TRPG General Chat

doppelgreener

00:10

@BESW I liked reading that, because my brain insisted on reading that out as "RAWR-geddon," which made me think of Godzilla, and him bringing armageddon is a great mental image.

Phil

any answer that starts with 'this doesn't exactly answer your question' is asking for trouble...

doppelgreener

@Phil yes.

Phil

there's reframing a question and ignoring it entirely - the two are completely different things :D

BESW

00:32

Mmm. It also suffers from that back-up-putting phrase "you can do this easily."

Any time something's so easy to do that you don't bother to explain how to do it while explaining how to do it--that's condescension.

How-to manuals should never have bits left out as exercises for the reader.

Phil

indeed

Tritium21

@BESW That depends on the intent of the manual?

BESW

@Tritium21 "I realize that I am generalizing here, but, as is often the case when I generalize, I don't care." -Dave Barry

Tritium21

k

BESW

Aw. It got deleted before I could link to the frame-challenging meta advice.

Bradd Szonye

00:40

I’d ask what you’re referring to, but I don’t have rep to view deleted stuff.

Today I threw caution to the wind and added a fourth close vote before adding my answer to a question.

BESW

Oooer.

Phil

hmmm

Bradd Szonye

Because I think the question is technically Unclear but I had a pretty good guess what they were getting at.

Phil

disagree with that completely, but hey ho

the fact you had to guess at all means you shouldn't have answered :p

BESW

@BraddSzonye Somebody answered this question with a set of hints on how to make your own 2-player adventures.

Bradd Szonye

00:42

It’s a question I’ve seen many, many times before. It’s an educated guess.

Aha.

BESW

Things like "It's easy to re-skin monsters!"

Phil

there was a lovely sprinkling of condescending advice as well, just to round things off

BESW

Which... um... okay, glad to know you're not finding that challenging.

Bradd Szonye

Oy.

0

A: How to make D&D-like Alignment work

The best way to make alignment work is not to overthink it, and don’t try to enforce it. Alignment has only a few mechanical effects in the game, which apply mainly to creatures with an obvious metaphysical affinity (outsiders, undead, clerics). Alignment doesn’t determine how characters behave,...

Mine was for the alignment question.

Which I’m not sure it’s a good question. But it might be.

It could stand to be improved, is all I can say for certain.

And the answers given were sorta OK but not really how I solve that problem, so I thought it was worth answering if I could write the answer succinctly enough to beat the 5th close vote.

doppelgreener

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Since these terms are coming up a bit, the site may benefit from a brief Q&A that explains the concepts of nomothetic and ideographic behaviour or ideas, and important related concepts (if stuff like rules vs mimesis is important and relevant to such a Q&A). Academic papers can be intimidating or difficult to parse for some people after all, who may do perfectly well understanding these concepts if explained in more day to day language.

Bradd Szonye

00:45

Kept me brief and honest.

BESW

That's about the best answer I'd be able to give outside of "rip it out and burn it!"

Bradd Szonye

Yeah, and D&D 4-5 pretty much do rip it out and burn it, except for vestiges.

BESW

"Handle it gently, with tongs, and set it aside whenever it's a problem."

Bradd Szonye

Yeah, basically.

I don’t think it’s an awful system that needs to be ripped out with prejudice. It just needs to not be taken too seriously.

BESW

The big problem being that there are inbuilt system mechanics which force intimate association with 3.5 alignment.

doppelgreener

00:46

@BESW KRyan also suggested to treat good vs evil as incidental names for sides in an eternal war, and whether you're actually a good person or bad person is not necessarily correlated to the side you choose.

Bradd Szonye

(back in a few, foosball time)

doppelgreener

@BraddSzonye have fun!

Bradd Szonye

@doppelgreener Yeah, that’s not a terrible approach, just not my preferred one.

Phil

@doppelgreener I would actually argue that if terms like that are used in a question or answer then they need to be explained in place. I feel that separating that out into a Q&A is needlessly laborious. You cannot expect 90% of the people who use the site to understand those definitions, and I think they should follow the standard practice of defining your terms in a way your expected reader will understand

BESW

So you have to skirt around all those too, and they tie into a lot of other systems, and next thing you know "ignoring alignment when it's inconvenient" becomes itself inconvenient as you have to keep hacking alignment-based DR, alignment-detection spells, alignment-specific prereqs, and so forth.

I'm having some trouble getting to Ithaca on time. The mythology reference writes itself.

Tweeted by KyleKallgren on November 26, 2014 at 12:37 AM

doppelgreener

00:53

@Phil That is probably true, however it would also be easier on people like me: I'm not sure if I fully understand the terms and I am not confident in using them. I just know what they have meant in certain circumstances.

