One of the most interesting things about the character is how dramatically he can be changed while still being recognizable.

sup

Batman is: 1. sad 2. bats

accurate

is he really batman without being rich and an orphan though

orphan is rolled into sad

And yet, plenty of Batsman (that is the proper plural, right?) are not orphans (Terry McGinnis didn't get orphaned until a reboot) and/or not sad (Adam West is the obvious example).

The Red Son Batman (AKA Ushankabat) probably isn't very rich.

And it turns out Terry’s dad is spoilers.

Which honestly kinda ruined the whole concept for me.

@Yuuki Yeah, we'll relegate that one to the discard bin.

@MarkWells Into the Bat-er-verse?

Crisis of Infinite Bats.

Batnarok

It was an interesting approach. All the relationships are contrasting elements, like "Bats, world's greatest detective, and Bats, world's most insane hero".

All hail batthulu

PHONE!

There we go

Nyarbathotep?

@BESW If I run it again in a place where it's actually on the schedule, I am absolutely using that title.

🎶 It's beginning to look a lot like Bat-men!

I like the concept, because the character's potential as a blank template onto which a creator can inscribe their concerns and values, is far more interesting than any single version of it.

So it makes a lot of sense to bounce Batsman against each other.

Lol

It's a little weird to have Adam West Batman have to meet the 201 grimdark batsmen that came after him

101 Batsmations

Sorry it's not even relavent but it popped into my head and it needed to leave

fiascoplaysets.com/home/bats

@Yuuki I tried doing this a few times in my last campaign. It's doable but methinks it needs certain types of players. Besides, how does the DM decide if a solution is or isn't good enough?

Technically my (now) two GSS games were like that

I had a scenario I was running in which they figured out for themselves just how to fix the problem

They needed very little help to come up with things

In both games I was mostly in charge of just role playing the one character and handling the spotlight

It's a nice way for the whole affair to work out

That's great! I love games which can work like that.

It's one reason I like Lady Blackbird, and why Gumshoe One-2-One isn't as great for me as I'd hoped.

@trogdor Agreed. From what I understood, it wasn't the type of challenge that had one right answer

@MikeQ exactly

Also I imagine GSS requires a more flexible mindset from the players

In fact even the scenario lines out that you can suggest things but that it's really up to the players to call me up with the solution

There's no "and then they should do this to fix it"

@BESW yeah that was a little disappointing

Challenges that have only one right answer are kind of pointless, IMO. What we want is to see how this character (and this player) would deal with a situation.

I bet you are thinking of the time I pulled something like that despite the fact the scenario didn't like it

Come up with not call jeez phone

You need some help, get a therapist phone

I can't even edit that now

Not even the idea that there's only a limited number of solutions the scenario's prepared the handle, it's just the amount of prep needed to make GS121 work.

I kinda want to go back and see if GS121 can be made more... improvisational, somehow.

Ah that's fair too

@BESW wouldn't that take a lot of work? XP

But maybe only once!

On reflection I should have seen this coming; Gumshoe is derived from the Mythos gaming community and they're some of the most prep-intensive tabletoppers ever.

I suspect that if I run a half-dozen sessions of it, I'll be able to do a lot of improvising going forward.

But those sessions take a stupid-long time to prep.

That doesn't sound like just one time

That's a different thing.

Either I figure out how to modify the system, once, so that it meets my needs going forward; or I become familiar enough with the system as it is that I can use it more freely.

Kind of like the difference between hacking D&D so monsters are easier to make, and becoming familiar enough with your system that you can make up monsters on the fly with the existing rules.

But it's still effort either way

The only thing that mitigates that one way or the other is how organically it happens

Yup.

I mean, I can't say for you that it isn't worth your time

I'm just observing that both of those things involve an investment of time

And effort

newyorker.com/science/elements/…

Oh yay

X/

hey there @linksassin and @KorvinStarmast

@Shalvenay hey

g'day folks

@KorvinStarmast how're things going?

