TRPG General Chat

Adeptus

01:19

@BESW I've been listening to a NZ metal band called Alien Weaponry. 2 of them are brothers, half Dutch, half Maori (don't know about the 3rd). They look "white" but embrace their Maori heritage & mostly sing in Maori language.

goodguy5

@Adeptus for some dumb reason, my brain interpreted "Maori" as "Maliwan", like from Borderlands

BESW

Not to be confused with Malian, of or pertaining to the nation of Mali.

goodguy5

01:34

btw, I tried out an idea and I liked it a lot.

in 5e, inspiration exists. I was giving one out at the start of every game, and then another if you brought stuff (usually candy or beer). The problem was that I felt like players were hoarding them and not using them on others.

So, I posed to the group: How about instead of the one free one at the start, I give you two free ones, except you can only use them on someone else.

Achieved exactly what I wanted.

Mark Wells

01:46

@goodguy5 "Can only use inspiration on someone else" is a good idea in general.

goodguy5

and inspiration gained from roleplaying is still normal

BESW

Yeah, I really like "do good things for others" mechanics.

Mark Wells

@goodguy5 I don't see how that's even necessary. I'm applying this to all inspiration next time I run D&D.

goodguy5

@MarkWells not necessary, but If I give an inspiration, I want them to be able to use it how they like

Mark Wells

Might also allow players to give each other inspiration, like, what was it, Primetime Adventures?

KorvinStarmast

03:27

@doppelgreener it's all part of learning how to earn a living, I guess. One step at a time ...

@NautArch yes, red

nitsua60

One last try: anyone have experience with Obsidian Portal or another (free) campaign website platform, and want to advise me on which to pick?

KorvinStarmast

I have not, sorry. :(

huzzah, I just earned review queue privileges in Meta SE, which some of us think is soon to be shut down. We'll see.

Hot RPG Questions

6

Q: Is it okay to have a DMPC who is also the BBEG?

I don't want to make my DMPC star of the show by any means, I realize how important it is to let the characters do their own thing. I want this character to act in the background and support the other characters from the side, not for party benefit, but because it benefits the DMPC character. The...

GcL

03:46

@nitsua60 I've used Obsidian portal for an online campaign. It was a pretty nice wiki

went with the paid offering.

The failing was the same as any wiki... it's only as good as the people are willing to put time into it.

For the current table tops, the players keep their own shared google documents for notes, inventory, character sheets. That seems to be as much as they need.

Hot RPG Questions

06:45

5

Q: How do I handle players murderhoboism of giants in chapter 10 of Storm King's Thunder

The following question contains major spoilers for the Storm King's Thunder campaign. I'm currently running Storm King's Thunder for my party and I read up on chapter 10 of the book where the party visits Maelstrom. In this chapter the party is supposed to have an audience with the Storm King's ...

dnd-5e storm-kings-thunder

V2Blast

08:02

Nova Drift is 33% off ($9.99) on chrono.gg for the next 10 hours: https://www.chrono.gg/?=NovaDrift
It's an addictively fun game with lots of replayability. I would definitely recommend it. The developer is also quite active and responsive in the Discord (there's a link at the bottom of the Early Access box on the Steam product page), and the community is friendly and helpful. I'm personally not very good at the game, but I can't help but get sucked in each time I sit down to play.
(Full disclosure: I'm a mod on their Discord and subreddit.)

@Xirema "The image you are requesting does not exist or is no longer available." If that's your dead monk's eulogy, was his name "The image you are requesting"? :P

BESW

08:28

Today in Why Are You Banging Your Head Against The Wall?

trogdor

it's really nice

oh specifically the title page eh

BESW

08:45

Yeah, the heaviest and lightest weights of my chosen typeface do that when Affinity Publisher exports a PDF.

trogdor

huh

I see the one you showed me normally

BESW

Yeah, that one uses the middle weights.

trogdor

ah ok

vicky_molokh

09:13

Interesting dichotomy. May be of use for those who don't like the term 'murderhobo'.

V2Blast

10:23

good night, folks

Carcer

good morning though

vicky_molokh

It's always morning in the Internet.

