TRPG General Chat - 2014-03-24 (page 1 of 2)

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12:28 AM

Following the Twitter ban in Turkey, Turkish twitter activity is up 138%.

5 hours later…

5:02 AM

Today's D&D Next column posits it has solved an issue I haven't really noticed: long time spent on equipment shopping for starting characters. It doesn't talk about laboriously browsing through hundreds if not thousands of magic items once you get your pick, but of starting mostly mundane equipment.

In my experience, it's always been a "get a weapon and armor that your class uses, adventuring pack if you feel like it, go" kind of deal. Said adventuring packs have explicitly been there: a bunch of generic useful equipment like sleeping bags and torches. We mostly just assumed characters had it...

I guess this goes together with the old-school emphasis on mundane gear and requiring you state you have rope with you?..

Ugh, every time there's a new article on D&D Next I'm like, "...Guys. Guys stop. You fired Monte, that was supposed to fix this."

@Magician Actually for one of my recent Pathfinder characters I spent... an hour-ish putting together a list of mundane resources. The weapon and armor were the easy part.

There were adventuring packs, but they didn't have everything I needed.

That is what I'm wondering. In our games we've just kinda assumed people had things it was reasonable for them to have. But other groups would play differently.

This was largely because magic items immediately overshadowed the mundane ones in both utility and price.

My groups tend to assume that fiddly small-detail things like whetstones, ink, extra quills, etc are in your pack

But problem-solving tools like ropes & crowbars get purchased

And mostly it's because we tend to get very creative with those sorts of things, so we shell out to get 'em so that we can absolutely state that we've got 'em.

The things one can do with a crowbar alone.

5:22 AM

So it's about the focus of the game. If the game is about getting into the nitty-gritty of being an adventurer and how they accomplish things, making the tough decisions of whether you want a crowbar or a collapsible ladder with you, you'd spent a lot of time reading the equipment list. If it's about the action of being an adventurer and accomplishment of things...

(stupid enter key, so prominent and easy to press)

...you'd likely handwave such things as encumbrance unless events demanded you pay attention to it.

4e, with its layer of abstractness created by powers, encouraged the latter. Your skill or power tells us you've done it, it's up to you to describe how, inventing circumstance and resources as appropriate.

> Maven In Star Wars SAGA, it is possible to build a Jedi who grants herself and her party two rounds of actions before a surprise round if the enemy ambushes her, thus making her somehow /more/ prepared if caught by surprise.

Does she come with a blindfold and earplugs?

There was a time in 3.5 where when I made characters I always spent at least 100g on the jewellery and adornment tables in the Arms & Equipment Guide.

My catfolk's mane was filled with trinkets and baubles and shinies and danglies, and I knew exactly what they all were.

@BESW ...which is exorbitant for a 1st level character, and meaningless around level 3.

Exactly.

I also felt that if you were going to make tables for such things, it was criminally lazy to only provide copper, silver, and gold options.

If ever there was an opportunity to justify padding your book with useless tables this was it.

5:38 AM

@Magician Correct; this game was such that the nuances of what we had would be significant.

(this brings us back to No Such Thing As D&D et al)

@BESW Options for what? Currency to use for purchase?

No, the actual jewellery.

Put it this way: this is the "clothing" table, of which less than half a dozen items have any mechanical value.

user image

And this is the jewellery/accessories table, of which exactly none have mechanical value:

user image

If you want to pad your book (which they so obviously and desperately did), why not invent elven moon-wire to fashion trinkets from, and provide a section on how finely crafted druidic ironwood combs provide diplomatic bonuses when dealing with elementals?

5:56 AM

...yeah, A&EG was the one 3ed book I didn't buy.

They dedicated a page and a half to a table of hirelings one might want and what their skills would be, which consisted of informing me that a shepherd would have Handle Animal and a blacksmith would have Craft (blacksmithing).

(It also informed me that a blacksmith makes more than a shepherd, and that a blacksmith stays in one place to ply his craft while a shepherd has to move around.)

@Magician I didn't either; it was left behind at my place after a session and nobody ever claimed to be missing their copy, so I kept it.

@BESW That would be lovely, actually.

