TRPG General Chat - 2014-03-25 (page 1 of 3)

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12:00 AM

If the game itself makes no sense, why should its free vehicle be any different?

d20pfsrd.com usually does a pretty good job with the whole "setting things up so you can find what you need" thing

because it's run by different people

also, because it takes different skill sets and different expertise to get right. in this case, expertise and skill set that are far more abundant in the general population

most game mechanics tend to be best modelled by third-degree polynomials, and most game designers are english majors whose degree never required anything past basic algebra (nothing against English as a major, most things its used for really don't need advanced math, but the RPG industry seriously needs to find itself some mathematicians to go along with the writers; also, I was an English major once, and I went into it on advice from someone in the industry on how to become an RPG designer).

@BESW no, what, I always stack dice.

Thus, it's not really surprising that an awful lot of RPGs have very well written fluff, but mechanics that are poorly thought out at best

Those are some pretty sweeping generalisations you've got there, and I'd argue vehemently about "well-written fluff."

tweetstocampaignby.tumblr.com/post/80625132836/…

12:12 AM

sure, there's some poor fluff out there too, but on the big picture, the overall quality level of fluff writing tends to be far higher than the overall quality of mechanics design

"THIS IS WHAT THE REFRANCE"

@Zachiel Ah, gotcha. I queued that up a month ago, so it's not really on my mind the day it comes out.

as for that or any other generalization i made, if you disagree, you're welcome to make a counterargument. this is chat, after all, discussion is not only allowed here, but kinda the whole point

@BESW Of course, the reference indicator is a reference to something else. I did not know you could queue those.

@Zachiel There's no way I'd be that consistent about posting them at the exact same time every Tuesday and Thursday if I had to do it manually.

12:17 AM

@BESW as for Lord_Gareth being most likely to be able to answer, now that I know that, is there any good way for me to act on that knowledge? RPG.SE doesn't seem to have a private message function i can use to ask him. is there one that i just haven't found yet?

@MatthewNajmon Because I used the @ sign when I mentioned his name, he got automagically pinged and the next time he looks at the top of the main site while he's logged in he'll see that.

ah

(Anyone who has been in chat recently can be pinged that way by anyone else. Mods can ping people who haven't ever been in chat.)

so just hang out here and wait for him to notice it? ok

I don't pay a lot of attention to individual game designers so I don't know their resumes, but fluff writing tends to be astonishingly purple and only vaguely familiar with consistency or characterisation--and indeed, the skills of an English degree (setting aside the difference between a degree in writing and a degree in analysing)...

...are sometimes detrimental to writing adventures or worlds which support adventures because common fiction-writing techniques focus on telling stories rather than making spaces for others to tell stories.

And statements about the nature of math in RPGs seem almost doomed to be limited to very narrow segments of the RPG sphere: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple and Call of Cthulhu have drastically different mathematical paradigms compared to each other and to, say, Pathfinder.

@MatthewNajmon If you have to leave before he shows up, we can ping you so that you get notified about his response when you next log in.

12:25 AM

anyone else see the news feed post from Tweets to Campaign By? tweetstocampaignby.tumblr.com/post/80625132836/…

Looking at his chat profile we see that it's not especially likely he'll show up soon.

how do you 'escalate danger' with in the boundaries of the story

isn't a random ambush kind of mean?

as for the claim that most game designers are English majors, that came from the same letter from the head of Palladium Publishing that recommended me to become an English major myself (and was from just over a decade ago, some of that may have changed since then).

> A wrinkled old woman pushes her way through the bar and peers at you out of her one good eye.
> "While you nurse that tankard, boy, the Dark is rising. Tonight will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond all imagining!"

knowing some of my players that old lady wont leave the tavern alive

:P

12:30 AM

as for the nature of math in RPGs, here's where i got the 3rd-degree polynomial description: things in RPGs that don't advance numerically are mechanically trivial. things that do advance over time/exp/whatever work best with a particular general shape of curve (not a particular specific advancement, or we'd just tell the designers the one equation to plug their numbers into and they could get everything right from now on)

in the games i've seen the mechanics for (a wide range, with many ways of doing things), this advancement is nearly always linear, but the best-fit line to the aforementioned desired general shape of curve gives an extremely poor fit, while a third-degree polynomial usually can fit perfectly or nearly so, very easily

the Dragonborn fighter that recently left the group (so the player could switch to a wizard) once ripped out a mans throat with his teeth in a prize fight boxing match, even though I told him the rules were fist fights til one of the combatants is bloodied (4e rules so 1/2 hp). He said he wanted to bit the guy, i said it's against the rules of the fight, he didnt care and insisted on biting the guys neck...

