TRPG General Chat

12:16 AM

He was still at terminal bag-of-holding-plus-a-head-sticking-out velocity, so he landed so hard in the courtyard of his home town that he fell all the way into the bag and it closed, leaving him trapped.

He started running out of air, so he cast create water and water breathing.

wax eagle

creative

That gave him long enough for someone to wander past and open up the bag. They were surprised to find a wet cleric inside.

Sadly, this removed the character from the campaign entirely and the player had to roll a new PC, but I gave him mad props.

wax eagle

srsly, very clever on his part

I've never had a character so effectively and efficiently himself from a campaign (without dying) before or since.

"Nope, sorry, I'm out of here."

Aaaanyway. Somehow 4e managed to more effectively avoid things like Monkey Grip that plagued 3.5.

Part of it is that 4e isn't as concerned with simulation and has fewer subsystems to interact in unexpected ways. It's also just plain got less splat running around.

And I really think the pre-4e multiverse design, as cool as it was, encouraged Stupid Mechanics.

What is splats, preciousss?

12:25 AM

Every idea had a plane, every plane had in-between planes, planes tended to have multiple levels and concepts and subplanes... the multiverse concept implied infinite space and content, and there was a pressure --or at least an urge-- to fill it and explore it.

Splatbook = expansion book that covers a particular narrow focus.

Right ok.

Oh my god, the "X has left this room" animation has a sled this month.

That is so excellent.

Comes from White Wolf, where they had clanbooks, tribebooks, etc., that got abbreviated in general as *books.

The asterisk is sometimes pronounced "splat."

Ah I get it ;o

[cough]
Little Mary donned her skates
Upon the ice to frisk.
Wasn't she a silly girl,
Her little *?

(Don't you dare star that.)

Personally, even at the very beginning when I was opening up the 4e PHB and was grieving everything missing that had been in prior editions, I loved that it basically just said: "Well, there's the Material plane, and the Feywild and the Shadowfell, and who knows what else!?" (i.e.: HEY, YOU GET TO MAKE IT UP)

12:29 AM

@JonathanHobbs That is one of my favorite things about the Points of Light setting.

Right after the fact that they've got that beautiful in-game justification for your party to be the heroes: there's nobody else!

All the setting and history material is deliberately contradictory (rather than just accidentally) to help emphasize that there isn't a canon setting unless you pick up Eberron or Dark Sun or the like.

(I had some 3.5 players who sometimes told me my world was wrong.)

I also loved this:
3.5e: Well there is material realm, and the astral plane and (this other thing I forget). The astral plane is a bunch of grey nothingness with occasional stuff in it. Also, the other planes are just full of dirt, and air, and fire, and whatever.
4e: There is the Feywild which is a realm of chaotic beauty, and like a jungle run completely wild in ways a mortal mind can't actually really comprehend. Just being here is going to drive you a bit mad. Also there is the Shadowfell, with grim winding caves that defy physical law, whose impossible geometries will turn people mad -…

I have a personal theory that travelling to the Feywild and the Shadowfell is actually time travel.

Oh? O:

The Feywild is the Material Plane As It Was, and the Shadowfell is a post-apocalyptic Material Plane As It Will Be.

They canonically share (roughly) landmarks with the Material plane, and what happens in one plane can bleed through to impact the other planes without any obvious magic making it happen.

What is the Points of Light setting?

Is that 4e's default setting?

12:36 AM

Yeah, one moment.

Okay that is a pretty cool theory.

Wild, uncontrolled regions abound and cover most of the world. Citystates of various races dot the darkness, bastions in the wilderness built amid the ruins of the past. Some of these settlements are “points of light” where adventurers can expect peaceful interaction with the inhabitants, but many more are dangerous.

(DMG 150)

Okthankyou :)

I heard mention of this in a podcast from when 4e was still in development, but I've never seen this in the books!

The vision of a world in savage darkness with civilization clinging as tiny points of light in the night is very evocative, and helps justify the kind of adventures D&D PCs usually get up to.

Though a few things I've seen recently have convinced me I really need to open my DMG and just read through it.

I didn't know Milestones were a thing, for instance.

Yes, it really does.

12:39 AM

I also like that it removes the "always a bigger fish" problem.

IE, "Why should we do that unless we're getting paid too much money? Have the local epic wizard handle it."

