TRPG General Chat

Alex P

13:00

I don't think our system-rec procedure is well-defined enough to really produce good answers consistently. And I think we couldn't define one that wouldn't force most questions in the category to be closed.

wax eagle

@AlexP it's better than when I first got here, but I agree. The question and answer standards that we've developed help, but you still get crappy answers with no backup, and questions that don't give sufficient requirements

in theory if you give sufficient requirements, and answers give appropriate backup, you can meet the criteria from 'good subjective, bad subjective', but ultimately I still believe you fail 'Q&A is hard, let's go shopping'

(and now one moment, while I find the links for those, because that's SE code)

Blog - Stack Exchange: Good Subjective, Bad Subjective

Robert Cartaino on September 29, 2010

Stack Exchange is about questions with objective, factual answers. We’ve been crystal clear about this for as long as I can remember, even back to the earliest, pre-beta days of Stack Overflow. It’s right there in the standard Stack Exchange FAQ:

What kind of questions should I not ask here?

Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered!

Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why? …

Blog - Stack Exchange: Q&A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!

Jeff Atwood on November 23, 2010

Over the last 2.5 years, we’ve identified a few problematic classes of questions that tend to get asked on our sites. Many of these are documented in our standard set of close reasons: exact duplicate, off-topic, subjective and argumentative, not a real question, and too localized.

However, as we launched the great Super User experiment, a new, previously unknown class of problematic questions emerged — the shopping recommendation.

That is, on Super User we began encountering questions like: …

BESW

I feel like GS/BS needs a pithier re-write that gets to the point.

If we're going to be linking it around so much, maybe it should be integrated into the help?

wax eagle

@BESW yeah, it's a long blog post to get the "give us something to test against dammit" criteria

Alex P

@BESW I think that's a sign we're linking it around too much.

doppelgreener

The Q&A is Hard thing is based on Too Localised which was ended as a close reason. Present discussions on Meta.SO have brought up the idea of "Obsolete" as a close reason. But whilst DDR2 RAM is no longer the best RAM to shop for, Call of Cthulhu is still a great horror game (or whatever).

I find that blog post problematic.

BESW

13:07

@JonathanHobbs He's not even online!

doppelgreener

@BESW xD

BESW

(sorry.)

doppelgreener

I think of that every time I use the word here.

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Yeah, but we do have questions that get obsoleted. Rarely, but we do.

wax eagle

@JonathanHobbs yeah, I realize that blog post get's thrown around a lot, and misused. We need a better "why we don't do rec questions" post to use to explain it.

doppelgreener

13:09

I find it especially problematic applied to system-recommendation questions. We do get people to be very specific. That may make it not useful to other people but that's no longer a valid close reason. But the answers don't necessarily go out of date.

wax eagle

ultimately the idea is that "it's useful only to the OP, and only in the moment that he's asking"

doppelgreener

@BESW Oh yeah definitely. Just that system recommendation questions don't necessarily go obsolete like shopping advice does.

wax eagle

which I guess in theory rec questions could be useful to others, if only for a list of games that meet arbitrary criteria, but when we make people narrow the criteria to make a question answerable, we limit it's usefulness to others...which is odd, but it's kind of true

doppelgreener

The thing that also bothers me about that blog post is he then goes on to say it's ok to ask "Q: What’s the best low light point-and-shoot camera?"

"A: Canon S90 and Lumix LX3."

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Yeah, that seemed like a blind spot or something.

doppelgreener

13:11

............ what's the difference between this and the shopping thing other than you're not using the words shopping and you're being specific?

so asking for a product recommendation is okay, if you're specific about your requirements. Asking how to identify the sort of product you need is more useful, but then may later go obsolete anyway as camera technology changes.

So, according to that blog post: the problem with shopping recommendations is (a) you need to be very specific, and (b) they go obsolete. But if you're specific, they're ok, even if they'll go obsolete.

Alex P

@JonathanHobbs Yah, it's a weird conclusion.

doppelgreener

It's a conclusion that cancels out half the original problem. It is un-logicked in what can only be described as a puff of un-smoke.