cue nat. 20, critical hit and now the dragonborn is munching on some throat while his opponent is drowning in blood and his neck is sizzling from the acidic dragonborn spit.

that's why we have human DMs

@MC_Hambone Whether she dies or not, things have escalated. I refer you to the quoted tweet.

i've had groups go so far off the rails that i scrapped the entire campaign module and started running a completely different one, before all of them had even met each other

2

very true. just... you know... players always screw up your plans in the most rediculous ways :)

12:36 AM

That's why I keep reminding myself not to have plans.

My NPCs can have plans, but I shouldn't.

in my experience, games where everything goes according to the DM's plan tend to be really really boring

oh, that's not a reason not to have a plan. it is, however, a reason not to count on one, and not to let yourself be dependent on one

i started out preparing for games, typing up original adventure modules... that lasted for like 2 'quests' in my current game and now I just ad lib

Dec 9 '12 at 12:22, by BESW

Instead I build NPCs with plans and goals, and contingency plans, and watch my players waltz into carefully balanced power plays with all the dignity and grace of an octogonal bowling ball.

sometimes it's good other times I endup backing myself into a mystery story arc that I have not planned for and my ad libbed clues sometimes contradict eachother

@BESW 'octagonal bowling ball' Priceless! hahahaha

I've got several of those, if you search "bowling" in the transcript.

Feb 6 '13 at 12:24, by BESW

My favorite campaigns are where the party is a lumpy bowling ball randomly knocking down the NPCs' carefully lined up plans and defying all hope of useful contingencies.

Apr 17 '13 at 14:17, by BESW

Like a lopsided bowling ball flopping its way through a game of chess.

I figure, especially in D&D-style games, the PCs are going to act like that anyway.

I might as well design for it.

12:41 AM

but yea, I am totally used to things not going according to plan.... for 3 years now I have been trying to guide my players into a realm saving story arc where they have to travel the globe in search of ancient artifacts that killed Tiamat and Bahamut, for there is an evil Warlock trying to find those artifacts so he can resurrect Tiamat

3 different group (including my current one) and the groups either break up or go off in a random direction before I can weave that into the story

in a real investigation, you should expect to occasionally encounter seemingly contradictory clues. that's not a red flag that the story's FUBAR, it's a (green flag? i dunno) that these particular clues warrant further attention: is one of them planted or otherwise false? is there some way they're actually consistent with each other that you didn't think of? are you reading too much into them and its really your assumptions that contradict, not the clues themselves? the game is afoot!

@MatthewNajmon exactly! I did "throw out" some contradictory clues after I took stock of it and peiced together a realatively good story (one that will introduce my tiamat story arc in our next session!)

...my players, however, have yet to find out which clues are real and which are fake, though they have their suspicions

@BESW it IS kinda the game where people care more about acting out rampant violence than anything else, but I guess that's a part of the system

anyway, i'll be back later on I'm gonna go scrounge up some grub

1:02 AM

Vote to close as dup

Who has dared to call my dread name?

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1 hour ago, by Matthew Najmon

researching an example for an edit, and was shocked to find that the d20pfsrd Advanced Spell Search page ( http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/tools/advanced-spell-search ) doesn't include ANY of the evasion mechanics (atk roll, save, SR) in its searchable criteria! anyone know where i can find a list of pathfinder spells that is searchable by these? or any insight as to why those would be left unsearchable? they seem to me to be some of the most important aspects to be able to search.

@MatthewNajmon Conversations with web-designer friends, co-workers, & hobbyists suggest that the primary reason is incompetence; that is, both of Pathfinder's main SRDs are shoddily-coded and barely hold together.

I have since found a spell that works for my example, but I'd still like to know of such a searchable resource if any exists, since i very often have those evasion mechanics as significant concerns when choosing spells for various purposes.

1:07 AM

@MatthewNajmon Not that I'm aware of but if you wait a few hours I can get back home, snag some buddies of mine and see how they do it.

