TRPG General Chat

Damn, I should've Accepted that answer after taking yet another look at the links and thinking 'you know, some of these show that the case is far from being as clear-cut as it is being presented', this is a useful opinion viewing things from a different angle.

Sad that it was phrased in an unnice way though too.

Any chance that the answer could be nicified and undeleted?

No, that answer is not getting undeleted.

Pretty much all it existed to do was slander and insult a couple of people (not me) and it is gone and rightly so.

@vicky_molokh Might I ask the purpose? I've commented the links so they are there as a reference. There was no other useful information in that post.

@DavidCoffron Because I think if toned down to polite levels, it would still provide insight into other perspectives on the matter that seems to have caused no small amount of disagreement in the community.

yann.kmm

@doppelgreener @BESW fyi I've created the question re: geodata and copyright rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/143463/…

3:14 PM

An answer stating that the [rules-as-written] tag has changed a lot in the past (and noting why those changes were made, and even whether the poster agrees with those changes) would be welcome, but that answer would have to be left as its own answer. I don't have the depth of history as other users to be able to leave that answer.

@vicky_molokh It portrays an extremely biased, largely incorrect, history of events from a user who has consistently taken an extremely aggressive stance toward anyone doing anything at all to handle policy around the RAW tag.

When I say it existed to slander people, I mean in the full sense of producing a false account of events in order to tarnish a person's reputation.

There is no content to salvage in that answer.

Related questions on the history of the tag: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4 — David Coffron 8 mins ago

@DavidCoffron Thanks for reposting those links.

@doppelgreener :thumbs-up:

Gotta love Extremely Online users.

I've edited that comment to present the links with titles in chronological order newest to oldest.

@doppelgreener Thank you.

@vicky_molokh It may also be worth noting that the request for tag warnings for [rules-as-written] received a lot of support

3:25 PM

I must admit that my understanding is far from complete, but I got the impression that the combination of both some of the relatively high-reputation answers in those questions, and the unfortunately unnice answer, indicate that some part of the community has a use for the concept of rules literalism that is broader than the one that I recently thought is a locall consensus.

I'm interested in learning more about the distinction between sub-communities in question.

@vicky_molokh Are you confused about the tag usage or the acceptance of questions asking for RAW answers? If you want answers to adhere to RAW, that is something you can request (but not enforce) in the question body, and the site is largely in full support of that. The tag usage is more tenuous

@vicky_molokh I'm not sure that question is as interesting in practice as it might be from an academic perspective. Some users want to use the [rules-as-written] tag in a way that the community at large decided was less useful.

This question tackles the issue.

@vicky_molokh In terms of discussions on forums or in chat here or even in questions on this site, the territory of what's described by "rules as written" (the term) is much more expansive than the territory to which we apply [rules as written] (the tag). The problem is, a lot of what's described as "rules as written" is simply asking about the rules. We don't have a [rules] tag; it's blacklisted.

The thing is, from my perspective, RAW as an idea and a method of rules analysis is actually really strong on the site. Just look at how many answers specifically call it out. (It's a lot)

So the [rules as written] tag must necessarily describe the territory of "rules as written" the term minus the territory of the [rules] tag, which leaves us with the present much-diminished territory of the [rules as written] tag.

3

The only problem that seems to come up is the tag itself

3:31 PM

@DavidCoffron I have prior experience with RAW analysis elsewhere (the concept comes up from time to time in GURPS), and I'm trying learn how different people approach the matter. However, the local usage seems to be . . . well, I'm not sure about the minimum and maximum degree of overlap with the understanding of the phenomenon I'm acquainted with elsewhere.

If the [rules as written] tag substantially still covered the territory of the [rules] tag, it would be almost entirely indistinguishable in usage, and thus would be blacklisted just like the [rules] tag would be.

It's even hard to put into words. My impression is that there are different sub-communities who draw the line of topics falling within or outside the RAW topic differently, and there's some pressure to convert one subcommunity into the other and vice versa? My description may sound overly dramatic, if so, then I apologise.

@vicky_molokh have your read the mainsite question about RAW?

@vicky_molokh Honestly there's just a whole lot of history of everyone having a slightly different idea about what that tag should mean, and we reach compromise with all the elegance and grace of international law (which is to say, very little).

And all of that is different to what the term means, on account of the tag's territory being largely detached from the term's territory.

@vicky_molokh I'd actually agree with that. For tags to be useful the site must agree on what they mean. In this case, it is usually a democratic approach where the majority consensus defines the tag. Any sub-community that disagrees with that definition must argue it on the battlefield of ideas (meta-site) and only when the majority is swayed to that definition is the tag changed in meaning

3:35 PM

^very well put

@DavidCoffron Correct

Well time to go in for surgery. Have fun all

My personal understanding is the [RAW] tag is basically for "What do the rules actually say?", with no inference of what they should do from outside influences, with no assumption that the rules must work or cannot be broken as-written- no saying "well, if we take the rule at its literal meaning, it does nothing/this bizzare thing, therefore it must actually mean X".

@Rubiksmoose Good luck

Given all the drama and the necessity to fight over the right of a community (sub-community) to use a term the way it understands it, I'm feeling pressured into trying to come up with a different word for the concept rather than trying to fight. (Of course a new term coined by me is extremely unlikely to catch on!)