BESW

I'm reminded of the garbage bag effect in Brick.

wax eagle

@JonathanHobbs Jeff reaches odd conclusions sometimes.

doppelgreener

What's that?

@waxeagle I haven't read many of his blog posts to find out. But, yeah, that blog post is problematic. :( According to its recommendations, our sys-rec questions are fine: any sys-rec question either has the level of detail required to answer the question or is closed (possibly temporarily whilst detail is extracted from the asker).

wax eagle

13:25

@JonathanHobbs good point. Though that post has somehow been used to ban basically all shopping requests around the network, that's not actually what it says...that leads me to wonder if there is a better one out there

BESW

@JonathanHobbs They wanted an effect where a black shadow came up a stream of water and engulfed the camera. They had a teeensie budget.

So they dropped a garbage bag on the camera and pulled it off so it floated down the stream, then ran the film backwards.

wax eagle

next post is interesting too: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/the-pee-wee-herman-rule

doppelgreener

@waxeagle Maybe it just bans them because on SO, nobody will take the time to do what we do.

Alex P

As requested:

1

A: Has [system-recommendation] grown too big for its britches?

Burn it down! When I first found this site, one of the reasons I didn't participate was that it seemed like a lot of the questions were forum-like (Stack Exchange format is like the worst forum ever, for several reasons). The situation has improved dramatically, which is why now sys-rec is a pro...

doppelgreener

@BESW That sounds like it was either spectacular or awful.

BESW

13:28

@JonathanHobbs It was very WTF, but it fit the film.

Brick is a hard-nosed film noir murder mystery, with a freelance detective whose dead girlfriend is bringing in lots of pressure and making people do stupid things because they're panicking.

And it's set in a modern-day high school, with nearly all the characters as students.

The genres mesh surprisingly well.

I highly recommend it; it's the first film by the guy who did Looper and Brothers Bloom. He's got a talent for that kind of convoluted storytelling.

Alex P

I was saying something but then I forgot...

wax eagle

@AlexP I think you were about to show us your juggling skills

BESW

o
o o

...I don't know what that was.

Alex P

Oh, yeah, here it is: Magic questions on B&CG. Sometimes they are "card recommendations," basically. Out of a pool of 12000+ things. What saves them is when the answers discuss why you make certain choices, and the individual cards are just expert examples of "the best one of this kind of thing," for people who don't have deep knowledge of the pool of options available.

This works because there's an objective task, and then both "how you determine whether something fits" and "what that thing is" are in the answer.

BESW

Heads up, I'm inviting someone over to talk about DFRPG.

Do we want me to take him into a separate room?

wax eagle

13:35

@BESW I'd show mine but the wife doesn't have them up on FB...

doppelgreener

I'm fine with them coming in here

Alex P

And... I forgot again. Sys-rec is not like that, somehow. Nevermind.

wax eagle

@BESW no reason not to bring them in here

doppelgreener

I am sleeping soon anyway but wouldn't mind even if I wasn't going to

wax eagle

@AlexP no, it's not. the pool is much bigger, the requirements can be equally defined, but the rationale given will never be as objective

Alex P

13:38

@waxeagle Yeah, that's where I was going, I think. The detailed criteria are so subjective that they kinda have to be in the question rather than the answer. Or they are nowhere and you get a bunch of answers that don't answer the question.

And this isn't as broken on a forum because really what you want is a running dialogue where someone says "How do I play X?" and then people's suggestions are a spring-board to really tease out what they like and don't like.

wax eagle

@AlexP yep. Forums do this reasonably well what they don't do well is Q&A and that's our game.

Alex P

And you'll come in and make a spiel for "Mouse Guard is the best Lord of the Rings game because here are the narrative elements of Lord of the Rings that really pop!"

wax eagle

There is a reason that Jeff's next big project after leaving SE is a forum reboot

BESW

@AlexP ....hey.

wax eagle

(how successful he is with that is TBD, but Jeff's been pretty successful in everything he's done)

Alex P

13:41

@BESW It's a good answer. ;)

BESW

So, while we're having this conversation, some poor sod got their "is DFRPG what I hope it is?" question closed, and they immediately deleted it.

wax eagle

sad when the truest answer is deleted: rpg.stackexchange.com/a/434/1084

BESW

It's not helpful or in the spirit of the question though.

