TRPG General Chat

doppelgreener

00:08

@GMNoob No, since I haven't been playing their official campaign thing. But from their pace of development, where they've gotten to and the stuff they've been talking about in their dev blogs, I'm concerned about whether they'll be able to get the rest of the way in the year they have left (and whether the ideas they're operating with will let them get there)

BESW

00:20

@SevenSidedDie I was always fond of swamp mummies, myself.

javafueled

02:35

MAD might stand for what? As in an abbreviation or acronym.

Metool

@javafueled Multiple Ability (score) Dependent, or Mutually Assured Destruction. Depends on context.

javafueled

in context of a PF build, I think the former. I know the latter.

Metool

For example, Monk wants every physical, plus WIS.

Plus INT for skills.

javafueled

cool. there's a question that was very heavy on the acronym use and slang heavy as well.

"High Int Pally build?"

cleaned it up some, but that last sentence is rough.

BESW

Indeed.

Nice work, though.

javafueled

02:48

I don't play enough PF to understand that last sentence. :)

BESW

There's an implied understanding of stat-generation mechanics.

Because paladins are already depending on multiple ability scores for their core functionality, adding Int as another high score is difficult: something's gotta give.

The last sentence is speculating on which stats can get shafted ("dump stats") without losing effectiveness, and mentions two unusual paladin builds as options.

Metool

Assuming point-buy (a fair assumption), yes.

javafueled

figured there something along those lines, but couldn't untie that last clause.

LOL… a 'dump stat' i know.

BESW

It's not a structurally sound sentence anyway.

javafueled

exactly!

BESW

03:01

@EvilHatOfficial Can characters choose to be taken out? We're not sure. I thought they could, but maybe not. http://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/30461/1204

Tweeted by jdahobbs on December 22, 2013 at 1:10 AM

@jdahobbs Not as such, as Taken Out = you lose determination over your fate. They can, however, concede (different rules apply).

Tweeted by EvilHatOfficial on December 22, 2013 at 2:36 AM in reply to jdahobbs

@jdahobbs Reading, tho. I sense (perhaps unnecessary) nuance in this question.

Tweeted by EvilHatOfficial on December 22, 2013 at 2:37 AM in reply to jdahobbs

Good content on this article about marketing (or rather, lack thereof) to geek women. The comma use hurts me, though.

2

via @anjinanhut Why Marketers Fear The Female Geek http://howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/2013/12/marketers-fear-female-geek-2/ This analysis feels spot-on.

Tweeted by nkjemisin on December 21, 2013 at 11:27 PM

2

A: Can a character choose to be taken out?

So far, we have two answers, which appear to contradict each other. I tend to think in practice they're not that far apart from each other, tho. When you're taken out, you cede control over your fate to the attacker. That means the attacker can assert all sorts of things about what happens to yo...

Takeaway:

> I can't see how there's any value in forcing someone to retain control over their character when they don't want it.

BESW

03:30

(For those who don't recognize the face: that's Fred Hicks, one of the central Fate designers at Evil Hat, answering a Fate Core question.)

doppelgreener

04:31

For when your campaign just has to be really creepy: Visions of Hell. Yes, the art's creepy. The artist was Polish and grew up during World War II. There's more here.

2

Problematic

06:32

@BESW [swoons]

BESW

Having @FredHicks woosh in, shout "Narrative before mechanics!" and bat-grapple out of the thread is even better than when @SevenSidedDie does it.

2

Problematic

So which one is Bruce Wayne, and which one has to be Dick Grayson?

BESW

Wrong question.

Which one is Adam West, and which is Michael Keaton?

Problematic

Indeed.

BESW

07:11

So, some of you may remember that when Owen Patterson scored a goal for his own team a few months ago, Sydney Padua responded thusly:

My husband demands a drawing of badgers moving goalposts, so my wifely duty: http://t.co/uIVsY96UTo

Tweeted by sydneypadua on October 9, 2013 at 9:57 PM

She later colored it and sold merchandise.

Today she tweeted about how she used the proceeds:

Proceeds from the Badgers Moving Goalposts merch have gone to the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust Badger Vaccination appeal!

Tweeted by sydneypadua on December 21, 2013 at 9:44 PM

Seemed the most badgerific of all the zillions of possible things to donate to.

Tweeted by sydneypadua on December 21, 2013 at 9:45 PM

I don't think I need to explain why I thought the chat would like to know these things.

