TRPG General Chat

trogdor

12:07 AM

lol

RedRiderX

12:24 AM

@BESW Heh that was a good time-travel fight.

@BESW Yes it did set up a potential new direction for the next 50 years, which is nice.

I was so worried during TotD that Moffat was just going to blow it and bring them back already.

BESW

That would've been disappointing.

I fully expect him to do it before he steps down, though.

Moffat has a compulsion to do things Bigger, Better, (Faster, Stronger) and More Game-Changingly than anyone else.

trogdor

I would include himself in there

BESW

He married the Doctor (twice), he brought back Gallifrey, he shoved a whole new Doctor into the lineup, he retconned everything since 2005, he invented The Most Important Companion...

trogdor

after seeing what I did yesterday

@BESW and then did it again

he made at least 2 most important companions

maybe 3 or 4 really

depending on your definitions

BESW

There needs to be a new meme: The Most Interesting Companion.

I don't always die tragically... but when I do, it's my first on-screen appearance.

I don't always save the Doctor... but when I do, I do it retroactively across all of time and space.

I don't always die... no, I lie, I die more than Aeon Flux.

I don't always get married... but when I do, it's to the man I was trained since birth to kill.

trogdor

12:40 AM

yeah,....

Moffat, if you can hear this, you will be BURNINATED

if you can't hear this, you will be BURNINATED anyway

RedRiderX

12:53 AM

@BESW Well didn't Gaiman do the other Doctor's wife thing?

Oh right there is the Queen.

BESW

@RedRiderX I'm not counting the TARDIS, there wasn't an actual marriage. The "wife" thing there is more of a joke.

RedRiderX

True

BESW

Yes, the Doctor has been married three times that we know of, twice on screen and both of those times under Moffat.

RedRiderX

He also re-retconned all of 11th's arcs.

But I suppose that's just tying them all together...

BESW

However, the Doctor getting engaged is a gag that dates back to Hartnell's The Aztecs.

RedRiderX

12:55 AM

Either way I won't be able to watch 11 again without thinking of TotD

BESW

@RedRiderX I think that's "Mission Accomplished" for Moffat, then.

RedRiderX

@BESW Heh totally.

BESW

Ditto being unable to watch any "I'm the last of my people" scene from 2005 on without thinking of Day and Night.

RedRiderX

@BESW Heh yeah it really changes the meaning of all that stuff.

BESW

And then the kicker is Name, which is designed solely to make you think of it when watching ANY OLD WHO EPISODE EVER.

RedRiderX

12:59 AM

@BESW Heh yeah and then Time subverts what you thought Name meant.

Moffception.

Evening all

Howdy

@C.Ross Hey.

1:02 AM

@RedRiderX but that's admittedly a little harsh.

BESW

@RedRiderX ~~invalid~~ retconned

RedRiderX

@BESW Hahaha yes much better!

C. Ross

I know most of you aren't Pathfinder fans, but if you're interested in player power base type stuff, the Downtime rules in Ultimate Campaign are very interesting

BESW

@C.Ross I'm still interested in such things from a design/context sort of view rather than a practical/implementation standpoint, but I frequently find myself thinking "Gosh, this seems unnecessary."

C. Ross

@BESW I've found myself wanting more crunch lately ...

and this is definitely the crunch end of the pool

BESW

1:07 AM

Indeed.

C. Ross

but I've also been wanting to run/play something with player power bases, so it hits a sweet spot of interest

John Craven

1:48 AM

Why have downtime at all in a world where you can heal broken bones and crap instantly?

BESW

I'm pretty sure nobody in D&D uses the bathroom at all, actually.

doppelgreener

hrm

2

Q: Does Create a Diversion to Hide come with all the conditions of using Stealth to hide?

In D&D 4e, characters have a couple of straightforward ways to become Hidden through their skills. The first is to use the Stealth skill. This is a check usually made at the end of a move. Using Stealth and being Hidden comes with many conditions, described straightforwardly and wonderfully in t...

my question has been completely misinterpreted overnight

I've rewritten part of it but I'm not sure if it's yet clear enough now

BESW

[cough]

doppelgreener

[edits a few more times and is done]

BESW

> Does "Create a Diversion to Hide" override any of the Rules of Hidden Club, or do I still have to follow all those rules as well? If it does, which rules is it letting me ignore?

doppelgreener

1:58 AM

That would be better actually!