Alex P

@waxeagle I don't have the privilege to view deleted answers. You tease!

wax eagle

@BESW not at all. Just because it's true, doesn't meant it's right or good

> As many as there are groups playing it. Every group has house rules and things the players and DM skip over.

Alex P

13:44

@waxeagle I'm with BESW on this.

@waxeagle For forums, I think one of the biggest factors is this:

wax eagle

@AlexP granted, it's not a good or helpful or even right answer, it's just true.

Alex P

BESW

At least I got to drop an inviting comment before it vanished.

Alex P

I moderated a forum that didn't really have strong guidelines for "Some things you say are awful and we won't let you say them here, even if they aren't actually trolling &c. in their own right."

It was terrible.

wax eagle

@AlexP ew. We've got pretty wide latitude for dealing with that here. Thanks to a general "be nice" clause in the help center

Alex P

13:48

There was a dude who had a really polite, experience-based (working some kind of job that involves catching creeps, like hotel security or some such) argument that... homosexual men were pedophiles. You can imagine what happened when he'd actually make that argument in threads. But dude never acted in a hostile way and wasn't trolling. So their rules just didn't handle that.

wax eagle

@AlexP heh, that's one of the stock SE questions for mod elections actually.

> How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

Alex P

@waxeagle Can moderators remove individual user privileges? (That's not necessarily step 1 in how to fix this, of course.)

wax eagle

@AlexP no, it's all or nothing. We've got some post level options, but they aren't very granular.

BESW

@waxeagle Community is more important than answers; bad community loses good answers. Talk with the guy and make that clear; maybe he doesn't get it. If he doesn't try to improve within a reasonable period of time, with accompaniment, he's gone.

Alex P

I think RPGnet gets forum stuff right, with the exception that you still really can't talk about some games on there because trainwreck.

wax eagle

13:52

basically, your tools at the user level are: private chat, moderator message (w/ or w/o suspension).

BESW

Leveraging suspensions to get across that you're serious is an intermediate step on the road to the banhammer.

wax eagle

at the post level you've got some more options: closure, delete comments, lock posts (locks comments, answers, and edits), post notices, votes, binding spam/offensive flags (rep penalties attached).

BESW

(This is assuming that the level of flags/arguments actually is disrupting the community.)

Alex P

There's not much of a "backstage" for mods on SE, is there? (Private discussion area &c.)

BESW

@AlexP I know there's a mod chat.

Alex P

13:57

Anyway, forums: if the rules say "be as awful as you want, just don't start fights," there will be a lot of awful posters making awful posts.

Zachiel

(and starting fights, because Internet)

wax eagle

@BESW yep, I like the private chat options for this (though the setup is a bit clunky right now) and I've had decent success with it.

BESW

@JohnCraven [wave]

If WhiteWolfDM signs into chat, somebody ping me in case I miss it.

wax eagle

@BESW is his question/answer nuked?

BESW

He self-deleted.

rpg.stackexchange.com/q/27390/4398

[sad]

25 mins ago, by BESW

So, while we're having this conversation, some poor sod got their "is DFRPG what I hope it is?" question closed, and they immediately deleted it.

wax eagle

14:07

@BESW k. If you feel the need lemmie know and I can superping him, but it looks like he should have seen your comment to come to chat

BESW

I hope so! It's a conversation I want to have.

If you think it'd be the friendly and encouraging thing to do, feel free to superping.

wax eagle

@whitewolfdm I know you've not popped into chat before, but there are some users who'd love to chat with you about your recent DFRPG question and try to help you sort through things.

hey, it worked!

well, he has a chat account now :)

BESW

Thanks.

John Craven

WhiteWolfDM is one of my 345 sock puppets, why do you ask?

