TRPG General Chat

12:36 AM

@waxeagle aaand wrath of the crimson legion is from a Dragon Magazine, which we're not using. >_> Third time it happens this campaign.

Dorian

1:05 AM

2

Q: Why burying yourself is not such a great plan?

So one of my player is a clever guy. At night when the others are putting the camp together he digs a hole big enough for himself (between 3-4 feet deep) and ask someone to cover his body with dirt and use a straw to breath. So his idea is to avoid ambush at night. The first time I was baffled b...

dnd-5e

I lol'd, and answered.

BESW

@Dorian additionally: a three-foot-long straw is too narrow to refresh the air by the force of breathing, so he'd suffocate from re-breathing his own exhalations.

(Look at the length and width of a snorkel, and then imagine trying to breathe through something three times as long but five times as narrow.)

Dorian

Hmm true that.

Should I bother adding it to my post? lol. Considering the plethora of "stop that if not fuck you and this is why" solutions I have I think that's plenty lol

BESW

I'll drop it in as a comment.

doppelgreener

Yeah, like whilst you're busy elaborating on freezing and being unable to expand your chest cavity in the first paragraph.

Dorian

Hey so I rambled a bit. Point is, no, you can't do that lol.

The bugs bit was an interesting afterthought because I had to close a tab that had a list of deadly scorpions. Was looking them up for good examples for a hybrid furry example... Someone wanted ideas for hybrid species on a furry page... so my thoughts were NIGHTMARE FUEL TIME!

Imagine: Scorpion + Snake + Spider + Bat.

BESW

1:20 AM

...eight wings and a fanged tail?

Dorian

Doesn't need a fanged tail.

Say two different types of venom in a bite, scales AND armor plate style exoskeleton, the venom in a scorpion tail, just wings in general (bat wings). Perhaps claws with venom sacs. Ecolocation and creepy noises, able to see in the dark, scent and etc pretty strong, giant pincers on their hands (if going standard two legged two armed design).

If going other weirdness... well... Eight legs, two pincers, large abdomen with huge tail, leathery wings that have claws on their ends (because), freaky as fuck mouth with massive fangs, perhaps even go Alien styled dual mouth thing, the inner mouth containing one type of venom (most likely a disabling or paralytic venom such as that of the Death Adder) and the other containing deadly/dissolving venom for ease of digestion. The stinger and claws could contain a venom that induces fear and...

doppelgreener

@Dorian oh, i didn't mean what i said as any sort of criticism. your answer is fine, just that whilst you're being rambly in the first paragraph about all the problems is the perfect spot to ramble just a little more about another.

Dorian

pain by way of self defense. (see the venom of the Irukandji jellyfish which causes excruciating pain and a sense of impending doom). And cover all of that with the whole "oh hey, I got strong as heck scales and ARMOR ONTOP OF THAT"

doppelgreener

you don't even need creatures not liking that you are there. others might consider it a wonderful thing you're there! free food! and loads of it! nom nom nom

Dorian

^ yes that

lol

BESW

1:29 AM

I get the impression this guy has never sat on the bare ground in an undeveloped area.

doppelgreener

@BESW one is never more keenly aware of just how much life there is in the world as when they are trying to find an acceptable place to sit in the wilderness

BESW

Heck, I have mats in my trunk for sitting down in well-kept parks.

If such shenanigans were allowed.... Depending on level and what 5e does in terms of divination spells, I'd expect that eventually some recurring villain would send a spy to put a cork in the guy's straw.

Dorian

Shenanigans for EVERYONE

wax eagle

1:47 AM

@BESW oh gods yes. That'd be kind of amazing....

better yet. The party has to roll to remember he's there every morning

bullette comes by for a snack

so many possibilities

BESW

Added that into my answer.

1

A: Why burying yourself is not such a great plan?

He won't get any sleep, and then he'll die. I get the impression this player hasn't ever tried to sit on the ground for a while in an undeveloped area. There's all manner of creepy crawlies out there. His bedroll will get damp and then it'll get full of bugs--whether they're upset or happy or in...

wax eagle

@BESW excellent

BESW

(Which is a little overlappy with Dorian's, but I think enough unique to justify itself.)

wax eagle

as a DM, I'd say fine. Have them roll a medium to hard endurance check every night to see if they get sleep, if they fail, they roll to see if they survive. After about a month, they get used to the bugs etc and can stop making the end checks. Every night I'd roll d100, on a 10 or lower, something bad happens.

(I guess in 5e terms those are just con checks...there are no con based skills)

I'd build a table of "something bads" most would not be instant death, but they would be complicated for the PC and his friends to deal with underground

BESW

Itchy bites; penalty to health-based checks from sleeping in the damp; bad cough from inhaling dirt; a mole carried off something valuable; party forgot you and had to come back, now you have trust issues...

wax eagle

1:56 AM

high rolls on the table include bullette attack, NPC sneaks in with pocket full of corks...etc

also, various other burrowing monsters

Purple Worm, Remorhaz

BESW

I wonder what kind of diseases you can get from inhaling dirt.

