TRPG General Chat - 2017-10-30 (page 1 of 2)

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12:03 AM

@Shalvenay hiya

...I just typo'd dispel magic as mispel magic.

6

I was tempted to not correct it.

@CTWind giantitp.com/comics/Incentives.html

(Scroll down a bit for the relevant bit.)

@nitsua60 how're things going?

hey there as well @CTWind

@nitsua60 also, mind hopping on Discord for a bit?

12:25 AM

@Shalvenay just a minute--I've got three assignments to grade before I get to bed =|

@nitsua60 ah, I'll let you grade assignments then.

I have to eat in two shakes anyway

12:44 AM

@Miniman the misplacer beast?

@trogdor I was talking about the Misspelled section, actually.

Oh

Whoops XD

I think Rary's Telepathic Bond is my favourite :)

I like misplacer beast anyway

That happens all the time

@trogdor Maybe you are a misplacer beast.

12:49 AM

No I should have been more clear, other people, namely my parents, are misplacer beasts

I have the opposite thing going, I am really good at finding stuff so they always ask me where everything is

@BESW Seems we are in furious agreement. Tactics are a means to an end (i.e. story), and tactics should be appropriate to the situation (i.e. not a globally applicable "I win" button).

I wouldn't go so far though as saying tactics modify strategy, it's more that tactics support the strategy (without ruling out "changing strategy" as another response).

For eg. if the strategy the players choose is "win by attrition", then that is the strategy. There are many tactics to support that strategy. A different tactic that causes a "win by co-opting the political situation" is a change of strategy, not a "tactic that supports win by attrition".

So, the spells (as just one part of the arsenal players have at their disposal) that would be interesting would be the ones that have wide utility for combining with other abilities or capabilities of other PCs (i.e. more likely to reward cooperation and planning).

2 hours later…

2:55 AM

hey there @DForck42

@trogdor the pulled pork turned out really good

@Shalvenay hello

how're things going?

@Shalvenay not too bad, you?

@DForck42 fantastic news

@DForck42 alright over here

3:14 AM

@trogdor yeah. we made some pulled pork nachos... yum

3:46 AM

@DForck42 I can taste my jealousy. Good on you

2 hours later…

the dark wanderer

6:07 AM

Okay, so I keep wanting to post this in response to literally everything @doppelspooker posts, but I know it's inappropriate so:

SpaaAAAAaaaceeeeeeee Ghooooooostt!!!!

3

6:18 AM

I have a character concept for a Secrets of Cats game:

WHAT.

Tweeted by highlikeplanes_ on October 27, 2017 at 8:00 PM

6:36 AM

@DForck42 I read this wrong "trogdor the pulled pork, turned out really good"

@Erics lol

I was not aware I tasted so good :P

mmm, burninated pork

the dark wanderer

7:41 AM

@BESW That's an awesome idea.

7:54 AM

@thedarkwanderer I'm not sure if it's a PC or an NPC, but it's character gold either way.

@BESW Opossums are the hags of the animal world.

8:07 AM

@BESW Sadly this doesn't seem to be true. It's been removed from the wiki page, and I can't find any other sources.

Well, no. It's ridiculous. But awesome.

Eh, animals do ridiculous things all the time.

yeah but they don't kidnap other animals just to teach them to fight and then release them to be on their way

still, some other pretty weird things do go on

@trogdor Humans do!

One of my favorites is that species of bird in Africa that likes to feed on bee larvae, and leads humans to beehives. After the humans rob the hive of honey using smoke, the bird can eat the larvae without getting stung.

8:22 AM

humans don't count

@trogdor Actually humans count more than most animals! :P

Reportedly corvids can count to nine (and recognize the concept of "more than nine")

har de har

Dogs also learn all kinds of weird rituals. A friend's dog, a four-year old rescue from Romania, has learned to thank for meals by stopping just short of finishing, coming to her owner, farting audibly and then returning to finish the meal.

Apparently she found it funny the first time and accidentally made the dog believe this is the desired behavior for ever after.

My aunt's dogs know how long she's put them on time out.

8:39 AM

@doppelspooker @nitsua60 Someone might want to move the comment wars on the term maiden to chat in rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/109067/… ...

Regarding that, do we have any guideline on where lore questions stop being on-topic?

