TRPG General Chat

mxyzplk

00:03

@nitsua60 Yes

trogdor

@nitsua60 lol

oh he is here, neat

nitsua60

@mxyzplk when comments are getting out of hand and one mod-moves them to chat, is that a canned message that comes up? The "comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat."

mxyzplk

@nitsua60 Yes, we just click "move to chat" and it happens automatically

nitsua60

@mxyzplk That's too bad that you can't individualize the message. I noticed on the lycanthrope CR question that you responded to my flag. But the canned message could easily read as "dude's a stick in the mud and won't let our voices be heard" when if you'd been able to append "per flagging activity" to the end, the obvious interpretation would be "dude's helping out where people ask."

mxyzplk

@nitsua60 Yeah, my days of worrying about who thinks I'm a stick in the mud are long past. We could edit and change the default message, but everyone who's been on the site more than 3 days should know the drill

(I mean - we can't change the default message, but once it's posted it's editable like any other comment)

nitsua60

00:11

Just thinking about February in meta.... Perhaps your days of worrying about who thinks you're a stick in the mud *shouldn't* be past?
That would be a pain to click into the comment to edit it each time, though.

mxyzplk

Yeah. I'm not interested in "passing the buck" to flags. I took the action. Flag or no flag. It might be worth mentioning in some contexts when it's not clear why action is being taken, but that's a clear case where everyone knows why action is being taken.

I appreciate the support though.

nitsua60

On the other hand, I was just offered the opportunity to move a bunch of comments to chat on this answer and it created the chat room, but didn't remove the accompanying comments from the post. Should I flag them for mod-deletion?

@mxyzplk Thanks, and no problem.

mxyzplk

Please. Actually even when we do it, it doesn't delete the comments, it says "now you have to delete the comments manually" so we have to delete-all-comments and then undelete the comment that says it was moved to chat. It's a pretty annoying process

trogdor

why does it automate the message but then make you delete the comments yourself?

nitsua60

ugh. You can't just.... buuuuurrrrrrnnn them =)

trogdor

00:16

that does seem like it just creates more work

mxyzplk

because they hate america?

trogdor

hmm, I guess maybe auto delete wouldn't be able to leave the comments that are not supposed to be deleted alone

mxyzplk

By nature they have to spend less time on mod tools than on functionality used by the whole community, but it means a lot of the stuff there is pretty rough, most of it we can't edit, etc.

so we just have default process workarounds we use

nitsua60

Makes sense, tough for you, though.
OTOH, now it looks like a bunch of the comments from my auto-move were deleted. I guess that just lags a bit. (I had re-loaded the page once or twice.)

mxyzplk

This morning I actually couldn't undelete comments so in that specific case you linked I actually repasted the "moved to chat" comment manually. (mod functionality sometimes doesn't work for little spurts of time)

No that was me

trogdor

00:19

@nitsua60 stuff works like that sometimes here, like seeing other people's edits

mxyzplk

since you already linked it, didn't bother waiting for the flag

nitsua60

@mxyzplk ah--I was looking for them to flag them for you =)

trogdor

@mxyzplk ah ok XD I just thought it was a uniform thing XD

nitsua60

@mxyzplk Hmm... it looks like you deleted more than were moved to chat. Is it possible to undelete?

The chat room starts with my "@DavidWilkins that's one interpretation..."

I thought I recalled there being some more before that. If not possible, well comments are transient =)

afk awhile (putting the kids to bed). Thanks for the time, @mxyzplk. @trogdor I trust you'll hold down the fort =)

trogdor

lol

what fort?

mxyzplk

00:26

@nitsua60 I can. did you only move some of them? Or was tha tpartof the automatic functionality?

undeleted the 2-vote one as the only one of any helpfulness

BESW

00:42

Today in I do not think that means what you think it means: "A West African chimp from a Swedish zoo named Peter."

nitsua60

@mxyzplk the auto-migrate grabbed some subset, but I don't know how it was determined. If you could see all the previous-to-migrate-point ones and resurrected what was worth saving, I trust your judgment. Thanks again.

@BESW As in, "why would they name a zoo 'Peter'?"

BESW

Yes.

nitsua60

01:02

May I ask the Chatizens a stupid food-question?

BESW

Shoot.

nitsua60

So, French fries have nothing to do with France, we know. [I feel really stupid already....] What about French toast? Any France-relation there?

BESW

It became popular in a 15th century French court.

doppelgreener

wikipedia says it's also called german toast, gypsy toast, and spanish toast

BESW

Yeah. It pre-dates the concept of "France" by hundreds of years, if not more.

Very common across a wide stretch of history and geography.

nitsua60

01:14

@BESW You mean eggs and stale bread predate France? =D

(that must have looked really weird without a verb.)