BESW

I am the Rephraser.

John Craven

yeah but does it give you free hide armor?

doppelgreener

you are

@JohnCraven no but i know a guy who can fix you up

BESW

2:34 AM

@JonathanHobbs Looks like you got a winner.

trogdor

lol

hide armor = best armor

BESW

If you use hide armor, it's hard for them to find you.

trogdor

lol

it actually is the best armor

in 4E anyway

if you get maxed out dex it's better than plate

by level 21 I think, maybe earlier

doppelgreener

3:08 AM

@BESW i might have yes :O

Lord_Gareth

4:15 AM

@C.Ross - I'm going to warn you ahead of time: you will live to regret using 1st party Paizo content. They defile everything they touch and desecrate most of the things they won't.

Alex P

6:13 AM

@BESW See also: Broadchurch. (He's not really the star of the show, though.)

BESW

@AlexP Still haven't seen it.

Alex P

You gotta hurry before they make the American one. Because otherwise you'll have to be like, "Well, crap, there's an American one now and I can't say I saw the British one before it was cool."

All that cred, just evaporating into thin air. :)

BESW

Tennant's in it. The bandwagon already rumbled past.

(It was full of squeeing fangirls waving sonic screwdrivers and shouting "Allons-y, Alonso!".)

I just have to resign myself to the fact that the vast majority of the popular and critical audiences find something in Tennant to enjoy that I can't.

I thought the Tennant/Stewart Hamlet was self-important pretension lit up by the occasional glimmer of potential, but it was popularly and critically acclaimed.

(It felt like they put too much effort into Being Clever, and just assumed that hiring big-name actors was all you had to do in order to get good performances.)

Alex P

6:36 AM

Yeah, he's really not the best actor ever. I'm not gonna try to, like, defend him on that front or anything.

I think I like him when the director tries hard enough, though.

trogdor

my problem is that he tried too hard

and some of the stories he was in were just downright terrible

BESW

@AlexP He was quite excellent in Day!

trogdor

and characters who popped up, if not actors, just annoyed the **** out of me

BESW

And frequently in both Hamlet and his own era of Doctor Who I'd sit forward and say "THAT is a version of the character which I'd like to see more of, please!"

Alex P

@BESW I feel that way about, like, everything.

I like Patrick Stewart but I think there is a terrible tendency to cast him in Shakespearean stuff that doesn't try very hard and hope he just carries the whole production.

BESW

6:49 AM

Stewart.... well, he himself has said that his entire career served to prepare him for the role of Picard.

Stewart is awesome at playing Picard-like characters, but the less Picard-like you need the role to be, the less wise it is to ask him to play it.

Kind of like asking BRIAN BLESSED to play Bob Cratchit.

Alex P

@BESW Characters who are not very Picard-like: Lear and Ahab.

BESW

Oh, jeez. People are asking sf.se questions as if it's canon that Tasha Lem is River Song.

Alex P

Wut?

BESW

You've seen Time of the Doctor, right?

Alex P

Yes.

Why is she River Song?

BESW

6:54 AM

There's a fan theory running rampant that Mother Superius Tasha Lem is actually post-computerized River Song.

"Fight the psychopath inside you" is the key line, it seems.

Alex P

Ahahahaha.

BESW

They kiss, they fight, he gives her the TARDIS key, she dies more than once, she ages slowly, she can fly the TARDIS...

You know, the things that lots of Moffat women manage, or that are easily explained by things the fans are forgetting.

And they gleefully ignore that she'd never seen Eleven's body before.

The TARDIS was always pretty easy to fly if she liked you (the "six people to fly it" thing was so made up).

We know the Daleks can kill and revive you repeatedly.

The Doctor flirts with a lot of women, and Eleven kisses just about anything that moves if he's excited enough.

Lots of Moffat's women have River Song's personality (and need to be insulted before they can leap into action).