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener -- yeah, treating alignment as a set of archetypes makes much more sense than treating them as innate properties of something

Phil

@doppelgreener one option would be to hyperlink the words when they are used to dictionary sites with definitions?

BESW

Solution: blog entry Brian can link to, maybe on @Magician's blog.

Phil

or possibly that

Shalvenay

otherwise, what do you do when you're a Paladin tied up in the desert and dying of thirst, and a vampire shows up in the middle of a cool desert night and offers you some of his own blood to save you from otherwise-certain death?

BESW

00:55

@Phil Nope, he's using academic definitions, and even then he's modifying them to apply to RPGs in a way familiar to a very narrow segment of the academic community.

Phil

ah fair enough

Tritium21

...SE developers have plainly stated in the latest podcast that chat is the least important part of the platform.

Metool

@Shalvenay His supply of collected blood?

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@doppelgreener Yep. Post a meta on it?

Phil

@Tritium21 that's not unexpected at all

BESW

00:55

@Tritium21 We've known this for a very long time.

Shalvenay

@Metool: depending on the vampire and the environment -- it could be sharing some of his supply of nourishment, yes

Phil

and I agree with it tbh

BESW

17

Q: The role of chat at RPG Stack Exchange

TL;DR? Meta is where consensus happens. Questions and answers, have to be good questions and answers without chat. Any Stack Exchange site has three realms for interaction, Main, Meta, and Chat. Main is where the business of the site happens, in our case we ask and answer questions abou...

Phil

@BESW yeah, that question sums things up nicely

Shalvenay

(one of my character ideas for a modern-fantasy type game is a vampire who has taken to drinking the blood of livestock instead of human blood, and works the night shift, flying cargo planes for UPS)

(along with him having a signature insulated bottle/flask of chilled blood with him on every trip)

Miniman

00:58

@Shalvenay Why chilled?

Shalvenay

@Miniman: anti-spoilage, but it's not essential

BESW

Because ice would dilute it.

Miniman

@Shalvenay Fair enough. I'd assume vampires would prefer to drink warm blood though.

Phil

@Miniman don't you know blood connoisseurs always drinks their blood cold? It accentuates individual flavour

Shalvenay

(I seriously see him getting five-gallon jugs of cow's blood from the local meatpacking plant :)

Miniman

00:59

In the same way that (most) humans prefer cold water to warm.

BESW

[insert reference to chilled/unchilled beer controversy]

Miniman

Difference is, beer doesn't really have a 'natural state'.

Adeptus

@Shalvenay Not entirely a new idea. See Angel, Forever Knight, and probably others

Miniman

Blood is only available in the natural environment warm.

Shalvenay

@Adeptus: yeah -- I tend to push that subversion a bit more extremely than most though, as well as sort of de-supernaturalizing it some

BESW

01:04

Night Watch, Twilight...

Adeptus

@Miniman One could argue that beer's "natural state" is unbrewed

Shalvenay

i.e. vampires are just humans who have adapted to blood as a primary source of nourishment, don't take well to UV exposure, and can't stand the smell of allicin

doppelgreener

0

Q: What do nomothetic and idiographic mean for RPGs?

A few times recently, the concepts of nomothetic and idiographic have come up in use on the site — particularly from Brian Ballsun-Stanton, who wrote a paper in which those concepts are pivotal. Answers such as in How do I handle a group that does not understand the 'assumption rule'? explain the...

discussion terminology

Miniman

@Adeptus You mean...grains?

Shalvenay

@Miniman: mash?

Miniman

01:07

@Shalvenay I really hope 'Blood as a primary source of nourishment' is supernatural, because otherwise vampires are going to have very short lifetimes

Shalvenay

@Miniman: let me link you a wb.se question on this

4

A: Could a humanesque creature derive all its nutrients from drinking blood?

Addition to TimB's answer: Expelling the waste might also be taken care of differently - if the vampire were able to digest the blood quickly enough, it could simply drink and return. This would require a powerful blood filtration system, much more so than human's, but it might be doable. As soo...

darnit, that link goes to an answer in the middle of the question :P

27

Q: Could a humanesque creature derive all its nutrients from drinking blood?

Vampires are a very common creature in various fantasy stories, they drink blood and often human food poisons them. Forgetting for the time being the additional rumours/fiction such as sunlight, crosses and immortality could such a being sustain itself from drinking blood alone? Obviously human ...

reality-check

better.

The Oracle

3

Q: What do nomothetic and idiographic mean for RPGs?