3:37 PM

@vicky_molokh It may. That would be an interesting topic to bring to meta, and I'd love to see the discussion.

Until about 2014, the approach was "if the OP put the tag on the question, it's now a rules as written question" even though (a) we still didn't agree on what that meant, (b) the querent didn't say what they thought that meant, (c) we were frequently pretty sure the user just typed in "rules" and picked the tag that came up and didn't care about RAW strictness, and (d) it lead to tons of argument in comments on the answers because of disagreement found in (a) and (b) and (c).

If you use the Knock spell on something above you, do you risk getting it pregnant?

We already have some terms that were narrowed down to a definition on the site (i.e. the specific meaning of [problem-player])

@CTWind Yeah, that's pretty much how I always knew it to be used. Without the (oh the irony) all the legalism and tiny criteria of when it is and when it isn't RAW I found here.

@goodguy5 Why is the qualifier "above you" pertinent?

3:38 PM

@goodguy5 oh no, that's terrible

@DavidCoffron knocking up

Or is this a case where the joke flew above me?

@goodguy5 Only in the Colonies. Back home it just wakes people up.

OOOOH

@goodguy5 Now I want to build a magic system built entirely around plays on words.

Like if you can pun it the world will bend to your will

@DavidCoffron honestly, I'd be a little surprised if such a thing did not already exist

3:40 PM

@DavidCoffron Alternative description: I've seen RAW generally seen as in opposition to RAI, and given the drama involved, I'm perfectly willing to 'retreat' to the topics of the Letter of the Rules and the Spirit of the Rules respectively.

@DavidCoffron I read somewhere that WoD's Demon had some power like that.

@Rubiksmoose Re-checking, not only did I read it back when, but I was relying on most of the bullet points from the top answer for adjusting my understanding of the local usage of the term.

@CTWind Usually RAW questions along these lines fall into the categories of "I'm think I know how this is supposed to work, but what's it actually saying?" or "This seems phrased a little oddly- how does it interact with these other rules, if I don't attempt to massage it into a more sensible format?". I can see why some people dislike the tag, as the practical usefulness of those types of questions is low, but IMO they can provide a baseline/common understanding of how something's broken.

@vicky_molokh I think that still doesn't quite follow the general concern. We need to have descriptive tags. Tags are for describing questions, not prescribing answers. Even system tags aren't prescriptive. I've seen perfectly valid answers referencing other rulesets in questions about a specific system (though they are often less-well-received)

[rules-as-written] must describe the lens through which the question is must be asked, not the lens through which the querant wishes the answer to come from.

Some questions are only askable if you come from a point of literalism

Even this question seems to be using the tag incorrectly.

@DavidCoffron I've seen that said, but so far I see that system tags do prescribe how one should answer a question, very much like a language tag would prescribe the answers to writing Hello World (simplified example; I know 'write my programme for me' is not a welcome question type). And this inconsistency between slogan and practice is somewhat puzzling for me.

This is my latest attempt at using the tag correctly, though last time I brought it up when this discussion happened I got the impression I should probably work my addendum into the question itself so it isn't glossed over.

@vicky_molokh No. They describe the system the question is asking about. The site-users then judge answers based on their usefulness (or whatever criteria they happen to use). It just comes to be that questions about systems are usually best answered with answers about those systems.

2

3:49 PM

I'm hesitant to argue that RAW questions should mandate that answers also adhere to RAW (what's the point of having Frame Challenges?) but I do occasionally ask questions where I'm trying to negotiate between the literalism of the rules and the (fairly obvious, IMO) design intent and how they appear to be at odds with each other.

@CTWind Yeah, that seems like it's just a rules question to me, but I'm not an arbiter by any means (why I haven't removed the tag from any of the examples I've linked)

@DavidCoffron In fact, in most cases of pure system questions, mentions of the system used are scrubbed from the question as far as I've seen.

If I were constantly getting answers that respond with "Well, obviously, the RAI is...", that would defeat the whole purpose.

@vicky_molokh Yes, we remove redundancy because the question is already described by the tag.

I'll try to find you an example of a useful answer that did not adhere to any sort of system prescription.

@DavidCoffron OK, so how is this different from 'People are free to give RAI answers to a RAW question, and should not complain when subsequently downvoted'? (IIRC some statement like that was posted among the comments of the four metas.)

3:51 PM

@vicky_molokh You are welcome to complain about downvotes, but downvotes are entirely individual

Maybe I should rephrase.

The site in no way curates upvotes and downvotes

Here's an extremely well-accepted answer where half of it relies solely on information from a past edition of D&D: rpg.stackexchange.com/a/125607/41726

IIRC one of the reasons RAW got a warning was because some people were unhappy about the prospect of answerers getting downvoted for RAI answers. Do I remember correctly that this was a concern? (Maybe I'm misunderstanding or something.)

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, mostly non-latin answer (210): Does a Grease spell affect the caster? by GREAT BABA SHORANMAN on rpg.SE (@doppelgreener)

Q: Where can I find the symbol of Orcus?

