TRPG General Chat

Denizens of Mountains and Seas vol. 1 by Daniel Kwan is his first OSR zine collecting 8 creatures from Chinese classical texts. One of the creatures has already appeared in an Asians Represent game.

Etched in Stone by Max Kämmerer is a live-action story game in which two people tell each other stories inspired by stones they find on a beach. Written for the Bookmark Game Jam.

12:17 AM

Upcoming Kickstarter (13 Aug): Gun & Slinger by Nevyn Holmes is a game of mystery, hope, and finding your way in a world twisted by the forgotten child of a god that ate the sky.

Mercy's Angels - A Bundle to Fund Action Medics! by Mercedes Acosta, Allie Bustion/Mad Pierrot Games, Caro Asercion, KiennaS, nell raban, pidj, Samantha Day, and Takuma Okada. A new street medic collective is being started by Mercedes Acosta in Tennessee where it is sorely needed, and we are raising funds to dress out our angels with appropriate gear and stock their kits.

Squeakeasy! Graffiti Speak! some really good stuff in that bundle.

12:41 AM

I don't understand why meta is getting behind the idea of simply not having protection on the questions we got repeated spam on and will get more repeated spam on, but I'm washing my hands of it.

@doppelgreener Not wanting to go to the effort of re-protecting the questions?

@doppelgreener Seems to me to be the assumption that more spam won't be a significant enough problem, and if it is they can all be reprotecred at that time. Or the assumption that there simply will not be any more spam on the posts which multiple people seem to suggest and agree with

@Yuuki There's no effort since the staff would do it with a button-press (or not much more)

I'm just sitting here thinking that somebody has to be wrong between the paraphrased statements "at most 5 will get more spam" and "hundreds of these are repeat spam questions"... At the very least, doing nothing lets you see why protection works if there is more spam or why the number that were protected didn't need to b if more spam doesn't happen

Vince Smith breaks down why WotC's response to Orion D. Black's statement is, and I'm paraphrasing here, inadequate. (Twitter link)

All of the questions that received spellcaster spam in the past are guaranteed to get more spellcaster spam in the future. That's how they operate. They will keep delivering the same spam on the same questions because it will keep turning up in their keyword searches—until we protect them.

@doppelgreener That's why I liked the partial reprotect but apparently many others don't

12:47 AM

@Medix2 I'm not sure "break it again because I don't believe you that it needed fixing" is a great take.

At this point I'm just like... Well, I'll learn something from this eventuall

@BESW Agreed, absolutely agreed

user15026

I really don't see what protecting 'em hurts any

Because new users who want to answer them couldn't answer them

Meanwhile Stack doesn't have an auto-unprotect so like... I wouldn't say they particularly care how long a question stays protected

user15026

Right, but if they're being spam targets, that's not great.

@Medix2 the site might spot why we went and protected so many questions over the years, and why just going "yep! Let's throw that work away because we don't believe it has any reason to need to be there and we're ignoring the people who did the work" maybe isn't true best plan.

12:49 AM

I read a lot of Metas and if I learned anything it's that people don't agree what protection is for nor whether it should exist :(

(that seven hundred isn't the sum total of what was protected, that was with people unprotecting stuff sometimes)

@doppelgreener Yup I'm very much seeing positives in all sides and thus finding myself at the "Stack should have some of the features people have requested" side of things

@Medix2 Speaking as a person who was specifically involved in hammering spam—and even helped front a spam wave of *six hundred spam users in one year*—me saying there's several hundred spam target questions is not hyperbole. The people saying "at most 5 will get more spam" don't know how the spammers work and are flatly wrong.

3

I looked at some other site Metas and only learned even more that people don't seem to agree about protection questions which is... idk, weird?

user15026

@doppelgreener As someone who has done similar on other sites, I am right there with you

user15026

12:53 AM

@Medix2 Most people don't get what it is or why it can help or how much of an annoyance spam is, they just see "new users can't answer" and think we gotta make room for that and just that I guess

@doppelgreener Yeah I flatly disagree with the idea that so few could get new spam. Like maybe it's possible but I would be beyond surprised

@doppelgreener As someone who automates stuff on an off-and-on basis, those people definitely don't know how spammers work.

