TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

00:02

also, in 3.x, am I correct in my interpretation that you need ranks in UMD to use an item that casts a spell that's from a different casting domain than your own? (i.e. bards are typically considered arcane casters, so they'd be able to cast from arcane scrolls/... without a UMD check, but to cast from a scroll of Bane, they'd need to roll UMD to do so)

BESW

You need UMD if you don't meet the prerequisites of the item's activation on your own.

Some items require that you have the spell on your class list and others don't.

Shalvenay

@BESW that makes sense, thanks!

BESW

Relephant entry on typical activation triggers.

DuckTapeAl

00:31

@Shalvenay Yeah, I really can't see where dopplegreener and wanderer are coming from.

We allowed one kind of shopping question, then we stopped allowing it.

BESW

There's two issues.

One is a matter of procedure: a number of citizens, myself included, feel the retirement of the recommendation experiment wasn't handled clearly and transparently by the mods. This is different from thinking the retirement was wrong: it's just letting the mods know the way they handled it wasn't received well so they can reflect on it and maybe change how they do things in the future to be more clear.

The other stems from that lack of clarity: the difference between "game recommendation" and game-recommendation, and the relationship between game-recommendation and tool-recommendation was clear to the mods but not to many users who participated in the meta discussion which resulted in both being closed.

It can be legitimately argued that tool-rec and game-rec are sufficiently different in practice (although they're quite similar on paper) that decisions about them need to be made separately.

Sandwich

I think Game-recommendation would be fine as long as there were rules that individual questions had to follow to fit the bill

BESW

If everyone had understood that they were being discussed as one entity in the first place, this could have been addressed before the retirement took place.

DuckTapeAl

@Sandwich That's exactly what we had.

doppelgreener

@BESW Or in my case, didn't participate, but would have.

DuckTapeAl

00:38

@BESW I definitely agree that game and tool rec are different, but aren't they both shopping questions?

doppelgreener

yesterday, by BESW

The recommendation experiment was dropped because we had rules that worked, but the community wasn't able/willing to follow/enforce them strictly enough to keep the quality up.

BESW

@Sandwich ...um. That's exactly what the recommendation experiment was doing, and the conclusion was "These rules work great, but a significant enough portion of the site's users deliberately disobey them that the work to maintain the rules isn't worth the added value to the site."

Shalvenay

@BESW yeah, game-rec vs tool-rec confused me -- I thought the meta discussion was mostly game-rec then SSD slapped a mod close vote on my one and only tool-rec question, which caused me to send close votes the way of a bunch of other tool-rec questions because "hey, apparently tool-rec questions are no good any longer"

Sandwich

Did we have anything that showed up and hot linked to the rules when someone added the game-recommendation tag to their question?

DuckTapeAl

@Sandwich Yes.

doppelgreener

00:40

@DuckTapeAl Yes. The point under contention is whether we discussed shopping questions or not. That's the difference between "game recommendation" - apparently all shopping questions - and game-recommendation - one set of them.

Sandwich

Similar to the "This question appears subjective and will probably be closed"

BESW

@DuckTapeAl Yup. Each Stack adjudicates its shopping policy independently, and the meta which resulted in the closure of all shopping questions on RPG.SE was worded so that many folks thought it was just about one kind of shopping question.

DuckTapeAl

I guess my confusion is that I thought that we had the standard ban on all shopping questions, and only lifted it in the case of game rec.

doppelgreener

All in all the whole conversation went nothing short of catastrophically and whilst I've had time and energy I've been putting together a question to prompt the discussion we should have had.

DuckTapeAl

All the stuff that I read on meta about allowing game rec only ever talked about allowing game rec, and not other shopping questions.

Shalvenay

00:42

@DuckTapeAl tool-rec questions are rare, and mostly consist of a few canonicals and their dupes, which is why you never really knew what was going on in that tag

doppelgreener

@DuckTapeAl Yep, that's what I've been pointing out.

Shalvenay

the only reason I was impacted is because I'm one of the few on this STack who's asked a tool-rec Q recently

BESW

Both game-recommendation AND tool-recommendation were allowed, with some people understanding the latter to be exclusively a subset of the former and others seeing them as separate entities.

doppelgreener

@BESW Under that separate entity interpretation: one with lots of rules attached, the other none at all really beyond standard good behaviour expectations, GSBS, etc.

Shalvenay

@BESW in my mind, they're very separate entities. game-rec seems to be where most of the problems stem from IMO -- tool-rec seems to be an unintended casualty

and oh hey there @Nyoze

BESW

00:44

Personally I think that given our understanding of tags as an evolving folksonomy, it's silly to say "we've always considered X to be true about this tag, so it's still true now by default."

Nyoze

@Shalvenay Heya

BESW

In our practical experience the two tags behave differently, and that's what's important.

