TRPG General Chat

doppelgreener

09:03

BESW. High concept: The avatar of patience and goodness and avoiding drama
Trouble: Impossible to brew into a Fate character, see high concept
Aspect: Must be the GM, see Trouble

BESW

Nah.
Trouble: Doesn't need an excuse for walls of text, just an opportunity.

doppelgreener

@BESW Hahahaha! Okay you got me

BESW

Although the aspect still holds; one reason I'm better as a GM is that as a player I tend to dominate the spotlight.

Operation My Tofu Is Too Wet was a success, by the way.

I drained it before I chopped it into crumbly little cubes and stir-fried it with onion and garlic, sprinkling tumeric powder, curry powder, pepper, soy sauce, and worchestershire, then seared some bell pepper in olive oil and dumped that on top. Served on a bed of brown rice and lentils.

doppelgreener

@BESW Yum.

BESW

09:18

For years I kept trying to marinade the tofu, or steam it in a sauce, or pour a sauce over it while it fried.

Now I just sprinkle powders and dry spices onto it while it fries, with the occasional dash of sauce to help things move and stick.

Still gotta dry it out a bit first, or it boils and steams instead of frying.

Aspect: The chef is willing, but the food is inedible.

doppelgreener

@BESW mild consequence from kitchen combat

lisardggY

09:48

I have a tab open with StackOverflow chat. They're talking about D&D now.

I'm confused.

BESW

[squint] I see.

Wait, no.

What's the opposite of that one?

lisardggY

And now the other SO chatroom I'm on has started talking about Star Wars and sci fi franchises.

It's like RPG Chat and Mos Eisley are replicated, only into WPF and C#.

BESW

I suppose, in retrospect, it shouldn't be surprising that the science fiction chat started replicating.

BESW

10:15

An illustration of the D&D wealth system, courtesy XKCD's "What If" 111:

4

MrLemon

11:00

Seems reasonable enough to me

BESW

[wave]

MrLemon

[wave back]

great, now I'm looking into the amount of money that Scrooge McDuck has

wax eagle

12:01

speaking of "what if" his book comes out today!

Joshua Aslan Smith

hah

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

― Friedrich von Hayek

wax eagle

today targeting wants a third t...

BESW

@JoshuaAslanSmith What a coincidence, I was just reading this.

wax eagle

@BESW that actually looks like a great way to quickly work out a system

Saffron

hello

wax eagle

12:14

hiya

BESW

Except for the bit where they're like "Hey, for a one-page system you can totally just rip off an existing larger system and ignore the other 299 pages of that book! But don't forget to mention how vehicle rules work."

Points five and six are both "Don't do this, but if you do anyway" for random game elements which are clearly chosen only because of the author's personal playstyle bias. If I were writing it, those would be "talking your way out of trouble" and "insanity" instead of "combat" and "vehicles," and it would make as much sense to have in the how-to guide.

And changing "Intelligence" to "Science" is somehow broader? I dunno. Gnome Stew occasionally has little flashes of brilliance, but they publish too often to do anything except churn out poorly edited pablum most of the time.

(Also: most solid one-page systems I've seen use dice pools, not summations with numerical modifiers. It's one of the major stumbling blocks for my own attempts at writing a small system.)

Mourdos

Yo

BESW

Yopp.

Mourdos

See the new question proposing a merge of WB and SciImag?

BESW

12:31

Nope. Haven't been over there much.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@waxeagle you see that tasty 4e weapon power quesetion>?

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith I did. Love it when they get their own action type wrong :(

Joshua Aslan Smith

I no rite?

AV seems more and more like it was shopped out (internally) to people not 100 percent up on the system

wax eagle

yes

Joshua Aslan Smith

@BESW interesting looking article, will have to give it more time latter

Lord_Gareth

13:09

@doppelgreener You be makin' me blush >.>

Lord_Gareth

13:21

@Magician I fired the tumblr cannon.

