TRPG General Chat - 2013-08-18 (page 1 of 2)

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12:19 AM

@C.Ross you following the fate gremlins post at all? Do you guys have an recommendations on how to deal with those answers? We can flag them til we're blue in the face but if y'all aren't going to delete them it's not going to do a lick of good.

@Zachiel they are indeed.

1

Q: Is it ethical to edit someone else's Questions or comments?

Why not make comments on what you feel should change and let the author do it, or better yet, privately message the author and suggest. It just seems really tacky and rude to edit someone else's work with out permission

@waxeagle can you be more specific? I'm not sure what post you mean, and a quick search for "fate gremlins" doesn't bring up anything

12:35 AM

11

Q: The gremlin in our answers: "Fate is narrative" answers to mechanical Fate questions

It seems like there's a gremlin in the Fate answers. He bites without warning, no one is immune, and while he'd been quiet for some time, he's back now. And he's making it hard to get good answers, which makes people not want to ask at all (I'll explain that at the end, after I've defined what I'...

discussion answers fate

11

Q: The gremlin in our answers: "Fate is narrative" answers to mechanical Fate questions

It seems like there's a gremlin in the Fate answers. He bites without warning, no one is immune, and while he'd been quiet for some time, he's back now. And he's making it hard to get good answers, which makes people not want to ask at all (I'll explain that at the end, after I've defined what I'...

discussion answers fate

lol. hey @BESW

@LitheOhm Ohai.

@BESW @LitheOhm yes, on meta

haven't seen any flags ... and honestly I thought the consensus was vote down

flags on meta or main?

well, main obviously ... pokes about

k, I see no related flags, and again I think the consensus is vote down

I'm not going back to flag old ones, but I'ma flag new ones if they're clearly not even trying to answer the question.

@BESW if you think it's a rant and not an answer, you're always welcome to flag

encouraged even ...

12:46 AM

My personal favorite is when there's an answer that basically says "you're asking the question wrong." Because, ah, shouldn't that be a comment or an edit, possibly with a VTC, and not an answer?

@BESW in most cases yes

Is it appropriate to flag old examples of this behavior?

@BESW probably, but we will be less likely to delete something with upvotes

1:08 AM

@BESW I've seen it be an answer, successfully, many times.

Identifying the "real" question in a question can be very valuable.

@AlexP That's what comments are for, usually.

If the question itself is based on a misunderstanding, then that's the point of the question and an answer should be explaining it.

But, for example, I once had a question that got a very unhelpful answer. In the comments where I tried to figure out what was going on, the answerer eventually accused me of asking an XY Problem question.

Which means "You're not asking about your problem, you're asking for the solution you've already decided the problem needs, and since it's the wrong solution your question sucks and you're going to hate the answers."

Which is a classic case of "why did you answer the question, instead of helping me re-work the question so it's asking about the problem?"

When I ask about potential social-contract pitfalls I should be careful about in a game with players new to Fate (citing examples from the manual where it suggests I do this), and the answer is "Silly BESW, Fate is improvisational, so just deal with stuff as it comes up," something is wrong.

This particular SE site has a massive fondness for reworking questions, above and beyond the other SE sites. That's because so many of our questions are fundamentally very very specific and subjective.

But, say on SO, the best answer to quite a few questions is "One of your initial assumptions was mistaken; you can obviate this whole issue by doing X instead."

And rewriting that question is not the best solution because literally what you want is for other people with that same mistaken assumption to see that exact question and learn to fix their mistake.

Aye.

So I really don't think the problem is "You need to step back and fix this other thing." I think the problem is people assuming that when it's not the case.

Which is just a poor answer whether it addresses the core of your question or one of the implicit assumptions.

One underlying problem is that this is effectively as if someone were explaining the d20 + ability modifier mechanic to everyone who asked a D&D attack mechanics question but didn't prove they understood the d20 mechanic.

1:21 AM

@BESW Yes, exactly.

Hmm, here's an idea.

