TRPG General Chat

Nyoze

12:03 AM

Morning :)

Iron Heart

12:34 AM

@SPArchaeologist yes I got pinged

Nyoze

Yeah, me too. It was confusing at first, but hey.

BESW

What did the ping look like?

Nyoze

I... Don't know how to replicate it.

It was weird.

Adeptus

@SPArchaeologist I heard the Ping of the Elder Gods

The Oracle

0

Q: The site's availability to newcomers seems startlingly low

Im new to this site and to RPG Stackexchange where I have been spending my time so far. I only have a moderate experience with DND and most of my friends have none. I've been looking for a reliable site to ask DND questions for months and when i stumbled onto this site I thought it was a godsend,...

Joshua Aslan Smith

12:55 AM

@waxeagle yep thanks, I was having issues viewing it normally on my phone at the time

@waxeagle make dat hangout

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith plus.google.com/hangouts/_/vptlq3246lqq4ezipcghdwx6kua (also CC @Grubermensch @Shalvenay )

Sandwich

12 more days...

wax eagle

@RobertF will you be joining us tonight?

Nyoze

12 more days?

RobertF

Yep I'm here

wax eagle

1:05 AM

@RobertF plus.google.com/hangouts/_/vptlq3246lqq4ezipcghdwx6kua

Adeptus

@BESW like @Shub in curly letters (I'm not going to reproduce it exactly, because that would ping everyone again)

BESW

@Adeptus I mean, what did the ping notification look like for folks not in the chat at the time?

Nyoze

Oh

It was just a normal ping in your inbox.

Shalvenay

yeah

I saw it as well

Adeptus

@BESW Yes exactly. I got the "new messages in your Stack inbox" email. The notification/message was like "SPArchaeologist: @Shub"

(redacted)

doppelgreener

1:13 AM

Shubba dub dub

Sandwich

@Nyoze Twelve more until I get my Fanatic badge

Nyoze

Oh.

@Sandwich You're just a fanatic :(

Sandwich

I want a gold badge

I got screwed on one of my badges

Populist I think it was

Nyoze

Yeah, I saw that post on Meta. You've almost got it at least :P

I'm going to run out like 4 days short of the 30 day badge :(

Miniman

It's weird, I have 412 consecutive days even though I've missed a day a few times.

wax eagle

1:23 AM

@Miniman GMT days make things fun

Nyoze

@Miniman Something to do with how the Aussie time zone interacts with their time area.

Miniman

Nah, not that, I mean I've missed days according to SE time.

Nyoze

I've noticed if I'm on around 1-2 on a weekend, and miss the previous/next day, it seems to count

Oh, that's weird.

Miniman

Generally it happens as a result of the timezone difference, though :)

Oblivious Sage

1:53 AM

anyone willing to help me come up with aspects for some FAE pregens?

i'm going to use Masters of Umdaar to introduce some folks to Fate

Pixie

I need to grab that one. It looks pretty neat.

Oblivious Sage

it has a system for randomly generating parts of your character, so i figured i'd knock out some pregens rather than try to walk the whole group through character creation

i like it as an intro to the system

it uses FAE, and is if anything even simpler: it comes with tools for generating races (i have an octopus-zebra hybrid in my pregens!), tons of example stunts, etc.

Pixie

Random generation... [downloads immediately]

2

Oblivious Sage

I figured I'd use that one to introduce them to the system, then Aether Sea as standard fantasy (in spaaaaaace) with base FAE rules.

Next I'll move to Gods & Monsters to show how you can add mechanics to FAE.

Finally, I'll run The Secrets of Cats to move up to Fate Core.

Pixie

I likely won't get a chance to play any of them, but I'm certainly adding them to the hoard. :P

Oblivious Sage

2:21 AM

on an unrelated note...

Japanese music is weird but it keeps getting stuck in my head...

Pixie

@ObliviousSage I love Babymetal. xD I've been listening to Daoko's "Girl" a lot recently though.

Oblivious Sage

With most of these J-pop fusion bands I'll hear one song and really like it, then check out & promptly hate all the rest of their music.

