As is my wont, I have created a document arranging Umdaar bioform info into a more legible form.

I listed the classes and stunts associated with the primary approaches of each bioform, and some amusing things emerged.

> Robots are Clever, which makes them good Mages and Bounty Hunters. They wield powers like Brain Twister, Elemental Manipulation, and Mind Reader.

> Fungi and Plants are Careful, which makes them good Runekeepers, Psychics, and Paladins. They have adaptations like Thick Skull, Spines, and Plates.

I love the idea of spiny, armour-plated plant people, and psychic robot mages.

Umdaar also has zombies with poisoned blowpipes.

Cacti are very tough!

Apparently they're also paladins.

Palacti.

I honestly wasn't big on the class associations myself, but I shy away from such things in general.

Yeah... They're very loose and mostly flavour though,so I'm okay with that.

Morning folks :)

Yawp.

It doesn't bother me that they're there, especially because they're not overemphasized or baked in too hard. I'd likely skip 'em myself, though. I'm not sure I would even use the suggested dominant approaches all that often, but I recognize that that's half the point of the generator. It'd be a little silly if they didn't suggest approaches.

All personal preference. I'm very "a la carte" when it comes to building characters.

@Pixie yeah, my problem with "a la carte" is that I can put things together that people don't want put together for some reason or another...I suspect there are players who would seriously object to a full-blood orcess cleric of Ilmater (aka my half-orc rogue's mom. :P)

@Shalvenay That's also not really a system or setting that's designed around doing things a la carte. Which I chafe against.

One of the things I like about the class system in Umdaar is that it's removed from the random gen.

@Pixie true. a-la-carte was possible with AD&D (Skills & Powers) but I don't think such a thing was ever written for 3.0 or any later edition of D&D

@BESW I would have actually liked an option for that, especially because it's all very clear about going "eh" and doing something else if you don't like what you get. Part of what I like about random generation is having a lot of "moving pieces" that combine to form surprising results. For my preferences, Umdaar's is a bit lacking -- but for its own purpose, it's just fine.

True.

And hey, I generated a mutant with fluorescence and tentacles. That's still pretty cool.

That is pretty cool.

Fluorescent Tentacles? Fun :D

What is this Umdaar anyhow?

@Nyoze Masters of Umdaar.

Interesting... I'll have to look into that one day as well :\

I still like the chimera I made earlier. His high concept was "Half Zebra. Half Octopus. All Gentleman."

A helpful guide for anyone who is unsure how to use chopsticks:

hey again Nyoze

@Shalvenay Holla

Brb though :)

aah. if you're around for it, I might try running that 3.5e test dungeon

Sure thing, give me like, 20 minutes?

yeah, I'll need the same 20mins or so, maybe somewhat longer -- in EVE Online doing logibro stuff atm

Eww :P

I tried Eve.... It wasn't worth paying for lol

@Nyoze you really have to get into PvP and the meta to make it worthwhile -- its not a game you can just sit back and play casually, raiding every now and again.

i found i enjoyed reading about things that happened in eve a lot more than i enjoyed actually playing eve

Yeah. I was just trying to make some money mining, but it just took wayyyy too long to get started.

@ObliviousSage EVE is lots of boredom punctuated by sweet,sweet bursts of pure thrill

Yeah, see? I don't like the lots of boredom part :(

@Nyoze yeah, mining is not exactly an easy way to get started. EVE industry in general is a capricious beast b/c it's so tied to the markets

Gods... In the thick of my MMORPG days, I wasn't happy unless I playing a tank and a healer at the same time.

@Nyoze imagine tanking as the healer

@Shalvenay Done that as well :P

One of the RPs I used to play, I had a high level healer that I'd gather mobs, and then use a low level character to AoE.

@Nyoze heheh. even better: tank, heal, direct DPS, minion-mastering, commanding fellow fleetmates, and maneuvering all at the same time

(although that by no means is the crowning moment of my EVE career ;) that title would go to one of my scouting feats)

@ObliviousSage This is Not Found for me! :(

@doppelgreener Occasionally that site blocks linking directly to images. Try this link.

HA!

@Shalvenay Yeah... When you're controlling a whole fleet, sure, why not?

@Nyoze haha :P that was 1 ship doing it all. but on a different note...if you can whip up a 3.5e char without needing too much help from me, I suppose we can get started with the dungeon test

Any class in particular?

Or a format for character sheet?

@Nyoze no particulars on class, but this dungeon is light on combat and heavy on utility, I will say that much. also, we'll be using Roll20's sheets for this :)

Well, shoot me a link then and I'll start filling one out.

@Nyoze hrm, any way to do it without posting it for everyone to see, or should I not care? :)

Just email it to me, have you still got my email?

@Nyoze don't think so, no

Ah. [email protected]

Or just post a link and then delete it.

Up to you

sent

> It (chlorine trifluoride) is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water--with which it reacts explosively.

(John Clark in Ignition!, quoted here)

And then I found astatine.

> Research is limited by its short half-life, which prevents the creation of weighable quantities. A visible piece of astatine would immediately vaporize itself because of the heat generated by its intense radioactivity.

@BESW Not feeling too hot today. Might still be OK for the game this evening.

@doppelgreener Thanks for the heads-up. We'd love to have you, but don't push yourself. If playing instead of GMing would help, that can be arranged.

Otherwise we'll find something to do.

That might help :)

I'll let you know

don't make yourself worse if you don't feel up to GMing

Our yesterday's game of tremulus had turned out to be a game of marital horror. There were dark conspiracies and creepy possibly not-human people around, sure. But one of the characters had cheated on another last game, and no one trusted anyone, and it was great.

