TRPG General Chat

BESW

00:00

It uses italic and bold formatting, and the difference between numbers and numerals, to create subtle nuance and flow throughout the piece.

doppelgreener

I find this very impressive.

There is a person at my workplace who is very loud and disruptive (but effectively politically immune). I have headphones and a static noise generator, and the portal 2 soundtrack is over 4 hours long. This makes it better.

BESW

Heheh.

doppelgreener

00:45

@Zachiel What was that 'argh' about out of curiousity?

(I suspect it could've been dark souls 2; that game has prompted many an 'argh')

BESW

I'm guessing it was the "morning run" bit.

doppelgreener

00:57

Could go either way really

The Oracle

0

Q: How should we tag the "next" edition of D&D?

Apparently dnd-next was the working name of the project. All of the branding simply shows it as "D&D": " while there are some open questions still, this is concrete news that Dungeons & Dragons (no longer Next, or even 5e, just Dungeons & Dragons) is coming soon." ... So do we tag it as 5e, o...

discussion

BESW

@TheOracle Seriously, Wizzes? That is an awful choice.

doppelgreener

@BESW yes

Magician

Ayup. Just wait until the edition upgrade is called AD&D :D

doppelgreener

@Magician For "Accelerated Dungeons & Dragons"

4

BESW

01:07

This will not cause any confusion for anyone ever.

doppelgreener

and then the second release: Accelerated Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd edition

Magician

@JonathanHobbs Oh, no. Then it'll be Advanced D&D 3ed.

doppelgreener

I look forward to our dungeons-and-dragons tag being destroyed.

I don't actually. I dread it. And dnd is its synonym.

TryHardNinja

Hi jonathan i was stizzle84 then updated my name 2 my youtube channel

doppelgreener

@TryHardNinja Hi!

TryHardNinja

01:11

Dude check me out on youtube

doppelgreener

I'm going to say this because I know it will and I want to make sure it happens as soon as possible:

This couldn't possibly get any worse!

TryHardNinja

How

doppelgreener

(there; they'll announce something even more alarming tomorrow)

TryHardNinja

Lol

doppelgreener

@TryHardNinja i am at work and unable to do so (but for context, D&D just released its new edition without a version number, just generically titled "D&D", which is going to be extremely confusing)

TryHardNinja

01:12

#the ninja and hobbs

Yay confusion!!

doppelgreener

@TryHardNinja [makes a fist bump so stealthy nobody knows about it, not even us]

TryHardNinja

Lol

I played mine craft hide and seek and made an info morceal

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Tomorrow: "Wizards of the Coast is happy to announce that Dungeons & Dragons is now merging with Skylanders!"

3

TryHardNinja

Standing still has never been so intence stand coming in june rated r!

Metool

Is that gonna be like that film with the bus that can't drop below a certain speed or else it explodes?

BESW

01:17

@Metool Hey, Speed was genuinely great.

Metool

I'm not disputing that.

TryHardNinja

It could be a movie where people just stand there for an hour and a half

doppelgreener

@BESW I am not familiar with Skylanders; what exactly makes this terrible?

TryHardNinja

Skylanders is 4 kids who r simply to dumb 4 school

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Skylanders is a relatively ordinary "elemental monsters" video game with vs and co-op mode... except that it uses physical models which connect wirelessly to the console. You save your monster's progress to the toy, and you get new monsters by buying new toys.

So you can carry your favourite monster to your friend's house and play vs/alongside his monsters on his console.

By itself it's a relatively harmless and admittedly amusing moneypit gimmick.

But now put that conceit in the context of D&D miniatures.

(I ran a DFRPG campaign where a kid's Skylanders came to life.)

Metool

01:25

Hmm, actually, that doesn't sound like an absolutely horrible idea for a console game.

doppelgreener

@BESW [grips by the shoulders and stares in the face with deathly terror; eyes open wide, nostrils flared] DON'T GIVE THEM IDEAS

BESW

@Metool Yeah, it's kind of elegant, actually, in a "keep giving us your parents' money" TCG-esque sort of way.

doppelgreener

(But yes I do recall this, and I generally do not like this concept of merchandise-model driven digital games, based on them being obviously moneypit gimmicks)

BESW

I haven't played Skylanders myself, but the research I did and the reviews I watched for the DFRPG campaign generally made it sound like a decent game if you overlooked the moneypit conceit.