Though more lovely would just be: "If you want some jewelry it'll cost about 100gp for these things and 10gp for these other things. Here's some materials jewelry might use in your setting."

(shapow, an entire dozen pages go up in flames and get replaced by a paragraph and a small table.)

6:12 AM

You clearly do not remember the 3.x motto: when in doubt, add a table.

then again, it's the approach of everything in the 3rd edition realm to define everything as much as humanly possible, it seems (whilst then leaving people to puzzle around in the billions of holes which they cannot possibly expect to cover)

@BESW Apparently I have not had enough exposure to 3.x

And I have had some healthy exposure to Fate, where the approach to this is: "My character wears an absurd amount of jewelry." "Ok."

Heck, it would be well within the 3.x ethos to include a section on paste.

Craft checks to make paste, Spot checks to recognise it, complex formulae to determine the prices for paste versions of various accessories...

@BESW And then to omit the description of how paste is actually used or gets consumed.

@JonathanHobbs Umm.

A rhinestone, paste or diamante is a diamond simulant made from rock crystal, glass or acrylic. Originally, rhinestones were rock crystals gathered from the river Rhine, hence the name, although some were also found in areas like the Alps. The availability was greatly increased in the 18th century when the Alsatian jeweller Georg Friedrich Strass had the idea to imitate diamonds by coating the lower side of glass with metal powder. Hence, rhinestones are called strass in many European languages. Rhinestones can be used as imitations of diamonds, and some manufacturers even manage to ...

Well then! I was thinking glue or skinpaint.

6:18 AM

"Paste" is also used more generally to indicate fake gems of any sort.

I have never heard of this term.

Way #15 to frustrate a person who enjoys consistently styled and written documents: Make all headings in section #11 have no spacing between their numbering and titles.

The best thing Word 2010 did was place emphasis on document styles and make them useful.

@JonathanHobbs Chalk up another bit of random knowledge to watching Mathnet.

(Square One TV and the Boxcar Children are responsible for an astonishing amount of my general knowledge.)

@JonathanHobbs I am currently using two interns to standardise styles between submissions for a literary magazine before I drop them into the layout.

Although, seriously, Word is still really stupid about styles.

For example, if I want an indent of 0.125'', I can have it--but when I revisit the style settings it has rounded up to 0.13''. Bizarrely the style's indent setting is still 0.125'', but if I ever press "Okay" while the setting is 0.13'', it automatically changes to the rounded-up value.

This means that every time I look at the style settings I must remember to either press "Cancel" or --if I make any change to the style-- I have to re-type 0.125'' in addition to whatever changes I wanted to make.

[stabs Word with a poisoned hummingbird]

...Eeyup, expected that downvote.

6:38 AM

@BESW ouch.

clearly word is not a device for professional printing.

@BESW which one?

@JonathanHobbs This one.

@JonathanHobbs And yet, Microsoft is working so hard to make their Suite do Everything For Everyone. It's the Fallacy of D&D Universality writ large.

@BESW so far I've just seen them make it good enough for office environment documents, and that's about it. Producers of books have other tools available more suited to the task.

@BESW "The obvious solution is to make non-combat challenges more combat-like by rolling more d20s per situation to be resolved." -- In the very first paragraph of the previous section, I thought exactly this. You might want to acknowledge that earlier to dismiss me thinking that for the entire rest of the section. Something like "we could just add more rolls, but I'll get to that."

"The original 4e math is a little funky though" - shove this paragraph and the next one to the end perhaps; it's not important at this point and interrupts the point you're leading the person through. At this point you're trying to demonstrate something about d20 systems, not advise them on how to use skill challenges.

Also, the fact that 95% of any given character sheet or book is focused on combat (and that such a phenomenon leads to non-combat situations feeling like they're a break from the rules) is an extremely important point, probably moreso than the fact d20s are unreliably swingy when taken in any small quantity (and anything outside of combat tends to happen with very small quantities of d20 rolls, because of the lack of mechanical focus, which comes back to the aforementioned point)

You need to bring that one up sooner.

Probably actually you can approach the flow of this differently: 95% of the system comes down to combat. Remove that, and you're left with some simplified mechanics that generally come down to one roll of the d20. d20s are horribly swingy and unreliable in small numbers, so this is bad. Support is therefore limited.