Here's one that relies entirely on past editions:

16

I was reading Volo's Guide to Monsters and came across the Bodak. The book says: A worshipper of Orcus can take ritual vows while carving the demon lord's symbol on its chest over the heart... I've found Orcus' stat block in (potential spoilers?) but no symbol related to him. I'd like t...

3:54 PM

@SmokeDetector bye

?

@goodguy5 there was spam, it's gone

I mean, I muted the thing long ago, but what? ah

@vicky_molokh It sounds like you're thinking "wow, this rules as written tag is really hard to follow and a lot of people seem to think/want different things for it and we get different usage guidance depending on who's asked when." In which case: yes. Entirely correct.

Alright, I'm brb for lunch. I'll try to clarify my perspective further if needed when I return

3:57 PM

RAW is not as opposed to RAI, as in they are not the only two categories into which everything fits, but RAW does exclude RAI.

@vicky_molokh RAW got a tag warning attached because people didn't know what it was used for, and were using it for questions that were just ordinary [rules] questions with no [rules-as-written] caveats or requirements at all.

As in, there are a lot of questions where people used the tag, we asked them why they used the tag, they said "oh, I just wanted to know what the rules said", so we removed the tag, because that's just [rules] not [rules-as-written] and we don't tag for that.

@doppelgreener Close. I'm thinking 'Wow, people have strong opinions on where to draw a sharp line and will not rest until others draw the line the same, so now I need'. There's also the matter that even after reading the answers to my question, and the linked metas, I'm not sure which choices would or wouldn't result in me angering one or more of the groups by my use of it, but that seems like a bad reasons for refraining from a topic.

@vicky_molokh There are also a handful of participants whose position has been "how dare you attempt to draw a line".

@DavidCoffron I edited it to try and make it a bit clearer as to why I consider it a RAW question? rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/141536/…

@doppelgreener how does raw exclude rai?

they are sometimes the same

@goodguy5 oh, sorry. You're right. I forgot there's two meanings of RAI.

4:01 PM

In retrospect, 'oppose' has been a terrible word choice on my part.

"add your modifier and proficiency to attacks" (or whatever the actual raw is) is also the intended affect.

'Distinguished' perhaps?

@doppelgreener wait, what's the other?

Rules As Interpreted is frequently a part of Rules As Written, 'cause, you know, you gotta interpret them. Rules As Intended is frequently discarded from Rules As Written on a sort of Death of the Author basis.

ah

4:02 PM

Like, 'This is the path of the letter of the rules, this is the path of the spirit of the rules, and you are not guaranteed to be lead to the same destination by the two paths'.

@vicky_molokh Right

Ralph's Ambulance Insurance seemed suspect.

@goodguy5 This version of RAI has at times been part of RAW debates on meta

But those days are long since past

@doppelgreener regardless, either of those can still fall under raw.

@doppelgreener Elaborate?

4:04 PM

"i interpret the writing of these rules to be the same thing the rules say"

@goodguy5 Well, the former yes. The latter less so, because what a designer intended when they wrote the rules is not always the same as what the rules say.

Hence my Truesight↔Invisiblity question.

@vicky_molokh Also, on that, I think it's less intense than "and I won't rest until others draw the line the same". Just that whenever it comes up, people will try to answer, and their answers will be different, but there's very little "I am right and everyone MUST agree with me" because we're all reasonable adults and understand we're all coming at this differently and we're trying to reach an acceptable sort of compromise.

@Xirema I agree, but sometimes it is.

My only point being that RAI and RAW do not exclude one another.

they are just not mutually inclusive.

Tuckman's stages of group development

@vicky_molokh I am joking, mostly, but RAW arguments on meta were a semi-regular occurrence before back to tagging basics and sometimes things got heated in the comment sections. There were users with history and grudges with each other going back to the site's formative months or further.

In a turn of events that ought to surprise nobody, RPG communities have a lot of baggage.

In the early days this was sort of a melting pot.

The forming–storming–norming–performing model of group development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who said that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, face up to challenges, tackle problems, find solutions, plan work, and deliver results. == Group development == === Forming === The team meets and learns about the opportunities and challenges, and then agrees on goals and begins to tackle the tasks. Team members tend to behave quite independently. They may be motivated but are usually relatively uninformed of the issues and objectives ...

You might have heard of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. We had more or less a prolonged Storming period on RAW because of our multi-year inability to agree on what it meant.

And some (not many) felt they had a very strong personal stake in the RAW tag's fate.

@doppelgreener Once again, my wording probably looks too literal and harsh, and I messed it up. But I did notice a series of repeated cases where user X will try to aggressively retag user Y's question.

With varying X and Y's.

4:10 PM

@vicky_molokh What you might be describing as "aggressively" I think others might be thinking of as "firmly"?

I'm probably the wrong person to ask though: I spend a lot of time around Video Game Speedrun communities, where ~~RAW~~ RAC (Rules-as-Coded) is the bedrock upon which the Any% categories are founded, whereas RAI supports different categories like 100% or Glitchless.

Like, we do have rules and practices and policies, and it is the responsibility of higher rep users to gently but firmly enforce them.

Err, how do I do strikeout text?

@Xirema Triple dash

@Xirema Pitch three times without a hit.

4:11 PM

There we go.

> And Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to sigh at.

To me, stuff like the Peasant Railgun are what dreams are made of.