Pixie

That can happen, yeah. I've liked most of Babymetal's singles though. I haven't paid much attention beyond those.

doppelgreener

@ObliviousSage I've learned kinda recently that the Japanese musical scales mostly consist of what we call sharps and flats, which also explains why it comes off so different.

Sandwich

I prefer The pillows

Adeptus

2:27 AM

@Sandwich Pillows are comfy [ignores context]

Oblivious Sage

@Sandwich They did the FLCL theme song, right? That was good.

Sandwich

I need a new pillow [now in context]

They did ALL of FLCL's songs

Oblivious Sage

oh cool

doppelgreener

Hey @ObliviousSage. This might be out of the blue, but a while ago on this question I made a comment which was kinda disparaging about your answer on how wizard & cleric spellcasting worked. I've felt like a jerk for it since, and it just recently got wiped away. I apologise for that. (If you never saw, then I guess this is just on me.)

Oblivious Sage

@doppelgreener I saw it, but don't worry about it. I know my question on that topic was not universally well-received.

And I agree with people that we generally shouldn't be explaining the basics. But for people coming from 3.X the changes to memorizing spells & spell slots were the thing that I had to keep explaining over and over and over.

Sandwich

2:32 AM

That seems like a funny design decision

Oblivious Sage

And my question has gotten an absurd number of views.

Sandwich

Considering Wizards were the most versatile class

doppelgreener

@ObliviousSage I think that question was pretty good to have actually!

Sandwich

Even with prepared spells

Shalvenay

@ObliviousSage it is an interesting design decision, but it makes the game a whole lot easier to handle especially at low levels

doppelgreener

2:33 AM

But I was also being pigheaded at the time I left that comment thinking my answer was the best. But I wrote it in a way that's satisfying for me, whether or not it's the best for others is another matter altogether.

Oblivious Sage

Oh I agree, it was a good design decision. It's just distinctly different from 3.X, while reusing a lot of the same terminology (presumably so as to maximize confusion).

@doppelgreener Like I said, don't sweat it. Comments are so easy to add that it's easy to say something off the cuff that you realize in retrospect was much harsher and/or combative than you wanted.

Let he who has never posted a jerkass comment cast the first stone. Which definitely is not me.

doppelgreener

I for one really really really like the thing they did to cleric & wizard spellcasting.

Sorcerers got shafted, wizards were already powerful but now there's slightly less bookkeeping and stress involved for a newbie wanting to play a wizard.

Sandwich

Isn't that how Arcanists in pathfinder work?

doppelgreener

"Oh goodness do I need three thunderbolts or four?"

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener sorcs got semi-shafted. they are the only class in 5e that keeps metamagic

Sandwich

2:37 AM

Sorcerer's don't need the weakness of getting their power a level later imo

They could get the spells at the same level

But wizards can learn unlimited spells with a few spell slots

doppelgreener

@Sandwich Yes, except in the context of Pathfinder, it's less meeting in the middle to become kinda rad, it's more conducting GEM FUSION TO BECOME THE ULTIMATE, MOST OP CLASS EVER.

Oblivious Sage

@Sandwich Yeah, that's always struck me as BS.

Sandwich

And sorcerers could learn a few spells and get more spell slots per day

That would level out the power of Wizards and Sorcerers I think

Arcanist is a stupid powerful class though srs

Miniman

Could be worse - spell-to-power erudite is still more powerful.

Sandwich

I still like psions better than any class though

doppelgreener

2:40 AM

@ObliviousSage Also thanks Ob, I'm glad to have been able to get that off my chest with you.

or shoulders or whatever the appropriate anatomical reference is.

Oblivious Sage

@doppelgreener Like I said, no big.

Miniman

@ObliviousSage Anyone else might've been offended, but you were oblivious (heh heh heh).

Oblivious Sage

@Miniman An image I strive to cultivate. :p

doppelgreener

you said you saw it!!

IMAGE RUINED

Sandwich

In other words

Someone Mindripped him and he failed his save

Oblivious Sage

2:44 AM

saw what now?

<_< >_>

doppelgreener

hmmmmmmmmm. >_>

well countered.

Oblivious Sage

3:01 AM

g'night all

doppelgreener

Goodnight!

trogdor

@SPArchaeologist I was

Miniman

@trogdor It's a gift that keeps on giving!

trogdor

it is, apparently

Miniman

3:17 AM

Apparently it's been fixed, anyway.