Magician

So you have. Interestingly, my RSS feeder doesn't grab the second post, only the intro one. Hopefully it'll work itself out.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth I worked in mcdonald's for a while, then a restaurant then a cafe, I understand what you said about food service so well

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener Honestly I feel like half of the problems would be avoided if customers would believe we're not deliberately screwing with them T_T

Oxinabox

What can I do to make this move to status-rejected or status-complete

doppelgreener

@Oxinabox [this](http://example.com/)

oh

right

wax eagle

13:32

also multilines break markdown

doppelgreener

markdown doesn't work when you use newlines

yes ^

Oxinabox

fixed. thanks

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth Yes! Unfortunately also my Dad has had bad experiences with people getting his order wrong all too often... or the meal involves 2 parts or he orders it with rice, and the second part does not get brought out.

All understandable! Except it kept happening for a while like some kind of spree!

And only to him!

Lord_Gareth

I see where this is going T_T

doppelgreener

(He is actually pretty well spoken, all I can imagine is it was dumb luck)

Oxinabox

13:34

I'll be back in the future. Night all

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth He just has less patience for staff doing things wrong now, though not verbally. Doesn't get angry at them, just disappointed and frustrated, and keeps that to himself or mentions it in like a sentence or two to us and leaves it at that. And he's found a couple of restaurants he's comfortable with and sticks with them.

MrLemon

Night

doppelgreener

@Oxinabox Night!

@Oxinabox Get people who use that tag to say "yes, please do this" in an answer and/or comments to lend weight that this is a sane and healthy proposal maybe

Zachiel

Thank you @doppelgreener

doppelgreener

@Zachiel No worries; getting to write stuff is satisfying and nice

Lord_Gareth

13:39

I wonder what to write about

Metool wanted an article on badwrongfun

BESW

Pace yerself.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW The undying hate recognizes no limitations!

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth Write about it, save it in a text file, dump it a few days later, don't dump too much at once

or at least, that's the theory for steady supply of posts, if that's what matters

Also I noticed: you have unendingraeg.tumblr.com, but unendingrage.tumblr.com also seems to be available, if you'd like to take that one

MadMAxJr

@BESW This reminds me of when a player asked if they could craft a spell, "Protection from Wealth/Poor" to go in the Law/Chaos and Good/Evil sets.

The Oracle

0

Q: What to do with conflict-resolution?

A recent question has pointed me to the conflict-resolution tag. I liked the sound of it, especially in light of a recent meta question about problem-players and problem-gms (that I can't find right now). It has no tag wiki and is currently used by 6 questions: How to avoid arguments with a pl...

MrLemon

13:44

@MadMAxJr You mean protection from peasants, right?

lisardggY

@MadMAxJr Marxist Magic!

MadMAxJr

@Lord_Gareth I haven't looked yet, but open with talking about the events that formed the basis of your RPG experience, focusing on what were good things and what are terrible not-fun things that are to be avoided, separated from RPG experiences, put into a box, then blown up by the explosive ordinance disposal team.

MrLemon

Protection from burgeoisie?

lisardggY

Choosing a set of metaphysical axes can actually be one of the more interesting parts of designing a setting, and a magic system that is influenced by it.

BESW

Detect CEO.

MadMAxJr

13:46

You have to be careful using Detect CEO in Silicon Valley. Lots of false positives.

lisardggY

Good/Evil, as we all know and will not go into, are real, concrete metaphysical elements in D&D. Law/Chaos, taken from Moorcock, are too. But can we think of additional dichotomies that can set the tone for the game?

MrLemon

I think I saw Nature/Technology once in a steampunk setting

BESW

...I don't know how I feel about a setting with detect gender spells.

MadMAxJr

Detect Apathy

BESW

Detect Marxism.

Man, the 50s would've been a lot different with detect Commie.

MadMAxJr

13:49

But Marxism is classless, isn't it? You can't put that in a d20 derivative. ;P

7

doppelgreener

@BESW Introduce gender identity to the game, then present the person with a genderfluid/bigender/agender individual and ask them how the spell works. (Possibly as inclined, introduce the concepts of sexual identity and romantic identity.)

