TRPG General Chat

DuckTapeAl

00:00

trogdor

lol

how apt

XD

Guiding Light

01:23

@Miniman Zweihander Sentinel would like a word with you.

Miniman

01:35

@GuidingLight DSP made a whole archetype to fix Paizo's dumb nerfs. That totally undermines my point. #sarcasm

DuckTapeAl

The more I hang out on this site, the less I feel like I have a decent bread-and-butter system to run stuff on.

Like, I've got stories I want to tell, but I don't want to have to figure out a system, teach a system, and tell stories in a system all at once.

PF fixed most of the things I didn't like about 3.5, but the longer it exists, the more of this edge case crap falls through the cracks.

And then there's the stuff that's just terrible on its face, like Sacred Geometry.

Or Blood Money.

Or the entire Downtime system, including the kingdom rules.

Miniman

01:55

@DuckTapeAl Well, what are you looking for?

DuckTapeAl

Basically, I'm looking for a game to join that's not playing D&D.

Once I've got a few sessions under my belt with basically anything else, I'd be comfortable running it, but I haven't had the chance to get that far yet.

I've got friends interested in a Skype game, but the only systems that I'm comfortable with are D&D-analogues.

So I could run the story I want to tell in 5th ed or something, but I'd rather do something else.

A system where I don't already know so many of its systemic holes.

Guiding Light

02:28

@DuckTapeAl Edge case crap?

Shalvenay

@DuckTapeAl -- sadly, I'm almost in the same position -- although I have been off-and-on hammering something out (perhaps Traveller?) with nitsua60

unless spaceships aren't your cuppa

(I suspect Traveller will either be very good or very bad for me -- it might be just different enough from my existing ships-in-space gaming experience to screw me up)

nitsua60

02:46

@Shalvenay speaking of whom, sorry I wasn't around this weekend--ended up popping down to the in-laws' this weekend. How's life?

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 alright here. got surprised with lemon glazed strawberry supreme pie for pi day

DuckTapeAl

@GuidingLight There are mechanical interactions in PF that are pretty clearly the result of a designer not knowing of a rule that's in another supplement, and bad things happening because for that.

Guiding Light

Example, just for fun?

DuckTapeAl

For example, the fact that the designer in charge of that sidebar in the Aasimar book not knowing that Giants are humanoids.

Shalvenay

result: jumbo Aasimar. :P

DuckTapeAl

02:53

The sidebar says that a celestial-humanoid hybrid creates an aasimar, regardless of what race the humanoid was.

Said aasimar takes on the size of their humanoid parent, and no other racial traits.

Giants are humanoids with the giant subtype.

Ergo: Gargantuan Aasimars.

Shalvenay

although in some ways, I think a gargantuan Aasimar would be a rather pleasant kind of giant to be around

compared to some of the oafs that lurk among the giantkin

(or worse)

Malice Vidrine

03:06

There should be PC Aboleth-Celestial hybrids. I would play the shit out of one of those.

I'd play an insane squid cleric.

(Well, so long as the system I was playing it in was not d20)

(I have standards.)

BESW

@MaliceVidrine Swordapus, a custom PC version of an actual NPC in a 13th Age setting supplement.

He's not a cleric.... yet.

Malice Vidrine

You had me at that name.

"Look Away. Now Look Back Again. I’m Still an Octopus." XD

3

BESW

03:24

....Hmm. Maybe my next PC will be someone Driven Mad by the Nameless Colour which has overrun the Pacific Northwest.

[looks at old 4e starlock character ideas]

> - warlock/divine/primal character who gets powers because some Power chose them as its herald/champion; they get no say in the matter and are unhappy about it, but use the power to further their own ends and try not to act in the Power's interests.
- Mad astologer who is convinced she has found terrible new Truths in the stars. Charts, astrolabe, telescope, twisted little star globes and orreries are used to understand and control the power of the stars. Of course, they are toying with her.
- Driven mad by star-dreams, fears the stars but grovels before their power.

Malice Vidrine

Heh, the Infamous Colour out of Space.

BESW

03:39

Our headquarters in rural Oregon was scanning old texts to digitise its library of ancient lore, and it seems nobody realised OCR might count as "reading" for the activation of various rituals and incantations.

Now the Pacific Northwest is a Nameless Colour Which Drives Men Mad.

And our organisation had to re-locate its base of operations to Hollywood.