BESW

[wave]

doppelgreener

11:01

> What a Hobo is.
By the general public the term “hobo” is applied to all species of the tramp genus, but among the vagabonds themselves this appellation is restricted to a certain class. A “hobo” is a tramp who begs, but will work rather than commit crime. A criminal tramp who does not hesitate to commit larceny, robbery or burglary is known among the fraternity as a “yag.” The latter class never works unless under penal duress. The “yag” never affiliates with the “hobo” and each is proud of his exclusiveness. The usual salutation by which unknown tramps recognise each is the query: “Have …

(that was tough to read, so here's my transcription.)

No citation or attribution, tsk.

I cannot find any dictionary acknowledgement of “yag” being used for anything other than a chemistry term coined in the 60s, or really any acknowledgement of it being used that way anywhere.

vicky_molokh

@doppelgreener Grand Valley Times | 1897-01-08.

doppelgreener

I mean the paper itself provides no citation or attribution, sorry.

vicky_molokh

@doppelgreener Can't say I'm surprised - dictionaries often miss out on the slang of small subcultures, especially in/from an era when less stuff was documented in writing than today.

doppelgreener

Dictionaries also draw no such distinction between tramp and hobo (in fact Cambridge draws the opposite) so I suspect this person may have been doing the equivalent of our dear "but what's the difference between a wizard, sorcerer, and mage?" questions, where we'll see people diving in to making taxonomies rather than acknowledging they all mean the same thing, or informed by the same.

(Alternately word usage evolved in the last 120 years and diminished any difference, which is likely if that was ever true, though that means the definition of ≥120 years ago doesn't necessarily have any relevance to today.)

vicky_molokh

@doppelgreener I think the wizard/mage/sorcerer example actually demonstrates that terminology varies by subculture. E.g. to a D&Der, the sorcerer is more spontaneous and the wizard more scholarly, while to MtAer, the mage is the dynamic-spontaneous meaning and the sorcerer is the static-scholarly type.

doppelgreener

11:11

@vicky_molokh Well, yeah, totally. That's exactly how it is. They all just mean "magic user" and different fantasy canons have assigned those words to different kinds of magic users. But then you have people stepping back and trying to construct a magic user taxonomy in a void as if there was ever one universal one to begin with.

vicky_molokh

@doppelgreener So when talking about MtA, it's useful to follow MtA's way of splitting terminology, and when talking about other groups, it's useful to follow those groups' way of splitting terminology.

doppelgreener

Like someone assuming that before all these fantasy stories rose up in the last 200-400 years, there was some specific difference between wizard, sorcerer, and mage that cleanly distinguished them as separate back them, and all these fantasy stories were just drawing upon those existing distinctions.

And then asking what those distinctions are as though they existed and have been carried through and still really exist to be found.

(Such distinctions never existed to begin with, and fantasy has layered all kinds of things on top of them.)

nitsua60

12:31

@GcL Thank you.

Hot RPG Questions

13:53

5

Q: What happens to a lich's soul when it dies with a Ring of Mind Shielding?

What happens to a lich's soul when it dies with a Ring of Mind Shielding? Normally, a lich's soul goes to the phylactery. But the Ring of Mind Shielding also takes a soul. Does the lich choose where to go or does one overrule the other? My interpretation is, the ring takes the soul. The wording...

dnd-5e magic-items monsters soul

SmokeDetector

14:58

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, pattern-matching email in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (348): How does the ability to cast healing spells affect a monster's CR? by Daniel Bohm on rpg.SE

Rubiksmoose

Deleted in 25 seconds. Very nice lol

Someone_Evil

Is it just the power of smokey's algorithmically enhanced powers that gets those deleted, or do any actual users have the chance to pitch a flag in?

Rubiksmoose

@Someone_Evil It can be either, but in this case I used a diamond on it.

Someone_Evil

The why does it show as deleted by the community user?

Rubiksmoose

Ah because I flagged it as spam instead of just deleting it. When spam-flag deletions happen they are attributed to Community. And flagging spam is always the way to go since it feeds into the spam rammer.

Someone_Evil

15:15

So it got two spam flag (based on the downvotes) which were yours and smokey; which deleted the answer as deleted/destroyed the user. Would this be counted as moderator or community actions with re. the by year statistics, do you know?

Rubiksmoose

@Someone_Evil Well the destruction I have to do manually. So that's a separate process and will definitely count as moderator action.

