TRPG General Chat

@Yuuki not any actual codified advice, but you can see a one-on-one game here between a DM and his wife. You might be able to pick up on something useful from it. youtube.com/watch?v=Ys4N_urjgvs

diego

@Yuuki Lessons from DMing with my GF is a thread from the old WotC boards that got saved. It has some information about running a game 1 on 1.

Papayaman1000

8:43 PM

Note to self: Never post a challenge on Programming Puzzles & Code Golf(codegolf.stackexchange.com) again, since you'll spend the next week checking on fifteen answers per second in languages you've never heard of that may have very well been made up on the spot.

Yuuki

Well, you could always add restraints to your challenge.

"No golfing languages" is definitely one I would use if I ever post a challenge there.

Karelzarath

Just be sure to include a safeword

nitsua60

@Yuuki RPG.net's listing of "Duets" columns; note they're listed in reverse order. I found them pretty interesting with useful tidbits.

@Yukki my advice, after a few successful duet-campaigns: do it.

Papayaman1000

See also: Programming in general.

"Bifurcated strings!"
"What?"
"Did you forget the safe word?!"

Karelzarath

Duet to it

Papayaman1000

8:48 PM

Duets. That's a new one. One-on-one GMing, I take it?

Yuuki

@nitsua60 Yeah, I'm thinking about DMing for my sister and she doesn't have a wide pool of D&D-willing friends.

Also, she's a bit hesitant to find people or play with other people she doesn't know.

nitsua60

@Yuuki Does she have experience playing, or would this be pretty early in her experience? Also, what sort of experience do you have as a GM?

Yuuki

@nitsua60 I've run homebrew one-shots before and she's a newbie.

nitsua60

Cool.

Papayaman1000

@Yuuki ...Brother? (heh)

Yuuki

8:51 PM

The basic gist I've gotten is to play fast and loose with the rules, which I think is okay since neither of us would be very rules lawyer-y.

@Papayaman1000 Yep.

Papayaman1000

@Yuuki ...Seriously, wow. You described my first five years as a GM.

nitsua60

The upside(s): you can tailor it exactly to her. You two can collaborate on an adventure that pushes all her play-buttons. Work together to identify what she enjoys, and where she'd like to be stretched.

Yuuki

@nitsua60 Dude, we're related :P

nitsua60

I ran one duet that was explicitly modeled on Joseph Campbell's "Hero With a Thousand Faces," because my player was a comp. mythology minor and wanted to experience it from the inside.

Trish

@Yuuki heh... reminds me of when I started... me and my sis had this "The Dark Eye" starter box (a German D&D 'clone' with rules for everything but what color your excrements have), I bought the extensions... eventually we both now sit in WoD groups.

Papayaman1000

8:53 PM

The three of us seriously need to get together for a one-shot sometime.

Trish

that was... let me think... uhm... more than 12 years ago. It was christmas.

Karelzarath

@Trish Everything?

nitsua60

Downside(s): combat can be scary. Look at some variants like the DMG's hero points, or ANgryGM's fighting spirit. Make sure you're comfortable transitioning immediately from "combat mode" to "chase mode" (DMG, again) the instant your sister wishes to quit the field.

brb--there are more thoughts

Yuuki

Plus, I think some more hands-on DM experience will help me speak up a bit more during my play. I noticed during my last 5e session that I tend to sit back a bit on the RP even though I love coming up with backstory and flavor.

Trish

@Karelzarath not really everything, but if you needed rules for... how hard it is to fletch an arrow, make traps to hunt bunnies, make someone change his religion... almost anything that wasn't stuff like breathing, eating and opening doors had (optional) rules. HEll, there were rules to decide how tasty the stuff you cook is!

not how it tastes, but you could take the best raw materials... and then cook it to taste crap. or you take sawdust and water, and because you are a friggin genious in cooking, make it taste like exquisite cookery.

ACuriousMind

8:58 PM

@Trish lol, I started played with a group of friends from school and my father's ancient TDE books

Trish

DSA4.0 it was then :P

diego

@Trish Isn't it amazing what a little spice can do :)

Trish

@ACuriousMind 2 or 3?

Karelzarath

@Trish Ah, so not quite F.A.T.A.L.-level "everything". That's a relief.

