Or an AW game about a post-apocalyptic RPG group that's playing the Star Trek RPG, and their Star Trek characters are playing a game of Paranoia on the holodeck.

@BESW Sounds like a thing to do science on

I'm sure if you take some time getting used to each new layer before sitting down, whittling dice and recursing, you'll be able to get fairly deep.

"Okay, you're in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Mutant communists are trying to kill you because you stole their Yahtzee dice, and you're trying to find a quiet place to hide from them and run an RPG session."

Nightmare mode: every now and then, orcs find the top-layer party. They must pack up and move, and find somewhere quiet to sit down again and get out their characters once more. And then everyone has to remember what they were doing a level down. (And maybe a level further than that.)

If your Paranoia characters were playing a game... would the rules need to be re-explained to each clone? :P

@doppelgreener RPG-ception

@Adeptus Only each six-pack; clones have most of the memories of their predecessors, because DO NOT QUESTION THE COMPUTER.

@Adeptus Paranoia is set in an underground apocalypse bunker run by an all-powerful computer which is basically an in-game avatar for the GM, who is encouraged to be capricious and cruel.

I just realised: in that setting where Every RPG Is Present, there must also be the legend of the Player Characters. Oracles of yore have predicted they will save the world, and possibly stab a whole lot of monsters along the way. Only problem is, nobody's sure what part of the world they'll be saving.

@BESW Yes I know that.... I mean, in the game-within-the-game, would the Computer be GM

Ah.

If so, it would refuse to explain why it was forcing the party to play an RPG, and it would execute anyone who asked.

Oh... would the first GM get to play an NPC who plays in the in-game game? So a PC can be the in-game GM... who plays an NPC playing the in-in-game-game game...

@BESW Also, anyone who rolls a chaotic neutral character is immediately executed.

@Adeptus Well, suppose in meatspace you're playing D&D. The bard pulls out this equipment and an old book he found from a fabled land. For the meatspace GM to be a player in the game, they'd have to have a D&D character as well, so a GMPC.

It's entirely possible, though. If they have a GMPC - for example, an excited and surprisngly social librarian lich who comes along - the GMPC could totally sit down and be a player in the rogue's game.

It's very interesting to read an RPG manual and see how much they assume they need to explain about the fundamental RPG concept.

Call of Cthulhu 6th Ed is interested in explaining what they think a horror RPG should be like, so they dedicate a lot of space to that because they know it's going to be different from other RPGs.

The 1985 Doctor Who RPG is like "Okay, gamemasters, here's what you're gonna do," and jumps right into encounter/scenario design.

The modern Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG has a "read this first" insert, and explains RPGs in detail in both the Player's Handbook and the Gamemaster's Guide.

D&D does that too, but then again, that's because it is the first RPG for a lot of people and they need it :P

@doppelgreener I guess that's the thing; there are three basic approaches I've seen: We assume you've never heard of RPGs before; We assume you don't need RPGs explained at all; and We need to explain our RPG, so it doesn't matter if you've played others.

I feel the last one is best, but it requires the developers to be able to understand and explain their own RPG well.

@BESW or in the case of Fate, we need to explain our RPG because you've played others

Aye.

That's the key, perhaps: expecting that you don't have to explain your RPG because your audience has played other RPGs is kind of like saying you expect someone to be able to play Arkham City without a tutorial because they've played Wii Bowling.

I think "I need to explain my RPG" should be a default whether you assume prior experience with the medium or not.

@BESW Yeah, I think so actually.

To convey to people what they're about to get into. And because you need to understand your own RPG well enough to be able to do that, so it's a barrier test.

I see Cubicle 7 has posted a Kickstarter campaign for their new Lone Wolf RPG (delivery estimated to be May 2015). The art looks fantastic so far. However there's also an older Lone Wolf RPG that was released by Mongoose Publishing - has anyone played this earlier edition? Used and new copies on amazon but are pricey.

@BESW ^

@doppelgreener A librarian lich would be such a rules-lawyer! "I've been studying the rules for centuries!" And watch he doesn't magic his dice...

@Adeptus - Yes, I played the Lone Wolf game books as well, think I read thru the first 4 or 5.