@Shalvenay slow, getting tomorrow' meal prepaed. We both have long day tomorrow

@linksassin note to self -- mass icebreakers are not something D&D is good at :P

@Shalvenay Something go badly did it?

@linksassin no. just -- a PC and 26 NPCs the PC has never met, but will be cooped up with after a matter of sorts, all in the same room for the first time

@Shalvenay I can't imagine that would be fun as a DM.

@linksassin It's the current text RP in the back room

I would be tempted to say, this is Anne, Bob, Carl, Dave, Eddy, the other 21 are called Fred and don't like you.

@linksassin random name gen + random tables basically saved my butt :P

(even then, I had to do something a bit simplistic)

Keeping track of them is going to be a nightmare

Maybe text based will make it easier but there's no way I could keep track of that at a table

yeah, it will help that I don't have to deal with each and every one of them in detail

That's why fireball is a spell. Thins out the crowd. :)

@KorvinStarmast hahaha

When you typed icebreaker, I thought it was a ship. (But then I saw what you and S were doing)

:P

Set sail for RPG

XD

All aboard the S.S. Adventure, destination... doesn't matter you're all going to derail it before we get there

Lol

I prefer to think of it as allowing them to choose the destination

But they could decide to change that a few times too

very true, I most often find they want to change it the second the enter the port of their destination

Example: my last session.

Players spent exactly 32 minutes in the city that I've been building up for over a year. Everything lead up to their arrival here. 1 long rest and they decide to leave to do something else...

@linksassin It works both ways. I joined a game that was advertised as a town intrigue game, since the GM kept talking about this town and how much worldbuilding he put into it. Once the game started, we were quickly railroaded out of the town and never to return.

@MikeQ Wow that's not how to follow campaign expectations at all.

The town had 1 NPC we could interact with, no shops, and no describable features other than that NPC's house.

I think DM often forget that players only know as much about the world as they tell them. So they think it was obvious and not a railroad but really they failed to explain themselves

Just sucks that they lied about the type of game it would be.

Unless they goal was to play a game where all the characters are out of their comfort zone. All the optimising for a politic city game goes out the window in the wilderness

Players have to learn how to adapt. I can see how this could be a fun game

But still a bit of a jerk move to not tell you in session 0 you wouldn't be in the city the whole time

@linksassin I think that was their plan. The PCs were townsfolk who were suddenly thrust into a magical combat adventure. Which makes sense if written as a traditional narrative (e.g. book) but doesn't work in interactive forms.

@MikeQ Would you still have signed up to play if they told you that was the premise from the start?

Maybe, but I would not have invested in my time in a noncombat shopkeeper character (which is what I did)

Why'd your players leave your city? No plot hooks?

Even if the pitch was "I want everyone to create townfolk characters instead of adventurers, this game is about being outside your comfort zone and learning to adapt."

Yeah that kind of thing cuts both ways

@MikeQ They have multiple plot hooks, they just decided to change their priorities. They decided to come back later to deal with the things in the town.

@linksassin Ah okay. Well that's promising at least. All hope is not lost!

That's why I'm so easily taken with the idea that collaboration between GM and other players is a fantastic way to handle these RPGs

@linksassin This is a neat premise, but can be tricky depending on what the system gives players access to. In this case, it was Pathfinder, so the combat-optimized characters had little trouble with the combat-heavy gameplay. CommonerQuest is possible, but you have to normalize all the player characters to fit that desired experience.

@MikeQ Yeah it will turn out ok. Just have to do a lot more prep for the next couple of sessions than I expected.

ben.wav

If I were to play it in pathfinder I'd give them the ability to retrain class levels as they level up. I think that's an optional rule.

Start as say a Level 3 Expert NPC and slowly become a Fighter instead

that could be a fun game.

@linksassin Sure, but what do you do when players bring characters that don't fit the game?

