TRPG General Chat

2:55 PM

Oh boy, a shiny new room!

Lots of shiny new rooms

am I supposed to keep a tab open to all the shiny new rooms?

you don't need to

we barely had enough chat to keep one room going before :)

when you're in several rooms, you still only need one tab

:1227 most RPG users don't have a meta.SO account

3:03 PM

so we might get more traffic? that would be cool

that's our hope

I like the FAQ, "So why don't you just use IRC?"

IRC god...does that still exist?

I figured it went the way of usenet by now

well, usenet is called "google groups" now :)

"We're trying to build a system better and easier to use than IRC ..."

3:05 PM

It was cool when they put the old stuff online and I found things I'd posted in the late 80's

I was born in the 80s, got to this 'internet' thing in the 90s, found usenet was this interesting hub of chat slowly being overtaken by spambots.

And then ISPs decided 'well now you can only get so many MB of usenet a month' and eventually 'This is no longer a part of service. There will be no discount'

Ah, I /almost/ miss the 2nd Ed. AD&D arguements.

heh 2nd edition was still basically everyone playing with their own house rules

It was a (at the time) solid framework for general roleplay. Want to get into specifics? You have to come up with that.

oh, I'll pass on that one. My memories are from 12 years ago and are muddled with the last 2 (or 3) editions since then

I came into the culture in early 3e, THACO was talked about with fear and love

3:15 PM

THAC0 was one of the things my first DM denounced 3.0 over. "It makes perfect sense! There was no reason to do away with it!"

I've learned since then, change, no matter how small, will upset someone furiously.

no matter how small, no matter how good

heh, I liked THAC0 too. It seemed a useful bar. IE - You must understand THAC0 or you won't like playing with us

It was a metric that tried to scale everything on a similar basis, what AC 0 is. Makes sense. Getting people to think about their THAC0 on the fly? Not always successful.

I don't know, I've never been in a group that exclusive

our rule has always been:

> You must be able to add two two digit numbers, in your head, in less than ten seconds

lol

3:20 PM

See, 3.0 made that easy. a +2 here, a +2 there, a +1 here, maybe a penalty of something between -1 and -4 given situation..

But 3.0 also gave us Attacks of Opportunity, which took my group damn near four years to stop bickering over.

I love my AoO's :-), especially when every thing had reach

We had one guy convinced that doing any combat action other than a charge provoked an AoO

:1262 As DM, I find myself adding threatening reach back onto most critters that would be large (tall). It just seems right

I think so too, that dragon should control more than the area around its base

It hasn't appeared to unbalance anything. I've found that most stock critters need to be beefed up anyways to threaten the PCs

3:26 PM

depends a bit on party size, etc

heh, thats right, I forgot you were running a dozen folks at a time!

Monday night was 11 of us, plus 1 absent character as NPC and our usual NPC

You're gonna need to video that game for me sometime :)

Always wanted to dabble with recording a session for podcasting purposes.

ours would be filled with tons of our lame funny-only-to-us running jokes

3:35 PM

Our Dark Heresy sessions would be full of the sounds of dice-rolling followed by not-nice expletives.

Arguments, fireballs, selflessness, the all important reminders that "this is not a democracy!!!"

"I don't care how you justify it, you're not replacing a failed intimidate check with a ranged attack roll, they are two different things!"

5:32 PM

Interesting. Looks like we may need a run-off in the domain selection.

:1282 At least we have two very good suggestions, other sites struggle to get one

5:50 PM

6

Q: Sleep spell in DFRPG

Has anyone here put together a "Sleep" spell in the Dresden Files RPG yet? One of my PC wizards (we're playing a "Submerged", or high-powered game) has a sleep spell as a Rote, and I wanted to see if my implementation made sense to anyone else. Here's how it works: She's got a Conviction of 4 an...

@Room, what do you think of that?

I haven't looked at Dresden sorry. Have read some nice things about it though.

6:57 PM

I don't know much about the Dresden Files RPG. I didn't watch the series.

7:11 PM

Nice answer for how to create memorable NPCs - rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/3093/…

A: What is a good way to become a better NPC/monster actor?

if you put those links alone on one single line, you get the pretty version:

3

Pick one characteristic that is unique to your character and mark it on your card, for example: a physicality: the henchman's hunched shoulders an action: the shopkeep who plays with his earlobe a held object: the duke who always is petting his cat a verbal distinction: the knight with a stutte...

Wow, lots of new answers there

ooo, that is pretty, I'll try to remember that

:1302 Yes there are. This is the first answer I really liked and upvoted though.

I think its a lot harder to write good answers to the "fluffy" questions on this site

I think any answer that supports the question with new, relevant information is a good answer.

I think the latest blog post is especially interesting for RPG

5

(just in case you hadn't seen it yet)

7:20 PM

:1306 I disagree, I see each answer as needing to fight for survival. Hopefully by the time the question stops getting much traffic, the best answer has risen to the top

I don't think folks googling for answers in the coming months are going to want to read 8 answers for every question

(I could be wrong)!

:1307 Still reading, but I like the sounds of the Back it Up principle. I think I've been a believer in that long before it had a catchy name

:1309 This is most certainly true, but I would defend the system can do both, since the accepted answer gets pinned to the top.

the blog post is excellent -- probably the best in quite a while

:1313 It will be interesting to see how it goes. I think more people need to actively edit their answers. Or the rest of us need to feel better about editing them ourselves

:1315 Editing them for...?

I don't see anything inherently wrong about one person incorporating another's answer in thier own

7:28 PM

Ah.