Trish

@Karelzarath no, THAT game is 3 magnitudes more "We have rules for EVERYTHING". As in, TDE is less.

ACuriousMind

8:59 PM

@Trish 2, I believe. No fancy point-buy systems or anything, you roll up a character and if it sucks, you play it anyway :D

Trish

@ACuriousMind fancy Point buy is 4, 4.1 and 5. 3 was rolling to raise, no idea what 2 was like, 1 was... Misspell your magis spell and you botch! "Balsam Salabunde, Heile diese Wunde" was good but "Klarumpurum Kräutersud, Frei von Blut sei alles Gift" is... Triple 1 on the roll XD

ACuriousMind

@Trish Mhhh, then it might have been 3

Papayaman1000

@ACuriousMind After getting into My Hero Academia, I'm really tempted to roll an intentionally bad character and make all their goals revolve around becoming stronger. That sounds like really fun roleplay.

ACuriousMind

The heroes were amusingly incompetent, but we fondly remember them to this day

Trish

(second one translates to free of blood be all poison - someone mixed up the order there :P)

Yuuki

9:04 PM

@Karelzarath Roll for CENSORED circumference.

Trish

@Papayaman1000 hoooh, reminds me of the mutant I rolled up for some MArvel X-Men group with that 80s or 90s game... the one with d%. Powerset was molding... for materials commonly used in clothing. Which does work fine - as long it is not the crap all the villains and heroes wear, because that is not common clothing material.

@Yuuki roll for Strechability!

BESW

@Miniman SEDE request: history of AW questions volume/frequency on RPG.SE.

Papayaman1000

@Trish "Spandex Slavery is not an acceptable superpower." - My GM

Nor is "Good Hitler" an appropriate hero concept.

user61230

Just coming back from a three day LARP, over 60 consecutive hours in character, and it was honestly incredible.

Papayaman1000

@Emrakul Ok, how many Aeons did you rip this time?

Yuuki

9:08 PM

@Papayaman1000 I mean, if you sorta glance it sideways, that actually sums up some depictions of Magneto.

user61230

@Papayaman1000 ZERO. BARELY.

Papayaman1000

@Yuuki Mother of God, you're right! Well, reverse-but-also-not-reverse Hitler.

@Emrakul Good. Now stop eating the Spawn.

Trish

OUCH! BMS went out on a shitstorm, then killed his question...

Papayaman1000

[Sorry, I'm going to a tourney on Saturday and my head's kinda stuck on this stuff]

BESW

@Yuuki Eeeh, that's like trying to make Superman fit the Christ allegory. Magneto and Xavier are Malcolm X and MLK Jr.

Yuuki

9:10 PM

Well, Magneto has, on occasion, championed the elimination (systematic or otherwise) of all non-mutants. Which is basically Hitler if s/Jews/non-mutants.

Papayaman1000

@Yuuki "Behold, TRUE POWER! RegEx Man!"

Trish

@Papayaman1000 what? It was super effective against mortal crooks! Force Choke, Wedgie Extreme and Rocky Mountain Oyster were the killer moves!

Papayaman1000

Say, just a quick question, how many times (if ever) did the players do something to force a Rocks Fall incident? Just what did they do?

(For all ya GMs out there)

Trish

Rocks fall? hmmm, I was tempted to have my group eaten by a sandworm (DUNE style) while in some marshes investigating a well... they got better JUST in time.

They spent two hours investigating an old well.

BESW

Quibble: nothing players do can force a Rocks Fall incident in the traditional GM/player power structure. It's a GM fiat move, which means there's always other, less extreme forms of fiat available to the GM as well.

Papayaman1000

9:14 PM

@Trish "If I ever meant for you to do that, you'd either be following a trusty dog or consuming unsettling amounts of living fesh."

@BESW Well... let's just say I've been morally obliged to dole out a few, and I avoided the temptation after a player castrated an innkeep and kept the byproduct. Sometimes, players really can.

Trish

@Papayaman1000 Whut? I asked them if they want to continiue to investigate the hole in the ground with black stone walls, or continiue their quest, grabbing into my bag to search for the bestiaries...

Yuuki

@BESW Speaking of fiat, now I have an idea about a campaign where the BBEG is a group of dungeon-delving adventurers that have been inadvertently destroying the economy through massive quantitative easing by introducing large quantities of gold and platinum coins that they found in dungeons.