The deletion I'm not entirely sure actually. According to Shog9, it only counts as a moderator action if it is unilateral. I'm not sure what the system counts the community user as, but I'm guessing it isn't counted as a moderator. So I would guess it would count as a community deletion.

Someone_Evil

It's probably moderator, because your flag deletes it (when it would have required more flags if it were just normal users). But because it was deleted through flags, it is attributed to community

I guess if we wanted to know for sure we would have to ask SE, but I'm not sure it is worth the effort. At least on my part

Xirema

@V2Blast Long Story Short, the mobile app accidentally "cancelled" the upload after it had already finished, and I had to upload the image again. >_<

Rubiksmoose

15:32

@Someone_Evil From what I understand, to take a normal case, if 2 users vote to delete and then the moderator casts the final vote or even the second vote, it still counts as community.

Right, @rubiks. Mods == one mod vote to close. Comm == 1 to n non-mod votes. A thorough analysis of how closing is done on a site must usually involve other data. — Shog9 Jan 4 at 19:01

Someone_Evil

Yeah, this is presumably in the "answers flagged by moderator" category, of which there were 102 last year, which actually explains what kind of activity that is because you have little other reason to flag answers, no?

Rubiksmoose

@Someone_Evil We certainly don't flag many other answers, but I do occasionally. Only the red flags will automatically delete. I'll throw the occasional NAA or other flag out there.

Of course R/A flags as well.

kviiri

16:08

Rolling 2d20 on the Kobold name table allows for a rather amusing result in my language

(In dnd 5e)

Rubiksmoose

Do tell!

kviiri

Roll 11 and 8, you'll be known as "Molo Irtos". The English equivalent'd be roughly "Dick Fellof"

Short for Richard I presume

Carcer

how do you get Dick from Richard?

(har har har)

Rubiksmoose

lol

Yuuki

If you're asking about Grayson, all you need is red hair, energy blasts, and an alien heritage apparently.

kviiri

16:14

Honestly puzzled me for ages but it's not like the only weird name thing ongoing :>

Carcer

the punchline is "ask nicely", kviiri

Yuuki

> The Germanic first or given name Richard derives from the old Germanic words "ric" (ruler, leader, king, powerful) and "hard" (strong, brave, hardy).

Well, there it is.

Carcer

whatever the etymology, for personal reasons I'm glad it's not a popular nickname anymore

kviiri

@Carcer I have heard of another version of this but let us not go there (:

Xirema

Thanks, I hate it.

Rubiksmoose

16:16

> Turns out, calling someone Dick instead of Richard is a somewhat recent evolution of the nicknames Rich and Rick, both of which we also use instead of Richard to this day. As the video's host explains, it's sort of like one of those "knee bone connected to the thy bone" progressions. In the days of writing everything by hand, Rich and Rick emerged as common nicknames for Richard, and apparently, people also used to like to come up with nicknames that rhyme.

> This gave rise to nicknames like Dick and Hick around the early Thirteenth Century, but unlike Hick, Dick continues to stick around today.

thrillist.com/news/nation/how-did-dick-become-short-for-richard

Another theory^

Yuuki

@Rubiksmoose ~The thy bone's connected to the thou bone~

Rubiksmoose

@Yuuki XD

Xirema

@Yuuki Extremely Griffin McElroy voice How would it even happen like that???

Rubiksmoose

@Xirema The phrase "Extremely Griffin McElroy" tickled me quite a bit.

ThePuzzlerThree

@Xirema griffin is an absolute unit

Rubiksmoose

16:25

Reminds me that I need to catch up on TAZ from like, two years.

I've started listening to MBMBAM though and that's quite fun.

doppelgreener

16:46

@Someone_Evil when smoke detector is very confident it's found spam it can use actual user accounts to cast a limited number of spam votes. I can't remember how many, maybe 3. That's entirely opt-in from the users and smoke detector advises us as well that it's doing this.

But it's also got a highly vigilant distributed community with dozens of people available to respond at any given time.

Spam barely stands a chance.

~~Fun fact: the average time-to-deletion of spam posts detected by Smoke Detector is just below 17 seconds.~~ (metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/graphs) Nope, I was reading the graph wrong. It varies between 3-6 minutes depending on time of day. Still pretty good.

Rubiksmoose

17:08

@doppelgreener Dang, that is impressive.