They had to peel through all of 3.5's 500+ supplements for bans, alterations, and boosts

They got very good at it.

and yea, that does seem to make some sense. i'd thought of it more as a layout thing, and was surprised because d20pfsrd usually does a pretty good job of being laid out such that i can find what i need. it does, however, have some problems more on the technical, back-end side of things, as i discovered when i tried to make a local copy to reference on a long trip when i was gonna be without internet and didn't want to bring a huge library of paper with me

sounds good. thanks.

Aight, I'm back out. If anyone needs me just kick an orphan into a fiery pit; the sacrifice will call me forth from the netherworld.

1:19 AM

As expected, Lord Gareth appears with a clap of thunder, announces "People are stupid!" and vanishes in a cloud of disdain.

and yet, somehow, still managed to be quite helpful

That's what makes him magical.

4

1:46 AM

A friendly reminder from Tweets to Campaign By: Do not meddle with intelligent artifacts.

This book is important. I like this story. It is not difficult to write. Why am I trying to strangle myself rather than write another word?

Tweeted by UrsulaV on March 24, 2014 at 4:38 PM

0

Q: Best roleplay game not DandD

So What RPG is best that is not Dungeons and dragons. I also don't want pencil and paper. I looked all over the internet and most of them are not cool. Also it needs to be one that at least 10 people play. Please tell me . I am very new to this.

VTC please

0

Q: What books should I purchase to start D&D4 with? (2014 after some became out of print)

This is obviously a more difficult question to ask now, given 5th is on the way. Essentials Dungeon Master Kit is way overpriced now, but the core rule books are still reasonably priced. I don't care at all about premade campaigns or modules, I'd be making my own. What player handbooks, rule...

and I'm sure this is a duplicate of something, but don't have the system mastery to work out what :os

Brian found it just as I did.

26

Q: What set of books makes a complete game?

I've asked several questions about 4th Edition D&D because I may be able to start a game. However, I'd need to purchase (some) materials. I am aware of the 4 book set (core) and the expected Essentials Red Box. So now I need to know: presumably buying either the 4 book set or essentials will be ...

I am this close to saying "troll."

2:08 AM

?

The 'best roleplay' question?

Mhm.

yeah, I see what you mean

This reminded me of the pathfinder archery monk archetype so I figured I'd share it :) youtube.com/watch?v=di8c7FZJgUA

@BESW Your patience is amazing :)

When a question is that far off target, I usually don't even know where to start

2

I can't stay on it for long, but if he gives us something to work with, others can pick up where I leave off.

2:16 AM

One of the issues I still have with that kind of issue is determining the best way of dealing with it. Clearly, when comments become too expansive and numerous, they are not the best approach, but the message from mods also seems to be that chat is to be avoided as well....

@Julix I'm reminded of the notion that the most proficient archers of antiquity held their arrows in their firing hand rather than in a quiver.

Took a lot more practice and skill, but made for much faster firing in much more chaotic conditions.

I now also vote 'troll'

Yeah, okay, I'm done with that.

Rawr.

[runs away scared]

2:22 AM

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I'm afraid that until you're able to describe your needs in more objective terms, this site isn't going to be able to provide useful answers. Perhaps look at Actual Play videos on YouTube so you know what the games look like before you dismiss them out of hand. Good luck, and I hope to see you back again when you're able to clearly define your needs. — BESW 8 secs ago

very diplomatic :o)

@BESW This, and all of the souls I consume in order to fuel my hateful powers.

Okay, this would normally be a non sequitur but you mention deep abiding hatred and I've been laughing about this all day, so I feel like I am allowed to drop this quote now:

> I admire [Cecil Rhodes], I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake. - Mark Twain

@Phil There's a certain space that I've seen teachers occupy, which I'm learning to utilise, wherein you can treat a person's claims seriously without giving them any room to latch on if their claims are an attempt to take advantage of you.

2:29 AM

@BESW Heh, tell me about it. I used to teach and know exactly what you're talking about

Flagged the new question and existing one as spam

I flagged the second for mod attention.

same

Aaand they're gone.

