TRPG General Chat

12:39 AM

-1

Q: Should there be a sandbox for question development?

The Worldbuilding metastack has a "Sandbox for Proposed Questions" where questions can be workshopped after a fashion to get them into a form where they will be less likely to be closed for opinion, inclarity, et cetera. More than in any of the other stacks I participate in, I see questions here...

nitsua60

12:53 AM

Woo-hoo. $1.49 check from a settlement between a company I haven't done business with in a decade and a state I haven't lived in for a decade. Can't imagine how much time and money it took for someone to get this to me =\

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 probably at least $1.49

nitsua60

Can't help but feel like there's a huge missed chance to do some real good, there.

I mean, the company probably lost a $3M judgment to the state, or something. But with 2M customers, everyone's getting a few bucks.

Eh, whatever. I'm just cranky about having to look up my password to deposit the check via mobile.</FWP>

<FWP>Arrrgh!!! I haven't installed my bank's app on my new phone yet!</FWP>

BESW

@nitsua60 ...my "arrrgh!!!" is that my bank wants me to put my banking information on the least secure information vector I own.

nitsua60

@BESW A decal on the side of your car?

BESW

My phone is running KitKat. A car decal would probably be more secure; at least I could cover that with mud.

nitsua60

1:08 AM

KitKat is...? (Aside from a delicious candy.)

BESW

Android OS 4.4, the oldest version to still be technically supported with security updates but hardly any phone manufacturer is still pushing the updates to phones that old.

nitsua60

Hmm... how can I tell what version of android OS I've got?

BESW

System Settings -> About Phone

Or something similar; the exact phrasing changes depending on OS and vendor.

nitsua60

7.0. I guess that's better, at least?

BESW

7.0 is the most recent.

nitsua60

1:11 AM

Cool!

BESW

Depending on your manufacturer, you might even get a pushed upgrade to 8 when it comes out.

(7.0 is also called Nougat, because that series of OSes got candy names.)

I'm upgrading to a Nougat phone soon, myself.

nitsua60

1:36 AM

"Giants are traditional enemies and rivals of dragons, and spent a thousand years fighting them." (From this answer.) Makes me, once again, throw up my hands in frustration at trying to make sense of fantasy worlds in which races' life spans vary by an order of magnitude. "Thousand-year war" = "aeons-long war" or "oh, yeah... my dad was there when that started" depending on whom you ask.

</FWP>

(That's "fantasy world problems" this time.)

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 for dragons, a thousand-year war might be on the timescale of "man i haven't had a decent nap in ages"

BESW

@nitsua60 This is a plot point in Dragons of the Cuyahoga.

nitsua60

@BESW Which, I forgot if I told you, I bought and read last summer. I liked it.

BESW

Yey!

It's a good book. The sequel is okay but not as great.

Shalvenay

hey there @nitsua60

nitsua60

1:40 AM

hiya

Shalvenay

how're things going?

nitsua60

Alright. You?

I'm ~~confused~~ perplexed by this Q&A:

-1

Q: Can a Wish spell create a legendary magic item?

One of our players in the Curse of Strahd hardcover adventure (©2016) recently found a Luckblade with one wish remaining. He wants to use that wish to receive a Staff of the Magi which is a legendary item (DMG p203). According to the PHB details on the Wish spell (p 288-289) there are various gu...

dnd-5e rules-as-written magic-items dnd-adventurers-league

Shalvenay

alright here

got a game starting in a few days, so that's good

BESW

Conplexed? Perfused?

nitsua60

@Shalvenay Cool--playing/running? System? RL/OL?

Shalvenay

1:48 AM

@nitsua60 playing and 5e

and online

nitsua60

@BESW I'd say "perflused," but I suspect that's a medical condition.

BESW

I think perfusion is what happens when you walk through the front of a department store.

...in all my snake's nest of cords and wires, I don't seem to have any headphone cords with a volume up/down control insert.

JuneShores

3:51 AM

Yo.

BESW

Yawp!

What's new?

JuneShores

I am back in Maine. Trying to cultivate some game programming skills to hopefully get a job next year.

BESW

Ooh, shiny.

JuneShores

I got me some reading to do.

Shalvenay

hey there @JuneShores, how're things going?