Alex P

08:40

Nick Gurewitch does Marvel superheroes:

(He's the Perry Bible Fellowship guy.) (Moderately NSFW.)

BESW

09:16

Sigh.

2

Q: Is it true that Amy is the Doctor's mother in law in two different ways?

I get that he married River Song and Amy is her mother but the Tenth Doctor married Liz 1, who is the daughter of Henry 8, didn't Amy accidently marry Henry 8? Does that make her his mother in law again?

doctor-who

Moffat, PLEASE STOP MAKING STUPID JOKES.

BESW

09:46

...I have never before had an answer accepted without a single upvote.

Inbar Rose

"I accept your answer but I don't like it"

GMNoob

@JonathanHobbs Have they been showing rule updates in the official Encounters? I thought the rules were publicly frozen and changes are only in their private betas?

BESW

[wave] Hi, guys.

trogdor

10:04

@BESW lol

GMNoob

@BESW hi

BESW

What's new?

GMNoob

10:20

the current exchange rate

Inbar Rose

Wow

I didn't know making fun of the decaying state of the world economy would be so unfunny.

GMNoob

thanks :D

Actually, I just happened to be looking up exchange rates, since I need to transfer some money. I wasn't trying to make fun of anything.

Inbar Rose

Well you succeeded.

:)

trogdor

lol

GMNoob

10:50

Boy do I love my newish Telecom company

they used to charge me $28/month for unlimited everything, including international calls, and now they are charging me $17/month

BESW

11:03

[envy]

I can't get a plan of any kind for less than $20/month.

GMNoob

11:33

Yeah, I don't know what this company is doing, but it brought down all cellphone charges across the country by over 50%

And they just keep getting lower. For the past 3 months, they had me on a $0/month plan :D

There are two unique things about the company. 1. they have no brick&mortar stores of their own. 2. They don't sell or rent out cellphones, you have to get the phone from somewhere else.

lisardggY

@GMNoob That description sounded suspiciously like what's been going on in the telecom market over here. So I checked your profile and found out that "here" is, in fact, the same as "there". :)

GMNoob

@lisardggY Nice another one! I met someone on here who has now since joined our every-so-often gaming group.

@lisardggY You aren't by any chance in the North are you?

lisardggY

Even our little corner of the periphery gets good mileage out of RPG.SE. :)

2

@GMNoob Nope. Right in the middle of the center of Tel Aviv.

GMNoob

@lisardggY Well, nobody's perfect :P

@lisardggY random question, are you able to access the RPG.net forums?

lisardggY

Never tried. Let's check.

Seems to work.

GMNoob

11:46

Ok, so I'll just have to figure out why I can't :D

I always get a 403 error, that makes it sound like I'm spamming them or doing some other nasty thing.

Inbar Rose

renew your IP lease / flush dns tables / refresh browser (forced with ctrl-f5)

lisardggY

I'm not sure my connection is identified as originating from Israel, though, since I'm at work and the network here is... weird.

So if there's an IP range block, I might be excluded from it.

Inbar Rose

rpg.net ? why would it block Israel?

Have you tried a proxy?

BESW

Huh. How did I miss that you're from Israel too, @GMNoob?

GMNoob

I haven't tried a proxy.

haven't tried hola either. Just noticed that I keep getting blocked from home and my office, but not my cell phone when I do random searches

@BESW I haven't noticed either :D

lisardggY

12:00

There's an overwhelming Israeli presence here right now. I blame our ridiculous timezone.

(Almost as ridiculous as your own, @BESW)

BESW

Yeah, the Western Pacific and the Eastern Europe/Middle East seem to be online at the same time.

Inbar Rose

Would it shock you all entirely to learn that I too am from Israel? (seriously, no joke)

lisardggY

It would not.

Inbar Rose

What gave it away? [he asked sarcastically while pointing at his totally Israeli name]

2

GMNoob

Now, I'm really upset that I didn't pack my RPG.stackexchange t-shirt when I was back in the states. I purposefully did not pack it, thinking that nobody in Israel would care or know what it is :D

BESW

12:06

[waves enthusiastically] I was in Haifa at the beginning of May.

(And Tel Aviv for a night, obviously.)

lisardggY

There's been a discussion in the Israeli Roleplayers group on Facebook about putting up an SO-like Q&A site for RPG questions, in Hebrew.

Though most people claimed that without proper traffic (which it will probably not get) it will just wither and die.

Inbar Rose

There is a large, very active RPG community here.

Especially for our size.