Dorian

oooh purple worm attack lol

BESW

(Also: add an extra hour to morning ablutions.)

wax eagle

@BESW yeah

@Dorian yeah I mean it doesn't just have to be stuff threatening to early level PCs :)

I think one of the current dragons burrows too

Dorian

Good possibility of that

wax eagle

2:02 AM

heh, both adult dragons have a burrow speed

BESW

I guess, at the end of the day, that question reminds me why I don't like D&D.

The instant players go into defensive mode, the GM turns into "the guy trying to kill you."

Dorian

It's not even that BESW. In the end, the only time the GM turns into that is when players come up with really illogical ideas that SHOULDN'T work.

Were I the GM of that player burying himself in the dirt, I'd come up with sooooo many ideas they CAN do it, and suggest he look for one of those ideas somehow, but every one of those ideas would come with a cost.

BESW

I strongly disagree. My experience has been that when players in a D&D continuum focus on excelling at defence, any attempt to challenge their defences becomes antagonistic.

The player says "I am unhittable" and the system we work within forces the GM to find a way to hit him.

Dorian

2:17 AM

If the player is unwilling to pay the cost, they suffer the consequences. Even if they use relatively mundane means (such as a possibly collapsible coffin with a breathing apparatus that is designed with a snorkel's shape that is sealed from bugs and insulated properly, with a mesh on the end of the breathing tube to keep things out) they can still do it, but it'd cost them time to set it up, money and time to create the object, etc.

BESW

(Because "hitting things" is how the system says things in the world interact with each other, taking "being hit" off the table is not actually supportable.)

Dorian

As for the "I am unhittable" thought, no, that's not just the only way of challenging someone.

Take my character for example. He's a trapper scout with some EXTREME hiding skillz.

He is now petrified.

Because he couldn't disarm a trap on a door handle.

But, he was good enough to unlock every door before he turned to stone.

BESW

That is "being hit." He was vulnerable to an attack.

Dorian

I even got xp for it.

Adventuring is a dangerous business.

BESW

Besides which, the D&D continuum doesn't support trapping as a default mode; it's a sideshow activity.

Dorian

2:20 AM

D&D is a combat and life or death oriented game.

though I have played in trap dungeons.

They were entertaining, but even I wouldn't want to continue too long in it.

BESW

A D&D game which doesn't focus primarily on combat is an outlying case of a group defying the system's expectations. In short, "If the GM can fix it, is it broken?"

I've built characters that bypassed the combat paradigm, and I've run games with players whose characters did the same. The characters got retired because they spoilt the fun the system was trying to offer.

Dorian

It's best left as a sideshow. If the group wants an entirely trap oriented game, that would take time but it's wholly possible to do it within RAW. It's not recommended to do that though.

It's better to go with the consensus of the group though regardless of the type of game an individual wants to play.

I played (hell, I LED) a game once which turned into a game of crime and economics.

My character wound up developing a highly addictive drug he could reproduce relatively cheaply, and made some wise investments. After a while he started calling in favors and collecting on his investments and I spoke with the group with my idea.

BESW

I tried defying the D&D paradigm for years, and eventually figured out I should be using different systems to play non-D&D games. Super-defensive play modes, like the "bury myself alive" camp defence to avoid ambushes, demand that the party re-assess WHY they feel the need to be so paranoid and whether it's how they want to play.

Dorian

Instead of being a good adventuring party (my character's adventuring was only a way to establish connections in various towns and procure the needed materials for his drug at first) I suggested a way (in and out of character) we can retire rich and do so safely.

BESW

D&D can quickly foster ten-foot-pole paranoia, which is what this question sounds like.

Dorian

2:24 AM

And even with the DM constantly trying to railroad us to go explore this wizard's tower and kill the evil lich inside it... we did it.

The DM was smart, but we were smarter.

We worked together, using our respective strengths to establish a solid foothold in several major cities. And eventually when the smart DM decided it was time to show us the consequences of not destroying an evil lich bent on enslaving the world... we laughed in his face.

The lich had a small army of undead and started terrorizing nearby towns, the party had several large armies of addicts and drug pushers as well as favors for several major and influential members of society.

BESW

Honestly, that sounds a lot like My Guy Syndrome and an unhealthy group environment where participants were using in-game mechanics to enforce a play experience on someone who didn't want that kind of game, rather than discussing it as friends out of game.

Dorian

We called those favors and such (which I had kept track of) and crushed everything that lich had to dust.

And did you miss the point where I convinced the rest of the group in and out of character of this plan? They jumped on it like a bandwagon going to heaven.

BESW

But you didn't convince the GM.

Dorian

We didn't convince the DM because he was beyond convincing =_=

He was one of THOSE DM's that always insisted on doing his story that he wanted and the player's wants be damned.