Metool

Spyro got rolled into Skylanders, right?

Appears so, yeah...

BESW

01:35

Ah, yes.

That is the most unnecessarily metal ampersand I've seen in quite a while. — BESW 1 min ago

Magician

@BESW I'm sorry. "Unnecessarily" and "metal" don't belong in the same sentence.

BESW

dampersandd

3

Magician

Perfect.

A curious thing. On all the cover illustrations, monsters are firmly in the middle, facing us; but characters fighting them are also facing us, twisting terribly to do so. Or just running away. In every one.

A couple of quotes from here:

Why the staggered release? Mike Mearls says "PH/MM/DMG releases were split because stacking them causes big quality issues, a la the 4e errata. Too much work at once." He also adds "You will not need the MM or DMG to run a campaign. Or the PH or Starter Set to make a character" and "You will be able to run a complete campaign starting in August, with the release of the PH."

BESW

Relephant Trivia: The ampersand ("&") is a ligature (two or more graphemes combined into a single glyph) of "et," the Latin for "and." We're also familiar with "et" in "et cetera," meaning "and the other things" or "and the rest," and abbreviated "etc."

Magician

On the difference from the final public playtest packet, Mike answered "Core rules are pretty similar. Mostly tweaks to monster HP (went up), added warlock and sorcerer, and balanced out classes."

BESW

01:45

@Magician Oh, right. "Added two classes and balanced stuff. Nothing big."

Magician

It's the same playtest that dropped skills entirely a month before its end, only to find out with some surprise players actually like them.

It didn't seem, how do you say, complete?

Especially considering the utter lack of modules. Have they been swept under the rug?..

BESW

@bazola Hi!

bazola

@BESW hey

BESW

What brings you to this corner of the Stack chat? Anything we can do for ya?

bazola

just an rpg fan looking at different SE chatrooms

BESW

01:51

Shiny. What system(s) do you spend most of your time in?

bazola

well i dont actually play a lot of d&d type rpgs but I do love reading about the lore and history of the different worlds

BESW

Cool.

I spent a lot of time running D&D games, but in the last year+ I've moved into more narrative-first systems that support one- and two-session camapigns with just one or two players.

bazola

thats pretty interesting, especially the single player potential

BESW

Among other things, it means that I'm spending time in a wider variety of worlds than D&D's mechanics were able to meaningfully support.

@bazola "Twosies" --one player, one GM-- are a major thing for me right now, as I've only got one friend who can commit to regular attendance.

I'm also experimenting with Storium, an online browser-based play-by-post service with a storytelling engine that uses the "collect narrative phrases to get control of the narrative" which Fate Core has recently popularised.

bazola

Must be fun to come up with the different stories and stuff as a GM

Is Storium fun? worth the money?

BESW

01:57

@bazola Oh, yes, that's always been one of my favourite parts of the experience. But I'm also having fun exploring the potential of games like Fate Core and Storium which give the players a lot of room to help create the world and the plot.

@bazola I'm still forming my opinions but based on my experience so far--yes. Storytellers (game-runners) pay for the service, and players get invited by storytellers to join for free. It's in beta right now, so only Kickstarter backers can be storytellers. They go public in the fall.

bazola

It sounds like a really cool writing challenge, I've never heard of it before but I'm already thinking of signing up. How many people are playing? What kind of universe are people writing about? Sorry for so many questions

BESW

However, Storium is a very different kind of experience than I'm used to; non-concurrent gameplay is new to me. I'm used to having all the players at the same table, or in the same chat, at once.

@bazola A narrator creates a world and invites players--how many players is up to the narrator. The system comes with a number of pre-made worlds which can be played as-is or modified, and when it goes public there'll be more worlds a narrator can buy access to, written by famous authors or connected to established franchises.

But a narrator can also make a world from scratch.

bazola

ah i see

BESW

The current pre-made worlds are inspired by well-known intellectual properties, with the serial numbers filed off.

bazola

My favorite setting has always been post-apocalyptic

BESW

02:02

"Medical Drama" is basically House MD; "Occult" is Lovecraftian; "Steampunk" owes a lot to Dinotopia; "Mysterious Island" is Lost...