Sandwich

3:34 AM

@ᔕᖺᘎᕊ ?

Thats such a weird thing to type to ping everyone

Shalvenay

@Sandwich apparently it was a collation screwup in SQL Server that caused that string to be LIKE everything under the sun

Sandwich

So in a way that ping was SQL injection

Shalvenay

@Sandwich well, not injection as no SQL syntax got snuck in

more like having a dictionary order that...isn't a dictionary order :P

Tritium21

A partial answer to a question of mine... that was on the right track of what I wanted.... was deleted :(

...I wonder it its on-topic at Cross Validated ...

BESW

@ObliviousSage Oooh, free Fate stuff I don't have. [yoinks]

BESW

4:36 AM

Hmm.

This concept of "natural numbers" in video games is something I'd like to think about in tabletop RPGs. What are examples of natural numbers in tabletops?

Miniman

@BESW Assuming I understood that article correctly, games where your stat = the number of dice you roll might count.

BESW

That's a start!

Miniman

Alternatively, Warhammer-style armor ratings? Your armor rating is the number you need to roll on a die to hurt them.

BESW

I suspect that for dice pools to be really "natural," they should be physically present at the table.

Miniman

Yeah, that idea of an observable mechanic is tricky.

BESW

4:41 AM

If you have few enough dice that players have to share them, numbers will be harder to keep "natural" in this sense.

Tritium21

If i understand the article correctly, and I dont think i do, it would apply to things.... I factor out of my gaming

BESW

But, like, I think DRYH does really well with natural numbers if you've got enough dice.

Tritium21

like...counting bullets

BESW

In DRYH you've got three basic stats, each represent by a different colour of d6.

White dice are for discipline, black dice are for exhaustion, and red dice are for madness.

You roll ALL your dice as a single pool for success/failure on actions, but the colour that comes out highest determines what your success or failure is like.

Pixie

Something with a pictorial representation on paper (or in mini form) might be relevant as well. A lot of this seems to deal with things you can understand the quantity of by looking, as with the pips in the first example picture and the number of guns on the ship in the second.

BESW

4:46 AM

So if you've got two white dice, four black dice, and one red dice, you know at a glance that you've got a decent chance of succeeding at an action which requires two dice to come up 3 or less. But you also know you're most likely to have exhaustion dominate the scene.

If madness dominates and you snap, that means you lose a white die and gain a red die: visually it's easy to see that your pool's the same size, but madness is more likely to come up when you roll. Easier, for me at least, than erasing the "2" in the discipline slot on my sheet and writing "1," then erasing the "1" on my madness slot and writing "2".

(On the other hand, "The Madness Slot" would be a good name for a metal album.)

(Or a Twilight Zone episode.)

@Pixie So, perhaps, the way I'm A Pretty Princess uses colouring in parts of a drawing to signal the amount of resources a PC has left.

Magician

Mythender has something a bit like that with its enormous and ever-growing dice pools. There's a sense of "oh, shi--" when you see the GM's pile of dice expand.

Pixie

@BESW I was actually thinking about that.

You can tell what resources you have to expend by looking at your coloring sheet and seeing what is and isn't colored in.

BESW

You can also tell what Princess qualities you've used, and relatively how much you've used each one, by the colours you've used on the drawing.

doppelgreener

@BESW Natural numbers won't exist in RPGs, just in how we represent them. In Fate, five tokens sitting in front of me is a natural number. A sheet with (5) written on it is not a natural number.

BESW

Which isn't really relephant to any mechanic, but is interesting.

doppelgreener

4:55 AM

But in reality that article is not very well appropriating natural numbers.

BESW

I don't think "natural" is a good term for what he's describing, no.

Magician

Representational? Observable?

doppelgreener

Natural numbers are positive nonzero integers. But what he's describing is being able to see and measure things visually, without having to think of numbers. We can look at a smaller elephant and a bigger elephant and go "that one is huge." We can pick up a crate, and go "one twice this big would be impossible to lift."

BESW

"Intuitive relationships" is closer.