(just kidding!!!)

wax eagle

@JohnCraven nah, the tools are better than that, if you had that many socks you'd be busted and suspended for the max already :P

John Craven

14:17

I like FATE and I like the world around DFRPG, so there's that...

Reading through the book, I think I see your point now @BESW about it not being the best reference material there is (although in fairness FATE is made to be pretty simple and the book is a fun enough read that the DM can at least read it through and therefore be a de facto expert)

BESW

...this CRT is heating up my room.

John Craven

then get a flat screen, for the love of Mike!!!

BESW

I work on a laptop most of the time, but my laptop is dying. The only other computer I have available is an Asus EeeBox PC that was hooked up to the TV, so it didn't have its own monitor.

My father recently replaced his old CRT monitor --he never replaces anything unless it's both broken AND he finally admits he can't fix it, but I finally managed to sell him on a flat monitor for virtue of space and heat. So I dug up the CRT and dragged it and the EeeBox into my room.

Turns out I can't do my InD work on the EeeBox, but I'm using it for everything else so as to avoid taxing Ms. Havisham II.

Alex P

So, I have a question I want to ask that I'm not sure fits the format. So I will say it in chat and maybe y'all can help me make sure it does?

BESW

Naturally.

Alex P

14:28

So, I have a good sense of how to do general historical research for a game. But this is based on topics that are already sorta "visible" to someone with a Western upbringing and education. E.g. I already have a bunch of expectations about knights that are with me when I research knights.

But I'm stumped on how to do historical research (again, specifically to get game-useful bits) on cultures that I don't already have a baseline set of information about. Like the Cumans, a steppe people from the 11th century. They have a Wikipedia, page, sure. Which I have read. But what resources I can find right now are references to academic books.

"How do I get a grade-school primer on something historical that's not part of my culture's general educational background and media, so I can use it in play," basically?

BESW

High-quality Google searches.

Which are more of an art than a science, I'm afraid.

Hmm.

Often TV Tropes will have a page of actual information about that kind of thing, but you've got a particularly obscure topic there.

wax eagle

@AlexP do you have access to jstor by any chance?

Alex P

The point is: is that a workable core of a question or not?

BESW

If you wanted the ancient South American nations, TV Tropes would be all over that.

Alex P

@waxeagle I can probably sneak it through a friend.

BESW

14:33

@AlexP No.

One moment, let me see if I can track down the meta post...

wax eagle

@AlexP The other option is to track down someone who's written a decent history book and get it from your local library (they can probably get it for you through ILL)

BESW

21

Q: Are campaign research questions on topic?

I was looking at What should I read/watch for information about the 1930s United States?, and I was wondering, is this really appropriate to the site. It can be answered. It requires some expertise (but not much). It isn't directly related to RPGs. It could easily be as valid for writing, etc....

wax eagle

13

Q: Are campaign research questions on topic, part two?

There is a category of questions on this site that seriously pollutes our scope. Taking these questions to their logical maximum (which I see us continually approaching) everything under the sun has become on topic. This category is campaign research. Appending historical-settings, campaign-de...

discussion on-topic research

original title: Is everything on topic?

Alex P

hahaha

BESW

In summary:

This is a case where the RPG context is largely irrelephant, so you should take it to the SE that the meat of the question actually pertains to.

John Craven

14:38

Off-hand, the only thing I remember about the Cumans was from a book about the Mongols I read a couple months ago...

BESW

Oh, hey. History.se is very relephant.

John Craven

history.se has some goodpeoples on it, I agree. Some of the questions are a bit dodgy, and they prefer if you ask pointed questions instead of "where can I find out more about Group X" (they'll say "wikipedia" and probably close the topic)

BESW

He's asking for "a grade-school primer on something historical that's not part of my culture's background/media," and giving the context that it's for a casual recreation scenario, I think that'd be sufficiently specific. Examples of the kind of thing he's looking for that Wiki doesn't provide would be even better!

Alex P

@BESW I can do all that.

BESW

...that's a lot of Nazi on the front page questions.