Find a really good version of that "basic Fate narrative stuff" spiel, on the Fate blog or something.

If an answer contains that spiel and also useful things, edit out the spiel and replace it with an "As always, don't forget that Fate is narrative (link)"

That's a bit aggressive but it may help to highlight the issue.

Certainly doing it voluntary to your own past answers is a good idea, if you're going back and trying to squash "gremlins."

Because from the sound of it, @BESW, it really is the same, like, three paragraphs every time.

Aye.

There's a secondary issue where "Fate is narrative, do whatever you like" is sometimes the default answer to questions that are hard to answer.

That's kinda like saying "D&D is about rulings, not rules" to every single AD&D and OD&D quesiton.

But that's more along the lines of the Fate G+ community going "ASPECTS!" in response to every question.

It's a true answer, but not well-considered for the particular situation.

"Fate is narrative" doesn't exactly even seem very accurate.

In terms of, like, the actual mechanical cycle.

It's not any more "narrative" than, like, most "new-style" games, really.

I don't think anyone on this site believes that the other citizens know what a "new-style" game even is until they've proven themselves. And then there's skepticism.

There's an unfortunate tendency to think "This game isn't like D&D, so I'm the only one on this site who knows how it works."

1:28 AM

@BESW I haven't seen that in my BW questions.

@AlexP As you've said, you go out of your way to prove expertise in your questions.

@BESW Hmm, true.

1:45 AM

@BESW This is I think, the main source of the problem. People assume that the OP doesn't know what they're talking about and that's a violation of our most basic principals.

Aye.

they make you feel bad for asking a question because you feel the need to ask.

As I said in a recent comment on one of the answers, we can ask about mechanics here without forgetting the need for narrative at the table.

2:18 AM

@detly Hello!

@AlexP Heya :)

Hi.

Hey @BESW :)

Just wanted to ask @BESW for that link he shared the other day re. alternative rules for D&D 4e skill challenges — I've lost it already

Stalker0's Alternate Core Skill Challenge System (4e)

Thanks

I'll actually bookmark it this time

2:20 AM

For future reference, it's in the Useful/Interesting Links bank in my profile.

Oh right

[grin] Most people don't use their profiles like I do.

Speaking of which, I need to update my campaign list.

Okay, I'm reading the "misconceptions" thread Alex P posted yesterday, and it's hilarious

I had exactly the same moment the first time I read "Turn Undead". It was only when I saw the similar "Smite Undead" power that it clicked.

2:52 AM

It's a fun thread.

3:51 AM

Hmm...

1

Q: Do NPCs understand target priority strategy?

Most everyone agrees that the strategy of attacking "the squishies" first in a combat scenario is generally the best idea, except in some specific exceptions. Often, then, the decision on whether or not an NPC is "smart enough" to do this comes down to their intelligence score and cultural upbri...

That does seem awful broad (and a bit forum-like, to be honest).

Mhm. I'm trying to help him pin it down, but I'm afraid he's asking speculatively rather than from a challenge he's facing.

I think the general answer is that everyone at the table should metagame to about the same level.

Otherwise the game feels really stilted and awkward.

If the players are mostly having their characters follow good strategy based on the pure game rules without fictional concerns, the NPCs should probably do so as well, at least within combat.

I am posting this in chat because, well, it's a chatty topic. >.>

I added an invitation to chat.

Good call.

As far as D&D and sentient opponents: they really should be able to do basic tactics. I mean, hobgoblins and the like have their own casters. They must have some tactical understanding of what a "magic-user" can do.

Because, seriously. "Please tell me which NPCs have combat smarts and which don't. System agnostic, setting agnostic."

3:56 AM

Yeah, that's true.

@BESW Although, in fairness, you could also rewrite that as "Please tell me how to figure out which..." Which is closer to a real question.

yes, but that's not what he's asking.

He's asking for an objective statement about the nature of strategic planning.

He might mean to be asking the other.

It seems to be a discussion question about whether we know more as people who like board games than our fictional characters do.