And the fact that they have a lot of history together... well, all of his history with Madame Vastra was off-screen too, but nobody's claiming she's secretly another character we've just given a tearful final farewell to.

trogdor

tears of happiness

BESW

(Oh, and "Lem" backwards is "Mel," as in "Melody Pond." Gag me with a spoonful of conspiracynut butter.)

trogdor

and gleeful joy at the prospect that the Abominable One might actually never return

Alex P

7:00 AM

I would appreciate fan theories more if they didn't mostly exist to make fiction worse.

2

trogdor

I honestly can't understand why anyone likes River Song

BESW

@AlexP Are you aware of the Knight 2 King Theory for Harry Potter?

Alex P

@BESW Probably. I forget which is which.

The best fan theory is R2-D2 Jedi Master theory.

BESW

@AlexP Ron Weasley traveled back in time and became Dumbledore.

Alex P

Partly because it is not, like, supposed to be serious.

BESW

7:03 AM

K2K is very tongue-in-cheek too, which is sad because it's better supported than most fan theories.

Alex P

I mean, think about it. R2-D2 has his own lightsaber (ROTJ). R2-D2 can fly (prequels). Every time some young untested kid blows the shit out of a mega battlestation with a lone fighter, R2-D2 is in it. R2-D2 can overload droids with his force powers, like an old-school Jedi (New Hope).

R2-D2 can use Force Lightning (ROTJ).

BESW

7:17 AM

0

A: If Tasha Lem is an incarnation of River Song, why would she ask if Eleventh has a "new body"?

Because Tasha Lem is not River Song. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence both for and against this fan theory, but you've asked about one of the major sticking points against Lem being River: she doesn't recognize Eleven's body. Tasha Lem is another Strong Woman who the Doctor flirts wit...

I would hope Moffat learned his lesson from killing Clara twice in a row, and didn't think that giving River Song a tearful goodbye immediately before bringing her back was a good idea.

shatterspike1

7:37 AM

Half of me loves burning wheel, the other half wants to gut it like a fish.

shatterspike1

7:47 AM

why in the hell is "Blank Stare" a required trait for a Peddler?

doppelgreener

@BESW I just re-read that theory (the only place I could find it, really) and that gave me shivers

BESW

8:16 AM

@JonathanHobbs I think this is its current official home.

BESW

8:31 AM

No downvotes on the Tasha/Song answer yet...

doppelgreener

8:54 AM

@BESW Maybe could create a self-answered question: "Is Tasha Lem River Song?"

BESW

That'd just be trolling, I'm afraid.

doppelgreener

How so?

Would it just start an argument?

BESW

Yeah.

It'd just turn into

[comment bringing up another point or contesting it]

[BESW edits answer to address comment's concern]

[another comment bringing up a point or contesting it]

[BESW's post becomes sentient and eats Moffat]

Without any solid statement either way, it's just a matter of who can most eloquently interpret the evidence to their view.

That's not an SE post, that's a forum debate.

doppelgreener

Oh, I guess so.

I would probably do it more like:

[comment bringing up another point or contesting it]

[Jonathan edits answer slightly]

[another comment appears]

[Jonathan either ceases to edit answer now or very shortly and either lets comments argue it out or unwisely engages in them]

BESW

Heheh.

...hm. The Doctor outright lies in the truth field.

"Don't worry, Barnable, I have a plan!" [turns to Clara] "I don't have a plan."

doppelgreener

9:14 AM

@BESW He does have a plan. Talk fast, hope good things happen, take the credit.

BESW

Either way, he's lying.

doppelgreener

That's... true

BESW

So irony. Many foreshadowing.

doppelgreener

oh my goodness XD

that's one of the cutest things I have seen.

BESW

@JonathanHobbs You haven't been very far into the depths of bronycraft, have you?

doppelgreener

9:25 AM

I haven't

BESW

►

Or if you prefer, Beep beep, I'm a cloud.

Followed immediately by Twilight's version.

doppelgreener

@BESW hahahaha, her version is lovely

am I to understand that a portion of bronycraft has a profession in cuteness?

BESW

Have you seen My Little Raptor: Friendship is Disembowelment?

@JonathanHobbs Yes.

doppelgreener

@BESW i was enchanted enough at how well those were done but then i noticed their personalities were even well captured

BESW

I went "BWAHAHAH" at raptor!Pinkie.

