No we want the best answers, having lots of inputs is only one partial path to that

If we forbade answers from new users, we'd forbid someone going "Hey yeah I had this problem a year ago. Hey everyone I'm new, what's up. Anyway here's how you resolve it." (Then it goes into a review queue and gets edited down to "I had this problem a year ago. Here's how to fix it." to keep it on track.)

the other is having expert information going in

@Storyteller Our mission says nowhere "collect a wide pool of answers".

they are not mutually exclusive, but the end goal of SE is not a userbase, is not self-fulfillment, it is a repository of well written questions and answers to practical, real problems that anyone on the internet can find and take that information from

ok, but now I had a valid answer, one that was echoed almost word for word by a more experienced user. but I was afraid to give that valid answer, or build on it, because of how the culture has shifted

mision maybe not, but the system does

Our mission wants the solution. If there's more than one, people can go submit those, and they'll get voted on, but the system exists to fine tune things down to the absolute best solutions, and discard everything else.

if someone else already said everything you were going to say and said it better just upvote

@Storyteller ... the system is not a sentient organism, and wants for nothing.

ok, but you lose potential good answers, possibly the best answers, how do you change that

@Storyteller Again: your comment was not "a good answer".

sometimes I mirror post because of timing (we both submit) but if Doppel answered a question hours ago and I see he said like 80% of what I was gonna say I just wont contribute because its all there

no, it was the basis of one, I didnt expand on

@Storyteller Then we have nothing to suggest a good answer was lost, meanwhile we're boating along happily on an enormous treasure trove of awesome answers, with suggestions that mostly everything we get delete gets deleted because it's sincerely trouble.

please go write a stunning answer that will receive upvotes

The only thing the system sadly "discourages", and I am talking about the whole SE network- not just RPG, is leaving comments that explain why an answer is bad. And be also wary that that is just because as it is now, users fear revenge downvote if they expose them as downvoters.

Yes, if you have a solution to provide, go right ahead and do so. (But it needs to be more than your opinion on the roleplay potential.)

This can become a mayor problem when the nature of the site make really hard to understand if a downvote was given because a solution has problems or "just for fun". Luckily, the issue tends to be relevant only on low traffic sites, where even good answers get one or two vote at max.

so, because I cannot expect the culture to change overnight, and because I see more how the system works, I will simply have to be brave enough to continue making answers even if they might get downvoted

@Storyteller You'll figure it out along the way.

I make answers even though they might get downvoted.

sure, and thats part of life, not everyone will like your answer/solution/opinion

I just pick the places where I'm pretty sure I'll be providing a fantastic answer, and leave all the rest without an answer from me personally. (Someone else with more expertise will leave one instead.)

@doppelgreener @Storyteller you have to pick the right hill to die on

my point is merely this, the system, combined with the current culture, dissuades some fro continuing to contribute

that is a net postive

even if those users may hae potential to offer a wealth of good answers

@JoshuaAslanSmith possibly.. even probably

@Storyteller Yes. Because we are optimizing for pearls, not sand.

@doppelgreener thank you for the links to SE culture, I am reading them

look I am a user whos first interaction on the site was arguing with a diamond mod about the downvote he had on my question (which was probably deserved) and Ive come so far as to stand for mod election the last time a slot was open and I have all the REP and the respect of other high rep users

Its similar to bootcamp, we need to break you of your previous mindset before we can build you into an SE superuser

Whoops, now I remember that one is about optimizing for good quality answers, not optimizing for new questions. But, still, we're interested in collecting high quality stuff. If some users are dissuaded from contributing... great, that's up to them, we've been there loads of times, they can go right ahead and leave and post elsewhere.

Stack Exchange is interested in finding people who work well within Stack Exchange's system.

If the people who don't want to, or can't, work well inside that system don't want to post, great, that's less moderation work for the rest of us.

Stack Exchange does not try to be all things to all people. We have our niche. The developers and most of the community accept this place exists for its niche in coexistence with the rest of the internet ecosystem.

As I said above, the only issue I see as a SharePoint.SE user is that the SE network is optimized for high traffic and high numbers.

We're like the spider that spins webs or the penguin that dives for fish. We do not also have to be the ants, bears, wolves, cats, apes, and so on - there are ants, bears, wolves, cats, apes and so on for being those things and doing what those things do.

as soon as those disappear, the natural process that should make those pearls emerge from sand... well, it get pretty slow.