This is why we stopped playing with him before long and started DMing little one-shots between us (passing the baton around the group) until we found another DM.

BESW

Instead of finding a GM who would support the kind of game you wanted to play, you used the poorly-thought-out economic model of a system that never intended to run economic-based stories to force it down his throat. Saying "he did it to us first" doesn't make it any more right.

@Dorian That is the proper response to a participant who won't cooperate for the fun of the group as a whole.

Dorian

2:31 AM

Let's put it this way: We were all in highschool. There was a VERY limited selection of DM's in our town, let alone around our age.

BESW

So... if you know it's not a good example of behaviour, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

Dorian

He was the ONLY DM any of us knew for a while until we found someone better.

And we tried to work with him, we really did.

BESW

Perhaps my assumption that your anecdote was in support of a point in the above conversation was erroneous, and you were merely recounting an experience for the sake of sharing?

Dorian

Eventually it becomes a point of "Look, the group runs the game, not the DM. The DM should be part of the group, but you're not because you willfully ignore any attempt at cooperating with us."

Yes, recounting for the most part.

Mildly supporting that yes, if done right (he humored us as best he could, but constantly tried to railroad us away) D&D can be used as an economic war.

BESW

It does help serve as an example of my thesis, though: D&D has a tendency to support in-game antagonistic resolution of out-of-game problems.

Dorian

2:34 AM

No, it's not the best system for it. D&D is best played as a Hack'n'Slash adventure, in which YES, the DM is trying to kill the players.

BESW

When players get paranoid, they ramp up defence and the GM gets frustrated because they're no longer challenged so he ramps up offence, when they should all be talking about why they're getting paranoid in the first place.

Dorian

D&D has a tendency to support everything, simply because of its size.

not everyone who plays D&D is capable of thinking to that point.

We did try to negotiate with the Railroading DM, but he didn't want to listen. He was far too caught up in the "I'm the DM that means I'm GOD" mindset.

BESW

@Dorian I don't know what that means. If you mean that people use it for things it's not good for because it's a monolithic presence in the RPG landscape so they default to it whether they should or not... yes.

In fact, all of the d20 System has that tendency.

Dorian

People tend to use D&D for everything, because it is the largest game out there. Many have never played another game.

As such, I've seen people twist D&D to be a Sci-Fi adventure (there's rules for that you know) because they didn't even know there was a d20 modern.

wax eagle

@Dorian (that's part of the reason this site is soo cool, lots of exposure to other games, even if it's just adjacency)

BESW

2:37 AM

@waxeagle Mmm, yes.

Dorian

I've seen people change 90% of the books just to make a story work the way they wanted, when they could have just as easily used a different system. But they didn't know the system.

BESW

I can't even remember where I learnt about Cthulhu Dark now, but I'm sure it was on this site.

Dorian

I've seen people homebrew entire new systems using only a sprinkling of D&D, because that's all they knew.

wax eagle

I learned about Dread, Do and Fate here

BESW

@Dorian Yup. But that doesn't make D&D any better at supporting such changes. In fact, it's pretty awful.

Dorian

2:38 AM

It's pretty good if it's taken for what it is instead of what it isn't.

If it's taken as a Hack'n'Slash adventure game with a healthy serving of "other stuff" then it's great.

BESW

And that's what I'm getting at: even with major hacks and re-skins, D&D encourages certain styles of play at a very basic level, and although "The GM can fix it," that doesn't make the system itself any more fixed.

wax eagle

@Dorian part of the problem is that the creators don't own what it is

Dorian

People shouldn't walk into D&D wanting to play a game heavy on anything other than "hitting stuff"

BESW

@waxeagle Or even, it often seems, know what it is.

wax eagle

@BESW yeah

(that's part of the reason I'm actually relatively impressed with the balance in 5e so far...)

Dorian

2:40 AM

The creators know what it is, but they're trying to expand their audience whenever possible.

Because it makes money.

wax eagle

@Dorian perhaps, but I think that they are sold on making it something beyond what it is.

and not just in the "We need to sell copy" kind of way

I think they really believe that it can support all styles of play

Dorian

It can, but only in small doses.

It can't support a style of play dedicated to nothing but sneaking/stealth. Or a style of play dedicated to solely diplomatic wars. Or a game of economics. Or a criminal enterprise. It can support them on a small scale, in sample doses so to speak. But it can't support making an entire campaign on any of those aspects.

It's like trying to play Thief for the combat.

You don't play Thief for combat, you play it to be a sneaky mo-fo.

BESW

I'm... not sure you're using "playstyle" the way @waxeagle is?

Dorian

He's meaning it as an overarching concept that would define a player's actions through the entire game correct? I'm saying D&D can't support that. It can support samples of every playstyle though.