But in light of the recent Fate gremlin kerfuffle, I'm very wary of guessing what people intend to be asking.

Yeah, no, not planning to do that here. I think it's a discussion topic about the pre-modern mindset and strategy, maybe. Which seems more like... something to have a discussion about?

@AlexP Yes, this seems reasonable.

4:01 AM

Anyway I want to discuss it in chat instead. :D

I suggest you say that in a comment, and indicate that it sounds like an awesome chat topic, please come over and talk about it!

Hello all

Hi!

@SouthpawHare [wave]

So, okay, my opinion on your question: all of the players at the table, including the GM, should metagame to the same extent.

4:04 AM

My apologies for making an overly-broad question. I guess it's just something that's bothered me for a long time

It's an interesting question, but unless you've got a specific challenge/problem at the table that inspired it, it feels too discussiony to keep in the Q&A part of the site.

But we'd love to talk about it here!

That's fine

And no, I have no specific instance

So, from the perspective of "What's a pre-modern mindset like?" Well, the characters in the game are presumably trained in fighting.

If the concept of "attack the mage!" makes sense in the world, I think they'd know about it.

Any experienced combatant learns quickly to gauge the threat of his opponents.

Remember that orcs and hobgoblins and kobolds and the like do have their own casters, for example. So it makes sense they would understand their role tactically.

4:06 AM

But what cues are available to let him do that is going to vary wildly from game to game, much less setting to setting.

If the concept of "attack the mage!" doesn't make sense in the world... well, why are the rules encouraging it??

But even if someone knew to attack the High Offense, Low Defense target first, would they recognize a spellcaster as that? Is it an automatic assumption that a mage is seen as a blaster by NPCs?

Well, when you see a dozen hobgoblins, how do you know which one is the caster?

yeah, there's several levels to this.

D&D wizards tend to stick out pretty visibly. They're the people without armor or substantive weapons, often carrying a bunch of profession-specific magical gear like wands and scrolls.

An Int 4 slime monster probably wouldn't catch onto that. But an enemy with the reasoning abilities of a human being? It's not exactly rocket science.

4:09 AM

First, how common is it that the guy in pyjamas is more of a threat than the guy in armor? Do mages wear robes regularly? If this becomes a common stereotype, wouldn't a guy with 18 Int figure out that a quick illusion to make it look like he's wearing armor would drop his perceived threat level?

@BESW Mage robes in particular are totally wizards all showing off, like I'M A WIZARD!! Otherwise they could just wear regular clothes.

I think the layers are:
1 - Will they recognize a mage as being a mage?
2 - Will they recognize a mage as being a Glass Cannon?
3 - Will they know that attacking a glass cannon is the best decision?

So.... yeah, any person with even sub-par intelligence and combat experience is going to do basic threat-level assessment. Big sword gets prioritized below the guy with a bow, if they're both on the other side of a field.

2: If that's what the rules say all mages are, I think the characters in the world really should understand that.

But how easy it is to make accurate threat-level assessments is going to depend on context.

4:11 AM

3: If that's what the rules of the game say is the best strategy, I think the characters in the world should understand that, also. I can see making allowances for "the game says X but we're going to roleplay like that's not the case," but honestly that's really frustrating over time because you're just fighting the game system.

Common knowledge, individual quirks, personal experience, and so forth.

As @AlexP said, unless the party is meta-gaming, the NPCs shouldn't.

Remember that enemies can also reevaluate threats. A wizard who looks innocuous is going to draw a lot of attention once he disintegrates a guy in the first round.

So determining in-game knowledge becomes significant.

The rules say nothing about whether attacking squishies is the best strategy, though. It's something that we as Gamers have come to understand from playing a lot of games.

Someone new to D&D might think otherwise.

@SouthpawHare Sure they do!

The rules say that the wizard is by far the most dangerous character but has crappy hp.

4:13 AM

The rules don't have to say "this is the best strategy." Most rule systems don't talk strategy.