A few times recently, the concepts of nomothetic and idiographic have come up in use on the site — particularly from Brian Ballsun-Stanton, who wrote a paper in which those concepts are pivotal. Answers such as in How do I handle a group that does not understand the 'assumption rule'? explain the...

discussion terminology

Shalvenay

@Miniman: the idea that a creature could use blood as a primary source of nourishment is not necessarily supernatural -- the main factor that prevents a human from doing so out-of-the-box is the inability to deal with excess iron, which is a piece of biology that would likely turn up given pressure to do so

Miniman

@Shalvenay Ah, ok. Sorry, I was going off 'vampires are just humans who have adapted' rather than evolving a fairly different metabolism

Shalvenay

that'd be the main adaptation I'm referring to, even -- to me, "supernatural" says something about the biological impossibility of a capability

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

01:22

@doppelgreener There should be alarm klaxons.... You've just put out philosopher bait...

I suspect someone will have to translate my answer though

Tritium21

Worldbuilding is surprising SE staff every day

Bradd Szonye

33

Q: How do I handle a group that does not understand the 'assumption rule'?

1st rule of D&D (as of 3rd edition/pathfinder): The GM is the final arbiter on all rules. I understand this, completely, and do not disagree. That said, I'm having trouble with a group that doesn't seem to understand what I call the 'assumption rule,' which is as follows. Assumption Rule: Unles...

pathfinder gm-techniques

Shalvenay

@Tritium21: how so?

Bradd Szonye

This question is interesting in that it sort of lays out there the underlying assumption a lot of RPGs have about GM system mastery.

Tritium21

They didnt think it would make it out of preposal.

Bradd Szonye

01:30

Which has all sorts of implications.

Like, lots of players are afraid to try GMing because they’re not comfortable with system mastery, or with the skills of a referee.

Shalvenay

@BraddSzonye: yeah -- I wouldn't feel comfortable at all in any D&D edition as a GM

Bradd Szonye

The Lazy Dungeon Master touches on this with a suggestion to delegate the referee job to another player.

Shalvenay

the only reason I'm able to do so for the PbP FAE game I'm running is because there just isn't that much referee work to deal with

Bradd Szonye

@Shalvenay That’s a really common sentiment. But I’ve played a lot of great sessions with newbie GMs who had almost no system mastery.

And I personally have the most fun GMing systems that are very new to me.

BESW

Heck, I started GMing with a group where none of us knew what we were doing.

Shalvenay

01:33

@BraddSzonye: not that I wouldn't like to try it, though I also have the problem that I am not a vanilla sort of guy when it comes to adventure design

Bradd Szonye

I discussed this with @BESW one day, about how a lot of my favorite GM experiences have come before I attained system mastery with a new game.

@BESW Yeah, that’s pretty much how I got started with RPGs in the first place.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

Step 1. Get the ideas out there. Which produces sentences like "To summarise from a ludic perspective, a game, embracing phenominology, seeks to recreate the significant aspects of qualia-experienced-from-real as reproduced-in-game. Deviations from expectations produced as the historical predictions of experience in the real shatter the desirability and authenticity of game."

... oh this answer will require a significant amount of translation...

Shalvenay

@BrianBallsun-Stanton: seconded!

Bradd Szonye

Borrowed my friend’s Moldvay Basic set and just read Keep on the Borderlands and ran it through my friends, who had mostly never played.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

But hey, maybe linguistic barriers map to a spherical plane. And I can just keep going in one direction until I reach my desired clarity? :)

BESW

01:34

@BrianBallsun-Stanton [rolls vs dribble]

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

In other news, it amuses me to see people flag my "do not argue in comments" comments....

5

Bradd Szonye

Heck, I have a bit of a philosophy and academic background, and I can’t read that.

BESW

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Obsolete? Offensive? Spam? Please say they're flagging as spam.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BraddSzonye Do not bait the philosopher, for he may answer your question.

@BESW usually obsolete or too chatty.

Bradd Szonye

Ah I would have guessed “not constructive.”

Shalvenay

01:38

@BraddSzonye -- for instance, I'm quite willing to play fast and loose with alignments in the sense that nothing is inherently good or evil

Bradd Szonye

Alignments are one of those things that cause endless can-of-worms trouble in armchair discussions, but I’ve only ever seen turn up in one or two common forms in actual play.

Shalvenay

but that can trip folks up, especially those used to playing alignment-tied characters such as paladins and various cleric flavors

Bradd Szonye

1. When your buddy is saying that what you did is evil, and you take it as a personal attack because you think it’s a perfectly sane and righteous thing to do.