Bees live off flowers, flowers live off bees, flowers and bees do not attempt to be flowerbees, Stack Exchange does not attempt to be everything else everyone on the internet could enjoy.

I also find SE to be an incredible jewel, an oasis of organized thought in the desert of chaos that is the internet. Most of the net is maturity level 1 or 2 in terms of organizational maturity but SE rates 4-5 depending on the subsite most of the time

@JoshuaAslanSmith If there comes another moderator election (who knows: as Brian said, there's a reason the mods earn a gold badge for putting up with this [expletive] for a year) and you run I'll be voting for you. :P

the real problem I see, is merely this. the system was designedto be a bazaar, a collective of many sources, where a free market mentality raised the value of good answers from poor ones. however, it has become an emergent behavior/phenomenon, that a cathedral mentality, ony certain sources give good answers and answers not coming from those sources (or perspectives) are dismissed outright, even if if they are the same or similar answers. this seems counter intuitive.

I'll probably run again, I will also probably start being here more again

Losing last cycle was hard, more so because it was a dodgeball, who gets picked last, of 3 people standing for 2 seats

@Storyteller These cathedral vs bazaar analogies are breaking down for me from the outset, probably because I do not think of cathedrals and bazaars the way you do.

anyway, Im not challenging the system per se, just pointingout an emergent flaw and wondering what to do about it. Im off to grab a glass of tea from the corner store. see you in abit

@JoshuaAslanSmith You said something about Dante before. Here, take level 11, with my most kind regards :P

oh, have you read the cathedral and the bazaar?

and until wax tossed his hat in it was a sure run thing haha but I love wax as a user and a friend so it was just sorta something I needed space and time to deal with

its about the open source vs proprietary software debate

But if I'm understanding correctly: the system was designed outright with the intent of being that cathedral. Everything in the help centre and tour on the types of information we keep and what we remove should point toward this. (It was never a free marketplace where just absolutely everything comes and goes.)

very famous article in the programming community

SE is a software dev team/company running Scrumm

@Storyteller I have not.

@doppelgreener well, cathedral, one omnipotent source, bazaar, an open marketplace

SE is a bazaar

you might see SE as a bazaar but SE is not a bazaar

Bitannica Encyclopdeia is a cathedral

of course it is

anyone canopen shop and the value of its goods is regulated by the open market

moderators act to maintain quality standards

You have two people who've been here multiple years telling you SE is not a bazaar.

SE is Western Democracy, lots of freedom, but also lots of good, solid legal foundations on which to keep everyone safe and no one's freedom from inhibiting someoneelse's

how on arh can you think its not a bazaar?

is this a breakdown in terminology?

because Ive been in open air markets

@Storyteller Yes. And when we find stuff that does not meet our quality standard, we downvote and/or delete it. So it's a highly regulated place of exchange with a fine-tuned purpose of exchanging only particular material, which is: excellent solutions.

ok, you are defining the word narrowly

let me se if I can think of a better way to put this..

I did suggest the analogies were breaking down. We are having a communication breakdown, yes.

right, in the bazaar, pure capitalism ideal said bad idea would languish, but never be forcibly removed, high rep users and/or diamond mods can and will forcibly remove really low quality objects in the system

this is not an authoratative site, experts are not hired based on any criteria, credentials, there is no accrediting body

it is self accrediting

you dont get reputation for having a degree

ok, thatrs mypoint

SE is a complete meritocracy

it is self acredditing

right but in doing so it self-policies, but SE was somethign that just sprang on teh web like 4-chan, there was a clear (changing and evolving, but still central) vision of the original dev team as the site was launched and has been improved over the years

and anyone, can ask, answer or moderate a question (if they have earned it), value is not determined by an 'authority', there is no sacred power that bestows bility

it is not a cathedral, it is not a government, it is not a university

there is no centralization of power

Actually user privledges are doled out based on rep which is gained 98% of the time from user upvotes

right, by market value and forces

it is an open air market, and goods are excluded from that open market, by people saying, thats a bad product, its poorly formed from badlky sourced materials

but again there are underlying laws that set the cultural precepts and what you have suggested/are suggesting completely contradicts them and that is why, meta post or no, you will not change rpg.se

