I don't think so.

We need something smaller than him that he just cannot destroy.

And THEN we make it fly faster than him.

@Althis -- that's easy. just leave him wondering what to do about the fact that he's got an angry pilot in a F-15 wanting him dead

Smaug just doesn't have the energy package or excess power to do much of anything in a dogfighting scenario

Fighter jets are still pretty weak.

You just need a very well placed rock to down one.

May I recruit some help? I found a question recently about dm tools and found one I liked but I was on a different computer and now I can't find it. I have been combing through questions with "manager" and "DM tools" but have not found it. It wasn't masterplan, or scabbard. It might have been for pathfinder specifically but I can't remember

the key is leaving him wondering "how the frack do I hit this thing?"

@Shalvenay This is something like the 5th time I've seen you raise this topic, and I still have no idea where this idea is coming from.

@Miniman -- there was a wb.se question that more generally asked "in what era would a dragon no longer be a guaranteed victory for the side of war it was on?"

and I argued that it'd be marginal in WWII and basically useless in Korea and later, b/c dragons aren't exactly equipped to go fast

(3.5e's, for instance, can't even outrun a C172)

@Shalvenay That's the idea I mean. There are thousands of different ideas about what a dragon is like. You really can't make general statements about them.

Ah found it.

Nevermind

In the case of Smaug, we know literally nothing about his speed or maneuverability.

It was PCGen

@Shalvenay, I recently made a setting in which I was trying to make flying islands actually make sense.

@Althis Yay for flying islands!

@Althis -- I'd just go for regular islands and a treacherous sea

so that the only way between them was by air

The physics have to be dodged a bit.

But what it would do to society and organization is what really made me interested.

Like, how do you chart something where the landmasses are constantly moving?

Gnight

Nighty night @Aaron

How do you live and farm under constant threat of being smashed by a giant block of rock.

@Miniman -- I'm pretty darn sure Smaug isn't going to be breaking Mach 1 any time soon. (transonic aerodynamics are a big, fat drag -- without a hefty, all-flying pitch control surface of some sort, you'll be in a world of hurt as soon as you exceed the critical Mach of your wing)

@Althis It's normal. You don't have any other choice but to live with it.

@Shalvenay In terms of physics, he's not even capable of flight anyway. Physics went out the window the moment you were talking about Smaug.

@Miniman Dragons are magic beings. A Wizard did them.

Aman is his name.

@Miniman -- the primary conceit for dragonflight is the ability to generate enough power and thrust to fly, I've decided

@Shalvenay That assumes all flight is just a really long jump.

It's the square cubed law right?

Double in length, eight times greater weight

@Althis You mean Morgoth, right?

@AnubianNoob That usually is just for size. Flight is similar, but we compare surface area/mass.

@Miniman Aman, I think is the actual deity from Tolkien.

@Althis Yeah, but compare the size of a bird to the size of a dragon

@Althis Yep, but he didn't make the dragons. Morgoth did.

@Miniman Really?

@Anubian Noob -- here's the thing -- Smaug isn't that huge in the scale of things capable of powered flight. building enough wing to get a decent glide ratio for an object the length and weight of Smaug is certainly possible, as humanity's done it

@Althis Yeah, he created them. Glaurung was the first, then Ancalagon was the first flying dragon.

Well a dragon is slightly different from a plane

I don't think Smaug has jet engines

in its means of generating thrust, most certainly

but if you took an A332 and killed the engines, you'd have a glider roughly the length/weight of Smaug!

Hmm how would aerofoils evolve?

Or are we not considering evolution

@AnubianNoob Tail fins.

Just raise them up and you got some pretty nifty aerofoils.

@AnubianNoob -- a bird wing is a fairly classic airfoil, actually -- birds even have a "thumb" on each wing that they can deply for extra lift, much like the slats on an airliner

Gotcha ok I'm thinking a little too constrained here

But to be able to fly Smaug would have to

well how large is Smaug?

@AnubianNoob -- he's the size and weight of a lightly loaded A330-200 jetliner, more or less

Do we have a picture of Smaug with the wings open to consider his wingspan?

that's an interesting question, I'm not sure if that's ever been measured

@Shalvenay How do you know? I know Ancalagon was said to be "as big as a mountain", and Smaug is smaller, but I've never seen any description of Smaug's size.

