TRPG General Chat

12:03 AM

@Shalvenay This is a process that works in either direction. You know you need a town now. You can figure out why it's there later. The way you design the town may then influence the way you branch out in the rest of the world.

Shalvenay

or do you think I should try to get it laid out on a larger-format sheet? (I'd like to be able to show where major towns/cities, roads, etal are -- if you've seen the detail level of the HotDQ Forgotten Realms map, that's what I'm shooting for)

Miniman

That was a good map

Hold on to it if you decide to run Princes of the Apocalypse

And for Rise of Tiamat, too

Shalvenay

@Pixie -- yeah, I suppose you're right, I can lay out a very simple way-station village now, something small enough it wouldn't "make the map" if you will

Adeptus

@Shalvenay You can always do a "zoomed in" map of areas you want more detail of. So eg, a world map & a region map

Shalvenay

@Adeptus -- true, but when maintaining this on paper, consistency would be an issue...

Adeptus

12:07 AM

design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/…

Shalvenay

@Adeptus -- aaah, that might just be the tool I need

Nyoze

3:21 AM

Wow, you lot are talkative today :(

Miniman

@Nyoze It's Monday for some timezones, and Sunday for others. Pretty much a lose/lose as far as this chat is concerned.

Nyoze

Yeah, that's true enough I guess. Monday's suck everywhere :P

Magician

This may be of interest to some: fonts used in D&D books, up to 3rd edition.

4

Nyoze

3:39 AM

I've never understood the ways of the fontaphile... To me one font is just as good as any other. :\

Miniman

> I've never understood the ways of the fontaphile... To me one sensible, readable font is just as good as any other. :\

Comic Sans and its ilk have no value, as far as I'm concerned.

BESW

@Nyoze This is a good site for seeing the use of different fonts in a context that we're familiar with, and understanding its impact.

For example: The title of 2001: A Space Odyssey uses a large, round, clean sans-serif. It is "timeless," meaning it's used over many decades of typography taking place over even more decades of in-work time.

BUT! The opening act of the film is in the past.

So it's introduced with a title card that uses a serif font associated with older contexts:

By a simple change in typeface, the text asserts when it wants us to think about.

Nyoze

3:58 AM

Huh... I never actually thought about it like that.

I guess that's why I just code things, and don't do the design as well :P

@Miniman I've never had an issue with Comic Sans either :P

BESW

Comic Sans --indeed, most any font-- is not inherently bad. There are many fonts which are overused or misused.

Comic Sans is a laid-back, relaxed font. Even a little silly.

It's been used for inappropriate content so much that it's now synonymous with bad font choice.

Not because it's always a bad choice, but because it's been a bad choice so often.

Papyrus is another font people love to hate. Partly because it's also overused in poor contexts, but also because it's not designed to look good when made really big.

Papyrus is okay at text-in-a-book size, not at sign-over-a-store size.

Shalvenay

@Nyoze -- did you ever come up with anything re: my encounter design stuff? (btw, I changed the dagger-bandit to be +2/1d4 and the shortbow-bandit to be +3/1d6+1 after re-reading some combat rules stuff)

Nyoze

@Shalvenay I've been thinking it through... The problem is that 2 bandits ganging up on one PC at level 1 are likely to kill the PC - even if you introduced a new PC on the second turn. The only way I can see around it would be to play a very scared bandit archer who orders the dagger bandit to protect him and nothing else.

Shalvenay

4:14 AM

I was thinking the bandit archer would be a bit reserved, yes -- kind of hesitant to shoot into melee

would that have a similar effect?

Miniman

@Shalvenay Ok, I'm going to get a little crazy here.

Shalvenay

shoot :)

Miniman

Why not just have the archer miss on the first round?

If the encounter is balanced for 2 players and the 2nd player is arriving on the second turn, just have the archer miss his first shot regardless of his roll.

Shalvenay

an intentional miss would be justifiable RPwise -- say, firing a warning shot

there. was chat down for a bit?

Miniman

@Shalvenay I didn't even mean that; I just meant have the archer take the shot as if usual, then regardless of what the die comes up say that he missed.

Shalvenay

4:24 AM

@Miniman -- no, that's not a workable idea. either he misses no-roll, or he rolls and goes with the result

Nyoze

Do you know what your PCs are playing?