@doppelgreener Well, I think it demonstrates that the editor believes one of the following: (a) the editor knows what type of question the author wants to ask better than the author or (b) the editor believes the way the author views the topic of rules literalism is not acceptable to remain and must be edited to conform tot he author's views of where the line of the topic lies.

@Xirema The Peasant Railgun is an improvised weapon and deals 1d4+STR bludgeoning damage.

As far as I understand, edits should still be in line with what the author wants to ask.

At least I've seen words that amount to it in the guidelines.

Personally, I feel like the Peasant Railgun is an abomination because it tries to find loopholes using physics-breaking RAW but then completely relies on convincing the DM to "obey real-world physics".

Am I being my unreasonable self and reading sentences incorrectly?

4:16 PM

@Yuuki Well, it depends on the edition you're trying to implement it in. I know for a fact that there's like a thousand reasons, RAW, that the Peasant Railgun doesn't work in 5e.

There are better examples that rely solely on RAW trickery, like the Locate City bomb.

It's mostly a holdover from earlier editions which did attempt in some of their supplemental materials to adjudicate strange physics problems, which eventually led to the Peasant Railgun.

@vicky_molokh Neither: it is usually "the editor believes this tag does not fit based on their understanding of the content of the question and the proper usage of the tag".

But if it's valid to play Super Mario 64 by cloning goombas to build staircases or by running so fast you travel to parallel universes, then let me build my particle accelerator out of a ring of well-paid peasants. ;)

GreySage

@Xirema Not well paid, set up with good life insurance policies since the acceleration of the particle will cause the peasants to disintegrate.

4:23 PM

@GreySage Details.

@doppelgreener Well, that looks like something close (or closer) to (b). But the thing that seems to make things complicated/dramatic/otherwise worse is that there doesn't seem to be a consensus, only a majority, in terms of what is the proper usage, and yet the enforcement of what one perceives as proper usage seems to involve not just comment-suggestions, but direct, non-suggestive edits.

If I can't overthrow Capitalism, at least let me exploit its cruelty for my own selfish benefit.

@vicky_molokh If this is about the time SSD edited out the RAW tag on your question, there's not much I can say about that which hasn't already been said.

@Xirema If you're tired of Capitalism where man exploits man, try Communism where the reverse happens.

@doppelgreener That's one case, but I've seen it happen to others too.

@vicky_molokh The normal way to fix tags is just to edit them.

The content is there, what tags do/don't belong is self-evident based on the content of the question, we hash things out through edits and if there's a significant disagreement then it gets discussed.

(This is mostly true, but less true in the case of system-agnostic and rules-as-written, which both suffer comparable issues around poor definition and lack of cohesive agreement over how to use them.)

4:35 PM

Yeah, people telling an author that the topic isn't system-agnostic despite both the author and others seeing the agnosticism of it , and editing despite this fact, is another thing that seems to be happening.

@vicky_molokh ooh I like that. Is it yours?

@DavidCoffron No, it's a joke back from before we switched to capitalism like the rest of the world. (Also important technical distinction: Communism was an ideology of USSR but not the society type. The goal was achieving Communism, but USSR only succeeded in achieving Socialism along the way before collapsing.)

Reminds me of the "democracy is the most flawed form of government... besides all the rest"

I do somewhat suspect some of the arguments about rules-as-written are functioning on some level as proxy battles for other arguments about rules-lawyering and min-maxing/munchkining, where people get argumentative about bad faith use of the rules because they see it used as a way to "one-up" the DM or other players, and think that questions attempting to view issues through that lens are just a trojan horse for said bad faith players.

@vicky_molokh we should all just switch to magicracy where only wizards rule.

4:39 PM

Which I have.... mixed feelings about.

@vicky_molokh Sure, and that's fine.

Stuff gets hashed out case by case.

@Xirema I see that as plausible. I wonder how much of it is true. I also wonder how much the debates over system-agnostic are a proxy over disagreement over how much faith to put into the postulate of the system mattering.

@doppelgreener Or (even more dangerous) "correctly."

(Going AFK, will try to catch up to any answers on the topic in an hour or two. Good luck everyone.)

@vicky_molokh just as a note: if you're seeing system being scrubbed from a question (post) that sounds strange to me. There are technical reasons to prefer removing system from title that are detailed here, but no broad reasons that I know of for removing mention of system from questions, generally.

(There's one exception I know of that I won't even link here. If you, Dear Reader, want to know you're going to have to do your own deep-dive on meta.)

4:51 PM

@nitsua60 I've done that a few times to remove redundancy, because I've seen it done elsewhere. I should probably rethink that practice as I see no reason it can't be included in the question body as well.

@DavidCoffron thanks. I appear to have survived. (And sheet for potentially sounding dramatic earlier.) My phone was yanked from my hands seconds after I sent that message.

@nitsua60 and fortunately it doesn't seem to come up very often at all

Really the entire tag should just be closed off because for the past several years, rulebooks have been printed not written.

3

@Yuuki xD

Best argument yet

And it lets us get a rap tag (rules-as-printed)

Q: Are there any magic weapons that befit a Rogue more than a DEX-based Fighter?

@Yuuki This isn't fair, my sigh pun queue already got exhausted, I haven't had time to come up with new ones.

