urg wording

How do I put a linebreak in my posts?

@Metool straigh linebreak is two spaces after the end of a line, parabreak is a double line break

Cheers.

Slow day.

aye. Holiday does that

Canada Day doesn't.

It was just the other day, too.

@Metool well, no, most of our users are 'muric'n

July 4th

that is what he means, today is July 4th in the US Mainland

(over here we celebrated it yesterday)

it's always strange to think of myself living in what is basically the modern version of a colony

@trogdor Independence Day, yes. Still, it's surprising.

mm

Hey, anyone here know how to build a 4E encounter? Someone from a chat I'm in is asking (not about this specific chat, of course).

Also, @BESW Ahoy!

Hey.

spooky

Metool: there are questions about mnaking a 4e encounter

Some of the rules in 5e are sort of mystifying to me.

Like, apparently you can operate entirely without hunger penalties by eating every 4th day, if your Con is 10.

If there isn't a visible manifestation, there's no way to tell that someone has cast a spell on you, whether you pass or fail the save.

@Metool I'll tell you later if you still need it. Having lunch now

Oh man! Bonus dice multiply on crits in 5e!

Yay sneak attacks!

Just ran my first IRL (not chat) game of Roll for Shoes.

@BESW How did it go?

Also, hello!

Characters: Ahzul, High Priest of the Realm; Loud Bear, Quiet in Villages; Mary, Mistress of the Sink; and Ignus (Great and Powerful 2-foot Archmage Dragon).

Our first roll of the game was to find out whether or not Loud Bear was actually a bear.

(He was.)

We wound up with skills like "What do next? 2," "Magic finger 4," "Ego of Archmage (Dragon) 3," and "Find friends 2."

That sounds a lot like PDQ.

You've seen Roll for Shoes, right?

I have not.

It's a lovely system for a short, rules-light RPG. Requires some creativity from the GM though, as things can get quite crazy!

Interesting.

As a computer scientist the tree-form skill tree pleases me.

I had a new experience too - my first game in Shadowrun universe.

We chose the Apocalypse World rules instead of Shadowrun's own. That worked like a charm, in my opinion. Even better than a charm, maybe.

@kviiri Most of the time I was able to throw it back at the players; that's one thing RFS is really good for.

We were almost at the end of the session before someone realised that Loud Bear hadn't talked at all, but we also hadn't confirmed whether he could.

Ooh, it looks like 5e doesn't have negative HP.

@BESW Solid gold right there!

So Loud Bear rolled Do Anything 1 vs my You're a Freaking Bear 3... and succeeded.

Reminds me of a certain 4chan thread...

Sir Bearington?

static.fjcdn.com/pictures/… that exactly.

@Zachiel He was quite good at bearrelling into trouble.

Unbearable situations?

I assume he sorted out the trouble with his bear hands.

For our first encounter, I suggested that the characters were travelling through the forest together for safety. They agreed. I pointed out this meant the forest was dangerous; what kind of danger might they encounter?

So a zombie bear attacked them.

It was at this point we had to discover whether Loud Bear was an actual bear or not.

Was Loud Bear a bear?

Yes. He was.

The correct answer was "Bearly."

Tongue of Healing... wow.

So the bear and the zombie bear wrestled while the Mistress of the Sink threw her shoe--and then a rock--at them, and the High Priest put on his armor and then called holy lightning down on the zombie bear.

All these puns are becoming unbe... intolerable!

(The dragon wasn't around yet, as @trogdor came to the session later.)

(If there's ever a lizardy/dragony PC in one of my games, you can generally assume it's @trogdor.)

lol

Does @trogdor only play reptiles?

no, but they probably comprise about half my characters

give or take a few

He likes 'em.

I almost landed my three-man party of shadowrunners in trouble right away. We were supposed to meet our contact in a no-weapons area, but my character Simsim is an army guy and refuses to leave his illegal assault rifle behind for any reason whatsoever.