"I've seen spam you people wouldn't believe. Revenge voodoo on fire off the shoulder of spells. I watched vampires glitter in the dark near adventure-recommendation. All those protections will be lost in time, like tears in rain."

6

I'm probably going to leave a grumpy meta post on this tomorrow to get it off my chest.

@Ash Yeah I read 120 (give or take 5) posts on protecting questions and discussions on it and feature-request and it became very apparent the confusion and lack of agreement or at least lack of guidance

@BESW Beautiful reference

12:56 AM

Because I know if I don't I'm going to be brooding on it.

@Ash Which is a good sentiment, I suppose, but also... 🤷

And then I am going to simply not visit main or meta because I don't want to wind up brooding if people downvote it.

@doppelgreener tbqh I've been waiting to hear your thoughts and take on it all, so if that does happen, I'll certainly appreciate it and probably agree with it too

@Medix2 Stack meta tends to bring out the Roy Batty in me.

Jun 11 '18 at 6:35, by BESW

> I've seen posts you people wouldn't believe. Frame challenges on fire off the shoulder of rules-as-written. I watched house rules glitter in the dark near the D&D tags. All those questions will be closed in time, like tears in rain. Time to vote.

in The Ink Spot, May 15 '18 at 10:39, by BESW

> I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Elected mods on fire off the shoulder of christianity.se. I watched CMs glitter in the dark near the Mos Eisley chat room. All those moderators will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to resign.

@Medix2 I appreciate that

12:59 AM

I wish I had a Roy Batty in me.

wait

I've been busy this week with study for a game jam that's happening now this weekend

In my experience there are three reasons questions get protected.

1. A question hits the HNQ list and lots of people start pouring in to answer it without understanding any of the site's expectations or context. It should be unprotected when it drops from HNQ.

2. A question is controversial and attracts a lot of steaming-hot bad takes, like the time somebody asked about the use an ethnic slur in a setting guide. That's unlikely to ever fully settle down; it might eventually settle down so the protection isn't strictly necessary--but the chances that the protection is blocking Good Takes is so small, and the potential for bad takes rekindling the controversy is so great, that I'd be inclined to keep it protected.

3. A spam bot algorithm has latched onto keywords in the question which make the bot think it's a good target for "do you want to cure your erectile dysfunction by becoming a vampire?" ads (I'm not joking, this is a thing we get). Bots never give up, this question should be protected forever.

The third instance is by far and away the most common, in my experience.

The second is rare enough to be lost in rounding errors.

And the first happens on questions that are high profile enough they usually get unprotected when appropriate and don't languish with an unjustified protection.

1:28 AM

Jay Dragon shared the cover art for Wanderhome (Twitter link)

Adam Baffoni wrote a twitter thread about "the effect tht the primary dice used for a game actually have on that game."

1:46 AM

@BESW I do like the talk about how the physical feeling of rolling a number of dice works but now I'm also interested in how that translates to online play, given quarantine and whatnot.

Kazumi Chin is looking for "games that begin with the presumption of your cultural belonging to a group."

GcL

@Ben is it morning for you yet?

2:17 AM

Phreshxbear is inviting people to share their non-white elf cosplays.

3

user15026

@BESW THESE ARE SO GOOD.

2:36 AM

@Ash Jonaya's purple degree-havin' elf is goals.

> So someone told me only white people can be elves because the word elf means "white being".

say what

Does that mean only skydivers can cosplay Luke because his last name is Skywalker?

Q: Is this 9th-level spell Find Greatest Steed balanced with respect to other 9th-level spells?

@Yuuki The line between white supremacists and Tolkien nerds is often as thin as psychic wire.

(There's receipts in the comments and the person was trying to argue for modern cosplay limitations based on literal translations of the Germanic root word Tolkien cited for his elves.)

To which I think the only dignified response is this.

Hot RPG Questions

3

Since the paladin gets the spells find steed and find greater steed, it only seemed natural to take this theme to its logical end: find greatest steed: FIND GREATEST STEED 9th-level conjuration Casting Time: 10 minutes Range: 30 feet Components: V, S Duration: Instantaneous You summon a spirit t...

user15026

@BESW that is the best response.

user15026

Plus that makeup is just yes

nitsua60

2:53 AM

@doppelgreener I was kinda wondering if you'd have some time to chime in. Hope the prep/study's going well. I do find it a little amusing, given our protection-disagreement, that I'm the one arguing "no, re-protect it all and deal with it from that direction."