JuneShores

4:03 AM

Going okay, @Shalvenay. How's stuff?

Shalvenay

alright here, got a game starting soon which'll be nice

BESW

I'm hoping to restart some gaming soon.

The last month and a half I've been reluctant to use Skype for gaming, because my dad doesn't need any actual disembodied voices to add to his confusion.

JuneShores

I'm hoping to try Anima Prime soon, and playtest my Cortex Prime world building project.

BESW

But he's getting better and I'll have more hands on deck starting next weekend, and I'm also looking into hacking Cthulhu Confidential for non-Mythos twosies with Trogdor (whose voice is not disembodied).

JuneShores

I'm glad he's getting better, @BESW.

BESW

4:07 AM

Thanks.

It's not like "Oh my maybe he'll be fine some day," it doesn't work like that. He has sudden drops, then recovers and stabilizes somewhere slightly below where he was before the drop.

But it's still a big relief to reach a plateau and know what the new normal is.

trogdor

@BESW but are you sure it isn't disembodied? whooooo oooooooooo oooooooooooo

BESW

Yes.

Miniman

4:23 AM

In case anyone paid attention to it - I'm reversing my previous recommendation for Hollow Knight. Strongly suggest avoiding this game.

JuneShores

Why is that?

Miniman

@JuneShores It betrayed my trust on a fundamental level, and has required several hours and a bunch of reading guides off the internet to reach the point of playability again.

BESW

Now I'm curious.

Miniman

Essentially, for a metroidvania game to punish you for exploring using one-way paths to force you to do areas that you can't yet, is dumb.

BESW

Aaaaah.

Miniman

4:32 AM

Especially since all of that exploration was done without a map, because of this game's even dumber mechanic where you have to find a cartographer in each area in order to even be able to view the places you've been.

BESW

trogdor

@BESW ok, so you fell for it then :P

@Miniman ah, I am sorry for the frustration on that point

to be clear,.... I almost gave up on a few Metroid games just for needing to backtrack ever

Miniman

Lately games punishing me for exploring seems to be a theme. Maybe there's a message I'm not getting.

trogdor

I didn't realize the game punished anyone for exploring

but then again, all the playthroughs I watched, there were at least 3 seperate ones, stopped at a certain point (not the same point, but pretty close to each other overall)

so I don't know if they hit the same wall you did and gave up there (or got further or less far)

BESW

@Miniman This is something I've been enjoying with REIS; they WANT you to explore, and reward you handsomely, but there's resource-conserving strategy behind HOW you explore.

Miniman

4:42 AM

@trogdor I mean, it's a blind metroidvania. Exploration is literally the core of the game.

trogdor

@BESW yeah I botched it that one time and it was really frustrating that I had run us into that fight we basically could not win

@Miniman that is why I am surprised to hear that this has happened

all the parts of the game I saw were cleverly designed not to force you to stay there and finish an area, especially if you didn't have the right power yet

there was even an early boss you could just escape from after starting the fight to finish him later

you had to find the wall that would break and let you leave, but you could escape that fight

he was called like, "the False Knight" I think

not that you can't like,..... just pop in, grab your shadow, and then not come back for a while anyway, but that wall broke the way you needed to go

(you still need his crest later but that is later)

if it were not for the fact that I am not quite the biggest fan of backtracking Metroid Vania games to begin with, I would think this game was right up my alley

Miniman

@trogdor The game always leaves your shadow outside boss fights or other really dangerous areas, thankfully.

trogdor

the platforming looks good, it at least looked like they designed it so the zones or areas were able to be done in many different orders, and the difficulty on normal mode at least looks like it is on my sweet spot

failure is easy enough but not punished in an irrecoverable way

@Miniman yeah exactly

Miniman

@trogdor Yeah, I'm not saying it's a bad game, or frustrating in general, or anything like that. Just that it's no longer a game I'm comfortable recommending to anyone, knowing that this might happen to them.

trogdor

@Miniman so what did happen?

Miniman

4:52 AM

@trogdor I was exploring a new area, and, because I didn't explore the way I guess I was "supposed" to, I was forced to follow a guide for an annoyingly long time in order to get through an area that I didn't have the required ability for.

hello there @Perahn

Hello! /unlurk

[wave] What's new?

how are you today?