Have you seen the TV show Primeval?

I haven't

Because there is no local epic wizard right?

@JonathanHobbs Right. No king's army, no far-spanning Organization of the Light.

It's the PCs, or nobody.

yaaaaayyy C:

(Just for fun, every now and then --not too often-- throw them a disgustingly underleveled challenge to wade through, to the eternal gratitude of the village of Stone's Throw.)

(So called because that's how big it is.)

@JonathanHobbs I ask because they do some interesting things with past/present/future travel. It's a ridiculously silly show, but has some very cool ideas at its core.

If they decline to save Stone's Throw, make it count: the villagers are bled for some ritual that summons a demon army that is a challenge for the party, maybe.

[In my worlds, blood is the arcane equivalent of lubricating oil; it makes things go smoother and faster with less effort. It's only really evil if you use someone else's, and even then apprentices are historically a grey area.]

If they help Stone's Throw, make it a safe haven, a quest hub, a source of power, something like that.

[I think the 4e multiverse is suffused with an Energy that gathers around rituals, willpower, meaning, and consistency: a wizard channels it through rituals to gain arcane power; a warlord uses willpower and martial forms to shape the Energy into martial power; a forest can become magical just by sitting there unchanging for long enough; a ruler (or a god) can gain power simply through the meaning and constancy of his station.]

12:57 AM

Hm, ok. I'll keep that theory in mind.

And that is smart. It would emphasize the position of the PCs compared to the locals.

And remind them they are that powerful

and exceptional.

Not so much so they can feel good about themselves, but so they can remember their place in the world: not everyone is like that.

Yeah, it's just my personal theory, but it helps explain a lot of how weird and unexplained stuff is, without making it mechanical and rote.

@JonathanHobbs The occasional wide-eyed child playing Kamola the Brave with a stick and a bucket-helmet can do wonders for a party's self-image and help keep them from going to The Dark Side.

All but the forest becoming magical is news to me.

And that one I just put up to the fact that if nobody tried to do anything about it, magic would eventually begin shaping the region.

@JonathanHobbs Well, it's kind of standard that Gods Need Prayers Badly; they're constantly stealing each others' portfolios and worshippers.

And the wizard/warlord stuff is just my way of explaining the magiphysics behind the different class power sources.

(How can a guy shouting at me make me suddenly rise from unconsciousness?)

I suppose so. :o

I haven't personally gone to a high enough level for any of that to really become a pertinent question.

We had a warlord/shaman hybrid who specialized in granting extra attacks and movement to his allies. He effectively made everyone else take an extra half turn most rounds. By shouting at them really hard.

1:01 AM

Hahaha!

Using what abilities

I could find the build... it was based on the fact that the player couldn't roll a d20 to save his life.

So he never made any attacks, he used his actions to give attacks to people who could hit things.

Between Warlord and Shaman there were enough attack-granting powers to have one at each level.

Direct the Strike, Spirit's Prey... there's a feat that lets you use Direct the Strike instead of a melee basic attack when you get an opportunity attack, so if someone brushed past him he'd scream at the ranger to shoot them.

I guess I could look it up myself actually, I am just curious what the flavour text is and etc

When I say "I could find the build," I mean "I'd have to go back into my files and locate it." The build we used does not exist online.

I took three different 'lazy leader' builds as inspiration, but nobody builds with the goal of "never attacks, ever."

Oh. Well - I mean I don't care what the builds are. I'm curious about seeing a couple of the abilities, though, just so I can see what kind of thing has that effect.

AH.

One moment.

**Direct the Strike**
You direct an ally to attack as an enemy lowers its guard.
At-Will Martial
Standard Action Ranged 5
Target: One ally
Effect: The target makes a basic attack as a free action against an enemy of your choice that you can see and is within 10 squares of you.

**Spirit's Prey**
Your spirit companion lashes out at a moving foe, and an ally uses the distraction to fire on that enemy.
At-Will Primal, Spirit
Opportunity Action Melee spirit 1
Trigger: An enemy leaves a square adjacent to your spirit companion without shifting
Target: The triggering enemy
Effect: One ally within 10 squares of your spirit companion can make a ranged basic attack against the target as a free action with combat advantage.

Those were his most commonly used powers, I think.