Alex P

14:42

Also, Wikipedia has some BS: "Hungarian King Ladislaus I of Hungary (left) embracing a Cuman warrior (right)." Except he is totes like strangling that dude and also Cumans breath fire?

wax eagle

ok, new Gmail inbox is a huge win.

Alex P

@waxeagle Yes. I am sad that my phone doesn't have that views thing on its Gmail app yet.

wax eagle

@AlexP people all over breath fire

Alex P

Okay, everyone, I'm off to work! Thanks for helping.

BESW

@AlexP ttfn

@AlexP Be sure to link it back here when you ask!

wax eagle

14:44

@AlexP me neither, Andriod 4+ only :(

flips off LG

John Craven

I'm just saying, I post there a pretty good amount, and while I personally don't mind that sort of question, the community may not like it. OTOH, there's not a lot of harm in posting it, getting feedback on at least how to improve the question, and then getting it "right"

BESW

@waxeagle What did Gareth ever do to you?!

wax eagle

@BESW not him. LG corp. I actually like a ton of their stuff (they were the primary appliance manufacturer in Ecuador), but they've kept my phone on Gingerbread for far to long.

John Craven

Alex P: The Hungarians befriended the Cumans in the lead-up to the first big pitched battle with the Mongols, only to blame them for the invasion and go off and kill a whole bunch of them

(and of course, the Hungarians got their asses handed to them by a relatively small group of Mongols)

BESW

Because history is nothing if not a cure for the ego.

("Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!")

(And +1.5 Internets to anyone who recognized the reference but didn't think of Watchmen first.)

@RavenDreamer Hi.

Raven Dreamer

14:55

@BESW H'lo

Hey, folks, perhaps you could help me out. I really like 4e's concept of "Dungeon Delves", i.e., 3-5 encounters in quick succession without having to worry about "plot" or "roleplaying" getting in the way of the tactical combat.
Are there any rpg / tabletop / d20 games that focus on the combat rather than anything else?

@BESW Ozymandius. 12th grade English, woo!

BESW

@RavenDreamer +1.5 Internets for you!

John Craven

yeah @RavenDreamer, there is a whole genre of them

BESW

Redeemable for a sense of accomplishment, or one virtual cookie.

John Craven

they're called war games

Raven Dreamer

@JohnCraven When I think war games, I think warhammer 40k etc. with armies. I'm specifically looking for "each player has one character". Does the "war game" genre include that kind of individual character play?

John Craven

14:58

I was being flippant but that's actually a good question

BESW

What about 4e makes it not work for you? That'd help provide useful answers.

wax eagle

@RavenDreamer doesn't 4e fill that niche already?

BESW

@waxeagle I win.

wax eagle

(@BESW jinx?)

@BESW I typed it, backspaced it and typed it again...

BESW

[face/palm] After converting two chapters of glottas to apostrophes, I realize that a) they've been autoformatting and are now useless, and b) there's an easier way to do this that would prevent the autoformatting.

wax eagle

15:01

@BESW we've gotta get you a proper text editor. like VI

Raven Dreamer

@BESW I don't like the way 4e handles a lot of things. I'm basically wondering if there's a genre that already exists for what I'm looking for.

wax eagle

</grognard>

BESW

@RavenDreamer 4e is in that genre, so we're asking specifically what you don't like about 4e, in order to suggest other games in the genre that you would enjoy.

Raven Dreamer

@BESW Character Progression (inc. math issues + ability score dependencies, inadequacy of hybrids / multi-classing to fill certain character archetypes)

Daily Powers are a big "no-no" in my book too

BESW

Those are things you'd want to include in your question.

Raven Dreamer

15:03

Basically trying to avoid the 5-minute workday syndrome.

wax eagle

ooh ooh this is where I mention fourthcore team deathmatch...

except that's probably not what you're looking for at all

Raven Dreamer

Is that when you do PvP in 4th edition with 1st level PCs from core sources?

