Hmm... I hate to even ask, but, given the events of the past few weeks: any chance we're being trolled? (@SevenSidedDie @mxyzplk) In any case, I'm stepping out.
> Aggressively not listening to our advice, functionally trolling. Nitsua has brought up in chat (and pinged SSD/Mxyzplk) that this may be a repeat of the troll we've seen creating new accounts several times already (chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/34780720#34780720).
@BESW It's not impossible to answer, because the answer's trivially "no, and there can't be, because there are thousands of RPGs (and growing) and no-one can claim authority over all of them."
Since he's specified "authoritative sources" for basically everything ever, that's a solid "We can recognise an answer if we see it but we'll never see it."
@BESW I think a great answer would point out that the question only references video games, and not the fact that the Templars were an historical group of people who couldn't cast any types of spells.
(Perhaps I'm primed for that because I just listened to an hour on the Temple Bank yesterday.)
They're Briggs security personnel, for Christ's sake!
Literally!
Hmm... vatican.va is unable to process my search request because of capacity issues...? A likely story! I SMELL CONSPIRACY! Call Dan BrownRobert Langdon Tom Hanks!!!
Dammit, Vatican! How can I mockingly answer some internet stranger's question if you won't give me immediate access to a document written 900 years ago!?
@Chepelink So every Stackoverflow question asking for sources detailing definitions or explanations of concepts such as "data structures" or "algorithms" (which can be similarly far-ranging and conflicted) are perfectly valid there but similar inquiry isn't valid here? I just don't understand the reasoning here, there's an overwhelming amount of misinterpreted responses to this question (which was somehow marked off-topic for being about video games when it never was in the first place). — a3eb574410 mins ago
@nitsua60 This guy's talking about Stack Overflow like he's got experience with it. He's a 1-rep account with 0 other accounts. I'm now quite suspicious he's that troll.
@Zachiel Not worthwhile. Let it remain closed. The actual reason isn't important and the actual closure has already been clarified:
@a3eb5744 Ultimately, the reason given is just what received the most votes, which may have been due to misunderstanding. But even if it’s on-topic, it is still hopelessly too broad, and primarily opinion-based. No one here can speak for the entirety of the RPG audience as to what “templar” means to them. There is no way to authoritatively or even credibly answer this question. Speculation and blatantly asserting one’s personal preference is universal are the only ways this might be answered, and those are not answers we want or allow. — KRyan31 mins ago
There's no reason to try to reopen and reclose it.
What's more important is that a question that should be closed remains closed, which we can do very well by doing exactly nothing.
not to mention that that's not a universal notion by any means -- you ask a native of either of the 'verses I've tried to create "What's a Templar?" and they'd be "I dunno, dude! We don't have those around here!"
Eh, I now disagree. I've got *the* answer: "Bishop Innocent, Servant of the Servants of God. To his beloved sons Robert, grandmaster of the religious order of the Temple which is situated in Jerusalem, and his followers and brothers, both present and in the future forever.... [&c. &c. and so forth, go ahead, have yourselves an order, defend the Church, assail Christ's foes, yadda yadda yadda.]"
"...secure that which is under the tyranny of pagans and which should be rescued from their filth. As for the things you will receive from the spoils, you can confidently put them to your own use."
Yes. Explicitly. Though there's a nice little legalism hidden in there. Any individual Templar is, of course (of course!) subject to a vow of poverty, but the order gets to keep the spoils. Confidently.
(BTW, before that gets flagged, that's a literal vow of poverty, not the banned 3.5 topic!)
@BESW See also: "Centuries; twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth."
I like how Jon Stewart describes this sort of thing as a religion being a teenager. "Look, when you're only six or eight (centuries) people think you're cute. You turn twelve you're still a kid, but sometimes obnoxious. Then comes the teenager...."
I have a question about my Role-playing Games Stack Exchange post: Are there any published sources on what a "Templar" should be?
A member of the community incorrectly placed my question on-hold for "being about video games" when all edited versions of the stated question make no reference ...
@Nitsua60 "Every time you edit the question, for the next seven days, it will be placed in a review queue for reopening." I thought it was just the first time it got edited.
