« first day (4141 days earlier)      last day (808 days later) » 

12:02 AM
One of the major distinctions between SG-1 and the rest of the Stargate franchise is that its main characters are written as ethically hypercompetent as well as hypercompetent within their professional specialties.
 
Does McGuyver count?
 
Almost certainly!
And I'm guessing One Punch Man does not count because his hypercompetence is not a viable solution to his problems.
There's also a whole pseudo-genre of youth fiction in this vein, some of it (like Henry Reed) more quality than others (eg The Hardy Boys).
 
lol yeah actually
One Punch man is specifically about the main character missing the point of what a hero actually is
IMO at least
 
Henry Reed is a series of novels about a comically hyper-competent teenager who basically Phineas & Ferbs his way through summer vacations in a sleepy New Jersey neighborhood. His problems tend to come from people underestimating him, or from succeeding more than he thought he could, or from complicating factors he couldn't possibly have anticipated.
 
Hey, the first... ten-ish books of the Hardy boys were okay. Everything after that was a downward slope.

What was the canonical explanation for Sorcerers using Charisma in D&D? It just sort of... doesn't make much sense to me, since a "force of will" argument falls flat because Wisdom is the standard force-of-will stat.
 
12:15 AM
(For example, he decides to test the efficacy of dowsing rods by digging a few shallow wells on an empty lot. He hits oil instead of water, which gets a lot of adults to behave in very silly ways before it's clarified that he just broke into a forgotten fuel tank.)
64
Q: Why do Sorcerers use Charisma?

Sorcerer BlobSorcerers use Charisma as their primary Ability Score for spell-casting in Dungeons and Dragons. Wizards use Intelligence to cast, and Clerics use Wisdom. Intelligence and Wisdom make sense for the respective character classes, both mechanically and flavor-wise. Why do Sorcerers use Charisma? W...

@Phoenices You might find The House on the Point interesting. Benjamin Hoff re-wrote the original Hardy Boys #2 House on the Cliff as a kind of "I loved these books but they could have been so much better" tribute.
And I'm by no means saying that the Hardy Boys books are bad. Just, perhaps, overall less worth re-visiting as an adult compared to some of their contemporaries.
(I have a personal fondness for the Three Investigators books, especially the Robert Arthur ones, though their characters aren't as clearly hyper-competent)
 
Jack Reacher is the one that sprang to mind as exactly fitting that description. (And I see that ASR mentions them later down.) Lee Child(s?) is the author. They're a bit more explicitly violent in the hand-to-hand bits than I remember from Ludlum, but it's been multiple decades since I read Bourne.
If that ^^ doesn't bother you, probably worth checking one out. If you like it, there's like twenty more clones. But don't go looking for anything to really change, except maybe the hair color of the woman Reaacher has a fling with.
 
Oh! @bobble Consider the Erast Fandorin novels by Boris Akunin, and the Albert Campion novels by Margery Allingham.
 
googling
 
I'm not sure if they'll scratch the itch but they're really good and the main characters are, each in their own way, very very competent.
 
Stephen Hunter is also in that genre. Point of Impact is a good point of entry into his corpus, unless you've seen the movie Shooter (with Snipey Mark Wahlberg). I don't know if the current show Shooter would similarly spoil Point of Impact. (Or even if it's actually related.)
 
12:29 AM
Fandorin is a police detective in pre-revolutionary Russia, who gets increasingly improbable skills (like ninja training) and each of his novels is a different genre of mystery; spy thriller, tragic romance, murder-on-a-boat, political intrigue, etc.
 
Wait, murder on a boat is a genre by itself? How many are there?
 
Campion is the black sheep of a high-ranking British noble family from the 1920s to the 1960s, who bills himself "a kind of universal uncle." His greatest skills are keen observation, the ability to befriend people from all walks of life, and a foolish face that makes people underestimate or even ignore him.
 
murder on a boat is at least a subgenre
 
@bobble As a subset of murder mysteries, sure. More than "science fiction" is a genre (that's barely more than an aesthetic).
 
lol
 
12:34 AM
It's part of the "closed circle (of suspects)" category, where the number of possible suspects is severely limited and nobody can meaningfully arrive or leave for an extended period of time. "Snowed in at the ski lodge," "on a ship at sea," etc.
 
basically, if there is a murder on a boat it opens up a lot of different opportunities to a murder story
@BESW yes this, although there's also opportunities like "oh another boat showed up" or "but the lifeboat is missing, along with insert person's name here"
 
For Fandorin, the third novel Murder on the Leviathan starts with a murder on land but Fandorin knows for certain that the murderer will be a first-class passenger on the Leviathan so he boards the ship as well.
Which is an entertaining twist.
(It reminds me of the Lupin story where the ship gets a telegraph saying Lupin is on board and gives such a vague description of the thief's disguise that it causes chaotic levels of suspicion.)
Lupin is another example of a hypercompetent character, but he's more in the Sherlock Holmes "never actually challenged" category.
@trogdor Would you say Murderbot counts as competence porn?
 
yes
but it also has bonus "AAAHH why do I have to interact with humans AAAAHH!" in there too
I would say as long as you are ok with the competence porn itself being limited to a specific set of competencies then yes
it's not hypercompetency at literally everything Murderbot does, but it's still a lot of hyper competence
 
I think it counts so long as the competence is a major problem-solving tool when it's leveraged in the right way.
Which I think Murderbot does well.
@bobble The Murderbot stories are good.
 
