TRPG General Chat

4:37 AM

Kickstarter: The King Is Dead: a Roleplaying Party Game. A party game for roleplayers and non-roleplayers. Fight with your friends, fall in love with your enemies, and seize the crown!

Magician

4:55 AM

That's certainly a... thing.

Doesn't look that appealing, I'll be honest. "Hey, let's play 11 games for each of which we'll have to read a page or two of rules as we go" is a tough sell. Without seeing the games themselves it's hard to see how roleplaying even factors into it, since it's all about hand manipulation. And most importantly, how do you even pick one of the 10 non-terminal games? Optimizers would need to know them all before touching the cards.

trogdor

I was more concerned with needing a book for each player

If you ever want a chance to play with 5 people you have to have 5 books? Not exactly all that great

Magician

That's what the boxed set includes

Or lots of printing, I suppose.

trogdor

Yeah actually looking at the price, that isn't too bad

You are right though,.... We don't know much of how this game works in a role playing way

Heck, we know what cards we want but not how we are supposed to get them

Magician

5:11 AM

Maybe there are hints in game descriptions, like "go to war if you want to take cards from other players"

I have a feeling you're meant to just go with the flow, and choose games based on "roleplaying". That is, something will happen and everyone will have a good time, party games, yay.

trogdor

Lol

I get the impression party games are not your favorite

Magician

au contraire

I love party games like Secret Hitler, Dixit, Mascarade

trogdor

Ah

I would love to try Secret Hitler

Magician

It's like Resistance, only better

trogdor

With a group of people who really knows each other well it looks really fun

It seems like it has the perfect mix of actual mechanics and group manipulation

Magician

5:17 AM

It actually works well even with people you don't know at all - what better way to get to know them than to lie to their face :D

trogdor

Also fair

kviiri

7:56 AM

Hi!

BESW

yo.

kviiri

Today in RPGs, I offered a friend to buy his 4e gear off him (if he hasn't gotten rid of them yet)

BESW

I assume that 4e gear includes a helmet and pads for protection against the haters.

trogdor

lol

that would be perfect

BESW

@kviiri Did you get the gear?

I managed to get most of my standard polyhedrons very cheap off a friend when he dramatically quit RPGs for about three months.

kviiri

8:06 AM

@BESW Still waiting for his reply

There's a non-trivial chance he's already got rid of them earlier.

kviiri

8:30 AM

If The Roman Empire was a TV Series #map #maps

Tweeted by onlmaps on April 3, 2018 at 1:50 AM

A bit harsh on the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire. At least Russia gets away just being "wierd" [sic].

BESW

....what's Carthage in this scenario?

kviiri

The competing franchise that actually predated the Roman Empire but never broke big and is mostly recognized by a few die-hard fans.

Sort of how people today'd assume The Worst Witch is a Harry Potter ripoff while it actually predates Potter books by decades. It just never got as big.

BESW

I... didn't know the book had been made into a film until people started talking about it in relation to HP.

For me it always just been one of the many kids books I'd read with a great premise and a lackluster execution.

kviiri

@BESW I didn't know about the books at all before Netflix started pushing me the series. I did have a hunch there was a book behind it, though.

As for why Netflix keeps pushing me these series... when I started using it, it asked me to select three or more series I like for it to base recommendations on. I was like "just get on with it I don't care what you recommend me!" and selected the first two series I had actually seen, being Orange is the New Black and Breaking Bad, and for third, I just picked the next item on the list.

That being Peppa Pig.

BESW

8:46 AM

Also, when folks started going on about The Worst Witch in connection to Harry Potter, my main reaction was "What about Wizard's Hall?"

@kviiri Hah. In my experience you wouldn't have gotten more accurate recommendations if you'd chosen something more carefully.

kviiri

@BESW My SO agrees. But I still wish I hadn't picked Peppa. I find the art style a tad unnerving.

My parents used to joke that I "like playing those games where guts and giblets fly" (meaning Bio Menace, a good ol' Apogee platformer from the 1990's) while I get easily distressed by uncanny valley animations.

