TRPG General Chat

doppelgreener

01:04

@DuckTapeAl In America you can die by bumping into the wrong bear, so

BESW

03:30

@Anaphory Go home, Evolution. You are drunk.

Iron Heart

04:52

Allo.

@BESW who are the "Fightin' Scientists"?

BESW

The Action Scientists who work for/with Robo to troubleshoot Weird Things in the field.

Iron Heart

[nod]

BESW

Atomic Robo and the Fightin' Scientists of Tesladyne.

Miniman

Also known as "Jenkins and some other randoms".

BESW

AKA these guys.

BESW

06:58

Now there's a pitch for a show:

> The Lord of Hell is bored of his life, abdicates, and becomes a consultant at the Los Angeles Police Department.

Characters include "Lucifer's therapist."

I... really kinda wish "The Lord of Hell" turned out to be Osiris, or actual-mythic-super-dork Hades.

Because I can totally see Hades doing a Forever kind of thing.

BESW

07:27

@SevenSidedDie I'm having trouble seeing how this isn't what Fate's consequence system does, really.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW It's the non-creative aspect. Roll dice, specific injury fiction with specific mechanics results. Fate gives you a mechanical effect but leaves you to provide the fiction.

BESW

Oh, he wants the developers to tell him exactly what injuries are possible in the system?

Wibbs

that's the way I read it too, but it might not have occurred to him that player definitions could work

frame challenge?

BESW

I confess to finding it extremely non-simulationist/realistic to expect the devs to provide a comprehensive iteration of... well, much of anything, really.

Wibbs

depends why he wants it I guess

SevenSidedDie

07:30

@BESW Heavy simulation is very grounding.

BESW

In chat, though, he kept saying that Fate's stress/consequence system was... let me find the quote.

"...the main objection to HP (and derivations) is that they do not tell a story. FATE's stress appears to be slightly mutated HP...."

@SevenSidedDie What does this mean?

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Don't tell the story, as in, they don't produce the relevant fiction. Same as I said up-chat: some games produce the fictional results of injury directly, while Fate leaves it to you to figure out what the injury looks like.

I should dig up a screenshot of TRoS's injury tables to give this some context.

BESW

Ah, that's what's meant by "tell the story."

SevenSidedDie

Yeah. It took a while to figure out what that meant exactly, but then I recognised it.

Ah, here's a TRoS screenshot:

BESW

@SevenSidedDie I need me a helmet!

Whups, Geeks are here. ttfn

SevenSidedDie

07:37

@BESW It's not even a criticals table; that's the normal injury mechanics (one table out of several pages thereof).

@BESW Have fun!

Magician

08:41

@BESW The source material is awesome. The "helps LAPD" bit leaves me scratching my head.

Not least of all because in the comics Lucifer opened a piano bar after retiring from ruling Hell.

BESW

13:34

Tonight, we fought giant leech-worms which had invaded an office building through a portal from the pre-Cambrian era.

...And Dr. Light was trapped in the distant past when the portal closed.

One player succeeded at cost to recover her iPhone 6 from the pre-Cambrian muck, and the cost was "the portal begins to close." When Dr. Light failed his roll to get them both back before it closed, he took the cost of staying behind in order to throw his friend through.

Other highlights included rigging a bomb squad robot with dubstep to distract the giant carnivorous worms, and establishing a cover story about pen ink with unintended hallucinatory qualities.

Lord_Gareth

15:52

@mxyzplk Where do you get the gall? You walk in on someone else's answer just to snipe at them for your own personal grudges and then respond to (yet another) accusation of your abuse of power by trying to silence dissent?

Where do you get the nerve?

You know damn well that no one has the time to spend months researching your petty grudges and abuses of power, for months, without pay, in order to make a substantiated accusation.

mxyzplk

@Lord_Gareth You probably don't see the whole timeline of what happened there.

1. There was a closed question with a 29-comment clarification thread. The OP edited their answer to address all of them. There were reopen votes.