@MikeQ Fair, you'd need to have a much better and clearer session 0 to make it work.

@linksassin to clarify, yes, you can assure players that they can retrain on a level up. But what do they do until then?

@MikeQ Work with what they have. A good DM will allow for the capabilities of their party. This just makes use of clever tactics and players skill more important.

They can't just attack everything because they don't know how. They do know how to cook the Orc's a nice pot roast though, maybe they can trade?

Maybe. In theory. It still punishes players for their build choices. Which bugs me.

So long as all the players are on the same page it shouldn't matter

i.e. "Just 5 more sessions of being miserable and unable to contribute, then you can change your character and have fun" seems like a weak promise

Just comes down to making sure everyone is making characters for the same kind of game

@linksassin Now that I can agree with. But how do you enforce it?

@Ben [ψ]

@MikeQ Make them together at the table during session 0. That's how all my games start.

@MikeQ [respectful applause] That's good. I like that one

@linksassin Yep, that can help. Do you give players insight into the premise and intended structure (if any) of the campaign?

@linksassin (asking out of curiosity of other GMs' strategies and experiences)

@MikeQ Usually yes. I give them a pitch for the campaign. Including the major themes, settings, magic level, combat or social heavy, expected duration and level range. I lay out any restrictions, class, race, alignment, technology level.

We discuss the campaign and if everyone is signing up for the same type of game

I don't give out plot or story arc information though. I just make sure that the story I tell fits within the world I present in the session 0

Does anyone know if there current Stack outtage is planned?

@linksassin when or if?

@Ben Mainsites are currently offline for maintenance

Perhaps they ran out of internet

That is a legitimate issue. Not really relevant atm, but still something foreseen. Hence IPv6

The more you know

There's no information on their status blog or twitter.

[joke pending...]

Maybe all the servers are on an unscheduled coffee break

Or, more seriously, maybe the server room AC is malfunctioning. That happened to one of my clients last week... the room got up to 55 degrees Celsius

Sky Fireball release us from the grasp

XD

My mate's company had servers go down because the VP left his jacket over an air vent

@linksassin oh good lord

Why would,... Anyone think that was remotely a good idea

XD

It was a poorly designed building. They used to have issue where a lack of water pressure in the building killed the AC to the server room

He had to go in a 3am a few times

One of the other developers at my work just suggested we all go home since stack is down

Ah fair enough

I had assumed, with it being something to do with ventilation, that what he had placed the coat on was high enough as to be,.. discouraging to place it there

At least casually

@trogdor This is making me think of the "Skyfire Cycle" series... though there are actually way more references of that name...

@linksassin Wow.

@Ben yeah I've not watched more than ten minutes of an early episode of Brooklyn 99

Not your thing or is it one of those "It's on my list" things?

It,... Didn't really grab me

But to be fair it had the misfortune that some number of shows do that are not the fault of the show itself

An extenuating circumstance as it were

My parents were watching it and tried to make me watch it with them

@trogdor It does take a little bit of time. For example I didn't like Gina Linetti (played by Chelsea Piretti) at first, but now I can't see the show working without her haha

This is a thing I resist because I then become expected to spend the rest of the night doing so with no extra decompression time doing something by myself

@trogdor I had the same thing, and pretty much the same reaction. I will say that when I tried watching it on my own, I got into it pretty quickly.

@Miniman yeah it's not a mark against the show per se

I don't think I watched it with anyone originally, I watched it all by myself.

Although it does mean I didn't like what I saw so much that I would, at the time, subject myself to something tangentially unpleasant to me

But now, it's my "friends". That show that I always go back and watch when there's nothing else on.

That certainly isn't a point against the show though

@Ben For me that's Community. With HIMYM as a backup.

Right now I'm intermittently watching Star Trek DS 9

Because I have never seen it before

@trogdor Ew. I mean, ah, how are you finding it?