2. When the DM says you did something that has some profound penalty for your character.

BESW

Interesting. @BrianBallsun-Stanton Where does Fate fall into this? It's rooted in the idea that mechanical "models-of-real" should "be disregarded when the model strays too far from what should happen," but it defines "what should happen" in terms of story cohesion--story.

Bradd Szonye

D&D3 did away with the vast majority of #2 cases, but it was a real problem in AD&D.

Shalvenay

01:41

@BraddSzonye I, personally tend to think of alignment as a function of how the character behaves, not the other way around

Bradd Szonye

That’s the way most sorts of D&D have described it, yeah.

Although another sticky point is that alignment works very differently for the DM and the players.

Shalvenay

so, just RP your character as you feel they should be RPed

Bradd Szonye

Like, DMs use it as clues for how they should play their NPCs.

Shalvenay

and then the alignment will tag along

Bradd Szonye

”This guy is honorable. That guy’s a bad guy.”

And it’s easy for players to think like that too, if they came up with the alignment first and the personality second.

Heck, a lot of alignment problems come from player hangups about what they vaguely think alignment should be, based on past experience, and often a fair bit of gamer-on-gamer abuse.

BESW

01:44

I think a lot of D&D alignment issues could be avoided by recognising that D&D alignment can't map to real-world notions of morality in any useful way. If we labelled the axes "purple/orange" and "wet/dry" instead of "good/evil" and "lawful/chaotic," without changing any of the definitions of the terms, it might do a world of good.

Bradd Szonye

I imagine it’s worse for folks with AD&D 1 experience, than (say) somebody who came into the game with D&D 4 where alignment was vestigial.

@BESW Yep, totally agree.

Shalvenay

@BESW: agreed there

the connotations cause huge hangups

Bradd Szonye

One big problem is that what most people think of as “moral” is best described by D&D neutral.

Or at the very least, not-evil and not-chaotic.

But they tend to think that D&D good = their personal concept of “good” or “moral.”

What I Learned in Philosophy 101.

Shalvenay

also, an admittedly contrived example that shows just how bad alignment can flop: my vampire-turned-UPS first officer from earlier hears a bunch of banging and yelling from a ULD in the back of the main deck cargo compartment while he's double-checking to make sure all the containers got loaded correctly (b/c being overweight and out of balance makes for a bad day)

Bradd Szonye

Brian can probably relate.

AgentPaper

01:46

Honestly, the issue with alignment isn't alignment at all. It's a perfectly fine and functional and even useful system for the typical heroic fantasy game and doesn't really need any changing.

Bradd Szonye

@AgentPaper Totally agreed.

AgentPaper

The problem comes when you try to stick to it's simplified version of morals in a world that doesn't run off of simple morals.

Shalvenay

he goes to investigate -- and finds an elf tied up inside one of the ULDs! Turns out, though, the elf is wearing a holy symbol and a paladin's tabard...

(ULD = unit load device btw, it's an airplane cargo container)

doppelgreener

@BrianBallsun-Stanton This doesn't sound too bad.

AgentPaper

If your game has characters that don't mesh well with the alignment system, then that's simply a sign that you probably should be using something more complex, or nothing at all, in it's place.

Bradd Szonye

01:47

@AgentPaper I usually find that it isn’t even necessary.

Characters like that can just usually be rationalized to fit into whatever box you like.

Shalvenay

@AgentPaper -- agreed, save for systems like AD&D/2e that try to force alignment into the picture -- you find yourself in a bit of a bind in that case then

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BESW add that to the outline

doppelgreener

@BESW Dang, good question

Bradd Szonye

Which leads to armchair arguments over which box fits best, but that isn’t a problem in actual play.

BESW

@AgentPaper I generally agree except for one thing: alignment is broken because it's self-contradictory. If it were internally consistent, you'd be spot-on.

Shalvenay

01:49

going back to my example -- the F/O offers the badly malnourished and dehydrated paladin a cap-ful from his thermos -- but when the paladin realizes that he was just made to drink blood and that the first officer's a vampire, the paladin springs on the vampire as soon as he is untied!

Bradd Szonye

@BESW Probably too broad of a claim to make for all games with alignment (and its thinly-veiled equivalents).

Even for all D&Ds.

AgentPaper

@BESW But see, my argument is, if you're worried enough about morals and philosophical stuff in your game to care about those inconsistencies, then that means you shouldn't be using the alignment system. It's simply not built for that.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BESW oh, fate is fundamentally nomothetic. "For a good story, follow these rules"

Bradd Szonye

@Shalvenay Contrived circumstances are not usually a problem for alignment systems unless they bump into one of the “one drop of evil” corners that sometimes crop up.