@bazola That'd work well for Storium, provided you're okay with having the danger of player-character death being removed from the table.

PCs can fail, but they don't get removed from the narrative for failing.

bazola

Yeah I would be okay with that. What I love about the whole thing is that the restrictions of the medium would affect the narrative in interesting ways

BESW

Interestingly, the more control over the narrative that players have, the more they want to orchestrate horrible, awful things for their characters to endure. Storium is good at supporting that.

bazola

Wish I could just go sign up now, but I see that the kickstarter is over

BESW

I could extend you an invite which would let you make a player-only account, but I don't really have the space in my current games to actually accommodate a new player.

So you'd be able to poke around, but you'd have to find an open-invite game to actually get involved.

bazola

I would definitely be interested in that, but I can't promise I would play right away so it's okay if you can't spare an invite

BESW

02:12

If you give me an email, I can send you the invite. It'll let you make a player account and then you just decline to join my game and keep the account.

bazola

Sure, is there a way to send personal messages through SE?

BESW

Alas, no. However, you can edit/delete messages within about 5 minutes of making them, so you could put your email up and then remove it.

Got it.

bazola

Appreciate it

BESW

No problem. I did similar things with people here when I had the Fate Core beta pdfs.

Sent.

bazola

Oh hey it looks like now that I joined I could pay to get access to the beta anyway

Thank you for the invite

BESW

02:26

My pleasure!

Storium isn't going to replace my tabletop gaming, but it looks like a good addition for games with friends who I wouldn't be able to play with IRL due to distance or schedule problems.

doppelgreener

@bazola there's actually some major reasons why you can't PM anyone: possible bullying over votes, peoples' tendency elsewhere on the internet to say "sure i can solve your problem, send me a PM and we'll talk about it", etc.

That last one's a big one: solutions should stay revealed to everyone, so that if you're giving someone a stupid, terrible, abhorrent solution, it can receive downvotes accordingly, and everyone's kept on the same page as the person with the problem reveals more details about their situation.

bazola

That makes sense

doppelgreener

@BESW Off to pick up lunch again, then I'll create a Storium character.

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Woo!

...haroom. I keep forgetting that some versions of Nordicism include a superiority-by-Atlantis clause. Some day I will include that in a game.

It will probably feature a black-haired olive-skinned Atlantean laughing really really hard.

doppelgreener

02:54

@BESW what's that clause mean?

BESW

@JonathanHobbs One of the justifications for Nordic racial supremacy is the claim that the Nordic peoples are, in all the world, the most directly descended from the denizens of Atlantis.

doppelgreener

The Nordics have an idea of racial supremacy!?

I did not know this at all

BESW

Are you familiar with the Nazi ideology of the Aryan race?

It's an extreme expression of Nordicism.

Not that Nordicism was ever not extreme, but even in relative terms...

"Nordic," in the Aryan "master race" sense, corresponds to the Germanic peoples.

Yanno--blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned descendants of Proto-Indo-Europeans, associated with physical and intellectual superiority because... well, reasons... and thus heirs to a manifest destiny of territorial and cultural expansionism.

doppelgreener

I've been invited to a 3.5e game that's starting up by a friend playing his first ever game of D&D. The party consists of: two rangers, two fighters, a rogue, and himself, a bard.

This will be very fun for all of them, I think, and I say that with sincerity.

BESW

Cool.

doppelgreener

03:04

I have timing concerns because most people are in America, but I am fairly tempted to roll up a Cleric or something.

BESW

Roll20?

A healy sort sounds useful.

Metool

03:21

Whoops, that script is having a bit of trouble.

@JonathanHobbs Oh, nice.

lisardggY

03:34

@JonathanHobbs That sounds like a fun party. The DM will probably have the do some work to make it work - giving easy access to potions, for instance - but it's always fun when people play what they want to play, not what "established wisdom" claims is the right thing to play.

BESW

In my first time GMing, the cleric was the first two characters to die.

2

....if only because technically the vampire was still alive, just permanently removed from play.

(In his defence, the "hide from the sun in a bag of holding" plan would have worked indefinitely, had the cleric not proven extremely susceptible to the rebels' "tea and please" interrogation tactics.)