@Adeptus Hm. I figured he might even sit down because he has never seen these rules, so the entire game is fascinating to him. But BESW built one with the ability to read books and notes and so on with his mind, so he might be able to steal a read of the rules even if he never picks them up. ;)

Cue "Hey, that's not what the rules say!" "Wh... How would you know!?"

Have there been any Kickstarter RPG campaigns that fizzled & backers were left high and dry?

@doppelgreener "The rules don't say I can't use telekinesis to roll my dice!"

@RobertF not sure about RPG, I know several miniature ones have

I was reading a video game one I had starred, but didn't back earlier today, raised half a million, never delivered more than a demo

@waxeagle - Yea, the KS article for Lone Wolf doesn't offer a lot of details on # pages, rule system, etc. But they've nearly doubled their 15,000 lb goal.

@Adeptus Any magic user with Mage Hand is forced to use a dice tower.

@waxeagle ouch, what was it?

@doppelgreener Clang

medieval sword fighting game using motion inputs to mimic real fighting styles. was way over the top ambitious, creators contend that they only intended to do R&D and release a prototype. backers contend what was released isn't close to what's promised. Rumbles of lawsuits, but all smoke so far

@waxeagle that was one of the first kickstarters I ever saw!

wow dang :'(

@RobertF do they have any history? Either with KS or with other publishing projects?

@waxeagle - Yes the company is British, called Cubicle 7. They published The One Ring RPG.

@doppelgreener I think Brian linked it here at one point

oh yeah he did

(the problem with a class action suit in cases like these is that there is rarely any hope of recovering your money, you have grounds, but usually the creator is already broke...)

Wow, the Clang goal of $500K doesn't seem like nearly enough money to build a sophisticated sword fighting simulator w/ all the necessary hardware & software.

wired.com/2013/09/clang-kickstarter

@RobertF ouch, that does not hold back at all (rightly so)

@doppelgreener Nobody's even mentioning the Cartmel Masterplan and the Other yet...

I just learned about a neat Stack feature, the Tag Future Report: rpg.stackexchange.com/users/tag-future/current

@doppelgreener Apparently I'm a "high activity user". Hah. Lies!

@Magician It's possible that it hasn't updated in a few months

but it says the same of me too!

@BESW seems reasonably accurate (if a few months old)

It might feel differently about my attitude toward history-of-gaming if it updated; I've asked three questions with a total of 102 upvotes since then, and provided one answer with 84 upvotes.

(Prior to that in my year and a half I'd asked one question with 26 upvotes.)

@Aaron Depends on which sources you're allowed.

The Nine Principles of Policing are really kind of eye-opening; I'm filing them away for application in my RPG worldbuilding, but they're also of historical and contemporary importance. (And it explains a lot about why historically British policemen are portrayed in that particular way they are.)

(Interesting Fact Addendum: Apparently British policemen were called "bobbies" after the Robert Peel to whom the Nine Principles are traditionally attributed.)

> 7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

I like this one.

@doppelgreener I think certain police departments need reminding of this one

@Adeptus i think there are ones like #2-4 that certain police forces like the LAPD could do with hearing

but then again, these are the British principles, not necessarily the principles of other police forces

> a philosophy of policing ‘unique in history and throughout the world because it derived not from fear but almost exclusively from public co-operation with the police'

@Adeptus that's a good philosophy

now I understand why Australia's police force might behave the way it does; we were still British at the time this was disseminated

So, apparently I've been having trouble giving Kickstarter my money because my bank put it on a "fraudulent; do not transact" list.

For you, or for all customers?..

It's on my bank's global "do not allow" list.

I went in and they said they can take the block off long enough for me to make the payment, and then they'll put it up again in the morning.

...wut.

I guess someone complained and tried to reverse charges?

And every time I want to fund something with KS, I have to call and do this again.

Can you pay for KS with Paypal? And then pay for Paypal out of your bank?

Nope.

Are you paying through Amazon or directly somehow..?

Directly with my credit card to Kickstarter.

Oh, huh. I didn't know that was actually an option!

Yeah, I pay through Amazon.

I'm not getting that as an option this time around.

Aaand the money took. I hope it doesn't get messy when the KS expires and they go to collect.