Carcer

@doppelgreener I am not sure you are reading that graph right?

if you're looking at the dotted line on those charts that is representative of the current time GMT

doppelgreener

@Carcer I am not sure either now

Carcer

as x-axis is hour of day

y-axis is time to deletion

my reading would be the average deletion time varies from 10 minutes to 3 minutes depending on time of day

doppelgreener

That sounds a more likely interpretation than what I wrote but I still have no idea if it's the right one, so I'm going to open a ticket requesting they add some axis labels. :P

Carcer

yeah these are not well-labelled graphs

goodguy5

17:14

I always forget that
1. Everything in my house is either kludged or halfassed.
2. any home task, regardless of #1, takes me about 10 times longer than I expect

I had to replace a light switch that should have taken 10 minutes and took me about 2 hours

doppelgreener

i have been recommended unf*ck your habitat as a source for keeping things orderly in a home

Carcer

and I'm guessing time to deletion is actually the whole lifetime of the post rather than gap between detection/deletion

Yuuki

@BESW So I picked up a copy of BOOM Studio's Power Rangers, Vol. 1 yesterday.

Trying to figure out what I need to read before the Shattered Grid event because that looks interesting.

And the collected volumes are unhelpful in that they don't tell me what issues they collect.

Also picked up volume 1 of the New Superman because Chinese Superman interests me and it's written by the guy who did American Born Chinese.

Rubiksmoose

Oh man that sounds very interesting.

nitsua60

@Someone_Evil One thing about flagging answers is that it also gets logged in (a mod-visible place of) the users' profile. So it can be easier to get to a list of posts by a user where things have gone off the rails when using flags than just by spelunking through their posts.

(One of the first things I did as a mod was notice in my own profile a new link that said "7 posts flagged" and thought "whoa, what?" Then I saw that a couple were ones I'd flagged myself to ask a mod to help with something, and a bunch of others were ones where community casts an auto-flag based on 10 answers in 2 days, or 20 comments in an hour, or other such triggers.)

doppelgreener

17:34

Coming back across our greatsword question from yesterday I've been reminded of something.

A while back I got a brief longsword lesson from eimyr, who's been practicing for a while. Turns out the point of using a sword is not usually to swing it around your body. Instead, the sword has a center of mass just past the handle: if you move the handle one way, inertia makes the center of mass want to stay in one spot, so you wind up rotating the sword around that center of mass and the tip of the sword moves the opposite way to the handle.

So the point is usually to keep the center of mass relatively steady and leverage it. It's nearly effortless to make very fast swings and adjustments if and when you're rotating the sword around its center of mass like this. It's much slower and takes much more effort to swing the whole thing around using your body or arms as a fulcrum.

goodguy5

@doppelgreener I don't see how this relates to my case

doppelgreener

Naturally you can't stay like that, and you have to actually move the sword and its center of mass around, and part of the training is learning ways to do that effectively so that you don't get stabbed or exhaust yourself.

@goodguy5 it might not, i guess

goodguy5

Oh, I mean "home improvement task grunt grunt", rather than like "cleaning", but that's good too. thanks!

Rubiksmoose

@doppelgreener ohhhh! This makes so much sense.

SmokeDetector

17:49

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body (94): Is the Alchemist class presented balanced? ✏️ by Xavier Pendragon on rpg.SE

kviiri

@Rubiksmoose Sorry, I accidentally rolled back your rollback :P

Rubiksmoose

@kviiri No worries :)

doppelgreener

@Rubiksmoose that's also why in Pirates of the Caribbean, Will Turner makes a comment about the blade being perfectly balanced. That's important!

Its center of mass is resting on his finger there.

Yuuki

pay no attention to the missing wall candelabra

doppelgreener

hehehehe

Rubiksmoose

17:58

@kviiri Alas, it seems that OP of that question was driven away by all the stuff around their question, so it might be better off being deleted by them.

@doppelgreener :O

JohnP

18:29

@doppelgreener Yes, that's also the reason for a split grip (Esp with katana type blades). Rather than baseball swing, you do a "push/pull" with your hands to transmit force and move the blade.

Yuuki

19:01

So pseudodragons are still draconic?