That would work. Just fudge the dice to make the archer seem incompetent to get started.

Shalvenay

@Nyoze a human ranger getting into this sticky wicket, and a drow sorceress bailing him out of it

Nyoze

@Shalvenay two-weapon or archer Ranger?

Shalvenay

not determined yet

Althis

I have a question that is tangentially relevant.

Miniman

4:26 AM

@Shalvenay Ok, any particular reason? If it's an ethical objection to DM fiat that's understandable, but if your dagger bandit crits the player for an insta-kill are you really going to just kill them?

Shalvenay

@Miniman -- fortunately, that's actually impossible -- the ranger has 11 HP and the dagger bandit can only do 8 on a crit

Althis

Do you guys think there is anything Saban could do at all to make Power Rangers relevant again?

Nyoze

@Althis Outside of creating yet another season of the same thing with different people? If there is, they're refusing to do it.

Miniman

@Shalvenay So it is just ethical objection then?

Althis

@Nyoze I am not sure that tactic has been very successful in the past.

I was watching an episode of Mighty Morphing on television.

And it is pretty bad.

Nyoze

4:28 AM

@Shalvenay That's assuming that the bow didn't crit on his 14 damage at the same time. 11hp, with an average 2 and 4.5, he'll be dead after 2 turns.

Althis

Like, really bad.

Shalvenay

@Miniman -- yeah, or more precisely, DM fiat that doesn't match up with RP

Althis

So that means it was never good to begin with.

But we still liked it.

Shalvenay

I'm willing to have the archer's first shot be a warning shot or even a no-roll guaranteed miss, because that's explainable in universe

Althis

I wish there was something they could do to make it actually good without losing its origins.

Miniman

4:29 AM

@Shalvenay It's essentially the same as firing a warning shot, except that your players don't know that you're artifically making things easier for them.

Nyoze

@Althis Saban have their shows marketed perfectly. They've never been good to anyone who knows better, but the kids love them.

Althis

@Nyoze Do kids still love them?

Shalvenay

@Miniman -- it's rolling a d20 that has no effect whatsoever :P rolling an attack dice for a shot that is missing by DM fiat/for RP reasons is a waste of time xD

Althis

Its been a while since I saw any watching it.

Nyoze

@Shalvenay I think that your best option is going to be a cowardly bandit leader. He'll go ahead and shoot you full of holes, but he knows that he has no defense at close range, so will prevent the dagger bandit actually attacking unless the enemy approaches him.

Althis

4:30 AM

They seem to like a lot of youtube garbage, though. Like Pewdepie and Minecraft.

Which, strangely enough, have the weird marketing tactic of NOT marketing.

Miniman

@Shalvenay Well, each to their own I guess. I just know that my players would be unhappy if they thought I was going easy on them.

Shalvenay

@Nyoze -- the idea I was thinking is that the dagger-wielding bandit would jump out and do the "roadblock" thing to the ranger while the shortbow bandit stays behind cover and lines a shot up

Nyoze

@Shalvenay I guess, play it to your player's choice? If he's a melee, start with the dagger bandit. If he's an archer, focus on the ranged bandit instead?

Althis

Not sure what you guys are talking about, but I will go back to reminiscing about my childhood and trying to regain the joy of those lost years.

See ya.

Pureferret

@Miniman is this in the phb?

Miniman

4:35 AM

@Pureferret The Monster Manual appendix on NPCs

I have the exact wording in an answer somewhere, I'll hunt it up

> Any spellcaster that can cast the find familiar spell (such as an archmage or mage) is likely to have a familiar. The familiar can be one of the creatures described in the spell, (see the Player's Handbook) or some other Tiny monster, such as a crawling claw, imp, pseudodragon, or quasit.

BESW

5:05 AM

Good name for a band: "Mutant Death Otter"

Nyoze

@BESW Agreed.

Althis

5:41 AM

I don't know how this even happens.

But I would totally watch a festival with the band names we come up with.

No need for there to be actual playing involved, I just wanted to go to a field with some people and discuss the great bands we came to watch.