@MadMAxJr Well played sir

MadMAxJr

Dungeons and Classless Uptopias

MrLemon

@doppelgreener @lisardggY and there we have the Male/Female dichotomy, and everything inbetween

Joshua Aslan Smith

lol

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener I humbly submit that you have missed the joke.

Joshua Aslan Smith

13:51

male female is a biological dichotomy down to the level of DNA

BESW

Detect contribution to society

MadMAxJr

Oh god my boss is casting that every Monday and Friday at the SCRUM meetings.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth Oh. Well if there is some reason you picked Unending Raeg then I have missed it yes! I just know it's been a way people (including you) have written it in this chat.

BESW

Detect sports team affiliation.

MadMAxJr

Wow, I got 3 stars for that Marxism remark pretty quickly. Nice.

doppelgreener

13:52

@BESW Oh man. XD

MadMAxJr

Protection from sports team affiliation would be very useful.

doppelgreener

That would be the start of so many family arguments.

lisardggY

@doppelgreener It's an interwebz thing. urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=RAEG

wax eagle

@BESW the collegiate version of this is cast when you enter Alabama

doppelgreener

@lisardggY Ha! Mine is an amused laugh.

Lord_Gareth

13:53

@doppelgreener @BESW may be able to explain it more eloquently, but 'the raeg' is a sort of tongue-in-cheek parody of the actual emotion while also being a recognition that I repeatedly take it to needless levels.

MadMAxJr

Protection from [sports team] would be extra handy in countries where soccer (or futbol) is a big thing.

Lord_Gareth

Which is to say, the fury is typically not in proportion with the stimulus.

BESW

Detect dog lover and detect cat person.

(See also: detect allergy, which cats have as an at-will SLA.)

MadMAxJr

Of course, this begs for the spell false alignment to get extended into these.

doppelgreener

@BESW And the inverse: Scry Allergy

Requires a hair from the intended target

BESW

13:55

Hee.

Lord_Gareth

Also, guys, realistically I'm not going to have a steady stream of posts. I work 46+ hours a week right now (GUESS WHOSE JOB JUST LOST ELEVEN WORKERS?), I have irregular days off, I'm busy writing professionally too

MadMAxJr

False Sports Team Affiliation, requires a misspelled knockoff piece of fan gear that is poorly made.

Lord_Gareth

Regularly-scheduled posting? Not gonna happen

Slamming my face into the keyboard because I have free time can happen

2

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth well, regular as in: happens reliably frequently, not so much happens at a reliable time

but yeah that's up to you

either way works

MadMAxJr

I don't think anybody holds tumblr writers to a regular posting schedule.

BESW

13:56

Tumblr does have "post at X time" features.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth (WAS IT YOURS)

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener IT WAS MINE

And most of them are our experienced workers too!

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth THAT WAS A GOOD GUESS

@Lord_Gareth Oh dear.

Lord_Gareth

One got a new job, three went off to college, one's retiring

Quite a few got fired

BESW

Ooh, ooh.

Lord_Gareth

13:57

Two girls quit just straight-up

doppelgreener

Holy wow.

[counts on fingers] 4 got fired?

Lord_Gareth

Yep

And they're threatening to fire another

BESW

Aspect: Going to college in the fall. Invoke for perspective and insight; compel for illogical nostalgia.

doppelgreener

How does this happen? Legitimately interested on account of learning about being an employee / not being the kind of employer where four people have to get fired

BESW

And back on topic: Protection from salesmen.

Lord_Gareth

13:58

So we're getting slapped around like a mouthy 50's housewife and most of our losses are people trained to run the hot case.

doppelgreener

@BESW Add time travel aspect; now compel for retroactive nostalgia.

lisardggY

detect future. detect past. That could lead to an interesting cosmology in a time-travel universe.

doppelgreener

@BESW Ward against Real Estate agents. Place on property owned by said real estate agents for amusement.

BESW

Protection from durn kids. Used primarily on the lawns of retired folks.