I'm trying to see if there's an equivalent to a Nakarkos, a creature from Monster Hunter that uses the bones of deceased wyverns to camoflage itself as a dragon when it is in fact some kind of cephalopod.

JohnP

19:16

@Yuuki Yep. DNDB lists them as "tiny dragons"

Pseudodragon
Tiny dragon, neutral good

Yuuki

So technically it's a pseudopseudodragon?

JohnP

@Yuuki related Reddit thread

@Yuuki - Also, a 5e Monster Hunter Monster Manual (Obv homebrew, but it has the nakarkos)

anyflip.com/suxb/sloz/basic

Yuuki

Pretty cool but I'm less thinking of bringing in the Nakarkos and more whether there's already a monster that pretends to be dragons for one reason or another.

JohnP

@Yuuki Mmm...closest I can think of off hand was the mimic, but that generally mimicked inanimate objects.

Yuuki

19:41

Monster Hunter has some pretty cool monsters and biology/ecology.

V2Blast

20:14

hello hello

Yuuki

i don't know why you say "goodbye", i say "hello"

V2Blast

I say, "Hello, hello, hello"

anyway

I just came across the shooting tag

Seems... weirdly specific, and yet vague. It's not like we have a tag for "swinging a sword" or something. but idk

Novak

Six whole questions and no description tag.

V2Blast

yeah. it's on 2 Shadowrun SR5 questions 1 Savage Worlds question (no further specification), and 3 others with the SW tag and the Deadlands Reloaded tag

Novak

And all but one from 2015. I don't usually exercise myself over tag maintainance, but that's a definite burnination candidate.

Also: "Now I have Site Analytics Privs. Ho. Ho. Ho."

Yuuki

20:24

@Novak who knows, someone might use to tag their question on how to banish a Qing Dynasty subprefectural administrative unit.

V2Blast

@Novak enjoy

Someone_Evil

Syn with firearms?

kviiri

@doppelgreener I stumbled upon "yegg" which might be more known and matches in meaning

Yuuki

@Someone_Evil Might have some scope issue with pyromancy.

Hot RPG Questions

20:40

4

Q: Are there rules for flying in difficult weather?

There are multiple player races that can fly, including the Aarakocra (comes with a 50' fly speed). Are there any official rules on how the flight of these races is affected by difficult weather conditions, such as a storm or extreme winds?

dnd-5e flight weather

Eternallord66

Quick question. Is the throwing hammer in the Dwarf proficiencies the same as the Light Hammer?

Someone_Evil

20:52

@Eternallord66 yes, see errata

Yuuki

It's weirdly ominous that this star has a small chance of producing a gamma-ray burst upon supernova and it's pointed in our general direction and it's in the constellation Sagittarius, or The Archer.

V2Blast

21:09

pew pew

Rubiksmoose

shooting

V2Blast

21:23

posted on meta:

0

Q: Should the [shooting] tag be burninated (or synonymized with another tag)?

The shooting tag currently has no tag wiki/excerpt. Currently, the tag appears on 2 shadowrun-sr5 questions, 3 questions with the savage-worlds and deadlands-reloaded tags, and 1 question tagged with savage-worlds (with no further specification). It's not entirely clear to me what the specific p...

discussion tags burninate-request synonymization

doppelgreener

@Yuuki ooer

that's spooky

The Oracle

21:39

1

Q: Should the [shooting] tag be burninated (or synonymized with another tag)?

The shooting tag currently has no tag wiki/excerpt. Currently, the tag appears on 2 shadowrun-sr5 questions, 3 questions with the savage-worlds and deadlands-reloaded tags, and 1 question tagged with savage-worlds (with no further specification). It's not entirely clear to me what the specific p...

discussion tags burninate-request synonymization

Eternallord66

@Yuuki What you talkin' bout Willis?

@Someone_Evil Which Errata?

Xirema

@Eternallord66 We're all returning to stardust.

Yuuki

@Eternallord66 I'm just wondering why it couldn't have been in the constellation of The Blinded Man or Guy Who Just Picked Up A Bow Yesterday And Couldn't Hit The Broad Side Of A Barn.

Someone_Evil

@Eternallord66 To the PHB: “Throwing hammer” has been changed to “light hammer.”

Eternallord66

23:19

@Xirema What?

BESW

I, for one, am definitely returning to Stardust. It's always worth listening to again!

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