2

Pureferret

5:55 AM

@Miniman thanks

Miniman

@Pureferret Happy to help! Every time I help someone with this stuff it makes the worryingly large amount of time I've spent looking at rulebooks more worthwhile :)

Nyoze

@Miniman You mean it's not worthwhile in and of itself? :P

Miniman

@Nyoze I enjoy it, so probably, but actually using it for something definitely makes me feel better about it.

BESW

6:23 AM

@Miniman This is probably a big reason why I have so much rep harvested from tags in a game I stopped playing well before I joined the site.

Iron Heart

[flump]

Magician

Guess it's my turn.

BESW

6:40 AM

...we have the weirdest rituals.

doppelgreener

8:27 AM

i still don't understand this particular one and i'm from here

Miniman

@doppelgreener It's a flumph?

And Iron Heart arrived with a flump, so...yeah.

trogdor

@Miniman I believe he means the ritual, not the creature

doppelgreener

now that i know this thing is a thing called a flumph i get it

but like..... why does this creature exist

trogdor

@doppelgreener because,.. a wizard did it

doppelgreener

@trogdor no from an editorial POV

trogdor

8:37 AM

@doppelgreener exactly,... a wizard did it

doppelgreener

no, that's not what i mean

trogdor

yeah, but it was Wizards of the Coast

Miniman

@doppelgreener Because of this

trogdor

so I joke that a wizard still did it

BESW

> In the humorous adventure Castle Greyhawk (1988), flumphs inhabit the plane of Silly and Unused Monsters, and appear in an encounter titled "The Room That Lets the Party Make It to the Next Set of Rooms".

doppelgreener

8:39 AM

So did they genuinely arise as a joke or is that adventure making fun of them?

because like...

there's a description of them in the Googles and it seems halfway between a serious attempt to create a serious race, and an attempt to make fun of them and something silly simultaneously

trogdor

@doppelgreener the oots comic linked is making fun of them

doppelgreener

No, I just mean the monster itself! As created and written and authored, from a "someone decided to write this in a D&D book this way" perspective!

trogdor

I honestly don't know if they were just originally a joke

Miniman

@trogdor I dunno, I like to believe that they're provided as a convenient tool for DMs needing to give an adventurer a soft landing

BESW

Try this.

doppelgreener

8:45 AM

ok so they're like... some weird fan submission someone decided to put in a book, and then thereafter they were taken more or less seriously and for some reason they are in the 5e monster manual despite being ludicrous

i don't mind them in general but it's like they were a creature designed with some serious subject matter and simultaneously to be comic relief?

which is not a good combination and leaves it unsatisfying for both

Magician

I think they were a comic relief, that people then rationalized into the D&D world. And they're one of the uniquely D&D monsters, which is why they're in 5e. They're also a potential effect of wild magic - one of the results on the 5e table.

The Oracle

8:58 AM

0

Q: Open-Rules-Mindset vs. Closed-Rules-Mindset

Can any creature elect to make touch attacks or ranged touch attacks? is a terrific question and it deserves the critical attention it is getting. However, that brings forth a very good conundrum brought forth by the comments in one of the answers. Regarding rules there could be an Open rule int...

BESW

9:29 AM

Wikipedia Tabs BESW Has Open Right Now: Jello salad; "The Horla"; "To Helen".

...okay, I think I'm done editing that meta answer.

Aaron

12:05 PM

Morning

BESW

12:47 PM

[wave]

Miniman

Oooh, Yearling badge.

BESW

Grats on yer badger's first birthday.

Miniman

Thanks!

Aaron

1:06 PM

Anyone know of a site that lets you make a custom random generator?

I found one but it doesn't do exactly what I was after.

Miniman

A random generator generator? That sounds awesome.

wax eagle

it'd be pretty easy to write something that took a text file, and spit out a random value from it

(simple file reader, read each line into an array, or simply read the file twice, once to get numLines, and again down to a random line between 0 and numLines)

Magician

1:40 PM

"The dragon actually hoards uncomfortable situations".

10

Somehow, BESW hasn't posted this yet. But it's amazing.

Joshua Aslan Smith

2:21 PM

@waxeagle herro

good morning everyone

Magician

@JoshuaAslanSmith Indeed it is. But not for everyone. Mine. All mine.