I'm quite sure I've shown you the Derpy Hooves loop.

Voldemort is apparently a Doctor Who fan and an SE citizen.

[blink]

[walleyed stare]

[slow face/palm]

Rose, combined with the energies of the TARDIS, became the Bad Wolf.

The Bad Wolf, it is easy to postulate, is also The Moment.

Thus The Moment is part TARDIS.

The Bad Wolf, it is increasingly clear, orchestrated a great deal of the events in Nine and Ten's lives, perhaps also Eleven's, and (as The Moment) pulled strings as far back as the First Doctor in order to get them into the LGTW at the crucial hour.

doppelgreener

9:52 AM

@BESW Tom Riddle's moniker was an internet forum username before it was his Dark Lord name

BESW

@JonathanHobbs It makes sense. He was probably a 4chan troll.

doppelgreener

@BESW what is The Moment?

BESW

@JonathanHobbs The Moment is a Time Lord weapon of universal destruction so powerful that it developed a conscience and judges anyone who tries to use it.

The fan theory (which I whole-heartedly support) is that The Moment didn't actually develop a conscience. It developed a Bad Wolf.

doppelgreener

Oh, right. From the 50th.

@BESW Haha!

BESW

The Bad Wolf said that it was throwing itself back and forward in time, orchestrating events.

doppelgreener

9:55 AM

I suppose Bad Wolf could've manipulated The Moment to develop an itself.

BESW

The Moment took the form of the Bad Wolf to communicate with the Warth Doctor.

And it is pretty clear that the Bad Wolf orchestrated the Doctor's rehabilitation from post-genocidal PTSD.

The ultimate culmination of which... is keeping him from ever having committed genocide in the first place.

It's the TARDIS looking out for him. Again.

Sadly, it's also "Rose saves the Doctor from himself" as the ENTIRE PLOT OF THE DOCTOR WHO REVIVAL.

Every. Single. Bit. Of. New. Who. is Rose and the TARDIS conspiring to fix the Doctor's mistakes so he doesn't have to feel bad.

I'm depressed now.

....hm.

doppelgreener

You might be over-extrapolating.

the Moment briefly became the Bad Wolf and this could maybe mean the Bad Wolf became the Moment. And, being who it was being, whichever way around it was, it got the Doctor to not use it for evil, which is what it's always been doing.

BESW

Now I'm wondering about the Charged Vacuum Emboitments that were draining entropy from our universe into E-space and keeping our universe from succumbing to heat-death.

doppelgreener

The Moment was being The Moment, and the Tardis has not engineered his eternal survival and not-depressed-ness.

BESW

Since it's been repeatedly enforced that inter-universe travel is nearly impossible since the LGTW, what's up with the CVEs?

doppelgreener

10:08 AM

What are the CVEs?

BESW

They're Charged Vacuum Emboitments, holes draining entropy from our universe into an alternate universe called E-space.

Without them, our universe would've succumbed to heat death by 1981.

doppelgreener

When do they come up?

BESW

Fourth Doctor.

He accidentally got sucked into E-space through one of them. When he got out the Master started mucking about with the guys who were maintaining the CVEs, and accidentally deleted a fraction of the universe.

doppelgreener

Whoops.

The mathematics people?

BESW

Yes.

The Doctor Who multiverse is vast and complex, and very very fragile.

It's held together with spit and thread.

doppelgreener

10:18 AM

I suspect as much in-universe as literarily

BESW

Yes, both.

Although in terms of props, it's more about the tinfoil and bubble wrap.

BESW

10:32 AM

@Cat Hi!

Feeling better, I hope?

Cat

@Hey BESW! Feeling much better, or at least bad of my own accord ... I was out partying last night. Nothing crazy, but my stomach is unaccustomed to the combination of insults (oysters, crabcakes, wine, chips, etc) that I hurled at it.

I'm just up to drink some water and get vertical now.

I'll nap later in the day once the water kicks in.

doppelgreener

:O

Hi @Cat!

Cat

Hey @JonathanHobbs :)

trogdor

@BESW that makes me sad really

doppelgreener

10:53 AM

@Cat That is how you know you had a good time.

(watch here for a couple of minutes onwards :D)

BESW

Gosh.