BESW

That said, I've seen a GM rain down precision-targeted deific smiting (that poor animal messenger never saw it coming). But I've also just had a GM say "If your characters can't find a reason to stop fighting in this team play game, I'm going to suggest very forcefully that we retire them to NPCs and have them fight off into the sunset."

Papayaman1000

@Yuuki Or, y'know, flooding the ten-foot pole market (and completely wiping the 10-foot ladder one, incidentally).

Trish

@Papayaman1000 they played Villains?

ACuriousMind

9:18 PM

@Papayaman1000 I can count the times I've actually killed a PC on one hand. Once for extreme stupidity and twice for extreme awesomeness, and none of those qualifies really as Falling Rocks(TM)

Papayaman1000

@Trish No. They're just sociopaths.

Yuuki

@BESW Or they can feature into my new campaign involving dramatic financial negotiations and economic wizardry!

Trish

@Papayaman1000 Murderhobos.

nitsua60

@Yuuki RP scenes can be tough--both of you have a lot of load to shoulder. OTOH, if you do get pretty comfortable with it, it can be some of the easiest character-work there is.

Yuuki

Join our plucky heroes as they attempt to convince the kingdoms to move from a commodity-backed currency to a fiat currency!

BESW

9:19 PM

The closest to a literal Rocks Fall that I ever got was not the GM's in-game response to table-level frustration:

Island explodes, everybody falls.

Jul 5 '13 at 2:43, 20 minutes total – 62 messages, 4 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked Aug 16 '15 at 9:45 by BESW

Trish

Killing PCs though... I killed 3 shadowrunners without planning to do so. They just really sucked at rolling their physical defense when I confronted them with 2 dumb guards armed with tasers.

Papayaman1000

Yeah. With some players, BODR's are a must.

"So these orphans were hogtied and kidnapped for ransom, right?"
"Uh, yeah?"
"Keep the ransom going and make some money off of them in the meantime by [REDACTED, DEAR GOD]"
"You are struck by a bolt of divine retribution. Time to re-roll, and I swear to Cthulhu that if you can do that and pass the alignment check on this new one I'm burning it before you even roll for starting gold."

nitsua60

@Trish Language, please.

Trish

@nitsua60 they were orks with an int score of 1...

nitsua60

No, they were new to the site and got greeted by a help-pile, which is often not helpful. It was a terrible question, yes. It also wasn't really a graceful reception.

Trish

9:23 PM

Oh, you mean that...

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 Right. Genteel correction? Sure. Roll for FORT save? No.

nitsua60

@Trish h, sorry for the confusion. I'd replied to a message earlier up ^^ where you used some profanity.

@Papayaman1000 ~~I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.~~ I'm sure I don't understand what you're trying to say.

Papayaman1000

@Trish Hey, at least you weren't slapped with a half-hour tempban.

BESW

@nitsua60 Fort save for massive ~~damage~~ help.

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 Just... keep it light on newbies. Don't attack them.

nitsua60

9:25 PM

@Papayaman1000 Did that happen to you the other day?

ACuriousMind

I think somewhere in here I lost track of this conversation

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 Yeah, yesterday.

Yuuki

My policy for handling problematic questions: if there's already a user commenting, let them handle it.

nitsua60

@Papayaman1000 I noticed that one message where I responded to you in text, it also got the dreaded blue-rectangle. And a few diamonds dropped in. Didn't know you got a kick.

Papayaman1000

@Yuuki My policy: That, but if they're too harsh, apply gentle correction to them, as well.

nitsua60

9:27 PM

@Papayaman1000 I'm pretty sure I'm still not following. Did I attack a newbie? (Seriously--put me straight if I did. I didn't mean to.)

Trish

oh my... we nees to get a better topic... how about... PPP?

ACuriousMind

@nitsua60 A validated rude/offensive flag auto-bans the user who posted the flagged message for half an hour

Yuuki

@Papayaman1000 I would try to avoid commenting on the question though, it can increase the signal-to-noise level. If it's a chat regular, talk to them in chat rather than commenting.

Papayaman1000

@Trish What is?

Yuuki

@ACuriousMind Flags on additional messages while you're banned can increase your banned duration.

