TRPG General Chat

BESW

01:16

@doppelgreener I'm putting some more content into the Layback Island setting.

It is, of course, not set in stone, but I thought I'd throw something up so that if people go "ew, I can do better!" then we've got momentum.

I particularly expect you to want to change the bar's concept.

With art, whether you're comfortable with a hammer is often a lot more important than whether something's a nail.

Tweeted by UrsulaV on September 10, 2014 at 1:21 AM

doppelgreener

01:36

@BESW yassir! I'm considering whether to make it a pretty laid-back place like a jazz lounge kinda thing, or a more intense deal like a night club

doppelgreener

01:52

Oh hey, maybe it switches between both: club with calm music during the day, night club with rave music and whatever by midnight.

BESW

That seems reasonable.

> A restaurant/club/bar with a rather odd tiki-meets-wild-west theme. By day it’s a laid-back place where elders sip beer and talk about the good old days; by nights it’s a rocking local youth hangout; after midnight it gets even wilder.

In honour of this question's typo, I am going to start using "rule-playing game" as a corollary to "roll-playing."

3

doppelgreener

02:15

@BESW i like that. Did it say that originally!?

BESW

@doppelgreener No, I edited in the progression.

doppelgreener

Ok. :)

Metool

Poor Dan.

Someone please comment about his "Is there a website that has information about times and events? I would like to start role playing!"

I know that it can be answered by other questions on the site.

(But we don't know what he's looking for, right...)

trogdor

02:44

@doppelgreener I actually can't wait to react to rave music as Takeda

Metool

02:55

So tonight someone introduced me to an interesting concept.

The Bone Zone: The number of skeletons it takes to put a single-class fighter to shame.

3

Given 5E's bounded accuracy, this is actually very low.

trogdor

lol

I suppose it must be

I don't think leveling up needed that kind of neutering honestly

in 3.5, half your level ups or so were already pretty boring

Metool

By the way, feel free to move this to the 5E chat room.

trogdor

depending on class at least

Metool

Mmm, empty levels.

trogdor

hp, skills, and maybe some to hit and or a feat

not too exciting

even if you were a caster, some levels gave you nothing, or next to nothing

Miniman

03:08

That's one of the main points though. Most levels in 5 no longer give an increase of 1 to 1 number, they give new features instead.

Adeptus

Has anyone had a look at Ptolus city sourcebook? It's on Bundle of Holding now, & I'm wondering whether it's worth it (to me)

trogdor

mm

doppelgreener

03:35

@trogdor ... suddenly I can't wait for you to do that either

trogdor

04:27

lol

Lord_Gareth

Huh

This is now the second country song I've found about how horrible small town life is, how it traps people in cycles of poverty and misery, and essentially about how the entire genre of country music lies about the reality of country life.

►

BESW

►

Metool

@Lord_Gareth What's the first?

Lord_Gareth

@Metool "Merry Go Round", same artist, which was the original anti-small-town song. Most country songs that deal with small towns are about how awesome and peaceful they are and the 'freedom' you gain by being away from the city.

Hers was about how people become trapped there by fear and tradition and then fall into cycles of denial and pain.

BESW

@Lord_Gareth As someone whose entire high school class left Guam for the mainland and never came back if they possibly could--heh.

Lord_Gareth

04:37

@BESW You haven't really dealt with Mainland Small Town USA, though. It's...a very different beast.

A very different, very frightening, very sad beast

It hurts people and makes them into bitter, miserable husks that hurt others.

BESW

I went to college on the edge of Small Town USA. Half my peers were escaping it.

Metool

<Windrunner> I guess that is potentially true
<Windrunner> I think thats more on the individual though

BESW

(One of my classmates was literally a crack ho baby.)

Lord_Gareth

In any event, here's Merry Go Round

►

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Thematically powerful, but lyrically it's a little self-important.

Lord_Gareth

04:46

@BESW Country songs usually are.

BESW

"Hahah, look at how many cognates I know!"