All these years and I've never known if I was having a good time or not.

trogdor

lol

I have, but not on those criteria

It's only fun if you burninated at least one thatched roof hut

BESW

@trogdor I figured out what was wrong! I missed picking up an unlocked assault rifle so I could use all that lovely ammo.

trogdor

oh lord

so you really were missing a weapon

I did think it was silly that you literally had one weapon you could use, and that the ammo for it was also so scarce

but to be honest, they railroad you pretty hard,... I can't see how they could manage letting you move on without getting your second weapon in the whole game

BESW

Also apparently if you kill a riot guard, you can pick up his minigun.

doppelgreener

11:08 AM

What was this? :O

BESW

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

The video game that Vin Diesel started a game company for to make sure video games based on his film wouldn't just be a lazy cash grab.

Because the man is One of Us.

trogdor

11:22 AM

wait,...

they don't biometrically lock the dang miniguns?

of all things?

doppelgreener

Whoa.

Okay that's pretty great.

So he made games based on his movies and made sure they were games that stood up on their own?

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Well, he hired people to do it right.

doppelgreener

C:

that is a great thing

BESW

It's a 2004 game, and has a lot of the typical hallmarks of hybrid FPS/RPG console games of that period.

trogdor

it does seem to have some issues

but not as many as it looked like yesterday, apparently

BESW

11:31 AM

Yeah, you arrived just as I got to the first run-and-gun level and I was very confused.

trogdor

yeah

and also you were missing weapons

running and gunning with just a shotgun is no fun

BESW

Also I am absolutely pants at FPSes.

trogdor

well,... yeah

lisardggY

History.SE needs an option to "Flag as Conspiracy Theory"

7

BESW

@lisardggY I wasn't around when you were being intimidated by Gareth!

lisardggY

11:42 AM

@BESW You left me all alone with the musket wielding antiwhovian!

BESW

Was there anything in particular you wanted to chat about, Who-wise?

lisardggY

Let me try to recall...

Ah, I'd just watched The City of Death, a remarkably irrelevantly titled Tom Baker story.

BESW

Good story, if somewhat random.

Great dialogue.

(You can tell Douglas Adams had a hand in it.)

lisardggY

Definitely.

But the title seems like it's a leftover from a completely different story that got edited out. Or, alternately, slapped on at the last minute.

BESW

Yes, it does, doesn't it?

lisardggY

11:48 AM

The first episode of the story had about 10 solid minutes of walking around the streets of Paris. Apparently it was the first Doctor Who story to be filmed abroad, in Paris itself, so I think they were enjoying it.

BESW

Yeah, very self-indulgent with the on-site filming.

Happily they get over it pretty quick.

lisardggY

A lot of things there are very dated. The pacing, the over-acting (though some of it works when you consider part of the plot, as well as the character of Duggan, were originally meant for a storyline set in 1930's Las Vegas)

But whenever it feels bad or silly, I remind myself that it's still better than Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

BESW

Heheh.

lisardggY

Comic books can get away with characters and stories which are simply silly when transferred to live-action movies and TV. You can deal with it by toning it down and making it more realistic (like most superhero movies do, in way) or by embracing the camp of it all (like the old Batman TV show, the Dick Tracy movie, etc). S.H.I.E.L.D. does neither, and it shows.

doppelgreener

I am watching the Robots of Death.

BESW

11:55 AM

Oh, dear God, why?

lisardggY

I just saw an episode, I think #5 or #6, with a pyrokinetic character unabashedly embracing the name Scorch, and giving one of the tritest supervillain speeches possible, but all played completely straight.

doppelgreener

As a friend put it, the opening scenes involve people being tended to by robots, talking about how certain robots are prone to malfunctioning and tearing people apart, and verbally abusing their robots. (Gee, I wonder what's going to happen now?)

BESW

Although, I believe that one does have Leela being awesome, so there's that.

Leela couldn't possibly have been made as a modern companion...

doppelgreener

Leela being in that one is a wonderful point for it. I haven't seen her in anything yet, other than the scene wherein the Doctor explains how the Tardis can be smaller on the inside. And that's in this one!