BESW

@BraddSzonye I'm pretty sure we're talking in the context of 3.5-like alignments? Do I need to add "3.5-like" every time I say "alignment"?

Shalvenay

01:51

the Paladin's actions are lawful in the 'good riddance to vampires' sense, but unlawful when interpreted in the context of the actual law -- a giant part 91 problem

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

gah, no, not doing alignment debates

they fail basic freshman criteria of "able to argue about"

Bradd Szonye

@BESW I wasn’t talking about just 3.5-like alignments and specifically mentioned other games early on.

doppelgreener

@BESW There's another good reason the alignments are broken: they describe people and acts in terms which are not exclusive from each other. This means many normal people or everyday acts can be described excellently from the point of view of multiple different alignments.

AgentPaper

Actually, thinking about it, those exact inconsistencies might well be the strongest virtue of the alignment system. If it was perfectly consistent, or at least enough that nobody ever really noticed, then there would be less people finding those inconsistencies and realizing that real morality is a complex issue that has no clear definitions.

doppelgreener

@AgentPaper We don't need D&D to teach us about that.

We just need a functioning game system.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

01:53

@AgentPaper A-hem.

Bradd Szonye

Alignments would be so much easier to deal with sufficient philosophers in the game group.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

I belueve about 20 centuries of authors would disagree with you on that one. There are clear definitions. But they require discussion understanding and agreement, and aren't enforced by omnipotent super-beards in sky which reign over the omnipotent beards in sky which...

Bradd Szonye

As long as they aren’t Kantian, those guys are jerks.

doppelgreener

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Correcting myself; yeah. There's a lot of philosophical thought on morality.

Shalvenay

in general -- 'lawful' as an alignment is left with a problem of the 'legal sandwich' -- you have two different codes/laws/philosophies/religions saying "I'm right and you're wrong" to each other

BESW

01:53

@AgentPaper [gestures at years of One True Interpretation arguments] It's not working.

Shalvenay

@BESW: exactly

BESW

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Then the definitions as currently given aren't clear.

AgentPaper

Haha, well, was just a thought. Obviously it's worked for some people, at least.

Bradd Szonye

Oh I have been in so many flamewars between Kantians and Utilitarians arguing over what alignment really means.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BESW yes. it's very work in progress

@BraddSzonye don't forget virtue ethics :)

Bradd Szonye

01:55

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Heh yeah, I just mention those two specifically because a lot of armchair D&D philosophers tend to gravitate toward them.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BESW you've basically asked for a fairly interesting paper. It feels like this answer will be around 5000 words before translation

BESW

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Aye, just pointing out a particular context point for reference in the progress.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Woo!

Bradd Szonye

Some generalize it to deontology versus consequentialism.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BraddSzonye bah. how prosaic and western.

::sigh::

Tritium21

I just want to roll dice and hit things

Bradd Szonye

01:57

“Supererogation” by some guy at Stanford

BESW

Whereas, because most of my non-Bahá'í morality discussions were Jesuit-influenced during my formative years, I think of 3.5 alignment debates in terms of fundamental faith/works salvation ethics.

Bradd Szonye

This is a thing I first encountered through J. O. Urmson's seminal 1958 article, “Saints and Heroes.”

It’s the idea that there’s morality, and then there’s being a hero.

Your average good person is moral. Not many are heroes.

In D&D-style alignment systems, that maps to neutral = moral and good = supererogatory.

Tritium21

Mechanically, Chaotic-Neutral is a superior alignment.

Bradd Szonye

I imagine there would be a lot fewer alignment flamewars if you had evil, good, and saintly/heroic/whatever, instead of evil, neutral, and good.

Shalvenay

@BraddSzonye: more or less

also factor in the banality of evil, though

Bradd Szonye

02:01

Because I think a lot of people really have a hard time getting their heads around the idea that neutral people are basically decent and moral and (in plain English) good.

Shalvenay

a large bureaucracy can easily wind up LE despite the good moral character and best intentions of all its participants

Bradd Szonye

And so they think that only Good people are moral, and Neutral people are shady somehow.

I think there’s a similar trap, because of the nomenclature, to think that only Lawful people are law-abiding, and again Neutral people are shady somehow.

Shalvenay

yeah

there're more traps in the Lawful-Chaotic axis, even

Tritium21

I wish they renamed the good-neutral-evil axis the "will demons, anything, or angels kill me"

3

Bradd Szonye

Yeah, well because cultural relativity is a lot easier to see on that axis.