Metool

<Windrunner> having lived in both city and country I can honestly and without prejudice say 90% of everyone is an intolerable arse
11:45:56 PM <Windrunner> heck the nicest people I ever met were from vietnam and they were treated terribly by a great deal of others

Lord_Gareth

Who is this person and why are they not here.

Metool

Someone from a pony chat, and they don't have 20 rep on any stackexchange site, I'm betting.

Lord_Gareth

At some point I'm going to wander into one of your pony chats like a diseased blight upon all mankind, darkening the skies wherever I go and dimming the hope in the eyes of the innocent.

And I will whisper to them, "How's your day been?"

BESW

04:53

And they will say, "Fine, thanks! But why are we whispering?"

MadMAxJr

That's when the knife comes out and they're pushed into the back alley.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW And I will murmur, "I've got this thing stuck in my throat, it's making talking difficult."

BESW

@Lord_Gareth [lozenge and some tea with honey]

Lord_Gareth

And then we will have reasonable conversation beneath the blood moon while the simpering sun cowers beneath the horizon

Metool

@MadMAxJr "Oi, you, get out of my kitchen."

Lord_Gareth

04:55

And eventually I will log out, and they will say, "Nice guy, I wonder why he eclipsed the sun and caused Latin chanting."

BESW

"Oooh, I bet he's great at parties! We can soirée at noon!"

2

Lord_Gareth

And then I killed the chat

BESW

"My gloom will blot out the sun!"
"Then we shall brunch in the shade."

"My mere presence is a blight on the land!"
"Can you stand a little to the left, then? There's this patch of weeds I just can't get rid of."

Lord_Gareth

See, this kind of conversation is why I was comfortable making a Harrowed Pony OC

Soul permanently welded to a chtonic horror from before the cosmos's current shape? FRIENDSHIP TIME

3

Adeptus

@Lord_Gareth "Or to put it another way, I'm a little ho(a)rse!" ;)

Tarmikos11

05:02

AND THEN THE CAGE WILL COME DOWN.

And then your mother will open the box of veitnamese fighting spiders inside.

BESW

@Adeptus [smacks upside the head]

doppelgreener

Miniman

@doppelgreener There's the gif I've needed my whole life and never even realised.

Metool

@Miniman Please no. I get enough of that on imgur.

doppelgreener

@Metool you're overexposed

Lord_Gareth

05:08

@doppelgreener Metool is a celebrity now?

BESW

....and from that, my brain quickly moved to imagining a Lupe Fiasco fanvid set to clips from Zardoz.

Metool

@Lord_Gareth [celebrates]

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth in the likes of to radiation

BESW

@doppelgreener When he gets angry, he's going to turn into a giant green meme?

doppelgreener

05:39

@BESW <- @Metool could you confirm this to be the case?

BESW

[cue rampaging green dickbutt]

Metool

@doppelgreener You never see it through the filter of the internet, but I must confirm that I do become a... treedoge, on occasion.

doppelgreener

> It also encourages you to consider having long term goals for your character besides "harvest souls." Do they want to become a lord? Do they want to marry the princess? Do they want to own a merchant empire? Those are things that require money.

2

i lol'd (it's from here)

Lord_Gareth

Sigh

That feel when I star the funny part of the post, only to find the rest of the post downvote worthy

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth I had the advantage of reading the post first. But yeah, doppelgreener definitely found the best bit there.

Lord_Gareth

05:49

There are definitely ways to say, "This system may not meet your goals," without being a jerk.

Miniman

Also, rather ironically, him saying that 'we still cared about gold' - in half of those editions gold was XP! Of course they cared about it!

Lord_Gareth

In all of those editions gold was XP

3e got rid of that and introduced regulated item crafting at the same time

In 2000

In any event, downvoted, commented, duty as citizen is done

Miniman

"This is one of those "Let me tell you a story about how things were pre-third edition" questions." There's so much wrong with this at the start of an answer.

Lord_Gareth

Preaching to the choir

Miniman

Sorry. I'm still kind of pissy from an argument I had earlier.

Lord_Gareth

05:56

Swiftly @BESW, summon something to lighten the mortal's spirit

BESW

Miniman

@BESW I laughed, but I have no idea where the middle pic is from.