12:49 AM
I seem to have accumulated a lot of recommendations :)
3
 
I might also reccomend the Xandri series
 
Probably should have mentioned before - I'm fine with swearing, gore, etc. but would appreciate content warnings for pupettering mind control. (specifically pupettering, where someone is forced to move against their will and thoughts)
 
it's got a lot more going on than competence porn, but there is a lot of it not only in the main character but also in the rest of the crew of the ship she starts working on
@bobble I have an issue with similar things like that myself
Xandri does have a bit of a Dystopian thing going on as well though just as a CW for that
the main characte is Austistic in a space faring future where humanity has met and allied with a diverse set of Aliens, but the Alliance itself has gotten into some Eugenics stuff that,..... is rather uncomfortable to me personally
the author did it on purpose because it's bad (IE to point out how ****ed up it is), and I'm hoping the fourth book will be about abolishing it, but it's in there for sure
 
Puppeteering... significant and/or recurring in: Ipcress File, Thunderbirds (not Thunderbirds Are Go), the entire Stargate franchise, Murderbot (traumatic backstory treated respectfully, it's what the main character escapes before the story starts)
Occurs in: some specific episodes of Sapphire & Steel, The Expanse (arguable)
 
@BESW Murderbot also has a little of at least the fear of that in the last book too
 
1:06 AM
@bobble there's no puppeteering in Intensity, or any other book I've recommended AFAIR
 
I would avoid the "Children of Time" and it's sequel "Children of Ruin"
uh,... major body horror body puppeting in that
I actually had to stop reading it for a week and then read like, a paragraph a day at some points because it was messing me up reading that
 
@BESW Some of those might not be strictly puppeteering; some of them are probably more along the lines of brainwashing or similar "change the person's mind to change their behavior" tropes. But listed them just to be safe.
 
the series I just mentioned is,... more complicated than puppeteering but honestly that just makes it worse
it's a whole thing
 
Ian Yusem wrote a "HULL BREACH EASTER EGGS THREAD" on twitter
Pidj Sorensen shared "A spoiler-free preview" of The Station current black-and-white draft (without the art by @mellifics of course)"
tori truslow announced their ZiMo project TENDING (with link to newsletter signup)
Barrow Of The Elf King by Highland Paranormal Society. A dungeon for analog adventure games
 
1:50 AM
The Great Bork Team by Haiduc. A bite-sized RPG about sled dogs on a perilous trip home.
 
2:38 AM
Huh, the top question right now (duplicate about control targeting) looks very borked to me on mobile, with overlapping images of the same stuff and part of the front page on it. I suspect it's because it's a duplicate.
 
3:08 AM
@BardicWizard "To cut or not to cut up old quilts" by Meguey Baker on Medium.
 
 
3 hours later…
5:50 AM
@BESW oh, interesting! I have no time to read this now but I have Opinions just from the title (and experience of my own)
Never mind. I just read it and completely agree with her argument
Personally I don’t cut up stuff much but that’s because every handmade thing I have comes from Bisa and Great-Grandma, so I have sentimental reasons not to cut
 
6:24 AM
XD
 
 
2 hours later…
 
2 hours later…
10:03 AM
2
Q: Can you prevent players using cantrips to tell whether a creature is disguised as an object

TREBAs it is established in the question below that there is some distinction between a cantrip that targets a creature and targeting an object: What happens when a caster targets an object that looks like a creature with a spell that targets only creatures? Considering cantrips have unlimited use th...

 
 
2 hours later…
12:07 PM
@HotRPGQuestions In a world where any competent wizard society can run a battery of tests to figure out your ability scores, hit dice, and saves, this seems like an extremely niche concern.
 
12:31 PM
@BESW there's not too many that do directly
 
No, but in most editions of D&D there's enough clear, discernible, and predictable in-game interaction with meta-game concepts, that it can be puzzled out.
Jan 12 '13 at 4:07, by BESW
I find it difficult to imagine that in a world where spells effect creatures in recognizable, quantifiable ways that are directly based on HD, and the same world is filled with towers of wizards dedicated to fully understanding the universe in general and magic in particular, that nobody sat down for some empirical testing to figure out what HD are.
 
this is a great example of how by focusing on combat being special D&D leaves gaps that it doesn't help you fill in
@BESW agreed
 
Hence "run a battery of tests," not "cast see your character sheet"
But yes, that too: when a system is built for one kind of game, it breaks when you play another game with it.
 
o.
wait, let me get my arm up
o/
good morning!
 
yawp!
 
12:46 PM
I have been watching the Hobbit movies for background stimulation while I work this past week, because my executive function has not exactly been fully there for me the past few days.
Before that it was the Lord of the Rings extended cuts, which I've seen numerous times before in similar circumstances. They'll accompany me for 2 days, maybe at most 3.
 