John Craven

I think the "dungeon delve" is a continuation of a style of play people have used DnD for for a while, but if you want to keep the roleplaying elements in there, I'm honestly not aware of anything that's done that, exactly

Problematic

@waxeagle coughSUBLIME TEXTcough

BESW

@waxeagle It's a matter of getting Word files from my clients and then making them behave in InDesign.

John Craven

15:07

there are tactical-level wargames, and probably some out there which allow for individual characterizations (although they tend to err on the side of fairness, whereas RPGs err on the side of detail), but if you're looking for a tactical wargame (no plot, not a lot of RPing), I'm not aware of much outside of computer games, and even there you're really ignoring the flavor

Raven Dreamer

@JohnCraven "I can't think of any" is a perfectly acceptable answer.

LitheOhm

@AlexP how do you mean, 'whether a broken char is a functional one'?

BESW

Definitely worth the question, I think.

@LitheOhm Keep reading, I asked him to clarify.

LitheOhm

@trogdor Meepo kicks ass.

I am

BESW

@LitheOhm "Meepo" is also one of the names listed for 4e kobolds. We had a kobold ranger who... made enemies useless.

He traded "doing any damage at all" for at-will slow/immobilize/prone/can't teleport; either one attack into each of nine squares, or two attacks at one target.

Raven Dreamer

15:11

@BESW Mine?

BESW

@RavenDreamer Yes.

Alex P

@BESW Me, me!

Raven Dreamer

@AlexP Literary high-five!

LitheOhm

I see broken characters as the ones who make anything pointless. Combat or otherwise. Same as mechanics

Diplomacy means much less than the RAW states, at my table

Ah. I first encountered the name in a 3.5 published adventure

lol. I really like the 'swords swords swords' verb.

BESW

@LitheOhm Apparently it's a LoL character or something?

LitheOhm

15:15

Reminds me of 8-bit theater

Alex P

@waxeagle Vim. It's Improved!

LitheOhm

LoL?

BESW

League of Legends.

LitheOhm

ah

wax eagle

@RavenDreamer something like that, though core isn't required

BESW

15:16

My players enjoyed it, but I never played.

wax eagle

@AlexP yeah, I've never actually used VI, only VIM

Raven Dreamer

@BESW It's DotA, not LoL, if you're feeling pedantic (I am).

wax eagle

but if you're gonna go full grognard, you've gotta go full grognard

BESW

@RavenDreamer "Core" in "Fourthcore" is from "hardcore," not "core materials."

@RavenDreamer PEDANT FIGHT.

Raven Dreamer

But the principle is, make PCs fight each other?

Alex P

15:17

@waxeagle Enh, Vi is like Chainmail.

@RavenDreamer So you want almost, like, a dungeon board game?

Raven Dreamer

Why is it "puh-DAN-tic" but "PEE-dunt".

BESW

A player review of Fourthcore

Raven Dreamer

@AlexP yes, I think that is an accurate summary.

Alex P

@RavenDreamer There are a couple of D&D-inspired ones. I think Wrath of Ashardlon is one.

Also a couple of others.

One sec...

BESW

@RavenDreamer Pedant, pedantic

The "ped" syllable is pronounced the same, and the accent is kept at the second-to-last syllable.

Raven Dreamer

15:20

Not 'round these parts! Haha. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that southern US pronounces something funny.

Alex P

@RavenDreamer Best I can think of is to look at BGG, start with something like Descent, and then go category-hopping from there.

There are at least 10 distinct games like this, with different mechanics and looks. I remember a Final-Fantasy-ish one came out recently.

Here we go. Roleplaying board games (like roleplaying video games).

wax eagle

@AlexP that'd be like Arkham horror, the D&D games and such?

(and would that make clue the first one?)

Raven Dreamer

Do these kinds of games have GMs / DMs?

(Never played)

John Craven

I don't think you keep your Cluedo character from one game to the next

Alex P

@RavenDreamer Varies. Some will likely have a GM player, some will use the procedural rules as a GM.

@waxeagle Yes.