BESW

@Miniman The Fifth Element, a 1997 scifi comedy film with Bruce Willis and Gary Oldman, written and directed by the guy who did District 13.

Miniman

@BESW I might have to look it up, District 13 rocked.

BESW

Wait, no, you're probably thinking of a different District 13 than I am.

Let me find something else he did.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec?

Miniman

06:01

I got nothing.

BESW

Eh. He's done a LOT of stuff, most of it not well known in American audiences. Just--watch Fifth Element.

Miniman

Turns out I was thinking of District 9.

Lord_Gareth

In any event @BESW, answer is grognarding for no good reason.

trogdor

@BESW I actually saw that

I think

BESW

@Lord_Gareth It's doing a lot better than you manage on answers about Paizo.

Lord_Gareth

06:02

@BESW I edit mine when I get slapped.

BESW

Fifth Element is silly and childlike and makes little sense, but it's a visual spectacle and has some brilliantly hammy acting.

Miniman

@BESW Harsh. Either way, the community judges.

Lord_Gareth

....The edit somehow managed to only make it worse.

Miniman

I didn't even notice the edit.

Lord_Gareth

> If you just want crunch for your personal character sheet - sorry, 5e might not be the game for you. Gold in 1e/2e/5e is more of a way to encourage you to think nonlinearly about your challenges and say "given the resources I have at hand, how can I get what I want" as opposed to driving down the path of really only allowing for the solution "hit it until it stops moving with your own sword" that 3e/4e more strongly encourage.

BESW

06:05

@Miniman After a year and a half of sniping at each other, neither has the high ground and I'm not going to treat either preferentially. Yes, Mxy could do better with that edit. But he's actually trying; he's pretty eloquent about the differences, and it's his right to show bias so long as he presents both sides, which I think he does.

If Gareth disagrees with the content, he can make his own answer. If he disagrees with the presentation... he's made his disagreement clear and the answer got edited as much as the OP is willing to go without compromising his own position. Downvote if necessary, and move on.

Lord_Gareth

In unrelated news, I finally remembered the title to this song I've been trying to find for months.

BESW

Yey!

Lord_Gareth

Now if only Youtube could remember how to load.

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth I've had a tune that I remember from my childhood that I've never found the source of. I thought I knew, but it turned out I was wrong.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW I won't beat this horse further but for all future reference the disagreement is very definitely with the presentation. TL;DR there are nicer, more informative ways to say "You can be creative with gold use" that don't involve being condescending or edition warring.

They are trivial to think of

BESW

06:08

I don't disagree.

Lord_Gareth

But that's gonna be the [/end rant] moment for me

doppelgreener

@Miniman Fifth Element is still awesome though.

I cannot believe you are only slightly younger than me, and you have not seen it.

BESW

@Harmelyo Hi! You'll need at least 20 rep on any one Stack Exchange site before you can type in chat rooms, but you're welcome to hang out until then.

Miniman

@doppelgreener How old do you think I am?

doppelgreener

It's one of those movies that was on TV once or twice every year, because people loved it

Lord_Gareth

06:10

@doppelgreener This is me to every single person my age that has managed to not see He-Man and cousins

doppelgreener

@Miniman Your profile says 22

Miniman

@doppelgreener Wow, just checked. I normally never put that kind of thing in internet, I mustn't have been paying attention when I filled it out.

BESW

@Lord_Gareth See, people my age are all "OMG YOU NEVER SAW [thing that was on cable TV]," while I'm equally "WHAT YOU NEVER SAW [thing that was on public tv]."

Lord_Gareth

I was watching bad 80s cartoons in the very last years of their runs

So now I feel old talking to people my own age

doppelgreener

@Miniman I am 24

Lord_Gareth

06:11

Because people just a few months younger than me never saw all the shows I grew up with

Which were canceled behind my consumption of them in some kind of rolling blackout of trash cartoon content

I go to make Voltron jokes and then feel like an old maaaan

doppelgreener

@BESW I'm talking about public TV too!