@BESW I and my experience agree with all this.

@Ash Like, if that's the root for elf, it's almost certainly not meant literally; "white" probably means "beautiful" in context with an implication of otherworldliness, like how "green with envy" is not an actual color phrase. And the connection of elf to that root is purely speculative. There's other possible roots which don't have that connotation at all.

user15026

@BESW I love it. Although now I am going to have to look up green with envy because I am curious why that is

user15026

(also I almost wrote green with enby which is likely something very different ;))

@Ash I believe you have, on occasion, been green with enby.

user15026

I suspect yes you are correct

3:07 AM

(And yes there's some potentially messy stuff going on with Nordic/Germanic associations of white with beauty but modern white/black race structures don't apply to that era/society's conceptions of race anyway so tbbbt to Mr. White Elves even if his entire frame of hIsToRiCaL aCcUrAcY wasn't farcical.)

5:06 AM

Hey, I’m looking at the review queues, and I’m not sure how to phrase a comment on mjornelle’s answer to this question

Is there standard wording for basically “look, glad you want to contribute, but you need to think about a) giving more details, b) does this question really need another answer, and c) is this answer actually answering the question

Or is no action needed

Thomas Parrott reports (twitter link) that Black Library (a publishing division of Games Workshop) terminated their association with him for calling out bigotry on Twitter.

Nvm @linksassin just commented with a welcome

But I can’t tell if it needs improvement, my wikisense is out of date a bit

Q: Pre-made comments: A resource-gathering & workshopping thread

@BardicWizard For the future you may find this a helpful resource to build your own collection of comment forms:

17

Pre-made comments are awesome. They're also super powerful tools. Let's workshop some new ones and improve the old ones! You've probably seen pre-made comments[i] used across the site by moderators, both diamond and not. They're efficient and help reduce the busywork of moderation[ii], but they'...

discussion comments

@BESW thanks

linksassin

5:24 AM

@BardicWizard I was having the same problem. They aren't wrong and I didn't want to discourage them but I couldn't find a succient way to say what was wrong with the post. I decided to leave a blanket welcome and then come back to it.

Your comment was good. I think that basically covers it.

@linksassin thanks. I stole from the link BESW posted for it so it’s not all my own work

linksassin

@BardicWizard I think if the goal is polite encouragement, some slight stealing is acceptable :)

Shalvenay

7:03 AM

@BESW I for a minute there thought it was folks cosplaying colorful elves that the thread was referring to, not colorful folks cosplaying elves...challenge time: colorful folks cosplaying differently-colorful elves?

A: Should we reprotect the 700 or so questions that were unprotected in the last few weeks?

10:17 AM

0

Yes, we should absolutely reprotect those questions. We didn't protect them for kicks, and having all of them become unprotected is actively harmful for us. As BESW summed up in chat, questions tend to get protected for one of three reasons: (1) a question hits HNQ and attracts nonsense, (2) a qu...

I made that meta post. @nitsua60 @Medix2 @BESW @Ash

[applause]

10:34 AM

I don't really see why it was put up for debate in the first place.

LizWeir

I mean, the whole thing here is that someone did something major without doing a temperature check on how the community as a whole feel about it; checking where people are at, and having a record of how people feel for future similar occurrences, seems like a good plan to me.

5

And there are a few different responses getting support on the meta, which I think solidly justifies making a meta post to discuss it.

Even if it's an issue that should be re-visited, the time for that debate is not in the immediate aftermath of a stealthy mass action. Take the temperature, sure? but that's very different from putting the very concept on trial.

And I think it should be the mods who made the choice about how to frame the discussion.

at the time discussion about it started I think it was unclear how easy it would be to undo what was done and something had already kicked off about in chat? (I wasn't there and haven't read the logs)

11:20 AM

@Carcer Stack Exchange staff can just go ahead and reinstate literally every protected question provided mods simply ask them to do it.

Mods say so and it's done. We don't even need to do anything ourselves.

Zero effort on this community's part.

I've added mention of that to my answer.

trogdor

11:37 AM

It definitely seems like something that shouldn't have been done in the first place

If only because of the sheer number of posts it was done to

Q: Make unprotection disqualify questions from further auto-protection

11:54 AM

I'd also like to point out that a simple principle of the Internet is that everyone has been trained to Have An Opinion.