(Unless I'm forgetting something, obviously.)

@Miniman -- that was based on the best estimates I found when researching the topic for another wb.se question

@Miniman From the way @Shalvenay, I am sure he has flown Smaug on a commercial flight to Indiana recently.

theonering.net/torwp/2013/05/11/… this was the link I found...although other numbers actually peg Smaug as smaller

I agree with what @AnubianNoob said, though.

Smaug does not have self propulsion.

yeah -- like I said, the physics problems with dragonflight are all thrust

generating enough lift to support an object of that size and weight isn't too terribly hard

Weight

This could be solved if he farted fire.

Just saying.

I think the problem is weight, because it's hard to lift that much weight

@Shalvenay I don't know much (anything) about avionics, but Smaug is built more like a tank than a plane, which I assume makes a difference.

Imagine a cube, 1x1x1, weighs 1

Now double the size

2x2x2, weight 8

Now compare the size of Smaug to the size of like an eagle

And imagine how many times more he weighs

@AnubianNoob Eagles have hollow bones and other features evolved to make them light, too.

Yeah, Smaug has scales aka tank armor

I'm thinking Smaug's rather not-solid on the inside

nonetheless -- it's all about structural strength and thrust-to-weight

But then he's gonna have structural stability issues

yeah

@Shalvenay Ancalagon smashed a mountain when he fell, so I think you can take it as read that dragons are pretty solid beasties.

interestingly enough the weight estimates I'm finding for Smaug so far are in the 50ton range

(albeit paired with the smaller size estimates in the 25m range vs. the larger ones in the 60m range)

but even assuming he's a couple hundred tons -- that's still within the realm of what can be shoved into the air given enough thrust ;)

that's kinda low no?

Well eagle is 14 pounds, 10 feet wingspan ish

so 3 meters

That's ~8000 pounds

for a giant eagle

@Shalvenay Ok, so, how much thrust? Are we talking a bird here (how dragons fly), or rocket engines?

But Smaug is super fat and has super strong scales

I don't think you can get away from the fact that in terms of physics, Tolkien's dragons are incapable of flight.

He's not a giant eagle aww

I would just like to add something to this discussion.

Ostriches do not fly.

lol

@Miniman -- somewhere in between -- he has the benefit of not needing to go fast (so he can have a low-speed optimized airfoil that can provide high lift) as well as variable incidence (which provides fine control over AoA), but he still would need somewhere in the 0.1 to 0.2 range to get somewhere. (assuming he can basically do a "soft field" takeoff every time, using ground effect to help get up to flying speed)

(for reference, jet transports vary between oh, 0.25-0.3 for an underpowered one like the A340, to somewhere near 0.5 for an overpowered one like the B757)

So, getting back to the original point, however he flies depends largely on magic, so we can't really make any assumptions about his speed or agility in flight.

the magic is in having powerful enough muscles to generate sufficient thrust to move his rump and sturdy enough bones to withstand those forces ;)

what I'm trying to say is the magic is in generating enough thrust to fly, not in generating enough lift -- a 60m long, 200 ton object with a 50-60m wingspan most certainly can fly, and fly reasonably efficiently as well

its just that biomechanics aren't equipped to build sturdy enough structures and powerful enough muscles to do it

(p.s. early model KC135s had a thrust to weight ratio of oh, 1:6 when stuffed to the gills with fuel. left you with miserable climb performance, though, especially when a donkey packed up and left on takeoff)

@AnubianNoob, is that a hamster in your profile picture?

Yeah that's me

I don't know why, but I am tempted to assume this hamster is a mad scientist.

Shit he found out

we're going incognito

<ctrl-shift-n>

he absolutely looks like it

@AnubianNoob Too late, we're already there and he found out anyway :O

I run genetic experiments on chicken

Trying to raise a firebreathing flying one with scales

I've gotten 1 and 2

Scales are hard to sustain in a chicken

New archeological dig discovers that dragons had primitive feathers all along! Wizard community shocked!

Can I bounce campaign ideas off you guys?

I'm only paying half attention while studying, but sure

others might be here x)

Studying for what?