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth I don't think you can call it trash if you've seen any of today's cartoons

BESW

Trash is still trash even if other trash stinks worse. Also, there are some awesome contemporary cartoons out there.

Lord_Gareth

@Miniman Avatar: the Last Airbender wants a word with you

So does the rise of anime in American culture

As does Code Lyoko

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth That was one of the ones I was thinking of. But nothing will ever top Naruto for me as the worst writing I've ever seen.

Lord_Gareth

06:13

In point of fact there's just this long list of contemporary animated media that all sorta want harsh words with you.

BESW

Mystery Incorporated and the various Marvel cartoons are in line, too.

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth That, on the other hand, was awesome.

doppelgreener

♥ Adventure Time and Gravity Falls. ♥

wait [edits]

Lord_Gareth

@Miniman Wait. Are you implying that Avatar was bad?

Because, ah

I may need to kill you

doppelgreener

there we go

Lord_Gareth

06:15

(Hell, for that matter Danny Phantom and Invader Zim were pretty solidly legit)

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth I never saw the first, but Invader Zim was great. And then I went on to read his other comics like Squee!! and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

Also great.

Adeptus

@BESW and great editing

Lord_Gareth

Yeah. Honestly if Zim had died to actual audience disinterest I'd be less upset about it. The show got killed as collateral to corporate politics.

One thing you're going to learn very fast, @Miniman, is that I prefer to put the "No" in "Nostalgia"

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth It did? I wasn't actually aware of why it got cancelled.

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener TL;DR the creator was kind of a prima donna and hard to work with/around. Nick needed an excuse to fire him but couldn't do so until his contract with Zim was up. Loophole in contract based around ratings with target audience was used.

Zim did great - phenomenal - with everyone BUT its target

So they paraded the numbers through court and then threw his ass out onto the street

Oxinabox

06:18

@xenoterracide: Yes create answer in the meta thread for making the tags for nwod-nwod-god-machine correct.
http://meta.rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/4773/lets-get-a-clear-consensus-on-the-use-of-nwod-vs-nwod-god-machine

That meta post is a achieveable, and is basically achieved at not having a tagging mess for nwod-god-machine.
It is part of the bigger problem that you hope to address for fixing all wod tags.

Lord_Gareth

And the result is Zim got canceled because, well, it had to

Or they couldn't fire him

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth Okay yeah that makes sense of something: he's responded to that general cry for more Invader Zim episodes and all those questions about if he'd like to do more, by saying no, he didn't like working on it and he doesn't want to go back to it.

So both sides did not enjoy the others' company all that much.

Lord_Gareth

Indeed.

Craaap, I shoulda done that alignment post this morning and I totally forgot to

I HAVE SHAME MY ANCESTORS. ONLY FLAMING CHAINSAW SEPPUKU WILL ERASE MY SHAME

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth but then the post wouldn't be done

and nor would any of the others!!

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener I find your assumption that death would stop me from ranting online to be cute.

My revenant would persist without life or, in this case, bowels, and continue to plague the internet.

(For that matter I'm fairly certain it would not have a spine)

BESW

06:27

@Lord_Gareth Does that mean trolls will make it cry deathless tears of ichor?

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Yes

Man, this chat community is so...multiple personality disorder. One minute we're deep questions of professionalism or ideals in gaming/worldbuilding/life, next minute it's undead nerds crying poison tears as they fight trolls from beyond the cold grip of death.

4

trogdor

lol

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth Might be ADHD rather than multiple personality disorder. You know, the whole attention span thing.

Lord_Gareth

Though at least part of that is probably the disproportionate number of writers present here, combined with an entertainment-focused topic.

I mean, the actual writing stack isn't anywhere near this funny, but that's because they gather for Professional Business

We're writers gathering around to have a friggin' blast

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Say, rather, storytellers.

Lord_Gareth

06:35

@BESW Implying they are not? I said 'writers' on purpose. Most of the chatgoers here play, or have played, in online-medium roleplaying venues.

We're writers

BESW

There are important differences; not all writers are storytellers. We are. For us, writing is a tool for storytelling.