@Tritium21 Haha. I’m a fan of Supernatural so the answer is “yes”

Tritium21

02:04

cause, using the 9 alignment boxes for actually roleplaying is silly. roleplay your character. thats the alignment is just for extra damage from the paladin.

Shalvenay

legal sandwich scenarios where you can wind up with two LG characters at "one of us dies" odds because of different legal axiom-sets

as well as deeper-seated disagreements about what lawfulness itself is

Bradd Szonye

I like where they’ve gone with the paladin in D&D 5. Cuz now, you don’t even need alignment for that, smiting is for whoever the paladin thinks needs smiting.

Shalvenay

I, personally, derive it strongly from due process

@BraddSzonye -- yeah

it makes the Pally far more manageable

Bradd Szonye

But “upgrade to D&D 5” would be an unacceptably snarky answer to that guy’s question.

Thanks for the chat folks! I’m off.

Tritium21

Arnt there like 8 other paladin variants in the books? one for each allignment

just... alignment is there to see if smite works, and other magical effects. Your character's morality should at most inform alignment, not the other way around.

AgentPaper

02:10

In 5e? There's 3 paladin variants, none of which are tied to an alignment directly. Four if you count fallen paladins, which again aren't necessarily evil (though their abilities are pretty dark).

Tritium21

3.5

I remember seeing in one of the books, a true neutral paladin, and going 'wat' when i saw it

AgentPaper

Yeah I remember seeing a bunch of varieties for each type. Don't remember what book it was in.

BESW

It took me three reads to parse this sentence. Bravo.

> Deviations from expectations produced as the historical predictions of experience in the real shatter the desirability and authenticity of game.

(I think it means "If the game doesn't do what you expected it to do based on your experiences outside of the game, then you'll stop liking the game.")

Tritium21

02:26

why do academics choose to obfuscate what they are talking about?

Pixie

Argh, the chat looked like it doubleposted, but then it didn't. That was odd.

BESW

@Tritium21 That.... is a non-starter.

Pixie

As I attempted to say, hey, a Pathfinder question I can probably answer. That is rare.

BESW

Specialised terminology is an inevitable and useful evolution in every community.

Tritium21

If it takes a reasonably intelligent person three times to parse a sentence, there is something wrong with the sentence.

BESW

02:30

It's better to assume Brian is used to thinking about this sort of thing with specialised terms which don't have easily translatable common equivalent phrases.

There's nothing inherently wrong with using specialised terms which mean exactly what you want to say, regardless of their accessibility to the layperson.

It's only context which makes such phrases inappropriate, and by saying he's choosing to use them you're implying that he's not making a good-faith effort to provide useful answers.

AgentPaper

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, try a 12 year old. They're much smarter." - Albert Einstein

Tritium21

If you are not linking your academic paper to laypeople as an answer on a q&a site, thats fine.

BESW

So... you're saying that Brian's deliberately being hard to understand, and that his efforts to provide his study and expertise are wrong because he's having trouble explaining highly complex ideas in very simple language?

Tritium21

In short... Yes.

Its as bad as answering in church latin

BESW

I think that's kinda silly, and dismissive.

He's using a language of speciality to explain concepts in that speciality, and he's obviously doing his best to help provide context for the layperson.

AgentPaper

02:34

I don't know about what he intended or what his expertise is, but if the answer is written in a way that is hard to understand, then its not a good answer.

2

BESW

@AgentPaper Agreed, but that's not what @Tritium21's saying.

Tritium21

Thats exactly what i was saying

BESW

He's saying it's inherently wrong to use that language.

Tritium21

....in an answer, to laypeople

AgentPaper

It's not morally wrong, but it's not a useful answer.

BESW

02:35

Calling it deliberate obfuscation?

Saying there's something wrong with the sentence?

Tritium21

I'm sorry, if you have to add foot notes and links to explain the words you are using, instead of changing the words, its deliberate obfuscation

AgentPaper

Mind linking the question in question?

BESW

[raises eyebrow] When you can provide the right words to replace 'em, it's your privilege and duty to do so in order to improve the quality of the site.

Tritium21

31

A: How do I handle a group that does not understand the 'assumption rule'?

For someone as nomothetic as you, there is only one option: Leave. I've been in your position. I've, in fact, written a paper (along with @CRoss and @mxyzplk) about different approaches to the rules. This group, as described, is intensely idiographic: they prefer the traditions of their group a...

theres one answer... let me find another

BESW

You aren't approaching this from "there are better ways to write that." You're approaching it from "academics are elitist."

That's... well, offensive and non-productive both.

Tritium21

02:39

They are, and there is

Miniman

@BESW Also, "everything that academics use technical language to express can be expressed through non-technical language." - Which is just plain incorrect.