I have study leave this week and I'm studying some technologies related to my job.

@AnubianNoob -- catch me tomorrow most likely as I'm hitting the sack soon

@AnubianNoob I have to say, my childhood would be so different if at the time we knew most dinosaurs had feathers.

@AnubianNoob Sorry, I was taking a break from chat to calm down a bit. I'm always up for hearing campaign ideas I can steal help you with.

@Miniman Everything all right? :(

@Nyoze Yep! There are just certain argument techniques I find extremely frustrating, and I don't deal well with frustration.

@Miniman Yeah... I don't blame you there :( Least you're all better now!

Netflix Says: Because I like Haven and Agents of SHIELD, I would like... Storage Wars.

@BESW My netflix keeps trying to make me watch Barbie. I don't understand why.

Netflix understands your preferences on a level too deep for human minds to comprehend.

Oh, I know exactly why Netflix started recommending me direct-to-DVD Tinkerbell films. I'm not sure I understand why it hasn't given up yet.

Damn... only 2 hours this time...

@Nyoze @Miniman might be right. Have you ever tried watching it?

@Althis Sure. Once. A very very very long time ago, well before Netflix. I hated it then, I hate it now :P

@BESW It is probably because you keep watching the Barbie Princess films... And they just keep coming... they never stop...

@Nyoze If netflix is to be believed that is a love hate relationship, you just haven't reached the love part yet.

Just keep at it. I am sure Netflix would never get something like this wrong.

@Althis I'm sorry, but it did.

You know. Amazon's recommendation algorithm is actually pretty good.

@Nyoze Netflix can't possibly be wrong, so maybe you're just bad at knowing what you like :P

It keeps recommeding me great books.

Yeeeah, Netflix also put The Science of Doctor Who in a list of "Cerebral Movies."

@BESW that seems like the opposite

@Miniman Hey, maybe he is actually good at knowing what he likes, maybe he just likes the wrong things.

He really should be getting a kick out of those Barbie movies.

@BESW Is that the one with Michiu Kaku?

Or is that Star Wars?

I have no idea.

Hey @BESW, before I forget.

I meant to ask you something.

Do you know who made the Not A Bar chat room?

@Althis Lord_Gareth, why?

@Miniman I do think I put a lot of effort into not liking things I'm inclined to like :P

Nothing special. Just wondering how long is the avarage life of one of these rooms.

And whether it is at all related to the reputation of the creator.

Ah. No, it's about the purpose of the room.

For example, we unfreeze the Back Room as it's needed, but it's not needed often.

@Althis Most rooms last for... 14 days I think?

Well, they freeze after 14 days of non-activity.

There are over 330 rooms that have been made for Role-playing Games since its inception.

Only eight of them are currently active.

The vast majority were created just for two or three people to talk more about a Q&A on the main site.

When that discussion was over, the room froze and was forgotten.

So... Not A Bar is never frozen because of it's purpose?

And is archived for posterity, like everything on Stack.

@Althis I'm not sure NAB ever goes for 14 days without activity.

NAB has been frozen once or twice.

but it gets used often enough it doesn't stay inactive long enough to get frozen, except for that once or twice.

Hm.

@Althis It's a pretty important purpose

@Miniman I wish I had such an important purpose.

Yeah, the purpose means it gets used regularly, and regular use keeps it (mostly) unfrozen.

Thanks.

It all makes sense now.

@Althis You've gotten a bit confused with this point. You asked about the average life of those rooms, BESW said the average life is connected to its purpose. Which is true! Rooms that are useful for years and years have a very long life. But that's different to the freezing timer.

and now you say that XD cool, all is well?

Rooms freeze when they aren't used for two weeks, and stay frozen unless a mod unfreezes it deliberately. That's all there is to it.

@doppelgreener Yeah, I got that.

Most rooms get used for a couple hours or a couple days and then never again.

Just so I know, is anyone here a mod with the incredible powers of microwave defrosting?

If they've got blue text on their name, and a diamond next to it on their card, they're an elected mod.

Around here, waxeagle has offered his powers for such things if we ask nicely.

Pureferret appears to be around, too.

I think the only mod at the moment is wax_eagle?

Ping him with the link to the room in the same line as the request for unfreezing.