@doppelgreener Needed more Sylvester McCoy!
 
But by comparison this is only the second time I've seen the Hobbit movies.
@BESW You're right about that.
 
I've been watching Supernatural for similar effect, and my mother's been watching Knight Rider.
 
I've had a project of watching films again that I haven't seen since I've started transitioning, because media is affecting me differently now. I'm getting emotional responses where there were none before; perception is just different what with depersonalisation being lesser
 
Oooh
 
12:53 PM
(depersonalisation being an overlooked symptom of gender dysphoria that affects at least a quarter of trans people before they begin transitioning)
I've also got a beter critical eye now. While before I'd just watch things unquestioning and piece things together afterwards as I talked with people, I'm now doing that at the time. I'm noticing the ways the film's working and the ways it isn't, I'm articulating (not just subconsciously noticing) its mistakes or where it's having problems.
Like the plot hole in Inception where "the kick" is meant to be a way to jerk someone out of the dream state that cannot possibly fail, but then when it matters in the plot, it inexplicably fails? My friend noticed that immediately when it happened, but I didn't notice until they pointed things out to me. Now I'm noticing things like that on first watch, and not just subconsciously (I know something's wrong but don't know what it is) but can pinpoint and articulate it.
Anyway all that is to say that while the Hobbit movies were kind of unsatisfying and spread-too-thin and occupied with filler the first time around, this time I'm really noticing that lol.
 
We've been watching a lot of 70s/80s TV where the lower budgets and fast turn-arounds mean a lot more of the tricks and techniques to push through bad shooting days, last-minute re-writes, technical errors, executive meddling, etc., are left unpolished and easier to spot.
Seeing them out in the open like that makes it easier to spot them in higher-budget shows too.
 
Ooo.
That sounds like fun.
I've been beginning to notice dialog that was inserted in edit.
 
Oh yeah, that's big.
 
Like, the first Hobbit movie has a section they're riding through the forest and leaving the Shire behind. There's one far shot where Gandalf speaks a few words to Bilbo, and I thought: "wait a minute, that wasn't originally part of this cut at all. They just laid that over because we needed the information and they didn't have a good opportunity to use the cut those words belonged to."
 
Last week I watched an episode of Murder, She Wrote where I'm pretty sure they didn't have enough time shooting on a particular set to get all the footage they needed, so they shot the most important parts... and then shot Lansbury and a guest character in an available diner set with one of them telling the other what happened, using the main shots as flashback material and filling in the gaps with diner narration.
 
1:05 PM
that's pretty clever actually
 
@doppelgreener Yeah, the telltale "dialogue at a distance or angle so you can't see the mouth" gimmick gets pretty easy to spot. I'm starting to develop an ear for how the sound quality changes too, though a film with a budget like Hobbit usually covers the audio mixing pretty well.
@doppelgreener I probably wouldn't have noticed it, except I'd already seen much clumsier versions of the same trick in the 1979 Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew show.
But that's nothing compared to the absolutely heroic effort by the editors of Moffat's Jekyll. There's a whole bar fight scene missing for some reason--if I had to guess they shot it with continuity in costuming and set that made it unusable when scene orders changed later on in production.
So they have to cut from "Jekyll makes a threat in the bar" to "the other guy hits the pavement in a shower of glass," and the editor and sound guy do their best to sell it as an intentional "too awesome to show you" smash cut and they almost make it work.
 
oh boy, i remember that
I think Hbomb covered that in his Sherlock analysis
 
He probably did, but it was bad enough that my untrained eye noticed it at the time.
There were some very talented people who couldn't save that show but gave it their hardest try.
 
Oh, yep, he did, just before the 20 minute mark
@BESW the better for future job interviews: "Can you work well under pressure or difficult circumstances?" "I did editing for Jekyll." "You're hired"
 
Hahah, yes.
As Mikey Neumann says, any film (or TV show) is a miracle just for existing. I don't begrudge Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew for having to sell the same backlot street set as New York City, New Orleans, Honolulu, and San Francisco. But I'm gonna be really entertained by the attempt.
There's an episode of Murder, She Wrote where they sent a duplicate set of Lansbury's wardrobe for the story to Moscow and filmed a stunt double on location in very long-distance shots. Long shot of Jessica walking across Gorky Park until she sits down in front of a nondescript stone statue pedestal; cut to Lansbury in the same outfit sitting in front of a nondescript stone backdrop on set for her dialogue.
That's not bad, that's brilliant and I love that I could notice it so I can appreciate it.
 
1:20 PM
that's pretty clever
 
It's one of the things I love about shows like Sapphire & Steel which are just an absolute masterclass of "Do everything you possibly can with what little you've been given, lean into your strengths but never overreach." And also I love that so much of classic Doctor Who has the exact opposite approach, going "so what if all you have is a handful of novelty magnets, a cookie tray, and some leftover spray paint, do your best and we'll just tell them it's an advanced computer."
@doppelgreener Next time you watch Stargate episodes, keep an eye out for every time the ka-woosh is a strobe-light effect just off screen, instead of a costly CGI effect.
Or better yet, think about why they chose to spend money on the ka-woosh visual when they do.
 