(Said susceptibility was the primary cause of the cleric's second death, at the hands of his remaining party members.)

afk bills

doppelgreener

03:57

@lisardggY apparently he is a very experienced DM. And yes, I agree! I look forward to it. If not playing in there, then hearing my friend's tales about it.

@BESW Was that the dwarf who died from his burns and medical assistance?

lisardggY

Also, bards are my favorite class ever.

Metool

Same here.

doppelgreener

04:13

I think they're pretty great too. Personally I've always rather liked Clerics, so the opportunity to play in a 3.5e game is pretty appealing to me.

lisardggY

I played an Oracle in my latest pathfinder game. I think it's the first divine character I've ever played.

Well, divine character in a D&Dish game. I played a religious character in an Amber Diceless game.

The Oracle

0

Q: What is the intended purpose of the 'fun' tag?

A recent question included two new tags. One of them I do not understand the purpose of: "fun." What kind of questions should this tag be used for? Given that discussing tabletop games is the favorite hobby of many of our contributors, it seems to me that we could apply it to any question on the ...

discussion tags

BESW

04:27

@JonathanHobbs Yes. Yes, it was.

The Tale of The Dwarven Cleric, or I Poke Him: 101 Stupid RP Tricks, Volume One.

Dec 26 '12 at 12:06, 7 minutes total – 36 messages, 2 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked Jun 25 '13 at 19:03 by BESW

doppelgreener

05:16

@BESW this must be the second or third time I've read that and I still enjoy it rather a lot.

BESW

I have awesome players.

doppelgreener

You do.

I am setting myself a challenge for the next Fate session. The first one involved some investigation, then combat with a werewolf. The second one involved escaping from a monster pursuing them, and involved a bunch of craft checks and some other stuff - but still, mainly combat.

BESW

Next stop, no physical combat?

doppelgreener

The next session is going to be set in a researcher's lair. It's a bit like a lich's labyrinth: trapped, with dangerous monsters inside it. Normally, it's just trapped, but some of the dangerous monsters are no longer in their cages. It's gone to hell due to lack of repair, and the fact that gangs of werewolves have tried on multiple occasions to break in and steal the researcher's research. (possibly successfully, I'm not sure)

@BESW That's the one!

None at all. Puzzles and challenges and no fighting.

If there's a dangerous monster featured, I'm going to make sure it's scary and an obstacle to work around, not confront.

(working around it might be tricking it to charge through a door for them, but it's still not going to be them fighting it, because they'll die)

If there's combat, it might be verbal combat, or merely involve a trap or difficult feature of the dungeon "fighting" them.

BESW

Talky conflicts can be fun.

But yeah, experimenting with step-back challenges can be fun.

I once ran Problematic through a game like that.

doppelgreener

05:26

@BESW What was it like?

BESW

Interesting!

The primary movement of the piece was his character traveling through dangerous terrain to reach a goal.

So we listed the dangers he'd face, set difficulties, and made it a challenge.

He rolled to find food, to cross a river, to camp safely in a forest, to not get lost, etc.

Then when something interesting could be zoomed in on, we did so.

For example, before he rolled the Overcome to camp safely, he Created an Advantage to have prepared his camp well.

Then he rolled really well on the Overcome to camp safely, but thought that was boring.

He hadn't defined his trouble yet, and invented one specifically to get compelled for a wolf attack.

But his created advantage said that we wanted to zoom in on this action.

So we had his good camping prep allow him to escape just ahead of the wolves, and we turned a single Overcome action in a challenge into a series of Overcome actions as a contest (Problematic running away vs wolves chasing him).

He succeeded in escaping the wolves, which gave him a single success in the larger "travel through the wilderness" challenge.

Had he failed to escape the wolves, we probably would've had an actual conflict.

Basically, instead of taking a flat-out success on a challenge check, he gained a Fate point in order to expand that single roll into a contest with the potential to become a conflict.

We used challenges to do a kind of montage sequence that could dip down into contests and conflicts where it looked interesting enough to warrant that.

Woop, gotta go.

Metool

Bye.

doppelgreener

06:03

@BESW Neat! I think I'll need to put on my thinking cap prior to our next session and develop some non-combat challenge creation muscles for practice.