2. This is where I come in - I reopen and delete the comment thread, as it has been addressed.

3. Since I'm there, I add an answer.

4. I get an immediate comment from KRyan about "my mod abuse," as usual.

5. As he's been doing that to multiple mods lately, I warn him to take it to meta and not just passively-aggressively snipe in comments.

6. He also posts an answer, which says the same thing as my "bad" answer (stay Sorc) with a questionable RAW addition, "be a CN undead-loving pally." I comment on that, that seems questionable advice since in my experience most DMs don't go for that.

Lord_Gareth

I find myself skeptical of your timeline. And your phrasing of 6. here is much more reasonable than it was in the actual comment. You are consistently rude, dismissive, and hostile.

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last time, that I tell you to your face that as a moderator your behavior is supposed to exemplify the policies of this site.

mxyzplk

Yes, well, not nearly as rude, dismissive, and hostile as you are being, of course.

Lord_Gareth

Lay in the bed you made, Mxy. Why should you be surprised that people react to your hostility with offense?

mxyzplk

And that is the timeline, regardles sof your skeptixism.

Sniping against others on the site will not be tolerated. Be Nice has no exception for "but I hate a mod." period. Take it to meta or flag it or whatever, but disrupting the site with that hate is not acceptable.

Lord_Gareth

16:01

What, unless you're doing it? You seem to feel free to pursue your own grudges and put-downs. Or is it not illegal if the President does it?

KRyan

@mxyzplk false; the OP edited an awful lot, but still hasn't defined what she really wants; "survivability" doesn't really mean a whole lot

and there was one reopen vote

@mxyzplk if your mod abuse wasn't usual, you wouldn't usually get comments about it

mxyzplk

@Lord_Gareth I'd be interested in what my offensive act was in this case, besides warning someone sniping at mods to quit it.

@KRyan If you still think it's unclear, ask for more clarification, but she had specifically responded to each of the comments so far and re-edited in.

KRyan

@mxyzplk the problem with your answer was dragon disciple, which I consider very poor in the best case, and a low-Str, high-Dex character is not the best case

@mxyzplk the existing comments were still issues

Lord_Gareth

@mxyzplk Do you really not understand how this: "Come on man, I get your pet opinions but how many DMs out there are really going to bite on a CN Paladin (with undead minions), is this really effective advice?" <-comes off as dismissive and insulting, especially considering the community's history of coming down on phrasing less aggressive than this?

mxyzplk

And you can have whatever opinion you want, and you can bring up issues on meta, but sniping in comments will get you suspended, and that's a fact. So keep it up or not - it won't be me that does it, no mod says that's acceptable behavior.

Lord_Gareth

16:03

Are you honestly gonna look me in the face and tell me that you don't get that?

mxyzplk

@Lord_Gareth Yes. If anyone else said that your panties would not be in a huge flaming bunch right now. But since it's the guy you've set up in your head as "abuseman," it is. But your mental constructs are not my problem.

Lord_Gareth

@mxyzplk ...You know, I'd credited you with enough intelligence to assume you were being deliberately malicious instead of ignorant but you give me increasing reason to doubt this stance.

mxyzplk

So for both of you - flag stuff you don't like for other mods to weigh in on. Take concerns with specific mod activities to meta. But sniping in comments and continuing your petty grudge-war isn't acceptable on the main site.

I'm not interested on continuing this discussion, as it's obvious that insults and rancor are all you are capable of. Good day.

Julix

16:23

hi

wax eagle

@Julix hiya!

Lord_Gareth

@Julix Afternoon.

@waxeagle Haven't seen you in a bit :p How's it?

Julix

it's good

but food is low

my roommate just asked me to join the shopping

so I don't get to ask what I wanted to quite yet

tty all later :)

Lord_Gareth

Have fun.

We'll help ya when you get back.