John Craven

15:24

I mean, I guess you CAN play Colonel Mustard in two straight games but it's not like he has an Intuition rating that you level up

wax eagle

@JohnCraven sure, they're just one offs every time :)

John Craven

if you're concerned about the idea of any one player turning into the DM, you can just rotate every session

Alex P

An example that isn't quite what you're looking for (it's more abstract rather than a tactical game), but might help explain something... Knizia's Lord of the Rings game.

The players are the hobbits, who trade off the ring (which is a bad-stuff magnet) and play various abilities to try to advance to Mount Doom and survive challenges along the way.

There's a stress track thingy that kills you.

The adversity comes from drawing random events.

John Craven

and it's Reinar Kinizia!

Alex P

BUT! There's a "Sauron" expansion which instead makes the bad stuff into another human player, kinda like a GM, except he's just there to screw you and has a hand he's playing from rather than just arbitrarily.

I'd expect a few of the games you look at will have a "random dungeon or craft your own" mechanic like this.

BESW

15:29

I remember one that had cards which were actually tiles you used to create the dungeon.

Alex P

Descent (linked above) and Mage Knight seem well-reviewed. Take a look and see if those have features you like.

John Craven

that one zombie game does that @BESW

although it doesn't have any game-to-game development elements

oooo, Mice and Mystics!

which is especially good if your party are 10 years old

BESW

@JohnCraven ....Ursula Vernon needs to do art for that, whatever it is.

John Craven

I've heard good things about Mage Knight as well

Alex P

Some miniatures games also kinda trend towards "being your guy." E.g. Malifaux armies are super-small and have clear leaders. So it's like playing an RPG character plus some summons/henchmen. (In a one-on-one battle, of course.)

BESW

15:32

@JohnCraven Air Mouse

Alex P

IIRC it's also easy to play Warmachine/Hordes in this style as well, at low point values.

I'd get a board game, though. Cheaper and less work.

John Craven

@BESW the actual game art isn't too bad: boardgamegeek.com/image/1312072/mice-and-mystics

BESW

Cool.

BESW

16:19

@AlexP I think I'm the only one still in that chat.

C. Ross

hi

BESW

Hey.

I am going to dream about apostrophes for years after this job.

How's the Grimm mod?

Alex P

@BESW Good call. Added a note on meta itself.

BESW

Now link it here.

Alex P

Hey chat people, I'd like to go ahead and get this rolling:

5

A: How are ticker feeds for chat selected?

It's been suggested in the comments that I propose a process. Here is a process. It is intentionally kinda informal. We make a meta thread for it like the community ads. People vote stuff up or down depending on whether they would like to see it in the chat feed. Moderators use these ratings a...

Which is to say, to create a meta thread that lets you suggest and vote up/down things you want to see in the chat feeds. Any objections?

BESW

16:32

I'm cool with it; if it's not something the community wants, it'll just fade away.

While we're poking chat utility, by the way, having an actual link to the main rpg.se page in the chat description is something that would seem good.

Alex P

And by "go ahead" I mean "do it later, when I'm not busy/lazy." So that'll be like in the next several days sometime. ;)

wax eagle

@BESW it's in the bottom right corner

BESW

@waxeagle I suppose that's sufficient.

Metool

17:14

I think I could do with more timestamps on the chat.

C. Ross

@Metool there's a jQuery addon for that

wax eagle

@Metool SE chat userscripts. Moment

31

Q: SE Chat Modifications -- Keyboard navigation and commands for chat

Screenshot Use /command shortcuts to perform common chat tasks: See message history inline: Easily preview replied-to messages: And much, much more... About Legends tell of a prolific Meta Stack Overflow chatter who despised using their mouse above all things. In an effort to keep t...

script chat

BESW

Ah, yes. Scripts are pretty cool.

wax eagle

if you're a chrome or firefox user these are for you. (firefox requires greasemonkey)

Metool

Firefox, pah.

BESW

17:16

Some of the more enterprising RPG chatters have developed a "user is typing" script (only works for others with the script) and a fudge dice script.