Red, be advised that your repeated and incoherent posts are attracting spam flags. I urge you to improve this one by looking at our game recommendation requirements, as consequences to repeated questions will escalate. — Brian Ballsun-Stanton ♦ 12 secs ago

The mod hammer strikes again

All hail the power of the mod hammer

Also, we semi-regularly get a peculiar kind of troll here which tries to get us to be mean, and then reports us.

Treating these trolls with a bewildered-yet-firm hand is fun, because they're baffled to find that kind of behaviour on the Internet and they get increasingly flustered until they out themselves.

(I admit I may have terrible-person tendencies.)

2:46 AM

Ahh, wasn't aware of that at all

@BESW Being a terrible person is salutary, sometimes.

2:57 AM

@Lord_Gareth Usefulness is magic. Souls are science undifferentiated from magic.

3:19 AM

"BESW's house is always so warm and cozy."
"That's because our air conditioner keeps icing over."

Reminds me of my college research summers.

@HeyICanChan Somehow I kept reading that last line of your answer as: That is how the fun. And all I could think of was zefrank, saying something like: That is how the fun do. (It was magical.)

The AC in the computer science department's server room was kinda ridiculous, so they put in a portable heater to keep it from short-cycling so much.

But also the power was spotty. And the AC didn't automatically turn back on after the power hiccuped.

@AlexP Science: defying logic since ever since.

(Whereas the heater, being a $100 consumer product rather than a thousands-of-dollars built-in system, did.)

3:24 AM

"Our AC doesn't work!"
"Put a heater in with it, that'll help."

2

It's an ad-hoc engineering solution to a badly designed building.

Reminds me of Southern High.

About fifteen years ago now, some bright people in government decided that the half-dozen high schools in the southern end of the island (one for each village) should be closed, and all the students sent to a single monstrous high school in the middle of the south.

Hence the super-generic name?

There are several points at which someone should have said "Wait, this is stupid," and everyone else listened.

Point the first being that the villages in question had major rivalries, and this was the equivalent of putting five different gangs in one school.

Point the second being that the site chosen to build Southern High had been used as a dumping ground for toxic chemicals for decades by the military.

@BESW I only saw one other. Was there more than two?

3:28 AM

@JonathanHobbs No, that was it.

But no, it got built. Shoddily.

The theatre stage collapsed because it turned out to be made of plywood.

The air conditioners were too big to fit in the holes in the walls.

@BESW I need to learn this.

@BESW And this.

The campus was designed with all manner of hidey-holes for drug deals and beatings.

Southern High is the primary reason I went to a private Catholic school for high school.

@BESW Hey, would you be able to give me any pointers into being able to learn about this for my own use? This would be immensely helpful in a few different places in my life.

@JonathanHobbs I don't claim to be an expert by any means; most of what I've got is kind of intuitive from watching my mother teach.

It boils down to this: always treat people with dignity, but don't confuse respect with permissiveness. You can acknowledge a person's legitimate concern without committing yourself to action until you know more.

@BESW I think I get what you mean.

3:38 AM

Listen, and ask questions. Expect people to want to put forth effort to fix their own problems: this is not rude, it's respectful. It would be disrespectful to assume people want others to fix their problems for them.

2

@BESW I am good at part of this!

I will think on this further and try to grok it :)

I live once more

Thank you

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Heh.

In conversation, I find that Dr. Phil's phrase "How's that workin' for you?" is an excellent response when one is at a loss.

"When my players don't make the choices I want them to make, I take away their XP!"
"How's that workin' for ya?"

Don't assume that someone is asking for your help until they actually do. If you want to help, you can offer it before they ask (in many Eastern cultures this is the standard so that no one ever has to refuse to help).

3:53 AM

@BESW i have heard it put that it is a habit of male culture to share information mainly only when a problem needs solving, leading to a tendency for men to offer solutions to things people express to them, and become potentially quite baffled when they're not looking for one

I suspect that's a correlation/causation fallacy re: gender and culture, but the habit exists regardless of its origin.

@BESW yes, it does not seem quite right, but it's hard to know where exactly to pick it apart.

To divorce the habit from the agenda, we can simply observe that it exists: In some modes of discourse, information is shared primarily when a problem needs solving; this creates a tendency to offer solutions to whatever is presented. When information is presented outside of the context of problem-solving, this tendency creates confusion among both parties.

in The Frying Pan, 3 mins ago, by SAJ14SAJ

First rule of food safety: never eat pomegranate seeds in Hades.