DuckTapeAl

I guess I'm just surprised that tool rec was a thing allowed at all, if it's really a shopping tag. :P

Shalvenay

@BESW indeed.

BESW

But all the posts on meta thus far have turned too petty and vindictive for me to add that observation usefully.

Shalvenay

00:45

@DuckTapeAl it's a very weird and specialized shopping tag, with a few canonicals that catch 99% of what's needed out of it.

BESW

It's turned into a clash of personalities rather than a clash of ideas, which leaves no room for people to change their stances without losing face.

Shalvenay

@Nyoze so...have anything more re: the dungeon from last week? :)

(suggestions? comments? questions? complaints?)

@BESW which is aggravating, speaking as an outsider who suddenly got impacted by it

Nyoze

Nothing really jumps to mind. All the electrical stuff was confusing, but that's a good thing I think.

Shalvenay

alrighty then :)

DuckTapeAl

So... are tool rec questions shopping questions, or not? I've been reading stuff about this debate for the past hour or two, and I'm not seeing a clear answer for that.

BESW

00:57

Frankly that's not the right question to be asking. The question is, "is tool-recommendation making a problem for site curation?"

Thus far I haven't seen anyone actually talk about that.

The objections to tool-rec are founded on "they're just a subset of game-rec and also shopping," when "being a shopping question" isn't why game-rec got shut down here at all.

DuckTapeAl

Yes, but "being a shopping question" is why we needed special rules to make game rec work for the site.

BESW

And the support of tool-rec is either "I didn't get to participate in deciding its fate" or "we can change it to make it less shoppy," both of which are also missing the point.

DuckTapeAl

Because, absent a specific exception, shopping is banned network-wide.

BESW

@DuckTapeAl Yes, and we decided the rules don't work for game-rec because the community rejects them.

The way to save tool-rec is to show that the community IS following the rules for that tag.

It's quite simple, really, but it takes a lot more actual work to compile evidence than to argue about procedure and cast blame.

There are procedural challenges that this issue is highlighting. But it's not helping anyone to conflate a discussion about our community's ability to follow a tag's rules with a lack of clarity and a tendency for blame-casting in meta discussions.

These need to be two different topics.

I don't have enough interest in the issues to put that kind of emotional energy into figuring out how to do it.

doppelgreener

@BESW I'm about to create the room in which I publish the draft of the question I'm going to ask for this. Would you have time & energy to help in ensuring it creates a safe enough spot where the right kinds of questions will be asked and get the right kind of answer?

BESW

01:09

Not for hours, maybe days.

You can invite me, of course, but I'm heading out to work now.

doppelgreener

Alright, thanks.

Take care!

Ben

01:36

Question: what is the closest race variant to a Hylian?

DnD 5e

doppelgreener

What are you looking for exactly? In Zelda they're just humans with pointy ears. Is there something special you're looking for on top of that?

Ben

Well the ears were the main giveaway. If you're suggesting they are just humans it would be best if I just went with human then :)

doppelgreener

Zelda wiki says they're just humans. If there's any special qualities on your mind you want to emulate, that might change the answer.

(I am not a zelda lore expert, so if the game ascribes them such qualities, I might not know about that.)

Ben

Not particularly. They really just are humans with pointy ears haha

trogdor

I am not entirely sure why they have pointy ears to begin with

aesthetic choice I guess

Ben

01:54

Maybe I can list it as some kind of deformity :P

doppelgreener

deformity/evolution/advancement, all the same thing

Actually, one sec.

> The Hylians, also known as the Hylia people, are a recurring race of humans in the Legend of Zelda series. Creatures that worship the goddess Hylia, from which their name derives, the Hylians are the original race of Hyrule. It is said that they were created by the Goddesses Or Oocca race. Physically, Hylians resemble other humans, and the only difference appearance-wise between them is the Hylians' long, elf-like ears that supposedly enable them to hear special messages from the goddessess. It is shown that Hylians have an extended life-span, to the point of living for centuries. Their h…

-- Hylian, Zeldapedia

So they're Super People.

Adeptus

02:09

Most obvious choice would be elf. Pointy ears, long life, affinity for magic.

(ignoring the strength aspect)

@doppelgreener Something similar happens in Hogfather

doppelgreener

@Adeptus I see an image that says beebook publishing.

You may want to save and upload whatever t is you're seeing if it's not that.

@Adeptus The strength aspect is pretty important though. They're strong and hardy. Link isn't the magical hero of being smart, he's the magical hero of kicking tremendous amounts of butt and looking great doing it.

What I mean by Super People though is this. Zelda, being a video game where you play as one particular Hylian, gets to have a particular conceit: you're part of an ancient race who has all the things humans do, except all those things are slightly better, plus you have unusual powers to boot. So does that Zelda girl, and various other people important to the plot. In D&D, where all races are supposed to be equal, including to humans, that won't translate as well.