And the storytelling aspect is extremely relephant to the point you're trying to make: we jumped to undead nerds because whenever we have a topic, we make it into a story.

We think about interconnectedness, implication, and motive, whatever the topic is, because we are people who tell stories about those things.

Writing.se is also for people who tell no stories at all, or who tell stories for didactic purposes rather than indulgent ones.

Miniman

I'm hoping that 'we' isn't all inclusive, none of this stuff applies to me at all.

doppelgreener

@BESW Tolkein may be a key (if controversial) example here ;)

Lord_Gareth

@Miniman You help tell a story every time you roleplay.

@doppelgreener You have spoken the Forbidden Name. Choose the method of your death, mortal thing

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth I choose death by old age

Lord_Gareth

06:40

@doppelgreener Very well.

doppelgreener

or via immolation in a distant star yet to be born

trogdor

are you sure you do not want BURNINATION?

Miniman

@doppelgreener That's a really bad idea to say if you're talking to something that can just do it.

trogdor

lol

Lord_Gareth

[Accelerates @doppelgreener's age in an instant, causing horribly painful death through decades of system breakdown condensed into a single second of malice]

It is done

BESW

06:41

@Miniman It's a reference to, among other things, the novel Talking to Dragons.

doppelgreener

@Miniman Well yes there is a certain bet here that it cannot be made to happ-- aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

3

Miniman

@BESW I know! Never thought I'd see that series mentioned on the Internet.

BESW

@Miniman Last year I ran a series of chat games during the Fate Accelerated beta set in the Enchanted Forest.

So a lot of these guys know it from that, despite not having read the novels themselves.

doppelgreener

@BESW It is!? Did someone choose death by old age in that book? I did not mean to make this reference and now you must tell me what I referenced!!

Miniman

@doppelgreener The 'Enchanted Forest Chronicles'

doppelgreener

06:43

(I didn't read it, after all!)

BESW

@doppelgreener Princess Cimorene is sorting her dragon's bottle collection, and she gets a hapless prince who is trying rescue her to help.

Miniman

A fantastic four-book series by Patricia Wright (I think that's what her name is)

BESW

He accidentally unseals a genie, which proclaims that because they unsealed him after a particular number of years in the bottle, "thou and thy paramour" ("Oh, he's not my paramour!") must die--but he will let them choose the manner of their death.

Cimorene immediately says, "Old age!" and the genie refuses, saying they have to die before sunset that day.

Lord_Gareth

Man...you know what I really want to see, or maybe write for DSP?

The Bottle Imp

BESW

They get to talking, and it's revealed that the genie should technically be granting them wishes because it hasn't been long enough for the "death" part of his oath to take effect, but that would be hideously embarrassing because no genie gets let out of the bottle that soon.

So Cimorene suggests that he just hop back into the bottle and wait some more--by the time the genie is let out again, they'll both have died of old age anyway. The genie is flabbergasted, and grants her one wish out of gratitude before returning to his prison.

She then writes up a very clear label explaining that if you open the bottle between X and Y dates the genie will kill you, but after Y date he'll just go back home and leave you alone.

doppelgreener

06:47

@BESW haha, excellent

Magician

A very specific genie kind, that.

Lord_Gareth

Speaking of genies

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth I always meant to read that, the extract at the start of Wizard at Large made it sound really interesting.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth Do tell us about this? What is it? What makes you want to write about it?

Miniman

@doppelgreener Robert Louis Stevenson

Lord_Gareth

06:49

A friend of mine was designing a campaign setting with a strong Arabian Nights theme as part of a big huge project. It actually technically finished - Hourglass of Zihaja (I'll get back to the Bottle Imp in a bit)

Miniman

That's about as much as I know

Lord_Gareth

So in the course of the teaser and feedback threads I ask what a racist joke from the setting might be like, and we got this:

Miniman

The suspense is killing me!