Hell - we probably all know each other, or can recognize each other if we saw each other since we probably all go to the conventions.

lisardggY

A Q&A site needs a wider user base than a forum or community site, I think.

The currently active online communities (those that are left, anyway) will probably stay and ask their questions in their respective communities.

BESW

Now I'm just thinking about The Living Tombstone.

GMNoob

@InbarRose I had no idea.

lisardggY

12:11

And it's hard to gauge potential based on the activity in the Facebook groups because A) most of the activity is discussion, not answer, and B) People write on Facebook because they're already on Facebook. It takes more energy to get them to go to another site for their interactions.

@GMNoob Several hundred roleplayers who regularly attend conventions. A lot more that just play.

GMNoob

@lisardggY I knew of some guys in a Yeshiva by me, and other than that all I knew was this article: :D ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3052074,00.html

lisardggY

The community is still younger, on average, than the US or UK, mostly because the hobby arrived relatively late, but we're past the stage of "people play D&D in highschool and stop when they get in the army". Lots of older people.

Ah, I remember this article.

This very, very, stupid article.

2

BESW

12:28

GMNoob

Gimli the dwog?

BESW

Yup.

Inbar Rose

13:53

@GMNoob I would say "most are in the center/tel-aviv" but that is not entirely true, its just the ones that arent, (like yourself) are often not aware of the rest of the community.

lisardggY

There's a pretty strong contingent in Haifa, mostly around/in the Technion. Also a strong community around Kfar-Saba/Hod Hasharon. And Tel-Aviv, of course.

Inbar Rose

14:12

Yep - I have 2 groups I play in, and I am just starting up a new group soon.

There is a Facebook Group for Israeli Roleplayers

BESW

Cool.

Inbar Rose

14:28

Our country is small enough :)

From the southest south, to the northest north (ignore my mistakes - its on purpose) its only 424 km.

BESW

That's not quite ten times as long as Guam.

lisardggY

14:45

"Guam - Even Smaller Than It Is Far Away". Catchy.

5

BESW

Heh.

One of the touristy slogans is "Where America's Day Begins," but I like yours better.

GMNoob

15:09

@InbarRose I think we can safely ignore Eilat, and say the country is only 255 km :) If I lived in Eilat, I don't think I'd spend my time with an RPG

Inbar Rose

Heh... The majority of the country sits within about a 50km radius of Tel-Aviv.

And then all the peripharies about 100-150km away.

Not even that much

The point is that its small.

And so the RPG scene in Tel-Aviv is quite awesome.

lisardggY

15:25

I know role players from Eilat

Sad and lonely.

GMNoob

They should be scuba diving or something. Fighting sea turtle dragons, and climbing dangerous volcanoes.

Inbar Rose

15:40

Its too hot.

GMNoob

perfect reason to work on your magic skills to resist heat I say.

Actually, I think the lives of people in Eilat and other fantastic places, should make us realize just how bored adventurers must get in their RPG settings. Yeah, it's great for a vacation, but when you live there, you just want to sit in your house all day.

RedRiderX

@GMNoob It turns out that it can be quite dangerous to go alone.

something something a better pun than I could think of

Professor Loki Caprion

16:39

So... if the game's author comes in and answers a question you post, it pretty much stands to reason that their answer is the correct one!

GMNoob

Not necessarily!

@ProfessorLokiCaprion themodernword.com/eco/eco_author.html

Metool

There are some instances [cougheskayarcough] of the creator not having understanding of the system.

GMNoob

It's the whole, rules as written vs rules as intended thing :)

Professor Loki Caprion

True, true! But in this case, the clarification was very much intention of the rules muddled by different ways of the text being read.

Inbar Rose

Also - nowadays many rules systems are authored by multiple people.

Each author may have their own opinions / direction they wanted to take the rules in / interpretation

GMNoob

17:01

@Metool what is eskayar?

Metool

@GMNoob A horror.

The idea is a good one, but the execution...

GMNoob

is the horror the point values or the idea?

Metool

Point values.

> Great Fortitude - 10 FP - a benchmark for defining what plus to a single save is worth a feat

> Scribe Scroll - 10 FP - benchmark for item creation feats because it can be used for any of your spell levels, can always be used by you, and doesn't use an item slot

GMNoob

17:23

distrubing. He created his own system without validating that it's correct :P

This is the problem with people trying to be "objective"

I was happy and scared about Next's proposal that all feats have to equal +2 to a stat.