Bring up a subject, ask a question, and everyone will come flocking in to share their view regardless of whether they have any actual knowledge or understanding, or if they've ever thought about it before they saw the post five seconds earlier.

Loudness and popularity of a hot-button topic doesn't mean it's a question that was festering in the community's soul unspoken.

(Oh, and I think that auto-protected questions will never be auto-protected again once they've been manually unprotected. That's an automatic defense system which can't be relied on after it's been overridden.)

Apr 1 '19 at 6:46, by BESW

"After all, in my experience, one wizard's lonely, two's an argument, and three adds up to two bitterly opposed alliances and a splinter group rapidly gaining in popular support."
("Time Shall Not Mend", AJ Hall)

Someone_Evil

@BESW I would have guessed so as well, but would appear not to be true:

26

When Community Wiki status is removed from a question, it makes that question ineligible to be automatically converted back to wiki status again. (Ignore the fact that auto-CW doesn't exist any more for a moment...) This functionality should be extended to protection as well. Auto-protection doe...

feature-request protected-questions

Not that I think we should lazily rely on the autoprotection to do this, and I'm not sure that's anyone's suggestion

(this being whatever we end up doing)

12:28 PM

@doppelgreener I apologise if I've hit a nerve or similar on that meta, btw, it feels like the tone of that conversation is... bad

I'd be frustrated, at best, if I'd spent years as one of the most active spam-smotherers on the site and then a whole bunch of people ignored my testimonials and hard evidence because they want to see for themselves the spam that I'd worked so hard to free the site of.

12:42 PM

@Someone_Evil Well it was that one person's suggestion to just completely remove protection voting and people did agree with it

@BESW tbqh there wasn't any hard evidence given that I was aware of, and the only thing I have heard is KorvinStarmast going through 120 of the unprotected posts and saying only 4 should be reprotecred

Um. Charcoal and our own meta year-in-review stats?

Yeah which nobody linked to or mentioned until today

And that's a problem.

I'm very glad it has been now

this is very frustrating

12:49 PM

If the mods, or somebody like Greener, had been involved in composing the question on meta, then we wouldn't have all these answers that are based on memories of the years before the spam bots hit, or low-rep impressions of spam curation frequency, rather than the post-2018 spam reality.

And then they wouldn't have to deal with being told they're wrong and choosing to either take their lumps for jumping the gun, or try to defend their hot takes.

Instead it's all hasty shotgun pellet debate and the tone will be bad because the debate wasn't opened carefully.

@BESW Aren't the current answers all from past and current mods?

@Medix2 "I was a mod for nearly ten years" carries a lot less weight as an expert in site spam when the reality is they were a mod for only one year after the spam bots started really targeting us.

(as is the question itself. nitsua might not be a mod anymore, but they're hardly an unthoughtful user)

Drawing on memories of the years before the spam wars actually weakens the argument because they're using the before times as evidence for the now times.

@Carcer I'm not saying Nitsua is generally unthoughtful, but that particular pair of questions seem hasty. Uncharacteristically so, but that doesn't make them not.

MikeQ

Everything changed when the spam nation attacked...

12:56 PM

I mean. Yes. SIX HUNDRED AND SIX users were deleted in 2018.

@BESW maybe so. The point there perhaps is just that it wouldn't automatically be better just because a mod asked.

@Carcer A mod probably would have consulted with the other mods before posting, giving the subject a chance to breathe and suggestions for context to be made.

@BESW and this is my disconnect again - I don't want to wade back into it in the meta itself but that is a number of spam accounts I look at and go "okay, that's some spam"

We destroyed 165 in 2019.

but it's not a "huge" amount of spam

based on my previous experience in other parts of the internet

so I have a hard time empathising here with the analogy about tearing down the walls of a fortress

1:00 PM

BESW can I use your thing about old mods not being here for the important history?

Only if you verify it yourself instead of quoting me.

I'm just gonna drop it. I did not like being talked down to like I don't have any relevant experience but I don't want to perpetuate this either

I'm gonna stop talking about this because I don't actually much care about the spam issue, the Stack Overlords don't deserve any of my time. I just sympathize with Greener for all the work she's done being treated as disposable.

I need lunch

And I just. I have no printable response to "it could be worse."