He also had "Hey, fighter! Charge that guy on my turn!" and "Hey, enemy who missed my friend! Try to hit your friend with that attack!" and so forth, as encounter powers.

1:09 AM

Wow, that is weird

How does that work?

This is one reason I came up with the Undifferentiated Energy Attracted to Order theory.

(I'm working on coming up with a better acronym.)

UEATOT

not very acronym-able

Vowel Soup.

[snickers at sled]

Energy Attracted To Constancy, Order, Willpower, and Manifestly Emerging: A Theory

LOL.

Not really gelling.

1:28 AM

The Field of Order-Responsive Consequential Energy theory

Hooray for backronyms!

[shrug] it's better than EAT COW MEAT.

And now we can tell our players to use the FORCE.

Hahahaha.

You could just not worry about an acronym.

1:48 AM

Oh, 3.5 grapple rules. You make any situation worse.

I once outright forbade a grapple-centric PC from getting a Necklace of Natural Weapons with the Ranged property. Would've let him treat his bite attack as a ranged weapon and he wanted to... so far as I could envision it... have his teeth fly out of his mouth and wrestle people to the ground.

2:30 AM

Yes grapple is something I fear to encounter in Pathfinder, and am glad is gone in 4e.

I miss having people able to grapple, but I have heard so many bad things about the grapple system being either too complicated or OP that I don't miss it.

@BESW Grats on getting your Smiley Bob answer accepted. I like that one a lot, and my desire to see that encounter is currently a strong reason why I want a DDI subscription!

@JonathanHobbs Thanks! I thought of it as soon as I saw the question, but had to get some clarification before I wrote up the answer.

I have not run it myself, sadly, but I really like it. The whole thing is that balance of wry and dark that makes for a good lighthearted story people still take seriously.

The Nexus fight looks cool too, but I think it suffers from trying to be too low level for its concept.

Yeah it probably would better for people closer to level 10, who are better equipped for a slugfest - more HP, and a greater range of abilities so they don't run out as quickly.

Col Fen looks like it could be good creepy fun, but at a glance-over it seems too complex for the guy's needs.

I am more concerned that it has a few large fights.

My first disastrous campaign I mentioned was disastrous mainly because, apart from the fact the players didn't realise they were in a sandbox campaign, they had a boring encounter vs about 8 goblins who didn't get up to much.

8 goblins, 3 players...

Too much time between turns!

I like elites for that.

But remember, pre-made encounters are designed for five players.

2:39 AM

This one wasn't premade.

If you've got eight standard goblin of the party's level in a fight but only three PCs, take out two goblins.

Ah.

Hence this question: rpg.stackexchange.com/q/16715/1204

Hey! I remember that one!

I'm still struggling with it.

(With the concept, not the question. I answered it according to all my learning at the time.)

O: Oh hey, you were the one that gave me that answer!

I didn't notice.

Ultimately it comes down to why you want so many enemies in the first place.

If it's to sap resources for a later fight, increase damage or put in damaging terrain/hazards instead.

If it's to give the party an army to wade through, do really simple minions and maybe make stacks of them as suggested in other answers there.

2:43 AM

It was because they were engaging with a small outpost which guarded against small orc raids. What sort of outpost has only three guards?

Ah, and here we come to my Sooper Seekrit DM Sneekee Cheet.

I am doing this in total:

* Have strategies.
* If there are two skirmishers, combine them into a "squad" unit.
* Use morale to have some of them surrender or flee.
* Group some enemies by initiative, so that the enemies act twice for instance, rather than between all three players' turns.
* Simplify enemies, and use minions.

What sort of outpost only has three guards? One that just achieved a Pyrrhic victory against an orc raid, of course!

If "logic dictates" a poor design choice, I change the logic.

Yeah but they were actually doing that. Their better guards had been dispatched to hunt down some orcs who were probably planning a raid. The remainder were just a few guards. I hadn't scaled things down like Points of Light suggests I ca.

can*

It's the reason villains are "surrounded by fools!" --so the PCs have a chance to find out what's happening and stop it.

2:46 AM

I also didn't realise how exceptional and above-average adventurers were - that it should be normal for them to be well above and beyond a guard. I thought that a reasonable guard should be a lot tougher than a level 1 adventurer, and was going to give them some encounters with two-man guard squads who would give them significant trouble.