Papayaman1000

9:28 PM

@nitsua60 Not that I saw.

Yuuki

I hit 3-and-a-half hours today for testing a bot in Sandbox!

Trish

PPP is either Power Perversion Potential or Plüsch Power Plunder, a german RPG.

ACuriousMind

@Yuuki Indeed they can, as you experienced earlier today ;P

Yuuki

It got corrected post-haste but it was both wtf and amusing.

nitsua60

@Papayaman1000 Ahh... you're saying "in the d% pile-on, it'd have been better if generally people hewed to 'keep a light touch on the newbies.'" Yes?

Papayaman1000

9:30 PM

My only complaint is that the "no swearing" ground rule is unwritten; you only really see any examples of it when it's too late. [And apparently abbreviations seem to fall under this too.] I get that a good chunk of SE has professional environment and use, but RPGs?

And, yeah, that's the gist of it, nitsua.

Trish

We in RPG are just like those in Worldbuilding. We are ordinary (sometimes mad) joes.

Papayaman1000

@Trish And that's why those are the only two SEs currently contributing to that nice little 1088 up there.

Yuuki

@Papayaman1000 It's also not universal as far as I can tell.

Papayaman1000

Mxypzl... not typing that... has arrived! HAIL!

Trish

@Papayaman1000 3117/2401 for me :P

Papayaman1000

9:33 PM

@Yuuki Precisely my point.

Yuuki

RPG is actually the first SE chat room I've been in that has a no swearing rule, written or unwritten.

BESW

RPG.SE is part of the Stack Network and adheres to the same standards; a lot of people use it at work, kids as young as 13 are allowed here, etc. Those standards are neatly posted on every Stack.

nitsua60

@Papayaman1000 I think it falls under Be Nice, frankly. I've never thought of it as an unwritten rule.

Trish

because we are ordinary (mad) joes.

ACuriousMind

@Papayaman1000 Well, the Be Nice policy is written, and there's also an explicit post that says expletives are not okay in chat. However, rooms tend to vary a lot in what is considered crossing the line - but in general, if someone flags your expletive, you can't really complain.

Yuuki

9:34 PM

@ACuriousMind Unfortunately, there is also not much talk on what counts as an expletive either.

Papayaman1000

@Yuuki I mean, I could see it on the main site or Workplace.SE for example. And, y'know, just adding it explicitly to the FAQ instead of sitting in a Meta post would be nice, too. But alas.

BESW

Like with comments arguments, though, RPG.SE has chosen to enforce the network policies more vigorously than some other stacks in large part because it's also part of the RPG online community. And let's be honest, the RPG online community has some endemic trouble with good behaviour.

(See also Christianity.se for an example of a Stack which has chosen to be particularly vigorous in enforcing behavior policies because of its association with non-Stack communities.)

Papayaman1000

@Yuuki Yeah. For example, not a single bloody sod on here seems to care when I'm using Commonwealth terms, so to speak. Devil knows why, but it's just how things work. Which is nice. (If you have an issue with that please just tell me to edit this instead of kicking me)

Trish

@BESW You mean... the internet for RPGlers is full of places that are sewers?

BESW

@Trish You might say that; I couldn't possibly comment.

Trish

9:36 PM

@BESW smelly places full of rats.

Yuuki

@Papayaman1000 You silly nerf herder.

ACuriousMind

@Yuuki Eh, once you make up a list of what's an expletive or not you just get endless arguing about "I was suspended for a word that's not on the list!" or "This word should be on the list!" or "That word shouldn't be on the list". That's not really constructive. Generally, if everyone involved is reasonable, just taking about it is usually preferable to flagging, though.

Papayaman1000

@Yuuki Eh?

BESW

We do have some minor disagreements on occasion about what constitutes Not Nice, but generally the big seven, racial or cultural epithets, and any form of personal insult, is easily identifiable as Not Nice.

Trish

Dreck! What is all this Dreck about?! ;)

BESW

9:39 PM

(And "just joking" is a defense, not a right, and only excuses ignorance that a phrase would offend; it doesn't excuse intentional offense.)

Papayaman1000

@Trish "Some grizzfarb says I'm not allowed to make up gnomish swears." - Mr. Welch

BESW

Broadly speaking, if somebody says "Please don't use language like that," we try to stop using that language.