Like take some challenges that've been fun in games I've played and see how I might model them in Fate.

or create whole new ones to try to model.

lisardggY

06:25

Spent a bit too much time this morning going over the covers of the PHB and DMG from AD&D 1e to vNext.

doppelgreener

06:42

@lisardggY What for?

lisardggY

I didn't like the cover layout much, but going over old editions, it seems to be something of a deliberate throwback.

1st and 2nd edition AD&D had relatively minimalist design. A full-page cover image overlayed with the book's name and a (relatively large) title/logo (usually a fully spelled out Advanced Dungeons & Dragons), and some more text at the bottom.

3e took a very different approach, where the line's branding is the first and foremost design element, no dominant cover picture, and relatively minor differences between different books (I'm talking core books here).

4e took a slight step back in that respect, with a large cover image, but still a very dominant logo and brand identification in the top third of each cover.

Next, however, goes back to the dominant cover image, even moreso than 1e - the top logo is a condensed D&D logo, and very little brand identity across the line.

I think this is deliberate, when seen in the context of other "we're so retro" moves by WotC on this edition.

doppelgreener

07:05

@lisardggY That would make sense.

Or possibly that's a red herring, and this is just the cover layout that won in this particular edition.

I think the covers are pretty great, personally.

lisardggY

I love the art, but feel that it needs a bit more than just the art.

doppelgreener

@lisardggY It has more than the art! It has a prominent title, a branding strip that literally and figuratively sticks out in the bottom left, and a more subtle piece of branding just above the title.

I dunno if I ever cared about much more than that for the 4e books: I just needed the title, and the picture to help me differentiate.

lisardggY

@JonathanHobbs It's there, but it's a lot less dominant than in earlier editions. I prefer the older style. I think I liked 4e's balance of image vs. brand the best.

doppelgreener

(Also I liked what they did with the 3e and 3.5e books - the handbooks looked relatively consistent, with a difference in the emblem on the front - but I prefer them stepping away from that; what they did in 4e was more useful to me.)

Inbar Rose

07:21

Morning.

doppelgreener

Morning!

lisardggY

Morning‽

The interrobang is among my favorites punctuation marks.

Yes, I have several favorite punctuation marks.

BESW

@lisardggY I like the en dash, myself.

doppelgreener

I want to check if I have something straight re: spellcasting in D&D 3.5e. Is this an accurate summary of Wizards, Sorcerers, and Clerics?

Wizards: Prepared casting. Limited amount of known spells based on what you can jam into a spellbook. New spells learned each level, plus whatever you can copy down. Limited spell slots per day. Spells are prepared from spell book into spells known each day.

Sorcerer: Spontaneous casting. Spells are simply known. New spells are learned each level. Hard limit on spells known. You don't learn spells off a scroll. Limited spell slots per day. No prep.

lisardggY

@BESW An underused and unappreciated mark, indeed.

BESW

07:27

@JonathanHobbs Yes, that's accurate.

Metool

There is... almost no class that uses spells proper without running out eventually, to my knowledge.

BESW

Addendum to Wizard: "plus whatever you can copy down" requires access to the spell in a copyable form and materials to write it with (with a level-based gold piece cost) and space in a book to write it in.

lisardggY

@Metool Pathfinder lets you cast cantrips pretty much without any limitations, though 3.5 was a bit different, I think.

doppelgreener

@BESW Right, but as long as you have a scroll or book to copy off, and something sufficient to write it in and with, you can copy it down.

Metool

@lisardggY Yes, but those are a separate class feature, and only classes that can cast at 1st level gain them.

doppelgreener

07:30

Wow. Clerics are like... the kings of spell access.

Sorcerers are limited to what they know. Wizards are limited to far more: what they've copied. Clerics don't even care, they just have their entire list to pick from.

I must away to shop and go home! Tally ho!

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Druids are even insaner, because they have the same kind of "entire list" access plus their spontaneous casting is for summon nature's ally, which is much more adaptable to situational need.

(And at higher level includes summoning unicorns to do healing for you.)

Metool

Also, pet, but that's a different thing entirely.

BESW

Yes, pet, and wild shape. But in terms of pure spell access/versatility and ignoring other class features...

Clerics are more... shape-able... as a class, to conform to a particular build.