I will still do that, but now I realise the scale and rarity of power.

I frequently throw threats at my PCs that would overcome them... if the NPCs weren't also dealing with something else, or recovering from it, or suffering from internal upheaval...

Yeah I would like that. ;o

@JonathanHobbs In 3.5 and earlier, the party was supposed to feel cool, but not superlative. 4e is designed to make you feel like heroes instead of just heroic.

Yes that is a big difference I am getting now. :)

My first 4e adventure was based on Keep on the Shadowfell. It's a decent adventure but full of plot holes. And the villain is an idiot with no motive at all.

2:49 AM

Are you aware of the Penny Arcade podcasts that did an abridged version of that?

@JonathanHobbs Vaguely. Haven't listened to much of the PA podcasts.

I mentioned them in a recent answer so you might've seen that.

Oh, yes, I was curious about that.

I looked at the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure and didn't like it - the first third, for instance, is full of encounters with huge numbers of enemies.

I very much liked the way the guy cut it down, and it made me realise I can just take bits of premades and use them.

So instead of the villain sending letters to each of his henchmen that effectively said "Here's what the heroes need to know, keep it until they kill you," he sent them letters berating them for the stupid things his henchmen were doing. Including saying "If you keep doing this, people will notice us!" So the PCs got to laugh at the henchmen and fear the competent villain.

@JonathanHobbs That is a powerful realization.

2:51 AM

The entire campaign in the abridged version contained maybe a dozen small encounters.

I have complained here before that if you include additional the encounter published in Dungeon Magazine, KotS starts with three kobold ambushes and a fourth off-screen. Possibly five, depending on how the party handles a choice.

And the largest ones had maybe five monsters (at least two of whom were minions), and the couple that were larger didn't have everyone in the room at once - others would come in later, leaving the players time to take down some of the earlier arrivals.

I enjoy fights in waves.

include additional what?

Oops, transposed. "include the additional encounter"

2:53 AM

Yeah it is nuts.

It doesn't need that. I am glad the guy cut it out.

If the party gets used to understanding the entire fight in the first round, they blow all their encounter powers, maybe a daily or two, and deal with it.

Totes ;o

But if you change things up at round two or three --new monsters, terrain change, the like-- their perfect plans need on-the-fly adjustment.

Though the first game I DMed did have one really nice encounter at the beginning.

I recently had an encounter where the monk popped a daily stance that let him ignore difficult terrain, only to discover the next round that what he really needed was the stance making him immune to dazing.

2:55 AM

A couple of wolves came out in a forest. Then a couple of dire wolves a couple of turns later. Then after that, a huge dire wolf, accompanied by two more - who I injured hugely, which meant the players took it out almost effortlessly. Lesson: if you weaken it, the players will kill it.

(also it had some crummy attack rolls)

Hee.

Rule of Threes, very nice.

I'm doing more and more with hazards and terrain.

I am not aware of a rule of three, unless it's just that things should come in threes?

Yeah, that's about it.

Right :) I didn't consciously pick that. Or maybe I did since it felt right!

Plot hints, major NPCs, fight phases...

If you read a lot of fiction you'll probably have picked it up instinctively.

2:57 AM

BESW, you might be interested in this and this.

Two bloggers talking about how in 4e, solo fights are crap, and even in MM3 where they are better, they still aren't good enough.

I linked those exact pages on the SE a few weeks ago. [grin]

Then I am probably linking you back what I saw linked by you! Dang.

I am very interested in them, yes.

Experimented with them both in the last two weeks, actually.

I am going to do that myself whenever I can.

BESW, can I have some narrative advice?

I am full of advice.

2:59 AM

You are indeed

My upcoming setting is in its early stages, but currently it has this: there is an elven forest. To one side of it, some plains as large as the forest itself, and mountains at its back. Some reclusive elves have lived isolated in this forest for thousands of years, until some humans, fleeing from a distant war, begin arriving in those planes and create a village. Word spreads, and more humans move in.

The elves are ok with them being there, but become less OK as the population grows and they build a city.

As the population grows, the humans start building villages closer and closer to the forest, and are cutting down trees, and perhaps contesting with the elves over other resources. I've considered having, say, crystals, which the elves leave in peace but draw power from, whilst the humans harvest the crystal and effectively destroy it to make use of its power.