Thanks.

6:55 AM

@BESW The main difference between MS Office and D&D is that with Office, the alternatives are much, much worse.

@lisardggY I use OpenOffice for ordinary stuff.

It doesn't have the bells and whistles, but do I really need a dynamic image cropping feature in my word processing program?

@BESW I've tried, god help me I've tried. With all the bitching that goes on about MSOffice, even the most die-hard open source enthusiasts I know acknowledge the OO/LO are seriously deficient.

I'm not even talking about all the 90% of obscure features that MS have. It's a lot of relatively basic stuff.

Oh, right, you don't have the RTL issues to deal with.

Admittedly if I want to do much that's very complex I run to InDesign, which is not an option everyone has.

Microsoft was among the first software developers to get right-to-left right, even when interspersed with numbers and LTR text.

By 2001 or so, it just worked in Microsoft products. Other developers took 10 more years to get to where MS were, and some still never did bother.

Ah, yeah, I can see that being an issue.

6:59 AM

In 2012 - 2012! - Chrome would still go the wrong way if you pressed Ctrl-LeftArrow or Ctrl-RightArrow to jump between words in a textbox.

@lisardggY what direction should the left arrow key take you in RTL? left and forward through a word?

@JonathanHobbs Left is left. Anything else is counter-intuitive.

Of course, the internal implementation was "forward", which leaked.

@lisardggY Ouch. So for a while, left moved you right as in backwards?

@JonathanHobbs Exactly.

"For a while" is at least between 2009 and 2012.

The annoying thing is that this worked fine in IE and even in FF, where the code was available. But still it get delayed, mostly because of open-source politics: the but was reported in Google's Chromium, but was actually in Apple's Webkit, so an upstream fix was needed, but got bogged down.

I'm guessing Apple/Google tensions also played a part.

Microsoft have actually been a major forerunner in tech for all sorts of international and geopolitical problems, usually many years ahead of google/apple/facebook and the like. They got RTL working well, they ran into issues with politics of timezones and maps, and even set up a geopolitical taskforce, around 2000, to be a cross-company consultancy group to all product teams.

10 years later, and you hear about Apple and Google and Facebook going through exactly the same problems.

@JonathanHobbs I did an edit.

3

A: How can I challenge my players with something other than combat?

Pathfinder provides an overwhelming focus on combat, and what non-combat options exist aren’t very complex or interesting. When I look at a character sheet or a manual, the vast majority of it is about combat options. Even skills are frequently geared toward combat applications, like feinting or...

7:15 AM

@BESW A possible reason for the downvote is that your answer treads close to the "You wanna do X? Don't use D&D for it, it's not a good fit" answer, which is pretty much accepted as bad. I know that it isn't what you were after, but it can easily be read as such.

I think your edit is good, because it focuses on how we can change PF, rather than why PF is bad for this.

New answer was pasted in very badly, probably from Word or something. Gratuitous line breaks galore.

Oh, yes. It's lovely.

Almost poetical.

I'm giving it a work-over.

It's a cute idea that I've seen before, but it has some typical "D&D must be symmetrical" flaws.

Like, seriously, the guy who spent his life locked up in libraries and laboratories pouring over books and beakers is going to have more social staying power than the man who makes his living entertaining strangers for food?

7:33 AM

@BESW Yeah, it treats social conflict as a reverse of physical conflict, rather than as orthogonal to it.

Mind if I steal that for a comment?

Sure.

I can understand mechanics of mental conflict being a reverse of physical, under the assumption that anyone who's bothered to buff himself up to a 1d12 physique to be deficient in the brains department. But social is a different barrel of monkeys.

@BESW Much better!

@InbarRose Hi.

@JonathanHobbs Thanks.

Hi

7:41 AM

This is a pretty elegant concept, but it treats social conflict as the inverse of physical conflict, which just doesn't seem right. Maybe if it was about mental conflict it'd make a little more sense, but I'm not sure the guy who spent his life locked up in libraries and laboratories pouring over books and beakers is going to have more social staying power than the man who makes his living entertaining strangers for food. It's an interesting starting point, but to be sensible this system will need an aggressive overhaul. — BESW 4 mins ago

@InbarRose Hey. Sorry for not getting back to you about the Fate game yet.