BESW

More than "what kind of action we take," I consider playstyle to be about theme and tone.

wax eagle

2:45 AM

I'm also thinking about the narrative-gamist continuum. D&D inherently supports gamist play, and trying to introduce and continue narratisivist play fights the system in many ways. It just doesn't have the mechanics for it.

Dorian

It can't support a campaign wide playstyle, but it can support small (say one encounter, or one dungeon, or one drawn out event in a city) samples of each.

wax eagle

For instance, I've run the town section of the starter twice now, and basically done it free form with no mechanical support becuase...there really isn't any

BESW

For example, D&D is really bad at cosmic horror games because on a very fundamental level everything in D&D follows similar, familiar rules.

Dorian

I rather dislike attempts of adding mechanics to a narrative style of play, it ruins the flow of things in my opinion...

wax eagle

(Granted, there are aspects of town where there are mechanics, but often they are poor compared to the combat mechanics...this is where I link Magician's goblin dice blog)

Dorian

2:47 AM

If you're going to run a narrative game, try to reduce the die rolls as much as possible.

BESW

Okay, so let's talk about a non-narrative game like Buffy or Doctor Who or World of Darkness, where internal and interpersonal characterisation and interaction are mechanised at the same level as physical interaction.

Dorian

That is a good way of doing things, but even then I've played in circumstances where rolling the dice to find out whether my negotiation speech did anything is annoying as all hell.

BESW

I've never seen any D&D rules or official rule variations that provide personality-based mechanical exchanges between characters.

Dorian

In negotiation and in discussion and other personality based exchanges I'd much rather play it out.

Yes, I know there are some people that don't want that. So don't build a character that relies on that.

wax eagle

@Dorian why should that be dependent on a player's skill in that area moreso than combat?

Dorian

2:52 AM

Because I doubt you're physically swinging swords at goblins around a table =_=

BESW

Well, that's exactly my point; D&D doesn't support personality-based interactions; at best it supports social-skill-based interactions, which aren't the same at all.

Dorian

Discussion and negotiation and the like shouldn't be handled by the dice. That ruins the fun of it.

I haven't even tried playing someone with a personality too far from my own in NWoD because I know I won't be able to play it properly.

BESW

But I assume you don't have trouble playing characters with physical abilities far beyond your own?

Dorian

In D&D, the farthest I've ever gone from my personality was a charismatic Bard. And for that I set it up that all his charisma was in his feet. He even had a stutter I played out to a T.

Because physical abilities in the game cannot be reflected via RP.

Were I to play in a LARP, I would play a character who's abilities approximate my own, because I can play out my actions and when I hit my limit I hit my freaking limit.

As this is a tabletop game, you cannot reflect physical actions physically, you must do so with dice. There is no other way.

BESW

Right. I think Wax's point is that mental/social actions can be represented the same way, if you have a system that does so gracefully.

Dorian

2:56 AM

You can describe the actions as best you can, but in the end you still need a definitive way to figure out whether your character is better than another.

They can be represented in the same way, but I wouldn't want to play a game like that.

I'd rather be able to deduce and negotiate and do all that by RP.

If I'm not smart or good enough to handle it, then I'd consider relying on the dice (for example playing an instrument or investigating a crime scene)

Even then though, I attempt to come up with the best result I can from my own mind. I describe, in minute detail, everything my character does. I only roll the dice afterward.

In NWoD thus far I've avoided having incredibly social skilled character simply because I am not particularly interested in trying to figure out how to RP someone with good social skills. I mean... I can copy the shit I see in movies, but that wouldn't feel natural to me.

The best I can do is play my charismatic fox furry character... who for some reason was always popular in chatrooms. But I don't know how to speak and show that on my own person... I can only describe it in text, I can't act it out.

wax eagle

why should that be the case though?

Dorian

So I don't play that character in a tabletop. I only play things I can act out because I play roleplaying games to act things out

If I wanted to write a book, I'd do that. I wouldn't play a tabletop game.

If I wanted to write a cooperative story a la PBP RPing, I'd do that.

I understand where you're coming from, but I honestly don't see the point in giving a bunch of barely social nerds a mechanic for socializing just so they can avoid doing it :P

BESW

Your play preferences are, of course, sufficient justification for your playstyle choice. You were presenting it as the only way, rather than your preferred way, hence the confusion.

But my personal objection is actually inverted; in my experience it's been more problematic when eloquent and persuasive players use their real-life skills to "get away with" things their characters should, by rights, not have been able to do.

Dorian

Ah, but in say D&D, those skills should be reflected by the paper. Whether or not you make said rolls, you need to have something of a skill in that.

BESW

After all, a player who doesn't feel up to the task of playing a hyper-intelligent wizard can ask the rest of the group for help and suggestions in how to play his character to its fullest potential.

Dorian

3:07 AM

I played in a game where some eloquent player decided to do something like that. He was literally playing a "dumb half-orc barbarian". Even said so by the name on his character sheet...

Tried to "negotiate" with some city guards to let us through...