So.

Mods are elected around here?

Yeah, Pureferret and Emrakul are also semi-regularly around and aren't averse to helping out.

@Althis Yup.

Mxyzplk is a mod as well, forgot about him.

Hm...

Mxy's never actually offered to make his chat-mod powers available to our use, so I didn't volunteer him.

Ahhhh.

The others have explicitly said they're okay with being asked.

Also, they're here more often

That too.

The election page is not cooperating with me.

Meh...

Anyway... I am not sure I agree with the election process.

@Althis It's not open at the moment. It will be at some point, not sure when though.

It's an annual process?

But then, I do not agree with the other methods of choosing mods either.

Moderation is a Sisyphusian, mostly thankless task. I don't like to ask them to use their powers unnecessarily.

Roughly, the mod election process goeth thusly:

I like when he speaks greek like that.

@Nyoze No, it's when SE feels it's needed

Ahh, there you have it.

When a need for more moderators is noticed (usually because existing mods step down or the site expands), an election is announced for that many spots.

Citizens nominate themselves and there are some low-key Q&A/campaigning activities for a bit.

lol, Citizens.

Then the citizens of the site elect the moderators; the candidates with the highest votes gain mod seats until the number of moderators needed is met.

@Althis "Citizen" is a word deliberately chosen to describe participants in the Stack Exchange, because we're expected to behave that way: as responsible participants in a society whose health we have collective responsibility for.

Then, once their term is done, they moveth to Elysium, where their work will be forgotten, but they will live in peace in bountiful abundance for eternity.

@BESW Really? That is new.

Stack really cares for the members of it's community.

@Althis It's why reputation gives increased moderation privileges; the Stack is supposed to be largely self-moderated.

More than any site I've ever seen before.

@BESW That is also kinda like the roman concept of citizenship.

The more you give the community, the more privileges you earn.

"Full" moderators, once elected, hold their position until they retire or (rarely, thankfully) are forcibly removed from office for misbehaviour.

Earlier this year two mods stepped down on this site (Brian and Ross) and SSD and Wax were elected in their place.

@Althis I'd like to learn more about this someday. I know ancient Greece and Rome had very different approaches to citizen self-government to nowadays, e.g. the democratic models used in the ancient world were very different to those we see today.

@doppelgreener It is some interesting reading.

I know most of what I do because I took philosophy in college for some time and they were big on that.

Anyway, gotta go.

Work early tomorrow.

See ya.

ttfn

Nighty night!

Steampunk quill pen.

Hellooo

Holla :)

Yawp!

Morning

what?

@trogdor It's from a poem titled. "Will There Really be a Morning"

ah

I am not exactly anything near an expert on poems

Neither am I.

partially, I believe my experience of them has been tainted by the fact that the majority of the ones I have ever read have been translations

that, I imagine, does not go over well for them

Hmm. This one is probably practically a translation itself. I should look that up.

any translation is bound to lose a lot of the rhyming that may be supposed to be happening, switch words out for less optimal ones, and quite likely also lose things in cultural translation

I have read a lot of Japanese, and a few Chinese poems

and I believe most of them were also written,... at least somewhere over 200 years ago

all of that combined cannot likely contribute to me having enjoyed them XD

Heh.

The one I quoted is Dickinson, who used very unusual orthography. She was resigned to the fact that her publishers would mess it up.

that is also probably a thing

I can't be sure all poems I have read were necessarily perfectly true to their original creators intent.

(Contrary to popular teaching, not only did people know Dickinson wrote poetry prior to her death, but she was published at least a dozen times.)

Compare this to this. The first is basically how she wrote it originally; the second is how she was published.

hmm

it seems to be mostly missing certain emphasis

and to have switched a small amount of wording around in relatively innocuous seeming ways

Editors standardised her punctuation and capitalisation, mostly, but in some poems they totally changed the meanings by doing so.

yeah, I can imagine that

my understanding of poems is that they are pretty precise things

if you said something, and with a certain emphasis, for example

changing it in even minor ways loses some of the "art" of it

or at least possibly the meaning you were going for

She was largely uninterested in publishing, preferring instead to share her poems with friends through letters. Most of the work published while she was alive was through the urging and encouragement of an editor friend who some scholars today like to vilify for the changes he made to her works.