@Chepelink By that logic, discussing this on StackOverflow would have been closed: stackoverflow.com/questions/625947/… That person asks for an implementation of hashtables in C, I'm asking for implementations of Templars in RPGs. The reception my question has received subverts rpg.stackexchange's goals since actual compatible discussion is being closed due to external interests abusing their liberties because my question doesn't fit a content clique a small group of the community has defined among themselves. Shameful. — a3eb574414 mins ago
This guy really isn't listening to us or (as it seems) going to listen to us.
I wanted to respond to his farcicle comparison of this question to a SO question, but I stopped feeling like bothering with it a couple of sentences into writing the comment.
He basically told me that I'm arbitrarily making things up, and I know I should be all calm and quiet and not feeding the potential troll, but I'm just pissed off.
And sorry everyone, but I care abut my mental sanity and need to vent more than I care about the possible damage I can do to a community. Which is probably why I'm not in many communities.
@Zachiel I recommend imagining him as a 2 year old having a tantrum at their keyboard. Get Big.
> Imagine you’re a 2-year-old toddler, who can’t have a toy or some ice cream right this minute. This problem is your entire universe, because you have no perspective, and so … you throw a fit. This is the world of a 2-year-old (I should know, I’ve had 6 of them). But as adults, we know that this is a very small problem, and in fact there are lots of other things the 2-year-old could do to be happy. Sure, that’s easy for us — we have a bigger perspective. But when someone offends us, we have a small perspective — this little offense is the biggest thing in the world, and it makes us very an…
That's basically what they're acting like, at this rate.
The ratkin got impatient and showed up in my house, demanding I make good on my promise right this second. They're very anti factory. I was originally trying to get it shut down through legal channels, but that was taking too long.
It's probably not inspired by Good Neighbours, just working with similar themes.
Good Neighbours is about maintaining good relationships between the mortals of a town and the fae of the adjacent forest, in the face of urban expansion.
Someday we'll return to our campaign where the Coverup was officially blown and now Godzilla's applying for UN recognition of his Kingdom of Monsters in the South China Sea.
@Ash I can't--as a matter of personal faith--believe that sincere engagement by a well-informed and -intentioned member of the community ever causes harm. Might it end up being a waste of your time? I actually think the answer's "no" there, too. Your volunteering your time to do good is not diminished in any way by anything else that might be true about the context or the recipient.
@doppelgreener You're a user with reputation who I have reason to believe abused earned privileges. Reported for harassment and subverting guidelines in rpg.stackexchange. I have timestamps for all versions of your posts. Thanks! — a3eb574429 secs ago
@nitsua60 Mmm. Physically it's a demonstration of good faith which can improve the community's social ecosytem. Mentally it helps us practice our communication skills and be sure we're really up on site policies. Spiritually it's an opportunity to develop virtues like patience, compassion, and justice.
@Shalvenay It's pretty excellent. A really good GM, I'm really liking some of the [stuff I can't talk about] in this adventure. I ma put myself forward to run it in AL this.. summer? I'm not sure when it's due to launch. But that's how positive on it I am.
@trogdor it's just an escalation like last time. they asked a question, we told them it wasn't viable and gave advice, they refused to listen and started escalating it themselves beyond anything we really did.
@doppelgreener I'm using the definition of fun that flows from "It's Saturday night, I'm on duty and am required to just be sitting in my office, I've been studying BESW for a little over a year now. I bet myself a chocolate-chip cookie that I can out-patient and -reasonable this guy."
@DForck42 I'm pretty sure they put a check mark on our Permanent Record indicating "This person is still willing to put up with random internet goonery for no pay. Consider trying to make them do more undesirable unpaid work in the future. They have a veritable gold mine of patience that needs exploiting."
I was just going to ask y'all to send up a bat signal via chat if a3eb5744 gets out of hand any more, so I could go enjoy the nice weekend I have lined up and just keep an ear for notifications (since flags don't directly notify us), but nah — they're clearly not in a listening mood. We'll all have a nice break for the weekend now.
@SevenSidedDie Thus far when he was suspended from chat he started getting aggro in the mainsite question comments instead, and when his RPG thread was locked I started getting new comments on the meta question, so I make that request on the basis that he's likely to start trying to continue the argument in that chat room -- the one place he can still talk, unless being suspended from mainsite withdrew that permission, and he can ping us to no end within that 2-day window.