@lisardggY No rush.

Joshua Aslan Smith

8:29 AM

@besw just started rewatching SG1 on amazon prime some of the costumes for the random other cultures in the pilot are quite hilarious

@lisardggY rpg.stackexchange.com/q/35347/5841

@InbarRose Upvoted for purely selfish reasons. :)

@lisardggY :)

8:49 AM

@lisardggY What do you say about this idea?

Good morning

@InbarRose Creating 4 "Main PCs" and 3 "Rotating PCs"? It seems a little awkward. A group of 7 is a lot harder to write for.

Of course, we really haven't decided on theme or group template.

No, no. Create only 3 PC's.

Between the four of us, we can think about and design 3 pc's together. The process is collaborative anyway (even if making characters normally) so it's not that different.

It's not really the same. Character creation in Fate is collaborative, but a character is still very much someone's character.

I think that even if a character misses out on a storyline (because his player is GMing) and thus on a Milestone, it's not that bad. We're not talking about D&D-style logarithmic-scale power advancement,

9:07 AM

I am aware of that.

But nonetheless, the issue needs to be addressed, and I think it poses an interesting question. My suggested solution is simply that - a suggestion. Of course the 4 of us will have to agree on whatever we decide.

I'm leaning towards the simpler "PC isn't there for this story" solution, with an appropriate narrative framing to support it (agent reassigned to different mission, etc). But I'm interested in ideas that might pop up.

Some earthly scenery for your games.

3

@lisardggY I originally though of this idea, due to the episodic nature of the game. However - I thought of this other idea, and decided I should work that with a question. Because.. You know... RPG.SE :)

@JonathanHobbs NOICE!

9:24 AM

user image

@BESW The moment I saw this cover I knew this book was going to be superb.

@JonathanHobbs What is it about? :s

Mar 7 at 12:16, by BESW

(If you haven't read Bad Day at River Bend, do. It's the Wild West meets Lovecraft meets <spoiler>, in a colouring book.)

What's goin on guys

1

Q: Running a Game with Rotating GM's and Balancing the Characters

I am part of a group, we are going to be playing Fate Core. There are going to be 4 of us playing. We want to be able to rotate the role of Game Master. We envision playing in an episodic format. Each session will be a single episode in the story. In this way, we can play a non-linear game where...

gm-techniques fate-core

thought i'd drop by for a bit before heading to bed.... (end of srping break so I can't stay up too late anymore :( )

9:39 AM

That's what is occupying my mind at the moment. Got any input?

I did answer the question you linked in the body of the question... let me reread that and I'll see if I have anything to add that applies specifically to your situation

first thoughts tho... SUPERHEROES

the JLA, Avengers, X-Men etc dont always send out the entire team

so that could be a reasonable thing for missing players

@MC_Hambone You answered? Oh.. I see what you mean. The linked question has an answer by you.

I just read it. I was not disappointed.

@InbarRose yes sir

@JonathanHobbs thank you, kindly

It's a great answer (it even has an upvote from me from back then) But it doesn't address character advancement issues.

9:46 AM

(Oh, also, I mean Bad Day at Riverbend)

But that question's a good one, too

I like your thought on it, just up voted though a slightly different take on it is percolating in my brain

@MC_Hambone I await it's birth.

10:06 AM

@InbarRose I very much prefer option 1 of my answer

granted in option 2 I never got to be just a player, so maybe that's why I found the situation limiting and kinda dull

goin to get ready for bed, will swing by here before closing firefox to see if you commented about my answer :D

@MC_Hambone I commented :)

10:39 AM

Gotta say that response doesnt really surprise me. I have not had the chance to try Fate (even though i have the core system pdfs) so I lack the experience to comment specifically for that game.

I do think the rotating PC's out can work... you say that in Fate characters need to be proactive to level, well i have a really wuick thought about that

quick*

Since the GM is writing a story for the players, why not have the players write a short narrative for the GMs character? nothing that you'd have to act out, but something story-wise that explains why the character isnt present and what the outcome of their adventure is

that way the GM doesnt have to come up with 2 stories simultaneously... of course this runs the risk of you burning thru game ideas kinda fast

may or may not be back before I go to bed, but in case I am not, Goodnight to those stragglers still creepin' around the chat room.