Anyone know if it's terribly popular in France now, six centuries later?

mxyzplk

@nitsua60 sure no worries

Pixie

@nitsua60 They do eat it, at least. It's called pain perdu, or lost bread, 'cause you can make it from dry/stale bread.

nitsua60

@Pixie to the rescue =) Thanks.

BESW

@Revolver_Ocelot Hi!

trogdor

lol

Pixie

01:31

@Revolver_Ocelot Nice name.

AncientSwordRage

Would it work?

doppelgreener

alternate question, will it blend?

nitsua60

Please cross-post this over in chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/36138/…. I dream of the day that's grown into some sort of magi-tech breeding ground.

BESW

I suspect it'd trigger as soon as it's shot.

doppelgreener

@AncientSwordRage I'm concerned by the design. The launch velocity itself could break the stick.

BESW

01:38

Also, seriously non-aerodynamic.

nitsua60

@doppelgreener That's why we need it modeled in Inventor or SolidWorks; we know how to do those analyses! Pleeeease =)

BESW

Range increment of 10 ft, tops.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 link to this message from there. the conversation will die in that room.

nitsua60

@doppelgreener done, and you're absolutely correct. I can't even get a mod to tell me who owns it/how to get it assigned an owner or a real name.... And I've pinged all three on different occasions.

doppelgreener

@AncientSwordRage You're pumping a tremendous amount of acceleration into the arrow shaft. Usually that then pushes the arrow head along. In this case, the arrow head's made of many parts, so each part pushes on the next. In this case, the cage pushes on the stick, and the stick pushes on the tube. If the stick's fragile enough to break when the arrow eventually lands, it's fragile enough to break immediately on trying to transfer all that energy through to the tube.

@nitsua60 There is none. Click INFO in the top right of a chat room, and then ACCESS. Compare this room to that one.

nitsua60

01:42

@AncientSwordRage don't listen to the nay-sayers. They probably said you were crazy when you proposed crossbow bolts with Oil of Impact built in!

@doppelgreener So if I created a new magi-tech room, would there be a way to suck all of the messages from the "chat on question..." room into the new one?

doppelgreener

I imagine many archers were lost in the development of this weapon.

@nitsua60 link to them. someone asked an RPG question here, it'll get attention here, it can stay here. create the room, see if it garners interest.

Pixie

@doppelgreener Quite a sacrifice to make when there's Mage Hand and Unseen Servant. :P

doppelgreener

@Pixie I think a few of them were not expecting there to be much danger involved. "Great! This passed the Unseen Servant test just fine! Let's try it out."

Pixie

@doppelgreener Oh, I meant something even simpler: you can just have the Unseen Servant drop the hole into the bag to begin with. You don't even need the arrow. But yes, underestimating risks is entirely possible. xD

Additionally, I feel like weight of the arrow would be a concern.

doppelgreener

@Pixie Oh yeah. :D

Pixie

01:51

The smallest bag of holding you can get weighs 15lb.

doppelgreener

I award this arrow: Most Amusing Way To Trick Your Enemies Into Destroying Themselves 2016.

AncientSwordRage

@nitsua60 we could use a similar spinning projectile release, as used in RPGs (ha ha)

doppelgreener

@Pixie ... a fifteen pound (or more) arrow is more of a balista bolt.

Pixie

Precisely.

nitsua60

Imprecisely?

'im ^^ precisely!

AncientSwordRage

01:53

nitsua60

@doppelgreener I see where you're coming from: impulse delivered to launch must be greater than impulse at landing (via resistive losses), so how can one not trigger? But impulse at launch can be spread out over greater time than impulse at impact, leading to a "sweet spot" in force needed to trigger.

AncientSwordRage

@nitsua60 would the flight not act as an air brake?

nitsua60

(It's also the reason you need your ~~Arrow of Annihilation~~ impact grenade to hit a hard surface--so you don't replicate that low-force impulse on landing and leave an untriggered munition for a kid to find.)

All atmospheric flights act as air brakes. The task of design is to identify requirements and constraints, then produce product that will act within constraints while exceeding requirements.

(simple as that, eh?)

@SPavel [wave again!]

That unnamed spring ^^ between the "impact trigger" and grenade body--that's where the magic lies =)

doppelgreener

trogdor

lol

nitsua60

02:08

Wow, I own a room now. And I can protect questions. And I'm a good sportsman. All in one day! I need to sit back and process....

@AncientSwordRage In a "real* RPG--which I know next-to-nothing about--how long is the launch impulse spread over? I.e. what's the thrust profile on the 'R' like?

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 UXO is no fun.

nitsua60

@Shalvenay UXO="unexploded ordnance"?

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 exactly.l

nitsua60

@Shalvenay My son thought we found some earlier today...

We were digging our cubic-meter hole, hit something hard, and he saw a spark fly. "Dad, I think there's a bomb down there!"