37

A: Are campaign research questions on topic, part two?

No, not unless they are truly RPG-centric. A Summary: What to do Add a section to our FAQ defining what is on topic or off topic. My second draft of the wording (that I'm still not completely satisfied with): Question about a general real-world topic such as history, geography or economic...

@BESW That's a good answer, but it seems to cover real-life research better than the lore of fictional universes (in this case, Forgotten Realms which is best known for being a DnD setting)

> Would an RPG expert give me a better/different/more specific answer to this question than a Historian, Geographer, etc?

FR is a D&D setting, so most questions about it are on topic because it's reasonable to expect RPG experts to give the best answers about it.

@BESW Yet it troubles me. I can get it for questions regarding things that pop up in campaigns all the time. Monster lore, iconic NPCs or locations, and so. But when we get into the minute details that are out of scope for most campaigns it no longer feels right to me.

8:46 AM

It might be useful to try and drill down to why you feel that way.

Because it feels like pointless trivia.

Well, generally we trust that someone's asking a question because they have encountered a challenge and need a solution.

Often if they don't say what that challenge is, we ask them to explain why they're asking so we can be sure our answers will really be helpful.

This also helps root out XY problems.

It doesn't seem evident to me in the particular question, for instance.

17

A: Is trivia on-topic?

I think the matter of whether a question is trivia or not is a red herring here. So is whether the reason behind the question is "I just wanna know." I'm considering a "trivia" question to be one where the asker's just curious and wants to learn something, but it won't necessarily solve a practi...

I also dislike the idea that FR should receive special treatment over other fictional universes simply because it's a popular campaign setting.

8:51 AM

I agree that the question would probably be massively improved by explaining the real-world game context which lead to the querent asking that question.

@kviiri Heh, nobody's saying that.

ANY campaign setting that is primarily an RPG setting gets the same treatment. It's not popularity contest.

@BESW Well, if that's not the case, shouldn't the question be asked over at scifi.SE? I think the whole "setting details" thing is more at home there.

@kviiri A question about "What is expected of unmarried people in Gareth" concearning Aventuria of "the dark eye"/DSA actually would be answerabe - there are information about that in... 5 books through 3 editions.

Atomic Robo is a comic series whose setting is used in an RPG, so setting questions about it aren't on topic here. Ki Khanga is an RPG with a customized setting that's had some stories published in the same world, so it's on topic here. Either would also be on topic on scifi.se or literature.se.

But it's a LOT more likely that an RPG expert has read the Ki Khanga novels.

For FR I don't know if there is an answer, but it might matter because of building the Background of a character (is informally livng together shunned or not? Is virginity of a marrying couple a trait valued?) - The question about chastity in a society in an RPG is imho a question like "Where is a moral event horizon in this game"=

And since FR is best known to be an RPG setting besides it being the backdrop of Neverwinter Nights/Baldur's Gates/Drizzit etc, it is best on topic here, as most who play FR here have at least a passing interest in the PC games AND Books in that genre.
The question /might/ fit in litterature, but that would exclude the PC games from the possible sources. in scifi it might find a home, but how many experts there are experts in the game splatbooks, the pc games and the books? It is more likely o find the expert where the idea of the FR has its root: here.

@Trish I considered doing that, but I've opted to leave them there primarily because they are still mostly engaged in topicality of the question, i.e. the things we want main-site comments to be about, and there's only a few of them. (If it were a longer back and forth, it would definitely be moved to chat.)

9:00 AM

But that still leaves the question: at which point does it indeed get too minute?

Or does it ever?

You can also raise a custom moderator flag for suggestions like that: flag one of the comments in the conversation, or flag the question itself, and pick the custom reason option and suggest the conversation get moved to chat. :)

@doppelspooker ah... just prefer the chat for getting in touch with the "blue brigade"/"clan diamond"...

I'm content with the FR question staying open on this site. RPG experts have pored over the game manuals and supplementary materials, which means they've likely seen things people who have only read the novels have not seen. Also, they are the kind of audience who would also have dived into the novels. They will also be able to answer focusing on what this means for the players.

@kviiri hard to say... to ask "What is the standard eating equipment in City A in culture B in game C" clearly is too minute, but asking "Is there information about the eating customs of culture B in game C" clearly is answerable

This means it's both within our domain of expertise and we're likely to give it a different, better, or more specific answer in the context of RPG gameplay.