But druids are the out-of-the-box masters of "Sure, give me a couple hours to re-set and I can do that." Wizards can beat them with effort, but not out of the box.

trogdor

08:13

@BESW I remember you helping me to make a 3.5 druid to basically do that

doppelgreener

09:20

The runestaves from Brian's answer reminds me of a character from Fairy Tail named Mystogan:

He carries around a collection of mismatched staves and uses those for his abilities.

As far as the anime goes, I don't think you actually see him do much before he departs due to plot (perhaps permanently, I don't know)

I am pretty sure he has no magical ability beyond the use of his staves - in a world where magical ability is usually an inherent property of a person.

Metool

Like... everyone else doesn't rely on implements to use magic?

doppelgreener

09:41

@Metool Correct. A couple of summoners do, because they need the key for the creature they're summoning, and some people have magic that necessarily involves an object (e.g. sword magic), but that's about it.

(I would say summoners have magic independent of their summons, but there's only a couple of characters in the show who do summons, and they and their summons are jokes - the subject of them, the butt of them, the be-all and end-all of them. Which is a pity, because they could do so much more, but they don't.)

BESW

09:56

@JonathanHobbs Think about films, too, and the way they stretch time.

Fate is a very cinematic kind of experience, scene-wise, and challenges can sometimes be considered montage-y.

Like in a CSI-type show where they have a bit of pop song playing over cuts of the characters doing Science Things for thirty seconds, then someone comes into an office with a new clue.

Or the bits in Lord of the Rings where we get the series of aerial shots of Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli running along mountain ridges; that's a challenge of endurance, speed, and navigation.

Or if it's the bit where they're tracking the hobbitses, that's a conflict where they try to track and catch up to the orcs while the orcs try to lose them.

doppelgreener

@BESW Whoa, that's true :)

Inbar Rose

@BESW Fate. Yum! :)

BESW

@JonathanHobbs So yeah, challenges/contests/conflicts can all stretch out or compress time.

But with challenges and contests it's probably more obvious how to do that.

A contest can be a car chase can last minutes; a contest between rival companies to gain a government contract might stretch over months; a contest between immortal wizards to be the first to decipher the Arcane Scrolls of Win could last centuries.

doppelgreener

10:21

@BESW Oh wow. That is pretty cool.

Inbar Rose

@JonathanHobbs Have you not yet been converted to Fate? :)

@BESW BTW - how goes your Storium games?

BESW

@InbarRose Oh, he has.

I'm just still his mentor for unlocking its potential.

@InbarRose Slowly, but awesomely.

Problematic has me in a very slow single-player Elephant King game which is giving me a lot of insight into the way Storium does pacing and challenges, despite having only made one move so far.

Also I love the Elephant King setting and wish I could figure out what it's inspired by.

Because I want to read/watch/listen to that.

Inbar Rose

What's the Elephant King setting?

BESW

3

Q: What's "The Elephant King" setting inspired by?

It's pretty clear that Storium's pre-made settings are firmly rooted in specific popular works: "The Mysterious Island" is "Lost;" "Steampunk" is heavily inspired by the Dinotopia franchise; "Medical Drama" looks a heckuvalot like "House MD" to me. But I'm not familiar enough with post-colonial ...

story-identification

Inbar Rose

hmm

I would say is Crusader based.

All the European knights came and invaded the middle east, and then left. Leaving a few castles and some lords behind...

BESW

10:27

Yes, but it's post-colonial Africa and that's throwing me for a loop.

Inbar Rose

Plus, I would suggest asking about that in the comments on the Storium Kickstarter.

doppelgreener

@InbarRose We've had I think... one individual session several months ago, then more recently, two sessions following a Hellsing-like organisation named the Gatekeepers of Tartarus. We're using a mission structure, where every session winds up its own individual story, but there's an overarching story between them, and continued characters (with the exception that the players can have multiple characters available at the base, so they can start each session with a new character if they want)

Inbar Rose

That reminds me, have you guys seen the new Constantine trailer?

►

Metool

I don't remember putting my vote on that question.

Inbar Rose

@BESW Where does it say that?

Plus, the basis for the story sounds a lot like post-colonial Africa, but the fact that it's knights and castles makes it more medieval and less imperial age. It's easy to switch around the flavor of the story, but it really sounds to me like the middle east after the Crusaders left. A period not often covered in history, and mostly forgotten....