Turns out it's just a big rock hit by the pick, but today he discovered fire anew.

The human race will on.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 besides, you could throw a fresh-off-the-line Mk82 in your campfire and it won't blow up

insensitivemunitions.org

nitsua60

02:19

@Shalvenay you could. Leave me out of it =D

BESW

There are caves around here which still might have UXO from WWII. And every now and then a farmer digs up a canister of mustard gas.

nitsua60

@BESW Toss 'em in @Shalvenay's campfire. (Seriously, though--that's scary.)

Shalvenay

@BESW ouch. that's scary indeed.

I betcha a lot of that stuff is wicked unstable by now

nitsua60

Luckily, in my part of the world the most-recent thing Peter and I are like to dig up during this project is a musket ball.

BESW

There are some places where they've chosen to just wall off the caves to keep people out, rather than go in and try to clear 'em.

nitsua60

02:31

@BESW What's the geology like that these caves are around? Are they lava-tubes? Limestone? (And forgive my ever-ignorance, those of you who love geology.)

BESW

Some of our caves are cut out by groundwater running along limestone/basalt contact zones and/or remnants of old surge channels cut through reefs that later uplifted as limestone cliffs.

But we've also got manmade caves dug into the limestone by the Japanese during WWII.

Shalvenay

I haven't heard of any UXO here thankfully. We have a military base nearby, but the ops that run out of there are recon and EW

BESW

Some of them are proper underground bunkers made during the occupation; others are more crude and were made by soldiers who went to ground rather than surrender after the American troops reclaimed the islands.

We also have several decades of the US military dumping their waste pretty much wherever they like.

nitsua60

@BESW =(

BESW

These hills have a mixture of spent WWII ordnance and modern detritus from war games:

As a kid biking through there, I could stop at the bottom of almost any large hill and sift through the dirt to find a handful of cartridges and maybe a bit of shrapnel. Once I found a big old-fashioned key.

nitsua60

02:42

So I'm an idiot, and it's a little hard to read topography from the image... are those sharp escarpments where nothing's growing, or is it recent earth-moving?

BESW

Yes, steep escarpments.

It's exacerbated by off-roading and the war games, but there's no deliberate earth-moving, just erosion of anything not held in place by the grass.

nitsua60

It looks very earth-ey, not so much rocky. Is there not much bedrock/regolith near the surface in Guam?

BESW

Guam's geography is very diverse. Central southern Guam is mostly volcanic red clay like you see there, with basalt underneath.

Go north or east and it turns into limestone on basalt.

Guam's underlying geologic history: A volcano emerged and then subsided so that a reef could grow on it. Then another volcano emerged just south of the first one, lifting the reef out of the water.

So our south is rolling volcanic hills and our north is flat limestone with steep cliffs around the edges.

The south has rivers and waterfalls, the north has an aquifer and a single basalt hill sticking up out of the limestone. Caves are found at the boundaries between limestone and basalt (erosion), and in the limestone cliffs (old surge channels).

nitsua60

"surge channel"?

BESW

Surge channel

A surge channel is a narrow inlet on a rocky shoreline. As waves strike the shore, water fills the channel, and drains out again as the waves retreat. The narrow confines of the channel create powerful currents that reverse themselves rapidly as the water level rises and falls. Surge channels can range from a few inches across to 10 feet or more. They may create tide pools if the conditions are correct, but the rapid water movement almost always creates a dangerous situation for people or animals that are caught in it. The West Coast Trail on the coast of Vancouver Island, B.C., is famous for its...

nitsua60

02:52

Ahh... I think we called them "thunder holes" as kids.

BESW

Yeah, that'd do it.

When the reef is lifted up out of the water, the surge channels become ravines and caves.

nitsua60

TIL: Guam is the RL Lava Me (warning: YT link)

BESW

@nitsua60 ...yes.

Looking for a good picture of the Keyhole.

nitsua60

Night, all! @Adeptus -- keep doing your thing =) @AncientSwordRage you made my day.

BESW

ttfn

...nobody takes photos of the Keyhole that show off its geologic origins. [sigh]

Malice Vidrine

03:18

The Surge Channel is my favorite. An entire network featuring only programs about a 1990s soda.

The Surge Channel: Carbo-loaded Television

BESW

04:59

I think AG-I might be a thing in our campaign some time.

BESW

06:31

I made a robot to help me argue on the internet https://t.co/NxpXhk0NMM

Tweeted by SimoneGiertz on March 16, 2016 at 3:19 PM

Malice Vidrine

Yes. That is how it's done.

AncientSwordRage

08:44

@nitsua60 thanks

@BESW I actually communicate via one of these

BESW

@AncientSwordRage I prefer to use a cat; their randomisation algorithms are very robust.

David Wilkins