TRPG General Chat

wax eagle

00:17

in response to meta discussion today. I made the announcement in the 5e room that 5e chat is welcome back here.

5

BESW

With, of course, the reminder that any conversation which unreasonably dominates main chat may be moved to a side room on a per-case basis.

doppelgreener

and followed and mugged for loose mechanics

wax eagle

aye. I also mentioned over there that I'll continue to hang out in the room for the forseeable future

BESW

Wow. You really never know which posts are going to run wild, do you?

wax eagle

lol, hot questions?

BESW

00:31

I mean, Owlbear and Paladin answers, sure. Those are obviously gonna be popular and get a lot of views, so votes will accrue.

And the "burying" one was so silly everybody was linking it around.

But an answer that boils down to "Animals die of exposure and starvation quite regularly, actually," and that haystacking paper answer?

[shrug] I do not understand the Mind of the Stack.

Miniman

It's interesting, the less suitable a question is for SE, the more popular it tends to be. Up to a certain threshold where it just dies horribly.

6

wax eagle

yes, that's one of the reasons that people who have been around here for a while will argue that votes/popularity is not a good standard of question quality

BESW

[wanders over to Fate chat to expound on the bafflement of stress tracks for mobs]

Joshua Aslan Smith

01:14

generally the less specific or system dependent a question is, the wider the possible audience, but also the greater risk of not meeting site standards

BESW

@afroakuma [wave]

afroakuma

[manifests]

Good day

Apparently I'm doing a thing this evening

BESW

News to you too, eh?

afroakuma

haha

No, he did make sure to ask me about it

I was just coming in to check on what precisely I'm supposed to do. Is it this chat room, or another...?

BESW

Gareth suggested that we make a special room just for that.

I'm not sure we shouldn't make a Thing of it and dedicate main chat, though.

Does anybody have preferences/suggestions/Opinions/complaints?

afroakuma

01:19

[shrug]

Wherever it transpires, I am at your service

Metool

If you have it here, make sure to bookmark it right away.

BESW

Hmm. Good point.

Yeah, maybe a dedicated room would be good--that way we can point at it all-at-once and with bookmarked fun bits.

(I suspect this will go so long that bookmarking the whole thing will need to get cut up into sections.)

Miniman

Also, stops it from messing up chat for those not interested

BESW

I'll make a room.

Miniman

(Note that I'm not referring to myself here)

afroakuma

01:25

as long as I can figure out where to be, I'm good

BESW

Running low-powered 3.5 games

A discussion hosted by Afroakuma

afroakuma

Good good!

BESW

Afroakuma will host a lecture/Q&A on creating and running deliberately low-powered 3.5 campaigns in this chat at 0400 UTC .

3

afroakuma

Indeed.

Glad that's sorted ^_^

Adeptus

@BESW Have you dated that correctly? Is it 2.5 hours or 26.5 hours from now?

Miniman

01:37

@Adeptus 2.5

BESW

@Adeptus Should be 2.5 hours from now.

Adeptus

That's what I thought. The event you scheduled is for +26.5

BESW

Whoops.

There, that should do it.

Adeptus

After reading this news item... cnet.com/au/news/…

I've had this song stuck in my head for the past day

►

though I much prefer this cover version

►

Tarmikos11

Damnit, Adeptus, now I'm gunna have this stuck in my head all night tonight.

Metool

01:50

@Tarmikos11 You.

Bring me the chips.

Tarmikos11

?

Metool

I forgot mine and we're about to play poker out here.

Tarmikos11

Oh sure, lemme just call up my unlimited range Eidolon to grab those for you.

doppelgreener

@Tarmikos11 replace it with this michaeltyson.ytmnd.com

Tarmikos11

I got something for that.

Arkhaic

02:37

So.

It sounds like The Thing is happening.

BESW

@Magician idodds.org should also provide calculations for whether the planet you've just landed on has a Krell machine underneath it.

doppelgreener

@BESW please elaborate?

BESW

@doppelgreener idodds.org, or the Krell?

doppelgreener

what is this "krell" "machine" and "planet" business, and this "iodds" thing

[puts finger quotes around each of those]

BESW

in D&D 5e Debate Room, yesterday, by Magician

Concept for a website: intellectdevourerodds.com. Very simple page, prompts user to enter monster's Int and whether they're proficient with Int saves or not. Calculates percentage (rounding up), and also rolls for them.

He then went out and bought idodds.org.

doppelgreener

02:44

Haha wow

That's great

BESW

It's basically "Oh Great IDOdds, does the monster my players are fighting contain an intellect devourer?"