1:36 PM
This past watch of Lord of the Rings I've been noticing all the scale doubles, including all the scenes they probably used Brett Beattie, and their tendency to do close-ups whenever one of the shorter characters are talking.
 
@BESW I was reading this thinking, 'Gosh I wish I noticed these things rather than just getting sucked in', and then I read this and realised I had noticed that
 
@BESW I will look out for that. :D
@BESW And this!
 
To bring this back around to TRPGs, I have no solid answers but a lot of questions about how our media influences our games.
TV shows and movies make decisions based on pre-writing, re-writing, editing, multiple takes, executive meddling, meeting time slot expectations, franchise contracts, union requirements...
Some of these things, like the baseline requirements for a show to get syndicated, or the merchandising potential of a franchise, have shaped and re-shaped the way entire industries function down to the kinds of stories that get told and how they're told.
And TRPGs? Our tables have none of those pressures unless we're, say, streaming it for an audience, and then the pressures are still very different.
But we learned how to tell stories --how to structure a scene or identify a villain, what makes a satisfying motive or an effective denoument, the pacing of a story and what makes it a story rather than a collection of events-- most of us learned all that from books and movies and TV shows, so we bring a lot of conventions to the table that may only be useful because they're familiar.
 
at the same time though, there's things to learn from handling people who can't make it to a session or other issues
 
1:47 PM
Absolutely, I'm not saying there's nothing to learn from intersemiotics.
But, for example, a lot of the problems I see around GMing, from burnout to authoritarianism, would be more easily mitigated if the table weren't being held to the same standards as edited media.
And I don't mean we should "lower" our standards, rather than the standards and expectations of edited media simply don't apply to our tables; we need standards that make sense for our games.
As fun as it is that systems like Fate are really good at recreating familiar patterns in other media, anti-canon games like Mnemonic and hero-less games like Wanderhome, tactile games like Dread and participatory games like Great Bork Team, are doing things that only TRPGs can do and I'm super excited about that.
BJ Games said on twitter "The GM is not god." Yes they are. If that shocks you, you're probably monotheist: You see, the other players are gods, too.
Put it this way: both a TV show and a TRPG can smash-cut past a fight scene. But the potential reasons for doing so, and the effect is might have on the pacing and characterization, are wildly different in each case.
TRPGs never have to throw a punch off-screen for budget or safety reasons, but if you're in a system where failure works certain ways skipping a fight may be the only way to keep it from having an outcome nobody wants--which is something a scripted fight never worries about.
 
2:13 PM
@BESW true, but you can look at how a smash-cut past a fight feels in a show, and then see if you can replicate that in a game
D&D 4e minions come close I guess
 
@ThomasMarkov And there was great rejoicing ...
 
2:59 PM
I'm skeptical about the read on the silver coins vs werewolves question.
The artistry and process of "silvering" just sounds like it's just the process of coating it with silver, but not making it, you know, worse at doing its job. The sword has to be silver-coated, but still maintain its cutting edge, for example.
A club made of pure silver would already be inherently silvered, as would silver coins. But one of these is a lehtal weapon, the other is ... some coins, and the coins are going to hurt a lot less.
 
o/ @doppelgreener hope all is well ^_^
 
o/
I'm doing well! Things are nice.
I've been getting into Guilty Gear Strive again and really enjoying it this time around.
 
@doppelgreener idk, a half dollar in a sling would hurt
 
oh, sure
 
@doppelgreener Sure, but silvering a club costs 100 gp, nailing some coins to a club costs however many silver pieces you use.
 
3:03 PM
It's a gameplay abstraction. Nailing those coins to a club only counts if you spend 100gp to do it, lol
 
@BESW Yeah, I don't come around here as often as I probably should... miss the more interesting conversations. :P
 
@doppelgreener one sec, I need to remind myself which game that is
 
What I'm suggesting is while the silvered sword would deal the damage a sword could do, the sock of coins would deal the damage a bunch of coins would do (so ... not much)
 
@doppelgreener Fair, if my player has the strength to wield a club with 1000 silver pieces nailed to it, I'll allow it to work on a werewolf.
 
3:05 PM
Actually, apparently 1000 quarters only weighs 5.6 kg.
 
@doppelgreener anime street fighter?
 
@goodguy5 More or less!
But I like it a lot more.
 
fair
 
There's an ease-of-access spectrum in fighting games. In Street Fighter, I have to do a creative form of finger-based acrobatics just to access the basic moves, and combo strings are nearly frame-perfect (so make sure you hit that button in the correct tenth-of-a-second interval!). That's on one end of the spectrum, alongside Tekken, and some few games are further behind it.
 
@doppelgreener my issue is not with using silver coins, it's that a blackjack isn't a silvered weapon. It just has silver inside
 
3:09 PM
The skill floor to do basic stuff is low, but the skill floor to do even rudimentary advanced stuff is way high up.
 
@doppelgreener oof. virtua fighter too hard lol
I'm getting too old and crotchety (33) to put that time and effort in.
 