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener One girl was stealing whenever she went on lunches, one got caught banging a manager in her chain of command, one decided to get into a spat with a customer and lost her temper and the last one couldn't seem to follow the "You cannot create tags on food you're going to buy" rule and burned through her infracs.

Joshua Aslan Smith

14:00

wait so spells specificially?

Protection from Institutional Politics

doppelgreener

►

Lord_Gareth

Decipher Propoganda

Joshua Aslan Smith

Comprehend Support tickets from non-technical staff

3

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth Dispel Euphemisms / Dispel Spin

lisardggY

@Lord_Gareth Was the manager fired as well?

Lord_Gareth

14:03

@lisardggY No idea if they were fired or sent to another store.

But they are now gone

Joshua Aslan Smith

@Lord_Gareth what kind of a company do you work at/position? just wondering

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth Hopefully the latter; it's a problematic issue but unless something unethical was going on...

Lord_Gareth

@JoshuaAslanSmith Supermarket, in the deli

Joshua Aslan Smith

ah yes this gels with my work experience in a supermarket

and food service writ large

BESW

@Lord_Gareth [insert salami joke here] [...wait.]

3

Joshua Aslan Smith

14:04

haha

@BESW YOU GET A GOLD STAR!

@Lord_Gareth so your starred comment about fate and D&D, talking about 5e and inspiration?

Lord_Gareth

@JoshuaAslanSmith No, talking about "Wizards rule mundies drool"

Joshua Aslan Smith

ah

gotcha

@waxeagle trevor_wotc is the community manager for D&D right?

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith yep

also Perkins joined twitter this weekend!

hope he's actually active

Joshua Aslan Smith

cool he seems like the right person to tweet as there is no longer a contanct us page/email on D&D's site and [email protected] is a dead address

wax eagle

depending on what you want, Mearls and Crawford are useful too

Joshua Aslan Smith

14:11

regarding the meta for RSS feeds for the chat

Lord_Gareth

@waxeagle I find this statement to be inaccurate, as it implies that Mearls is useful.

Not that I am bitter

wax eagle

@Lord_Gareth if you're asking about design intent he's a good resource.

Joshua Aslan Smith

the formerly bugged RSS feed (infinite morningstar news item) is now just dead

and Im seeing if there is a new RSS feed address

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith gotcha, yeah trevor's the guy then.

Joshua Aslan Smith

figured

Lord_Gareth

14:13

@waxeagle Mmmr. I feel odd about that, in a pay-to-play system. With something like Legend or an open beta, being able to ask about RAI is great. If you shelled out the cash already, the author is frickin' dead.

Joshua Aslan Smith

hah

Lord_Gareth

Especially when we wanna talk Mearls, since he has this long giant history of writing for games he fails to comprehend.

Joshua Aslan Smith

not an essentials fan?

Lord_Gareth

@JoshuaAslanSmith Not a Mearls fan. This guy having a job is a daily insult.

Joshua Aslan Smith

right but are you saying his pre-essentials work basically?

Lord_Gareth

14:15

I can't comment on Essentials, as I haven't played with them, no

Joshua Aslan Smith

gotcha

just seeking clarification

@besw random who stuff, I was just thinking about the impossible planet storyline randomly because it was a new who storry that felt like an old who story

BESW

@JoshuaAslanSmith The Thing in the planet was definitely a Great Old One.

But more than that, it felt like Classic Who because it was a Base Under Siege story.

And a good proper one, like "Web of Fear."

None of that excuse-for-slapstick junk like the Judoon platoon on the Moon.

doppelgreener

@JoshuaAslanSmith Oooo. Is that the one with a space station and a planet orbiting a dying star, and they find something imprisoned inside the planet?

BESW

(Also: reusing the same sets for most of the story, aliens that are just people in plastic masks with a prop, a scary special effect that's just writing on a guy with a sharpie but still works... and the big reveal of the bad guy is poorly chroma-keyed. Totally Classic Who.)

@doppelgreener Yes. Except it's a black hole, so more like "dead star."

lisardggY

@doppelgreener Yeah, that's the one. A pretty good double-episode.