11:03 AM

@JonathanHobbs Skype?

[skypening intensifies]

@MC_Hambone The main issue that is Fate specific is the fact that advancement isn't as fast or as dramatic as in D&D and the like.

Also, I took pains not to mention Ars Magica yet, mostly since I've been playing Ars Magica for almost 20 years now, and I'm not sure ArM's Troupe style is exactly what we're aiming for.

@lisardggY Why don't you enlighten us? (I know almost nothing about Ars Magica.)

Ars Magica, set in a mythical medieval Europe, is focused on the Hermetic Order, a group of wizards, most of which live in Covenants usually remote castles, hidden manors, and so forth. Places where the wizards live, usually in relative secrecy, and spent their time in their labs, researching more magic.

The players are expected to create such a Magus as the primary character. However, the assumption is that much time is spent in the lab (the basic unit of research is a season), and so not all magi will go on all adventures.

Instead, players are encouraged to create Companion characters - which can range from wandering minstrels, knights, and any other non-magical but relatively important characters, that allow you to construct an ad-hoc adventuring party that includes all players, even if not all characters.

Additionally, there are grogs, which are the menial servants and guards of the covenant, who often accompany the magi and companions on journeys. They're secondary characters, usually less fleshed out, personality-wise, and with a more limited skill-set (mostly fighting and the like).

11:20 AM

I think I read something about this in here once.

So a given adventure might be composed of players playing any of the three roles. Grogs are sometimes shared between players, since they're not as deep or important.

@InbarRose Likely; Brian and Magician play it too.

Seems very interesting on its own. But I don't know if this method works well with any game. It seems mostly those games where the players have a "base of operations" and "minions" ..

The idea is that the covenant is the central character of the game. People come and go, but the players basically play out the things that happen around the covenant.

Exactly, the base of operations is critical here. Especially with games that often run many years, in-play.

@lisardggY That idea I can totally understand.

11:21 AM

It may have been mentioned in conjunction with discussion on this question, which is similar to yours.

@BESW Perhaps.

@lisardggY We still need to see what kind of game we will end up with. We have no setting or theme yet.

Can you indicate when you will have time available to meet? So that we can get our motley crew together and decide such things?

Ars Magica does put a lot of focus on character advancement, but advancement is almost entirely done off-screen.

@BESW (We found 2 other players, and are trying to start a game - in case you are wondering)

This week is a bit of a problem, but next week I can meet around 21:00ish every day.

@InbarRose Hmm?

11:24 AM

@lisardggY Which is great. And Ars Magica could be a really cool game to play. (Even borrowing it's setting for a Fate game). I just don't know what the other players would want to do.

@BESW Lisardggy and I.

@InbarRose Cool, in what system?

@BESW You didn't read my newest question did you? :P (Fate)

@InbarRose I can't tell if the subject changed or not.

Only paying half attention to the chat.

And you are normally so on-top of your game! :P

Or on top of our game,.

11:27 AM

Is this an IRL game or an online one?

@BESW IRL.

Shiny.

Shiny?

Shiny.

Shiny.

11:41 AM

I see.

11:55 AM

@JonathanHobbs I consider Bad Day at Riverbend to be an excellent primer in how to simply and effectively create Terrible Things from Beyond the Realms of Understanding which nonetheless follow their own strange internally coherent patterns.

On a somewhat tangential note, I should reread A Night In The Lonesome October.

12:20 PM

@ProfessorCaprion [wave]

@ProfessorCaprion Were you working on a Mage to Fate conversion?

@BESW That it is, I think

Oh - no, it iwas Torg -> Fate conversion.

At some point I kinda want to run a lovecraftian campaign with my players.

Shame. I remember someone was working on a Mage -> Fate conversion.

Have you guys heard of this game? Clockwork Empires? It is a really neat game (with Lovecraftian influences)

12:24 PM

But do it the way someone suggested: Don't tell 'em it's a lovecraftian campaign. Just, one day, have them be investigating the sewers, and find a monstrosity they cannot explain. And then let things slowly escalate from there.