I'm good! Here and playing Stein;s Gate, just a lazy day

How about you guys?

Shalvenay

4:54 AM

alright here, kinda excited to see how the 5e game that's starting up for me this week will pan out

Perahn

Always exciting

my friends and I are due for the third session of a 'morally ambiguous' campaign

Shalvenay

interesting, what system and sort of setting?

Perahn

5e, Faerun

Shalvenay

ah

sadly, I haven't really gotten my organizational act together well enough to put together and run a full campaign of any significance yet

Perahn

Waterdeep has a priestess of Tyr who wants to bring the hammer down on scum like us, and also there are murders, people running scared

Shalvenay

4:57 AM

ah, a Tyrran tyrant :P

Perahn

but for evil people, so far all we've done is kill a shambling mound and scare a washed-up bookseller into straightening out his act

my Red Wizard is distinctly not impressed

trogdor

@Miniman ah, but you were able to get out of there right? (not saying it was cool necesarily, just that it was accomplishable)

Perahn

:P Indeed!

Miniman

@trogdor Yep. Another point for the internet.

Shalvenay

it doesn't help that both my storyline ideas for campaigns are seriously challenging to flesh out fully

Perahn

4:59 AM

I've played a few 5e campaigns, and one Dresden Files, never DMed anything longer than a one-shot, though

Shalvenay

one of them is faced with a difficult subplot (incorporating lawfare into a campaign is hard)

Perahn

'lawfare'?

Shalvenay

the weaponization of the legal system

it's mostly a phenomenon in common-law, adversarial systems like the US legal system

the other just hasn't yet crystallized

it's Hobgoblins and Elves in a sort of logistics/man-vs-nature centric disaster relief sort of campaign arc

Perahn

the whole idea behind 'trial by combat was replaced by trial by lawyer because it was crueller'?

Sounds intricate

Shalvenay

yes, very -- not sure what system to run it in even

I think it could be very cool, but also not easy to run

and hard on players too due to the logistical aspects coming to the fore

Perahn

5:03 AM

I think you'd need exactly the right sort of people for it

Shalvenay

yeah

BESW

There's a World of Adventure for Fate that's about a disaster response team, but you're looking for a more infrastructure-level approach.

Shalvenay

@BESW yeah -- disaster relief pivots to an infrastructure operation relatively quickly

I also want to wrangle my Mongol-cowboy-orc concept into a campaign that can showcase them as more than a sidenote, but that's going to be hard too

actually, I have an idea

Perahn

They must defend their cows against all those cattle-mutilating aliens?

Shalvenay

heheh, I was actually thinking elven refugees from magic gone awry in their homeland turn up in the orclands...

what's funny is the other race I really want to do a full workup for are Gnolls

Perahn

5:15 AM

Why is that funny?

Shalvenay

@Perahn well, more odd than haha

it's hard finding a niche for them at times, even

Perahn

I take it you mean beyond free-range XP

Shalvenay

@Perahn bigtime beyond free-range XP

(I was in a 1e campaign even where I was playing a LN Gnoll monk/priestess of St. Cuthbert)

Perahn

Could always go for Gnolls vs Drow: Battle of Matriarchies

Shalvenay

LOL!

makes me want to do a version of Out of the Abyss where the PCs are Underdarkers trying to escape the watery grave the Underdark is turning into all-too-quickly...

Lake Peigneur

Lake Peigneur is located in the US state of Louisiana, 1.2 miles (1.9 km) north of Delcambre and 9.1 miles (14.6 km) west of New Iberia, near the northernmost tip of Vermilion Bay. It was a 10-foot (3 m) deep freshwater body popular with sportsmen, until an unusual man-made disaster on November 20, 1980 changed its structure and the surrounding land. == Drilling disaster == On November 20, 1980, an oil rig contracted by Texaco accidentally drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Company salt mine under the lake. Because of an incorrect or misinterpreted coordinate reference system (the rig...

^^ kinda like this little incident

Perahn

5:31 AM

Well, you could tie that in to your disaster relief plans

Shalvenay

I want to keep the disaster relief stuff centered on one plotline basically

Perahn

Fair enough

BESW

5:49 AM

Yeah, I've found that it's generally better to give each major concept or theme its own campaign, so you can give that thing due attention and have a story that reaches a satisfying conclusion.