@Matt [wave]

@BESW If it doesn't work, Kickstarter will send you an email saying "Hey! You still need to pay for this Kickstarter." Then, you can speak to your bank and send the money through.

@doppelgreener Good to know.

I've been thinking about switching banks. Tomorrow I'ma go ask Coast360 how they feel about Kickstarter.

And I'm going to go back to BankPacific and ask them to justify their placing it on the auto-deny list.

Sounds ok. Make sure you get one that supports instant transfer between your own accounts.

If only I could find a bank that had paid extra for spaces between the words in its name...

I have a bank that has no fees and transfers instantly between my own accounts, and overnight at most to other accounts. Meanwhile I have friends who have to wait a day before transfers happen between their own accounts, or two or three days to reach other accounts... in the meantime, the money sits in a nonexistant state (i.e. it's the bank's, and they pay nobody interest temporarily during a holding period for no reason)

Several of them did not even realise that banks could do better than that.

Coast360 is a federal credit union right near my house. I like FCUs because they're all loosely connected, so I could go to the Carolina FCU in South Carolina and it'll behave like my own bank for most purposes.

And this one has a no-charge ATM in the mud room that you can get to any time of the day or night by swiping your ATM card in the main door.

Which is better than having an ATM just sitting outside, because you're locked in with it away from random passersby.

@doppelgreener which bank? I'm thinking of switching to NAB or maybe Citibank, they're the only fee free ones I'm aware of at the moment.

@Adeptus NAB.

@BESW sounds good for you personally then!

Good morning, everyone.

@lisardggY Hey.

How've things been going?

Do you remember when I said I'd run someone through a one-shot game of FAE and it turned into the Enchanted Forest campaign with at least eight participants?

I think I noticed something like that passing through, sorta.

Something like that may be happening with my weekly IRL game, with Skyping players from Australia.

At first it was "Sure, I can do a quick Skype game with Hobbs to demonstrate Cthulhu Dark."

"Yeah, he can have a friend join the session, it'll be better with two players."

"Hm, that worked well, and Trogdor and I don't like playing alone--so why not have them join us this evening so we can play something together?"

"Wait, Hobbs's friend is talking about inviting HIS friends?"

And one of my IRL players is bringing her little brother sometimes now, too. It never rains but it pours.

You're becoming an Oceanic sensation.

Hee.

Also I finally got my bank to approve my Fate token Kickstarter payment, with less than two days to go.

Awesome.

I forgot to go to Orc's Nest when I was in London and buy Fate dice. :(

And while there was an awesome stall at Worldcon selling AD&D 2e-era RPGs and sourcebooks, there was no-one actually selling dice.

Also, I got to hold Randall Munroe's Hugo award.

@lisardggY ooh.

Did you see Ursula Vernon?

Today's unintentional portmanteau: "envocations"

@lisardggY Leisure games > Orcs nest every time

Morning.

Nevermind, just read "closed content reproduced without permission"

No, no reproduction of D&D content outside the strictly-defined contents of the SRD is legal unless it's a publication directly associated with the Wizards of the Coast.

That link I provided has normally been fairly good at providing minimal overviews of spells using open content

It even tells you (when I checked again) which parts it has legally used >.>

People get confused because part of the d20 System (which is re-publishable under the Open Gaming License) is used relatively unchanged as part of the D&D 3.0/3.5 system, which is not re-publishable under the Open Gaming License or any other general permission.

If content is in one of the three core D&D 3.0/3.5 books, it might be re-usable under the OGL. If D&D content is in any other WotC publication, it is not covered under the OGL.

Since fireburst is from the Complete Arcane, it is not OGL.

...I think someone should do a Q&A on this for the site.

Or at least add it to the tour

I really wanted to say "He's playing an evocation wizard and wants a single threat damage spell. Of course its not powerful "

Heh.

@BESW I don't think so. I might have.

@Phil Also much further away from where I was staying.

@BESW This was two minutes Cory Doctorow put it up his nose.

@lisardggY I think you accidentally a preposition.

@BESW This isn't from this year's Hugo.

@lisardggY No, last year's.

But she was at LonCon this year. I have the tweets to prove it.

@BESW Also, yes. I was busy thinking on what a relief it was to have touched the Hugo before Doctorow put it in his nose, that I forgot to actually type "before".