Hello :)

Joshua Aslan Smith

lol

wax eagle

2:43 PM

@JoshuaAslanSmith heya

Grubermensch

@Aaron It kind of depends on what kind of random generation you want to do.

The Oracle

5:05 PM

0

Q: Question "On Hold" but its already been answered, Negative votes on new user posts, And general Shin kicking

Now this is a small rant of mine but since I'm a new user in guarantied to get maybe -1 or -2 on this post but here I go. now this is related to New User Experience: Why allow downvotes (esp. below 0) on already closed questions? so read that a bit if you want but on with the rant. First questi...

discussion comments new-users down-votes

Pallas

5:46 PM

Hello

Sandwich

@Pixie Omg Alexandrite is so big

Joshua Aslan Smith

6:22 PM

@Pallas hello

was away working on something

welcome to chat

you can ping a user with your message if you type an"@" sign before their username then a space and then your message

Sandwich

Ah yes, Hello there Pallas.

Pallas

Ah thanks. i just don't like bothering people too much and i ended up watching a video.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@Pallas can you drop a link, Im interested to see what kind of video intro to stack exchange is out there

Pallas

@JoshuaAslanSmith no it was just a random youtube video

Joshua Aslan Smith

ah okay

So I guess you read my sort of rambly answer, bascially you are not the first person to want an expanded tutorial/walkthrough/intro to the site

I even asked a similar meta question a long time ago myself

partially because I skinned my knees on my first question and because I felt it could be improved

Sandwich

6:32 PM

Formatting your question also helps a lot for getting good responses and upvotes

Instead of putting line breaks between each of the things your GM doesnt allow that would be a great opportunity to put in a bulleted list

Pallas

that was when i was really new. like anon new.

Sandwich

If you'd like I can link you an example to a question and an amazing answer that runs on a similar tone to your own first question

Pallas

that would be great if we were 1 week in the past. Atm i have taken some advice and have switched over to a friends 5e group

and i am starting to see problems in my old group. but other than that the discussion is on set problems on this site one of them being the new user experience that and the fact that opposite to the belief negative votes and [On Hold] don't Help improve your post.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I freaked out the first time I got a DV was from a diamond mod too

but I have come around and fully embrace them as a user tool to improve the site

Aaron

@Pallas On Hold can help improve your posts. I have had my posts put on hold before and after discussion they were re opened much improved.

Joshua Aslan Smith

6:40 PM

also generally users will return and change their DV to neutral or an upvote if you improve a question

also if you self-delete an answer with downvotes you basically undo the negative rep

Pallas

@Aaron whilst yes it can help but the problem being that new users can't start up a chat or discussion and generally unless in the comments some says "This is why this question is on hold" it helps no one. and negative don't help they just serve and a kick in the shins especially if the question has received a lot of good feed back only to get negative votes.

Another point is when you first start on this site and get negatives for you first question it can feel a bit like a Moba community telling a new player to get lost just because they picked a champion they feel comfortable with using but the rest of the team need a different champion.

Pixie

7:08 PM

@Aaron What exactly are you after? I don't have them handy right now (at work), but I know of a couple things that could work for generator creation.

Aaron

@Pixie I have made a bunch of tables for generating a dungeon right now I have them in a google spreadsheet and am manually putting in the rolls.

Pixie

@Aaron Okay! Do you want something temporary or permanent, do you want something that works on a website, and how complex is your information? I've got to go now, but later I will dig stuff up based on your answers.

Aaron

@Pixie docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/…

@Pixie Starting out you roll a d100 to determine rooms, items, monsters, and treasure. Then a d2 for each consumable to determine potion or scroll. Then a d20 for what potion/scroll. Magic items I will be building the magic item charts into the build so each magic item can be randomly generated. The only thing that is not random is monsters and artifacts. (In this dungeon only gold and artifacts can be kept. Everything else is "Deleted" upon leaving.)

Sandwich

7:31 PM

Looks nice Aaron

Pallas

7:50 PM

@Aaron very nice i will probably have to use this for my 5e campaign if i get people for it.

Zachiel

"Cryotherapy? Let's have that on friday, you'll need it" "Ok, first cicle ended, things are getting better but I'd swap to something less painful" "Oh, I see you've improved. LET'S DO CRIO AGAIN. ON [snip]PING MONDAY." Doctors. I hate doctors.