The DM listened to his speech, nodded and humored him...

Then asked to look at his character sheet.

The guy was like "well I'm acting it out, this is what my character says"

The DM responded "roll the die, let's see." There was no way his stats and die roll could combine to meet the DC for that discussion I saw forming in the DM's head.

BESW

Mmm. So, the onus falls on the GM to keep the players in line? What happens when the GM is not a forceful or eloquent personality himself?

Dorian

He got a 1 anyways. Which when combined with his negative mod social skills amounted to his half-orc throwing a tantrum on the floor.

BESW

I ask because this happened to me, as a player with a GM whose personality was easily and accidentally overshadowed by my own.

Dorian

The DM doesn't need an eloquent personality. He needs to be aware of the group and as a leader and controller of the game he needs to be able to put his foot down if someone does try to overdo it.

If the personality is not suited to that, he should get help from the other players.

In this particular instance, I think everyone at the table would have had the same reaction.

Even other people in the room (we were playing in a comics and gaming shop) had a bit of a "you must be new here" reaction to the player (and yes, he was new to this)

In the end, there was much laughter at his expense because he wouldn't listen to the friendly advice of his comrades and let the party ALL THE CHARISMA Sorcerer talk to the guards.

(The DM would have allowed the Sorcerer to RP it no problem, because he had the character sheet to reflect it. Usually he did our negotiations, and he rarely needed to roll for something and most of those rolls were to find out if he knew what he was talking about or was bluffing lol

I hold by the tried and true: If you plan to RP something, make sure your character sheet reflects it. If you plan to be good at something, make sure your character sheet reflects it. If you can't RP something you want to do, let the dice do it for you.

Often, even if I suck at something my character's good at, I RP it as best I can and still roll. This has granted me a few bonuses that saved my ass in the past. Even when attempting some unusual physical stunt, I describe it and roll. If, by way of the RoC or by way of the die roll I succeed, sometimes I know which it was sometimes I don't. Either way, I am a storyteller first and a gamer second.

I like D&D, because it epitomizes the styles of stories I like to play and tell. Other systems are fine and dandy, and I've yet to find myself playing in a medieval fantasy system other than D&D (mostly because of the lack of groups to play with) but until I find something that literally does it all, D&D is still my go-to game.

mrf. keep letting myself get distracted... not good.....

Need to write up bloody lance stats... screwit, i'm not making one with class levels

too complicated since the bloody GM won't respond.

BESW

3:31 AM

@doppelgreener I think I'm going to get a Marshal badge soon!

doppelgreener

@BESW \o/

BESW

...mostly just from going through my own old comments to delete them and flagging nearby comments and threads as I go.

doppelgreener

We will be marshals together >:D

@BESW Hahaha, that's pretty much how I ended up with mine

Dorian

Apparently not all of Australia's critters are nasty and evil and trying to kill you. Take a look at this guy fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-9/…

Still a creepycrawlie, but not trying to kill you at least! That's a nice step up lol.

BESW

@Dorian We've got them here on Guam, too, and while they're useful and unthreatening to humans they're still freaking hardcore.

Dorian

3:35 AM

Sounds it.

Might be nice to have one as a pet lol

Even an 'unintentional pet' ^_^

BESW

I've seen them get as big as a small dinner plate. They hung around on the ceiling of our garage and when something food-like (a big roach, a small rat, whatever) ran underneath one he'd let go and fall, flipping over in midair, to land on top of the food-thing.

Dorian

"food-thing" I think I will use this phrase later...

BESW

We call them "wolf spiders."

I prefer them outside, not in, but they do keep the vermin down.

Dorian

Huntsman spider

Sparassidae (formerly Heteropodidae) is a family of spiders known as huntsman spiders because of their speed and mode of hunting. They also are called giant crab spiders because of their size and appearance. Larger species sometimes are referred to as wood spiders, because of their preference for woody places (forest, mine shafts, woodpiles, wooden shacks). In southern Africa the genus Palystes are known as rain spiders or lizard-eating spiders. Commonly they are confused with baboon spiders from the Mygalomorphae infraorder, which are not closely related. More than a thousand Sparassidae species...

Wolf spider

Wolf spiders are members of the family Lycosidae, from the Ancient Greek word "λύκος" meaning "wolf". They are robust and agile hunters with excellent eyesight. They live mostly solitary and hunt alone. Some are opportunistic hunters pouncing upon prey as they find it or even chasing it over short distances. Some will wait for passing prey in or near the mouth of a burrow. Wolf spiders resemble Nursery web spiders (family Pisauridae), but wolf spiders carry their egg sacs by attaching them to their spinnerets (Pisauridae carry their egg sacs with their chelicerae and pedipalps). Two of the Wolf...