There was just enough creepiness and secrets floating around that players had them to bounce off, and incorporate into conversations. Without them, it'd be a boring drama. Without drama, it'd be a usual adventuring party solving a mystery. Entwined together, I could sit back for the large part of the game, and watch them squirm, and laugh at how increasingly more screwed they were becoming.

They'd reach for dice to Read a Person against one another repeatedly, and bad things happen if you roll poorly.

Very cool.

I'm reminded of my favourite Cthulhu Dark sessions.

cheated on in what way?

were they playing people in a relationship?

The characters are married. But one is a performer. And, well. They moved to a new city to start a new life, dammit.

That sounds amazing :)

@BESW :DDDDDDDDD ClF3 is wonderful stuff -- it's even used in industry (it does a real bang-up job getting pesky oxides off the inside of CVD chambers in semiconductor work)

@Shalvenay I'm loving that guy's articles.

The State Key Laboratory of Explosion Science and Technology is the sort of thing Atomic Robo plots are made of.

(source)

@BESW Derek Lowe is indeed awesome

I just came across him via the comments on this comic.

@BESW @trogdor I won't be in tonight but dan will be

If you want to do dwarf stuff, you have my blessing

Okay. Hope you feel better!

Thanks. I'm just feeling a bit out of it and dizzy and stuffy.

sounds like you should relax today

mmhm, i've had an intense week and lots of short sleep, which is probably why

You do that sleep thing.

i did that until like 1pm and will do it again soon :)

Is there a correct process for contesting a question being closed as a duplicate?

@CrusaderJ Post a question on meta.

You can more or less say that.

If you have official business about the site itself, rpg meta is always the go to place.

Masters of Umdaar was a success.

We had a cyborg cattaur psychic and a cyborg snaketaur illusionist and a robot bounty hunter. The snaketaur was a princess of one of the Dark Domains, adventuring to get power and influence so she could overthrow her parents and bring her kingdom into the Lands of the Light. The cattaur was her advisor. The robot was hired to find them, and then joined them (exactly how was left totally unexplained, it's just the sort of thing that happens in these stories).

We flirted with a mercenary, adopted a laser-wolf, escaped a deathtrap using proper grammar, acquired a powerful sword (you shout its name to strike fear in an enemy!), and got an arch nemesis who vowed that we'd regret refusing her offer.

The attendant group felt that this was an appropriate and awesome add-on setting for our main campaign.

The idea that our one-shot tonight would be considered canon at some point on our main-campaign timeline was especially well received.

..I want a laser-wolf.

@BESW Sounds great!

I don't usually play with premade settings/adventures, but Umdaar hits enough of the right notes that I might give it a shot.

Same here, really.

I've spent a couple months trying to figure out how to build exactly what Umdaar's doing.

I have a great love of Thundercats. More so the reboot than the original, but goodness, I cannot dislike 80s-style adventure cheese. A tool to channel this is more than welcome.

My players said it felt very Thundercats, but we all agreed that might be mostly because it's the only touchstone for this sort of 80s planetary romance that we all share.

To me it definitely felt like Thundercats and He-man were the primary inspirations, but similarly, I have more experience with those.

Those laser wolves are making me think of Zoids, though. Hmm... my memory is probably too fuzzy to run a Zoids game, but I can still think about how cool it would be.

I was a little nonplussed by the assumption that random generation and random re generation was just immediately accepted by all the players personally

the system seems to think everyone is ok with their characters being randomly changed by something

Oh, right. Trogdor's robot had the honour of picking up the massively powerful plot-based artefact, and was surprised when it promptly attempted to re-write his molecular makeup.

which isn't to say that is some horrible sin, but some people such as myself don't prefer our robot characters to turn into ostrich sharks,....

That's not a casual everyday thing. That's a "you're wielding pure Plotonium, there are going to be side effects" thing.

@BESW this is part of my issue with it

surprised

now maybe if I knew beforehand, I would have left said artefact for someone else to pick up first

but I was not informed by the game that picking things up might randomly change my character

and I am also a person who generally doesn't want his characters to change without my own decision or prior consent

yes, they should have some character development, they should slowly start to do things differently

I don't think randomly turning from a robot into an ostrich shark, with no prior warning that the action I took can do that is covered by that

not to blame anyone in particular

I just think there is at least a slight disconnect between the ideas of the setting/rulset and my game style

they think the idea is awesome, and honestly I think it is awesome that they think it is awesome

I just also think, for starters, there is buy in that I may or may not have ever gone with, but which the game itself kinda didn't give me the kind of chance to realize that that I would have liked?

Yeah, that was surprising to me too. It said "look at page X for drawbacks on major artefacts like this one," and I grabbed the first one on the page.

If it were an adventure I'd made myself, I would've telegraphed it.

yeah

and I get that

So that's not a game philosophy thing.

and again, I don't even blame the creators/designers

That's a "GM using someone else's semi-random prep" thing.

they can't foresee everything

And frankly, Raycia would've been delighted if it'd been her PC turning into an ostrich shark.

like the fact that some people are like me and don't like that stuff

@BESW yeah, and I imagine more people like her in that regard than people like me

so I don't blame them for possibly seeing that and thinking it is awesome

I wouldn't necessarily imagine more people like that. Unless clearly temporary, I don't think it would go over with a lot of groups I've played with. There's a certain amount of control a lot of players like to have over their characters, and unless I'm prepared for it, I'm that way too.

maybe you are right

either way, I know what I like personally

and what happened showed a certain disconnect between that and what the game has set to happen sometimes

Again. It's not something that's supposed to happen randomly without warning.

The game doesn't just have it "set to happen sometimes." It's an option for the GM to choose if he thinks it's appropriate. I just chose it mid-session without reading it first.

Ahh, okay.

ah

see, I don't know that from my experience