@JonathanHobbs I have... issues with that scenario as relates to the social contract.

@BESW Well - you could make sure they know its a "horror/mystery" game, but not about the Lovecraftian part?

@BESW I know. I would be extremely careful about not violating the social contract. Moreover, I'd have to do it with players who I'd be confident would be interested, etc.

Yeah.

But if it could be made to work, it'd be fun.

Yeah!

12:26 PM

@JonathanHobbs I kind of had that with a MERP game.

Well, Middle Earthish without the actual MERP rules.

Certainly there was a time in my career as a GM when I would've considered such things well within my rights as GM.

Then again, it was a GM who tended to inject Lovecraftian influences into any game he ran.

He ran a 7th Sea game at a convention that, when questioned later, players described as "Like Cthulhu, with seagulls".

("By playing under me they are saying they want me to choose the kind of game we play.")

user image

2

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this anecdote before, and was rewarded with this image.

If I was around, you surely were.

12:30 PM

@lisardggY "Whoa, deja vu." "What did you just say?" "Nothing, just had a little deja vu." "What did you see?" "I saw a seagull with a starfish in its mouth. And then I saw it again."

I also found a series of images of an octopus eating a seagull. I will not link them.

You're welcome.

I also found this, which I will link: Luna has found Cthulhu. And they are friends.

Thank you in arrears

I find octopuses unendingly rad but I do not need to see one eating a seagull

2

Professor Caprion

@InbarRose No, sir! I did a Torg to Fate conversion.

Mage is my favourite game as it stands, still.

(Mage: the Ascension, that is. NOT Mage: the Awakening.)

@JonathanHobbs And yet, seeing a seagull eat a starfish is fine.

Double standards!

Clearly you have a pro-skeleton bias.

Mornin all

12:44 PM

@ProfessorCaprion And would you want to make a Mage -> Fate conversion?

I think its a natural fit.

@BESW well, is the octopus eating the seagull whole?

Professor Caprion

@InbarRose I certainly wouldn't mind one!

@ProfessorCaprion Why don't we work on one together?

@JonathanHobbs Deja vu's the least of my problems in this scenario.

@lisardggY [lizardggY is a broken man, his dreams of opening a starfish sanctuary in tatters, his every night haunted by seagulls, and the cries of his charges]

12:51 PM

There are already a few people who tried converting M:TA to Fate: forum.rpg.net/… critical-hits.com/blog/2014/02/05/…

Professor Caprion

@InbarRose I suppose we could, when I get some moments!

Can't wait for my M20 book to come... at some point in the future.

Some really cool methods out there for doing this.

Some I like, some I don't.

1:07 PM

What in particular is challenging about a Mage-to-Fate conversion? Paradox?

Challenging? Nothing really, just getting it right.

First thing I can think of is Spheres. I would add them as a new concept, similar to skills (perhaps even a subcategory)

But I would need to think about how expensive they should be. 1:1 skill:sphere ratio seems a bit too strong. Depending on if Spheres follow the Pyramid rules or not.

Paradox would be another stress track I think.

And Quintessence is naturally just Fate Points.

Joshua Aslan Smith

mornign folks

morning

Joshua Aslan Smith

@besw its gonna be a hard slog through season 1 of sg1 I think

@JoshuaAslanSmith It's kinda rough, yeah. Doesn't really hit its groove until the season finale.

Joshua Aslan Smith

1:16 PM

I mean I remembered it as such

@JoshuaAslanSmith It's worth it.

Joshua Aslan Smith

also being a middleschool kid and being so into it because who needs good dialog

@InbarRose Ive seen every episode before, Im rewatching it with adult and a critical eye since I havent really watched it since I got out of undergrad (screenwriting program)

I see.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I did the same thing with Deep Space Nine last year and it was very rewarding

Well, let me also suggest Babylon 5. (Because it's awesome)

Joshua Aslan Smith

1:17 PM

I know of babylon 5 and ive seen a bunch of eps because my uncle was a fan and I watched some in a sci-fi tv film studies class I took

You need to watch that show.