Hmm... that makes me wonder. Perhaps "TrollBourne" was an opening salvo, sent in to make us think we had gotten good at finding trolls. And now the real, secret troll army is ALREADY UPON US! 'Cause we were just watching for "Troll*"s!
@doppelgreener They're on a two-day timeout, also, so you're probably good until... two hours from now when we close the sockpuppetted new question "Where do I find a$$hat in the armor list?"
@doppelgreener His mainsite suspension should have automatically extended to chat, since it's his home site, but it somehow wasn't. I've manually done that then.
@doppelgreener They've got the tour page open in an incognito window alongside their commenting-window. So that if you call them on it you can be reported for stalking and harassment. (Though that's not a big deal in your case, since your complaint's already been filed.) It's standard practice in THE SECRET TROLL ARMY!
So guys, we have reason to believe that our troll has created a great number of socks. Unfortunately many of them aren't "provably" him. But there's no need to get overly wound up when some new account gets like this. He's trolling specifically to upset you, so don't play that game. Do the initial round of helping, and when they start to flip out, just walk away.
I know you want to help, but in reality you're just helping him get jollies and helping your blood pressure go up
(I'm not sure it's technically close-worthy in the strictest sense, but it's definitely close-adjacent enough that it'd need a lot of benefit of the doubt.)
(It's more of a "We'll close this because otherwise we'll spend the rest of our lives deleting non-answers" thing. But only when stripped of the real context of the interactions and evaluating the question on its own.)
@BESW Yeah, I'm a little sad I didn't get the entire text of Pope Innocent II's bull establishing the "Knights of the Temple, appointed by the Lord to be defenders of the Catholic Church and assailants of Christ's foes," in under the wire.
'Cause that'd be a good reference to have on this network for posterity.
I took his continued presence despite moderator action taking place as a signal it was not a sock puppet, but I'll take note for next time this doesn't necessarily mean what I thought it meant.
@nitsua60 If it happens to be Tales from the Yawning Portal, they've publicly announced it as the next book now at least (though I imagine NDA still prevents any actual discussion around it either way).
Ooh, that gives me a good idea for this question; write a crawler to map wizards.org, and use that as your maze template! Full of wrong turns and dead-ends! Yet you know that what you need is somewhere in there!
@CTWind WOTC: Releases new edition of D&D with brand new forms of outreach into the internet space not seen before. Releases PDFs of numerous previous editions and materials. Shuts down official forums. Wait...
@nitsua60 In a misguided attempt by the University of Wisconsin in Madison (whose mascot is the badger) to discourage crime without actually doing anything, they plastered the campus with signs encouraging students to form a kind of neighbourhood watch under the slogan OUR BADGER EYES ARE WATCHING.
(Presented at a colloquium there once. Got a t-shirt.)
(Also in the early 2000s, coincidentally.)
Had a seriously-funny experience with architectural illusion there... I went to school in DC and often, when going for a long run, would warm up, turn on to North Capitol, and run the 4 mi to the US Capitol, staring at it the whole way. In Madison I got up to go for a run, turned onto the main drag, and saw the state capitol--a near-twin of the US Capitol--ahead of me. 9 minutes later I was there. It's a lot smaller than the US Capitol, but perfectly proportioned.
@nitsua60 I had a very surreal experience once driving in Austin, Texas, where I turned a corner and saw the US Capitol building. Apparently, they made it slightly bigger so they could thumb their noses.
@daze413 I took the question to mean any valid character's speed, helped by any other characters, with unlimited wealth. Interesting limits include 3 attunements, 20 class levels, no duplicate named spell effects, etc.
@Miniman I'm not opposed to using any given spell in that question, I'm just questioning the validity of this spell with no apparent casting mechanism. In your example, I don't see how you fit a 9th level spell into a ring that can only hold 5 levels' worth of spells
That is, I'm not questioning the spell per se, but the road to get there.
@BESW actually, I don't feel immersed in current events right now. I planned my turn in advance. So, no one lose time and fun because of me.