Huntsman Spiders aren't Wolf Spiders :P

BESW

Hmm. Not sure if we have one and just call it the other. [pokes about]

Dorian

3:40 AM

-nods- I'm gonna afk a bit, gonna try to get me a food-thing

doppelgreener

@BESW possibly both

BESW

Definitely wolf spider is what I'm thinking of; I've seen them carry their eggs.

doppelgreener

Okay. Those are a little venomous, but it's not dangerous.

Huntsman spider bites are rather benign, beside the bite itself.

BESW

I've been bit by their babies sometimes.

doppelgreener

@Dorian Yeah, we do have a lot of dangerous stuff, but frankly our spiders are the things I'm not concerned about.

Americans are frightened by them, but honestly, it's American spiders I'm scared of.

BESW

3:45 AM

Black freaking widows and brown recluses, man. I went to college in an area with both of 'em.

doppelgreener

The brown recluse loves to hide in clothing and inflict necrotic bites when you put on that clothing and frighten it. There's a black widow spider kinda thing that I am informed appears in some locations, and if even one is there, you probably have an infestation of hundreds of them. And they're necrotic. We don't have to deal with this b/s.

BESW

"Is that a wolf spider or a brown recluse? I don't care!" [smashes with a four-foot-long mailing tube]

doppelgreener

Yeah. Like, here, I catch huntsmen we find in our house and release them. (We don't have many insects inside, so they'll do better - and survive - out there, not in here.) Any non-huntsman spider is something I should almost certainly kill. There, I would spare no mercy for spiders.

Dorian

Black widows tend to like dark and relatively undisturbed areas. I don't recall anything about if you find one you prolly have hundreds... let me look into that.

BESW

[amused] Googling "black widow" gets Natalia Romanova as the first hit, and latrodectus as the second.

doppelgreener

3:55 AM

@BESW an interesting result of those movies ;)

@Dorian A friend expressed it to me this way. It might not be black widow spiders, but it was a small black spider that came in infestations. His grandparents' house was unfortunately one place they decided to make home in, last I knew.

Dorian

@BESW Yeah found that too.

doppelgreener

my cat has died in Nethack; time to find out a little more what it's like playing this game without it

BESW

@doppelgreener When Google's ngram service catches up to 2014, I'll be interested in doing some analyses.

Dorian

It's hard to find definitive results (or rather I don't want to keep looking) but I do recall that black widows tend to be relatively rare for the most part.

I mean, in their areas where they are most commonly found they tend to stick to dark and undisturbed areas. On my grandparent's property my grandpa said when he goes digging through some of the old stuff he has in the garage or around it and his shed out in the woods he might find a few, but not hundreds.

There might be a species that is like that though within the latrodectus spiders, considering there are a good 40 something different species.

doppelgreener

4:26 AM

@Dorian yeah they are supposed to be rare, so it probably isn't them

Dorian

Good thing though, because hundreds of black widows is a bad freaking day

So, fully knowing there is an evil character in the party, and knowing there is a justice and "DESTROY EVIL" character in the party... I am tempted to put on this magic lance (which I can't currently make a standalone character because lack of DM input has stranded me)

Detect Evil, at will, and let the Justice freak of the party hold it.

BESW

BWAHAHAH. Third gold badge!

Dorian

I have a feeling if I do that though the guy who plays the evil character will find a way to take revenge on me in or out of game lol

doppelgreener

@BESW Congrats :)

Dorian

Might just do it though anyways and not give it to the justice freak.

Might make this lance a "Dousing Rod" essentially, giving it all the detection methods.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

4:35 AM

@BESW ::tests the action on his flamethrower::

A-hem.

BESW

Yeeees? [innocent]

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

just... a-hem.

Grubermensch

hullo

Dorian

hey Grubermens

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

and, of course, "are you done?"

Dorian

4:36 AM

See above.

BESW

Yeah, yeah, I'll take a break. Every week or so I just go through some pages of my comments to trim them (still working on backlog) and I flag whatever else I see along the way.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

yep.

It's not a bad policy, just a huge number of flags raises ... concern. All of your flags were good.

Right then.

::tips sheriff's hat::

BESW

[recounts] ...okay, so an average of one flag every 5 or 10 minutes for two hours might be a little excessive.

Grubermensch

just maybe

Dorian

Without a method of designing this as a legit character I'm afraid I'll need to make this lance just another talking weapon and it will wind up being one of those "blessed with a suck" weapons...

BESW

4:40 AM

Flagging's fun.

@Dorian My 3.5 librarian invented a detect text spell which worked like detect magic; given a few rounds and a successful check he could not only sense the quantity, language, and rough size of nearby documents, he also learned the general topic or genre of the text.

Dorian

So, no, I most likely won't continue to play it afterwards. It's going to be a talking, magical starmetal Lance +3 with some situationally useful abilities that will merit keeping it around for use as a dousing rod.

BESW

(I think he could also glean the title and author with a high enough check.)

Dorian

That would be nice for that character, but rather useless for us I'd think. Also, most likely wouldn't be able to use it anyways being homebrew.