@Miniman lol

I actually kinda like it? I mean it definitely has issues

But just the fact that they are separate issues from the ones TNG had is interesting

I've rewatched DS9 sometime in the last couple years, I found it's grown tremendously on me since my first viewing.

And so far they don't bother me the way the trash fire of Enterprise did

Especially being able to binge it, so you can follow the story arcs a bit easier.

Yeah that helps me a lot too

I think I'd have to rewatch it to get a handle on where my extreme distaste for it comes from, and I'm not really willing to do that, because of the aforementioned extreme distaste.

@Miniman Yeah. HIMYM would have been, except for an ex-housemate that would watch it so much that they'd be watching one episode in the morning wehen I left for work, and then somehow have watched it that much that they were watching the exact same epidose when I got home again...

I've found watching a show out of order inordinately upsets me

I do love Community though. Troy and Abed ftw

Although, if I'm honest, the older I get, the less tolerance I have for Star Trek in general.

Community is a classic, particular the early seasons

@Miniman that's cool, it's not like I would want to re watch Enterprise, or say, Arrow, again

Even under the assumption that I was just looking for what I hated about them

Rewatching a series looking for things to hate is a pretty surefire way to make yourself unhappy and dislike the series more, as well.

INTO THE SPIDERVERSE CAME OUT ON MY BIRTHHDAY

@Miniman there is plenty of it that was done badly in some way or other, and also some behind the scenes practices that I find were poorly exhibiting certain forms of morality

best bday present ever

@linksassin I'm actually listening to the season 1 soundtrack album right now :)

Like the stuff to do with Will Wheaton and

Jonathon Frakes

@CTWind Funnily enough, that comment reminded me of that haha. Not that there is much to hate about Into the Spiderverse… (seriously, I challenge people to come up with a list that is anything outside of minor nit-picks).

I rewatched it and was amazed all over again by my newfound knowledge of the movie, from people reviewing it all over youtube.

Spiderverse is real good

Spiderverse brings out the sqealy inner child in me. It makes me so happy and mystified.

Anyway, Star Trek does have at the very least a seemingly continued trend of at least being too hamfisted

(There isn't even an "Everything Wrong With" video about it haha)

DS 9 seems to continue that trend so far

But not so much that it annoys me more than I enjoy it

@Ben I'm sure you could find someone on the internet who hated it if you looked XD

Probably shouldn't do that though

:P

Do you have any resources on building a Picard-style (Star Trek franchise) lawful good character?

@trogdor Oh sure. Not everyone is going to like it.

But I do, my gf does, and that's all that's really important to me :D

Yeah

That's good

@Ben well that pretty well illustrates the problems with the alignment structure

@Ben Gah. I know all the reasons why it's pointless and silly, but I still see a chart like that and have to fight the urge to point out everything wrong with it.

@TautologicalRevelations Also in the words of Captain Barbossa - they're more like guidelines, than actual rules

@Miniman Haha. I really only like this particular one for the quotes.

@Ben That's...hmmm. That's actually pretty good - if we ignore the characters, and focus on the quotes (or the stances being expressed in those quotes) it makes a lot more sense.

...except for V.

Yeah by itself,... That statement is kinda evil

In context it does make some sense but,... Yeah

@Miniman Yeah... that is perhaps a bit extreme. I suppose it's relevant though... but a bit over the top

Maybe that one is the exception to the rule haha. That one needs to be considered in the whole context of what V stood for, in his own environment, with the corrupt and controlling government, with the intention to restore the power of what the government actually stood for, in his eyes.

I argue that PIcard is more of a lawful good character with some lawful neutral influence rather than a true lawful neutral.

Yeah. Miniman and Trogdor were saying the same. If you focus on the quotes instead though, they are more appropriate to each alignment. I.e. in Picard's case "The Prime Directive prohibits me from helping you"

I would agree with that but it involves a second engagement with the alignment chart XD

I read the Darth Vader's quote in James Earl Jones's bass voice. :)

@TautologicalRevelations As it should be

(^ relephant)

@Ben I mean, what I really meant was that there's no such thing as a [alignment] character, merely [alignment] stances and actions. But even that isn't really true, so...yeah. The only thing I can say with certainty is that I have reached the end of this paragraph.