Papayaman1000

@BESW Seems fair.

Anyways, meta-complaints about minor contrivances aside...

BESW

Yes. [rummages for previous topic]

I have noticed that our comments to new users are getting a little sloppy again.

Yuuki

The thing about abbreviations is what particularly confuses me because 1) I don't think I've seen an abbreviation used in a Not Nice manner, B) the actual expletive is hidden, and @) it can always been explained away as something else. In fact, I know some people who believe that "wtf" stands for "what the fudge" and would get in trouble.

Papayaman1000

9:41 PM

@Yuuki Right. MINOR CONTRIVANCES ASIDE...

Yuuki

I'm not trying to say expletives should be allowed, it's just that the guidelines can feel a bit murky.

BESW

In my experience, "welcome to the site here's the tour and a link to why we're asking you to make a change" is one of the best ways to make new users happy about the site's structure.

Papayaman1000

@BESW Mmm. Quite. [Roll for Sophistication]

d20

Dice Service

1

BESW

[proffers handkerchief] I say, sir, you're drooling.

Papayaman1000

9:43 PM

Now how bout we go [REDACTED] this [REDACTED]ing [REDACTED] and have us a [REDACTED] [REDACTED] time! Yee-haw, [REDACTED]!

Of course I frelling get a Nat-1 on Sophistication. This calls for one of SMBC's finest Gentleman's Single-Use Unlubricated Monocles!

(And yes, that is an actual thing)

nitsua60

@BESW working on an addition to the "community check-in" about that right now

BESW

@nitsua60 Good call.

Papayaman1000

Anyways I need to run some errands. I'll be back in a few hours or so, to lose sleep.

nitsua60

@BESW "Well-intentioned help piles are occasionally problematic"

I feel I have expertise to share, as a prime offender =)

I just didn't happen to insert myself into today's.

Yuuki

@Papayaman1000 Curse your Teutonic preparedness!

Trish

9:49 PM

hmmm, let's make Nitsua a mod next week!

from offender to Mod!

BESW

@nitsua60 Hardly anything on this site has been Problematic in months!

nitsua60

@Trish Your'e testing my ability not to swear in chat. =)

I'm convinced that's how I was promoted to an administrator at my school: I kept making trouble for administrators with my bad praxis, so they made me one of the ones responsible for dealing with the crap.

BESW

@nitsua60 Heck, I've used that technique in RPGs!

(I learnt it from a teacher who, instead of punishing the boy who brought lizards into the classroom, pretended she didn't know how they got in and made him Lizard Monitor in charge of getting them out with as little disruption as possible).

GreySage

@BESW Was that you?

BESW

10:05 PM

No, I wasn't in that particular class.

I had that teacher for a number of classes, though, and worked with her in the local community, and that "blind eye and ask for help that skewers the point of the undesired behavior" tactic was a gold standard of her leadership.

Papayaman1000

"NEVER MIND, WE'RE BACK IN BUSINESS!" - Alucard

By the way, struggling writing clear and concise descriptions for some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey spell components. Trying to phrase "this slows down your perception of time, allowing you to take actions [howevermuch] quicker, and lasts for [someamountof] real-time turns." It's just a bit too wordy.

ACuriousMind

@Papayaman1000 "For [someamountof] turns, your perception of time slows down and you can take actions [howevermuch] quicker"?

Papayaman1000

10:20 PM

Likewise, describing the force of a pushing spell (without using straight-up force units like Newtons because complicated).

@ACuriousMind Good call.

BESW

Isn't that just "You get [amount] extra [kind of] actions every turn"?

If you're playing in D&D, mechanics tend to describe their interaction with other mechanics and don't primarily touch on the narrative reality of the game.

Abstraction!

Papayaman1000

@BESW ...not quite. More along the lines of "time flows faster for you by [very precise amount], giving you the ability to perform turns [that much] quicker..."

BESW

What does that do, though? What benefit does it grant?

Papayaman1000

i.e., given X amount of oomph behind the spell, will make the duration of your turns X% shorter relative to that of other creatures. Like, if X is 25, then you can get off 5 turns in the span of 4 "normal" turns.

BESW

Are you acting before other people? That's an initiative bonus. Are you doing more things in the same amount of time? That's bonus actions. Are you reacting to things others aren't fast enough to react to? That's a defense bonus or an action on someone else's turn....