Joshua Aslan Smith

18:24

that does look scary

RedRiderX

StockFinds

@stockfinds

Unknown threat to the United States of America

490 tweets, 4.3k followers, following 5 users

For all your stock photo needs

GMNoob

@JoshuaAslanSmith I'm happy with the way it works. I'm also happy with Next as is, and see no reason to buy a copy of the rules :)

RedRiderX

lisardggY

18:58

I played one game of vNext, a few packets ago, and while I enjoyed the simplification of the dis/advantage system (and its low swinginess), it still felt very unfinished. Friends who played the latest packets said it didn't feel much... finisheder.

I'm guessing they closed the beta, but they're still going to be polishing up a lot of rules and ancillaries.

lisardggY

19:09

Damned CoookieClicker. Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in. With Santa.

RedRiderX

19:22

@lisardggY Merry Clickmas then!

lisardggY

@RedRiderX Not falling for another one of those. :)

RedRiderX

@lisardggY You know you want to!

lisardggY

@RedRiderX Nah. It's not the clicking that does it for me, it's the surprisingly impressive art and puns.

RedRiderX

@lisardggY Oh well just wait for it there is a bit of that in Clickmas

Not as much

It's hard to be compared to CookieClicker

lisardggY

sigh

Just one quintillion cookies to go for my next Santa upgrade.

RedRiderX

20:23

@lisardggY Just take it one trillion at a time.

Zachiel

Santa upgrades? Right now that I've reset it?

I keep resetting it since I don't know how to get the fast shadow achievements.

RedRiderX

@Zachiel cheat with javascript

Zachiel

I tried cheating with an autoclicker. Cheating more than that feels like cheating.

Metool

"Cheating more than that feels like cheating." - Zachiel 2013

4

Zachiel

But 10 clicks per second and following an optimal upgrade path didn't get me the first achievement

@Metool It was intentional, of course.

RedRiderX

20:30

@Metool No no I liked the other quote

oh there it's good now

Maybe make it link to the original if you want proof

Very nice.

Zachiel

I like how it's Metool who's getting stars (even from me)

2

RedRiderX

Ah well I just reposted that twitter feed after someone else found it, so those stars are a little bit illegitimate.

BESW

21:35

@Metool Several months ago Fred Hicks was asked a question about a mechanical difference between DFRPG and Fate Core (both of which he one of the lead designers on).

He was very surprised and had to go check the rules, because he'd always played the DFRPG rule as if it were the way it was expressed in Fate Core, despite them being explicitly contradictory.

RedRiderX

22:10

7 Hours, 1 Customer

Sorry if I sound bored.

BESW

I assume you don't work in a place that people might consider suitable for gift shopping.

A few days ago we've reached the point where it's better to just lock yourself in and not go anywhere near retail of any sort. Or restaurants. Or roads, really.

RedRiderX

@BESW Nope

@BESW We have also reached that point

More because snow

About a third/fourth of Canada is experienceing some form of power outages.

Metool

@RedRiderX I'm glad I'm not among them.

RedRiderX

I'm not sure what it's like in the Northeast US

It's pretty much Southern Ontario and everything East of that.

0

Q: Please explain how to Stack Overflow because I do not get it

So apparently I can no long add answers, and I can not post comments (<50 points). I basically can't do anything to dig me out of the hole unless asking stupid questions I already know the answer to? Could someone please explain to me how this is going to work out? I have studied Business Inform...

discussion stackoverflow users post-ban

@Metool Well that's good.

I think it was blinking at my parent's house early on.

BESW

22:26

We had an outage last night, but it's probably unrelated.

RedRiderX

No, everything is related.

BESW

Metool

[ded]

RedRiderX

@Metool Department of Economic Development?

Data Element Dictionary?
Department of Education?
Death Effector Domain?
Dutch Elm Disease?

Metool

22:46

Sorry, [Death] is what I meant.

RedRiderX

oh

okay

that makes sense

7.45 hours 1 customer

Sorry but it does wear on a body. :P

Especially being the only one here.

Metool

@RedRiderX 7.75 hours?

RedRiderX

@Metool Wait yeah that would be less

Oops

Metool

What do you even do?

RedRiderX

Call Center atm

And I'm not doing much right now.

Metool

22:50

Ah, of course.

RedRiderX

Yeah so Sun. + Xmas + power outages = not a lot of calls

RedRiderX

23:47

8.75 hours 1 customer

I'll try not to have such an outburst again.

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