What does relephant mean?

@TautologicalRevelations It's a play on "relevant". In this situation, a Christmas song using clips of Picard is only relevant in so far as we were talking about Picard before, which reminded me of a funny Picard meme

Oh thanks!

@TautologicalRevelations oh it's just supposed to mean relavent but elephant is mixed in

It's also not an actual word in the English dictionary haha

@TautologicalRevelations It means "to lephant again"

First you elephant, then you re-lephant

@MikeQ let's not get overly confusing now XD

Ok, going off the assumption that @TautologicalRevelations is not a natively English speaker, I think we're just going to confuse them hahaha

@MikeQ But that is hilarious for me... and I don't know why XD

Also, it's spelled "r🐘".

And we have our star. Lol

@Ben no it's just, they asked what a word means that isn't a real word, so maybe we shouldn't joke too much about what it means

@trogdor Yeah, I agree with that. That was my intention

@trogdor Shouldn't joke? I don't understand this concept.

@Ben Totally worth all the effort I had to put in to finding the unicode character XD

Rise my joke fiends, take the joke souls of those residing here with jokery in thier hearts

@Miniman Oh wow even better haha. I assumed you just used the emoji from your phone. Haha

🐘

@Ben That...is a thing I absolutely could have done.

That is usually what I do

Albeit by accident

🐝 shows up a loooooooooot

Stupid bee

@Miniman There's something cooler about using the Unicode though... at least I think so :P

@trogdor Lol

🐘

@TautologicalRevelations Btw, I love your username.

Thank you.

Why do you like it? :)

@TautologicalRevelations Because I like it :P

Because it's awesome

@Miniman well played

[snarf]

@V2Blast Thanks!

I may have said this before, but my favourite was "A Hobo On A Bench"

This was during my Halo phase, so you can imagine the hilarity of that :P

"You were killed by A Hobo On A Bench"?

"A Hobo on a Bench Assassinated you"

"You were sniped by A Hobo On A Bench"

"A Hobo On A Bench is on a Killing Spree"

Reminds me of my Unreal Tournament days.

Although I don't think any of the Halo maps have actual benches, sadly.

Not particularly haha

I can certainly think of a few UT maps with benches, though.

So it's an objectively better game, obviously.

lol

I have never played it so I wouldn't know

it's not like I am going to defend Halo at this point though

Halo was fun for me because of the game nights we had. We would get 8-10 of us, set up tvs and xboxs in different rooms of the house, and just play team deathmatches, and party games. no online stuff.

And there was always one local user called "Wheezy", and at the end of every game, you'd hear from one room or another "WHO THE HELL WAS WHEEZY?"

Wheezy was everyone... and no one... we would always swap them around in between games and sessions hahaha

Back in high school, at various points we had Quake 3 Arena, UT2004, and Halo set up on all the school computers to play together.

@Miniman Wow you had that at school? Our networks were for school stuff only, with fully enforced firewalls etc.

That said, everyone had that "N+" game some where on their network share haha

@Ben Well, at one school, we had Quake and then UT. The other school had marginally better firewalls, so we only had Halo on the macbooks.

Which is why the weirdest skill on my resume is "can play Halo using a mousepad".

Halo was fun but like

in terms of measuring it against another game I am far from invested

XD

Oh yeah, I wasn't seriously comparing them. Just pointing out that UT did better on that one...benchmark.

@Miniman [rimshot]

@Miniman That is impressive

Ok, so I bought a set of Elder Dice last week, and they're already halfway here.

That is, I bought them on Friday, last week.

@Miniman lol

@Ben Maybe they were always here, and you just never noticed.

That would make sense... Or... Not...

My level of comprehension of this conundrum is somewhat lacking still.