They give information that informs strategy.

Just like how the rules in chess effectively say "You should control the center." It's not an explicit thing, but it's built into the game structurally.

If you look up a chess strategy manual, it'll tell you explicitly. Just like you can look up D&D character guides and so forth.

Well, that's just it. People know to control the center nowadays as common knowledge because we're all so educated and chess is commonplace. But a medieval peasant who was explained the rules isn't going to jump to that conclusion, I think

Okay, but are you fighting peasants?

Or are you fighting trained warriors?

And super-intelligent thousand-year-old dragons?

Like I said, Int 4 slime monster, by all means, just wale on whoever is closest.

Or looks tasty.

@SouthpawHare This is where personal experience and training comes into it.

4:16 AM

(I'm emphasizing training over experience because, from a "realistic" perspective, most warriors never kill anyone.)

A peasant who fights off hobgoblins regularly will be a lot more combat-smart (in the realm of hobgoblins, at least) than one who doesn't.

I'd say that the most common human opponents I've experienced in D&D games are bandits - uneducated, savage, aggressive people that understand only "everything must die, order doesn't matter" as the base strategy.

Is that what a bandit is, though, really?

And a mercenary veteran of three civil wars will have a great deal of experience and training with a wide variety of threats and will be much better at evaluating them accurately than either of them.

@SouthpawHare That's... what? No.

Tends to be the kind of bandits we find, yes

Usually rather full of themselves

Always overconfident

4:17 AM

Bandits generally don't want to kill people. That puts the authorities in a hanging mood.

That's kinda like having wolves who will attack an entire group of people in daylight.

Or how D&D monsters tend to fight to the death in the more recent iterations, on account of there no longer being a morale score.

For a real-world bandit, fair fights are crap. They don't want to kill people either, really.

Bandits are desperate, yes--because they're driven to a really crappy lifestyle by economic or social misfortune, and they're doing their best to stay alive without becoming the kind of person who adventurers get paid to take out.

They just want to threaten you, or maaaaybe ambush you, and take your stuff.

I can see both kind existing.

Also, consider this... even if your strategy isn't some complicated "nullify their artillery and then do this and that" kind of business, if you're just going for "knock out as many enemies as you can as fast as you can, and hope they're outnumbered greatly or surrender," hitting "squishies" makes sense.

4:20 AM

I don't see any contradiction for the particularly bloodthirsty type, though, if they're powerful enough to get away with it

A fighter and a (not-too-gaudy) wizard and a caravan of 5 non-combatant NPCs... the fighter is probably the biggest target.

An adventuring party? Might clearly be the wizard or some other lightly-armored character.

If you look into the history of pirates, you'll find that there are two kinds: the ones who board you, take your money and your medicine, and leave, killing no one unless you put up a fight... and the ones who get a naval fleet scouring the seas for their butts.

I never said this wasn't short-sighted and bound to end horribly...

In my (narrow and judgey) view, "Bloodthirsty bandits who fight to the death" is mostly a game construct, to make fighting more fun. So I really don't mind if they're aware of other game constructs.

I could choose to make them fight kinda stupidly, for fun. But it's not more realistic one way or the other.

Huh...

4:23 AM

It's a matter of having consistent goals, to me. WEIRD things happen when "realism" is applied very selectively.

Aye.

"Bloodthirsty to-the-death bandits" exist only so the paladin feels okay killing them.

And because enemies that run away or plead for mercy are frustrating in D&D.

That too. Heh

James J. Regan IV

Yea, and regardless...if you constantly (as a GM) use the same strategy every time for every opponent..then the game could get boring for the players...a player creates a tank to take the punishment...by constantly attacking the wizard and ignoring the tank, you are effectively ignoring that person's character and subverting his purpose.

Though you can mitigate that a bit by introducing a few rules for skillchecks.

@JamesJ.ReganIV Well, that's because the game's doing a bad job of making the "tank" actually, erm, tank, though.