Zachiel

@RavenDreamer Meepo is a dragonkeeper Kobold from the Sunless Citadel, thee first 3.0 official adventure. He then got some cameos in some example adventures and got referenced in DotA, where most characters had names taken from elsewhere (e.g. Lina is Rina Inverse from Slayers). So the hero with the WC3 Kobold model was called Meepo.

Metool

Welp.

Zachiel

@RavenDreamer I've heard that Southern US accent (the one they use in Texas to be precise) is the most faithful to Shakespeare's English.

wax eagle

@Metool open your settings, you've got to drag it into extensions

you can't just install it

Metool

Drag into extensions, you say?

wax eagle

17:22

@Metool yep

drag and drop yes

BESW

@Metool When you clicked on it to install, it probably downloaded to your desktop or somewhere similar.

wax eagle

@BESW you can actually drag and drop the "hey I downloaded this, keep or discard" bar

BESW

Find that file on your computer, open Chrome's extensions tab, and drag the file to the extensions tab.

@waxeagle Ah, when I did it, the sneaky thing managed to download without giving me that bar.

Metool

That isn't working.

wax eagle

@Metool ok, describe your steps exactly?

Metool

17:27

Place the .user.js file in an easily accessible folder.Open that folder in another window. Un-fullscreen the Extensions window, drag from Finder to Chrome.

Alternately, now that Chrome isn't fullscreen and it starts displaying the downloads bar, drag from downloads bar to Extensions.

wax eagle

@Metool did you refresh this page?

Metool

It's more that it's telling me it won't accept the thing.

Metool

17:41

... All my hate, Google.

All my hate.

So I got it installed, but only after I figured out exactly the kind of stupid restrictions there are on files Chrome can read.

BESW

...oooh.

You had to add something to the extension, right?

Metool

Nope.

It turns out, I can't pull it from list view.

I have to use that tiley layout.

BESW

....wow.

Metool

Yeah.

BESW

[stands and claps]

If it's any comfort, I've spent the last five hours wrestling with convincing InDesign not to auto-format typewriter apostrophes.

Zachiel

17:46

@BESW dr. House style?

Alex P

0

Q: RPG General Chat: vote for your feeds!

Chat? Feeds? SE sites have associated chat rooms. This site's main one is RPG General Chat. Check it out! SE chat supports feeds, which shows up as little pop-ups from time to time. Since really we want the chat (like every site feature) to be useful to the users, it makes sense to have the us...

discussion chat feed

@C.Ross When you get the chance, can you un-featured the previous discussion and featured this one?

BESW

@Zachiel Something like that.

Metool

Is there a better place to chat about ponies?

BESW

@Metool Technically, scifi chat is the appropriate place for generic MLP talk.

chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/198/mos-eisley

The first influx of pony questions was met with incredulity, but the consensus is that it's on topic for the site.

I say "technically" because the chat is usually rather dead, and the site itself is lackluster and prone to infighting.

Problematic

Not like us!

[shifty eyes]

BESW

17:53

We just inbicker.

Metool

@BESW How so?

BESW

@Metool Science fiction and fantasy.

There were attempts to argue that it wasn't appropriate for the site's target demographic, but the reasonable response to that is "So stop asking about Transformers," and the opposition generally turned into subdued eyerolling.

Metool

This amuses me too much.

Zachiel

@BESW I missed that (and found it now searching for something else...) I need to talk to you about that later.

BESW

Later is good. Sleep is now.

Alex P

18:03

I kinda want to go ask a question about literary SF there, just to see what the answers are like. But I can't think of one so meh.

BESW

G'night.

The Oracle

0

Q: RPG General Chat: vote for your feeds!

Chat? Feeds? SE sites have associated chat rooms. This site's main one is RPG General Chat. Check it out! SE chat supports feeds, which shows up as little pop-ups from time to time. Since really we want the chat (like every site feature) to be useful to the users, it makes sense to have the us...

discussion chat feed

wax eagle

18:55

community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/27928765/…

2

lol

Metool

@waxeagle Hee!

wax eagle

isn't it great? I hope my sons are as clever

LitheOhm