Another war with a third kingdom unites the humans and elves, but that was a while ago and now the Elves are back to seeing humans as being like guests who have overstayed their welcome.

I want the players, however, to meet the elves, or the elves to meet them. I want a reason for the elves to wander out and come across the PCs.

And I want there to maybe be a reason to go into the forest. But I'm at a loss. The elves are too reclusive as they are, and have very little reason to enter the human lands, or do anything aggressive, unless I have some young upstarts who actually want to carry out terrorist plots etc.

Then you need to change your elves.

Not by much, perhaps.

First off, an apparent non-sequitur: the 1936 Olympics were held in Berlin.

Remember these are people. Look at history. Even nations with terrible rivalries and all-out war don't lock up their boarders and become hermits.

I'm sure there's some sort of trade, some professional guild-type interactions, diplomatic visits or residents.

Maybe every twenty years (elven holidays take the long view) there's a Feast of Friendship in the Name of Corellon or something equally mushy.

You are right. I need them to get involved.

It is not good enough for them to just be reclusive. That sucks!

People who don't want anything and don't do anything are boring. Get rid of them.

done

Look at the elven gods, study the primal powers, see if that gives you any ideas.

3:10 AM

Now instead they have a decent amount of interaction with the humans, both trading and living off each others' things. Maybe I don't need the elves to dislike the humans' presence anymore. They could still be totally allied and at peace with each other.

(By primal powers I mean the spirits of the material realm that fuel most of the classes in PHB2. Elves seem like they might get along with 'em, especially in the face of civilized expansionism.)

Also remember there's a god of civilization in 4e. How does that factor in?

The elves can wish the humans were gone--or maybe just less impulsive and greedy. But they can't retreat in the face of it. That's not how people work and it's boring too.

I will look into that. I actually planned to have these elves be feytouched (not even quite like the Eladrin) - their forest has a deep enough connection to the feywild and it's tainted them (in a good way). Half their city is in the feywild, in the same spot as their city is, and crossing a bridge might take you into the feywild or out of it!

A bridge just between two trees! Except one is in the feywild.

@JonathanHobbs I like it.

The Manual of the Planes has a city that spends winter in the feywild fighting a bitter firbolg war, and the summer in the material world doing trading.

They would do things like, for instance, use the Feywild extensively during battle. I am planning to have their soldiers trained to do forced marches via the Feywild - in past wars, they didn't march into battle, they just disappeared for several days then appeared where the enemies were.

@JonathanHobbs I've used that in my campaign.

Also, abuse teleports and flavor it that way.

3:13 AM

That is a pretty neat city then

I was planning to give them all in-combat teleports, and also half their dodging will be described not as a sword stopped by armor or dodged, but the very fact that the elf would appear to fade away briefly, and the sword would go through them like gas.

Yes.

This helps keep their philosophy of avoidance without making them hermits.

i.e. these people can't stay in the feywild for long, but they visit there regularly. Plus all of them are visibly mutated by the Feywild's influence: the king, for instance, has a stag's antlers.

Perhaps the reason they are still allies (or at least trading) with the humans is that they do not want conflict whenever it can be avoided.

Yes that is true...

So they're hoping for a peaceful solution. And remember, elves live a long time: perhaps they're still a little shocked at the humans' actions and are formulating a response and that is why they're still in the alliance.

3:17 AM

Alright yes C:

@JonathanHobbs Classic imagery. +1.

:) Thankyou!

Also I will definitely use that Feast of Friendship.

And have the humans who enjoy it complain it happens so rarely, and the Elves complain it happens so often.

(every 20 years)

Hee.

Maybe 20 is too much, but 5? 7?

Your call.

Yes maybe. A decade tops.

I actually sat down and wrote a calendar based on the gods of the seasons.

3:19 AM

Oh my.

It's not complete or detailed; I want it fluid to adapt to what my plot needs.

But I'd be happy to share it with you as a jumping-off point for your ideas.

(I want my campaigns to have the feeling of time passing and people doing everyday things. Rituals and holy days help with that.)

:O Okay sure.

And I am not sure what gods the humans worship but thanks for mentioning the god of civilisation. Hm!

And, you know. "It's the night of the Fey Moon, when the line between our world and the Feywild is so thin you can cross it just by stepping sideways!"