BESW

Aug 12 '15 at 6:34, by BESW

Netflix Says: Because I like Haven and Agents of SHIELD, I would like... Storage Wars.

kviiri

@BESW Storage Wars is either one of those numbing reality shows or a delightfully self-aware anime.

I hope it's the latter.

BESW

Alas, the former.

kviiri

Rats.

BESW

8:50 AM

Aug 4 '14 at 6:01, by BESW

[sigh] It's time for more What Are You Thinking, Netflix?
- Because of my interest in "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" and "Belphegor: Phantom of the Louvre," I might like "Forrest Gump," "Patriot Games," and "M*A*S*H."
- Because I watched Joss Whedon's home production of "Much Ado About Nothing" and the British "House of Cards," I might like "Parks & Recreation."
- ...and they've yet again managed to track down a Tinkerbell movie to put in "Top Picks for BESW."

Oct 2 '15 at 5:28, by BESW

Dear Netflix: You don't get to call a film a "hidden gem" if people look at me funny for not recognising when they quote it.

Nov 26 '14 at 23:35, by BESW

Really, Netflix? A 1967 film has "a 1960s-style vibe"? You don't say.

kviiri

:D

You can't make that stuff up

BESW

Seriously though they spent at least three years throwing direct-to-DVD Tinkerbell movies at me.

kviiri

I was going to ask whether there's enough movies of Tinkerbell for them to be a category of their own. Apparently there is.

BESW

May 19 '14 at 1:46, by BESW

Netflix says: Based on your interest in Adventures in Babysitting and The Legend of Bagger Vance, you'd like Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive.

kviiri

How does that work out? She doesn't speak does she? Is she a mute protagonist like the video game heroes of old?

BESW

8:54 AM

I don't know, I never watched any. I didn't want to encourage the algorithms.

kviiri

Crikey.

Me and my SO actually like kids' films a lot, as long as they've got good production values.

BESW

As do I!

But the Tinkerbell franchise looks like.... not that.

kviiri

Yeah, "direct-to-DVD" doesn't associate with quality.

BESW

"Direct to DVD Disney sequel series for tots" even less so.

trogdor

@BESW ooh that's a good one right there, really shows how,....... good? Netflix is at deciding these things for you XD

kviiri

9:01 AM

There's a reason why "entertainment industry" has "industry" in it. Doesn't mean it's all bad, but with the goal being "let's make X-many marketable products this year"... it tends to either be bad or be going that way.

BESW

Yeah. That's why I'm pleasantly surprised when things like the TMNT 2012 series, which really had no reason it needed to be anything beyond mediocre in order to cash in on the film, turned out to be.... actually good.

trogdor

@kviiri I think I saw commercials for it in which she not only spoke but had like 4 or 5 fairy friends who also did

well, for one of them anyway, I have no idea how many movies there are or how different from each other they are

kviiri

@BESW Regarding this, I would say I joke about "adulthood being the state where you can watch children's films, play Pokémon Go and build sand castles without being embarrassed of it", except I really mean it.

BESW

I don't agree with CS Lewis about a lot of things, but "When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

doppelgreener

That's great.

kviiri

9:07 AM

@BESW Couldn't say that better myself

BESW

(source)

I think about it a lot when I'm making the posters for the local student directors' night of self-chosen one-act plays.

doppelgreener

I enjoy a lot of stuff that's ostensibly for kids — invader zim, Steven Universe, studio Ghibli movies. I'm surprised others in my life sometimes don't want to watch them exclusively because of them being in the "for kids" category.

BESW

You will pry my brightly-colored and optimistic depictions of the best things in human nature from my old, dead hands.

kviiri

I go to the beach a couple of times a Summer, and my favorite activity is still not swimming but building little pools and walls to protect them from the waves. And little "wells". And once it's done, contemplate the finitude of everything as waves slowly erode the muddy structure back into a flat non-existence.

BESW

Alas, the best beach for doing that here is, itself, a victim of the finitude of everything.

kviiri

9:12 AM

Because of the army dump thing?

BESW

....In particular, the abrupt and determined finitude of government administrations.

Naw. Even stupider than that.

