TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

12:04 AM

hey there @BroderickSmith, welcome to the RPG.SE lair :)

Miniman

@doppelgreener Not possible, sorry. There's no link between that table and any others.

inthemanual

@Adeptus double negative?

Shalvenay

hey there @inthemanual

doppelgreener

@Miniman oh shoot. I thought that was just me failing at SEDE.

Thanks dude

The Oracle

12:19 AM

3

Q: Should questions that have answers only by combining two or more other Q&As still be marked duplicate?

Specifically this Q&A, but I believe this can also be applied in general. In general: It seems to me that if a question doesn't have an answer already in one Q&A, that it should be considered a valid question. Duplicates, in my understanding, are only for cases when the question is the same que...

Miniman

@doppelgreener I was looking around for a long time before I went looking on MSE, but yeah. You can tell which questions were closed using custom off-topic reasons, but not what those reasons were.

Ben

12:36 AM

OK, so I had an idea for a question, in addition to an answer (so, like a self-answered one). "Why should li give my PC a backstory, and how would it affect the game?"

Miniman

I would VTC if I saw that, personally.

Not only is it a really broad question, but the answers will vary enormously from group to group.

Shalvenay

yeah -- some groups care deeply about backstory, for others its a player by player thing, and for yet others its a shrug

Ben

What do people think of that, as q general concept? I'm not sure if I need to restrict it to a system at all, and the "answer" would be mostly along the lines of "it can help develop the character, how they react, etc, as well as giving the DM something to go off in a long-term campaign (personalised story arcs, etc)

ACuriousMind

@Ben Who is 'li'?

Miniman

@Ben I think it'd make a great blog post XD

Ben

12:39 AM

It's cold here, I have a shudder. @ACuriousMind

@Miniman that might be a better option. And maybe I should make one for my "CON as a dump stat" post too haha

Shalvenay

hey there @ACuriousMind

ACuriousMind

ahoi

Miniman

@Ben It'd be cool if there was an rpg.se blog that we could all throw these kinds of things into. When I've got some time, I might look at setting something up.

2

Shalvenay

how're things going?

Ben

I mean, it's summer, so having the AC on makes sense... but having it at 12℃ in an open plan office is a bit overkill

That is actually a really good idea @Miniman

ACuriousMind

12:42 AM

@Shalvenay Wasting away a few minutes much too late in the night before having to go to sleep ;)

Shalvenay

@ACuriousMind heheh

Ben

I'm not sure how it would go with moderation though?

Miniman

@Ben I'd envisage it as having some number of admins, and accepting articles from anyone who wanted to contribute one.

Shalvenay

@Miniman look at the WB.SE "Universe Factory" for one way to do it

Ben

Yeah. I'm thinking though, each one would have to be read individually, and blogs can be long and involved, so that might be some work. On the plus side, you wouldn't get a whole tonne of them very regularly.

Adeptus

12:47 AM

While my DM's taking a break for ~6 months, one of the others in the group is going to run a Tunnels & Trolls game. I'll probably be playing a yeti wizard.

Miniman

@Adeptus Yeti Nother Wizard?

Ben

On the plus side though, they would be fun to read, and would even help with answering questions. I.e a lot of my questions about building my Diablo game are often met with "have you read The Angry DM?" Haha

@Miniman [Sensible chuckle]

Shalvenay

@Adeptus big enough for my gnoll to ride around on their shoulders? XD

Miniman

@Ben And it'd be nice to have an outlet for self-answered questions that...push the limits a bit.

Ben

Yes :D

@Shalvenay can you post a link? (I'm on my mobile)

Adeptus

12:52 AM

@Miniman Basic T&T uses strength like "spell points" - each spell has a strength cost, that recharges slowly through the day. And has minimum int & dex requirements to cast spells of higher levels. Yetis have high strength (obviously) & int (don't know why), and average dex.

Shalvenay

@Ben medium.com/universe-factory

Adeptus

@Shalvenay They're 1.5x human height range. So, somewhere around 7-9ft.

Shalvenay

@Adeptus aww. a bit small then

"yeti" had me thinking BIG thoughts xD

Miniman

@Adeptus Nice. I really hope he walks around with a cape and a pointy hat, sporting the classic wizard look.