[cue encounter]

5:12 AM

@Novian @KRyan The bag o' rats psi-healer uses Empathic Transfer and Share Pain to suck up damage off others then Empathic Transfer, Hostile to dump 50 hit points a turn into a rat. Not the most efficient of builds but a flavorful one.

@KRyan Fair enough. At least someone can use it :)

okeefe

@BESW The classiest.

Novian

5:43 AM

Welp I came up with the most roundabout way to craft a demonslaying weapon.
+2 Vicious Whirling Large Starmetal Heavy Mace
(Large) 2D6 Damage 2 handed -2 to attack
Viscious +2d6/1d6 to self
Whirling 1/day Whirlwind attack.
FeindSlayer Crystal Lesser 1d6 damage vs Evil outsiders good aligned
Starmetal 1d6 to extraplanar creatures and is adamantine

The Whirling is unnecessary but I wanted it.

Vs an evil outsider this weapon would do 6D6 +2 +1 1/2 str damage.

I just got bored.

6:20 AM

Has anyone had any experience with the 4e Tomb of Horrors superadventure?

Alternately, any experience/advice re: travel in the Astral Plane?

(Specifically running it.)

@SimonGill Any idea if the animals from a Bag of Tricks count?

@BESW Well... that was what I was using (since it was more convinent than an actual bag of rats) but I never got to actually use the power. That group imploded after one of the players didn't quite "get" the idea of playing in an evil campaign delving into the Tomb of Elemental Evil..

Aw, sorry to hear it.

I once played an evil PC with a bag of tricks... but he just kept it so he'd have something to torture when he was bored.

I think it would work, but the wording of the power is unclear whether it only counts positive hitpoints taken away for the purposes of healing you. I can see an argument for and against that.

I think I saw an errata somewhere that sounded general about not counting overdamage.

6:36 AM

@BESW That's a shame.

Well, don't take my word for it.

@BESW Not like it really matters :P I'm very unlikely to play 3.5 again.

6:53 AM

Wasn't someone on this chat talking about how facial acting seems to be a dying art?

Because I'm watching an episode of Arrow (I know, I know) in which they seem to have found a man whose eyes cannot act.

Sounds familiar - something about theater vs. film wasn't it?

Yeah

It was you I think. chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/11?m=7118390#7118390

It was a discussion on this chat. I'm sure I was in it.

Ah, yes. It started with KRyan. chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/7118378#7118378

(I'm enjoying watching Arrow for how it's simultaneously mangling every tired cliche it can find... and coming up with brilliant innovative new ways to be stupid.)

Hehe, I haven't watched any of it yet. I hear it's pretty good for a superhero conversion though.

6:57 AM

--Despite having some very good actors. The lead seems to have achieved a half-dozen different types of furrowed brow, because that's all the script lets him emote with.

It's awful. As a TV show, as a hero story.

I love its awfulness, but it plays merry havoc with its own themes and can't decide what kind of show to be.

@BESW Fair enough. It's probably going to run for years then...

He's murdering people to get to his rich targets, and then just taking their money or humiliating them. And the only guy who calls him on it is ignored and we're obviously supposed to dislike him.

Somebody clearly grew up with the Iron Age comics then. Ewww.

That's not New and Gritty, that's Only the Rich Can Live.

@BESW Who do you think pays for this stuff? You wouldn't want to put killing rich people as a new major part of the culture.

7:01 AM

@SimonGill So he could be not killing the guards.

They're plebs. Who cares if they get killed? :P

Yes, I'm being facetious. It is a silly idea really.

Sigh. It's an issue with the source material that was resolved in the '60s.

[pokes television] You've had longer than Doctor Who has consecutively been on air to get with the program!

@BESW Was Green Arrow acting the same way in the 60s?

Well, he had very much a "The little man? Oh, you mean midgets!" kind of air to his stories.

In the late 60s he got a new writer who had GA go on a cross-country tour of America to actually come down out of his golden tower and live among the people. He's been more of a social rights figure ever since.

@BESW And Doctor Who got darker in the same time (not dark enough for him to actually use a gun, but dark enough for the Time Lords to be awesome villains!).

7:05 AM

True, The War Games was aired at around the same time.

@BESW Fair enough. I didn't realise he was more of a rich playboy than Robin Hood..