@DuckTapeAl it sorta helps that quite a few of my reptile characters where made sorta on the spot

cause I like reptiles in general, so they are my go to in a squeeze

@trogdor Isn't cold-bloodedness an issue in many environments?

it can be

if it wasn't mammals might not have taken over more of the planet than reptiles

besides, that doesn't always come up specifically in RP

in fact, I think it might never have come up at all

@trogdor I appreciate paying attention to the possibility it might be an issue. It could create cool stuff. Or it could just be handwaved - "I have a warming bracelet that keeps my body temperature steady at all times".

Or it could be ignored completely, naturally.

the second thing is usually what happens

I generally assume that humanoid creatures have human-like tolerances unless otherwise stated.

just to be honest

Gripping adventure, that.

The only system that I know of that actually has rules for reptillian races being affected by cold like that is W.H.A.T.

Looks like Identify has a focus instead of a component in 5e.

Although. A story built around such limitations could be interesting, albeit in a Mouse Guard-ish kind of way.

While only inspired my RPG's, ADOM has special temperature rules for the reptilian draconian race. Cold slows them, heat makes them quicker. Both extremes are more harmful for them than to any other race.

Oh, man, ADOM.

That takes me back.

Frickin' ants.

Ants are worse in NetHack!

"Every spring the toadfolk emerge from hibernation to find their villages destroyed and their farms ravaged. You must patrol for straggling Ice Zombies not yet melted in the spring thaw, and help your people rebuild in time for planting."

I've abandoned both NetHack and ADOM for Dungeon Crawl though.

...now I want to know more about Ice Zombies.

Anyway, goodnight!

Good night!

Ice zombies sound like a race of zombies that has learned to postpone their eventual rotting by freezing themselves. During cold weather, they attack unprotected settlements and drag their victims to their frigid lairs where they, too, freeze into similar vile creatures.

Instead of biting, they could pile around their target to absorb its heat

Or maybe they're actually a form of necromental only active in the winter. They form bodies made of snow and sleet, and hate anything made of life.

They could be what happens when unholy water freezes!

I like it. :)

One of my favorite non-mainstream undead creatures was created by accident. Toady One, when developing the 2012 version of DF, accidentally made all parts of a dead creature animable. Including the skin.

Enter... The Hollows!

Oh, Dwarf Fortress.

The only game where being brutally murdered by a fish is a reasonable thing to happen when standing on teh shore.

The hollows are only cool in my imagination, though, and would probably have been less cool in the game if they hadn't been cut. Imagine a walking, empty sack of skin that follows its prey and then snatches their unfortunate target inside itself...

Fun fact about W.H.A.T: Making a spell that does a magic attack against a target with +3 to attack and damage and making a spell that turns someone into stone permanently have the same XP cost.

Speaking of Dwarf Fortress, if there are players here who haven't already noticed there'll be a new version next week.

@kviiri I played so much ADOM at one point in my life, that in certain dreams, I was an @ sign

In high school, part of my morning routine was to play through the cute dog dungeon. I got to be fast enough that I'd either finish it or die well before I had to drive to school.

Do you know if JADE ever happened?

Or was that just vapourware?

@DuckTapeAl Yes it did. There's an alpha version iirc.

Also, there's a new version of ADOM too.

oOo

...I may no longer have any free time now.

I'm ruining lives masterfully! :)

OH MY GOD ITS ON STEAM

WARRGHHBBBBBL

I also recommend Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup for any roguelike fans. It completely abandons the notion that a roguelike should be a pain to play or require spoilers, while still preserving the infernal difficulty level and having a wide variety of strategies.

Have you ever tried Desktop Dungeons?

It's a mini-roguelike that's played more as a series of mini-dungeons than as a single big quest.

It's a bit more puzzle-like, and way friendlier to newbies.

And doesn't require spoilers at all.

No I haven't, I've been meaning to but I have so little time.

@kviiri You know D&D has done that, right?

They're called forsaken shells.

D&D 3.5, Libris Mortis:

D&D 4e, Open Grave:

@BESW Nope, I didn't have a clue. Thanks!

@kviiri My pleasure.

I'd feel a lot worse about spending all those years learning minute esoterica of a franchise I will probably never return to, if I wasn't able to continue applying my knowledge to helping those who do still frolic in that franchise.

I'd love to get Ty-Bob-Reed into chat some time.