Adeptus

02:32

@doppelgreener yes, that was replying to BESW's comment (somewhere back there ^^^) that bookkeeping is a better word than beekeeping

So, anyone who's been following my ongoing saga of the (mostly)core-only 3.5 game might remember that I was dissatisfied with the usefulness of my Ranger, and that the Cleric's player was threatening to leave. Well, after some indecision, he has left. As a result of the two, I am now considering switching to a Cleric.

What is slightly frustrating is that all the charop guides assume all books are in use. Making it hard to pull out the core-only options. But, since clerics are usually regarded as tier 1, and the rest of the party aren't optimising (except maybe the druid), I guess I can just do whatever & still be relevant.

Ben

02:47

@doppelgreener So I guess I'll be using the Variant Human then :P

doppelgreener

@Adeptus Sounds useful. You're definitely going to get a power bump.

Shalvenay

@Adeptus pretty much -- even core-only, a Cleric still is very relevant

doppelgreener

05:02

Sep 18 '14 at 4:33, by Lord_Gareth

Every time someone tells me they're running core-only to reduce game breaking loopholes or combos, I want to cry in frustration and rage. Because all of those loopholes ultimately involve core, and the majority of the worst ones are entirely core. All of the most powerful options in 3.5 are core. The most powerful classes and races in the game are core

Sep 18 '14 at 4:34, by Lord_Gareth

The most powerful spells in the game are core, with only ice assassin entering the arena later on.

Sep 18 '14 at 4:34, by Lord_Gareth

The game's most powerful feats? Core.

Sep 18 '14 at 4:35, by Lord_Gareth

You will solve more problems in 3.5 by banning core than you will by banning any number of other books

Sep 18 '14 at 4:35, by Lord_Gareth

Rant concluded

(followed by a thank you)

This is 3.5e, but the Pathfinder Core Rulebook is pretty close to just being the 3.5e PHB apparently

Rest assured you will have a lot of powerful options right at your fingertips.

(By the way, "most powerful options" includes Cleric and some of its spells.)

Novian

@BESW Surfs Up! Waves

doppelgreener

@BESW This link doesn't work anymore! Did you (re)move it?

doppelgreener

05:40

@Pixie Ollo!

Pixie

@doppelgreener Hihi.

doppelgreener

How's things?

Pixie

Pretty good. Had a fun time at con this past weekend. Made some people happy with my cosplay. :D How are you?

doppelgreener

That's excellent. :D Have you worsened your shelf space problems during your con visit?

Pixie

... yes. TwT

doppelgreener

05:50

I'm pretty great. \o/ Weekend wasn't so good but things are better now. Weird things are going on. Lots of things are going well. We're experiencing continuing tensions with one of our housemates and I'm steadily reaching the conclusion that although things are working better with her, it might be the case that I like her but do not like living with her. And the same is probably the case for others. So, um, there is that.

Other than that things are in alignment and looking peachy.

Althis

I am pretty bored, so I am entertaining myself imagining what your "con" was.

doppelgreener

@BESW Did that chat invite from earlier work, or have you received no such thing?

Althis

And how you almost didn't pull it of when your mark ran out of shelf space.

And you had to call Pierce Brosnan to finish the job.

doppelgreener

@Pixie This is a fun kind of problem to have at least.

@Althis This is pretty much exactly how it happens. I have it on good authority.

Althis

Sometimes Matt Damon does the trick.

But he was unavailable conning the guys from Penny Arcade.

Pixie

05:55

@doppelgreener That is unfortunate. :( I hope the situation can be resolved as cleanly as possible. Sometimes that does happen... someone can be a lovely person to know but not necessarily to live with.

BESW

@doppelgreener I didn't get any invite, but I know the chat exists and can find it in the site rooms list.

@doppelgreener Yes, I removed it due to terminal user error.

doppelgreener

@BESW Cool, good. :)

(I clearly have no idea how to invite people. Might be there is no such thing I guess.)

@BESW Will you be putting it back? I'm interested in reading it.

@Pixie I hope so too! All of my diplomacy abilities will have to come to the fore for this one. This person is unpredictable and impulsive, so I have concerns about revenge via property damage, but I don't know them well enough to know if they'll actually break anything.

BESW

@doppelgreener Umdaar bioform tendencies.

doppelgreener

@BESW Oh my gosh there is a thing called a swashbuckler.

Pixie

@doppelgreener Ouch. Best of luck.

BESW

06:03

@doppelgreener Classes are nothing more than flavour for your approach values.

Swashbucklers are +3 Flashy; +2 Forceful, Careful; +1 Quick, Clever; +0 Sneaky.

So when I say that a bioform is inclined to a certain class, it's just "these are the listed classes with a +3 in that bioform's typically favoured approach."

doppelgreener

From a friend's status:

> Got around to watching Rick & Morty. So far it is the best two seasons of Doctor Who to come out in the last decade.