A friend of mine has told me about her: she's from a tribe at the end of time, and so whilst she is foreign to an awful lot, she isn't stupid. At the beginning of the Robots of Death, she's spinning a yoyo because the doctor told her to keep it spinning - and she finds out it's just a game, whilst she thought she had to keep it spinning or else the ship would stop working! But she's still intelligent, even if she misunderstands stuff.

BESW

Leela meets the Sontarans, a race whose only physical weakness is that any attack on a small spot in the back of their neck incapacitates them: "I've worked out how to stop them. Stab them in the neck!"

Yeah, when the Doctor picks up another companion, Leela starts translating his technobabble for them.

doppelgreener

12:01 PM

Whoa, she outright stabs one in that spot? XD

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Psh. She throws a knife into the spot from five meters away.

doppelgreener

@BESW dang that's good.

lisardggY

Great shot, kid! That was one in a million.

doppelgreener

@BESW I hear that's deliberate, as part of their perfect-warrior engineering. It forces them to face their opponent: they cannot turn their back and run away, lest they expose their weak point.

BESW

It's chicken-or-egg.

The physical reason is that they're clones who use that vent to reproduce.

doppelgreener

12:04 PM

@BESW whoa.

BESW

Whether it was engineered to foster their never-surrender attitudes, or if their never-surrender attitudes are the result of this unintended weakness, is unclear.

Yeah.

To defeat a Sontaran, you hit him in the nads.

doppelgreener

@BESW I was thinking the same thing, hahahaha

(even settling on 'nads' as the best word)

i roll for occlumency

d20

Dice Service

14

doppelgreener

i am now medium safe against our minds melding

BESW

I have a +5 bonus for already having used this chat to mindmeld with Brian.

lisardggY

12:08 PM

I just censored a comment that, once I saw it written out, sounded much dirtier than I intended.

doppelgreener

well shit

i get a -2 for my concentration modifier

d20

1

I think you're safe.

hooray!

12:16 PM

lol

BESW

12:43 PM

Finished Butcher Bay!

....next time I sit down to play video games, it will be Assault on Dark Athena.

[Riddicking intensifies]

RedRiderX

Hey nice.

Have you bought Assault on Dark Athena yet?

BESW

Yeah, Butcher Bay was re-released with Dark Athena, so technically I just bought Dark Athena.

RedRiderX

Aww nice.

That sounds like a good time then.

BESW

Not my favorite kind of games, but I'm a sucker for Diesel in any form, especially Riddick-shaped.

BESW

1:02 PM

Huh.

Pitch Black, Butcher Bay, Dark Fury, and Rule the Dark all feel of a piece, with Chronicles feeling very out of place.

BESW

1:17 PM

Okay, sleeptime.

lisardggY

g'night.

BESW

Back in 8 or 9 hours.

lisardggY

We're counting on you.

BESW

I know!

[is frozen in carbonite]

lisardggY

1:59 PM

Submitted a proposal for a lecture in the upcoming scifi convention. Now, commencing three months of procrastination followed by two weeks of panic followed by two days of writing the damn thing.

RedRiderX

2:44 PM

@lisardggY Sounds like a plan to me.

RedRiderX

3:17 PM

2

Shania Twain

Proposed Q&A site for shania Twain fans Questions and Answers.

Currently in definition.

lisardggY

3:34 PM

They're opening language-specific versions of existing sites now? I see that Turkish/Russian/Spanish versions of SO are going into beta soon

I'm guessing there won't be much support for, say, Hebrew language versions of RPG.SE.

RedRiderX

@lisardggY It took them all this time to split up just SO into language-based sites.

So just wait until RPG.SE gets as big as SO, then we'll see. :P

Zachiel

4:50 PM

I'd like (and fear) an Italian version of this site

RedRiderX

NSA catalog reveals US government has been secretly back dooring equipment from US companies including Dell, Cisco, Juniper, IBM, Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and more, risking enormous damage to US tech sector.

Hmm

so this sounds bad

very bad

BESW

10:56 PM

Hey, guys!

Remember the Origin of Owlbear debate?

2

Most sources said it was based on a toy, but tracking down the original source of that statement revealed that the article mentioned the owlbear, but was talking about the rust monster being inspired by a toy.

Well... apparently the owlbear was a toy from the same set.