Hot RPG Questions

6

We have an Assassination Rogue and a Dual-Wielding Champion Fighter in our party, and we often divide our items trying to maximize party damage output. One pattern that we have noticed is that any weapon that works for both characters is better suited for the Fighter. With his Extra Attack, the F...

dnd-5e magic-items weapons

4:59 PM

@HotRPGQuestions Oh no...

@Rubiksmoose Wait what did I miss? Did they have to remove your antlers? .... or put antlers on?

@goodguy5 Someone took him apart because they couldn't solver the cube...

@Xirema Attitudes like this definitely bleed into the broader RAW debate, but we explicitly embrace all those playstyles, so the actual disagreements about whether a tag does/doesn't apply shouldn't be turning into disagreements about whether the question has any validity — just whether the tag should be applied to it.

If you do find someone denigrating a playstyle as badwrongfun or otherwise the wrong way to play a game, please flag it. We have no tolerance of that.

@doppelgreener Although I will say, my personal breed of goodrightfun is accepting all the playstyles. Meshing a diversity in playstyles is a very enjoyable aspect of GMing for me

@HotRPGQuestions ooo are these hot rpg questions in my area?

5:07 PM

@doppelgreener Intolerance being one of the few things we don't tolerate =)

@Yuuki I'm just worried as that question is ripe for bad subjective...

GreySage

@HotRPGQuestions Yesterday I learned that questions go into the HNQ list WAY more frequently than I thought they did.

@nitsua60 The good ol' paradox of intolerance of intolerance.

I kinda wish the question were "what [qualities|features] make a magical weapon better for $thisrogue than $thisfighter?" Feels much better suited to the format....

@DavidCoffron Yeah, that was my impression glancing at it.

Like, I think in theory the question's scope is properly limited. It's possible to mathematically prove (Hi!) which weapons improve DPR more for Rogues than for Dex-based Fighters. But you do have to scan a whole lot of weapons and evaluate each of them....

5:12 PM

@DavidCoffron For my own part there's playstyles I strongly object to, and ones I strongly prefer. But these are my personal preferences and nothing more or less than that. I will never go into a question telling people the former style is the wrong way to play, or invalid, or bad, or that its players are (insert pejorative here), or so on.

@doppelgreener Fair, the only playstyle I won't tolerate is one that detracts from other people's experience.

There's a few playstyles that fall into that bucket for me. :P

But they work fine for others.

Sounds like a table to table thing (almost like communication is a good problem solver)

@Xirema That last answer, curt as it is, strikes me as the kind of answer I like seeing. "here are the differences between the fighter and the rogue, here's the sort of feature that wedges those differences in favor of the rogue, here's a weapon with that feature."

@DavidCoffron It does! (And I think it might be!)

5:48 PM

Petition to rename HNQ feed to 'HotLocalRPGQuestionsInYourArea'.

11

@nitsua60 Oww, I'm intrigued but clueless where to even begin the search.

6:19 PM

@DavidCoffron I've done the same and have also been rethinking/stopping that practice. I actually think it might be a bit harmful.

@Xirema your clever tool had significantly affected what I considered a reasonably answerable question here wrt math and stats. So I'm really impressed by it.

@goodguy5 not my antlers! My poor teethies though...

@vicky_molokh quite honestly I think the overlap is much less than you think.

oh, nbd phew. I was concerned.

wisdom?

@goodguy5 yes my wisdom score has been reduced by three. And more if you include the pain meds lol

:)

And yeah you didn't miss anything. I just dropped the bombshell and left which was not particularly well thought-out

yea, but the meds are a temporary debuff.

also wait , three?

Yessir. Three. The other one is quite keen on snuggling up with an important nerve in my mouth. A nerve that would have really bad consequences if it was damaged. So they left it in.

ah, I see. Do they plan to take out a molar instead? (I suppose that a wisdom tooth is technically a molar, but still)

or is there just enough room in your head for it?

6:33 PM

@Rubiksmoose I never forget to count my blessings that my wisdoms are still coming in straight and non-crowding (somehow). Dentist is keeping a close eye though

I think the ultimate monster would be a question tagged rules-as-written and system-agnostic.

heh

@DavidCoffron I'm waiting to get over 9,000 reputation before trying. ^_^

V2Blast

@DavidCoffron then the universe implodes

Q: What RPG concepts does "rules as written" encompass?

But on a serious note, the non-meta definitional thread about RAW could probably accept the system-agnostic tag.

V2Blast

this one?

48

The term "rules as written" (or RAW) gets thrown about fairly often in RPG circles, especially around D&D. But what does it actually mean? Is RAW an analysis technique? A playstyle? An entire parallel game system? What key aspects or attributes would allow one to recognize something as RAW or ...

rules-as-written terminology

6:38 PM

Yes.

Its topic is literally RAW from a eagle's eye view and not tied to a specific system.

@vicky_molokh You ruined my joke xD

@DavidCoffron You can only get even with me by adding the tag!

Fair though. Although I wouldn't risk it because sys-ag has an even.... "richer" history than RAW from what I've gathered

6:54 PM

@vicky_molokh done

@goodguy5 You are now unstoppable!

I'm quite stoppable, I assure you

(And your rep is over 9,000.)