9:06 AM

Considering how many DnD questions per edition we get from just the rules, I'm a bit spooked about what will happen if enough people get the idea that asking random tidbits from FR or any other popular RPG universe is encouraged here. Therefore I think we should expect such questions, when not obvious, to include some description of an actual RPG problem the querent wants to solve.

@doppelspooker don't forget the NWN/BG games... I happen to remember that a certain tiefling rogue did speak about having had an affair with another rogue, but I don't remember if there was some more context to the matter on a society level allowing more answers for the Sword Coast at least

@kviiri The lore tag is for questions about campaign world lore and it already has 153 questions. It's been going fine.

@kviiri If people are asking questions that are high enough quality to not get closed, I don't see the problem with having more content on the site.

(Also, only 10 lore questions are closed. The site in general has a close rate slightly over 10%, so slightly under 10% being closed in a tag is pretty good.)

And, again, "popular" is not a quality we look for when judging topicality.

9:09 AM

@kviiri there is a qestion asking for "mundane higher education" - which is just as much a 'here are tiny splats of insight on this' across ALL the FR books as 'how expected is celebacy for unmarried people'

@BESW Yes, but what I'm arguing here is what "high enough quality" means.

@Trish Please don't make this into "why didn't you complain about X" discussion. I don't have the time, motivation or energy to notice every post on this site. Other stuff exists always, but that doesn't mean I'm ok with that.

@doppelspooker But there's many kinds of lore, and a lot of it is more obviously important to playing than what kind of sandals they wear in Neverwinter.

@kviiri I just tried to make a point that "help me find tiny tidbit about this or that in the game books" IS indeed a bread and butter question to the compound memory of us gamers.

@kviiri None of us, individually or as a Stack community, is in any position to tell other individuals in this community what's important to their play.

Looking at the closed questions of Lore: Shopping questions (3) Dupes (1) Unclear (3) Too broad (2) Opinion based (1 - though that might have been unclear too)

The Stack has given us a great many ways to tell if a question is of good quality without passing judgement on whether the querent is playing right.

9:18 AM

@Trish The university question clearly states why they need the information.

@BESW Yes, that I can agree with - but could we at least request the querent to indeed state why their question is important?

@kviiri that only makes the question better, but not invalidates the other

@Trish Well, it makes the difference that it's no longer just "tiny splats of insight".

And since I'm arguing against questions on RPG universes without RPG context, it's difference enough, wouldn't you agree?

Look at the FAQ ( rpg.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask ) - the question is on topic (or better home here than somewhere else), it is relative specific, it is somewhat relevant to more than the asker as it is easy to pull out that question for things like punishing the game group for not being married and sleeping their way through the continent as well as make it a hook for a tragic Romeo/juliet plot, and it keeps an open mind.

It doesn't show search and research, but that is often omissable to some degree.

I did not vote to close it because I agree it's not off-topic as it is.

It is not a good question as it is, so much I give you, but it is clearly not a VTC.

9:23 AM

@Trish Yes, but maybe it (or future questions of same level) should be.

Asker might want to make it more relevant by giving us insight in what motivated the question

Yes, that's true.

as it is, it is likely to drop to the bottom of the pool and get ignored till someone interested in the topic does the research

I also agree that we don't have a lore question problem at this time (a single question I would rather see closed is hardly a problem)

But in general I would raise the bar to prevent future excesses.

@kviiri We can absolutely make that request--but refusal to comply doesn't make the question close-worthy.

@kviiri Stack policies don't have grandfather clauses.

9:29 AM

/me loves one thing in Wiki: <sup>[citation needed]</sup>

That means all posts no matter how new or old are subject to curation based on whatever the current policy might be.

@kviiri The Stack doesn't work that way. We don't make policies in anticipation of possible problems; we make policies based on actual experience with existing problems we're facing.

@BESW Usually the old questions are not discovered till somebody digs them up though

In other words, the exact same "You should explain what real-world experience led you to ask for this" guideline that makes for good questions... is mandatory for policy discussions.

[pause for irony]

Yes, you only make it a Better question that more likely gets an answer on the main... but you NEED to justify on the meta or get burncinneratedeletecrushedcurbstomped

@BESW Wouldn't the poor signal-to-noise ratio on other stacks qualify?