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4:17 AM

Uurrrrgh. [bites tongue bloody] I have serious problems with the idea that it's "fair" to force someone to lose an advantage based on real-life time commitments because of something in the game.

If you've attended twenty game sessions, dedicating something like a hundred hours of your life to my campaign, I'm not going to treat you like you've only attended fifteen of them because your character kicked the bucket.

How that ever became a standard assumption of the community baffles me.

5:14 AM

[blink]

5:49 AM

@Metool ?

What brought that up?

5

Q: How to reintegrate players who had their characters die in AD&D 1e?

Just wondering how it would be possible. Say for example, the party is level 5 and one player is killed in battle. What is to be done? Does he roll a character at level 5, or level 1? What are your thoughts? Is there an option that is fair but still fun for the returning player? I don't believe ...

character-creation adnd character-death

@BESW Cattle prods.

Ah, reintegrate. I've read it as "revigorate".

"There has to be a penalty, for fairness sake"

A penalty for a streak of bad luck? Sure, that makes total sense!

[/sarcasm][/opinion]

I remember when I thought like that...

6:06 AM

I'm trying to remember if I ever bought into it... I recall thinking it made sense but still balking at it.

Wait... is RPG.SE preventing me from entering fullscreen mode for my own security?

@BESW because it was AD&D

you died, you started over, that's how people played the game

it's a pretty primitive concept, the idea of "don't make your players die because it's boring" is probably a relatively advanced one

Yes, but the idea that it's fair!?

That's an astonishing claim with insidious implications.

have you played AD&D specifically?

No, but I'm not talking about AD&D specifically.

6:14 AM

ok, because this is AD&D specifically

I'm talking about the fact that our community 25 years later is still labouring under the same assumption.

Not just that the community thinks it "makes sense" or that to do otherwise would "rush the backstory" or whatever, but that it's the fair thing to do.

"There has to be a penalty, for fairness' sake."

That's not an AD&D-specific sentiment or statement, it's presented as a general principle (and so obvious and logical that it needs no justification or explanation).

If it were an AD&D-specific thing, those answers would be talking about it instead of assuming it.

My friend and I played through an AD&D (or was it BD&D?) dungeon crawl once at a tabletop gaming group nearby, in which we were hunting down a necromancer. I had to bow out partway through, but my friend tells me they found the necromancer, and the DM got as far as narrating "Aaaah, hello th--" before the rogue's player interrupted with an "I throw my dagger at him!" The necromancer died immediately. They won. Dungeon crawl over.

Instead, it's the answers which defy the "fairness" assumption which feel they must defend themselves.

@BESW I suspect it's got to do with the belief that character death probably should be treated as significant - see the old question about how to provide respawning without cheapening death - but I certainly wouldn't describe it as being fair.

Also, point of that being that it doesn't actually have that much impact in AD&D to be at level 1. A person at level 5 is only a little bit stronger, so you're not losing very much going back there.

Unless you're a Wizard.

But ultimately the old games had a lot of things that just seemed good at the time because they were fun enough, and the idea of respecting peoples' time and not making them start over despite that being the logical thing, and not killing characters unless it's useful, is probably new-age thinking

post-forge, stuff we've recognised only because of the paths we've taken, etc

it's there because weird cultural heritage from a more primitive time when nobody knew what they were doing.

at least, that's my supposition. and it'll go away.

6:30 AM

I agree with all of that (except the notion that it's okay to take away someone's pennies because they're only pennies and nobody's got dollars--the level disparity being less significant doesn't make it any less taking away the fruits of someone's real-world dedication), but it's the notion of fairness that baffles me.

It's a kind of self-persecution complex, this insistence on calling it fair.

Logical, supporting the narrative, keeping death significant, avoiding flimsy backstory--all those are arguable and supportable.

In the face of all these supportable reasons for XP loss from character death, why does fairness continue to take centre stage as a justification for it?

6:47 AM

@BESW Is it really widespread that people are insisting on calling it fair, or has it just come up in this question and it's a word people are using (possibly without thinking it through)?

I've seen it before.

I was never really clear who it was fair for, though--the people who managed to keep their characters alive and loot the bodies of their comrades?