Papayaman1000

10:27 PM

@BESW It's also homebrew spell 'components' for a homebrew spellcrafting system for a homebrew system.

BESW

Are you using a traditional turn/round structure, or something more esoteric like "En Garde!"?

Papayaman1000

But seriously, describing pushing force is a pain without getting technical. (And it's normal turn structure of "six seconds with 1 standard, 1 move, and as many free actions as you can perform without interference")

nitsua60

@Papayaman1000 My gu instinct would be one line of flavor, then just describe the actual rule-effects. Knowing the intention and the actual effects, the players can back-fill most of the flavor.

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 Yeah, but the issue is, I want the same force spell that barely staggers a giant to also be able to launch a stone between its eyes at the speed of an arrow.

The spellcrafting system is also very complex when you don't look at the spreadsheet, so... eh...

BESW

Hrm. That kind of effect sounds like it'd be better off in a heavily abstract/narrative system where the mechanical effects of a mechanic are adjudicated each time based on the specific context and intent.

I have vague recollections of a Forces mage...

nitsua60

10:31 PM

That's easy. You need your spells to create some sort of fluid that's expelled as a creature/object moves. So the more creature/object's mass is, the more quickly it expels the fluid, and the less effect the fluid has on the object. Let's call it... pomentum for fun.

=)

Papayaman1000

@BESW Yeah, that's about what it is, but I still want a basic guideline for when a player is casting a spell...

I mean, I've tried using comparisons to common actions (this is about equivalent to the force needed to throw a stone), but it's just long and clunky.

BESW

Today in our ongoing irregular feature "Your Fantasy World Isn't Weird Enough:"

Your periodic reminder that there is a massive, abandoned temple shaped like a chicken in the Indonesian jungle.… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/851772690918768641

Tweeted by davidplotz on April 11, 2017 at 12:23 PM

Papayaman1000

"Chichen Itza"
"That's not even the right continent and it was a terrible pun regardless"

@nitsua60 Oh, hey, look, an abstraction of momentum with the same hurdles in trying to explain it as the hurdles in trying to explain the force in any other fashion.

nitsua60

I think it's Fudge that handles D&D-like spells this way, and nicely? I have an anthology somewhere, and spell cost/effects are simply indexed to a few key abstract variables: how well prepared you are, how much time you spend, how well you know/understand the target, the size of effect you wish to create, the duration of effect, the time spent casting, &c. Each on a 4- or 5-point scale, so it makes a nice little minigame.
"I don't really have time to cast a two-hour spell during the diplomatic meeitng, so we're going to have to steal one of the Duke's fingernail clippings to make up the ma…

Miniman

@BESW Here, but it's not really useful.

BESW

10:36 PM

I think, if you're designing a game that toys with F=M/A you need to assume it's for an audience that's at least passingly familiar with F=M/A. Alternatively, check out how Ars Magica explains unfamiliar physics to lay players.

nitsua60

Theory of impetus

The theory of impetus was an auxiliary or secondary theory of Aristotelian dynamics, put forth initially to explain projectile motion against gravity. It was introduced by John Philoponus in the 6th century and elaborated by Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji at the end of the 12th century, but was only established in western scientific thought by Jean Buridan in the 14th century. It is the intellectual precursor to the concepts of inertia, momentum and acceleration in classical mechanics. == Philoponan theory == In the 6th century, John Philoponus partly accepted Aristotle's theory that "continuation of motion...

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 Pfeh heh heh. I use "Focus" for that. It's basically mana but makes more realistic sense and can be reduced by distractions.

BESW

@nitsua60 Yup! DFRPG, the pre-Core version of Fate, codified it even more.

Papayaman1000

@BESW It's less "I don't trust the players to be familiar with this" and more "I don't feel like turning every casting of a force spell into a 9th grade science worksheet".

BESW

For each stuntsworth of effect, the difficulty increases by X from base Y. For each extra complication you add to the casting (time, special materials, specific location, etc), the difficulty decreases by Z or you get a bonus of A to the roll.