ACuriousMind

@Adeptus Yetis gotta be smart, else everyone would be certain they exist

Adeptus

12:56 AM

@Miniman I was thinking hood rather than pointy hat. The Raistlin fashion rather than the Gandalf fashion.

Ben

1:11 AM

@Miniman ones that he picked off the flying wizard from Morrowind, and therefore just a touch small

Adeptus

Ben

@Shalvenay this isn't part of the se network, is it?

Shalvenay

@Ben no, it's on Medium

Ben

Ok

ACuriousMind

@Ben SE blogs were abolished a while back because most sites didn't really use them

The WB blog is one of those who switched to another host to continue

Ben

1:15 AM

@Adeptus I always imagine wizards having stars in odd shapes and sizes printed all over their garments. Regardless of what I've actually seen wizards wear, the setting, or the character of the wizard themselves.

@ACuriousMind that makes sense then :)

@Adeptus good wizard? Deep blue robe with gold stars, or depending on their eccentricity, multicoloured stars. Bad wizard? Black robe, with white stars, and the stereotypical flames along the bottom hem

Adeptus

I'm thinking I'll name him Winston

Yuuki

Just realizes H.P. Lovecraft's "Nemesis" has the same meter as Billy Joel's "Piano Man."

Tweeted by OurWorldcomic on January 14, 2018 at 11:25 PM

Wait, was this posted here already?

Ben

Aaand now that's canon. From now on, any wizard (or other spell caster) now immediately causes their garments to copy this standard. "You Don the cloak form the peddler, and with a faint pop, it changes color, followed by a fizzling sound as a trail of mismatched stars careen down the length of the cloak"

@Yuuki I need to hear this.

@Ben You're in luck.

This is incredible

1:31 AM

Wow

KorvinStarmast

@Adeptus Reports of your demise have been greatly exaggerated. :) Good to to see you.

Shalvenay

@KorvinStarmast wibble :)

KorvinStarmast

@Shalvenay Just dropping in ... about to play some dungeon crawl Diablo III for no good reason. Cya.

Miniman

2:36 AM

Flags please.

Shalvenay

2:47 AM

@Miniman flagged

Shalvenay

3:33 AM

hey there @JoelHarmon

Joel Harmon

Hey @Shalvenay, how are things going?

Shalvenay

@JoelHarmon OK here, as to you?

Joel Harmon

Pretty good overall.

Helped some friends move and do some home repairs this past weekend. More physically tired than usual, but it's a good tired.

nitsua60

4:54 AM

@Rubiksmoose just as a heads-up: I like to, when opening a meta that discusses a specific, current question, drop a comment on that mainsite question just to say "there's a meta discussing the closure [here](link)." It helps, I naively assume, gather the conversation in one place rather than having some happen on meta and some still in comments on mainsite.

Rubiksmoose

@nitsua60 oh good idea! Didn't even think of it. The question is actually not very current though. Do you think it's still beneficial?

nitsua60

I don't know--I've been offline the last eight hours or so, but I saw the two meta notifications about your specific-questions. You probably know their current status better than I.

Rubiksmoose

I'll double check and see.

Yeah it was closed in July 2017 so probably not a lot of people looking at it right now lol

nitsua60

Second thought, though, go ahead and post such a comment. Even if the mainsite question's been knocked into shape, it's good to have signposts like that around to help newer users discover site features and see the sort of moderating/norm-building the community does.

Rubiksmoose

@nitsua60 sounds great. I'll do it right now

nitsua60

5:06 AM

Thanks!

Have a good night, everyone.

Sora Tamashii

I hate AT&T. :/ So, what's new with all of you?

Miniman

@SoraTamashii Advanced Tunnels and Trolls?

Sora Tamashii

I mean, they're not far off...

It's who my internet's through. They've been giving me issues the past few nights, hence why I haven't been able to return in a while.

Rubiksmoose

Not much new over here honestly.

Sora Tamashii

5:21 AM

Sounds dull. lol :)

Rubiksmoose

I hate ISPs so much. AT&T was awful when we had them as well

Sora Tamashii

5:37 AM

Fortunately, we don't pay a whole lot per month, so it's not a huge loss... but still.

BESW

7:10 AM

vote to re-open.

BESW

7:52 AM

DM: Oh crumbs. Looks like you've taken your owner's favorite seat. Tonka: Oh no. But I'm so comfy. Can I use my big squishy face to persuade them I can stay? DM: For sure. You don't even have to roll. You're too cute. They're gonna sit somewhere else.