I still enjoy this game. Just don't find current events very interesting. :)
@BESW yeah. One of my players played not very smart paladin. That was awesome! He willingly decided to do not very smart things and embraced consequences and gave us a good laugh :)
Well, ours had a very epic quest. The most epic moment were when they found basilisk and other party member told him: "Kill this thing! Just don't look it in the eyes!" He shut his eyes and with his 2h hammer in outstrethed arms before him he run to monster, while it moved in different location. In the end he hit another PC with his hammer, while trying to kill monster.
I was more thinking just about the myths themselves, not so much characters playing in a word that is mythic. Maybe a myth-creation game, but with a GM? Maybe something like Cheat-your-own-Adventure, but involving hero-quests and one dedicated player who choses the Right Path?
I thought it might be good to get a feeling for how the myths work, so hypothetically some more people can look through the playbooks to see what might fit and what might not.
Hm, also @eimyr, I think at some point – maybe in an Epimas bundle? – I encountered a game about two characters from different species (one alien, one human?) on a doomed spaces ship telling each other their legends. Or maybe I'm conflating two games? Or game ideas I was told? Because another thing I believe to remember is the Human presuming next-steps of the legend, but they are not corrected by the narrator, but by other players.
[And if that game isn't a thing yet, I'm going to write it, inspired by Cheat-your-own-Adventure, maybe.]
@Anaphory that reminds me about KS Samurai Duel game. Can't remember it's name. Whole game is a flashbacks of two samurais who are about to begin their duel to death. And they remember moments from their past. How they become acquainted, what went wrong in their relationships and etc. While playing flashabacks players earn and spent some game resources which will affect duel outcome. And the last scene of the game - duel itself.
@RollingFeles Have you considered how your apparent level of attention to the game is impacting the immersion of the other players? A pet peeve of mine is non-DM players using computers/phones during the game. The DM gets a blanket pass because I'm pretty certain they're only doing game-related things.
@Quentin FYI we're reasonably sure that user's just the same troll as from the other day (who has had that and several other accounts destroyed at this point); probably isn't worthwhile to waste any more typing on him. They're being deliberately obtuse.
@JoelHarmon yeah. We're playing online, so no, no one is affected. I'm listening to what is happening and I lose attention only when they resolve combat mechanics.
Yeah, I know and I understand what are you talking about.
Actually, this game was very interesting. Even in fight I have pulled some non-default actions with my fighter( I have a life/death goddes medalion which I pushed into ghost face and it didn't like it so much, that it died again :) ). Later we discovered some nice riddle/puzzle for us and we've enjoyed it.
There was a great moment in the end of my DW session. I've asked if players understood what caused the events they were dragged into. Not only they answered right, but they also speculated about further reasons and possible situation at larger scale giving me great ideas about what can happen next.
found a table at the local FLGS. AD&D, Greyhawkian, but with a DM that likes the weird, wild, and wooly ;) so I have a Gnoll cleric/monk of St. Cuthbert in mind. good news: first session is today. bad news: weather limbo :/ incoming ice storm.
@RollingFeles Careful with that. Remember to use your Fronts as guides to trends in the world, rather than writing out predefined events that must somehow happen.
@Shalvenay good news: perfect weather for beginning in a tavern in an ice storm. every character is greeted by the DM with a booming "AND YOU WALK OUT OF THE ICE INTO THE WARM TAVERN TO FIND A NUMBER OF STRANGERS AT THE ONLY TABLE, AND FEEL COMPELLED TO TAKE A SEAT..."
@doppelgreener oh, no no no. this is a "stock up on canned goods and stay at home" ice storm. (not quite the epic-level-bad that Dodge City, KS is slated to get hammered by, though. 3/4" of ice? I'm glad I'm not over there!)
@doppelgreener and when you enter you understand that you can't close the door, because someone broke it. And whole room is screaming to you: "USE THE HAMMER AND NAILS" and "SHUT THE DOOR". You can't hear them well, because of the crazy wind behind the door.
I have a question about my Role-playing Games Stack Exchange post: Are there any published sources on what a "Templar" should be?
A member of the community incorrectly placed my question on-hold for "being about video games" when all edited versions of the stated question make no reference ...