BESW

14:25

And the science makes no sense at all.

Which, again--classic Doctor Who.

Lord_Gareth

You know, I've noticed this trend on the Paizo boards and I really have to wonder how the Debate Standards Board hasn't gotten to these savages yet. People go to critique something Paizo did, and a ton of posters show up to go, "If you think it's so easy, why don't you write your own system?"

Which has got to be the single cheapest freaking fanboy copout you can possibly invoke to avoid an argument

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Nuh-uh, their mother is the cheapest copout.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Well played.

BESW

So I wake up this morning and apparently a bunch of people want to see a wizard made out of wolves.

Tweeted by UrsulaV on September 2, 2014 at 2:17 PM

lisardggY

@Lord_Gareth People tend to identify with their system of choice - god knows the D&D Edition Wars taught us that. And just like a belief, sports team or other forms of identification, people dislike having their choice criticized.

BESW

14:29

(I'm pretty sure Lois McMaster Bujold actually did that one.)

lisardggY

The D&D Edition Wars are basically several different editions of the same war.

Lord_Gareth

@lisardggY No dude. We have to go deeper

(Unrelated, but damn do I love the lyric work that Digital Daggers does. Been listening to a lot of their work lately, am an especial fan of a pair of line out of "Bad Intentions" - "Just pull the trigger, I'll take the blame/I'll be the villain, just play the game.")

lisardggY

But now, I shall leave you and head home. On the way I shall listen to podcasts and polish my thoughts - later to be blogged - on why I dislike most podcasts)

Joshua Aslan Smith

@doppelgreener yep

BESW

@Lord_Gareth What is this, a post-Dark Knight Batman concept song?

Joshua Aslan Smith

14:32

@doppelgreener @besw what I love is that the episode is equally hilarious (unintentionally I believe or at least so straight up dry thats my take) and dramatically serioius

the fact that I both laughed at shots of the antagonist and regarded him as a good threat is what made it so very classic who for me

Lord_Gareth

►

BESW

@JoshuaAslanSmith Again, it reminded me of the Great Old Ones. Have you seen "State of Decay"?

Joshua Aslan Smith

maybe?!?!

I dont what that is

BESW

It's a Fourth Doctor serial about vampires.

Joshua Aslan Smith

if its a who ep Ive watched all of 4 and 5 and I watched new who from beginning until matt smith because of river song

hmmm I feel like I have

BESW

14:36

Adric and Romana, a little medieval town ruled by goths in a castle made from a spaceship.

And at the end, one of the most spectacular laugh-out-loud special effects failures since "Invasion of the Dinosaurs," not to be matched until "Terror of the Vervoids."

Joshua Aslan Smith

I probably blanked this because #hatenewromana

BESW

It's so bad, it's almost literally impossible to show a still or a clip of it because the entire scene looks like an unfairly cut segment of a better scene.

Here, try these guys out on your memory:

Aaaaand....

doppelgreener

@BESW that guy is so photogenic

BESW

That is not an artist's rendering. That is a screencap.

doppelgreener

cinematography!

sleep time I think. goodnight!

@Lord_Gareth this was a good song

BESW

14:44

Ditto.

doppelgreener

@BESW Sleep well! [zz]

Joshua Aslan Smith

the makeup stands out

BESW

G'nighty.

Joshua Aslan Smith

but yeah I really felt betrayed by new romana vs old romana

Good night

A conversation topic for another time

random meandering thought, Cthulhu is to boardgames as zombies are to video games

Saffron

@JoshuaAslanSmith Cthulhu still has its honor though, compared to zombies (loosing a fight against plants...)

MadMAxJr

14:57

@lisardggY The fightin d20 Moderns don't stand a chance at the Super Bowl.

Joshua Aslan Smith

meh, both concepts have been completely watered down from their strong cultural iconography

I get why cthulu is everywhere, no copyright on it, a well known mythos so its easy to use and tap into a fanbase/casual person but it takes this really great idea about unknowable cosmic horror and then makes it mundane

the issue is far worse with zombies though

I 100 percent a gree

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