Eg. Math.stackexchange or Stackoverflow? (Seriously, I'm spooked RPG.se will be like them one of these days - although it's a devil unlikely to arrive via the carriage of lore questions)

9:34 AM

RPG.SE's history with trivia questions actually reflects this nicely: originally we wanted to be all-inclusive because in theory that's a great thing to do. But when faced with the situation in practice we curated it in defiance of the established policy, and then revisted the policy based on actual experience.

Wow, I just realized I answered a question asked in 2013, when 4th ed SR was new and fresh... in 2017, when 5th ed SR largely made it obsolete since 2 years.

@kviiri No, because each Stack has to deal with its own problems, not the ghosts of other Stacks' problems. Curation in advance of a problem creates extra work for potentially no effect and probably increased resentment from the community at large.

Lit.se beta is currently struggling mightily because people keep trying to curate away problems that they've seen in other sites, before we know if lit.se would suffer from them at all.

@BESW Okay, fair enough.

I haven't caught up on the conversation above yet, but please bear in mind: the default approach to "but what if X happens?" on stack exchange, or at least this stack exchange, is to wait and see if X actually does happen, then see if we need to do anything special to handle it.

@doppelspooker Well, it seems like you caught enough. Okay, I'll bear that in mind :)

9:41 AM

A lot of problems that have been expected in our past have either not happened, were handled by ordinary community curation, or were handled in considerate meta discussion that was able to formulate a good solution because the problem had already happened so we already understood its nature. We have the campaign research policy we have now because we allowed a lot of problem questions to happen first which showed us where drawing the line was appropriate.

@kviiri 👍

Rest assured that just like the campaign research discussions, if we do experience a slide in quality and increase in frustration connected to a class of questions making the site less fun, there will be someone to say on meta "hey, something is going wrong. Can we talk about it?". It may even be one of us here right now.

by the way, this discussion reminded me of a discussion that I know was once handled in diverse publisher forums for the german shadowrun: WHO holds/held the license of that game over time... and why did they change hands.

hi

@eimyr Good morning!

hey @eimyr

@Trish Tell us about that. :)

9:48 AM

@Shalvenay Hi!

@Trish I'd love to hear the story behind why the World Health Organization holds the license for the German version of Shadowrun.

I know best about the FanPro break up in Germany: around 2007 FanPro handed back almost all of their licenses due to something internal, a lot of the staff moved to either Ulysses or Pegasus Press, the SR4 license followed to Pegasus.

@BESW WHA?! ohhh, I just wrote caps instead of bolding it

@Trish No, that's Assembly, not Organisation

The Wealthy Humanitarian's Assembly has no bearing on this conversation.

@eimyr Ah, the World Hockey Association. What RPGs does it own?

9:52 AM

@eimyr you mess with my heat! eh... hed... eh... my brain-jar..

@Trish [grin] It's an old joke amongst Doctor Who fans.

You mean fans of Doctor,

FanPro originally had got the license from FASA btw... together with a bunch of other stuff.

and... there was that debakle aroung CatalystGamesLabs with lawsuits around the 2007/8 (or later?) with misappropriated funds or something... they changed the licensing then I think...

licensing...

@eimyr You speak about the Werewolf game in the making (once more)?

not sure, probably some vampire flick, I honestly couldn't care less about that game right now

not the video/PC game, the tabletop one

10:04 AM

Oh, I thought you speak about the PC one... I thought Onyx Path is responsible for the WoD and CoD stuff...

While White Wolf is fully defunct...

nope, OPP is a separate company from WW, they licensed their IP and developed some of their own, WW was recently bought by Paradox and I thought the future is bright.

11:00 AM

Is this the Paradox of Europa Universalis fame?

If so, you can expect regular patching and biannual paid content for at least five years :)

Yes, it is the Paradox of EU4, Stellaris and HoI

Don't forget CK2 :)

And Victoria

And, the odd one out: Cities: Skylines.

Well, that's only published by Pdox. If only is the appropriate term :P

I still marvel how they develop the Clausewitz Engine to calculate large scale combat... and then use it for a city planner

11:12 AM

I have never played Victoria but apparently it's a very close spiritual successor to a game I played a lot and loved, Imperialism.