@BESW Not sure, as I'm not sure why it would be called fair in particular

7:02 AM

I left a comment on the answer which focused on fairness:

Why are penalties fair? I can see all kinds of other arguments for penalising a player's new character based on his previous character's death--backstory, mechanical balance, and the sting of death have all been mentioned on this page--but who is it being fair to when we tell a player that the benefits of attending sessions regularly (spending real-life time and effort on the part of the player) are being taken away because something happened to one of his fictional avatars? I'm honestly puzzled by this. Since it comes up twice in your answer, perhaps it's worth explaining. — BESW 3 mins ago

@BESW Good choice

8:03 AM

I've brought up a point related to this when I wrote a post on death in D&D. I believe this is related to death in games, and how our attitudes to it changed. Remember, it was "fair" to start from the beginning of the level if you died, and then from the beginning of the game if you died a few times. Except that was brought on by lives costing the player a coin.

We're used to starting over if we fail. Newer generation of players, be they computer or rpg, are not.

Games nowadays respect their players' time... Except when they make the players grind the same thing over and over. In more insidious cases, failing a level makes you start over, but also gives you some xp. So you can try it repeatedly until you're good enough. Which is just like the old times except game mastery is replaced with level accrual. But that's veering off-topic.

8:30 AM

Morning

8:41 AM

Good morning

@BESW I am confused about your comment on this answer. The guy appears to be answering the question directly just fine, the only problem being he's basing his answers on what he recalls from 3.5e, not pathfinder. However, he could've edited it during the 5-minute grace period.

I suspect you had a bit of a brain fart or something, or I'm missing something.

(both of which would be reasonable)

(or that, y'know, he used the 5 minute grace period whilst you were commenting)

@JonathanHobbs You're missing what the question is actually asking, I think. Read it again?

9:01 AM

@BESW Well... title asks if you can take a 5-foot step back and perform any standard action, and body asks if you can take a 5-foot step back and fire off an arrow or a spell. Right?

The answer responds: yeah, you can take a 5-foot step and fire your arrow/spell, but you can't just perform ANY standard action after that 5-foot step, because 3.5e rules say you can't 5-foot step and then also move in the same turn.

(the fact this is not established as Pathfinder's rules is a problem)

Hey there party people!

Hello! How goes it, fellow party person chum?

just catching up on the feed about fairness in level reduction after dying

for what it's worth, my 2cents about the fairness in level reduction for dying is this: at MAX the penalty should be 1 level reduction or resetting the XP to the start of the current party level. This keeps everyone along the same power level (of course I am not thinking of any particular system here)

the one caveat is WHY they died, was the player being a stubbron fool? that warrants a reduction of level, was it just really bad luck and dice rolls? that probably does not.

9:17 AM

Oo, there was a discussion about penalizing players?

And since I have never played Pathfind nor read up on any of the rules I have nothing to add to the mor recent discussion

@InbarRose yes, its not too far up

@InbarRose mainly revolving around an answer saying there's gotta be some penalty to keep things fair... I think

I think i might play some Neverwinter... i kinda like the system of that MMO, but i really wish they had more class options

@MC_Hambone neverwinter, the game where 4e finally actually became a video game

hahaha yep!

I dont mind playing 4e, though admittedly it's the only version i have ever played

I never played a D&D game before and my friend who had didnt want to be a DM for even 1 session so I could try the game.... so he gave me his 4e and 3.5 books and told me to learn to DM and he and some of our friends would play

i picked 4e as it looked less complicated :-/

9:23 AM

well i don't mean that in a derogatory way; I have heard that 4e having a clear enough ruleset it could actually realistically become a video game or an MMORPG was actually part of the pitch that convinced Hasbro to let WotC make 4e.

4e is fantastic at what it has chosen to do

Have a thing to tinker with: Hemingway App. It's a writing assistant.

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9:40 AM

where are those guidelines coming from? Passive form is bad in english?

9:57 AM

@Trajan it's not bad in my opinion. However, it does create a slower, less urgent feeling to your sentence

knowing when to use passive forms of a sentence is important for the feel of a passage

@Trajan passive form is quite valid, as @MC_Hambone says, but for some forms of writing it's ineffective

like you certainly wouldn't want to write a heroic sword fight between Leonardo and one of Shredder's cronies in passive voice

indeed

blades were swiflty crossed

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no complaints, even with padding

it's possible it targets the word 'been', because "Blades have been crossed" was picked up.

just like it targets 'ly' for adverbs

It is, after all, a writing assistant, not a writing does-it-for-you-and-is-always-right

10:12 AM

It doesn't like french.