Malice Vidrine

Oh god, that's what I call a high cost of failure...

BESW

Also our head of operations is missing, and the organisation's been taken over by a hivemind cult.

But, yanno, it's Hollywood. Who hasn't been taken over by a hivemind cult at least once?

Malice Vidrine

In Hollywood, nobody.

BESW

At least we aren't in San Francisco. It's being attacked by the undead of Colma.

(Led, I'm assuming, by Emperor Norton I.)

Malice Vidrine

Emperor Norton would never be involved in that funny business. Slander!

Adeptus

03:47

@BESW If they'd just watched that Buffy episode... [sigh]

Malice Vidrine

At least Seattle is safe until our Deep One overlords come to collect.

BESW

Undead-Americans must be recognised as equals in his Empire!

Malice Vidrine

@Adeptus - I Robot, You Jane.

Embarrassingly bad episode. But at least we have Once More, With Feeling to make up for it.

Adeptus

I didn't think it was embarrassingly bad. It was first season, so the show hadn't hit its peak yet. But was it really any worse than the rest of first season?

Malice Vidrine

Only slightly.

doppelgreener

04:43

Rhinovirus

Rhinoviruses (from the Greek (gen.) "nose") are the most common viral infectious agents in humans and are the predominant cause of the common cold. Rhinovirus infection proliferates in temperatures between 33–35 °C (91–95 °F), the temperatures found in the nose. Rhinoviruses is a genus within the Picornaviridae family of viruses. There are 99 recognized types of human rhinoviruses that differ according to their surface proteins (serotypes). They are lytic in nature and are among the smallest viruses, with diameters of about 30 nanometers. By comparison, other viruses, such as smallpox and vaccinia...

Weird Science plot: someone creates a different kind of rhinovirus. One that has more to do with rhinos. It doesn't get sufficient notice on account of the Mostly Harmless reputation rhinoviruses have.

DuckTapeAl

Urban fantasy plot: Someone becomes a lich, using a web service as a phylactery.

The difficulty of the plot goes from "geocities site" to "google".

Miniman

05:12

@DuckTapeAl Datacentres are increasingly becoming accepted as the optimal method of soul storage, slowly beating out the more traditional jars.

Malice Vidrine

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to do my binary encoding of souls with knots in the form of complicated tapestries.

And I write spells in register machine code instead of your high and mighty Turing machines.

Miniman

06:11

@MaliceVidrine Um...I think you might have those 2 in the wrong order.

BESW

09:20

@doppelgreener Perhaps it's a different kind of virus altogether.

Hmm. Is there a way to search Wikipedia for articles belonging to multiple categories? I'm suddenly curious if any other article falls into the centre of the Venn diagram of Mammal cryptids | Fictional cetaceans | Legendary mammals.

BESW

09:45

I'd like to point out that @MaliceVidrine has 10 stars across 4 comments at the top of the star bar.

eimyr

11/5 @besw

And counting!

BESW

I wasn't considering 8 down to be "the top."

doppelgreener

10:29

@BESW Apparently Special:Search has an incategory: parameter.

BESW

ooh.

Also--you're on chat in the early evening!

doppelgreener

@BESW Yes! For a moment there before I sent that link there were problems connecting to the server and I thought I'd be in trouble, but... huzzah!

I called my ISP when you reminded me about the issue a few days ago and it was working fine the very next day from what I could tell.

BESW

Cool.

Miniman

13:22

I find this question utterly unfathomable.

BESW

What's confusing to you?

Miniman

@BESW The idea of a player not automatically taking on every quest they hear even so much of a mention of.

In every game I've ever played in or run, all it takes is a third-hand rumour to send the party running halfway across the globe.

eimyr

@Miniman I don't have a problem with that, though admittedly many games require players to take on quests.

Miniman

I mean, I've had my players spend an entire session on something that wasn't even meant to be a quest.

eimyr

It brushes on how social contract treats player commitment.

@Miniman Meanwhile, I've had players who simply didn't like the adventure hook and went off to do something else.

Miniman

13:31

Admittedly, the group I was playing with earlier tonight got a little caught up infiltrating a cult and was pretty close to retiring from the adventurer lifestyle to go into a flower-arranging career.

nitsua60

14:22

@Miniman "Third-Hand Rumour" would be a great name for some band's third album.

nitsua60

15:47

[come to think of it, "Running Halfway Across the Globe" would be a good name for Third-Hand Rumour's opening track.]