As for the Krell--have you seen Forbidden Planet?

Because if not, MAJOR SPOILERS.

Like, "Seriously, this film is one of the great classics of scifi, do not spoil yourself for it."

Suffice to say, I made a very clever pun.

doppelgreener

@BESW I haven't, I suppose I shall

BESW

Tangentially, it's kinda wild to see Forbidden Planet use the traditional flying saucer spaceship design for a human craft, after we've had so many decades of it being a default alien shape.

I love seeing old seminal works that have influenced modern culture, and how much their influence has drifted from the source material.

(Warner Bros. and Straczynski have recently talked about some kind of film based on Forbidden Planet, but it seems to be a dead project.)

(For which I'm glad, because Straczynski is anti-retro for this kind of thing.)

Lord_Gareth

03:05

Soon(tm)

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth ok. :)

The Oracle

03:27

0

Q: What to Do About a Redundant Question That You Asked?

I asked a question a while back and it never really got answered to my satisfaction, but I realize that a huge part of that was my failure to ask it well. So, recently, I posted a new question that was much better formed, and got some really good answers. What should be done about the old questi...

support

Lord_Gareth

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth :'(

BESW

I am very concerned about tomorrow's game, because I have an outcome I'm trying to design towards instead of just designing scenarios and seeing what happens.

Arkhaic

Hm, outcomes.

Miniman

@BESW Predefined stories seem to get a lot of hate around here, watch out!

Arkhaic

03:42

Are you referring to setpiece encounters?

Miniman

No, I meant when the campaign has a predefined story that the GM is just running the players through. This isn't exactly what BESW is doing, I just thought I'd mention it.

Lord_Gareth

@Miniman Lack of player agency gets a lot of hate around here, and @BESW is quite aware of that.

There are a lot of ways to motivate players to voluntarily follow your story.

Miniman

@BESW I'm assuming you're referring to your plan to have everyone acquire a mantle by the end?

BESW

One of our players isn't going to be with us next week, and I'm trying to help orchestrate a way for him to get his character out of the story dramatically.

@Miniman No, that's the other playtest game.

I'm confident my players will work with me on achieving this outcome.

Miniman

@.@ Ignore everything confused guy over here said

Arkhaic

03:44

Mantles? Is there a DF playtest?

BESW

@Arkhaic Yup. Dresden Files Accelerated Editions is in closed alpha right now.

Arkhaic

Ooh, shiny.

BESW

So this isn't an issue of player agency so much as it's an issue of "never expect things to go the way you expect."

Miniman

@BESW But if you're expecting things to go in a way you aren't expecting, aren't you expecting that?

doppelgreener

@BESW Ouch, I see why you were saying you wish you could talk to me about that one.

Will we be in on the outcome you're trying to produce?

BESW

03:47

@doppelgreener Absolutely.

Lord_Gareth

Oh, oh, @BESW, I had some theories on how FATE relates to freeform that developed while I was at work.

doppelgreener

@BESW Great, then I will happily conspire to all misfortune in helping to get there.

BESW

Fate chat and game room

Good questions raised here should hit the main site too! Fudge...

Tarmikos11

Obligatory mention of heroic sacrifice, possibly just implied.

Arkhaic

The level of subdivision of chatrooms leaves me with 5 tabs open.

BESW

03:48

@doppelgreener Basically, it's how to get Rodger into a non-proactive state in time for next week's game.

@Arkhaic I'm in 11 chatrooms across five Stacks.

Arkhaic

Yeesh.

BESW

Most of them I don't need to keep tabbed open; the sidebar shows me if there's something to keep an eye on.

Adeptus

@BESW It took me a while to notice that feature. It's very useful.

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener - Get in the FATE room you

afroakuma

04:03

Kicking off the lecture if people are interested

Adeptus

04:34

As an aside from the low-level "lecture" (I don't want to post there since this is only tangentially related), CR isn't terribly accurate. So, how do you fine-tune it to your particular party? (at any power level)

Arkhaic

You...don't.

You look at things and compare them to your party.

And figure out whether or not it will brutally kill them.

Miniman

Like, for example, a roper: Aw HELLZ NAW. They ain't never gonna beat that shit.

Magician

@BESW I have been thinking of expanded functionality, yeah. I'll try and get basics covered on the weekend, at least. I'm very much looking forward to making up the expanded version, the fillable Mandrake equation.

Adeptus

@Arkhaic But how do you figure that out?

Miniman

@Adeptus Play the battle out, if you really want a good idea

Arkhaic

04:46

That's the best way, yes.

Also, look at the tactics the party usually uses.