KorvinStarmast

12:07 PM

@kviiri Short answer: computer culture, computer programming, the way of thinking that promotes, and its effects on a great deal over the past 35 years. Not just in RPG, but in a lot of sectors of society. This goes hand in hand with a society becoming far more infused with legalism .... long topic, and a collateral point is that not everyone is the right person to be a DM.

Interestingly, Perhan has added an apposite observation in an unrelated discussion:
*the whole idea behind 'trial by combat was replaced by trial by lawyer because it was crueller* ... as author Pete Gent once observed about a divorce, *it wasn't so much of a marriage breaking up as a ritual killing*

BESW

12:25 PM

@KorvinStarmast Most chat markdown is broken by line breaks.

KorvinStarmast

@BESW Not sure what you mean by that.

I clicked on a question to me and answered it to whom asked.

BESW

The asterisks aren't turning your text into italics because the same entry includes a line break.

KorvinStarmast

OK, I see what you mean. hello rather than with a line break

BESW

Line breaks disable pretty much all markdown except the block quote (>), but they also drastically increase the maximum character limit per entry.

KorvinStarmast

Hmmm, this informs a few of my formatting problems.

BESW

12:31 PM

(That's how the Cool RPG Stuff pin works: it uses line breaks to increase the character limit, but when something gets pinned to the bar line breaks are turned into spaces and the markdown magically works again.)

Yeah, it's also true of comments, but obviously not questions and answers.

KorvinStarmast

Back to the questions to see what help I can give. Thanks for the tip.

BESW

No problem. Chat/comment functionality are their own special brands of esoterica.

Shalvenay

3:34 PM

hey there @CTWind and @nitsua60

nitsua60

4:21 PM

@Miniman looks like I"m not the only one peeking ahead. I'm tempted to watch, just to get a sense of how much of the ToA beans they'll be spilling, if any.

@Shalvenay hiya

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 how're things going?

nitsua60

Alright. Need to tackle the project of re-jiggering discarded phones for kids' usage. A little daunted....

nitsua60

5:52 PM

@CTWind that's true, but trawling through ENworld's not the sort of pointer I'm likely to throw out there--I find their search really clunky and who knows the provenance of what you'll find! (As opposed to SRD or Beyond, which are unimpeachable sources.)

eimyr

6:32 PM

hello everyone

Anaphory

Hey everyone of you!

eimyr

Well, I only saw BESW as active, and it's well known they are a collective

anyway

I have a question!

What do you say, should I ask?

Shalvenay

hey there @eimyr, how're things going?

eimyr

@Shalvenay Good, thanks! I'm doing well at work as well as socially, my RPG design ideas are pushed forward and I consider myself fairly fortunate lately.

Shalvenay

I'm OK here. been trying to wrangle my room under control. small parts, BIG PROBLEM!

eimyr

6:44 PM

Animals are sick though, as there is never a rose without thorns

You?

kviiri

7:28 PM

@KorvinStarmast I think you're arguing against a position I don't promote, there. I like games with rules, but that doesn't equate to "CRPGs" and I think it's a sort of a straw man in this. Quite the contrary, I prefer RPGs with a heavy narrative element, something the CRPGs often lack.

I just like that narrative based around rules that empower the players, because I want to be an author too. I'm not very happy with DnD, because its rules only empower the players during combat.

That said, combat is still my favorite part of DnD because it at least has rules I can lean on, and know my character can have an impact in the game. Few GMs will argue against a natural crit, a powerful fireball or a ferocious axe strike, but many keep the power to decide everything that happens out of combat.

But in out-of-combat situations, it's all too reliant on the GM for my tastes. Any ability check I make, I roll, then the GM gets to decide whether it succeeds or not and also what happens on each result. The rolling might as well be just for show if the player doesn't know the stakes and the TN, and it bugs me. Unlike combat, I can't guarantee the desired result to be even possible.

Eg. I try to scale a wall the GM doesn't want me to scale with a Strength (Athletics) check. I don't know the TN of the roll, so the GM can decide whether I succeed after I roll - even nat 20 isn't an automatic success.

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