Im merely discussing the nature of the place

again, in your analogy said bad product would wither and close from lack of sales but we dont like clutter here, its noise so before even letting it go that far users with enough rep boot it out

yes, i getthat

@Storyteller Well, you know, you may have a point in some specific cases. Many may not know about this because they don't really observe the whole SE network, but there are currently ongoing discussion about Healt.SE just because of that. You may understand that a bad answer there has potential to do pretty serious damage.

yes I do!

its fine if you see it that way, and you can wax philosophical if you so desire, but were just talking in logic loops right now

im interested in the emergent behavior

its of interest, exploring these topics helps me better understand this place nd how to make it of benefit to me, and myself of benefit to it

What I mean is that, sadly, if I really wanted I could go and upvote on purpose answers on Health that are actually dangerous. Until the system do not manage to correct itself by numbers, my vote will be still there to confuse people (and maybe cause injury too)

But again, Health is by nature something ... different.

@Storyteller There's the SE dev team, who oversee the elections which produce the moderators, which oversee the community and decide who does and does not get to stay. (But they only decide who doesn't get to stay when that person's causing a lot of trouble for the site.)

caveat emptor

let doppel, myself, and other high rep chat users break you and rebuild you if that is your ultimate goal. the best thign I ever did was lurk in chat and ask more experienced users their opinions about how to RPG.SE if that makes sense and also workshopped a lot of questions and answers before I posted

sure, democratizing knowledge.. actually, there is a lot of orwellian groupthink here

hahaha

there is danger in that, though Im interested in seeing if it can be harness for overall good

@Storyteller Have you heard of the monkeys and ladder experiment?

@doppelgreener that experiment has actually been reference multiple times when talking about SharePoint development...

@SPArchaeologist really? XD

@doppelgreener Here ---> "I'll continue to Dispose everything, but I am just worried that I may have turned into one of these monkeys."

I dont know how old/experience you are but basically this whole thing is like you are a fresh college grad and you want to completely change the workplace at your first job but a lot of the processes and procedures in place are here because of very good reasons, experience, and lots of previous trial and error.

I like your enthusiasm though

@SPArchaeologist I saw XD

I'll explain anyway. There's a thing called the ladder experiment, or the monkeys & ladder experiment. It works like this: put five monkeys in a room, with a ladder in the middle with fruit on the top. One of the monkeys will inevitably climb the ladder to get the fruit. When they do, the room's sprinklers go off, which the monkeys hate. New fruit then gets added a little while later.

After not very long the monkeys figure out that it's climbing the ladder that does it. So the next time a monkey tries to climb that ladder, the other four monkeys leap into action, howl, and drag that monkey right back off it. They exhibit this behaviour consistently, and reach a point where nobody climbs the ladder.

Then the experiment progresses to the next phase: a monkey is taken out of the room, and a brand new monkey is added. That monkey will almost immediately go to climb the ladder. Everyone will howl and drag him off. Then, once that's settled in, a second monkey is rotated out, and a new monkey added. He'll climb the ladder as well. Everyone, including the new monkey will howl and drag him right back off, even though the new monkey has no idea what'll happen.

Repeat this process until all five original monkeys have left the room. Now you have a room full of five monkeys, all of whom will howl at any monkey who climbs the ladder, and drag them right back down, even though they have no idea what will happen if anyone climbs the ladder. None of them have seen it at this point.

I say this, so that I can then say: We are not those monkeys. We individually form conclusions or agreement over what the SE system does well, and what it does not, because we observe it working well or not working well on a regular basis. Most of us experience basically every single one of the problems our system can face first-hand at some point.

We have rules to eliminate certain types of content which causes problems, and those rules came after we recognised the problem and how to remove it. They were based on actual evidence and experimentation, only after real issues emerged in the system. See the banning of shopping questions, for example.

It's a bit like taking a while to figure out that knives are really, really shit for smashing rocks, and while they're really great at cutting meat, we probably shouldn't use them to smash rocks, because they're awkward and go blunt or slip or we stab ourselves. We should probably just use knives for cutting meat, and find something else to smash rocks with.

Well, we've gone and seen all the stabbings happen by idiots using the knife to smash rocks.

(This is still a metaphor, but I'm sure Youtube has something like this.)

There are many new users who follow older users' advice on how the system should work, but that's more like the elder saying: "Don't eat those berries. They are poison. You will die." Most people think that's pretty good advice and never eat a berry. And then a few people go "what does he know," eat a berry, and they die.

... which sucks for them, but hey, that's what elders are for: to impart advice and help you avoid dying horribly to poison berries.