@Trish Skylines doesn't use Clausewitz, does it?

well, actually it douesn't, but would be cool if it would...

Wow, the company that made Skylines is actually Finnish.

Victoria and HOI 3 allowed turning your empire into a power in the other

Paradox is Swedish... did the Swedes conquer the Fins once again?

From Tampere, the town that recently had a huge argument over whether they should have a tram line or not. Fitting home for a company that makes world class games about mass transit planning :)

@Trish Skylines was developed by Colossal Order Ltd.

Published by Paradox

Still pretty much an "in house" currently... it just don't seem to fit their portfolio :P Collosal should use Clausewitz to calculate the flow of resources... or they should use the C:S traffic code to dimulate flow of equipment in the Clausewitz.

11:18 AM

I hope they'll make Vicky 3 soon.

VIcky 2 sounds like a game I'd enjoy but it also probably has a lot of "old Paradox" issues. Vicky 3 will, likewise, have "new Paradox" issues, but at least I'm already used to those.

Victoria 2 came out 2010, updated 2013.... hmmm, yea, and it is Clausewitz 1 based.

Vicy 2 will be Clausewitz 2 (if it comes) or probably even 3, as the Clausewitz 2 is already 6 years old.

Victoria, from what I've heard, just like Hearts of Iron is a spreadsheet simulator

The old Vic? yep.

but you can make an empire, import it to the HoI that came after it and continiue the journey.

HoI 4 is less of a spreadsheet simulator than the earlier installments, or so I've heard, but it has its own problems.

(I have only experience of HoI 4, not of any earlier installment)

HoI 3 is a MESS

it has a good UI, but making war goals? A mess...

and you need to organize your armies with like 1 HQ per 4 brigades, which are bunched as 4 into the next step, and then the next, and finally after like 7 levels of HQs you have the field command...

11:27 AM

I had a rather amusingly stupid situation in HoI 4, where I was playing Greece, fighting a war against Italy on Yugoslavian soil which was invaded by both the Italians and the Germans. I wasn't at war with the Germans, so naturally my troops didn't attack them - but that didn't stop the German troops from occupying Yugoslavian soil for the Italians...

@Trish Yeah, HoI 4 doesn't have anything that bad, although the "startup tedium" is still notable for large countries.

because the Germans were part of the Axis and allies of Italy

ohhh, play the VRC once :P

@Trish That didn't matter, I think, they just were in the same war against Yugoslavia which I wasn't a part of.

ohhh XD

with a good russian player at the helms of Russia, and the VRC flipping nationalist china quickly and swallowing the other parts of china, they can be in a war with Japan /before/ it joins the axis, allowing russia to mobilize /everything/ before the germans march in... smart Russia /= Briarstone, as Quill18 had to find out ;)

A game of HoI 4 begins with assigning production and construction projects, changing or disbanding divisions that start with poor templates, assigning divisions to armies and them to guard various borders (and making battle plans if one intends to invade), selecting research and national focuses, assigning ships to sea zones, assigning air wings to aerodromes and missions, trading for resources one lacks... takes about 15 minutes with a large country and moderate experience.

Nice contrast to CK2 where it's just "hand out a few titles, get married, select ambition and assign your councillors" :)

15 minutes of startup management, yes... these do return every so often...

Stellaris has some 10 minutes setup too: check own system, set up fleet movement, plan research, building queue, click go, wait 5 minutes of do nothing.

11:34 AM

My GF has been toying with the idea of trying one of my "geek games" and she wound up trying Stella. After an hour or so she noted how the gameplay seemed to be pretty much "waiting".

She's right.

Stella would need either a touchup of mechanics or more content oriented towards immersive role-playing, or preferably both.

Stellaris has a gameplay that has a lot in common with Farmville: WAiting for the reward of an action chosen. Just it punishes poor choices.

Stallaris is a great simulator for thinking in empires.

especially with the content additions...

My current Pdox preference ranking is CK2 > Stella > EU4. Vicky is omitted because I haven't played it and HoI 4 is a different enough genre to make it difficult to gauge.

Just have Stella, Vicky1 and HoI3, and it's pretty much STella>Hoi3>Vicky1. saving up for HoI4 (likely will trump stella)..