I must have missed her. There were over 6,000 people present, so I can be excused.

Fair enough.

There were quite a few corsetted, tattooed, dyed-hair women around.

Come to think of it, my wife was a corsetted, tattooed, dyed-hair woman for one evening there. :)

I'm failing to find a better pic of her right upper arm tat, but have a picture of her clutching a pickaxe.

@BESW A pickaxe beats a tattoo.

It's a commemorative pickaxe hand-made for the highest tier of backers for the Digger Kickstarter.

@BESW Dont think its too confusing

@JoshuaAslanSmith Well, you know, except for the bit where someone in this very chat earlier today thought that a non-Wizards site might have been able to legitimately reproduce non-OGL content.

I see it pretty often.

I believe it its just weird to me, maybe its coming to D&D post 4e I have zero expectations of that kind of thing

I agree a question is a good idea

Yeah, we had seven years of OGL flooding the market with d20 System products with varying levels of open-source/reproducible/copyrighted status often wrapped all together in each game.

@Metool Preferably pathfinder sources but 3.5 if there are no pathfinder sources.

Morning everyone

@waxeagle Ummm. It may seem pedantic, but the question is asking for sources, not copy-pasting, and I think "ALL information about Gibbeth," even though there's not much, is kinda pushing our luck with the copyright gods.

@BESW figured it's a paid doc so more was more, but I trimmed the quotes down substantially

some of them were more relevant to the adventure than gen ref on Gibbeth anyways

more is in fact more

Best case mod ever? screenburn.kotaku.com/system-shock-2-custom-pc-case-1623067712/…

@JoshuaAslanSmith that is awesome

Afternoon/Morning/Evening/Other time of day to you all.

@Mourdos that too

Quick question for anyone familiar with D&D 5e: is there a (canonical) changeling race? Our 4e group are thinking of migrating to 5e as the same group, but since one of us is a changeling, if 5e doesn't describe them, we'll need to homebrew or wait.

@detly as of yet, no

Right

It looks like some folks have sketched out their own homebrewing for it, so that might be useful if WotC continue to cauterise every last lump of flesh off their 4e resources

Thanks @waxeagle :)

the high level rogue has some things that can mimic some of the changeling abilities. or you could grab the racial traits from the doppleganger monster and mix that up

ooh, I hadn't thought about mixing in monster traits

basically take an elf, swap out some elfy things, and swap in some doppleganger things

yeah

looking at the doppleganger features, I would not give the surprise aspect as a racial feature (lots of monsters have that, not a good one for PCs). Shapechanger though would be legit. Maybe a nerfed version of read thoughts...but I'm not sure.

ambusher would be too good for a rogue

I have found a new villain for a one-shot Roll For Shoes campaign.

Smokey the Bear goes rogue. Only one team can stop him.

Looking forward to the new stuff going up on d20pfsrd

acg ftw

Talking about changelings, I'm still waiting for a D&D edition with no polymorph-unveiling spells.

Oh wait maybe it was 4e

@Zachiel 4e it was an opposed check insight vs bluff

no auto success that I can find

@waxeagle I can live with cheesing my bluff. A real pity that 4e game I never considered has closed already. I guess the "different levels adventuring togheter" was an unsurmontable problem to them

interestingly the glossary entry for "truesight" says "see blindsight"

and the only two mentions of it are in Divine Power...interesting

plus items in AV2 and Dragon384

lots of creatures have it...interesting

@Zachiel what do yo umean

@JoshuaAslanSmith Some friends I played with in one of those "permanent world" games stopped playing my game and made up one based on 4e

I know they stopped, maybe because not many people liked 4e so the site was empty, maybe because 4e was even less suited for that kind of game

oh yeah,

I'd engineer some mechanism that has different leveled characters all be the same level when they fight togheter but I wouldn't know how to explain it in-world

@Zachiel Level = Aura of Heroism that clings to the heroes?

are you talking about lower PCs getting stepped up?

or higher PCs being nerfed

Being around other heroes makes you do more heroic stuff (all high level), or even boosts your capabilities (low -> high). Gracing lesser beings with your company makes them perform better by sharing some of your "heroicity"