@DavidCoffron you are a lucky lucky man. My mouth hurts like...errr a lot.

@goodguy5 I actually reverted the change because of the most recent meta on SA. Also Doppel had already removed the tag in Feb so I feel like that is a good place to keep it

Waitwaitwait, the author actually asked this question as system-agnostic in the first place. I didn't realise.

7:08 PM

Mine were able to be extracted without surgery. Though, honestly, if I'd had insurance at the time, I'd have gotten my bottoms removed (shut up) surgically before they had a chance to slightly crowd my incisors.

And . . . I figured that the FAQ on the tag makes it applicable.

I need to take another look at the SA FAQ.

@goodguy5 oh nice.

> Because it is a specific declaration of the querent's intended scope of the question, then as @AceCalhoon points out, you should tend to leave it alone. You can ask the querent about their intent to clarify, but under no circumstances should you be trawling through old questions and changing either their system or [system-agnostic] tag unprovoked.

What nightmares are made of ^

7:12 PM

Hmmm . . .

@Rubiksmoose @vicky_molokh told you I was stoppable

I started this as a joke, but re-reading the FAQ, it seems that since the question is already bumped, it's actually fairer to follow the above principle and make the question the way it was as posted by the author.

@Rubiksmoose Could you elaborate the 'because of the most recent meta' bit? Re-reading the meta FAQ on the tag, I'm arriving at the opposite conclusion than you. I where we interpret the guidelines differently that we arrived to such different conclusions.

@vicky_molokh my recommendation is to bring it up in meta. Since a mod stepped in to change something it would be better to bring it up there than to start a debate in the comments of a very old question. I can see your side but we don't want to start an edit war. Better to have the conversation.

Unfortunately the pain meds are kicking in big time so I'm going to hop off.

Well, it has been raised in meta, and got resolved, it seems: rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8836/50419.

Not this specific question, that is, but the principles of the tag etc.

When a mod makes a change it's usually best to respect that unless there's some really good reason to think it was incorrect. If I were you, I'd ping doppel and ask them on chat at least before changing it again.

Mods aren't infallible of course but just reversing changes they make without any kind of discourse usually is not the best move

I tend to agree with you here though.

In this case I'd say adding it back might actually be appropriate, but I want to respect doppel's understanding of the issue as well

Anyways you can do what feels best to you of course

Just my 0.02

7:27 PM

Seems like I'm doing a lot of trouble-raising in my short stay here.

As long as you are respectful and approach it from the perspective of learning from more experienced people (even if you disagree with them) and trying to achieve improvement as a community raising trouble can be fine

For one I largely appreciate the things you've brought up, even if there have been some roughness in learning for you along the way so far.

And fwiw I was much the same when I first got here too I feel

The whole situation is also awkward because there's the matter of respecting the author, but the author seems less currently active than any of the three people who edited the tag in or out and me.

Well arthurial intent is actually fairly weird here and in a lot of respect is not a priority. Though, in some cases I think it is.

Hmm. Maybe I should consult mxy, as the agnostic FAQ poster, first before doing anything drastic like raising another ping / entering yet another debate. Not sure.

But I am getting seriously loopy from these meds so I need to get off. I'll be more than happy to talk to you about this later though if you still want to.

My advice ping doppel and see what he thinks. I can't hurt to ask and learn from why he made the change and see if that changes your opinion of how it should be. And maybe even ask them if they feel differently after the recent meta. Doesn't have to be a debate.

Chat pings aren't really that aggressive in my mind and are a good way to take care of things in a more casual way. I don't see it as trouble making at all and doppel doesn't have to engage if they don't want to.

Anyways ttyl

7:37 PM

@doppelgreener Hey. This started as a joke, but now I'm having serious thoughts: Q rpg.stackexchange.com/posts/104165/revisions originally had the [system-agnostic] tag stripped off it despite it being added there by the author and despite the question being system-agnostic. Having checked the tag FAQ (rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8836/50419), it seems accurately descriptive of the question. What's the original reason for the stripping and do you think it's still applicable?

I'm also interested in mxy's opinion as the one who seems to be an enthusiastic expert on the topic in question, but apparently mxy's not been in this chat recently enough to ping.

V2Blast

@Rubiksmoose Who's Arthur? ;)

@vicky_molokh I think in this case the "terminology" tag is a subset of "system-agnostic"?

/me looks up [terminology]

Because that's not intuitive at all, as terminology can be system-specific.

Huh, you're probably right.

I didn't realise.

> Use this tag for questions about terminology used across RPGs in general, rather than the in-game meaning of a special game term within a certain game.

That's surprising. I sit informed.

Though now you made me think of the way implicitly-nested tag subsets interact with searches.

7:59 PM

...oh, incidentally, if you want a seed to roleplay a corporate AI, write a call-center evaluation form from hell and then score-attack it.

. . . ?

Old sys-ag question of yours that I think got locked?

Ah, the [roleplaying] one.

That being said, I am indeed playing with a PSA-ish, call-centre-esque speech pattern, and it seems amusing yet plausible. Alas only had two sessions so far - constantly getting cancellations because of various reasons.

8:26 PM

BTW @Glazius, while I accept that your answer regarding Scale is mostly likely correct from the PoV of the letter of the rules, I must say I'm not sure it's the best choice for emulating all kinds of situations that may or may not skew asymmetrically throughout the scene.