Joshua Aslan Smith

Babylon 5 just has a bunch of niggles for me that keep me at bay, lexx & farscape have similar (but very different due to tone) issues that stop me from being a fan

Don't watch Lexx. It's just... well... It's just not a "good" show, its a mockery of all the tropes in other shows, and it constantly degrades itself. It's a Joke that I don't think should have continued past its first few movie/episodes.

Joshua Aslan Smith

and for whatever reason the more theatre level of production values, especially that first season turn me off (and Im someone who loves the Dune mini-series exactly because its theatrical)

Farscape is great though. So is Babylon 5. And I can't imagine what specifically has you not liking those but liking SG:SG1 and DS9

1:20 PM

@InbarRose That's a good way of putting it. Lexx is miserable, and exists for the purpose of increasing its own misery.

@BESW Yes. I managed to get through the first movies, season 1, and part of season 2 before I just had to give up. It's just not entertaining. (Doesn't help that they switched actors midway through)

Joshua Aslan Smith

I know with B5 its because Ill ultimately compare it to DS9 too much and I know ahead of time it wont win as much as its got cool characters like gakarr and some neato cloak and dagger diplomacy and moral grayness it won't be:

" I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover up the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But most damning of all... I think I can live with it... And if I had to do it all over again... I would. Garak was right about one thing – a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it...Because I can live with it...I can live with it."

B5 is much more interesting in its secondary characters than its main characters, which is a tragic flaw.

Joshua Aslan Smith

en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/In_the_Pale_Moonlight_%28episode%29

I respect taht b5 is probably a more cerebral and at times better written show

DS9 is shakier overall, I think, but it stands by the strength of all its cast whereas B5 stands in spite of its primary protagonists.

1:24 PM

B5 is a story, from start to finish. DS:9 is a platform to tell stories.

Farscape... well, I have trouble with Farscape because of its actors. Also it feels like "Firefly with muppets."

Joshua Aslan Smith

ehhhh id say so about the enterprise, not about ds9, but I understand what you mean about the planned arc thing

@BESW That's a pretty good definition, from the 3-4 episodes I watched.

@BESW But it's great! :P

Joshua Aslan Smith

yeah as far as farscape goes im not into the sort of hijinks space opera genre in general

1:25 PM

@InbarRose Sure, but I'm not interested, especially when two of the main actors set my teeth permanently on edge.

@JoshuaAslanSmith I see.... Battlestar Galactica more your thing?

Joshua Aslan Smith

Seasons 1 and 2

beyond that the whole thign goes off the deep end

Andromeda?

Joshua Aslan Smith

the only reason to keep watching is to watch colonel ty's various eyepatch accoutrements

@JoshuaAslanSmith I'm sure there are YouTube compilations.

Joshua Aslan Smith

1:27 PM

I watched Andromeda but I dont think I would rewatch Andromeda. it was like, oh hey kevin sorbo in space with a hot ship AI chick.

Damn, hate to leave but work calls. brb

Joshua Aslan Smith

oh yeah only reason I ever rewatched BSG was for the wife

Flag as spam; do not downvote.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I really want to get her into SG1 but its too big for her to bite

which makes me sad because SG1 is probably the light hearted space show to show to anyone ever

Mar 20 at 13:24, by wax eagle

friendly reminder not to downvote shit posts so we can murder them with spam/offensive flags more quickly

Joshua Aslan Smith

1:29 PM

I concur I was like who downvoted this but didnt flag it

anyone else watching Person of Interest? (since we are talking about sci fi)

...it hit -7 before we nuked it.

wow jeez

my link of a starred message got starred

@JonathanHobbs Did someone just star a re-post of a pinned comment?

whoever did that it's safe to un-star it

it's pinned right o'er there ->

Joshua Aslan Smith

haha that was me sort of as a joke

1:30 PM

oh okay x)

Joshua Aslan Smith

I can unstar it if you would like

that doesn't matter as much for answers since they don't disappear like questions do

probably better off unstarred

I have the power!