Adeptus

And then games like Cthulhu deal with unnatural numbers...

doppelgreener

4:57 AM

I can look at a pile of fate points and say "that is a lot. I have enough." or look at another and go "this is not enough, I should do some compels here".

BESW

On the other hand, for example, Dogs in the Vineyard obscures the intuitive value of dice pools.

Adeptus

Once again, I love StackOverflow. Get weird programming problem, throw keywords into Google. Google gives me a SO link, which has relevant Q&A that lets me fix my problem. Doesn't always work out this way, but often enough that I really appreciate SO.

BESW

NPR is streaming the soundtrack for Hamilton.

Magician

Today's xkcd engages in memetic warfare. Probably written by an illithid.

"Imagine a telepathic brain with legs that can sense you when you're thinking about it."

doppelgreener

@Magician That's fantastic.

@Magician NOOO XD

That's creepy!

That's even worse than the big-eyed monster.

Pixie

5:06 AM

I guess my brain is full of kuriboh now.

doppelgreener

Information visualization

Information visualization or information visualisation is the study of (interactive) visual representations of abstract data to reinforce human cognition. The abstract data include both numerical and non-numerical data, such as text and geographic information. However, information visualization differs from scientific visualization: "it’s infovis [information visualization] when the spatial representation is chosen, and it’s scivis [scientific visualization] when the spatial representation is given". == Overview == The field of information visualization has emerged "from research in human-computer...

What he's talking about is taking the abstract "weapon rating 1" and visualising it as the very palpable "they have one gun that fires a missile."

Pixie

Yeah.

It's definitely about visualization.

doppelgreener

I don't know what the word is for stuff like... "this basket could hold three rocks", but it takes it from "rock rating 3" to "three rocks".

BESW

That's... kinda intersemiotics.

doppelgreener

It is not.

We could see those rocks, we could touch them and pick them up if only the game allowed us.

They become visual, palpable, actual rocks that we see sitting right there daring us to throw them.

Magician

5:11 AM

Doom candy.

doppelgreener

Counters, tokens, doom candy, rocks, are visualisations of numbers. I don't know what the word is for what our brain does differently with that though that short-circuits conscious mathematics happening.

Magician

We're currently playing tremulus, under candlelight. I intend to use this in the concluding game somehow. I'll put them out one by one as bad things start happening.

Dread (the game) is all about this.

doppelgreener

Perhaps I should say differently: it takes it from a sentence saying "rock rating 3" to three physical rocks sitting right there. (It's not a rephrase. It's actual rocks now, not sentences.)

Magician

@Pixie random character generation, eh.

BESW

"Spatial intuition" is related.

doppelgreener

5:13 AM

It is.

Pixie

@Magician It's not always the tool I want, but I like playing with it.

Magician

Eclipse Phase's Transhuman has great randomized character lifepaths. I had a lot of fun rolling up characters with Brian at some point. If someone's interested, maybe we could do that in a chat. Does help to understand the setting, of course...

BESW

> We also have the motto “When in doubt, dinosaur,” but that’s more of a philosophy.

Pixie

I enjoy rolling things for the sake of rolling things, so I'd be down, but I know nothing of the setting.

BESW

Masters of Umdaar looks like fun randomisation too.

In fact... [sets aside weeks of prep and pokes Umdaar with a stick]

Magician

5:16 AM

@Pixie Cool. Not now, though. I have a game to prep for. But all of Eclipse Phase is available online. Transhuman, for instance.

Pixie

@BESW It looked fairly simplistic, but not unuseful.

BESW

I like that each animal chart has two dominant approaches.

Invertebrates & Marine Life are Careful and Quick; Reptiles, Amphibian, Dinosauria are Clever and Sneaky; Birds & Mammals are Forceful and Flashy.

Pixie

@Magician I have work early tomorrow anyway, so the idea is that I will go to bed soon. (Whether that will happen remains to be seen, but it's the idea. :P) Sometime, though.

BESW

BTW, @doppelgreener, you need to look at Masters of Umdaar for your H&S hack.

doppelgreener

@BESW NEVER

Ok I'll do this thing

BESW

5:19 AM

@doppelgreener RANDOM CLASS TABLES WITH ASSOCIATED APPROACHES.