Lord_Gareth

"A gnoll, a lizardman, and a half-djinn go to the market seeking gifts for their mothers. The lizardman walks amongst the stalls, past exotic foods and perfumes, and purchases a bronze vessel to hold sweet water. The others nod and say that this is good. The furman searches through weapons of bright steel and princely cloths but eventually settles on a brass-bound chest to hold wealth. The others nod, and say that this is good. The half-djinn searches [Cont]"

"High and low, past magical wonders that defy description, past dancers and pleasurable company and wines that a lord could not buy with all of his wealth, and he purchases a dented tin snuffbox. "Why do you buy such trash for your mother?" the furman demands, and the half-djinn looks offended. "Trash?" he protests. "We've been looking for Father for ten years!""

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth I lol'ed.

Lord_Gareth

06:54

@doppelgreener The Bottle Imp is...a creature? An artifact? There is a bottle, and in it lives a demon which obeys the master of the bottle. But the demon has a mind of its own, and escapes from the bottle when it is not attended to. It brings misery and betrayal upon your life, and if you die as the bottle's owner, it drags you to Hell. The bottle cannot be stolen, it cannot be given away. It can only be sold, and only for less than you paid for it.

Miniman

I gotta head home and leave a database in the middle of indexing, I always worry about what it will do without me watching it...

Adeptus

A watched database never boils... no, wait...

BESW

@Adeptus An indexing database is the Devil's workshop?

Lord_Gareth

Which, to me, is maybe the most interesting kind of cursed item you can introduce into a D20 game. It's something that, yes, worsens your life, but it worsens your life by complicating it.

"Normal" cursed items in 3.PF are just systems to game like the rest, things to turn against your enemies or penalties to avoid.

The Bottle Imp tempts you with power and the promise that if you're just a little more clever, a little more vigilant, than the last guy, you'll be just fine

Won't you?

But of course you won't.

That's the point.

You never will

And neither will anyone else.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth it took me a little while and then I got it. I like it. :)

Lord_Gareth

07:00

And maybe it's the Ravenloft DM in me, but when it comes to doing bad crap to my players I like presenting them with a noose and watching them hang themselves.

Optimized enemies can kill a party, sure, but why bother? That's just using DM power.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth Oh wow. I'm impressed.

Lord_Gareth

It's so much more exciting to watch them kill themselves

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Do you remember my Thief's Curse from 4e?

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Yes, yes I do.

@doppelgreener [Blushing intensifies]

's nothin' too special. Folks around here play like that pretty often.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth sounds like y'all have bags of Fun

Lord_Gareth

07:02

@doppelgreener The thing you have to remember is that I hate my players and wish them ill, misfortune, and harm.

Finding ways to make them do those things to themselves is like 70% of why I'm even at the table.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth I remember you describing them as extremely talkative lungfish and it still makes me snigger when I do

Lord_Gareth

In other news, Cards Against Humanity caused this conversation

avenheart I still thinking accidentally killing your genitals with fire due to spiders would have been funnier.
Flickerdart I never even got a blank
Ravenheart ...Though on the other hand this does have the potential to imply you're having sex with spiders.
Ravenheart (No-one said /why/ you were screaming, after all...)
Maven ha
Forrest #JustDrowThings
Maven hahahahaha
Ravenheart snrks.
Ravenheart Niiiiiice.
Forrest bows

In any event, the intercession of "I hate my players," "My players are morons," and "Gareth believes passionately in player agency" leads to a whole lot of imploded parties.

BESW

(For those who missed it, my Thief's Curse was a curse on a tomb robbing PC which gave him bonuses to thief-based skills that increased every time he used them--but the bonus value was applied as a penalty to all other skills. He was also given a power which let him deal damage to an enemy by rolling a thief skill, and turn that damage into commensurately valuable jewels on the spot.)

Lord_Gareth

Argh. Waiting to run this Scion game is killing me. I've got the willing cooperation of a mole within the party.