Stella does have a certain polish most Paradox games haven't had on release.

it has a totally different problem due to the map makeup though.

and the titally random research (chances)

11:43 AM

It has a world of its own problems, yeah.

in HoI there is an optimal research queue for each and any country...

@CTWind Tireball, Placid Splash, Ingestation, Frog Cloud, Bridal Wave...

I think the biggest issue at the moment is that there is little interesting stuff to do in peacetime, but warfare is very boring too. Stella is the most doomstack-oriented strategy game I think I've ever played.

EU4 favors the doomstack too... but it does demand a flexible defense and favors fortresses too

Yeah, EU4 at least has the attrition mechanics working against the worst doomstack designs... but distributing over three provinces instead of one doesn't really change much.

11:47 AM

Hoi evades the Doomstack by making flip over instant. you instantly loose territory and its resources if even a single unit gets into it.

It favers wide fronts.

(I'm reminded of WoW's infamous Bacon of Light.)

@Trish steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/875248189071750655/… see those gray stripes in the middle of cyan territory? That's the price I paid for trusting the AI allies to defend my occupied territory :)

@kviiri did you place the terrain as garrison to automatically conquer/reconquer?

and yes, proper front management is an art... as is Border Gore

@Trish No, this was a rather special case... none of that territory was actually occupied by me. In the aforementioned situation where I was being greatly hampered by Germany despite not being at war with them, I justified a war goal against them to be at war with them too. I picked a random state as the war goal and the Soviet Union staged a landing there, granting me that land. So I'm occupying a huge slice of Western Europe without ever fighting there.

ohhh, THAT odd thing, yes. happens...

odd behavior :P

11:54 AM

And contrarily, most of the territory I did conquer is occupied by Yugoslavia, since in the absence of war goals the occupied territory goes to whoever owned the province where the attack came from.

Yeah, HoI 4 is full of little bits of weirdness :)

either where you come from... or if somebody has a war goal or claim AND is in the war.

Though I like the "seperate peace out" idea from EU4

@Trish Oh yeah, that's one of the major gripes I have with HoI 4 too... there's no non-total victories or losses except for a few hard-coded cases.

VTC: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/109085/…

HOI 3 had a very odd victory counter: hold specific places at the end of the last year and your faction wins...

and it was near impossible to get USA into the Axis...

Eg. a Red Brazil trying to establish a Latin American socialist superpower might get declared war by USA, and in order to ever win, they must invade the States. Deflecting US invasions until the war loses popular support is not an option (although it might be in the next version). Similarly, China must invade Japan, and Germany must invade UK, to make territorial gains.

I tried to flip USA in HoI3... took more than 1940 and a three player game with Japan NOT attacking pearl harbor...

12:00 PM

"Red Brazil" sounds like a mixed drink.

@kviiri Nationalist China or Communist China?

@Trish Usually they're in the same war (because of the Chinese United Front)

So applies equally to both

They can occupy Manchukuo and Korea, but can't make peace without someone taking out the Japanese (and the Japanese won't capitulate without losing a large portion of their territory)

@kviiri not if you don't take that focus as VCR - and flip over parts of Nat China

you just have to try hard to get into the CCCP faction

Joining the Comintern early seems to be a rather sound strategy for almost everyone.

unless you play Japan, then "join the Axis ASAP" becomes the right way... and US should choose "Join the side winning"

12:05 PM

The shallowness of HoI 4 diplomacy is one of my pet hates. Also, I think the game will become very hard to expand and maintain because of the heavily intertwined National Focus Trees.

the NFT is pretty much the "Governement Ethic/Diplomacy"

/me just stumbled on a Reddit: Kazachstan has no core provinces. As the ONLY country in the game.

12:18 PM

@Trish Yeah, except it's unilateral and you can't really push your ethics on others except when you can.

All kinds of weird conflicts arise when n different countries have the option to "Woo X" and X even has their own set of focuses about who to ally and who to vilify... it requires a ton of special casing.

Since the overtures of WWII were largely about militarily superior countries using the threat of war (implicit or explicit) to pull off various political schemes like the Vienna awards, I think the game could use a proper system for coercion and pressure in diplomacy.

12:38 PM

In some areas it was outright lies and deception too. What were the words about the cienna awards? "This is my last demand for land..." yea... and just a couple months later this brownnoser annexed half of checoslovakia... and then came the Blitzkrieg episodes.