@BESW WHAT

Son of a gun!

Also there are other things you were talking to me about just the other night. Like a Motivation Aspect.

doppelgreener

I want to try this one out.

Let's do that sometime on a between-night.

BESW

5:21 AM

I... [spoiler] [spoiler] [spoiler] [spoiler] we should talk about this on Skype or in the Spoil-Lair, apparently.

doppelgreener

To the spool-lar!

BESW

BESW's Spoil-Lair

CAUTION: High chance of plot. Not for BESW's players.

Miniman

@Magician I've never been so glad to be bad at visualising things.

Magician

@Miniman Pixie even provided a visual guide! Come on, just, just imagine. You can't ignore those begging eyes. It just wants to get in.

BESW

6:02 AM

I'm gonna hijack the Not A Bar to randomly generate an Umdaar PC.

Adeptus

6:19 AM

Looking up movies. I see "The Who Live At Hyde Park", and I think, The what who live at Hyde Park? They've left out a word!... oh

Pixie

@BESW I wish it had a second stage in the bioform generator for non-animal-based characters. It's kinda lopsided in that regard. Narrows it down further for only about half of the possible results.

BESW

Yes.

Tritium21

I guess i should have asked this before... but is cross posting a question (that is on topic several places) kosher?

doppelgreener

6:44 AM

@Tritium21 not very

SPArchaeologist

Morning

Tritium21

@doppelgreener I flagged the version here for deletion

or mod attention

doppelgreener

7:02 AM

@Tritium21 cool beans, sounds fair

SPArchaeologist

7:25 AM

Hihihi, a friend of mine had a question going on SCI-FI about identifying two characters in a poster Hasbro released for MLP FIM S5.

Since the season is still going, all character who haven't yet appeared up to the date the poster was release where blackened out. The two characters weren't , so we assumed them must appear somewhere in episodes 1-13.

Guess what? That was an error in the poster:P

They are in episode 15.

I can't wait for his reaction when he will notice that...

Pixie

8:09 AM

Ah, speaking of random generation, I picked up a game called How to Host a Dungeon. I have yet to play through it, but I look forward to doing so. I'd love games like this for other subjects, too (this one is solely for subterranean dungeons).

BESW

8:54 AM

@William'MindWorX'Mariager [wave]

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

9:49 AM

Heya @BESW :)

BESW

What's new?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Decided to spare my player after a lot of pleading on their part. Lots of things lost though, like equipment, reputation and property.

BESW

Oh my.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Indeed. Our priest is particularly taken by the situation. Looks like he's on the track to find another god. Some interesting character development when something this drastic happens to the group. It's nice to see.

I keep wanting to give Fate a try. But I'm not sure my players are good enough roleplayers for it. Seems it's a requirement to play it.

BESW

Fate's... weird, in that it can morph its form depending on the group's needs.

It's definitely a very powerful scaffold for supporting mostly free-form play, but it's also fine for highly structured, crunchy play.

What qualities are you concerned your group lacks?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

10:04 AM

Mostly I'm concerned about their creativity. Actions they do would likely just be, "I shoot", but as far as I can tell, the system wants more than that. Been trying to understand the whole "Create an advantage" part of actions.

BESW

Ah, yeah.

That can take a bit to wrap our heads around, but I've yet to meet someone who can't do it--just people who've been told "you can't do that because it's not something your class lets you do" often enough that they've developed a block about it.

(And you don't have to be a poet. Simple, direct aspects are usually better.)

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Perhaps I just need to dive into it. Things usually make more sense once you've tried them a few times.

Consequence would just be something relevant whatever caused it? So like, an attack from a fireball might cause a: "Moderate consequence: Severe Burn on left Arm"?

Which could then be invoked later, like another person could use said burned arm to get a bonus to another attack?

BESW

Yup.

Although a consequence doesn't have to be obvious.

Example: Myka had her robot throw her through a trap instead of trying to navigate it herself.

The robot threw her too hard and she took a moderate consequence as a result.

Instead of something like Broken arm, her player decided to write down Robophobia.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Interesting

BESW

This is especially great because one of the other PCs is a cyborg.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

10:15 AM

And then the players would have to agree if that could be considered a fair consequence?

