our Office 365 subscription, and Libre if I'm on a Linux desktop for whatever reason
 
@LegendaryDude Time for me to pitch a new Kindle device to Amazon that leaves smudgy black crud all over your fingers as you operate it.
2
 
9:37 PM
@doppelgreener XD
 
@doppelgreener Does it also make you sneeze if you leave it off for too long and then start using it again?
 
@BESW It will blow dust right in your face if you so much as sigh in its direction. The nozzles will be guided by infrared lasers to point straight at your nose.
 
@doppelgreener lol
 
That sounds wonderful, if I can also dog-ear the corner.
 
@BESW The screen will be made of flexible OLED. You will be able to dog-ear a corner. Whenever you return to the page the device will re-dog-ear itself, but not quite as you left it, and probably with an extra fold at the very tip of the corner that you didn't want there.
 
9:43 PM
@BESW The largest benefit of CBR is actually realised in CBR/CBZ-aware readers' features, which will only be used for CBR/Z files. Things like showing facing pages automatically while intelligently detecting single-file spreads and not showing them paired with the next image, or being able to reverse the page reading order.
 
@SevenSidedDie Yeah, I'm going with CBR.
(This is for the Yohancé/The Pack Kickstarter material.)
 
@BESW I suspect there's a slight preference for CBR by those in-the-know, but PDF is more broadly known/accessible. If you have the option of doing both without significant overhead, that might be well appreciated.
 
PDFs are searchable, are CBRs? I love my Paizo PDFs (even though I've moved away from PFRPG) for that reason.
 
Makes sense. I kinda wish they offered both instead of either/or; that's a problem with several of their digital options.
 
@SevenSidedDie I both love and HATE pdf...
 
9:46 PM
And I really wish WotC would do watermarked PDFs in the same way.
 
@LegendaryDude Again, only if the content is vector text instead of raster text.
 
@BESW Right, but - and this may be a big but - there are readers out there that are very good at doing OCR on raster text, as long as it's legible.
 
@LegendaryDude I don't think CBR/Z can embed text meta to the images like PDF can, but I haven't delved into the technical details of the format much. I don't recall seeing a CBR reader that provides a search feature.
 
@SevenSidedDie I noticed a swath of comments were deleted from this answer; if there's something I should know I hope you or mxy--I assume it's one of you that did it--won't be shy about letting me know.
 
A quick Google reveals this interesting project.
 
9:48 PM
And for what it's worth, the free desktop version of OneNote can take text from pretty much any image and make it searchable. I've been taking pictures of D&D text and inserting them into OneNote notebooks to make them searchable/copy & pastable.
That's OneNote 2016 (not 2013), and it has to be the desktop version (the Windows store version has a different feature set for some reason). You do get the searchability on the OneNote web app, though, so I guess that works if you use the Windows store version.
And it supports embedding PDFs and will index those/make the text searchable/selectable .
(I use OneNote a lot for D&D prep :P)
 
@LegendaryDude I use onenote a lot, but never for prep. Can I ask what about it you find helpful? (I'm not against it, just haven't (yet) used it for prep.)
 
@nitsua60 I have a Surface Pro 4 which I use to run my games and keep track of a lot of stuff. I'll use the built in camera, take a picture of a page from the adventure I'm running (Curse of Strahd currently) , then make the image searchable and copy paragraphs where they need to go. Not for like, room descriptions or what's going to happen next but for large lore sections or bulleted lists ("NPCs in this town know the following...") it's much easier than bookmarking the relevant pages.
 
@nitsua60 I just went and reviewed those (I didn't remove them); it looks to have been caught in some unrelated firefighting + it looking like it hadn't gained traction with the OP. If you have hope that the advice on reformulating the question might get through, that was probably fine (just not apparently going anywhere). Re-commenting it under the question should be fine (& maybe more effective).
 
I also have a party tracker, NPC notes, etc, and I make extensive use of the excellent Public D&D SRD notebook made by Cryrid for rules references
 
@SevenSidedDie It's not a huge deal. As I was writing four (!) full-length comments I was aware anything that needed that many words wasn't really fit for that medium. Just want you to know if I have a grumpy day and start generating flags you shouldn't hesitate to smack the back of my hand =)
IIRC the comments were very wordy site-education, which probably would have been better achieved through a few well-searched meta-links.
It's just that I saw one of the users say they're being singled out, and worried that I might be the bully =(
 
10:00 PM
@nitsua60 Oh, I get your concern now. :) You generated no flags there! There's a user who has generated a spike in moderation that looks to have led us to those comments during cleanup operations.
 
@LegendaryDude cool--I'll have to check that out. Would it be fair to summarize your use as a hierarchically-organized digital scratchpad?
 
@nitsua60 If it makes you feel better, I'm pretty sure that's directed at us mods.
 
@nitsua60 I'm not sure anything I do can really be called "organized."
 
@SevenSidedDie Not better, but at least at-ease. No good deed, eh =)
@LegendaryDude Sorry, didn't mean to disparage your workflow (lol). I meant that Onenote is inherently that way, what with sections and pages =)
 
@nitsua60 Hah, no worries! But I suppose in a way it is organized. For example, in CoS I have an NPC section, and under that I have various faction pages, and then under each faction page I have subpages for specific NPCs, or if an NPC doesn't belong to a faction it just gets its own main page. I don't make a lot of use of this stuff during play (play is too fluid to be constantly checking things on a computer) but it's useful to write it down so I can recall it when it comes up in game.
 
10:06 PM
@nitsua60 comments, by nature, aren't intended to be permanent. they're supposed to be used for prodding for more information in a question or answer, or for clarifying, etc. however, we're social creatures and like to say things. comments just need to be cleaned up once in a while to avoid a lot of unnecessary on-screen text for questions and answers
 
@DForck42 I'd use InDesign, which I use at my workplace, but I won't pay for a license for my home projects. So I'm stuck with freeware and... it's not always optimal.
 
@Zachiel yeah, I get that
i have office cause student discount
 
@nitsua60 By far my most used feature is the inking feature (using the Surface Pro Pen). I took a hi-res map of Barovia and I've been able to chart party movement by drawing on it with the pen, taking notes on locations, etc.
 
@LegendaryDude that is cool
 
@LegendaryDude absolutely--I use inking literally every (work) day.
Gotta run, all--AL calls =)
 
10:10 PM
o7
 

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