BESW

Mmm. D&D 3.5, at least, has rules for how a character can design a custom spell in-game.

But yes, very niche.

Surprisingly useful, though.

"Hmm. There's an instructional placard behind that brick. I'm guessing that's where we'll find the disarming mechanism for the trap."
"That guard has a romance novel in his pocket. Bard, maybe a sob story about trying to reunite with your lost love will get him to let us through."

Dorian

It might be useful but right now we're fighting LOADS of orcs.

Loads.

And most of the party isn't really into the whole negotiation thing

BESW

4:46 AM

Ah, yes. Orcs don't carry much literature.

Dorian

Unless you count Fleshcarver's "Diplomacy"

Which tends to involve more smashing.

BESW

They're more of the "oral tradition" mindset.

Dorian

And the only "skillmonkey" in the party is my character, who is right now petrified (they're going to fix that presumably next session... if not, I'm going to say screwit and spend the next week working on a dark whisper gnome melee skirmisher type, with Iaijutsu)

BESW

Orc poets are legendary. "Ode to a Dagger Stuck In Somebody's Eye," "Poem for Mushrooms Growing From The Skull Of A Dead Elf"...

Dorian

>.>

the joke was flat to begin with, now you're beating a dead horse :P

I'm surprised. I half expected a rebuttal about an orcish sonnet about tenderizing deceased equines :P

BESW

4:57 AM

Eh. Orc poetry is self-evidently never not funny, it needs no defence.

doppelgreener

5:08 AM

@BESW Hahaha. That sounds like a great spell for a librarian. "Now, then... where's the detective novels section? Been a while since I read a good one..."

BESW

@doppelgreener Oh, it was great. I could know who people got their orders from by reading the wadded-up letter in their pockets.

And it was very useful for quickly noticing if something got mis-shelved.

Later on I made a higher-level version which also gave me a silence type aura (Will save or you can only speak in whispers), several mage hand effects (for hands-free reading and getting things off high shelves), and a dancing lights effect for good light to read by.

I called it librarian's aura.

doppelgreener

C: You had a lot of fun with the spells for this guy, didn't you.

BESW

...yes.

By level 31 his library was a pocket dimension with portals in every major city in the multiverse.

("Iron Man" is artificially inflated because of non-comic use of the term; it's actually been relatively constant since 1800.)

Dorian

5:26 AM

dat wonder woman jump lol

BESW

yeah, well, here's some perspective:

Dorian

lol, supes flies over everyone of course

BESW

So I extended "batman" back into the 1800s and saw that the term was actually still used relatively frequently!

doppelgreener

@BESW You went to level 31?

BESW

So I took a guess and added another term:

@doppelgreener Epic level 3.5 is pretty stupid, but yes.

doppelgreener

5:31 AM

Vampier and Batman coincide! :)

Dorian

@BESW totally unsurprised

@BESW that's why I tend to retire if they get that high. Either that or do a shift to freeform.

The last game I was in that passed lv20 wound up shifting to freeform to continue the story. That's where my god of the shadow realm came from.

BESW

@Dorian My biggest surprise was that they continue to coincide well after "Batman" is established as a comics hero.

That bump in the mid-70s...

Dorian

Hmm...

Wasn't there a comic where Batman WAS a Vampire?

BESW

@Dorian "Red Rain" was 1991.

Dorian

Hmm... coulda sworn it was earlier...

doppelgreener

5:37 AM

What on earth is that 70's-80's bump?

Dorian

But then again, things from my infancy and back are pretty blurry to me sometimes, and I'm not a huge comic geek lol

doppelgreener

It sharply affects Batman, wonder woman and vampires.

Did someone write a whole bunch of fanfics about vampire batman and wonder woman around this time or something?

BESW

@doppelgreener I'm guessing film.

doppelgreener

@BESW Oh right yeah that'd do it

BESW

I'd have to do some research to get my hands on numbers, but if I recall the 70s is when comics and fantasy really started getting classy in film.

Dorian

5:38 AM

There was a successful show called Dark Shadows around that time too for the Vampire bump, as well as a bunch of alternative vampire movies.

BESW

And when stuff gets classy, it also gets less classy ripoffs.

The 60s and 70s saw horror films saturate the market, Wonder Woman had a TV show in the second half of the 1970s, Superman's big film was '78...

Dorian

Yeah. The 70's were a good time for vampires.

doppelgreener

@BESW superman's big film coincides with a dip in his ngram results :)

BESW

@doppelgreener [bemused] Yes.

Dorian

(looking at a thread discussing that)

Oh gawd... Blacula came from that time!

BESW

5:43 AM

Ahah! Super Friends!

@Dorian I was going to link it, and then changed my mind.

Dorian

@BESW That explains it!

What you're looking at the same forum thread I'm looking at? Or were you going to link Blacula?