BESW

Yeah.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

But the game master has the final say? I imagine it's possible there could be some bickering.

BESW

We don't usually have that in my group; usually negotiation results in a better aspect that everyone prefers. But yes, the GM is the tie-breaker.

(This is not to say that a physical consequence would have been worse, or less creative, or anything like that. Just that particular player prefers psychological or social drama, so she tunes her consequences to match her play goals.)

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Interesting. Would their approaches affect consequences? Or is that mostly just how they perform actions?

BESW

Approaches are how you do things.

Consequences derive from what happens to you.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

10:19 AM

Right, makes sense.

BESW

My PC currently has the consequence Time jitters, which she got when she used her time gun to freeze an entire room full of mech-suited soldiers... while she was in the room.

It's just a minor consequence, but I like it so much that I haven't given her any opportunity to remove it.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Hehe

BESW

Another PC --a plant "monster"-- got the consequence "missing fingertips" from messing around with a force field.

For a regular human that'd probably be moderate, if not severe. For him, it was minor and quickly removed as he grew the finger ends back.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

How would you "win" an encounter. Seems the players will usually enter an encounter with consequences from earlier, giving them a disadvantage in all situations.

BESW

Consequences will sometimes limit or change the way a character can approach problem-solving, but PCs are still competent and proactive. They've got Fate points, and gain more Fate points when consequences are invoked or compelled--and invoking a consequence requires that the NPCs spend from their limited Fate point pool.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

10:25 AM

Ah

BESW

Generally a consequence won't drastically restrict a PC from accessing their primary arenas of competence--since the PC's player is the one who chooses it.

The Fate point economy is one of the foundational elements of Fate. It mechanises the philosophy that crisis contains the seeds of future success, and success sets the stage for coming crisis.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

So Fate Points is something you get from voluntarily putting yourself in a disadvantage?

BESW

You get Fate points (in addition to the ones you start the session with) when one of your aspects is invoked against you, or you are compelled.

When an enemy invokes one of your aspects against you, that gives them a +2 on their roll, or lets them re-roll. Which means they're more likely to succeed against you, making your life more complex or dramatic.

At the end of the scene, you get those Fate points, which give you power to address the drama and complexity now in your life.

If you're compelled, that means the GM is bribing you to do something (or have something done) that makes your life more complex or dramatic without any rolls at all.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Okay

BESW

So you immediately get a Fate point, giving you a little bit of power to set things right later on.

Basically: you get Fate points when obstacles get in the way of your goals, and you spend Fate points to get closer to your goals by overcoming obstacles.

It mechanises and --more importantly-- incentivises the narrative idea that the protagonist's victory should be hard-won, and that the challenges the protagonist faces are a necessary step toward his victory.

Aaron

12:41 PM

Good morning

doppelgreener

USA's Federal Trade Commission pursued legal action against a failed kickstarter board game.

@Aaron morning!

Aaron

@doppelgreener About time there was some enforcement.

imgur.com/gallery/YTjkJ

SPArchaeologist

2:35 PM

Which also remembers me... the backers only demo of Mighty #9, which was supposed to be a "we are sorry" for the recent game shady delay.... was also delayed at the last minute.

SPArchaeologist

3:28 PM

Have to go for now. Bye

Zachiel

5:24 PM

@BESW sigh. Why this never works for me?

BESW

9:25 PM

@Pixie Personally, I'm just going to roll again on the animal table for almost everyone anyway.

BESW

10:31 PM

@Novian [wave]

BESW

11:28 PM

Anybody here reasonably familiar with Warhammer lore? I've got a question about lizardman society.

Pixie

@BESW That works! A little less given to 80s adventure cartoon variety than I might desire, but then it's fair to say that most of them were beast species anyway.

trogdor

@BESW I would love to say I know anything at all

I do not

I only know they exist in Warhammer because of Bloodbowl

trogdor

11:48 PM

which I think might not be like, Warhammer cannon

either way though, it is not helpful XD

oh, it looks like it is just really similar to Warhammer since its newest editions

anyway, I would be thrilled to look them up, but I gotta go until about 2

BESW's Spoil-Lair

Transcript for