@waxeagle actually i guess you're right

Joshua Aslan Smith

1:31 PM

I think it got removed alreadey

if anything an answer at -6 just makes me even more want to look at it and see what's going on

Joshua Aslan Smith

person of interest would also make a really great plot arc/team founding reason for a cyberpunk rpg

@waxeagle I figure it's far easier to remember "don't downvote stuff that should be removed entirely" than "don't downvote certain stuff that should be removed entirely, but it's okay to downvote this other kind of stuff that should be removed entirely."

Excuse me, I hear a mug of Abuelita calling my name.

Joshua Aslan Smith

not sleeping last night may have been a mistake

@BESW agreed, simpler is better

1:37 PM

user image

2

@JoshuaAslanSmith I know how that feels - my wife is keeping me awake at the moment with a horrible hacking cough.

Joshua Aslan Smith

so my term of classes wrapped up last week and then I got food poisoning

ouch

Joshua Aslan Smith

so between the stress and then the recovery my sleep schedule is all kinds of wonkey I lay awaking reading until like 3am and then was like well I guess ill just get up

Hot chocolate internalised, couch allergies moderately controlled... time for bed.

1:46 PM

@BESW Goodnight!

(I should really re-visit and revise BESW's Aztec-Inspired Hot Chocolate Concoction some time...)

Goodnight.

Joshua Aslan Smith

haha

wow just rewatched the end monolog for DS9 in the pale moonlight and Sisko is drinking from the same glass as Deckard in blade runner

Aztec-inspired ? Sounds gruesome.

@BESW good night.

Thanks for the fast spam handling community!

Whenever a discussion arises about whether embedding images in SE questions is helpful or gratuitous, I shall link to this question:

2

Q: When did nose-picking became socially condemned?

Nose-picking is a common and well known socially condemmed habit. However, this condemnation seems to be a purely social behavior with very little grounds on medical risks; it is even done by other species, see below. can we set a time of when it started? (10.000 BC, 0 AC, 1000 AC?) What are t...

social-history everyday-life

1:57 PM

@lisardggY I've never heard complains on RPG ...

@C.Ross We are like the leather strap thingie upon which the mighty modhammer is spun.

@C.Ross It comes up in SciFi.SE once in a while.

@lisardggY actually together you can actually modhammer something without our intervention, if people actually hit the right button

@lisardggY I read this as leather strap on at first X.X

@Aaron Spinning mightily?

@lisardggY epic.

2:04 PM

@lisardggY Some of them do that.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I feel that images as part of questions can be more suspect but an image that helps set the tone for an answer can convey something that might otherwise be lacking

1 hour later…

3:12 PM

So I've asked questions with images, especially when something is difficult to describe

@C.Ross Agreed - sometimes a question needs an image.

15

Q: What is the Red White and Blue suit in the Iron Man 3 trailer?

What is the red white and blue suit shown in the Iron Man 3 Trailer?

4

Q: What is the image on the flags and the box in Three Coins in a Fuchsbau?

In the episode Three Coins in a Fuchsbau there is an image on the flags in Captain Renard's dream as well as on the box that the coins were in. What is this image and what is its significance?

etc, etc

@JonathanHobbs are you around?

I think I know what that ranged spell modifiers question is about and I understand what his last question you deleted is about as well. I'm rolling back to the previous question, but with a clearer wording and a slightly different title. ;)

(it's the difference between attack and attack roll, where attack includes the damage roll too)

2 hours later…

5:02 PM

heyo @Lord_Gareth

5:21 PM

Oh, he left.

Hello, everyone else.

5:47 PM

Hello

Damn, it's BESW!night

How does one search for saved conversations on the chat?

@Zachiel click info, then it has conversations there

I've found what I needed with a standard word search

@Zachiel works

Namely, BESW's description of what Fate is

2 hours later…

8:05 PM

0

Q: System-Agnostic's tag wiki needs improvement

RPG SE uses system-agnostic a lot, and in a rather esoteric fashion. Its tag wiki, however, is a sad, sad thing: About system-agnostic Not related to any one particular system of rules. This really needs more information. Users should be able to look at the tag wiki to find out which ...

discussion tags

It is empty in here today. Normally we have at least 8 or 9 people.

@Aaron it's a monday

@waxeagle This is treu

True

2 hours later…

10:08 PM

Flag as inexplicable.

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