Tweeted by dndoggos on January 23, 2018 at 3:06 AM

Essay: But, but, but — WHY does magic have to make sense? by NK Jemisin. (contains some harsh language)

Spent the weekend in Chicago at ORD Camp. Decided to give a very truncated version of my "let's build a world" exercise. We ended up with sentient alien virus-infested people-eating bamboo, and a culture dedicated to the sacred panda. (Just go with it.)

Tweeted by nkjemisin on January 22, 2018 at 4:57 PM

Forget GM screens, I want a line of GM reference throw pillows. Our group pretty lounge games these days and these would be amazing. "Hey Adam, what's +5 on the FATE ladder?" "Check under your butt." Lumbar support AND reference help? Yes, please. Do it @EvilHatOfficial. https://twitter.com/robdaviau/status/955223701703790593

Tweeted by JayBassDeluxe on January 22, 2018 at 2:57 AM

Sora Tamashii

8:33 AM

No offense, but NKJ is right... That is a whine...

BESW

She's also not wrong, and has put her money where her mouth is by writing multiple award-winning fantasy series that poke systemic magic with a sharp stick.

I think it's one reason I'm so attracted to Shadowcraft's magic mechanics.

Magic is satisfyingly thematic and deeply reasonable, but utterly unpredictable and can cut to the core of who the person is when it gets out of hand.

Sandwich

8:56 AM

Hey dudes

How's it goin?

BESW

[wave] Long time no sandwich.

Sandwich

How goes BESW

I came back to a huge amount of karma from a question I don't actually remember posting :thinking:

Sora Tamashii

BESW, I mean, I see where she's coming from, it's just a lot of what she's saying isn't really founded or reasonable. Success doesn't mean good after all. What she's looking for is "Fairy Tail". That's a "systemless" system of magic.

Clarification: Some of it is founded but unreasonable. Some of it is reasonable but unfounded. She does also make a couple good points, but where she isn't making good points, she is truly whining. It's a shame, because I think she has some decent points.

BESW

@Sandwich My RPGing is less frequent, but good fun when it does happen. Lots of one-shots like Honey Heist and InSpectres recently.

Sandwich

The game store I used to play D&D 5.0e at closed up because of a supplier issue so I'm out as far as RPGs are concerned

I really.. really wanna play pathfinder.

BESW

9:10 AM

What about Pathfinder is attractive to you?

Sandwich

The similarities to 3.5 mostly

And I own a toon of the books

I'm parsing through this article on magic right now and she does sound like a whiner.

BESW

[amused]

Sandwich

I couldn't help but chuckle when I saw her referring to fantasy racism as "logically or ethnically questionable"

BESW

[eyebrow raise] You do know that's an actual thing, right?

Sandwich

Elves and dwarves or elves and dark elves are probably the best examples and the reasoning behind their dislike of each other is firmly rooted in how different they are from one another.

[counter eyebrow raise] Of course.

She goes on further to say "of course orcs are evil, because they're orcs" when the reason that the majority of orcs and goblins are evil are because they are the creations of evil deities. There is nothing wrong with saying this because by and large the entire race was made to serve an antagonistic purpose. It's an abstract creation to further player agency.

kviiri

9:19 AM

A lot of fantasy racist tropes are founded on ideas and language that's rather indistinguishable from real life racism.

Sandwich

Also, Jeez lady how many times are you gonna say "It's fucking magic" in one article.

kviiri

I'm not saying it should never be done, full stop, but rather that an informed writer needs to be aware of this.

BESW

@Sandwich You're making a diegetic argument, which is completely unrelated to her objections.

Sandwich

Well her cursory observations of magic really have nothing to do with fantasy racism anyway. Her own argument about magic has nothing to do with it at all.

She's attempting to make the argument that because rules exist for magic in Dungeons and dragons that you can't be creative with how you choose to portray magic in your own media

You could make a system of magic that takes effect by lightly but firmly slapping someone in specific points of their face and someone out there would probably eat it up and find it entertaining.

kviiri

9:44 AM

Well, DnD has a habit of normalizing parts of the genre for both RPG and fantasy.

BESW

Mmm. She's specifically saying that it's not good to use systemic magic as a substitute for storytelling; that it's okay as a tool for storytelling, but too often it's become a replacement.