Her character is Loki. Except she doesn't know that she's Loki because the plotline revolves around a gambit the Sky Traveler is running to try and cheat his fate and thus cancel Ragnarok entirely

BESW

VTC: too broad or unclear

Lord_Gareth

07:08

By erasing his own identity and becoming, in essence, an entirely different god

Thus leaving no 'Loki' for Fate to kill

The opening plot line? The Band is given a converted bus (the "Argo II") and commanded to use it to transport the Golden Fleece to safe keeping in New York City

doppelgreener

@BESW that is deliciously evil

BESW

@doppelgreener Hey, what do you think is going to happen when you rob the tomb of a king-priest of the god of thieves?

2

doppelgreener

@BESW the DM unleashes delicious evil

Lord_Gareth

@BESW His god appears in person, congratulates you on your impressive feat, throws a party in your honor with all manner of comely outsiders in attendance, and then you wake up eighty miles away, buck-ass naked and stripped of every valuable you own including body hair.

BESW

He got to the point where non-thief skill rolls were taking something like -35 penalties.

Which means he could steal the beard off a saint, but would then break his ankle trying to leave.

3

Lord_Gareth

07:16

@BESW Sounds like he had some self-control problems with his curselazor

Metool

"In no particular order" but then lists twelve names alphabetically...

BESW

@Lord_Gareth He voluntarily failed his daily rolls to resist and throw off the curse.

(I used the 4e disease mechanics, with the depth level of the disease acting as a multiplier on the damage/jewel attack.)

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Welp, there goes any pity I had for the fool. Excuse me while I soak in the energies released by your malice.

BESW

@Lord_Gareth I knew the player well, and carefully tailored the curse to hit exactly the sweet spot you mentioned earlier: "If I'm just careful enough and clever enough, I can make this work for me..."

Meanwhile, somewhere in the Astral Sea, Zehir was laughing his serpentine butt bones off.

Lord_Gareth

Pfft

Man, I wish I had to go through that much effort for my players.

My customers challenge me much more than my players ever have or, probably, ever will.

BESW

07:22

These days I don't have to work nearly so hard.

Lord_Gareth

It's like, no matter how many virgins I sacrifice beneath the nacreous moon, Satan just won't send me a decent IRL group.

BESW

Player: [gathers up all his Fate points to resist mind control and proffers them to me]
BESW: "If you keep those, and I add a shiny extra Fate point for your troubles, I promise you'll have fun being mind controlled."
Player: [snatches Fate point from my hand and eagerly awaits instructions from his alien master]

4

(It turns out his alien master sounds like Old Spice Guy.)

Lord_Gareth

@BESW I had something almost like this once. Passed a note to a player, other players thought it was a dream sequence. Nope, kidnapped by dopplegangers. Dude announces IRL that he has to go get the food (it did need getting), comes back, sits down at the table and starts playing "himself" subtly wrong.

Assassinated both of the spellcasters before the paladin cottoned on to the fact that the party was vanishing one member at a time

Still killed the paladin

(Bard got him)

BESW

In this case, one of the Doctor's companions ran the Doctor through with a spear.

Twice.

The Doctor had to regenerate in order to not be killed.

Anyway, must dash to meeting.

ttfn

doppelgreener

It was pretty fun. It was also pretty fun trying to stop them from doing it.

Metool

07:38

Unrelated to anything, potoophon.

Source.

Mourdos

08:17

Morning all.

Which seems to just be me.

Metool

@Mourdos Heyo.

Mourdos

Ah, there is someone around. Good morning!

Potoophon amuses me

BESW

09:05

[wave]

Mourdos

Morning.

Can I get your thoughts on the following:

minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=7952.0

BESW

In what way? Do I think it's balanced?

Mourdos

I'm planning to play one in a ECL4 game. The DM is going to be running mostly solo plots for the characters involved, based in the underdark, with players occasionally working together or against each other based on goals.

So far, Drow Cleric and someone is making a bard.

I'm not sure what to do with the shadow.

BESW

Shadows have inherent OP potential because they bypass the normal defeat mechanisms.

Mourdos

I was also thinking of taking an monk that runs off of int

and then having int and cha to my ac

BESW

09:16

(IE, they bypass the standard death buffer of hit points by attacking ability stats instead.)