@doppelgreener (or at least, you no-sharepoint user aren't like those monkey. I'm not sure we can claim that :P )

Our groupthink, as you put it, is probably the groupthink of people going "hey, you know, knives are pretty crap for smashing rocks and it's pretty easy to just stab yourself in the process, we should just use tougher rocks for smashing weaker rocks." Which is kind of a good form of groupthink. Except to drop the analogy, it's: "hey, these kinds of content work really well in the Stack Exchange system. These other kinds don't and are kinda useless or cause problems."

@doppelgreener if no one ever used a big knife to smash a rock, how would all the Arthurian legends been born? Historia Regum Britanniae wouldn't be the same!

bk, read above, i agree. until the concept of bandwagoning comes in and 'point awe'

those are just things one has to live with. Im not quixotic enough to think I can reshape all human nature

I am mainly just suggesting you are a person in a new land, and when people native to that land suggest "don't eat those berries, it's poison," they're not just doing it out of foolishness.

sure, good idea.

but I digress, some berries are poison, and will kill you, others may be hot peppers that seem like poison.

but when you leave a comment like

in general, following sage advice is good. but it is challenging the establishment that creates innovation

"that" being our orwellian groupthink

you come across as this person going "you poor, misguided people. here, i will show you the true ways." thanks, but we're doing fine, we've actually figured this stuff out because it works and figured out not to do other things because based on evidence not superstition, those things don't work.

well, Im not talking about moderator behavior when I say that, Im talking more about an average user who bandwagons and sees many downvotes and downvotes himself, or who has 'point awe' and upvotes anything with high points

nah, just having a discussion, to better understand the place

im grateful for the articles you posted, i et a keener sense of why things are

yes, and i am responding to part of what you have said in this discussion.

ok,

which appears to view our decisions to do things a certain way to be not sound decisions, which need to be harnessed for good, as if we are not already using those ways to do good.

that particular bit of behavior is beyond rpg and extends in SE itself

you can see how that comes across as a bit condescending and naive, whether it comes from naivety or sage wisdom, and whether or not it is intended as condescension.

at least, i hope you can see that.

something you said earlier 'several people who have been here longer'

does senoirity automatically grant authority? correctness?

if you take this to meta, it would be best not to approach us as people whose practices need to be harnessed for overall good as if we are not doing so already.

@Storyteller no, it makes us the people who've seen idiots eat the berries.

i thikn Im expected to relenquish my sense of ego

I would expect the same in return

relequishing ones ego seems to be critical here

i would posit, everyone who posts an answer here thinks they have given a great answer

and when it is downvoted, it is taken as an attack on thir intelligence, thatr is egotistical

I relinquish about as much of my ego as I can, but that doesn't mean I'm going to relinquish years of wisdom gained by experience on multiple SE sites.

once that ego is released, it becomes an opportunity to improve

wisdom is only applicable to ones own experiences, to think otherwise is the heart of ego

@Storyteller Yeah, probably, though we have cases where people are genuinely sure their answers' substandard but they might as well post it anyway. And most people learn not to take votes on their posts personally - the ones that can't learn to take them impersonally tend to leave, which is probably for the best.

@Storyteller ... No, that's not how it works. Wisdom not to lick the sharp edge of a knife because it hurts you doesn't become ego because you suggest "hey, don't lick the sharp edge of that knife" to your kids.

yet you proffer that my statements are condescending, they are not meant to be. you seem challenged, personally by my inquiry

Or "hey, don't jump head first off a cliff."

those analogies are from from context

@Storyteller I am suggesting your statements could pretty easily come across as condescending. I am roughly 1% challenged, 99% unmoved. I'm pointing it out because if you want to make a difference here, such a perspective is going to work out pretty badly in that goal.

i appreciate your suggestion

Challenges to authority, as you've said, need to come from people who appear to understand the people they're speaking to.

Otherwise they tend to get resisted on account of the person in question appearing to have no idea what they're talking about.

@doppelgreener you need to be about 20% challengeder. (sorry, could not resist)

@SPArchaeologist sry

I understand you.

@Storyteller to be 100 percent honest I am the Drill instructor and you are the 1st week recruit at boot camp telling me how the military is bad at X but if only we made Y changes it would function Z better. Until you've demonstrated capability with the baseline of the site Im not really going to take your input on site improvement and value it that highly. this is not to say we are tone deaf the the new user experience, we have a lot of meta discussions about improving it.