It's interesting to look at her letters and notes, because you'll sometimes find three or four different versions of one poem, written over years, and maybe a few of its lines turned into a separate poem somewhere else too.

Her poems are very spontaneous because even when she re-wrote the same thing over and over, she was writing each version with specific people in mind and revised accordingly.

mm

that is interesting

but still, there is a certain thing about leaving work alone if you were not the one who did it first

not in general so much as with most art

Closer to issues of translation, the author Isabelle Allende writes in Spanish and then translates herself into English.

And Boris Akunin's novels are translated into English veeeeery slowly because they're done with such artful care. Translations like those make it clear translation itself is a craft.

My mother has a book of Pablo Neruda's poetry with the Spanish originals on one page and an English translation on the facing page so you can read them side-by-side.

mm

yeah, I didn't mean to say it as though translation automatically destroys a poem per se

just that,... it is something that could muck up the whole meaning

among other possible things

Very easily.

though to be fair, I am not sure I am too much into poems as a whole anyway

(It's amusing to see what Scholastic thought American kids could and couldn't handle in the British-English Harry Potter books.)

@BESW Huh?

@Aaron Oh, the American-published Harry Potter books, especially the earlier ones, were edited for American audiences.

British slang and grammar was semi-haphazardly modified.

@BESW Really? I did not know that

I wonder if I can get the original books in America somewhere.

I have,.. done a small amount of digging into some brittish slang,.. it is surprisingly mystifying in some cases

considering it is still english

@Aaron This is a good reference for the changes.

Some of it is expected silliness like "football" becoming "soccer."

But "Sybill" becoming "Sibyll" is straight-up mystifying.

And there are bits where Sprout becomes Snape, or a single sentence gets stretched out to a short paragraph to explain things which need no explaining.

> Harry watched the spiders running away. (UK version)

> Harry's eyes narrowed as he focused on the spiders. If they pursued their fixed course, there could be no doubt about where they would end up. (US version)

lol

And I've seen a few bits where they just edited out passive voice!

(I'm also fond of the bit where instead of sunlight streaming onto someone's lap, it streamed into their lap. Sounds painful.)

lol

that is some hilarious stupidity

anyway, I gotta go to bed so I can wake up early enough to go somewhere in the mid morning

ttfn

I'm giving my dad a pill now and then it's bed for me too.

It's very impermanent and shifting... fluid... a mix of cultures, nomads, threats and wonders, ideally, and because some kind of magitech space travel is possible, many get stranded on this world

The way it'll cause problems is logical: all it takes is it coming in contact with a (relatively) moving object, especially a landmass, to destroy it or cause heavy damage. It goes through a fortress unthinking, unfeeling, unstoppable, and it deals heavy damage. It tears a floating island in halves. It kills someone that's unaware gruesomely.

But I thought... what if THAT comes to be seen as a tool? It can't be moved, so it can be used. If I had this massive, monstrous threat that threatens the world and seems indestructible by conventional means (think one reaper capital ship from Mass Effect)... I could make a decently interesting plotline about first discovering the errant cube and finding a way to drive it THROUGH the core of the massive aggressive threat to destroy it

@AlexMitan I'm concerned that you're creating this scenario by deciding what the ending looks like.

@Grubermensch Oh, I don't NEED or even WANT them to end it that way!

I'm not even going to (/have an NPC) suggest that

if they want to torpedo it or eliminate it with a fleet they gather, sure

And the Cube may be dealt with in another way maybe

All I'm saying is, it would be cool if they did, either way

I'm thinking of a bunch of initial ways to get the newer one acquainted to the mechanics in a safe in-game environment

I won't plan it all through as rigurously, but I need a solid initial scene

somehow they are sent on a small airship from a refugee camp, and when resupplying the quartermaster offers them a choice of some ammo crates for the ship's ballista. It'll be a Create Advantage with a high difficulty, maybe 5 or 6, but the quartermaster will Invoke an aspect or two to make them succeed if they don't do well enough

I want to show them that every single entity in the world can do what they can do

also, get the new player acquainted with how Advantages work

sees everything on TV as a Compel or Create Advantage