Who tends to contribute what.

AC and attack bonuses.

Figure out percentile chances of things you don't want to happen happening.

(granted, 1st level is a coin toss)

If the monster has some specific weakness, can the party actually target that weakness?

Gareth and Fro can elaborate more, but it's essentially trying your hardest to figure out how to brutally murder your party with it while simultaneously trying your hardest to figure out how the party can kill it.

Lord_Gareth

@Arkhaic Then you figure out where the dials are to control the chance of it happening to a level appropriate to your game.

Super lethal game? Murder time

Laid back buddy game? Better tone some stuff down

Arkhaic

Aye.

Lord_Gareth

06:16

►

Oxinabox

07:26

I am working towards the party aquiring one of their most dangerous foes as a pet

The party ins (nwod-gmc) demons.
One of the party was being hunted by 3 hunter angels, who took the form of cats

g2g later

Mourdos

08:53

Whoot, finally hit 1k :-)

BESW

Grats!

Inbar Rose

Morning.

I just noticed the "tables" tag on this chat room is a broken link (ie: no tables tag exists?)

BESW

@InbarRose Yeah, I can put any tag I want on the room and it'll try to link back an rpg.se tag page, but I'm not limited to extant tags.

tables is up there as a pathetic attempt to make it more obvious that we aren't a chat for video games, mathematics, grenade launchers, or website design (the most common things which random people stumble in here to mistakenly talk about).

Inbar Rose

Okay. :)

BESW

See also: dice, pen-and-paper, role-playing.

BESW

09:24

Here's a phrase: "Background mua-ha-ha-er." The villain in the shadows who is apparently behind every evil plot and minor mishap but has not yet actually done anything beyond laugh evilly as though the thwarting of his minions were all part of his master plan.

Inbar Rose

I think "Background mua-ha-ha-er." isn't a very catchy phrase.

Although it reminds me of the bad guy from inspector gadget.

BESW

It sounds better spoken out loud?

Inbar Rose

How about something less descriptive and more fitting? Like "Shadow Master"

These individuals are not "background" they are master chess players

They don't "muhaha" they sip on cognac and smoke cigars while receiving reports from their minions/magical orbs/monitors.

BESW

And thus they are not background mua-ha-ha-ers.

It's a cheesy and usually lazy trope for characters that the writers want to have be chessmasters, but are not.

Inbar Rose

So the "Background mua-ha-ha-er." is specifically a satire?

BESW

09:30

BMHHEs are usually more "failed writing" than "clever satire."

(I did not coin this term; it comes from Obscurus Lupa's Charmed reviews.)

Inbar Rose

oh

BESW

(I do think it's a trope which is useful to have a name for.)

For example, in an Atomic Robo game the BMHHE would be a really good trope to gun for.

trogdor

why is that?

I mean, it sounds like an entirely negative title

lisardggY

10:29

`ello.

BESW

10:39

[wave]

wax eagle

10:52

ooh today is select store drop of the MM

Metool

Mmmmmodrons.

BESW

"Modrons" will always sound like a Second Doctor "made of tinfoil" alien to me.

lisardggY

I never actually heard of them until the recent "Yay, Modrons are back!" foofarah.

Metool

Modrons are adorable. Also, yes to the name thing.

lisardggY

11:07

Maybe it's because I never had the Planescape setting books in my 2e days.

BESW

►

"Ooooh, I'm a Kroton!"

Aaron

12:25

Mornin

Tim B

hi

Metool

Heyo.

BESW

[wave]

The Oracle

13:37

0

Q: Should I change which answer I accept?

I asked this question and accepted an answer, however, another answer incorporated the accepted answer and is now clearly better. Should I change my selection to the now better answer?

discussion accepted-answer stackexchange

Metool

13:48

Hmm, I need a list of creatures by languages spoken.

MrLemon

that would be an interesting thing to have...

I assume Pathfinder?

@Metool: d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/tools/monster-filter can be sorted by language, though it will sort alphabetically

so "Abyssal, Common" will not be sorted along with "Common"

Zachiel

14:04

@Arkhaic They cast labyrinth? Add a second copy of the toughest monster to any encounter.

Metool

14:25

@MrLemon Thanks!

MrLemon

@Metool I'm actually writing a script right now to provide a nice list

dang truespeech, being separated by ; instead of , like everything else

Zachiel

@MrLemon are you working with monkeyscripts?

MrLemon

python

as usual, RegEx is helpful

Yethhound: "Abyssal or Infernal"...

Sifkesh: "Abyssal (can't speak)"

Okay, I need to limit the languages to a fixed list...