Pixie

8:44 PM

@Aaron Quite complex! I will have to look at this on an actual computer and get back to you. I see also that it takes level intro account, which is likely more than anything I was thinking of would do. I'll still poke around later though.

@Sandwich Yes. SHE BIG.

Sandwich

She giant woman

Marc Dingena

9:57 PM

Wow, even at horrendous times this place is dead for me. I'm really in a bad timezone for this stack...

BESW

Asiapacific folk are going to start trickling into work soon and logging on.

Marc Dingena

"Oh goody!"

Zachiel

Which timezone are you in?

BESW

@Zachiel Marc's closer to you!

Zachiel

beacuse this is close to an horrible time for me

Bedtime.

Or, in other days, when I should be in bed but I'm not.

Marc Dingena

10:04 PM

Yeah, I'm doing a night shift for my work... feature roll out

@Zachiel I'm in CET.

Zachiel

We boh are then.

both*

Marc Dingena

I'm usually on while at work, and not in my free time...

Im EST personally

@Sandwich No.

Yep

10:10 PM

@Sandwich Uh, nope.

Sandwich

Uhhhh, Yep.

BESW

While I'm in chat frequently enough that some people probably suspect I'm actually a digital entity living inside the information networks, Max-Headroom-like.

Marc Dingena

@Sandwich Dude, every time is sandwich time...

Sandwich

Not if you're my kind of Sandwich it isnt

Marc Dingena

Ah, capital S. Sorry those are out of my league.

Sandwich

10:13 PM

There's also Sandwitch

Marc Dingena

@BESW Your name looks abbreviated. Artificial Intelligence is abbreviated AI. Your name is 4 letters. AI is 2 letters. Split the difference, that's 3.

Sandwich

A more deadlier version of the common Sandwich

Marc Dingena

Half-Life 3 confirmed.

Althis

I would like to meet Sandwitch.

Marc Dingena

There is also Greenwich time... :)

Sandwich

10:13 PM

Greenwitch is no less deadly than Sandwitch

Marc Dingena

But he's kind of mean...

Althis

Is she as fine as Frostwitch, though?

@MarcDingena ...

I see what you did there.

Marc Dingena

Better than Cold Bitch (sorry I'm not exactly clear on when I'm crossing lines in this chat :P )

@Althis winky face

Althis

...

Hey.

Is there such a thing as a switch?

Marc Dingena

Yes.

Althis

10:17 PM

What kind of witch is it then?

Marc Dingena

A witch with a lisp.

Pixie

10:32 PM

@BESW People sometimes get confused about my timezone online because I am around at some truly ridiculous hours for EST. xD

Sandwich

Same

BESW

Ooh, blue text again.

Ia! Ia! Blue-GUI fhtagn!

trogdor

10:50 PM

lol

SevenSidedDie

AUGH. THE BLUE, IT BURNS.

Marc Dingena

:o

Hey D7

Where did your last letter go?

SevenSidedDie

Hallo. Last letter?

Marc Dingena

Yes, your name in chat says it's "SevenSidedDi"

SevenSidedDie

@MarcDingena Huh. That might be a display size thing. I can see it here, but this is a wide screen.

Marc Dingena

11:03 PM

Could be :)

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Does the blue text happen often? This is the first I've seen it.

Grubermensch

It's a display size thing. It tries to break on spaces, but that's not always good enough.

Blue text?

BESW

@SevenSidedDie I've noticed it a couple times over the last few months. It's always associated with profile layout breaking.

Grubermensch

[looks at main site] YOWZA!

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Yeah, I see a "2015.8.10" revision number in the footer, so likely an update just rolled out. I guess they don't have full regression testing first.

Oh, well this explains a lot about that contentious 5e striker question:

Just got chatting to my friend. He says "You can play a 3.5e Class if you can make it fit within 5e rules" — Pallas 11 mins ago

Marc Dingena

11:10 PM

Blue text is a bit of a vibe killer. We have this cool customized Stack look and feel. This is totally breaking that

SevenSidedDie

@MarcDingena I find it quite disorienting.

Marc Dingena

@SevenSidedDie How did you quote him with those links at the end? Did you manually put those?