4:25 AM

@JamesJ.ReganIV Well, I think it's up to the game mechanics to make the tank work properly.

Exactly

That's one of the cool things about 4e, actually.

agreed

The defender isn't a "tank," and doesn't prevent the NPCs from choosing to attack the wizard--he makes attacking the wizard a bad choice.

Both it in being a good thing about 4E, and being the "one thing"

So, I guess what I would emphasize is beware "realism" arguments.

They're quite the rabbit hole and most people really aren't prepared to truly follow them the whole way. Or interested in playing a game that does.

4:27 AM

Eeyup. Realism is a bad way to argue for anything in an RPG that doesn't already have realism as its primary goal.

(And very very few RPGs have realism as a primary goal, even the ones that make loud noises about it.)

Good design of "defensive" characters in games tends to make them very damaging, which would normally be considered offensive, and just giving them crap mobility. Heavy and Engineer in TF2, E. Honda in Street Fighter...

Defensive doesn't just mean high health or damage reduction

James J. Regan IV

Yea, and I agree, 4th ed did that right...but for other systems the point of the game is to have fun...(whatever your definition of fun is). And for me (and probably others) varied tactics and enemies makes the campaign fun.

@SouthpawHare I happen to think 4e is among the best tactical combat simulator RPG systems available, so I'm not going to engage with that snide remark.

Heheh. I do think it did tactical combat really well.

I just think that it's at the expense of some believability, which I think is more important

A lot of believability, really

(The fact that ultimately it --and any other iteration of D&D-- is not a game I want to play doesn't keep me from admiring its balance, focus, and poise in the fields it chose to excel in.)

@SouthpawHare I found it no less believable than D&D 3.5. Which isn't saying much of anything, but there it is.

4:31 AM

So, if you like realism, I encourage you to really go down that rabbit hole, particularly in terms of understanding the realities of a fantasy-medieval life. But what you'll find is that most games really don't do it justice at all, in both big and little ways.

I think applying per-encounter or per-day limitations on mundane and non-magical things is rather unbelievable and inexplicable. As is the methods of healing.

@AlexP And D&D is definitely not the game to try it in.

@SouthpawHare I like it better than hit points, anyway. >.>

I find that good game design practices don't always apply in RPGs, since good story design is often at odds. Often, fairness and balance actually ruins dramatic tension, and it's better to feel weak and vulnerable.

@SouthpawHare So, then my advice is not to play a system where "prioritize the squishies" is really that central to the whole deal.

James J. Regan IV

4:34 AM

@SouthpawHare Depends on what kind of game you want to run...you need adversity...but some games are about empowerment, so your characters should feel powerful

@SouthpawHare That's a gamestyle choice which many RPG gamers don't share. It's totally valid but not useful when generalized beyond the scope of the gamers and systems that have chosen to make the choice.

There are a myriad ways to play RPGs, and so long as everyone's happy and safe it's all good.

My group felt very happy knowing that 4e's balance let them build fun characters without worrying that they'd be ineffective.

Yeah, I get that. I'm not trying to force me beliefs on others

I mean, realism is you break your arm and it could take you months to truly regain all the manual dexterity you had.

Or you take an axe to the leg and you're maimed for life.

WHICH CAN BE FUN.

Totes!

But yeah, I'm also not about empowerment. My favorite game scenarios have mostly involved very survival-centric, disempowered situations

I can see why 4e doesn't work for you: it's all about being over-the-top heroes, and if you want stories that lead to the characters feeling weak and vulnerable, it's an awful system for you.

4:36 AM

My character broke her arm in Burning Wheel today.

It was a big deal.

@BESW D&D in general is over-the-top heroes, though not always from the very start.

4e just gets rid of more of that initial part than other versions do.

But, like, a high-level character is kind of a wuxia action master in any edition.

If not more than that.

Yeah. That's why I don't like 4E's over-the-top healing system. Even 3E's is much better. It should at least take a matter of DAYS to heal without magical healing, if not longer.