BESW

10:34

@InbarRose It never says Africa, but it's very clear: lions, elephants, some of the names are either African or Indian in flavour...

The social structure and magic systems implied are very NON-mid-eastern.

Inbar Rose

@BESW Yes, I understand that, but that can easily just be flavor. Knights and Castles from a land that dominated a country and then left? Leaving the local population to reclaim what was once theirs?

BESW

Nature magic, sacred groves, etc.

But more than that, you're just giving a very generalised concept and all of Storium's settings that I can identify have a much much more specific intellectual property they're inspired by.

As I outlined in my question.

Inbar Rose

Okay.

I concede.

BESW

They just don't do much re-fluffing or re-contextualising. They file off the serial numbers and make things generic enough that there's no copyright problem, but they don't add a lot of overt innovation of their own. If Elephant King is the only exception to that rule... well, okay, and I want whoever was responsible for it to write a lot more!

Inbar Rose

It really does seem like this guy is right:

I would be inclined to look toward Haggard's Allen Quatermain books, the most famous of which was King Solomon's Mine. That said, those books don't really match up with "post-colonial" in any way. There's a whole genre of "post-colonial" literature out there, but most of it is semi-historical and/or allegorical. — Sean Duggan May 14 at 23:08

BESW

10:42

Mmm, except that it's really not. At its heart, Elephant King isn't a Crusade story or a White Man in Africa story. It's about the natives, not the foreigners. It's about recovering from invasion and colonisation, about rebuilding and reclaiming.

And if there's one thing Quatermain isn't about--it's not about the natives' point of view.

Inbar Rose

.. Okay.

BESW

I think we're grasping at straws just because we don't have much Africa-from-the-Africans literature in the Western gestalt.

Inbar Rose

I already told you about Things Fall Apart?

BESW

I believe so

Inbar Rose

in BESW's Spoil-Lair, Apr 13 at 11:56, by Inbar Rose

I once read an interesting book called "Things Fall Apart" Which was very insightful into African Culture.

BESW

11:00

@JonathanHobbs [poke]

doppelgreener

@BESW Hi!

I have just now opened Storium.

BESW

Yey!

So, apparently opal can form in weeks or months rather than hundreds of thousands of years, if conditions are right.

2

Source. (PDF)

This goes into my Awesomely Fantastical But Totally Legit Real-Life Things To Use In My RPGs file.

doppelgreener

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Character review complete

Metool

@BESW What else is in there?

BESW

@Metool A lot of other geological setting-y stuff like how caves form from the relationship between limestone and basalt on volcanic islands, and limnic eruptions.

Stuff like why certain architecture is climate-specific, how pirates most often organised their leadership, and various kinds of historical locks and keys.

@JonathanHobbs I'm not seeing your character, have you submitted it?

doppelgreener

11:13

@BESW no, not yet

werdandi.deviantart.com/art/Gunsmiths-91476029

BESW

Oh, okay.

doppelgreener

anubish.deviantart.com/art/Red-Knight-105300953 <- Not gonna use this guy, but he's super great lookin'.

BESW

Indeed he is!

doppelgreener

dangit that's not what an open padlock means

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Means the Kickstarter got enough donations to unlock the feature, but they won't actually have it ready until the public opening Novemberish.

doppelgreener

11:16

@BESW Oh right.

I can change this picture later, right?

BESW

Iiiii'm not sure.

I know you can add one later.

Let me go check with T'Chaka.

Yes. Yes, you can.

doppelgreener

Excellent.

Inbar Rose

@BESW T'Chaka?

BESW

@InbarRose My character in Problematic's campaign.

And yes, he's named for the Black Panther's father.

Inbar Rose

I.. I dunno all these references.

BESW

11:22

Black Panther (comics)

The Black Panther (T'Challa) is a fictional character appearing in publications by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and penciller-co-plotter Jack Kirby, he first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966). He is the first black superhero in mainstream American comics, debuting several years before such early African-American superheroes as Marvel Comics' the Falcon and Luke Cage, and DC Comics' Tyroc, Black Lightning and Green Lantern John Stewart. Black Panther was ranked the 71st greatest comic book character of all time by Wizard magazine. IGN also ranked the Black Pan...