Back in the '50s the Army Corps of Engineers built a very simple stone pier to re-direct the currents from the river into the bay and prevent erosion of the bay's beaches.

kviiri

How did it turn out?

BESW

It worked until the late 90s, by which time the waves and tides had shifted the stones of the pier--which had just been piled in place, not cemented--so that the pier was no longer influencing the currents. The beach sands started quickly migrating out into the ocean, and the shoreline was eaten by yards every year.

By that point it was no longer the Army's responsibility, it was the local government's.

And since the Corps doesn't bother with things like blueprints for such simple tasks, it was technically impossible to rebuild the pier and nobody would sign off on building a new one in the same place without having the paperwork to say what had been there before.

trogdor

mmm mmm mmm government bureaucracy and colonialism

BESW

So instead they piled rocks up all along the shoreline, where the beach used to be, to make a sea wall.

trogdor

9:17 AM

such,.... great,..... horrible flavors

BESW

...a sea wall that was also not held together by anything except the weight of its materials, and which (unlike the original pier) was not built with any consideration for how the currents actually flowed.

...A sea wall which amplified the currents, speeding up the movement out to sea of the silt on which the wall was piled, because that entire valley and bay go down at least a hundred of sand, silt, and clay before you hit bedrock.

So every few years they go out and pile more rocks on the sea wall where our beach used to be, because it's sinking into the silt.

At this point rebuilding the pier probably wouldn't work because the whole shape of the place has changed.

I'm very much in favor of humanity being okay with the fact that the world moves, and I think we need to learn how to build and plan to take that into effect rather than trying to make it stop. So the pier going away, that's just part of how things work and rebuilding it might never have been the right plan.

But what we have is just Sisyphean nonsense.

kviiri

Ugh... that sounds terrible.

BESW

I mean, the Corps was mostly just building the pier for post-war busywork and because they wanted a nice beach. It's not like they built the pier before we lost a whole cemetery to the currents.

But they had experts who could eyeball the context with the currents and the tides an make a pier that lasted more than 40 years with nothing but rocks and muscle.

Oh, and for extra stupid: there are decades of crisp aerial photographs of the pier, with visibility down into the water, that clearly show how it was built and how it slowly fell apart.

But that's not good enough.

kviiri

Hrmh.

BESW

It was a wonderful beach. Fine black magnetic sand with streaks of dark blue mud, a long low slope into the water and a nicely scooped bay mouth made for excellent surfing waves.

kviiri

9:29 AM

:(

BESW

have you ever made drip castles?

kviiri

Yeah, but nothing fancy

BESW

This sand was amazing for them.

Now what little sand piles up against the sea wall is gritty and coarse.

kviiri

I don't know any good beaches near my home, but we go to Pori about once per month. There's a beach with particularly fine-grained sand that gets everywhere.

BESW

kviiri

9:44 AM

It's beautiful

BESW

Top image is from 1991; bottom is of the sea wall.

kviiri

I imagined the wall to be a bit further out

BESW

No, it's about where the trees stop and the sand starts in the top image.

Basically they waited until the erosion threatened the road before they did anything.

kviiri

Okay

kviiri

10:02 AM

I can't help staring out towards the little bay of our own to see if someone's still testing the ice

kviiri

11:10 AM

TIL: In 1917, in Naissaar, Estonia, there was an independent yet short-lived (two months) Socialist republic led by a very small Russian force with a very cool/stupid flag.

Naissaar

Naissaar (German: Nargen; Swedish: Nargö) is an island northwest of Tallinn (but belonging to Viimsi Parish) in Estonia. The island covers an area of 18.6 square kilometres (7.2 square miles). It is 8 kilometres (5.0 miles) long and 3.5 kilometres (2.2 miles) wide, and lies about 8.5 kilometres (5.3 miles) from the mainland. The highest point on the island is Kunilamägi, which is 27 metres (89 feet) above sea level. The island consists predominantly of coniferous forest and piles of stones and boulders. As of 2005, the island had a population of ten. Now the island has three dozen or so permanent...

BESW

11:48 AM

@doppelgreener If you've got a moment for Discord some time soon, I'd appreciate it.

doppelgreener

@BESW I do!

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