Your wounds just don't go away, you have to deal with them for a while

@SouthpawHare But realistically all it did was force you to use magic for everything.

And your wounds still don't incapacitate you in any way, really.

Well, yeah.

I mean, Magic is better than not magic.

You also run into "How do I narrate this?" issues.

Like what?

4:41 AM

If you have 40 hit points and get hit with a sword five times, were you actually stabbed five times?

Hit points like in D&D do get a bit odd and abstract

If you weren't, if "hit points" are just representing a more nebulous "narrowly avoid a bad hit" factor, why does it take forever to regain them through rest?

I think I like systems like Old World of Darkness best.

Only a single-digit number of health levels, and they very much do cripple your ability to do things, and take an exponential length of time to heal naturally

But do those systems even do "kill the squishies" in the same way?

Not at all.

This isn't really about the question anymore

In that kind of system, almost anyone can be one-hit killed

4:51 AM

I guess my main point is that, in D&D, if killing the mage is really the best idea, it's also pretty "realistic" for opponents to understand that.

If you want to subvert D&D's general approach to combat and adventures, I think you'd want to go bigger than just the tactics. Like, why is the world organized into adventuring groups or dungeons, anyway?

Well, I kind of assume that there really aren't a lot of adventuring parties or dungeons in a given D&D campaign setting. I mean, it's not like everyone who's ever played D&D exist in the same canon.

There may have been hundreds of thousands of people who have played a character that's part of a D&D adventuring party, but there's probably only a handful that have ever existed in the entirety of a single given world's history.

James J. Regan IV

@SouthpawHare Unless you are all playing in Faerun :)

The campaign setting constantly talks about numerous "bands of adventurers"

All the good-guy NPCs in FR were adventurers, pretty much.

Yeah, that seems a bit silly to me. Faerun is a bit unbelievable to me in general

I mean, Greyhawk does this a bit, too. The big NPCs are literally old player characters. And the game books I've read constantly talk about "such and such has put out a call for adventurers to deal with X."

James J. Regan IV

4:59 AM

@SouthpawHare Why not? When you've got a world constantly attacked by deadly foes...why wouldn't there be a string of adventurers who are willing to take that call? Is that any less realistic than any particular city/area having a Vampire..."Lord? King?" in WoD

@JamesJ.ReganIV Because organizing everything around the equivalent of the five-man band is a bit silly? :D

I mean, there's "adventurers" in general (i.e. brigands, freebooters, other random scoundrels) and there's "adventurers" that form into convenient little cross-class groups and have actual adventures.

Most pre-4e D&D settings defaulted to assuming that the party wasn't the only set of adventurers out there robbing tombs and overthrowing villains. Heck, the Tomb of Horrors plot is predicated on it.

But the thing about a world that's conveniently-sized and -structured for adventurers is that, well... it's easy to have adventures in it!!

@AlexP This! By focusing world-building on things that the party of adventuring PCs would engage with, you create a world that is designed for parties of adventurers.

That said, I do think it's cooler to just find other things for a group of protagonists to do.

Though a tomb or two wouldn't be that bad.

James J. Regan IV

5:05 AM

Other than dungeons? I agree with that

Now that I've stopped doing D&D I realize just how much tiiiiime D&D takes. Because everything is stretched out over lots of encounters, for instance.

James J. Regan IV

Dungeons aren't the most interesting thing to face...they should be a means to an end...not an end in and of themselves.

Even a small pre-written dungeon is huge!

@AlexP Blarghen. When combat is the primary unit of progress, and each combat takes at least an hour, you need a LOT of hours in order to say "you've progressed!" whether it made sense for that progress to be combat-heavy or not.

This is, in my opinion, the true purpose of random encounter tables.

They make you feel like you've walked through the forest for a day, because you spent an hour in pointless combat instead of just saying "we walked for a day."

I'm pretty sure their true purpose is to be simulationist-y, and to punish you.

5:08 AM

(They serve secondary functions in world-building, XP gain, and so forth, but...)