Meanwhile, Smash Bros is on the other end of the spectrum. Want to do a move? Push one button. Want to do your more complex moves? Push that button and a direction. That's it! You know everything there is to know about your character now. Go and have fun using those moves. The skill floor is low for even fairly advanced stuff. You have to practice those things, but controlling the character at all is not itself the major obstacle.
 
@doppelgreener Ive revised my answer to allow it for 1000 sp.
 
Guitly Gear Strive is very close to the Smash Bros end of the spectrum in terms of ease-of-access. It's why I'm playing it at all. It's why I can play it at all. It's super available to learn because they just nailed every single part of the game's ease-of-access that I can think of.
 
ah okay
 
3:12 PM
Your moves are a button, possibly a direction, possibly a quarter circle or a half-circle, and that's about as complex as it gets, and there's so much you can do with that.
And the skill ceiling is super high. There's so much to practice to combine and put things together. There's a lot of room to develop. I love it.
@ThomasMarkov brilliant, lol
good point about the effective discount of doing otherwise
@goodguy5 that's also fair and true. it's fun to give it the benefit of the doubt though
 
@ThomasMarkov Kanabō and Macuahuitl come to mind
 
@AncientSwordRage oh, yes. those are fun.
This reminds me of something a swordsman friend told me about once.
 
@doppelgreener I'm imagining a tetsubo with silver coins instead of iron studs
 
Swords are kinda bad. They're a basic weapon, but they're not a very good one. Spears, clubs, axes, etc are all way, way more lethal—it's why people use them—it just so happens that the sword is a very good weapon with which to start learning the basics. When a knight or samurai would be heading to war, they'd be likely using one of those they've managed to train with, and using their sword only as a fallback if they lose access to their main weapon.
 
3:21 PM
@goodguy5 I think that's what I was thinking of when I shared the Kanabō
 
The reason we associate gallant heroes with swords is because they're the weapons you were able to bring into town, and that's generally true both in Japanese society and Western society. If you've got a sword on your hip, that's something to protect yourself with; if you're carrying an axe or a spear, you're going somewhere to kill somebody.
This means whenever an ordinary person saw a warrior, they probably saw them with a sword. The warrior's axes and spears would be seen by those they were fighting with or against.
 
@AncientSwordRage and it's only like 150 or so coins
 
@doppelgreener those are specialised weapons, but the sword is very general - that's what I'm taking from what your swordsman friend said
@doppelgreener now that's interesting
 
The sword is the crowbar of battle.
2
Need to stab something?
sword
need to swing something?
sword
need to hold it backwards and swing the spike pommel like a pickaxe?
sword

Battle's over and need to pry open a chest?
sword
 
It's the equivalent of a pistol on your hip vs carrying an assault rifle around. Following the same rules, seven centuries in the future, the heroes of the 20th century battlefield will all use pistols, and only the weird unusual people will have a rifle or a bazooka or a sniper rifle. All real fighting? Done with pistols.
 
3:26 PM
Mmmm. Not quite sure that tracks. I think it's more rifles vs. tanks there for a modern comparison.
 
(please do not use swords to pry things open, for all kinds of reasons)
 
alternate metal weapons and crowbars reminds me.

my standard kit items ranging back to 3.x (and maybe beyond) included a cold iron crowbar and a silvered dagger. just to make sure I had them.
@doppelgreener 1. it's a pun.
2, I'm pretty sure there's precedent for prying open things with the base of the blade. one sec
eh, I either can't find it, misunderstood what I saw whenever it was, or imagined it.
but still, the primary joke was "prying open a [person's] chest"
 
10
Q: How can I introduce twists to a heist when the dice always succeed?

Richard WintersI think it's pretty well known that the best heists are those where the party gathers information, makes plans, gets their gear together, and then in the middle of executing the plan something happens to force them to improvise and change what they're doing on the fly. It's that difference betwe...

 
@goodguy5 oh boy. okay i get you now
 
@HotRPGQuestions I'm forced to recall the Rick & Morty heist episode
I think the joke should have just been.
The sword is the crowbar of battle, they're both good for opening up other people's chests.
 
3:47 PM
True story: responding to this DDoS interrupted my Friday DnD 5e campaign w/ friends. My level 5 Tiefling Warlock got put into NPC / follower mode for 90 mins while I jumped in and helped the team. DDoSers: so freaking inconsiderate of others' time :P. — Haney ♦ 3 mins ago
 
3:57 PM
@DarthPseudonym That is the issue with 999 silver pieces - 1000 sp is the bare minimum to get sufficient thread stretch upon impact. — Thomas Markov 10 mins ago
🤣
 
@BESW that's very interesting, but I do not like his format. the drawing while talking is super distracting.
anyone got an ergonomic mouse they like for gaming?
Mine is not quite on its way out, and I've like it very much as a mouse mouse, but it as a bit difficult to get used to to play games with.
 
4:49 PM
@AncientSwordRage Apparently he plays a Hexblade :P
 
5:02 PM
@V2Blast typical :p
 
Ah, the Hexblade warlock, the failed solution to the eternal dance of "Okay, this time I play warlock, I won't just do eldritch blast spam."
 