@Ben I did that in college... though I often played two matches and then fell asleep, because apparently weaponsfire and profanity are my best white noise. Also a lot of the people who showed up were kinda jerks? One of the reasons I started running D&D campaigns was to get my close friends into a different social setting.

(I used a name that was difficult to pronounce so it was hard for people to coordinate against me.)

@Miniman [press button for rant about the failed intersemiotics of V for Vendetta]

@BESW I'll be honest, I watched it once and paid very little attention to it.

@Miniman I have... OPINIONS. Because while I can't say I like the novel, I sure do respect it and the film doesn't.

@BESW I mean, I'd be interested to hear (your rants are generally informative), but don't expect me to have anything to contribute.

(The film also does not respect its audience, or the marginalized groups it purports to be pulling for.)

It's hard to really dig into the details without also doing a deep dive on the novel, which is both fantastic and horrible and I can't really recommend it but I'm glad I read it.

@BESW Wait, it purported to be pulling for marginalized groups? I know I said I wasn't paying attention, but I really didn't get that at all. It just seemed to be generically anti-government.

Yeah, that's what Stephen Fry was there for.

Er, make that anti-establishment, thinking about it.

@BESW Political satirists are a marginalized group now? (I know what you mean, but that really seemed to be the point at issue in his part of the movie.)

[wry] Like I said.

The comic delved into complexity and had actual things to say about various forms of bigotry and power dynamics.

The movie waved its hands vaguely in the direction of such themes.

Makes sense.

But... V was insane. Like, straight-up cuckoo for Cocoapuffs flirting-with-statues insane.

He'd been driven mad, and the comic doesn't apologize for the terrible things he does to Evvy in an attempt to get her to see his point of view.

V is part of the system he rages against, because the system broke him and he's defined by that breaking.

The movie doesn't get that. Its V is a quirky antihero, not a broken terrorist.

You know the end of the movie where he blows up Parliament? In the comic blowing up Parliament is the conclusion to the first night Evvy meets him, the very first chapter.

But first he confronts that statue of blind Justice, calling her a two-timing cheater for having an affair with fascism, and telling her that he's seeing another woman now--Anarchy. Then he gives her a box of chocolates, which explodes.

Like, it's funny and scary and clever all at once, and more interested in allegory than story, and the art is beautiful but intensely oppressive, and it still ends with the hope that people can be good to each other even in the worst of circumstances.

It's still needlessly sleazy and leans too much on shock value for some of its messages, and it's speaking very specifically to the mid-80s. A "faithful" modern re-telling would fail because the shocks and themes are no longer appropriate for the audience.

But of the trifecta of mid-80s grimdark graphic novels (the others are DKR and Watchmen) that heralded and ushered in the New Era of Serious Comics, V for Vendetta is hands-down my favorite--which may be damning with faint praise.

And it didn't deserve being turned into a bland, generic anti-hero film bloated with its own self-congratulatory smugness for mentioning that contemporary hot-button topics exist.

As an example: our introduction to V has him swoop down to save our protagonist from being assaulted by officials and he recites a confusing monologue.

In the film, he delivers the monologue to Evey after defeating the attackers, and it's a rapid patter of largely meaningless consonance.

In the novel, he's quoting a particularly r🐘 Shakespearean passage while fighting the attackers, disorienting them and showing how he's smart, crazy, and theatrical, and leaving Evey an equally disconcerted onlooker.

And, well. The sheet music of this song was the opening for the midway point in the story, and that recording was sold as a record:

> V is part of the system he rages against, because the system broke him and he's defined by that breaking. The movie doesn't get that.

Strange. The first sentence is pretty spot on for the impression I got from the character from the film (I haven't read the comic).

This reminds me of some people not realising some things are satire.

@vicky_molokh See also: recent film treatments of the other two novels mentioned above.

(Damn, in retrospect the above reads as accusatory. Sorry.)