BESW

Brian is currently involved in trying to do exactly what you say he should be trying to do. What is the problem you're trying to solve which isn't being acted on?

@Miniman Also this. Which I thought I'd said by talking about the usefulness of specialised language, but maybe it wasn't clear.

If a term is the right one to use, it should be used in favour of a more commonly-understood but less accurate term.

That's how "the seasons are caused by the Earth's tilt changing a hemispheres' distance from the Sun" type misunderstandings are created.

AgentPaper

@Miniman Not true. If you can't explain it through non-technical language, then it's not actually something you understand. Technical language is something you use to make it easier to talk about concepts that you and the person you're talking to already understand, so you don't have to use the very long explanation of what it is every time.

Tritium21

and using such terms out of the context of talking to another person in the same field is elitist.

AgentPaper

Not necessarily.

More likely it's just a mistake.

Though it can certainly come off as elitist.

BESW

02:50

I return to the central issue: What is the goal of this complaint? Are the answers bad? Downvote them. Is Brian's ongoing meta activity to help explain his concepts inappropriate? Leave a note in the meta to that effect. Should he copy-paste five tagnentially-related paragraphs into each answer instead of using a particularly loaded word? Suggest that.

Yes, some academic fields value over-jargonising. Broadly expanding that to say ALL academics DELIBERATELY obfuscate their good-will attempts to help people is demonstrably wrong as well as useless.

AgentPaper

Yeah, I agree on the second part.

BESW

So talk to the specific issue at hand.

AgentPaper

For the first, though, I don't think it's really useful to try and end a discussion with, "Well, just let the site mechanics deal with it!"

Metool

Stars everywhere!

More stars! Gah!

BESW

@AgentPaper I'm not trying to end a discussion. I'm saying that I haven't seen a discussion topic which is useful to chat about yet.

I've seen a complaint.

I've seen massive generalisations.

I haven't seen a goal, so I can't speak to it, so I don't know why we're having this conversation.

AgentPaper

02:53

Also, I have a lot of posts on the chat feed. What's up with that?

Metool

@AgentPaper If I had to guess, someone was trying to knock old stuff off the screen.

Alternately, you have a huge fan.

BESW

Brian's using jargon. Yes. This has been addressed as a less-than-useful thing. No need to re-iterate it.

Miniman

@Metool Well, "As it turns out, humans are, in fact, living creatures." is there because a lot of people thought it was (I'm guessing) funny.

BESW

A mode of action to correct it has been taken. I have not seen this current chat discussion offer any opinions about it.

Metool

@Miniman I can't even see that one anymore.

Miniman

02:56

@Metool Yeah, there's a lot of 1-star lines.

BESW

(When the conversation's over I'll trim up the star bar; its default function is to help people coming into chat see what they've missed, so generally one or two stars per topic is best.)

AgentPaper

Yeah, it's basically just our discussion in summary up there, haha.

BESW

So aside from "answers are better when they are easy to understand," which I don't think anyone is arguing with, what's the topic? How academics are elitist? I don't want to have that conversation, thanks, it's nonconstructive and overgeneralised to uselessness unless it's about Brian--and then it's gossip.

AgentPaper

Yeah, that's about all I wanted to say anyways.

BESW

We could talk about where the line is drawn between common jargon and uncommon jargon--for example, whether terminology in published works about RPGs is unreasonable to expect RPG experts to know.

But since the goal of that is probably a site guideline or policy, shouldn't it be held in meta where more people will be able to contribute and the ideas can get voted on?

AgentPaper

03:00

Though, for the record, you were arguing against that very concept. I mean, it's right there in the chat feed.

BESW

@AgentPaper Nuh-uh. Sorry if I was unclear, but I was arguing that sometimes it's not easy or even possible for a user to express themselves that clearly.

Miniman

@AgentPaper "answers are better when they are easy to understand" still takes a back seat to "answers are better when they are correct".

AgentPaper

Fair enough. There's no argument anymore, though, so you can stop asking why it exists. ;p

BESW

If the only way Brian can give a correct answer is to use terms some people have trouble with... okay.

That's not an awesome triple-A five-star two-thumbs-up answer, but it's not deliberately obfuscating either.

Miniman

Or elitist.

BESW

03:04

This site only works if we assume good faith on the part of its participants until we get a heckuvalotta evidence to the contrary.

Miniman

@BESW Except that BESW guy, he's always up to no good.

4

AgentPaper

Agentpaper too. I mean, can that guy let ANYTHING slide without bringing up a counter-point? I mean, really now.