I assumed averaging right now

too much work

the easiest way to do it would be to boost the lower level PCs, but only from a math perspective

aka they get a to-hit and saves boost as well as more damage dice and some temp HP at the start of the combat

I'm not familiar with 4e, but wouldn't pseudo negative levels also work for lowering chars?

if you do any more of that you should just have PCs be the same level anyway if only by dm fiat

the rub is that as you level you get powers and feats

more dailies for example

hmm... I guess it's easier to do that way in 3.P

the advantage of leveling is the increases to stats, feats, and gaining those extra powers, not the HP, or minimal damage increase

too much book keeping to temporarily be level 8 and then revert to level 6.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Still, Zachiel was looking for in-game-meta-reasoning why anything like that happened, and "basking in the awesomeness that is a high level hero" is a possible explanation, at least for increasing lower level chars power

Anyway, I'm heading home.

this is just baffeling

I want to DM a game I'm inventing, how do I do it?

@JoshuaAslanSmith Heh, I'm still thinking about it. Nobody likes nerfs. Probably unlockable zones with different leveled NPCs and relative PC level

@JoshuaAslanSmith does not work, because high level math assumes better feats, and high level characters have better powers

which is exactly what you said in the following line, now that I read it

@MrLemon In 3.pf it's done by the high level character getting aggroed by the big monster only he can survive against while the lower levels fight the level-appropriate minions. Usually higher level characters refrain from going AoE on everything, or if they do the DM just adds a second wave of monsters

@zachiel yeah I mean for 4e youd just have it sectioned off by tiers at the least but even then 4e doesnt like you fighting monsters more than 1 level below or above your current level

@waxeagle right? I think it needs to be closed.

bbrrrrrrr

Cold

Cold?

They moved where our break room is where I work. The new room is flipping cold

cold = good

Nuuuuu. Cold bad. At least until I get a hoody here to wear.

I get sleepy when I get cold.

It's 28 degrees here right now. That's 82 for you Fahrenheit heathens. And that's at 10pm at night.

Cold is good.

That isn't cold.

@Aaron No it is not.

I am talking it must be in the 60s in that room.

70-72 degrees is perfect

It's really, really hot. I miss cold. I just got back from London, where it was delightfully chilly in the mornings and evenings and nights, and, well, any time except for high noon.

Now I'm back to the damp, sticky, humid heat.

@lisardggY Makes you wonder why Israel is so fixated about that place. (XD)

It's the Promised Heat, or something. :)

A friend of mine recently said there would have been no problem if God had given jews Alaska, or some strip of Siberia.

Michael Chabon wrote a lovely novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which posits the state of Israel crashing 2 years after its founding, and the Jewish population given a 50 year lease on Alaska.

I am thinking about finally writing my book.

Oh, boo, I was hoping there'd be a bit more people in here at this time.

Actually I should probably do this in the other room anyway.

Heya

@GraceNote [wave] You've hit a dull spot in the chat day, I'm afraid.

I've finally collected up the tickets for the 5e drawing, I see there's another room for this. I'm probably going to do the actual rolling in there (assuming that, indeed, the dice do work in there), but figured I'd drop a line in here in case anyone was interested. However, if now is a dull spot, I could delay the drawing until there's more people around.

What I might do is plan a scheduled drawing at whatever looks like it should be a good activity time spot tomorrow

Which, on looking at the average activity graph for the room, is basically at noon my time.

Let's go with that then.

Shiny! If you put that into a pithy little statement I'll pin it and make sure people see it.

It did in fact actually come out today, yeah?

A cursory check at stores says it's "Available now" but I want to make sure that today was indeed the launch date and that I didn't manage to mess things up by not noticing it came out earlier.

@BESW The official drawing for the RPG Stack Exchange 5e PHB will happen tomorrow at 17:00 UTC.

Next iteration, I'll gather the stuff much faster and see if I can schedule the drawing on release day.

Fair enough. I'm not paying really close attention to 5e, myself.

Man, the metal Fate tokens KS is just steamrollering in its last day.

[takes notes for DFRPG campaign]

... board & card games's main chat has messages in its star list from november/december 2012

we frequently have our star list full of messages not more than a day old