@Trajan computers are fairly intolerant of unexpected cultures

Tell me about it. I became fairly intolerant of timezones and daylight saving issues.

(this is a programming joke because fr-FR, which denotes french from france, is called a culture)

(this is not a very good programming joke at all)

@Trajan Oh boy. I have had to completely embrace those.

(I didn't get it at first, but now I know it's a joke, it made me smile)

10:37 AM

@Trajan i am glad c:

what's wrong with daylight savings time?

For a moment there I had horrified visions in my mind that maybe, just maybe, only about half the countries in Europe use daylight savings time, so that suddenly, for half the year, every country is out of sync with a neighbour or two.

But it looks like almost the entirety of Europe has DST.

10:55 AM

@JonathanHobbs ...I wonder what this thing would think about Shoghi Effendi.

@BESW Let me know what you find!

[snerk] I copied in two paragraphs from World Order of Bahá'u'lláh and got a grade of 20.

Out of two paragraphs with a total of six sentences: 1 sentence is Hard To Read, 4 are Very Hard To Read, there are 6 Adverbs (aim for 1 or fewer), 5 words or phrases Can Be Simpler, and it hits the maximum recommended 1 Use Of Passive Voice.

...yeah, it really doesn't like his style.

Let's see what it thinks about the UHJ... Century of Light, maybe.

...worse.

grades of 22 and 23.

On the other hand, it gives 'Abdu'l-Bahá in Some Answered Questions a grade of 10 to 13.

[amused] That seems about right.

Interestingly, one of the most mystical texts of Bahá'u'lláh which has been translated into English gets something like 12 or 15.

Which really goes to show that computers have no ability to comprehend metaphor.

11:12 AM

@BESW Haha!

Entire swathes of The Seven Valleys are given 10.

I am pretty sure the Hemingway app is not actually all that smart. It might just pick on 'been' and words ending in 'ly', and use special symbol count and length to determine reading difficulty of a sentence.

This is a freaking seven:

> O Shaykh! Make of thine effort a glass, perchance it may shelter this flame from the contrary winds; albeit this light doth long to be kindled in the lamp of the Lord, and to shine in the globe of the spirit. For the head raised up in the love of God will certainly fall by the sword, and the life that is kindled with longing will surely be sacrificed, and the heart which remembereth the Loved One will surely brim with blood. How well is it said:
> Live free of love, for its very peace is anguish;

I had no problem reading the highlighted red example

I think my writing might be too complex for this

Professor Caprion

Oooh, this is cool.

11:16 AM

Compare this, which is an absolute-rock-bottom thirty:

> From the text of this explicit and authoritative interpretation of so ancient a prophecy it is evident how necessary it is for every faithful follower of the Faith to accept the divine origin and uphold the independent status of the Muḥammadan Dispensation. [...]

> [...] The validity of the Imamate is, moreover, implicitly recognized in these same passages—that divinely-appointed institution of whose most distinguished member the Báb Himself was a lineal descendant, and which continued for a period of no less than two hundred and sixty years to be the chosen recipient of the guidance of the Almighty and the repository of one of the two most precious legacies of Islám.

you're right i dont think it understands metaphor

Granted, Shoghi Effendi's work is very densely packed.

He was educated in Oxford specifically so he could translate the Holy Texts from Arabic and Persian into English, and it shows.

He says exactly what he means, and because he's usually talking about really complex stuff that involves... well, there's a joke that while many people write five-sentence paragraphs, Shoghi Effendi writes five-paragraph sentences.

I'm feeding it RPG manuals now.

Fate Core is getting single digits.

@BESW Does he write very long sentences or write a lot to express a simple idea?

@BESW Oh wow.

You are having a lot of fun with this. :)

@JonathanHobbs He tends to write... well, sometimes they're long, but his sentences are complex, with subordinate clauses, and because his points are complex it sometimes requires several paragraphs of context to make clear.