SevenSidedDie

@MarcDingena It's one of the fancy things chat will do automatically for some links, but only when they're the only thing in a chat message. (The :numbers in a reply are okay though.)

Marc Dingena

@SevenSidedDie Did you get the link for that comment by its timestamp or differently?

SevenSidedDie

@MarcDingena Just the link from the timestamp, yeah. (It was a long time before I even noticed those were links!)

Marc Dingena

11:18 PM

Room for Marc Dingena and SevenSidedDie

BESW

Stack sites, Stack chat rooms, Stack comments, Stack chat conversations, Stack chat messages, Stack questions, Stack answers, Stack user profiles, Wikipedia, Twitter, most image file extensions, xkcd, Youtube...

SevenSidedDie

I wish it did RPGGeek links too, but we're too small for them to hand-code that.

Marc Dingena

@SevenSidedDie What do you mean? I doubt anything has to happen on their side.

BESW

@MarcDingena By "they" he means our benevolent Stack Overlords who would have to do the coding for the chat to automagically one-box RPGGeek links.

We're extremely lucky to have a dicebot; that was created just for RPG.SE and isn't available in other Stack chats, and was a Very Big Deal they did it for us.

Marc Dingena

Oh, I see. I'd think that they are using generic programming to scrape content from the linked pages and format them for chat use...

SevenSidedDie

11:29 PM

Yes. Each link supported by the chat's "oneboxing" has to be hand-coded for, to gather and format the right information from the linked site. They don't generally do ones that aren't going to be used widely.

Marc Dingena

But Facebook can do it, even if you didn't specifically coded your website to support FB scraping your links...

You can hint your preferred image when you paste a link, but it still scrapes the page for other images that you can use when posting a link. I thought this kind of worked the same.

BESW

Not really, because Facebook has just one sort of one-boxing for almost everything.

This chat does one-boxing uniquely per instance. Check it out:

SevenSidedDie

It's not that RPGGeek needs to support it, it's that SE needs to support it. That takes coding that they're not willing to do for links that won't be used much.

BESW

Corythomantis greeningi

Corythomantis greeningi (Greening's frog) is a venomous frog species in the family Hylidae. Endemic to eastern Brazil, it lives in Caatinga savanna habitat. It is usually situated on vegetation, including in bromeliads, and on rock outcrops. Breeding occurs in temporary streams. Although suffering from habitat loss, it is not considered threatened by the IUCN. Unlike most poison dart frogs which merely secrete venom from their skin, this species is equipped with skull spines capable of injecting venom into other animals or human hands via headbutting, a tactic it shares with Aparasphenodon brunoi...

It's an interesting fact about insects that there's a whole lot of things that try to convince you that they're ordinary bees.

Tweeted by UrsulaV on August 10, 2015 at 9:20 PM

I came here to chew bubblegum and say no more than eighteen words ... and I'm all out of

See? Totally different one-boxing style depending on what I'm linking.

Ask Lovecraft - Arkham Horror - I'm a Nun!

►

@Amedeus Hi!

SevenSidedDie

And it's done automatically, without any ability to tweak it before it posts like with a link on Facebook.

BESW

11:41 PM

In other news, @doppelgreener, @trogdor, I may have undersold those pre-Cambrian worms we encountered.

trogdor

lol

I am summoned only to see this monstrosity

The Oracle

0

Q: Links suddenly blue?

Links are suddenly blue. Personally, from a usability standpoint, I find this to be a significant improvement (blue is the standard link color on the internet, the dull red stands out poorly compared to black to my eyes), but it doesn’t seem to fit with the overall color scheme of the site and in...

bug css

Shalvenay

hrm. what would you call a sworn law enforcement officer who is responsible for a large swathe of land, not just a single town? Sheriff seems about right semantics-wise, but also seems a fair bit modern for a medieval-fantasy setting, while constable seems like it's more for city patrolmen, and guard would be for someone who stands a post instead of being out and about all day

Miniman

@Shalvenay Marshal

For sure

BESW

Reeve.

(Sheriff is from "shire reeve.")

....I just got the mortarboard badger for meta. Huh.

Grubermensch

11:58 PM

@Miniman Marshal is generally either a high military commander, a ceremonial leader, or security for a specific building.

Miniman

@BESW That's bizarre.