Papayaman1000

10:39 PM

I mean, some math is inherent with most of these games, but c'mon, guys, I don't want to have to break out the TI-84+.

nitsua60

I like pulling it out for NPCs in my D&D games. I like having my players learn that the PHB is a representation of the collected "wisdom" of their culture, much like Diderot's Encyclopedia was *the* great collection of wisdom in its time...
And yet barely scratched the surface of what's *possible* to know/experience.

Papayaman1000

@BESW . . .

nitsua60

@Papayaman1000 You'll be find with an 83 =)

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 Yeah but I like my 84+

it has pacman

nitsua60

@Papayaman1000 Silver edition?

@Papayaman1000 [facepalm]

BESW

10:40 PM

@Papayaman1000 ?

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 No, fortunately and unfortunately

@BESW I can only understand jargon to a certain extent.

nitsua60

(Here I was, thinking it might have been the CAS they added to later editions.)

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 84+ regular can still run TI-Basic games via Mirage but also Flash. Anything earlier or later loses at least one of those.

BESW

@Papayaman1000 "Stunt" is, for this context, suitably equivalent to "feat." Nothing else in there is jargon.

Papayaman1000

@BESW "featsworth". I get that stunt == feat, but the worth throws me off.

Another tough math problem? Describing the size of a conical casting.

BESW

10:42 PM

In Fate, you can quantity an effect's power by how many stunts you'd need to make it happen.

Papayaman1000

@BESW Oh. Don't think I've used that before...

nitsua60

@Papayaman1000 1/3 pi r^2 h. No trouble at all =)

BESW

Yeah, one of the awesome things about Fate's mechanical structure is that almost everything can be measured and converted using roughly the same unit of narrative power.

It's not hard and fast, but it gives a good gut-level rule of thumb for figuring out stuff quickly on the fly.

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 I'm more saying how to describe its size when it can be a variably-sized slice of circle.

nitsua60

I'm just joshing. All the geometry's tough in these games.

Papayaman1000

10:45 PM

@BESW Yep, FATE is always pretty awesome

BESW

I've used a similar concept in, for example, Roll For Shoes.

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 That edit tho

@BESW [Love that game!]

nitsua60

What, R*sr? Steradians are glorious =)

ACuriousMind

@nitsua60 Has this Josh something to do with Jeff?

BESW

Aren't Steradians a Star Trek alien?

nitsua60

10:48 PM

@BESW No, they're the artists who released Slice of Circle on their first album, Unit of Narrative.

Miniman

Sorry, needed to upload it somewhere so I had a link.

BESW

@Papayaman1000 I use the second technique here.

Papayaman1000

Also: Relative power on - Targeted buff that effectively renders grounded targets prone until the duration is up (unless... "Roll DEX check for unexpected ice skating.") VS stun target for varying amount of time.

BESW

@Miniman Harooom. You're right; I think it'd have to sample ALL PbtA tags.

Papayaman1000

@BESW [Hate that game in particular!]

Miniman

10:52 PM

@BESW Well, if you give me a list, that'd be simple enough - I'd be guessing if I tried to compile it on my own.

BESW

@Miniman Can SEDE handle splat variables?

Miniman

@BESW Yep.

nitsua60

@BESW Help-piles, for your amusement.

BESW

> apocalypse-world*
dungeon-world
monsterhearts
monster-of-the-week
saga-of-the-icelanders
the-sprawl
tremulus
blades-in-the-dark
kult

@nitsua60 Yey!

AW noob question: what's Hx?

nitsua60

I think there's, like, three Saga of the Icelanders questions on the whole site. Makes me sad. Because I like the idea of the game, and would love to have random occasion to read more about it.

BESW

11:07 PM

(I'm reading about a PbtA hack that talks about what it's using in place of Hx.)

Yeah, most of those tags are quite sparse.

Miniman

Oops, I forgot to delete that. @BESW would you mind?

BESW

Italics can't delete, only blues can. It's not doing any harm, is it?

Miniman

Nah, I guess not.

I probably shouldn't get into the habit of using chat as a place to upload stuff in order to create links, though.

BESW

Maaaaaybe.

Karelzarath

Papayaman1000

11:13 PM

That comic was one of the better graph jokes.

BESW

Okay, so I went and looked up Hx on my own, and now I have a DIFFERENT question for our AW folks.

Do we have a duplicate here?