He was a rich playboy fooling himself into thinking he was Robin Hood, really.

How much of that was intentional and how much was just the writers at the time being blind to the irony of it all... I don't know.

@BESW We'll probably never know.

Well, I'm not exactly a Green Arrow scholar.

I'm an amateur student of Batman.

@BESW A much more interesting character.

7:10 AM

Well, in the right hands.

But yeah, he's survived because he can be whatever society needs him to be: a comic hero, a brooding avenger, an aging man trying to recapture his glory, a stoic utilitarian, an avatar of the privileged trying to atone for their privilege...

I'm starting to collect Bat Facts. They're like Chuck Norris Facts, but come from the Batman canon (comics, DCAU, etc.).

@BESW At least you can attribute all of yours ;)

- Batman defeated Lex Luthor with a glass of water.
- Batman has at least nine Batcaves. One is in Los Angeles. One is a submarine.
- Batman is so prepared, he died once just so he'd know what it's like.

@BESW If you're at all interested, I could set up a site like sheldonsquotes.com and share the advertising revenue with you :)

That's kind, but it's more of a hobby. I don't have a large enough collection or the time to add to it regularly.

- Batman shot a god with a used time-traveling bullet.

@BESW Bizarre...

7:16 AM

- Someone made an army of Batman clones, but they all killed themselves because being Batman is too intense to survive.

- Batman once stabbed a cassowary with a poisoned hummingbird.

@BESW On the plus side, it would help you collect faster, because it could be set up for people to submit their own.

Maybe when I'm finally done with this insane book project I can consider it.

@BESW Ah, yeah, you probably want to do useful work before investing time in a maybe project.

Trilingual social studies text slash tourist picture book with multiple authors, dozens of illustrators, no budget, and no central management with experience in the process of making a book like this.

@BESW That begs the questions - is it better to have central management that doesn't know what it's doing or no central management? Sounds like insane needs a few more * around it.

7:22 AM

I'm growing out my hair so it's easier to grip.

By 'central management' I mean "a guy from Boston who did a picture book on a Japanese village once and thought this would be cool."

I really like the guy, but he didn't just bite off more than he could chew; sometimes I think he's going to need a tracheotomy.

[falls over] The Green Arrow's only confidante just said "You can't fall in love with her; she's murdered four people in cold blood."

GA's lucky to get out of a single episode with that low of a kill count!

....Hey, it's John Barrowman doing a bad impression of himself.

@BESW Himself or Captain Jack?

@SimonGill There's not much difference anymore, is there?

- Batman told a man that Gotham Is. Not. Sparta.

@BESW I thought there was... he wasn't very captain jack in the brief bits of the reality tv search for a west end theatre lead role.

[shrug] I don't pay much attention, but most of the interviews I've seen give me the impression that writers are increasing making Captain Jack more like John.

Then again, I thought Jack went off-character after his first appearance.

@BESW Perhaps. Torchwood is a very different show now to what it was and how the characters started in Who.

7:41 AM

I tried to like Torchwood, but it started on a faulty premise: that there was a need for a 'more adult' Doctor Who. Doctor Who is freaking adult already, so all they could do to make TW more adult was adding swearing and sex.

@BESW Miracle Day was a much better version of that premise. It handled adult themes with much more emotional depth than they started the show with.

Maybe I'll look into it some day, but right now Netflix released 18 early Classic DW episodes for streaming.

@BESW That's a much better choice :)

9:27 AM

Hm. I'm trying to track down a 1980s (1988?) tuba solo called Caverns, by Frank Wiley, for background music in my campaign. So far all I can find is "buy the sheet music!"

10:22 AM

Good luck with that one.

10:42 AM

I saw it performed at a university recital a few weeks ago.

Along with the piano composition Makrokosmos, which I have already tracked down and will use extensively in the Astral Plane.

The university music department might be a place to start looking?

Yeah, when I can get my car to stop making like a Jumblie ship.

...um. That may be an obscure reference even by my standards. en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Jumblies

And there's where I forget that not every university department publishes stuff on the internet.

@BESW Maybe, but it was good enough to show what you mean.

@SimonGill Three cars in a row have leaked like sieves until they pop something too expensive to be worth replacing. This time my mechanics can't even find the problem.

@BESW Nasty :(