@MikeQ On reflection, I think this question ties together the easier-to-parse "is it accurate" subject with the more-practically-important topic of how Disney positions Pasifika people in the real world, and both can be addressed by asking "Who wrote Moana?"
A few days ago Hank Azaria (in a spectacular turn-around that I do respect) said regarding what to do with Apu that "listening to [Asian-American] voices means inclusion in the writer's room."
@JoelHarmon OK here. have ideas in mind for a DW game I want to run but need someone to bounce them off of because what I have so far is basically a giant furball of campaign fronts
A quote from tonight's session: "We summoned a dragon! We gave it a summons, and it showed up to the trial!" Vic (me) was the party's defense attorney, and made a pretty good argument in our defense... Until we realized the questionable NPC that showed up in town accusing a group that seemed to resemble an earlier version of our party was probably a shapechanged dragon (specifically the mate of another one). Vic conferred with the judge and rolled a 22 on Persuasion - even though the roll on the die was a 2 (thanks to expertise and bardic inspiration) - to convince him to put the NPC on the…
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in body, pattern-matching product name in body, pattern-matching website in body, potentially bad keyword in body (296): Three. Keep an affordable food plan by nbghnyt on rpg.SE (@doppelgreener)
Mute or otherwise seriously communication-impaired characters are among them (that said, I'd be fine with muteness if it was more about exploring a life without speech than just a gimmick)
I think our party has a bit of potential for exploring issues like that in depth, but it's hampered by us playing systems that don't really support that.
Deadlands: Reloaded was a particularly silly phase. It's one of those systems where you take disabilities and hindrances for character building points.
I am not a fan of the SW char generation in any way
Savage Worlds I mean
There's lots of character options that seriously muck with your character's state: they might be terminally ill or be wanted for crimes. Or they might be enlisted in an army, for all the perks and responsibilities that entails. Not a hint of guidance on how to mix them with playing as a group.
@Szega But that's a statement that doesn't really mean anything, does it? Any game gives you the option to play it any way you like with generous application of rule zero.
Technically if we strip D&D of combat we wind up with a skill system, but very little to do with it because all of the core of the system that the skills were attached to has vanished. I'm bringing this up because if it's being pointed out that SW still has things left over after you strip out combat, the same is still true of D&D, so this alone doesn't mean it's not about combat.
@Szega "Not getting hit" is reliant on the dice and multitude of other skills. There are multiple ways to get Shaken, you can't really build your character against all of them.
And while I think Bennies aren't a bad game design element in themselves, their practical use as "you need to spend these points or roll real lucky in combat to even get to try to act!" is incredibly unfun design.
Esp. in the edition we played where you'd get experience rewards for not spending bennies.
Yeah. I'm glad they fixed that and the Shaken stunlock thing
Before the Shaken revision, you actually needed to Raise your Spirit check to get to act. Otherwise, you'd just be un-Shaken but only get to act on your next turn.
And esp. with wound penalties, it would be very hard for characters who hadn't invested specifically in Spirit.
@Carcer It is extremely, extremely terrible. The character creation is great, assuming you're willing to skip the 600d6 phase (which you may be required to re-do) and assuming you're braced for all content you get presented with to be extremely, extremely terrible and have extremely, extremely terrible outcomes. Then it can be kind of amazing in its extreme terribleness.
I do not recommend direct exposure to actually playing it.
In point of fact, you're going to be very lucky if one of your three characters is even a little bit playable.
It is quite likely your characters will all be dead, crippled, bedridden, or have one of the perks that makes them likely to die and/or kill themselves within a few minutes or days of game start.
In all the deadearth chargenning we did here for fun I think I recall two semi-viable characters and one supermutant who somehow lucked out into being not only alive and well and unhandicapped, but also into being incredibly powerful.
granted merely being alive and adventure-worthy is a superpower as far as character creation goes.
I would say that this sounds like you could do the MST3K version of RPGs and play through some for funsies (without me knowing anything about these) but then I got to "grotesquely bigoted" so I'll pass thankyouverymuch.
there are actually quite a lot of horrible, awful, bigoted video games given it's a lot more popular to make video games than tabletop games. (and requires a lot less cooperation from other people.)
the recently elected political leader of brazil infamously had a video game about him in which you beat up all of the country's persecuted minorities.
that is fan made. The problem is that based on every report in existence, the author didn't intend it as a (very bad) joke.
@doppelgreener sadly, there is also a "city simulation" game - think sim city - that has you managing a lager camp . Not joking, it was made by some extremist German party.
@Derpy (cc: @carcer @doppelgreener) I don't know that there's any standing agreement not to talk about them, but I don't see a harm in keeping them at arm's length. So I moved the thread, hope you don't mind.
A place for trash messages from other chatrooms. If you're a r...
(again, a joke, no need to move those messages to the trash, but to be fair it may be good to know that there is a designed "move trash here" room if you ever need it in the future.)
On a lighter note, it sounds like the new DM of the group is going to be running a campaign loosely inspired by Pratchett's Discworld in both tone and some setting stuff.
Which is a very nice change from the dark, dramatic, and gritty campaign that we killed a couple weeks ago.
certainly the Vimes books tended to be more serious and a bit grimmer than the rest - I think pterry was just quite good at mixing that with humour still
Night Watch in particular, though. I think I'm mostly remembering the bit where they stormed the cable street irregulars.
Depends on the definition of "dual wield" -- you can hold and use two of anything in DnD as long as it doesn't require two hands to use. But you can only use Two Weapon Fighting if they're light melee weapons
But you can dual wield for other purposes too, eg. to have two different types of damage handy.