So take that comment about condescension not as me getting defensive, but advice on how to productively make a change rather than have those attempts blow up in your face.

to be 100% honest, earn the respect your uniform denotes. you'll garner no point awe from me.

???????

Im not asking you to respect me at all (the metaphor was simply about hands on experience with a system not your relationship to me in terms of rank), nor my rep, but simply know I have site privileges aka abilities you

do not

and can exercise them to curtail you acting outside of what I believe is the best interest of the system

is that a threat?

you're the one going on about points. notice we are not trying to swing our points around.

no were talking about answers adn comments

the original discussion of this question

your original concern was downvotes

no, you have begun making veiled threats and assertions to yoursupposed authority, you will now be ignored

or closed answers

All right, who rolled a 1

Be nice, or don't say anything at all. That's SE policy, and everyone is expected to follow it.

Joshua is not making threats, and this discussion has just ceased to be productive.

@Amelia @ArtOfCode Up until now we've been having what seemed to be a relatively calm talk about how Stack Exchange works, by a user busy making a paradigm shift in trying to understand it.

@doppelgreener And then someone flagged a message as offensive, there are accusations being thrown around, and the talk is no longer calm. Hence, the mods have arrived.

Storyteller took one of these comments as a threat, and it was not, which you can see for yourself. This came up in a discussion about authority and so on.

@ArtOfCode Yeah, I agree the talk is no longer calm, hence why I say it seemed to be.

I happen to agree there, it's not a threat, but let's just make sure that discussions stay calm.

So, that context of us busy talking about authority - and then also reputation points, which Storyteller brought up himself - is important here.

I promise, we are remarkably good at staying calm and the fact this flared up is surprising.

@doppelgreener I'll take your word on that one; I haven't seen any flags from here before

the man made comment that he would exercise his sitegranted ability to 'curtail' me

thats a threat

i took offense to it

including, not in the best interests of this system

@Storyteller He was stating facts about the system that exists here on SE. There is no doubt about the fact that having reputation lets you exercise privilege that sometimes affects other users.

ok, and that is apparent, but to threaten to use it, to the detriment of the system, over some perceived slight, is offensive

it was an open threat

i do not take kindly to it

It wasn't any kind of threat, it was a statement of fact. If you took offense to it, that's through no fault of the message sender's.

ok, cool, im out.

read it, read his previous comments and tell me in cointext, that wasnt a threat

We're a long way from Equestria / We're a long, long way / We're a long way from Equestria / A long, long, way

@Storyteller Having read his previous comments, and in context, it still isn't a threat.

i disagree. in fact, it was a threat to this site, to abuse his ability, even if ithurt the site in doing so

@Storyteller Now you're getting outlandish. Would SE staff provide him with abilities that have the capability to seriously harm the site, if they weren't at all productive? Moreover, that's what mods are for - to look at extreme cases and revert any malicious actions. There are none, and I'm confident there will be none, in this case.

im not sure how you think that, but clearly point awe rules supreme here. you have created a cloister. clearly, only seniority and points atter here. that you, a moderator deny an outright blatant attack exists, is baffling

man can be drill sergeant all he wants. i however, have chosen to ignore him completely.

@Storyteller I deny it because it doesn't exist. This discussion has ceased to be productive; what you flagged as offensive isn't. It's your choice to ignore him, and chat even provides a "block" feature if you'd like to use it. I remind you of the Be Nice policy, and with that I leave you.

@ArtOfCode It made something useful, it summoned @Amelia here. That way, she will slowly continue to absorb the pony aura I am emanating, until I will be finally able to turn Anime into "Little colorful ponies"

jokes aside, I must get going.

Bye for now

@PaulWhite it would be best to leave it. No wrongdoing was done and people hours from now will be wondering what happened.

We are in general a well mannered mature community who's close knit and able to discuss even grave potentially inflammatory topics with great calmness and levity and come out without argument erupting.

Fair enough.

I'd find heavily starred comments by pleasantly surprised people remarking as much but I couldn't search them up earlier when I looked.

There's no need. I do believe you.

Thanks. It's unlikely to cause problems and if it does, we know what was said. (Which is important for pointing out the lack of wrongdoing if it needs to come up.)

@SPArchaeologist So what does the SP at the beginning of your name mean

I'm off to sleep. Goodnight everyone.