Interestingly my most recent history paper only got an 11, i would have assumed a worse grade

11:24 AM

@JonathanHobbs For example, this single sentence:

> I feel it incumbent upon me, by virtue of the obligations and responsibilities which as Guardian of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh I am called upon to discharge, to lay special stress, at a time when the light of publicity is being increasingly focussed upon us, upon certain truths which lie at the basis of our Faith and the integrity of which it is our first duty to safeguard.

@MC_Hambone I fed it my So Your GM Betrayed You answer. It got a bunch of highlighting.

In a single sentence he says what he's doing, why he's the one who should do it, and what the context is which makes it necessary.

@BESW I am... deeply moved and impressed.

That's the opposite of writing a lot to express a simple idea, and most of his work is written like this. Dense with meaning.

That was complex enough I had to adjust my reading of it a couple of times and yet it was very elegant.

Normally those two don't happen together

11:26 AM

17 hard to read sentences, 9 Very Hard to read, 15 adverbs, 7 phrases that could be simpler and 24 passive voice instances.... in a 4 page (double space so really only 2), 16 paragraph, 81 sentence, 1500 word assignment.

I consider Shoghi Effendi to be an example of the proficiency and skill with language which we should all strive for--not that I think we should all write like him, but that we should be able to communicate as effectively and eloquently.

Now let's feed this puppy some Flying Temple.

Flying Temple is getting 5s and 6s.

Microscope... three and five.

the document of my D&D session recaps that I have basically turned into a novel project got a 9

Paranoia (5th ed) gets 5 and 6.

I think it might be good for SOME very hard to read sentences.... then again as the person who wrote the document, i know what I am talking about and therefore might not find the hard and very hard sentece difficult to read.

Professor Caprion

Wow... plugged in one of my corporate e-mails and it's like a rainbow of crap.

11:33 AM

wonder what else I should try putting in there....

[blink] Okay, that's just silly. The Dawn-Breakers is getting 13s.

Professor Caprion

OH! I'll try Fate Core!

@ProfessorCaprion Mid-to-high single digits depending on which bits you copy.

anyone know who many words are in an average fantasy novel?

Professor Caprion

@BESW Alright, then! I'll try DFRPG!

Hrm, not bad!

11:36 AM

Janelle Monaé's Q.U.E.E.N got a 1.

hahahaha

Professor Caprion

Hah!

song lyrics usually arent that complicated these days

Okay, I'm gonna feed it something from early Dylan.

Ballad of a Thin Man got a 1.

Desolation Row got a 3.

Beck's Black Tambourines got a 2

11:39 AM

Bob Dylan's 115th Dream got zero.

Seriously, THIS is a zero:

> I ran right outside
> And I hopped inside a cab
> I went out the other door
> This Englishman said, “Fab”
> As he saw me leap a hot dog stand
> And a chariot that stood
> Parked across from a building
> Advertising brotherhood
> I ran right through the front door
> Like a hobo sailor does
> But it was just a funeral parlor
> And the man asked me who I was

each line break is a "sentence" and none of them are actually overly complicatd, even though as a whole the symbolism is dense and we might not understand all the layers of metaphor

I'ma take out the line breaks from something.

To be or not to be is grade 3 with line breaks.

....It's 15 without.

Professor Caprion

Oh, wow... They Might Be Giants "Cowtown" got a 1! I thought it'd get a little higher just for the line "The ardor of arboreality is an adventure we have spurned". xD

But I'm loving this app.

then again i just moused over the "?" next to the "good" rating for beck's black tambourine. It suggests only writing at a 10th grade level or lower in order to write so people can understand it

Professor Caprion

I may do it next time I do RP posts in my online thingies.

11:44 AM

Yeah, line breaks fool this thing something fierce.

I took that stanza from 115th Dream from zero to 9 by taking out the line breaks.

I am not sure if I agree that 10th grade is the education level for whom we should target our writing

...imean how many high school drop outs read books anyway?

Professor Caprion

May be surprised!

so I just checked wikipedia's page on word count.... it says that for fiction a "novel" is generally anything 40,000 words or more in length... my narrative of what my players have done in my D&D campaign is currently 15,000+ words... I have written practically half a novel!

....a really short novel, but STILL!

Novelette!

No, seriously.

Guten morgen.

11:58 AM

Hafa adai.

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