13

Q: Explain How History Works in Apocalypse World

History, or Hx, remains a little perplexing to me. Can you explain how it works, both mechanically and fictionally, in a way that makes sense? I am especially hung up on integrating History changes into the fiction, because I don't understand how to rationalize a shift from +4 to +1, for example....

apocalypse-world hx

5

Q: How to explain the Hx generation during character creation

When creating Apocalypse World characters with new players, I regularly see that picking options does not need much explanation, and where it does, I can go around the table and answer questions separately. However, the assignment of Hx (History) is more complicated. It has two parts that are di...

character-creation apocalypse-world

Papayaman1000

@BESW Oh, look, it's 12-year-old me getting into D&D for the first time! [No insults intended]

BESW

("The New Plateau of Uncertainty" would be a good name for an album by a band that got back together after an acrimonious breakup.)

nitsua60

Oh, dear gods. It looks like someone's got another decade of Dragon to reread....

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 Those are the worst to research.

BESW

11:20 PM

@nitsua60 Your version of "Hold my beer" is a lot less immediately gratifying.

trogdor

lol

hold my beer is not immediately gratifying at all, I would say

Papayaman1000

@BESW Meanwhile, I introduce "Power Word: Beer Me" for lulz and my players immediately weaponize it.

nitsua60

@Miniman while you're doing piece-work, would it be possible to query SEDE for time between first close-vote and first comment on a post? On posts that do get closed, authored by new or low-rep users?

@BESW I upvoted this comment, btw: I'd been trying to puzzle out how/whether to say something similar to your first sentence.

BESW

Yeah, I've been upvoting comments all over the place on that thread. Lots of very self-aware, posture-of-learning stuff going on.

Shalvenay

11:41 PM

hey there @nitsua60

nitsua60

@Shalvenay hiya

Shalvenay

how're things going?

nitsua60

Alright. Not completely swamped at work, for the first time in a fortnight.

Shalvenay

heheh.

nitsua60

Or maybe it's just that a minivan-roadworthiness panic and (separately) an ER trip this weekend re-set my priorities?

@Shalvenay You?

Shalvenay

11:43 PM

@nitsua60 what happened to the minivan?

@nitsua60 had a close brush with losing my char in Sunday night's PF game (bad dice luck in a fight with a skin wraith :/)

nitsua60

@Shalvenay Noticed a bubble on the tire. Probably means that it's actually been worrisome for a while, but I rarely drive that vehicle so only saw it on Saturday. But we had to take the kids to Boston on Sunday, and I didn't want to even think about the possibility of a hwy-speed blowout with wife and kids in the car.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 yeah -- been a passenger in a highway-speed blowout -- fortunately, my dad's a reasonably decent driver and handled it OK, but yeah...good catch. time to get 4 new tires for the minivan

although, for later on in that campaign if later on happens...I do wonder how I could get a flaming treant summon for my char...

nitsua60

Didn't get feedback on Little Adventures from you: any thoughts? I could certainly see it be too free-wheeling and loosey-goosey for your comfort. (The sessions with the kids cross over in to sheer surrealism sometimes... twists my brain in brand-new ways.)

Karelzarath

@nitsua60 Woah, what's THAT like? ;)

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 ah, other than the one thing that tripped me up, it seemed OK, but it definitely has that potential. my thing is that most people have not just rules of metaphysics, but rules of narrative structure to bound them, so they're more comfortable giving up metaphysics because they still have narrative structure as guidance

but without narrative structure's rules to guide me, the world-metaphysics if you will basically becomes my only fixed point, and without that, I find myself...adrift in a sense?

nitsua60

11:49 PM

@Karelzarath Means it's 8pm and I already have tomorrow's classes prepped, expect to get to bed before 11, and am considering rereading all of 1980's Dragon. Yanno, 'cause nature abhors a vacuum and all.

Shalvenay

also, can you repost the link to the writeup you put together for the Little Adventures rules @nitsua60?

nitsua60

22 hours ago, by nitsua60

@Karelzarath Little Adventures, attribution incomplete. (cc: @Shalvenay if you see improvements needed, please do chime in)

Karelzarath

@nitsua60 Yeah, I have it pulled up right now, in fact. I like the way it bridges RPGs and story time.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Yep, but not for a few hours from me - stuff happening.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 thx

nitsua60