@kviiri so yes, more on diplomacy could be more fun

@Trish Yeah, one problem with creating a WWII grand strategy game is that everyone knows there will be a war, while the historical Allies were doing their best to futilely prevent it by appeasement.

So I think they would need to represent the country's belief in averting the war that would be separate from the player's, and restrict the player in some respects based on that - something World Tension already does.

12:59 PM

World tension is actually a good idea, but it restricts the players of the axis almost not at all.

and there are ways to circumnavigate it as the Komintern (at war trigger, never switching back)

@Trish I think that's sort of the point.

It's meant to represent the hopes of appeasement limiting the policy, but the concept falls a bit flat outside that.

@kviiri I mean, you an game the system by declaring war on... a country you'll never even reach and has no army... something deep in africa... and something that is not Ethiopia as that is going to be eaten by italy at once... something you can maintain a war state with to use all the world tension at once and circumnavigate some other checks.

@Trish Can you? I think you need a rather high world tension or a focus to declare war in the first place as a democracy.

As the USSR, it's really simple to game, though, as the Allies will be more keen to attack the Germans anyway.

It's a non-ally trick... as the allies can't easily declare war... but it works pretty much best for USSR and PRC

(and PRC actually has pretty much all of china to conquer without world tension and can make the china front not happen at all)

mornin

1:14 PM

Hello

@Trish Communist ideology is rather strong, yeah, having a large portion of the Fascist flexibility in warfare while having a seat reserved for them in the "winning team".

Anyway, I have high hopes for Cornflakes patch :)

@DForck42 What's up?

rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/109088/… opinions?

@kviiri not much, you?

It seems to be meant as a recommendation question, but the verbatim question "are there offline RPGs" is clearly answerable (with a scantly satisfying "yes")

@kviiri shopping/too broad

@DForck42 Working, trying to get stuff finished before Wednesday when I leave for my thesis holiday.

@kviiri usually when people ask "is there/are there" what they REALLY mean is "what RPGS, if any, are there?"

@kviiri fun

1:26 PM

@DForck42 Yeah. And doesn't help it was originally tagged as gamerec.

@DForck42 Yep, I know I'm in trouble when work feels like a holiday from my thesis :)

@kviiri lol

what's your thesis?

@DForck42 Master's on Computer Science. Studying distributed algorithms in toroidic (or "donut-shaped") graphs

@kviiri neat

Yeah, it's a cool topic. Very mathematical. There are some rather cool proofs regarding the complexity theory of such algorithms, and I wish I understood even half of them.

@kviiri yeah, I did good barely making it thorugh discrete 2 and calc 2

1:38 PM

@DForck42 I'm one of the more math-oriented CS students, and while I never was bad at math, I did a short math curriculum because I did a dual degree (vocational and baccalaureate at the same time).

That has made me significantly better at the CS "letters math" than I am with "numbers math" :)

I can hardly differentiate a function.

yeah, I've got a friend that was dual majoring CS and math, but his father passed away and he missed a semester. in order to graduate on time he had to drop the math major to a minor

At the University I did a long math minor. Our CS students have to take at least a short minor in math or math+stat.

If they take a short minor in math, they need to take a short minor in another subject too. Statistics, physics and various humanities subjects are popular picks.

what's a long vs short minor @kviiri?

@NautArch Short minors are 25 study credits, long minors 50 or 60 credits. (The 60 credits ones of course mean 10 credits less for voluntary picks)

1:53 PM

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Q: Do I have a setting wrong? I can't see what I am editing

Ever since I joined the SE system, when I am editing an answer or a question I can see how it looks before I hit "submit" or accept the edit. I have found, this morning, that I have to submit the edit (with possible errors in look or content) to find out if it looks as intended. Did I hit a s...

@kviiri for context, what's a credit? How many credits would a course that meets one semester for a few lectures a week earn you?

And how many credits for a major? And for a degree?

@nitsua60 A study credit is nominally twenty-something hours of work, with the target value for a full academic year being 60 credits. A single course with two lectures a week, exercises and exam is usually a neat five credits.

The Bachelor's Degree is 180 credits, the Master's is 120 credits on top of that.

So a Bachelor's is intended to be done in 3 years?

Yep. Took me way longer than that despite me scoring 120 creds during my first year :P

I was really hesitant to write my BSc thesis, so I started working on my Master's courses before that.