I'd dig up the quote but, meh, it would take a while.

And by "true" I mean "original, in Gary's game." Not "main game-mechanical purpose."

@AlexP Ah. Yes, these are often very different things.

James J. Regan IV

@AlexP The more I hear about Gygax...the more I really wouldn't want him to run my game...

If he were alive that is

Would you want him to run it if he were undead?

Today's Tweet to Campaign By is a murder with a twist.

David Burnstein, who was said to have been murdered by Jack Hobson in Chicago, is not dead at all. Another sensation spoiled. IL1888

Tweeted by TweetsofOld on August 18, 2013 at 12:22 AM

5:10 AM

@JamesJ.ReganIV His "Killer GM" thing is mostly an act, I think. Ditto a lot of the stodginess. But I just don't like the same things Gary liked.

@SouthpawHare Novelty!

I'd still rather play with Gygax than Greenwood.

@AlexP I've heard that he wrote Tomb of Horrors in response to accusations that he was too soft on his players.

@BESW Tomb of Horrors is a bit of a joke, yes. I think it was only ever intended as a "tournament" module.

People complain about that first trap right at the entrance being so ridiculous, but I think that's the point: it tells you "the rest of this adventure is whacked-out jerk stuff."

@AlexP Yeah, this. It's true of all of D&D, actually. The game likes things I don't want to spend time on, and dislikes things I want to dwell on.

James J. Regan IV

5:12 AM

@AlexP I also heard recently a quote from him along the lines of "You aren't roleplaying if you're not keeping close track of time and resources"

It would be way more frustrating, in some ways, if it dialed up the crazy traps gradually.

@AlexP Have you read the 4e Tomb of Horrors superadventure?

I ran my players through it, twisted into the main structure of my campaign.

It's four separate dungeons spread from roughly level 10 to level 22, with breathing gaps for other adventures between.

The first dungeon is basically just trolling everyone really hard. Then the gloves come off.

Also, as far as Gary: I just don't really like 60s/70s fantasy fiction -- not Lanhkmar, not Dying Earth, not all those Pol Anderson stories, -- nor Hammer horror, nor do I enjoy Celtic mythology very much (look at the bard and druid in the AD&D2 PHB, for instance: half-page-long elaborations on his inspirations), nor do I enjoy counting anything, really.

Partly because most of his favorite things are not, like, known at all to my generation.

I spent years trying to figure out where they found bits of the D&D Rakshasa lore.

They mostly live on in D&D-isms that migrate between games but have lost their original, like, thing.

5:16 AM

Turns out I'd never watched Kolchak.

@BESW It was probably some movie.

James J. Regan IV

Heh...I see the issue...anyway, I'm off to bed.

Hahaha! There you go.

@JamesJ.ReganIV See ya.

@BESW There's going to be a book pretty soon, I think, that talks about D&D through the lens of playing with Gygax and his various friends when D&D was first becoming a thing but wasn't a commercial product.

That'll likely cover all that "Oh, this is from Kolchak" kind of stuff.

I still don't know where they got the "backwards hands" thing.

Maybe a bad mini?

5:18 AM

I mean, there are plenty of myths that feature such things, but I've never been able to connect it to the Rakshasa outside of D&D.

(I really like the visuals of the D&D Rakshasa, but I want to go back to whatever roots it may have instead of just building on D&D.)

@BESW It is pretty weird and cool.

It would definitely be in my Five Monsters To Steal from D&D.

I'd also have to go with mind flayers.

Beholders I think don't make the cut.

Nah, beholders raise too many questions.

Owlbears.

One of my campaigns linked Rakshasa and catfolk.

@BESW Makes sense, really.

5:33 AM

@AlexP Last Airbender did the "mushing animals together" so well that I'm not very interested in most other implementations.

Owlbears are iconic and hilarious.

True.

I guess moonkin from WoW could kinda fill the same niche.

But they're so iconic I wouldn't want to use them in a system/setting that wasn't directly homaging D&D itself.