BESW

20:07

I wrote a Core/Accelerated conversion guide this weekend. http://drivethrurpg.com/product/177639/Fate-Accelerated-Core-Conversion-Guide?affiliate_id=24139 https://t.co/QDtpSXPU9v

Tweeted by fredhicks on March 15, 2016 at 2:47 PM

BESW

20:35

**Cool RPG stuff:** [Bundle of Holding](http://bundleofholding.com "buy RPGs cheap in bulk, support charities & indie designers!");
[Storium w/the Stack](http://goo.gl/forms/jvz9Bs6jg8 "an interest survey");
[Core/FAE conversion guide](http://drivethrurpg.com/product/177639/Fate-Accelerated-Core-Conversion-Guide "pay-what-you-like by Fred Hicks");
[GM's Day Sale](http://drivethrurpg.com/rpg_gmsday.php?&filters=0_0_0_0_0_31817 "30% off on thousands of titles");
[Storium launch](https://storium.com/ "Still no native library of storycard art, though.");

Please note the GM's Day Sale.

Malice Vidrine

Numenera is tempting at that price...

eimyr

20:58

Definite solution to the Alignment discussion:

BESW

"Image Not Found" is very accurate.

2

eimyr

Malice Vidrine

That is amazing.

doppelgreener

@eimyr instructions unclear; created hamburger cult

eimyr

@doppelgreener Neutral Evil: Hamburglar

The Oracle

21:04

0

Q: Where to find races and classes in 5e

I agree that What new playable races and classes are in Curse of Strahd? isn't a great question for the site. One step worse than a "read the book to me," it's a "read the ToC to me" question. However... Would What are the official (WotC) playable races in 5e? be an acceptable question for the s...

eimyr

@nitsua60 The question is very likely to quickly become obsolete.

BESW

If you face swap Mulder & Scully they look like a great Synth Pop band. https://t.co/Sai6CsC8Am

Tweeted by DannyDutch on March 14, 2016 at 8:11 PM

Sculder and Mully?

eimyr

Murder and Scarry.

BESW

13

Q: How to motivate players without the promise of gold and XP?

The only way I seem to be able to motivate my players to go on adventures is the promise of gold or XP they don't seem to want to go anywhere unless some kind of physical reward is promised. For example: A little girl is dying of a disease and her father asks the adventurers to go to a hidden ca...

gm-techniques

Whoops, messed up the pin.

**Cool RPG stuff:** [Bundle of Holding](http://bundleofholding.com "buy RPGs cheap in bulk, support charities & indie designers!");
[Storium with the Stack](http://goo.gl/forms/jvz9Bs6jg8 "an interest survey");
[Core/FAE conversion guide](http://drivethrurpg.com/product/177639/Fate-Accelerated-Core-Conversion-Guide "pay-what-you-like by Fred Hicks");
[Storium launch](https://storium.com/ "Still no native library of storycard art, though.");
[Conan RPG](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modiphius/robert-e-howards-conan-roleplaying-game "'the most authentic Conan roleplaying experience yet…

nitsua60

21:23

@eimyr do you mean when 6e comes out?

eimyr

@Nitsua60 no, when more races are released.

doppelgreener

22:07

i fail to see why this is a problem, personally

BESW

Why what is a problem?

trogdor

@BESW wat

doppelgreener

@BESW "The question will become obsolete" or, rather, I presume, the answers. Because they can be updated when a new book comes out.

And the books don't come out all that often.

Whether anyone wants to do that is another issue. I'm not particularly interested in that.

I am however not enthusiastic that I'm suddenly seeing "oh no, the answer might change over time" becoming an established reason to reject questions.

but right now I am so done trying to do things on meta.

Wibbs

@doppelgreener yeah, that's not a reason by itself

lots of answers change over time for lots of reasons

BESW

"Unmaintainable" is the quality we're looking for, and it's a very subjective one.

doppelgreener

22:12

@BESW Unmaintainability is a good reason to avoid something, and I agree with the subjectiveness of it.

BESW

So I'd suggest that we not be too impatient when others' perception of such a subjective quality doesn't match our own.