And that's really the problem with the V film: it's sincere and earnest where Alan Moore could really never be either, and thereby hangs the novel's tension.

Both the Wachowskis and Snyder came to comics during the influence of those Big Three, lacking the context of what came before and thus seeing the stories radically differently. The Wachowskis did a better job than Snyder, I think, but ultimately all three films are weak because they're trying to capture an ethos they didn't understand for an audience that has forgotten it or never lived it.

So they capture some of the style, that sense that this is a medium with greater potential for import and weight than it's given due, but they only gesture weakly at the actual themes and concepts which made those novels persuasive arguments for the potential of the comics medium.

(And, of course, then you get to the intersemiotics: film already had that gravitas bestowed upon it, so the impact of seminal works that transformed a medium forever was lost.)

Cough wooooow

@Ben :/

@BESW I need to read through this lol

@trogdor I know right

There's rumors of a VfV miniseries, and that... would be a more appropriate medium to tell the story, but it doesn't change the fact that the story is a Cold War parable with very specific commentary on the fears and pitfalls of that era. Re-creating that would be an interesting exercise but completely devoid of the original's punch and purpose.

I would like to see someone rebuild the concept for the modern era, provided they can keep Alan Moore's creepy hands off it.

@Ben I have no idea just what to think

...and not lean into ANY of those horrible tropes they did with Evey the first time around, we don't need that thanks.

@Ben There are much better graphic novels to read, if you have limited time/budget for such things. It's mostly of historical import at this point.

And if you want to understand the DC cinematic universe and why it's so weird, just read Watchmen and keep in mind that Snyder didn't like superhero comics until he read it.

(Or do yourself a favor and don't read anything by Alan Moore except the first 6 volumes of Swamp Thing.)

Sudden 180 swing to something completely off-topic for this chat: I just had an idea for an RPG system where there's little/no randomization. Players narrate their characters' attempted actions, and then choose themselves if the action's outcome is good or bad. The character's player narrates bad outcomes, while the GM (other players if GMless) narrate positive outcomes.

So you can have bad things happen on your own terms, or good things happen on others' terms.

I like this concept

@Ben it's the earnest comments that are most concerning.

I use the "player narrates failure, GM narrates success" paradigm in other games, but I like the idea of giving the choice of failure or success to the player with narrative control as the counterweight.

@BESW I see what you did there :P

@Carcer I mean, it's one thing to be supportive of new users, and I can understand being ignorant of the whole "leetspeak" thing

my first impression of that is "speech recognition configured for the wrong language"

yeah I mean,... my trepidation from criticizing it too much is that it could in some way not be on purpose

that's one way for sure that it could be the case

that doesn't mean it's completely cool and should be left alone

but it could be accidental

It just doesn't look like anything I typically associate with leetspeek or "dialects" of such

I'm not a web-o-linguist, but leetspeek tends to preserve "obvious" pronunciation: "game" -> "gaym" would be conventional, but "game" -> "gume" isn't.

@Carcer It's actually a good praxis: assume good faith while educating about guidelines.

If it's an honest attempt, then you haven't driven someone away.

yea

If it's insincere, you're still forcing them to either stop or to act indistinguishably from a regular user.

eh. Time wasted, troll success

Nah. Because it's not about the troll.

Or, if they're really determined to troll, then us being unrelentingly helpful means they out themselves by continuing their troll attempts in the face of reasonable helpful community behaviour, or by escalating their trolling.

It's about what kind of environment the site provides to its users. Firm-but-kind means you get to demonstrate to others how to behave to each other.

yeah

Three comments aren't a massive price for making the site a pleasant place to be.

@BESW two. The third is a little on the sarcastic side

Basically when we assume good faith and be nice, it's a win for us in every scenario.

..... there is some clue to be had from the partially discolored black background? O_o Or it is just a screenshot from something I don't recognize?

It's just a screenshot.

Source is the Twitter account @outofcontexthbg.