@Rubiksmoose Sounds like fun. And since Discworld cosmologically is just making fun of fantasy tropes including D&D's own, it might work out okay as the system.
(Dual wielding isn't really a mechanic in DnD 5e --- it's just the act of holding two things, and doesn't really have any general, particular rules associated with it)
@kviiri that's deliberately disingenuous - there are clearly rules for fighting effectively using two weapons at the same time, which is what people mean when they describe dual-wielding
@doppelgreener Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed that he decided to go with 5e over another system in general, but it probably is an ok choice given the fantasy nature.
On the other hand, I'm having a hard time coming up with a character concept. In part because I think I might just be really tired of the fantasy genre.
@Carcer Yeah I can definitely see where you are coming from there.
@DavidCoffron wait, what? let me just read the spell text
got it.
So, a fighter can hurl as many as he has attacks and stones available
@DavidCoffron the way you said "enchanted to grant you the ability to use your action to deal damage." made it seem like it didn't combine with extra attack
A thread on the history of books and libraries and how much it took to have either:
"I've never seen so many books before in my whole life!": a thread about book production and premodern libraries in fantasy
Pet peeve: characters wandering into an endless library without further worldbuilding
@DavidCoffron I mean I guess, but if everyone else want to play high fantasy and I'm playing Sherlock holmes or Wyatt Earp then I'm not really playing the same setting as people. Doable: sure. But I'm not sure I want to go there.
Even then I'm not sure that solves my issue. My lack of enthusiasm for character choices is just one aspect of it. Really, I'm tired of all the tropes and trappings of fantasy right now.
each round, bonus action magic stone, drop the pebbles, eldritch blast something. Your hirelings each pick up a pebble and throw it at an enemy using your spell attack stats.
there's an extra 3d6+15 damage per round, possibly.
@DavidCoffron your mage hand+magic stone (correct, IIRC) could benefit, I think, from quoting the clause in mage hand that specifically prohibits making attacks. (Which, IIRC again, is a thing?)
I wish there was a purchase option for both the physical book and electronic access to the material at the same time. I really do hate paying 2x for the same content.
I'd market it the other way around, 40$ to get DnDBeyond and 60$ to get the code with a physical book
Maybe because I'm used to perusing my DnD from a digital medium, I think the physical books feel more like swag and luxury to me than the actual format of the game anymore :)
@ColinGross Actually the reason that Curse charges what they do is because, partly, they argue you are not buying the books itself but an entirely different form of hte same material with added functionality and features.
I've always had the issue of being able to "buckle down" on work stuff. even in middle school. If I could just sit at the desk and eventually wthe work would get done....
There is yeah. I'm not sure how much that is. Or for that matter how much only buying the spells would be. But it will be cheaper than buying the full books and they even subtract the amount you pay from the price of the book if you want to buy it later.
@Rubiksmoose Then you hack your home into having your desk, kitchen, and anything else you want to get done all in/near the same place so you get credit for all of them while you play on your phone.
@ColinGross cat are multidimensional entities. What your punny human senses perceive as "sleeping" is actually them being active on alternate planes of reality.
I wonder how Gelatinous Cubes maintain their shape. Like, if a giant were to pick one up and smash it on the ground, would it splat into a pancake? And would it then turn back into a cube with well defined corners?
In which case the cube left in the open, or deformed while in the open, would probably eventually start spreading on the sides and form a more classical jelly shape
That's only my headcanon though (except I think it's outright stated somewhere that the cubical nature is an adaptation to corridors) so use with caution or not at all :)
"an adaptation to corridors" could just as well mean that gelatinous cubes evolved a cubular shape over time and it is the natural shape of the present species, not that an individual gelatinous shape has been contoured by its environment
urge to design a dungeon based entirely on gelatinous shapes of varying kinds with an intelligent gelatinous hypercube as boss is reaching critical levels
@Carcer Oh man, I'm getting ideas now. My kids have giant foamy d6s, I'm imagining using them for a Gelatinous Cube boss that moves by rolling onto one of it's sides. The number of the side facing its target determines what kind of attack it uses.
I'm not sure if I really disagreed with their opinion or I just didn't understand it
But overall, people who equate fairness with direct democracy despite group size and without further qualifiers are... likely to have some opinions that differ from mine in general.
I don't really see the advantage of that though. I mean, most of the times either me or another has invoked "the X", it's been in response to so some facetious suggestion that no one really felt strongly in favor of in the first place.
Another reason why I don't really like the idea of "democracy" being used to determine if a table allows something: "uh why not" is all too often counted as a vote for.
it's a game where 1 player guides multiple through a world - why would democracy ever work? the multiple players will say "well why not (thing that strictly benefits us)" every time
I think most don't, in particular --- I mean, before learning too much about DnD, people tend to assume it's something Tolkienish or similar conventional high fantasy which DnD simulates better at lower levels
@kviiri milestone leveling doesn't make it faster by virtue. It just makes it harder for the DM to forget that they're supposed to be supporting your level up.
Milestone leveling as we've used it does make it faster, usually... we usually decide levels on some mixture of "do you guys want to level up?" and "do you guys feel like you've deserved a level?" --- I usually ask these between quests.
It works quite well! We had one minor disagreement regarding it once --- and even that remained a polite one, not a proper row --- but usually people agree on that remarkably well.
But yeah, I like it :)
Similar systems are used in some other games too, eg. I think Dungeon World asks the players after a session questions like "Did you fight a dangerous foe?" and "Did you discover valuable treasure?"