Adeptus

22:55

@eimyr Our group very nearly refused to go to Kakishon in the Legacy of Fire PF adventure path. There was the rumour of fantastic treasures and/or horrible monsters, but very little "hook" for our party. An NPC was very keen to go with us, so that finally persuaded us.

Shalvenay

23:14

what are the alignments of Oberon and Titania in the Forgotten Realms? (I think Oberon's NG but my source on that's kinda thirdhand)

nitsua60

@Shalvenay FRwiki just calls her the "queen of good-aligned fey"

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 alright. I'm trying to point out in an answer that patrons aren't necessarily malevolent ;)

Miniman

@Shalvenay Chaotic. Don't ask me about the good/evil axis, but definitely chaotic.

nitsua60

Monster Mythology (2e) says that Oberon roams the beastlands and arborea, pointing to NG and (even more strongly) CG

DMG5e at p.49, though, specifically cautions against equating seelie-unseelie with good-evil.

[and that's all I've got =) ]

@Shalvenay I feel like the classic lesson to learn from the tales is that trying to overlay traditional (human) concepts of good-evil onto the fey ends up badly for us. Their motives, values, &c. are just alien, and we need to learn them before we can hope to make any headway.

Shalvenay

because I'm writing a concurring answer on the latest warlock question -- and struggling a bit to make the point further that the DM is seriously narrowminded on what a patron can be

@nitsua60 yeah. they are somewhat blue/orange in their morality

nitsua60

23:28

@Shalvenay did we have my cleric ?= warlock conversation at some point?

BESW

@nitsua60 Or, rather, than human stories encompass motives and goals more nuanced and complex than simply good or evil, lawful or chaotic.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 we may have

BESW

@Shalvenay Might check out the different kinds of patrons that 4e warlocks enjoyed.

Shalvenay

@BESW I'm actually thinking back to 3.5e which left the door pretty wide open

BESW

@Shalvenay Well, originally. Then they slammed it shut again with more splat later.

4e explicitly lists patrons including elementals, ghosts, fey nobles, and god-kings.

Shalvenay

23:33

@BESW oh? what did they do to do that?

BESW

@Shalvenay One of the later expansion books frothed at the mouth about "redeeming" warlocks and put forward a set of prestige classes based on the concept.

Shalvenay

@BESW ...*rolls eyes*

@BESW do you recall anything that might help me find the book in querstion?

BESW

The basic idea was that warlocks who bend their powers to good are a) extremely rare; b) defying their patron; c) in need of divine sponsorship to make it work.

I think it was one of the Fiendish Codexes?

[goes digging]

Miniman

@BESW You're not thinking of Enlightened Spirit from Complete Mage, are you?

BESW

@Miniman Maaaybe.

It's been years.

Yes, that's it. But it didn't stop with that PrC.

[digs further]

> Enlightened Spirit (warlock gets paladin-like powers): "Some warlocks start down the fiendish path, then repent and turn toward the light. Such rare individuals are called enlightened spirits."
Eldritch Disciple (warlock and cleric theurge): "Must worship a chaotic or evil deity," is flavoured as inherently fiendish.
Eldritch Theurge (warlock and arcane theurge): "Most of those who find themselves blessed (or cursed) with magic burning in their fiendish blood become warlocks."

Shalvenay

23:44

@Miniman yeah, Enlightened Spirit is part of it at least, yet the text on pp.7-8 of Complete Mage on warlock patrons mentions celestials (particularly eladrin), slaadi, and fey in addition to demons and devils

I suspect what happened to the Warlock is it was subject to a designer-war over what the class is

BESW

So, despite the non-mechanical writeups occasionally mentioning non-vile patrons, all the prestige classes for warlocks assume evil, and often explicitly fiendish, patrons.

Shalvenay

one side (Enlightened Spirit/Eldritch Disciple/Eldritch Theurge/most abilities) considers them to be mostly fiendish in nature

BESW

In fact, several of them assume the fiendish power of a warlock is inherited rather than bargained for.

Shalvenay

the other side (the original desc. in Complete Arcane, as well as the writeup on patrons in Complete Mage) refuses to make such assumptions, leaving the door wide open to a wide variety of patronage, or even gifted (as opposed to pacted or inherited) warlocks

and then you have corner cases like KRyan's use of the warlock class to model built-in abilities of a certain type of warforged ;)

BESW

Of course, Complete Arcane also gives its powers a distinctly dark flavour without any counterpoint.

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