BESW

...wait, maybe not. "Super Friends" itself hardly registered.

@Dorian I was going to link Blacula.

We watched excerpts of it in my Vampire Lit & Culture class.

Dorian

Gotta love older stuff and its oh so subtle racism sometimes XD

BESW

Blaxploitation was... honestly a kind of fascinating thing, because it marked the African-American community becoming a recognised disposable-income demographic.

Dorian

@BESW Right

Hmm... I think the moon is interfering with my wi-fi connection.

BESW

5:50 AM

...you have a were-modem?

Dorian

Possibly

Seems to freak out and run off on me at random tonight.

BESW

It's a shame Weekly World News fell apart, they'd love that story.

trogdor

@doppelgreener Mainland Americans are scared of spiders because they actually have dangerous ones

doppelgreener

@trogdor I have not actually thought of it this way!

That makes so much sense!

trogdor

so I kinda don't blame them when they see a huge one, that they didn't automatically know was not poisonous enough to really hurt them

doppelgreener

6:03 AM

They have this little thing that's terrifying, then they see our comparatively enormous huntsman that's right there and they shriek down to their souls.

trogdor

yeah

and to be fair, I was insanely afraid of spiders when I was younger

I still don't really like them all that much anyway

but I don't actively wish they would all just die anymore

doppelgreener

I've been playing Nethack as a Valkyrie with the name Leaf today and so far I have died horribly a few times, and also been depeer than I've ever reached and seen an Owlbear!

(I even got killed by one! :D)

trogdor

yay death!

I just died for the first time in a Cuthulu Dark game run by BESW yesterday

doppelgreener

I've been playing this game for ages, but only recently it's beginning to unfold and make sense... there are lawful- and neutral-aligned creatures, my pets do special things beyond just fight for me (but apparently cats and dogs do different things), and so on

@trogdor oh! :D You were the one who attacked the chef?

trogdor

no, actually

I got strangled by the stuffed orangutan

or possibly some monster that just made itself look like the stuffed orangutan, or was manipulating its body

oh wait

you mean the one who killed him XD

my bad, yes I was

doppelgreener

6:08 AM

and then you were strangled by the stuffed orangutang?

BESW

It was pretty horrific.

trogdor

my character rapidly gained 5 insanity after being the most sane person in the group for half the game, and I roll played him into a corner where he was practically destined to kill the chef and then die

BESW

It was a much more... loosely designed... scenario, since I slapped it together in half an hour based on what I remembered of a Mystery Inc episode.

It's given me some ideas about directions to push the system in the future.

trogdor

to be fair, it wasn't only my fault.

BESW exposed me to the really strange/scary stuff first

and then one of our group ran to my character for help, which was a mistake on many levels

BESW

Hey, you're the one who said "We're spending the night in a spooky mansion filled with eldritch curios? I look for something to read before bed."

trogdor

6:12 AM

it did end better for him as he ran away while I attacked the orangutan though ( attacking monsters in that system means auto death, which I full well knew)

I said it wasn't ONLY my fault

I didn't deny that it was basically at least 80% my fault

BESW

I did really like the group's original concept.

trogdor

the whole con thing?

BESW

A bunch of people who met by teaching/working at a community college were on a road trip to Comic-Con.

Dorian

I come back after an episode of Detective Conan and I see death by stuffed orangutan? Nani?

trogdor

lol

BESW

6:16 AM

@Dorian Trogdor was a player in the game of cthulhu-dark I ran last night.

trogdor

it certainly was a strange way to die

BESW

It was a "haunted museum" story, Scooby-style, except with real monster(s) and death.

trogdor

and it was certainly 100% avoidable

Dorian

Fun times

BESW

Hmm.

doppelgreener

6:20 AM

@BESW ha!

BESW

The unanimous starting point of the "female Doctor" panel was that it would be great, but AFTER Moffat's run, obviously, jeez #nineworlds

Tweeted by pickwick on August 9, 2014 at 1:48 PM

Dorian

6:46 AM

Any templates that grant Powerful Build to anything in 3.5?

doppelgreener

6:59 AM

@Dorian i wouldn't know, but that is probably a good site question if you want to ask it

Dorian

considering it heavily

doppelgreener

a thing I really like about Avatar: the intro sequence is under a minute. they don't waste time. the entire intro is there to do absolutely nothing except introduce people to everything they need to know about the story. s'great.

BESW

@doppelgreener High-quality "previously on" blips are actually a useful way for kids to build schema they'll use in writing and teaching later in life.

I'll always remember the "Mathnet" version; they had a 10-minute episode every weekday, and all five episodes would be one story. So the first ep had no "previously on." The second ep had a pretty detailed summary of the first one, but day three had to cram two days' worth of plot in so they focused on the more important stuff... and by day five they were hitting only the absolutely crucial plot points in rapid succession.

It was a great lesson in degrees of summary, how to fit your content to your available length, and recognising what's actually important.

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