8:39 PM

@vicky_molokh Just read a lot of meta. You'll know when you come across it, and by the time you do you'll probably be one of a handful of experts in how the site works and doesn't and how it all happened =)

@nitsua60 oh... that one...

@vicky_molokh Whenever I'm looking for something that at least a couple people can remember just from allusion like Rubiksmoose did, I search first for particularly active metas (such as by searching by votes).

@vicky_molokh Hm. An example of switching a bonus from attack to defense might be?

@DavidCoffron SSD's incisive-as-usual realization never fails to remind me of the wisdom of solving the actual problem in front of us, rather than worrying too much about larger issues.

@nitsua60 Yes, very well solved. No need to overreact to issues that aren't really present. If they real an ugly head, then they can be addressed more formally

@Glazius Maybe.

I'm thinking the cleanest solution would be to just always apply both sides of the line, but of course that makes Scale twice as good. Which means it requires recalibration.

8:55 PM

@vicky_molokh Sorry, sorry. I mean "give me a single scene where it makes sense to swap the bonus". I think some of my answer might have a framing assumption in it.

@Glazius Oh. I just thought of potential electronics warfare between two different-sized vehicles. Of course it's easier for a bigger vehicle with a bigger comms module to jam the smaller one, and conversely it's harder for the smaller one to jam the bigger one. But it's not a given that both of them will be actively jamming the other's sensors at the same time.

Thus, whether it's advantageous to get a bonus on offence or defence will depend on how many exchanges a given unit will be on the offence vs on defence. Swapping the bonus to make scale relevant again when the roles of the vehicles swap seems like a sad necessity.

A clean solution would be to ensure bonuses exist both on the offence and on the defence.

But it's a cleaniness at the cost of increasing the impact of each level of Scale relative to the default reading.

Okay. ECM isn't a create an advantage roll, there's a systems stress track?

I imagine it is a CaA roll, one where it would make sense for the bigger module to get a bonus in either role.

Am I missing something related to the CaA-ness?

Well, it's not an attack and doesn't deal stress.

It's that awkward thing which logically should benefit from scale differences.

Though I suppose a similar issue would apply in a regular shooty combat: a bigger gun should be more devastating to a relatively smaller/weaker target, but a bigger hull should be harder to damage by a relatively small gun.

9:08 PM

Hmm. I think you might want to look at systems which actually implement scale, rather than just a brief summary of the concept.

I'm looking at the System Toolkit variant as a base.

I just feel that the correct reading is not the one whose outcomes I'm comfortable with from a narrative-logical PoV.

The Toolkit mechanics aren't intended to work when dropped as-is into any possible game. They're describing a concept you can put in your game, not a pre-made module you can plug in.

Hmm. I know Mindjammer does things differently.

(I should get back to reading MJ some day.)

I'm fond of Fate of Agaptus's "weight" mechanic (if one side has four times as many people, or equivalent advantage, compared to their opponent's side, the side with the advantage can always turn one of their Fudge dice to + after rolling).

But DFRPG and DFAE also toy with advantage scales in interesting ways.

@BESW Hmm. A 'tactile' (metaphorically speaking) way to do it.

9:13 PM

I like the tactile element, yeah. I also like how it's mathematically tied to the default curve in ways that +1 isn't (and if I'm not there for the 4dF curve, I probably shouldn't be playing Fate in the first place).

I haven't analysed how that affects the curve yet.

Also, is is the parenthetical part meant to be read literally as applying to you, or as a generic-I hinting at something else?

ACuriousMind

Moving things to the NAB should be called NABbing.

→ 11 messages moved to Not a bar, but plays one on TV

@vicky_molokh I try to use "I" instead of "you" unless I really mean someone specific or can't include myself in the description. It reduces the likelihood of being read as confrontational and reminds me that I can only speak for myself; others may take what they want from my experience.

How much will I get yelled at if I try to create a "Half-Advantage/Half-Disadvantage" homebrew variant for 5e?

9:20 PM

@Xirema YELL YELL ROAR ROAR AGGA FLABBLE WAGGLE!

@Xirema tilts head what do you mean

@nitsua60 Risk is within acceptable tolerances.

@Xirema "I'm a half-disadvantage warlock. My father was a human and my mother was a mechanic."

@DavidCoffron I found ways of rolling d20s that skew the results, well, approximately halfway between having Advantage or Disadvantage. Mathematically speaking, I mean.

@BESW While I figured there's a chance of something like that going on, I'm still unsure what was actually meant by the parenthetical part.

9:21 PM

@Xirema Roll 3, take the middle?

@BESW How does trancing work?

@nitsua60 No, although I do have a model for that as well. =3

> @Xirema is a pathway to many dice rolls some consider to be unnatural.

Half Advantage works by rolling two dice with disadvantage, then rolling a third die and taking Advantage between that die and the result of the disadvantage dice. Half-disadvantage is the same but in reverse.

GreySage

@Yuuki When in doubt, more roll dice and ignore an arbitrary subset of them

9:23 PM

@vicky_molokh I find that, when designing Fate mechanics, adding a flat bonus like +1 tends to be the most boring and least Fate-like choice. Part of this is because the predictability of that 4dF curve is, in my opinion, central to the Fate experience and too many bonuses flattens out its impact on the gameplay.