The Shadowcat is a character from the Elephant King setting who gave me really strong Black Panther vibes.

Inbar Rose

Okay.

~~Isn't~~ Wasn't Black Panther a political party?

BESW

Yes.

They were named almost simultaneously, and in the 70s he experimented with being The Black Leopard to avoid Unfortunate Implications.

lisardggY

So they're producing a Dark Dungeons film? And apparently playing it straight, not ironically?

wired.com/2014/05/dark-dungeons-movie

Metool

Isn't that already baked in?

lisardggY

Ah, I see:

> [T]he movie is carefully faithful to Chick’s world. The thing is, Chick’s world is insane.

Metool

11:36

Zone of the Enders?

Oh, I see you snipped that other bit.

lisardggY

@Metool Yeah, it wasn't really relevant.

And it's premiering at GenCon.

Inbar Rose

Funny.

Meh. Gest Dungeons and Dragons movie.. is D&D.. because it is so cheesy. (oh look, the whole movie is on Youtube) .. You have to see the first scene again.. it's priceless.... So much... just... cheese.

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lisardggY

Apprently there was a *second* sequel to the old and terrible D&D movie, and that one used D&D 4e rules.
Yes, the movie did.

Inbar Rose

@lisardggY "rules", what rules? :)

It was a movie. They never rolled dice.

Metool

Movement?

lisardggY

11:46

@InbarRose Didn't see it, but a friend who did said they had specific references to 4e rules, like a weapon shopkeeper saying he had this magical weapon in stock at Heroic or Paragon tiers.

Inbar Rose

@lisardggY Seems more like a nod at D&D than basing the movie on it.

I did see the movie, horrible as it was, and I didn't notice any "rules" ?

lisardggY

It's a movie called Dungeons and Dragons. Of course it's basing the movie on it. :)

Inbar Rose

@lisardggY I mean on the rule system.

You didn't have level ups etc..

Metool

Again, if you have people moving in ways that seem off, that's close enough.

[coffees up]

lisardggY

Of course it's just a nod to it and not actually run by the rules. But just as the first movie (and possibly the second, I couldn't bring myself to watch that hunk of trash) based itself on tropes, references and citations from classic D&D, this movie updated it for 4e concepts.

Inbar Rose

11:52

I didn't notice any of that (then again, it was a long time ago)

Oh, that is on youtube as well... (they all are)

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Aaron

Morning

Metool

@Aaron Morning.

BESW

12:40

The ONLY DIFFERENCE between YOU and ME is that YOU stop HATING EVERYTHING once YOU have had COFFEE. #NoSkarobucks

Tweeted by DalekThay on May 20, 2014 at 12:18 PM

Inbar Rose

12:55

@BESW I imagine this is the kind of musical atmosphere in Ricky's Coffee Club.

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BESW

That works.

Inbar Rose

:)

BESW

Just, yanno, if the singer were Eartha Kitt gargling gravel.

Inbar Rose

Well... How about this then

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Or.. the arguably better version

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Joshua Aslan Smith

laughing at the dnd next tag meta question and @brianballsun-stanton 's devils advocate answer

BESW

13:03

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I'm trying to remember which songstress I had in mind specifically for the voice, but that "crooning into the mic" 1920s/30s style is definitely what I had in mind.

Inbar Rose

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fixed

Joshua Aslan Smith

I like jennifer connely in dark city only because it reminds me of jennifer connely in the Rocketeer

Inbar Rose

And of course... Ella

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BESW

Yeah, those are definitely all well within the stylistic ballpark.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@besw still nitpicking on my m ove

BESW

13:10

@InbarRose Try to think of the female vocal equivalent of Tom Waits.

@JoshuaAslanSmith Oh?

Joshua Aslan Smith

trying to decide what I what berengar to do to gear up as it were

cue 80s movie montage

the dark part of me wants me to literally write it out like a very cliche montage in a screenplay but I know that way lies madness

just trying to workout how I would use one of my cards on it

Inbar Rose

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Joshua Aslan Smith

@InbarRose One of the ones I was thinking about when I said that. Sidebar: Rocky perfectly captures Philadelphia, which I have to believe is an extremely happy accident given everything I know about hollywood and the creative process there

doppelgreener

@Sardathrion I was mistaken about the not-lines & not-veils question

lisardggY