Mourdos

yep

And I think at level 10 I hit cha if they are immune to str damage

and can affect even creatures immune

(with a save)

I've been wondering if Weakness Grasp is a natural weapon, or just an attack

Actually, what I'm looking for is a way to deal with bluff.

Can you think of any ways to get my sense motive high or based on a non wis stat?

BESW

@Mourdos Since it's a homebrew monster class, most of these questions are unanswerable except through rampant speculation and GM appeal.

Mourdos

This is true. Except that shadow is already a monster and has the same ability. I believe that the answer to what the monster's ability is will answer the same question. and its good to have some research to present to a dm

Special Attack, under the Shadow on d20srd. Hm

BESW

VTC, and can someone help this guy?

Phil

why VTC?

BESW

09:28

Because at the moment it's far, far too broad and vague to answer usefully without wild guessing?

Metool

I'd like to do a Paper Mario hack just so I can change the Refund badge's name to Rebate.

[coffees up]

BESW

10:13

@trogdor Would you be okay with joining Ira and I on Skype?

He wants to be a 17th century ninja einherjar.

trogdor

10:39

lol

sure

is it too late?

BESW

Welp, we've got a ninja chemist in the group now.

Nah, he's in the DFAE group chat on Skype.

You can text with him, and do video if you want. I don't think I need to be part of it.

trogdor

ok

I was getting my parents to watch Rosencrance and Gildenstern are dead

cause my mom doesn't remember seeing it

dad does though

Saffron

10:51

Hi

trogdor

hello

lisardggY

'ello 'ello.

BESW

11:23

Okay, so here's something interesting. One player wants to have his character from 17th century Japan be largely historically accurate; the other wants his 17th century Japanese character to have participated in a massive wuxia-style coup, and killed the Emperor.

lisardggY

Heh.

BESW

Reconciliation: the ultra-secretive Jade Court vampires covered up the bloody coup and erased it from history.

lisardggY

Parallel realities! Alternate timeline! Worlds are colliding!

BESW

I'm not putting it in stone that the Jade Court did it, but yes--something is Wacky.

lisardggY

Go the Feng Shui way.

Incidentally, Robin D. Laws mentioned in his podcast that he's working on Feng Shui 2.0 and will soon put up a kickstarter for it. That should be fun.

BESW

11:25

@lisardggY ?

lisardggY

@BESW The Feng Shui RPG is based around an eternal conflict of different factions around nodes of power in the world. The premise is that these factions constantly take over points of significance throughout history, changing the timeline going forward. But the Soldiers in the war (i.e. the players) aren't affected by this retroactive change, and can re-take those nodes, re-changing history.

Feng Shui (role-playing game)

Feng Shui is a martial arts-themed role-playing game, designed by Robin Laws, published first by Daedalus Entertainment and now by Atlas Games. The game shares its setting with the collectible card game Shadowfist. The system is simple, with most detail being in the game's combat system. Combat is made to flow quickly, moving from one action scene to another very quickly. It was inspired and based on Hong Kong style action movies. The characters begin at a high level of skill, as appropriate for protagonists in the source films. In 1999 Pyramid magazine named Feng Shui on its list of "The Millennium...

BESW

12:02

@Lord_Gareth I have a new phrase for my quotes list, and I thought you'd appreciate it:

> My sense of outrage is more evolved than yours.

Aaron

Morning

BESW

Hey.

Metool

@Aaron How's things?

Aaron

Good. Going to be another busy day though.

lisardggY

I ran into a youtube link on how to make tamago and it turned out to be a lot more interesting than just an omelette.

►

(So that's my day so far, yes)

Aaron

12:14

So today is internet shutdown day huh

lisardggY

It's my day home with the baby. Usually she goes to sleep around 10:00, but today she was up and around until 13:00, so I was too tired to do anything but stare vacantly. :)

Mourdos

@Aaron This comment is ... loading, please wait

BESW

Oh this is EXACTLY what today was missing. Unsatisfied Women In Western Art History http://the-toast.net/2014/09/09/unsatisfied-women-western-art-history/ via @TheToast

Tweeted by HaywardCL on September 9, 2014 at 5:43 PM

Mourdos

12:56

I love it

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