The only time I've asked for that is when one responder put good information in two separate answers.

just in general. If an answer is static, its hard to believe that it will be the best answer for all time

This is true.

I can see going back to change an answer that is no longer correct, but I'm not exactly going to keep every single answer up to date. Though there are folks with the ability to do that in my place.

Following up on the blog post. That's not a bad metric for subjective questions.

8:02 PM

:1314 Love that blog post. Thanks. We need to use it for guidance around here.

So do we need a panel of six subjectivity judges to hold up score cards for each of those metrics as questions come in?

actually, only 5 :) (5 votes to close)

but I think if several of us that are here a lot use those guidelines and make prompt comments that hopefully we can get the ball rolling and develop better community standards

I think one of the worst things we can do is close a new person's first question without giving them any guidance

right -- but it should still be closed. It should just be made clear to the user that having their question closed is not a punishment

or the end of the world

the most important thing is that they understand why it was closed

and learn from it

Closed: Reason - We are xenophobic and don't like you.

unfortunately, many SO users behave exactly like that

8:13 PM

I'm cool with that for the most egregious questions, but questions that I think can be fixed with relatively minor edits I'd be hesitant to vote to close without giving them a chance to edit it.

That's more along the lines of a few 'group moderated' message boards I've been on.

:1335 true

Closed: Reason - You are expressing an opinion that is unpopular to me and my four friends.

:1334 I think there has been some of that going on here, and it seems crazy to me to not cultivate new members when there aren't all that many of us to begin with.

here's an important thing to keep in mind: you're teaching people a new system

8:14 PM

I've always been curious if the exchange system has a means for checking for band-wagoning.

they're used to phpBB etc.

don't make them think "wooow. Just asking a question here, and I get hit over the head in no time"

People behave in different ways. It is not that they intend to act against you, it is quite possibly they simply do not know (or did not read) what is expected.

make them think "hey yeah, that makes sense. maybe this is a better way to get actual answers to real questions "

no kidding. I might be a little sensitive about it as my first question got downvoted right out of the gate and I got a wee bit defensive about it

Sadly I can't simply write an exception handler for people.

8:18 PM

before the exception handler, I'd like a RAM upgrade plz

For some reason that reminds me of an image someone photoshopped nicely of a man with a heatsink and a fan attached to his head. He's overclocked, you see.

:1349 lol

I was amused at the concept, but I'd rather not wear down the hardware that quickly, as my warranty and replacement policy is terrible.

Hmm, just thought of a venue I can post in to try to generate some traffic... Old board I was on.

Give it a shot, I dropped a link on EnWorld yesterday. Didn't seem to do diddly. My personal group hasn't shown much interest either :(

8:56 PM

:1335 <necro>On the other hand people on this site get touchy about people editing their posts ... I think we have to edit things to make the palatable, but for goodness sake, use a light hand

Gamers? Touchy?

yes, you're right

gamers are more artist than engineer

Some are an unholy fusion.

:1355 I appreciate the sentiment, as I've noted, I don't want anything to do with driving people away. However, the quality of the q's and a's are suffering

finding the right balance is tricksy :)

Agreed, and I edit questions myself, if you have the rep to edit then the community implicitly trusts you to edit

9:05 PM

FYI, I think I read that close votes are only valid for 4 days.

Yes, that is true

the grimoire question is up to 3 close votes, it may need to be moderated closed if its ever going to get there

It is closed

w00t...ty

:1288 With regards to the Dresden question I meant the style "This is my rule design, is it ok?"

9:19 PM

:1368 Ah, sorry. I'm not sure, I did consider voting to close it, but have so far refrained

Trying to refine my answer, I've come up with this test - Does the RPG encourage and provide guidance for designing new elements?

Not knowing Dresden, I can't answer that. Whereas for D&D4, I can say with some certainty that it does not (in most cases - Monsters being an exception)

I'm not trying to promote that as a general rule, its just where my head is at currently.

Q: Good RPG for pirate-oriented setting

5

What good, popular setting you have used for "Pirates of the Caribbean" types of adventures? What makes it good for running a pirate game?

settings pirates

I'm not trying to be negative, but what about this question makes it appropriate to you?

I think there is a good question hidden in there, but it isn't there yet. I've commented twice hoping to get some clarification, but it should get even more IMHO

the problem I see, is that there are now several answers to it. If the question is significantly revised, then are the answers still valid?

Closed - Question not asked correctly?

that may be the right course of action. Are you the current close vote?

9:35 PM

Nope.

I wanted some input before considering that.

I give it 2/6 from that blog post about Subjective questions. Is that saveable? seems low to me

I probably get overly frustrated at folks that put in questions and don't hang out for a bit to check comments

sweet..editing chat - nice feature

Hmm. Trying to think of an analogy of how you should express questions here. It's a help desk, not a fast food counter. "Can you help me with X?" not "Can someone give me X?"

Hmm...I'm fine answering some short questions. To my mind, if you can't find a rule in the book and want to come here, that's cool. Someone can point you to p84 or whatever

But for subjective type questions, you may be on to something.

A polite way of saying "If you need help understanding something or finding a specific game reference, we can help you. If you want to find something general, use google."

That sounded polite enough :)

9:49 PM

It's nicer than responding (for example): google.com/search?q=Pirate+RPG+system

awwww, it filtered the passthrough

Apparently we don't like 'let me google that for you' here. :D

Yeah, we definitely don't want to have the answers be whatever someone googled up.

Stressing personal experience as per that blog post is the key I think

If you haven't actually played a pirate game, you probably shouldn't be answering that question.