So are mind flayers, though!

5:35 AM

Mind flayers are a little different for me, maybe because they've had so many different implementations over the years.

Most of the not-as-iconic D&D monsters don't excite me much.

Oooh, I kinda like gnolls.

Krenshar. I've always loved them.

@BESW Heh, I was actually thinking krenshar as well!

Honorable mention.

Gnolls are great, but Digger did hyena people so much better that it's hard for me to keep them away from the gnoll concept.

Okay, here is my list. The five creatures I would totally steal from D&D: mind flayer, owlbear, rakshasa, gnoll, lich. Honorable mention: krenshar.

5:39 AM

@skullpatrol [wave] Hi!

@BESW Hi :-)

@AlexP Hrmm. Krenshar, rakshasa, catfolk, lizardfolk (for @trogdor)... not sure what the last one would be.

@BESW No mind flayers?

Nope.

They're cool, but not my top five.

Fair enough.

5:42 AM

ooh. Yuan-ti!

How did I forget them?

Oooh, good one!

Also, now I'm imagining a krenshar-catfolk.

Catfolk but also they do that thing with their faces OMG.

eeeew.

Honestly I think regular cats are like halfway there with their skindancing. My cat will sit perfectly still and her whole back just, like, scoots back and forth over her.

(I'm not much of a cat person IRL --the only cats that like me are the ones I'm allergic to-- but design-wise they're awesome.)

Like, what is that, seriously? Is there a special muscle group for it or something?

Okay, sleepytime.

5:45 AM

ttfn

@skullpatrol What's up?

6:21 AM

@AlexP I like the lich (every D&D campaign I've ever run for more than three months had a lich show up), but I feel like I could do more with the things about the concept that I like if they weren't bounded by the D&D definitional constraints.

Dragon of the Lost Sea style phylacteries, for example.

7:04 AM

So I'm reading this: community.wizards.com/nentir_vale/wiki/… and looking at this map: wizards.com/dnd/files/Nerath_Map_HighRes.jpg

...and I'm trying to place The Trackless Waste/Desert of Desolation/Sea of Dust

Should be somewhere in the south west.

It doesn't really matter that much, but it would be nice to mark it for the players

1 hour later…

8:24 AM

@BESW huh?

do you mean you would pick lizardfolk because of me?

anyway,I would have thought you would also pick wombat people

8:37 AM

@trogdor They aren't a D&D thing. The idea is the top five D&D monsters we'd "steal" to use in other games.

8:57 AM

ah

ok

I see

9:43 AM

The last entry on this wikipedia talk page is my second-favorite Internet Thing today.

10:43 AM

Anyone have experience with LARPing?

A few of us, but not I.

11:05 AM

@BESW My browser's likely to crash if I visit that.

@InbarRose Emrakul, Brian, a few others I can't recall.

@Metool It's not a very big talk page.

Doesn't matter. New tabs will bother it.

Ah.

11:58 AM

@BESW I turned this up to 11 in my last game. Casual encounters give the players -no reward-, as an incentive to try to be smart and avoid them. (In a previous campaign they wandered in a zone with non-dangerous wild life (up to CR8 dragons) to farm experience)

So long as that's reasonable for them to be able to do, that's pretty cool.

I was very amused that @problematic and I wound up effectively running a random encounter in Fate a few weeks ago

@BESW more than reasonable. They get random encounters only if they stay in the open too much, and they know it. But the random encounter tables in CotSQ are good. In places where you're supposed to wander a lot they have unique encounters or you meet people who would normally be elsewhere in the castle, doing patrols or wandering for some task. I give out XP for those.

Ah, cool.

Non-combat random encounters make me slightly happier about them, in the right kind of game.

(IE, one where it's not a waste of everyone's time to be doing stuff that doesn't related to the plot.)

The non-combat ones were there, they just teleported past the place.

(ok, they shadow-walked past it)

mmmh no, I was wrong, they had one of those encounters in a different zone, it gave a new cohort to our cleric.

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