@Storyteller This RPG.SE meta post clearly explains what comments are and aren't for on our particular Stack. Combined with the excellent answers about comments in this post it's probably the best reference for RPG.SE's comment culture goals. (Of course, a brief perusal of the comments meta tag reveals that it's an ongoing community discourse with many opinions.)

Hey guys!

what's going on?

Apparently I slept through a discussion about comment policy that got derailed. I'm not going to try second-guessing what happened, I'm just sad it happened that way and I hope people will think about how these situations can be more effectively defused in the future.

Also this is a great picture.

Hey, have you guys seen many people playing GURPS lately?

It might be just me, but it seems like it's popularity has greatly decreased in these last few years.

Well, nobody's asked a question in gurps or gurps-4e since March (but there's only 68 questions between them altogether, so that's probably not indicative of recent trends).

Doesn't look like ICv2 has ever had GURPS in its top five.

Although this article indicates that GURPS was in the top three selling RPGs the year gurps-4e was published.

@Althis I asked a Reddit question about "how light it is" after I've been recommended it for its crafting system

looked at a few character sheets

never again

Heh.

calculating FIVE types of carry weight exactly does not sound like fun for me

GURPS' virtues seem to lie in its completeness, for people who value having specific rules for each situation rather than general rules for all situations.

I mean what on Earth is this abomination?

This is one of the four character sheets for ONE guy

Hm...

I have played the 4th edition a long time ago.

And it was way waaaaay lighter than that.

Great, because I can't wait to see if a player can or cannot shift over a crate to make cover

I am not sure why people would even do that...

The incredibly complicated sheet, that is.

@Althis It keeps saying you can add or substract as much complexity as you want, but the main guideline still IS complexity, simulationistic complexity for that matter

If I am not mistaken, though, GURPS was the first system to implement the "Advantages and Disadvantages" idea.

The only kind of complexity I'd be down with would be some kind of crafting system, spellcrafting especially, just because it strikes me as incredibly fun, but nothing else

Which is pretty important.

But honestly GURPS just seems like a first draft for a C++ physics engine

@AlexMitan I've never even seen a medieval fantasy GURPS game. I've only played Sci-Fi and apocalyptic, and it was ok.

I guess I can't say much because I just wasn't much into the campaign to begin with.

I don't really blame the system.

@Althis Sure, it's a personal thing that simulationism doesn't strike me as fun at all

Or rather, that PnP simulationism doesn't... I honestly feel like some kind of GURPS port to PC would be kind of cool

Because there's a huge difference between what a Fate GM has to do and a GURPS GM has to do... I've been told literally that GMing Gurps is easy because the story basically flows from itself since everything is simulated...but that just makes me feel like I'd be a human rendering engine

Oh, btw, @BESW, I met up with a few of my friends from the D&D sessions to buy a present for another of us... and we decided to meet up at the local game store, where we got our friend a thing... however, we hung out there, and as I looked through what they had I came upon Fate Freeport......those being my D&D survivors, I wasted no time and started selling them on Fate

I told them FAE is not quite like Freeport, and I'm only showing them some stuff for inspiration... basically, how D&D would look like as a Fate add-on... I introduced them to the idea of narrative permissions instead of numbers, aspects, custom stunts, classlessness, zones

they were CRAZY about it! They started being pumpy and saying stuff like "I love this! Less math, more story! I'd love to contribute to the story more and not be limited!" etc.

Heh.

they had their own quirky ideas that I told them are easily implementable in Fate and such

One of my D&D players (who sadly had to leave island before we really got to play Fate) was enthused simply by the idea of 'with style' and how it meant that when he rolled extra-well it would actually mean something.

Heh.. oh, and they loved the idea of Fate Points altogether

Of course, that's not something unique to Fate, but it was an interesting thing for him to latch onto.

They were familiar with the idea of a bell curve and they liked it a lot too

and how the rolls are not final, but rather they can be narratively bargained for

@BESW Does it feel particularly different living in an island than leaving in the continent?

@Althis Yup.

i knew a lot of gurps players back in the 90s. very few since. most said it offered a good system for the modern era or ww2-paranormal type stuff

I am asking because of the way that sentence. It is sentences like that which break our projected reality and remind us of the fact that people live in really really different conditions sometimes.

always liked its character generation events, the traits and such

@Storyteller Have you heard of many people playing it lately?

no, none

been.. 3-4 years since it was mentioned, besides one guy in reference to it atthe game store a few months back. 10 since I saw it played. guy wasnt playing but mentioned it in passing

pretty much see it less and less all the time, but I did see a recent steve jackson games card game. it was selling

How much of a health hazard ARE cockroaches anyway?