@Yuuki Like (i/2)d6?

In Half-Advantage, your odds of getting a critical success aren't meaningfully different (5%→5.238%) but your odds of getting a critical failure are greatly reduced (5%→0.5%), though not as much as regular Advantage (5%→0.25%)

@Xirema So the higher of [the lower of two red dice] and a black die

Q: Can you take a "free object interaction" while incapacitated?

@DavidCoffron Yeah.

Hot RPG Questions

5

The incapacitated condition description (PHB 290) says: An incapacitated creature can't take actions or reactions. Meaning that you can still move. But what about "interactions"? Page 190 of the PHB describes examples you can do "in tandem with your movement and action", it also mentions, ...

dnd-5e actions conditions

9:26 PM

The averages are 10.5 (regular), 13.825 (Advantage), 12.163 (Half-Advantage)

I kind of like it. I might implement in one of my sessions to see how it feels. Sometimes I give a +2 to a roll because advantage feels like too much. I will playtest your half-advantage

@HotRPGQuestions HNQ #6 for the day.

Rolling with Half-Advantage improves your odds on a coin-toss roll (11+ pass, 10- fail) by exactly 12.5%; literally half of regular Advantage (25%)

@BESW On one hand, a quantitative bonus is less interesting than a qualitative one. On the other two hands, FATE conflicts are very flattened in terms of mechanics compared to many other systems (attack and 'damage' are one roll), and a bigger 'oomph' is in many case an appropriate difference between bigger and smaller participants of a conflict or contest.

@nitsua60 Oh hey, my petition for a name change has 5 stars.

We should totally do it.

9:30 PM

@Yuuki feature-request

@Yuuki Ehh.... I'm not sure a "hot girls in your area" joke is totally welcoming.

(that doesn't ping any site employees or anything in chat does it?)

As for your specific concern about scale's effects being determined at the beginning of a conflict and applied to ALL rolls within that conflict... that doesn't actually happen in practice in any implementation I've ever seen.

@DavidCoffron Nah, just magically links.

@nitsua60 I thought the meme was "singles" not "girls".

9:31 PM

@nitsua60 mkay. just checking

@Yuuki I don't really know. This room is the lion's share of my exposure to internet culture =)

Every scale implementation I've ever read says you determine if scale applies per roll based on whether the narrative source of the scale is applicable.

There is one weird property of Half-Advantage though: it slightly skews results towards +13, instead of towards +20. It's a very mild skew though: no individual number becomes more than 6.66% likely to be rolled.

> applies per roll based

(that number is +14, FYI)

9:32 PM

As in, decide each roll if it makes sense for it to give a benefit, not each conflict?

Right.

So if you're a wizard casting a fireball, you get scale for rolling the fireball's effect. But if you're a wizard throwing rocks, you don't get scale.

But when you're a wizard casting a shield, you get scale again? (This is how I think is logical to do it, but apparently not the default assumption of the System Kit.)

Right; you get scale for the stuff that grants you scale. As a mortal wizard, you only get scale when doing wizard things.

@vicky_molokh It's not clearly written, but I disagree with the answer you got to that question. It's ambiguous as to whether scale applies per-roll or per-conflict.

Toolkit scale assumes equal distribution of scaliness across the entire narrative.

9:36 PM

@BESW I found it ambiguous, thus asked: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/143305/…

Oh wait.

Since you read the answer, linking was pointless. Though maybe someone else may show interest in it, so who knows.

@Xirema /me Nods approvingly

A: Is the Choice of Scale Effects Limited per Roll or per Conflict?

0

Per-roll application of scale is more in line with the Golden Rule. It is also consistent with practical implementation in published systems. The Toolkit is not a rulebook. The Toolkit's description of scale is ambiguous as to whether scale is determined and applied globally per-conflict or in...

Ugh, can I downvote the SRD? "For example, (one thing with no explanation)" is not a good example!

Wait, did I accidentally cause drama that lead to post deletion? I apologise.

9:51 PM

I don't think there was drama?

Folx sometimes delete an answer if they decide it wasn't adding value to the site.

@Glazius Yeah, the Toolkit sometimes feels hastily written.

...I've got an answer that I'd like to delete because I think it's silly and not useful, but it's one of my top-five upvoted.

10 mins ago, by Glazius

Ugh, can I downvote the SRD? "For example, (one thing with no explanation)" is not a good example!

I may be slow. Which of the SRD's 'for examples' is being referred to?

I'm guessing how the scale example is a rather bad one because it's describing something that's arguably "always on" so it doesn't offer a chance to illustrate the nuance of the implementation.

...that was my first answer is almost a year. Wow.

@vicky_molokh Having a [system-agnostic] tag on a general terminology question is mostly just redundant and unnecessary. Nobody was going to assume it was system-specific to begin with.

@doppelgreener Well, except people who think D&D is all-consuming, but a sys-ag tag never stops them anyway.

@vicky_molokh The SRD under "scale" offers one example of how to apply it, which isn't clear whether it's for a single exchange or the whole conflict. I junked my answer because I took a bit to reread and decided I didn't have a useful point of view.