Julix

hehe :) - thanks

wax eagle

16:26

@Lord_Gareth going all right

Lord_Gareth

@waxeagle Gonna say this for the record - you have my email (and if you don't I can give it to you). That inbox is open if you feel I've crossed lines and need a dressing down. Or if you just wanna talk, I do kinda like you. The Stack's lack of PM functionality is rather aggravating.

wax eagle

@Lord_Gareth that would be out of bounds, if I need to contact you as a moderator it will be via the mod message functionality.

Lord_Gareth

@waxeagle Mmkay. Do feel free to do so as a human being though. I know there can be a line between behavior that is not okay vs. behavior that is against the rules.

Giantitp taught me that one. That place is a hive.

Grubermensch

16:50

Is anybody else getting a CloudFlare 502 when trying to access the site?

wax eagle

@Grubermensch no, though they use distributed hosting for a number of things, so it could be a localized issue

Grubermensch

Yeah maybe bad connectivity to San Jose (which is my CloudFlare portal)

well whatever it was seems to have passed

Julix

17:34

hi again

wax eagle

@Julix w/b

Julix

you know the inspiration ability of the investigator class?

wax eagle

3.pf?

Julix

d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/investigator

wax eagle

yeah, not my game

Julix

17:39

how powerful is 1d6 bonus to a thing?

variable obviously, but do I have to worry about breaking the game with it?

Is it even 3rd party? source says: Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Class Guide © 2014, Paizo Inc.; Authors: Dennis Baker, Ross Byers, Jesse Benner, Savannah Broadway, Jason Bulmahn, Jim Groves, Tim Hitchcock, Tracy Hurley, Jonathan H. Keith, Will McCardell, Dale C. McCoy, Jr., Tom Phillips, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Thomas M. Reid, Sean K Reynolds, Tork Shaw, Owen K.C. Stephens, and Russ Taylor.

oh! 3.pf! now I get it!

sorry, right - forgot. you're not into that game, we covered that in the past

I tried joining in on a FATE game once, but I didn't like the setting much so I didn't get a good insight into whether it would work for telling the kinds of stories I like.

Grubermensch

18:10

Ohai! I play Fate (we're not doing the ALLCAPS thing anymore fyi). Mayhaps I can illuminate?

Julix

18:21

hey @Grubermensch , the question was a pathfinder question. the comment on Fate was just me trying to tell @waxeagle that I tried to play something besides pathfinder.

Grubermensch

Right, I was offering to answer the implied question in that statement.

What kinds of stories are you trying to play?

Julix

ah! :) that is a good question

But sadly one filled with incompatible things for me... :( I want to spend less time on the game between sessions than I currently do with PF (reading stats, feats, etc.), yet I also love the mechanical aspect a little bit.
I like it when the story seems very plausible and sometimes simulationism helps me with that. I don't like overly strong focus on drama (i.e. everything all the time) but I like having highlights that feel epic.

Grubermensch

Unfortunately there's a pretty direct tradeoff between mechanical complexity and prep time.

If you're willing to experiment, I'd recommend having a look at Exalted 2E. I find that its mechanics are more consistent than D&D but still have enough fiddly bits to seem realistic. And it will definitely take you straight off the end of the awesome-meter.

It has its problems mechanically (definitely play with the Scroll of Errata rules, and use the Battlewheel initiative tracker), but I was very pleased with the injection of more dramatic elements into the system. It's also the only system I've played that, at the system level, tried to be fun. (Except Roll for Shoes, but that doesn't really count)

Julix

19:29

@Grubermensch roll for shoes!? lol - thanks for the idea.

I'm thinking I should run a mechanics heavy thing in the background to inform my choices for less mechanical-focused games. That way I can have the constraints of the mechanics inspire me, yet not feel so limited by them when I feel "I have a better idea" that isn't possible with the mechanics as are...

Also mechanics heaviness and complexity means game balance is more easily risked by making changes to it... I would like for the system to be easily modified without falling apart.

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