@ThomasMarkov agreed
 
6:00 PM
@AncientSwordRage A hastily made bludgeoning weapon with silver coins attached to it would probably have a pleasant jingle to it.
 
6:19 PM
@goodguy5 if it jingles they're probably not attached in a deadly enough formation
 
Nah, nah, goodguy is talking about tying coins on with string or something. That way you can reclaim them later.
Jingle coins, jingle coins
jingle all the way
Oh what fun it is to whack
Werewolves all the way!
There's a better way to write that, but I'm not motivated.
2
 
@AncientSwordRage They don't ALL have to jingle, but if I attached 150 of anything to anything else, some would jingle
@Phoenices nono, this is perfect
 
Is there an actual reason that there are no Mouth Marts around the city? Like, a shop that sells little earbuds that bing whenever there's an overflowing pot or burning food for 20 gp, earbuds that ting whenever someone is hiding nearby in a way that points out their direction for 150 gp, and earbuds that do both for 190 gp?
(via the 5e spell Magic Mouth, which is utterly ridiculous)
 
would that work? hrm....
 
The 150 gp earbud would require 8 or 12 tiny metal spheres inside a lead earbud. When there's an enemy in front of you, sphere 1 says "Twelve-o-clock!" quietly, for instance.
 
6:27 PM
I think that, and variants thereof, is a long standing worldbuilding thing with a number of fantasy worlds
 
"For example, you could instruct the mouth to speak when any creature moves within 30 feet of the object"
 
You get some lovely results if you say that those things do exist
 
Hmm, why can these goblins with magic scrolls and potions and mass-produced metal caltrops tell where we are?
Better yet, multipart conditions - these earbuds literally won't work for non-goblins.
"The triggering circumstance can be as general or as detailed as you like, though it must be based on visual or audible conditions that occur within 30 feet of the object"
 
how does one stealth past magic mouth?
 
One does not.
 
6:29 PM
that seems silly.
 
Doesn't Non-detection or mystic aura do something like that?
 
but pretty cool. I'll have to think on this
 
Goblins throwing caltrops that bing inaudibly when there's a nongoblin within 30 ft. That triggers the next caltrop which bings when another caltrop bings, and that triggers a goblin's earbud.
Someone_Evil - pretty sure not. This is an illusion, not a divination!
Magic mouth is just an illusion with... perfect knowledge of everything auditory or visual within 30 ft?
 
My first thought for it is a large room with hundreds of 5 foot tiles that bing when someone is standing on them
 
No, you just enchant ten of the bricks in the walls to bing when someone is within 30 ft and they haven't binged for one second.
(or just a whispery sound, since the Magic Mouth caster has to be able to say it)
 
6:32 PM
@Phoenices eh, I want the specific 5foot square for rogue reasons
 
Aah
 
@Phoenices I can say "bing"
 
Also, hack to MM - use a 70ft rope. Now MM has a very, very long range, and the rope reports back to your earbud.
 
@Phoenices So, what if I have a perfect tower shield that completely covers me on the front and goes to the ground, and I approach the magic mouth who's trigger is to bing at a person?
 
Yeah, but you probably want the targets not knowing about it.
MM goes through walls
(and I was thinking of a high or low frequency bing at first, that most people can't hear but MM earbuds can)
 
6:34 PM
@Phoenices I mean, you could certainly just blow on it. it'd be a little weird, but wouldn't immediately alert someone to "THEY SET OFF AN ALARM"
 
"Then speak the message, which must be 25 words or less, though it can be delivered over as long as 10 minutes."
Gotta be actual words, unless it doesn't!
 
I mean, a sigh is a message
 
There are arguments that could be made either way, I think.
 
My wife sends me that message often (in response to my jokes)
 
Ah, but is a sigh 25 words or less? Does that mean "must be words, and less than 25 of them"? Does it mean "Less information than 25 words"? What's going on?
 
6:37 PM
I think <=25 utterances
 
I will make a new utterance: basiliskcomingtowardsyou30ftnorthnorthwestopentunnelsouthwestofyou
 
but you could also just whisper a word that sounds like blowing, I'm sure there's a good candidate, like "who"
 
Yeah, exactly. Some random whispery thing.
Someday, I will have a villain/noble who enchants a string thousands of feet long with the top thousand most common words, so it will say them when it hears them, and sneaks it through a palace or something.
 
I think my immediate next use of Magic Mouth is going to be
Party enters an area, every 6 seconds the thing (prob a statue) counts down from 20.
20!
19!
etc
1!

A comedic amount of pause time.

I thought you'd run off.
@Phoenices a weird intercom
 
Plus illusions that make the floor tiles glow brightly with every number or something.
And of course, this noble has three incompetent servants writing down every word it says and trying to piece together the ten conversations happening at once.
hehehe some devious person completely messed with the honey market, so now you just need 9 gp worth of honey and 1 gp worth of jade dust, and honey is 15 gp per bottle.
This person previously bought 3000 acres of honey bee land.
 