Sora Tamashii

10:05 AM

Of course systemic magic isn't a substitute for storytelling. Most writers are smart enough to know that. But just because it isn't a substitute doesn't mean there shouldn't be a system in place. For example, how is a wizard supposed to know what spell they are casting if anything can happen? It'd be like a world of nothing but wild mages taken to an extreme.

BESW

"Anything can happen" is not really what she's getting at either.

There's not just two extreme points on the spectrum. The space between contains faith, intuition, emotion, the inertia of plot....

Again, there are plenty of awesome, compelling stories that soak their toes in that spectrum in diverse ways--several of them by Jemisin herself, including one of my current favorite fantasy series which actually has an interesting intersection with common scifi approaches to psi powers. And there are plenty of RPGs which do it too, including some of my favorite RPGs.

kviiri

Magic is not very systemic in Tolkien's works, for instance, but it is still very far from "anything can happen". It's a lot like shamanistic intuitive nature magic that operates on the principle that natural forces are persons that can be compelled and commanded, with some flashy bits thrown in.

There's a really cool scene in The Fellowship of the Ring (at least in the movie, can't recall if it's in the novel) where Saruman and Gandalf have a "duel" of sorts, yelling at each other from dozens of miles away, Saruman trying to cast a storm upon the Fellowship and Gandalf trying to ward it off.

(sorry for spoilers, in case anyone didn't know Saruman turns out to be the Emperor of the Sequel trilogy)

Miniman

@kviiri It's not - in the book, the storm is ascribed to the mountain, and Gandalf doesn't try to do anything about it.

kviiri

@Miniman Rats. It would've still been quite Tolkieny, tho!

I mean, he drew a lot on Kalevala where singing and shouting to evoke natural forces feature in a few prominent places.

BESW

Bujold's Five Gods series is quick to talk about the rules people have figured out for magic--and almost as quick to break them, because magic is all derived from personal conversation between souls, whether they're mortals, chaos spirits, animals, or gods, so a lot of what's taken for absolutely true about magic is actually cultural or common.

I really want to model a game on that system some day.

I think it'd probably be a mashup of Shadowcraft and Bubblegumshoe.

Jan 5 '17 at 2:23, by BESW

The relationship grants you a Magic skill which is rolled like Shadowcraft, except that consequences suffered from success-at-cost are inflicted on your relationship with the patron and must be resolved through interaction with them. You can also spend fate points on the relationship for effects, and be compelled in the same way.

Sandwich

10:32 AM

I always saw Tolkien-esque magic as Druidism more than actual arcane or divine magic

And there are plenty of fictions that do magic completely different that still have at least some underlying structure for how they operate

Avatar: The Last Airbender for example

Where it's a genetic, yet intuitive type of magic that relies heavily on physical motions

BESW

"Arcane" and "divine" as codified magical distinctions post-date Lord of the Rings by at least one year.

@Sandwich Except for all the people like Sparky Sparky Boom Man who don't need physical motions, and how it's a power directly granted by the spirits, and how it manifests spontaneously when the world sees need.

Again: the system doesn't substitute for story, the story uses the system as a tool to further itself.

The magic has a framework which reinforces the themes of the story, and the story challenges the framework where that reinforces its themes.

Sandwich

Druidic predates lord of the rings by a few thousand years though :P

BESW

In the sense that D&D uses it? eeeeh.

Most of D&D's real-world inspirations were filtered through at least two levels of fictional abstraction before they entered the game at all.

doppelgreener

Current druids in fantasy have almost nothing in common with the druids of yore.

Sandwich

Whaaat

BESW

10:45 AM

Again, the idea of "druidic magic" as a codified magic distinct from other kinds of magic is much more recent. The idea of carefully distinguishing between different kinds of magic in the D&D sense is itself mostly a conceit of fiction.

Sandwich

So dancing around stone henge at the equinox isn't part of druidic rituals? RIP

doppelgreener

@Sandwich Druids in the ancient world were priests, healers, kings and leaders, influencers, keepers of knowledge, adjudicators, etc. That is mostly fairly mutually exclusive from "reclusive shapeshifter who summons plants and animals."