Gotcha.

2:09 PM

On the bright side, if I could get my Master's thesis done I'd be almost set to graduate.

And then I could spend the remaining years I have enjoying free afternoon every day

Are you talking about "the remaining years I have" in university, or "the remaining years I have" on this planet? Because if you mean on the planet, then kudos to you for swinging that =D

@nitsua60 On this planet :)

I've had my share of the fun at the university, I think.

Alright, then you've clearly made better life-choices than me =)

(Though I do spend my afternoons coaching/playing ultimate frisbee in the fall, bell-ringing in the winter, and squash in the spring. Not too shabby. But not quite "free," either.)

Free as in free speech, free beer, free to serve the motherland, etc.

:P

I had some serious academic aspirations as a freshman but I've come to lose most of my blue-eyed idealism regarding the scientific community. I think I'll just be an IT consultant and write novels on my spare time.

My wife on the other hand will be an astronomer and name an exoplanet after me. "It's as cold and distant as you", she'll say, then we laugh and contemplate our navels.

@kviiri lol

3 hours later…

4:54 PM

@kviiri The joke will be on her after you discover FTL and terraforming.

"What motivated you to do such groundbreaking work?" the interviewers will ask.

"Eh, it's an inside joke with my wife."

5:22 PM

@nitsua60 I'm kinda bummed that the user who asked this meta question seems to have quit the site :(.

5:44 PM

@Yuuki With any luck, I'll write a simulation on one of those in the future.

But I wouldn't hold my breath :P

2 hours later…

8:07 PM

Oh bother... I forgot to do campaign prep today.

Never too late to work in last-minute panic, right?

@kviiri is there another way?

@NautArch Legends tell me of a lad who used to prepare his campaigns way up front. But I'm a skeptical man.

Is it a homebrew adventure, or a published one?

Homebrew, the same session I've been prepping forever. Somehow, the last session just keeps getting delayed and I always leave a bit of prep for later.

This way I can experience the joy of last minute panic again later! How cool is that

This is one reason I started using a lot of no-prep systems.

8:20 PM

@BESW Yeah, I know that feeling. I'm prepping in part to make our (possibly) final session of 5e a memorable one and the best 5e they've ever played, but at the same time this whole ordeal is making me very happy to leave the game behind.

I like thinking out things in advance, but I prefer more abstract stuff. The bulk of my work here has been coming up with cool and level-appropriate combat challenges.

The grand finale encounter will be against a "party" of four bosses, with their leader standing in a ritual circle and the others trying to keep the PCs away from the circle. Others being inside the circle ruins the circle's magic. With this overarching theme, the other three bosses have mainly abilities that help them keep the PCs out and deal a bit of damage while at it, while the ritual circle guy uses the circle's power to blast the PCs with various lethal spells.

In a way I like how Apocalypse World gave me a structured way to do prep. I was rather reluctant to pick it up though, and I'm not still playing it completely by the book.

8:43 PM

I wonder why players have a handbook but dungeon master has a guide.

because players have to follow the rules, but DMs don't.

@kviiri that is a very cool mechanic

Anyone in the mood to map out a campaign for 5e?

Love writing with you guys :)

@NautArch Thanks. I wanted something that encourages varying the usual tactics without fundamentally changing the gameplay or making it into a total puzzle boss. I got some really good advise from here.

@Skathix Sure

Hey @kviiri :) How goes?

@Skathix Stressed as heck regarding work and studies but at least my DnD campaign prep is about to be wrapped up! Holiday begins on Wednesday, I'll just have to last until then.

8:57 PM

Oh you too? Work and school is hard man, keep the faith

After this semester I have 2 semesters left

The light is in sight lol

@Skathix Yeah, I really need to finish my thesis. I have this problem where it's far less... demanding than my usual work. If my boss kindly asks me to stay for a few extra hours a week, I understand and usually do it. The thesis can't do that.

And I really mean asking kindly. My employer is very considerate of my study needs... but I'm bad at saying no. That's why I took a month off, I just can't help slipping when trying to work on both my job adn my thesis.

Yeah, I've got my capstone which is a year long class and I have a group of 3 people including me, my team begged me to let them drive and finish the project, and there has been 0% progress

So I'm freaking out

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