6:44 PM
@goodguy5 I'll get working on the extension for Gmail then....
@Phoenices teach it Ithkuil
 
From what I know of German, it has some... options in that department too.
Heh, the day my players cooperate to construct a language that optimizes information density per word for MM is a wonderful and painful day.
We have one player who would think of that, and one player who is obsessed with languages, having made a large fraction of a language for when we went to the Feywild when she was DMing.
"No person, including Quijada himself, is known to be able to speak Ithkuil fluently."
 
@AncientSwordRage Is the joke "if I put 150 attachments into an email, some would jungle"?
 
Yep, looks like it
Yeah, see, my problem is that I want to have interesting overpowered things with MM (or even just useful things like helping with cooking/knowing when your package is here), but if I ever use it then my players will wield the dreadful power of Magic Mouth forevermore.
 
@Phoenices You could always not tell them how the devices work.
"Welcome to Mork's Magic Materials, I have a variety of items to make your every day life, a little less adventurous."
(^that message is less than 25 words)
In my head, the voice sounds like Tyson DeLeon from Borderlands 3
 
@goodguy5 preferably jingle, but I'll accept jungle.
 
6:57 PM
ha
 
I have considered this, yes. They could get suspicious when it doesn't identify on a short rest, can't be attuned, doesn't show up as magical to Detect Magic and so on.
 
@Phoenices I think it would show as magical, though, right?
 
@Phoenices pretty much
 
No, no, I can't let them detect that it's illusion, because then they'll know it's magic mouth (and a mouth appearing on it is a dead giveaway). It's a bunch of tiny metal pebbles inside a lead earbud, which is totally safe.
 
@Phoenices I mean, you could hide the mouths. And them knowing that it's illusion wouldn't immediately tip off my players. Maybe yours are smarter
 
7:00 PM
I have one who might comb through all the illusion spells, or already know. 1/3 chance of each. I know that seeing it was an illusion would make me curious enough to comb through all the illusion spells, since the effects don't seem very illusion-y.
 
Then just recast it as a divination spell that the wizard in question designed on his own.

Enchanted Orifice, or whatever
 
@goodguy5 Please never name anything again.
5
Wait, what? Nystul's magic aura is sort of useless, because when they Detect Magic it, instead of "transmutation," they get "illusion and abjuration."
 
7:30 PM
@Phoenices aren't you able to choose what school of magic the target appears as?
 
7:44 PM
@Yuuki Yeah, but you aren't able to choose what school of magic the Nystul's Magic Aura effect appears as.
 
@Phoenices i don't think anyone casting detect magic is able to separate nystul's magic aura from other effects
when someone casts detect magic, they'll first detect a magical aura. then, they can choose to more closely examine it. then, nystul's magic aura determines what they see when they examine the aura of the magical effect
 
But they can sense all the schools of magic involved, right? They sense Abjuration and Illusion.
"...see a faint aura around any visible creature or object in the area that bears magic, and you learn its school of magic, if any."
 
@Phoenices if nystul's caster specifies that the aura only belongs to abjuration, then the detector will only sense abjuration
 
@doppelgreener If you aren't too busy and up for it, I'd like to hear your thoughts about rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/q/11930/44723
 
> You change the way the target appears to spells and magical effects, such as detect magic, that detect magical auras. You can make a nonmagical object appear magical, a magical object appear nonmagical, or change the object’s magical aura so that it appears to belong to a specific school of magic that you choose.
 
8:25 PM
@Akixkisu The precursor to our FAQ "designer intent" meta was this one, asked just a month earlier: Is 'what is the rationale behind the design of X' a proper question for rpg.se?. I think it's important to bear in mind the nature by which designer-intent reasons didn't work, and I think my answer there actually catalogues what was going on a bit better.
After a series of questions about "why did the D&D folks make feature X the way it is?" we came up with these guidelines I described:
> Per multiple previous discussions, questions about a designer's intent, reasoning, etc, has only one acceptable type of answer: an answer that cites explicit designer statements demonstrating conclusively what they were thinking or what their intent or reasoning was, because they are saying so and we are quoting them saying so — or something very close to equally convincing. Answers not providing citation of this level get deleted.
> These rules exist because otherwise we get a lot of answers containing pure speculation on what somebody thinks the designer might have been thinking. Sometimes these answers also attempt to reverse engineer conclusions from some limited amount of related output in the game, but that doesn't make the speculation any more correct — it just means it now has truthiness. It's making guesses either way. Those answers aren't OK, and get removed.
In D&D's scope, the "why" was never really explained by anyone. Often there wasn't really much of a "why" other than it just so happened to leave the cutting room floor that way: the contracted writing staff wrote these words because they needed to hit a quota, and the editor snipped and changed some bits to fit it in.
More extreme examples of "there isn't really much of a why" exist in Pathfinder land where chapters and features would often have text added or removed so that the text column on the published book reached the exact bottom of the page, and for no other reason. Not that people were asking much about that; these questions were virtually all about D&D 5e. But it goes to show that people were asking for reasons that basically didn't exist.
Moreover, it's a closed editing process. The writers don't actually talk much about their reasoning or what they did or how and why they did it. Not like, say, Fate, where all the key designers are prolific bloggers talking about all of this all the time including waxing philosophical about the game system they built.
That simple lack of any available answer, combined with peoples' desire to see these questions answered, repeatedly lead to people just making up a plausible answer and asserting it's what the designers wanted. To them it seemed like they were doing detective work, but to us it was just making up a misleading story. People kept doing it so eventually we tipped the whole thing out and banned the category of questions.
Whether this question about Roll20 is viable or not is less about "is this a subcategory of designer reasons?" and more about "are we going to see the same exact thing happen?". Like, is there even a public answer? Do the designers have any tendency to talk about this thing?
 