BESW

Heck, D&D took the rakshasa from Kolchak: The Night Stalker, of all places.

doppelgreener

@Sandwich it may have been for the people around stonehenge, though that's not much different to people nowadays standing up and singing in a big room in a stone building.

well, it is actually different i guess: in the ancient world, dances and song were critical to preserving and passing on cultural knowledge. if that did happen, it would've been the equivalent to what we do nowadays by reading books, attending lectures, watching tutorials, etc.

though a lot of the time these people were just places they could just talk to each other, attend lectures and speeches, read about things if they were literate, etc.

BESW

11:02 AM

@doppelgreener Also in many places in the modern world! There are Yapese dances which contain history and languages lost to every other form of knowledge.

doppelgreener

@BESW That's true! Aboriginal Australians have the same going on. ... I realise I slipped into a mindset of this stuff being outdated in describing that, but it's still current practice that doesn't need replacement in many modern-day cultures.

BESW

11:18 AM

Literally, there are some Yapese dances with songs in languages no one understands anymore.

It's kinda fascinating.

Some of the modern dances are used to discuss topics which aren't socially permissible to talk about in public.

doppelgreener

@BESW Like how we use mediums of comedy or Scifi TV Episode About Allegorical Aliens With Silly Hats to discuss the same?

BESW

Kinda, yeah.

Sandwich

11:31 AM

How do you add a tag to a question

In the

Main body, not the tags

kviiri

tag:tagName inside square brackets.

doppelgreener

@Sandwich [tag:dungeons-and-dragons] to link to a mainsite tag, [meta-tag:discussion] for a meta tag.

discussion status-completed specific-question

aw, they don't get fancy coloring on here

BESW

@doppelgreener this-is-a-main-site-tag this-is-a-meta-tag

Sora Tamashii

Back. Let's add Microsoft to the list of companies on my s*** list. :/

trogdor

@BESW it is a very interesting series for sure

BESW

11:44 AM

Nov 5 '13 at 17:07, by BESW

Microsoft could buy me a pony and a place to keep it and I wouldn't forgive them.

Sandwich

Microsoft has been a junk company since gates left it

BESW

....Clippit has been the platonic ideal of how not to handle locus of control in ethical programming since 1997.

Sora Tamashii

BESW, sounds like me when they forced me, against my will after denying every possible permission, to upgrade to 10...

The Oracle

0

Q: The handling of the creation, understanding, and implications of weighted or loaded dice in reference to role playing games

In regards to this question: Dice are a medium used in pretty much every tabletop role-playing game, which means that things that involve dice at least have some analogous connection to tabletop games, on a fundamental level. Being able to change the primary medium of agency between players and ...

discussion specific-question

kviiri

12:11 PM

So we played another Curse of Strahd session yesterday. Was a rather slow-paced session, with the bulk of it spent fighting a creature that was trying to escape and that we had scant means to damage effectively with.

We also got our butts kicked in a different encounter but that ended by plot.

doppelgreener

@SoraTamashii There's at least one ongoing class action lawsuit over the forced upgrades: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/…

Sandwich

Oh yeah as a person who works in a computer shop

doppelgreener

From an IT security point of view it's good to have people upgrading, but the decision to force it upon people is not something I can support even then.

Sandwich

We got so much business during that whole period

GWX Control Panel was a lifesaver

Completely disabled all built-in windows 10 upgrade scripts in older OS

I still prefer 7 to 10 to this day

Forced windows updates will never be on my priority ladder

That instantly goes to the bottom of the stack

doppelgreener

On the other hand though, (somewhat) forced updates might need to become a norm given the security climate we're dealing with nowadays.

Those users on Windows 7 will cease to receive security updates in 2020, meaning whatever critical vulnerabilities are discovered then, they will almost certainly be left out in the cold dealing with them.

Sandwich

12:26 PM

Thats a two way street though

Because Windows 7 will be dated at that point people will stop specifically coding to determine where the vulnerabilities in the OS are

And move on to more lucrative exploits of more recent operating systems

Since low-level end users buy more computers due to having less aptitude for technology, they'll be the ones more likely to use newer versions of windows

Joel Harmon

@Sandwich IMO, if I power on my computer and it powers itself off without me telling it to, that's a bug.

Sandwich

Which operating system is doing that Joel?

Joel Harmon

Any version of Windows that I can recall, by default.

Sandwich

Oh, Windows update? Yeah definitely.

Joel Harmon

I'm not sure whether the server versions do the 3AM updates by default, but the consumer version all did.

Sandwich

12:33 PM