BESW

@Miniman This is a thoroughly redacted fact.

Pixie

Is it possible to break up block quotes that come one after another?

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

::sigh::

Yes, pixie. Add a linebreak

then a new >

bah.

Pixie

03:07

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I did that, and it doesn't seem to be working.

BESW

Two linebreaks, or a <br>.

Pixie

@BESW That's not working, either. D:

BESW

Whereat?

Pixie

I had already tried the <br>. Maybe it's just not updating properly...

doppelgreener

@BESW @trogdor I just finished atomic robo volume 5 and also the free comic book day 2011 comic about Emma's science project!! I loved all of it.

Pixie

03:09

Working on an answer for this question (but haven't posted anything yet, I'm just going off the preview).

5

Q: For Pathfinder, how do I go about creating mutagens and extracts as an alchemist?

I'm very new to d&d and I was immediately drawn to alchemist when our group's now dm informed us that she had purchased a Pathfinder guide book. Using extracts and mutagens in combat sounded enticing but I've hit level four in our campaign now without being able to use any. The dm had played path...

pathfinder alchemist

doppelgreener

I usually do this:

> blockquote

<!-- -->

> more blockquote

the  is an empty HTML comment. it means nothing at all, and is basically just another blank line, but it breaks up the quotes.

AgentPaper

You could also just say, "And" in between.

Pixie

@doppelgreener It worked! Thank you.

doppelgreener

@Pixie You're welcome!

Pixie

@AgentPaper I may wind up with text in between them once I'm done, but right now I have a summary of how it all works together at the top, followed by the supporting text under specific headings (Preparing Extracts, etc.).

Pixie

03:23

Maybe I'm going overboard, but I want to make it as clear as I can... oh geeze I haven't even gotten to the mutagen part yet either.

Miniman

@Pixie It doesn't look as though you've got competition for it though.

Pixie

@Miniman Heh, true. I'm honestly surprised because it feels like a pretty basic question. But that's part of the reason I want to be really clear in pointing the OP to the information in the rules. The section is pretty long, and it can be easy to overlook things like that. (The gist of it is that they work almost exactly the same as spells but only you can benefit from their effects without the Infusion discovery.)

doppelgreener

03:48

I just came across the situation of the word cleave.

Observe the first definition: "to adhere closely; stick; cling (usually followed by to)."

Observe the second: "to split or divide by or as if by a cutting blow, especially along a natural line of division, as the grain of wood."

So I can cleave a shelf to the wall, or I can cleave a shelf from the wall, and both will be very opposite effects but use the same word.

BESW

Two distinct words which evolved into homophones.

AgentPaper

Welcome to the English language, where things mean what they mean and also the opposite of what they mean.

3

Aw, I pushed my glue-eating monk comment off the feed. :(

BESW

PIE *gloi- and *gleubh-, "to stick" and "to slice" respectively.

doppelgreener

@BESW Holy cow, what a set of etymologies

Adeptus

@AgentPaper And people wonder why there are so many arguments about RAW...

Pixie

03:53

English is funny like that.

doppelgreener

Middle English creole hypothesis

The Middle English creole hypothesis is the concept that the English language is a creole, i.e., a language that developed from a pidgin. The vast differences between Old and Middle English have led some historical linguists to claim that the language underwent creolisation at the time of Norman conquest. The theory was first proposed in 1977 by C. Bailey and K. Maroldt and has since found both supporters and detractors in the academic world. The argument in favour of calling Middle English a creole comes from the extreme reduction in inflected forms from Old English to Middle English. The system...

BESW

Speaking of etymologies, someone earlier today asked a Harry Potter question on SF.SE assuming video game definitions of "wizard" and "warlock" were how they'd "always" been used.

Adeptus

@doppelgreener So, the feat Great Cleave lets you stick things together really well?

BESW

Trivia of the Day: "Mana" is an Austronesian word for social/spiritual power, and was only joined with modern Western magic traditions in the 1960s and 70s through the works of Larry Niven.

doppelgreener

Summary: when two people have no language in common but must communicate, such as traders in ports, they tend to create a language in common just good enough to get by, called a pidgin. When the language takes on a life of its own and stabilises, it becomes a creole. There is a theory that our current version of English evolved from a creole.

AgentPaper

03:56

Basically, English is the bastard child of Old English and Norman?

And then us americans got a hold of it...

BESW

doppelgreener

@AgentPaper Well, not just you. There's also Canadian English, and Australian English, which are both somewhere between British and American English in separate ways.

BESW

Long before English was dialectised in colonies, it was influenced by (literal) familial association with the French, and by Renaissance obsession with Latin.

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