@doppelgreener I think that is an interesting approach.
 
One aspect people were dissatisfied about with designer reasons is that the only viable way to answer (in D&D 5e's scope) was to go bug the designers for an answer then come back with it, so the thought was, well, people asking the question should just do that themselves instead of outsourcing to us. It's not like (again) Fate where there's tons of blogs to go research where an answer actually probably already exists.
And even then it's not like they're necessarily authoritative about it — we saw tons of ruling contradiction between Mearls and Crawford because nobody "owned" the text. Who "owns" this paragraph halfway through this Wizard class feature? Who wrote it? Probably five people did overall.
So it wasn't even clear who to go bug for an answer.
 
yeah, with these kind of questions, i get to the point where i'm thinking that not every question needs to have an accepted answer and that valid answers can mention possible design goals and outcomes without requiring a specific source and then i just end up realizing that i'm trying to shoehorn something that doesn't fit SE's framework into SE's framework
 
I don't have it in me right now to synthesize an answer for that question since I'm not feeling well today, but I'm giving you this wall of text in hopes it'll help you understand the territory you're navigating with this meta so you can better resolve it.
 
@Yuuki had me in the first half, ngl
 
8:38 PM
@doppelgreener <- my actual answer I'm quoting here has links back to those multiple previous discussions for further reading if you want to do that
 
@doppelgreener Ah, unfortunately, I don't think I will resolve it, but I do appreciate the insight greatly — thank you! My answer there doesn't entirely reflect my thoughts about the situation. I'm myself still on sick leave and not entirely up to invest the amount of energy it would take to write a rhetorically persuasive answer - so I hope that isn't disappointing :)
 
That's just fine.
I appreciate you asking and I hope that wall of text can be just generally useful.
 
 
1 hour later…
10:12 PM
2
Q: Intelligent Magic Item Communication Modes

MichaelDorfIn the SRD, https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/intelligentItems.htm it is noted in the table under Intelligent Items ~ Languages Spoken By Item two footnotes 2 and 4. Footnote 2 reads 'Like a character, an intelligent item speaks Common plus one language per point of Intelligence bonus. It ca...

 
10:37 PM
2
Q: Would a bag of silver work against lycanthropes?

Rp_MasterSo I just read Weekly Roll #53 and saw that the paladin used a sock full of silver coins against a werewolf, would that really work?

4
Q: What level should my Alert spell be?

SeriousBriDuring the night my wizard casts the alarm spell around where he sleeps (yes, even inside his tiny hut) to make sure nobody tries to touch his stuff. During the day however he has to rely on his own senses, which is just too mundane for his liking, so he has been working on a spell for that. My c...

 
Ben
10:48 PM
May 20 '20 at 5:30, by Ben
> Wall of text: you confuse and aggravate an enemy. They must roll an Int save it be stunned for 1 round
Morning all
 
11:12 PM
@Ben why are you mourning all of us???
 
Ben
Sorry, that was a bit rude of me. I don't have any coffee so I just assumed the world was ending
 
11:30 PM
How many days since the last time to world ended?
 
@bobble when did Ben last have coffee?
 
Ben
[insert witty humor]
nailed it
 
@doppelgreener The one that blew it all up (lino frank ciarelli's correct answer about fire bolt) is the kind of answer that an expert in the game can answer, and yet one such expert went off on LFC in comments even though that expert has time and again argued that that kind of expertise is what we have here ... and the mods (can't recall if you were on the mod team yet or not, or if it was still just mxy and seven) got tired of the flame war and shut it all down. That's how I remember it.
But it all started with a question that was actually a rant about "it doesn't make sense to me" which is what forum posts are for in the first place.
 
11:53 PM
@doppelgreener We only have documentation that Paizo does this, but I'd be shocked if Wizards didn't do it regularly too.
 
Another unmentioned issue with the whole "did the devs say anything about it" thing is... developers don't always tell the full truth, whether because they're forgetting some part of a years-ago decision or trying to pad their reputation or Marketing/PR won't let them say what they'd like to.
A really good dev-reasons answer would compare statements with text and other evidences, but let's be honest, lit.se couldn't muster that level of critical thinking for something as obvious as The Philosophy of Composition being a blatant defense against accusations of plagiarism rather than an honest explanation of his writing process. I don't expect rpg.se to rise to an even higher level of analysis for a subject with so much less existing scholarship.
 

« first day (4141 days earlier)      last day (808 days later) »