MrLemon

14:54

@Metool: pastebin.com/AJ6dteDK

Statistics: Abyssal (342), Aklo (185), Aquan (165), Auran (133), Celestial (303), Common (1104), Draconic (485), Dwarven (38), Elven (105), Giant (211), Gnoll (10), Gnome (39), Goblin (57), Halfling (27), Ignan (113), Infernal (303), Orc (36), Sylvan (213), Terran (131), Undercommon (110)

Zachiel

What's Aklo?

MrLemon

good question...

Zachiel

undercommon? (judging from the list...)

MrLemon

"This ancient tongue is spoken by strange eldritch entities, and certain ancient beings."

"Derro, inhuman or otherworldly monsters, evil fey."

according to the PFSRD where I got the list from

Zachiel

draconic lists every dragon age as a separate element

MrLemon

15:02

I suppose it does :)

Zachiel

well, every tongue does, but every dragon speaks draconic

MrLemon

yeah, the script is not smart enough to detect that

Are there language differences between Dragon Age categories?

Metool

Hmm. Mariliths speak Celestial. Troublesome.

MrLemon

Ahh well, I'm out of here for the moment. Though part of me wants to keep modifying the script to get all sorts of crazy "Monsters by XYZ" lists

"Monsters by Fort Save", "Monsters by first listed Feat"

(wave)

Zachiel

@Metool Know your enemy

@MrLemon bye

MadMAxJr

16:29

After a month long break, I must don the DM hat again tonight.

Phil

looking forward to it?

MadMAxJr

I am, it's just today has a hecktic schedule and I won't have as much prep time as I would like.

Phil

sounds familiar ^^

running an Unknown Armies game tonight and I've done about half the prep I needed to

Zachiel

16:49

I need some better google-fu

D&D 3e's A&EG had a mundane armor property called quick escape, costing 300gp. I know it costs 500gp in 3.5e so there's been an update but I can't find in which manual it is. Google only finds out the A&EG version.

Zachiel

17:05

@rockbeatspaper Hello! Looks like I missed your arrival yesterday, welcome to RPG.SE!

Phil

What he said ^

Metool

17:22

@Tarmikos11 How do you like coffee burns?

Zachiel

@Metool well seasoned

rockbeatspaper

17:41

@Zachiel @Phil Ah, thank you!

Zachiel

(Mmmmh guys? I just welcomed him. Should I say "you're welcome" the same?)

rockbeatspaper

I'm getting antsy about my group. We did character creation, but couldn't meet for another 3-4 weeks for the first session.

wax eagle

18:00

There is a monster by CR index in the DMG, interesting

as well as monsters by environment that's exciting

Metool

18:37

@rockbeatspaper ah, fun

Aaron

19:24

That was the weirdest half dream I have ever had.

I was reading about the traveler's any tool and nodded off.

Dreamt that a fat dragon in a dress was being kicked by a rat man until it fell over. The dragon then farted igniting a gas puddle. That is when I woke up

MadMAxJr

@Aaron Congratulations, you qualify to write adventure modules stamped with OGL in the back cover.

Aaron

That all happen in the space of like 10 seconds that I nodded off.

@MadMAxJr the adventure modules are not that bad are they?

MadMAxJr

@Aaron I'm just being a little snarky. There were some terrible modules published in the early OGL days.

Aaron

Ah. Did they include farting dragons?

MadMAxJr

@Aaron I would not rule it out. The depths of PDF only published modules get even weirder and more niche.

Aaron

19:33

Sounds amusing

rockbeatspaper

Huh. Never heard of a witch's hair being freaking dexterous.

Aaron

@rockbeatspaper There have been a few questions about what you can do with hair.

Lord_Gareth

21:05

Warning, R-rated language: wildwestscifi.net/gencrawlgaiden/11751

I need to mine this comic for trap ideas

afroakuma

manifests

Lord_Gareth

Oh hey, Afroakuma has arrived

afroakuma

Indeed.

How's it going?

Lord_Gareth

Fairly well, getting the master doc together for Wilder!book

So we can release wilder!book

afroakuma

Indeed.

Lord_Gareth

21:11

Also posted a thing from GenCrawl, up above. Party summoned a bonus boss

MadMAxJr

... We have a question about 'Is the RPGA allowed to...'

afroakuma

I'm still trying to figure out how to approach the design

But I haven't abandoned it yet

Have there been any whatnots regarding last night's lecture?

Lord_Gareth

@afroakuma not that I know of

afroakuma

Good enough.

Running low-powered 3.5 games

Fate chat and game room

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