Cockroaches themselves aren't dangerous, but they get into everything--which means then they carry "everything" around wherever they go.

Basically, cockroaches are as unhealthy as the most unhealthy nearby location. Which is probably a sewer.

Ok, ok, thanks

...okay

But, like, if somebody's got a pet roach that they keep confined to a clean area, that's not a hazard.

Which is yet another advantage of living in an island.

cockroaches can bite. rarely. a few people are allergic.

Roaches do not swim.

That is a fact.

The moral of this story is

YOU CANT TRUST THE SYSTEM

@Sandwich GURPS you mean?

Oh man actually that would make a great Stunt in Fate

Also, this talk of cockroaches must really be getting into your crumbs.

groans I brought this on myself didn't I

You can't trust the system Gain a +2 to Investigate when investigating the system

@BESW oh and by the way... they were alright with the D&D session, but they enjoyed their own mechanics-less messing around more than the system... basically what I gathered is that they just took it as a system that doesn't work for them and a genre that does, and they're really patient and understanding with me

I don't need no handouts Gain a +2 to burglary when short on cash.

@Althis Roaches do, however, use boats.

@AlexMitan That's great.

@BESW Who sold them tickets!?

@Althis The rats.

Can't they read the sign?! It says clearly, we reserve the right to refuse service to pests!

I'm an adult Gain a +2 when building connections that would be considered adultlike.

@BESW They had their own summer chewed up by the same things as me, so they aren't really regretting not having RPG sessions all along because they couldn't anyway... they're really great people, but that's why they're the people in question in the first place

@Sandwich That sounds spammable as HELL

@AlexMitan ....depends on your aspects.

And the setting.

Building a connection that would be considered adultlike could be a fist in the face or intimidation..but also...

And then I threw it on the ground Burn a fate point to throw an object on the ground, triggering many different circumstances based on the object and those viewing your actions.

Oh... that's just human nature isn't it... equally applicable to all ages just in different ways

@Sandwich, please be so kind to invite me when you choose to play this SNL campaign.

Also.

I want a BOOMBOX. Spend a fate point, everyone gets out of control. In a sexual manner.

This ain't my DAD, this is a CELLPHONE - spend a fate point to completely, outlandishly deflect a call to action or communication with little to no consequence... requires I'm an ADULT

We'll kill U - Once per scene, you can use Shoot to inflict mental stress when you're fighting total losers

Phone insurance: Replace the cell phone broken when using This ain't my DAD, this is a CELLPHONE

Your day in court sacrifice time and money. remove a basic right from your character.

@Sandwich And before you know it, either all of your refresh(FREE WILL, MAN) is gone, or the SYSTEM gets more fate points TO SCREW YOU OVER

Oh, wait, that's really deep... the more free you try to become, you daredevil adult you, the stronger the SYSTEM gets

Thats what You can't trust the system is for

@AlexMitan This is pretty funny.

@doppelgreener have you seen what they are getting the names from?

Ok, so everyone knows about my crazy endeavours to create D&D Characters from TV shows and movies?

I just thought of a new one...

@trogdor I have. :)

@doppelgreener mk

just checking

@Ben beautiful

@Ben Unlike some of your other ones, that's one the system is set up to handle.

@Miniman Can D&D (whichever)e do repeated at will brilliant explosions? Cause that's kinda his thing.

@doppelgreener Well, tbh it might work better in 3.5, since in 5 he'll run out, but he can certainly do it for a while.

@doppelgreener I'm sure that if they're purely aesthetic the DM won't mind :P

@Ben true enough ;)

@Miniman and while yes, some of my ideas have been a bit extreme, I still think my green ranger turned out ok :P

so, rpg.se is really about rules clarifications for existing games then

@Storyteller That's reductionist.

It's easiest for RGP.SE to deal with those questions within its format, because there's already a lot of groundwork for it.

You'll find a good deal of other topics addressed well here, but in proportion they're significantly fewer. Partly because fewer people think to ask such questions; partly because it's harder to provide clear support for such answers.

Asking about game development, or homebrew, or social conflicts at the table, requires a more structured, reflective kind of question because it's harder for answerers to know enough about the situation to answer it usefully.