3

@BESW I see there's plants, but are Mutawarriors remotely related to what Stellata is?

BESW

I think she's more of a Beastman.

Mutawarriors are like the X-Men: basically human but with inherent unique superpowers.

Beastmen are humanoid animals whose abilities stem from their animal nature.

And for purposes of Umdaarian mechanics, "plant" is just a kind of animal.

doppelgreener

@BESW I find the quirk of this classification quite enjoyable.

Beastman sounds right.

BESW

06:18

(There isn't any place where they lay out all of this stuff; it's just implied through the tables and mechanics and incidental flavour. Hence why I made the document, to collate it.)

doppelgreener

My thinking is: Stellata should totally be a Swashbuckler with Flashy at +3. I know this game has opinions on plants being careful, but Stellata is probably not the kind of plant this game had in mind when it decided what plants were.

(And Stellata is not a plant from Umdaar.)

BESW

Interesting.

(And for the record, I'm not planning to ask you guys to translate your ARRPG characters into Umdaarian mechanics. I'm going to inflict your ARRPG characters on Umdaar.)

doppelgreener

Beautiful. 8)

BESW

Umdaarians will still be using FAE mechanics. I'm going to boost the numbers a little bit so their mechanical effectiveness matches their narrative effectiveness in ARRPG terms, but that's all.

doppelgreener

Oh wow. So, we'll be using ARRPG mechanics including skills and stunts, and Umdaarians will be using approaches and their form of stunts?

That could work out pretty great.

BESW

06:56

@doppelgreener It's an experiment that could go horribly wrong, but I have high hopes.

BESW

07:20

Help me, @Magician, you're one of my few hopes!

0

Q: Does it matter who adds coins to the Despair coffer?

I suspect I'm fretting over a trivial loose end in the rules, but I might be missing something pretty fundamental about the coin economy, so I'd like to get it cleared up. On page 24, the book says that when pain dominates it "has a game effect of requiring the player to place a coin of despair ...

Magician

Oh, you are so doomed.

BESW

I've also got a question about where Hope coins go that will probably be cleared up by this one so I'm not asking it yet.

Magician

I'll give a quick answer now, without actually re-reading the rules, simply from memory.

BESW

Interesting.

I was thinking that having the GM be the one to fill up the Despair coffer might be more dramatic.

But yeah.

And that implies things which answer my question about Hope coins, so okay.

Magician

Yeah, it works just fine if you cackle as you put the coin in yourself.

BESW

08:07

Also, @Magician.

0

Q: Actual Play of Don't Rest Your Head one-shot exemplar

I'm planning my first Don't Rest Your Head session for next weekend, and I'm feeling like I just don't get it yet. A solid one-session Actual Play recording of a Don't Rest Your Head game could really help me out here. Audio-only (podcast-style) is preferable, but a video works too. Text-only w...

session-summaries dont-rest-your-head

Magician

That, I can't help you with, sorry. Never was one for Actual Plays.

BESW

Neither was I, but recently I've been using them for crash courses in new systems.

BESW

09:13

@revenant Hi!

eimyr

10:12

Hello

BESW

Yawp.

Two DRYH questions posted within an hour of each other. First answered, second not. The second question has accumulated more upvotes than the first question AND its answer combined.

trogdor

how would someone answer the second one?

just provide a link?

BESW

A link, and a description of how it meets my criteria.

BESW

10:46

...I wish I had time to run another practice session of DRYH.

The core mechanic is super-simple, but the system has complex event triggers and a strict atmosphere pressure.

trogdor

yeah

it is odd

I could run something if you are still not up to it, though it would have to be an ARRPG session and it would be relatively un-prepped

BESW

11:08

No, I think I can manage. I'm just really nervous.

And I may ask you to let me interfere a little more than normal with Doctor Light's opening scenario.

Since we're kinda using him as the lynchpin of the thing.

trogdor

I don't mind that I think

on one hand it is a loss of player agency to some degree, on the other hand, it is not that much loss, nor is it, I assume prolonged

and I expect whatever you do will amuse me regardless

BESW

I think I can manage that.

BESW

11:43

@trogdor One thing this will change: you can make Doctor Light's madness talent whatever you like, don't worry about the plans we talked about earlier.

trogdor

ok

BESW

Give him the power to harness light, maybe.

trogdor

couldn't everyone do that anyway technically ?

BESW

hm?

Do what anyway?

trogdor

have whatever as a madness talent

BESW

11:48

yeah. But we'd talked about some specific talents for Doctor Light that would fuel the plot.

trogdor

oh

BESW

I'm gonna change the scenario so we don't need his madness talent to be anything in particular for it to work.

Also I'm going to offer you to start him with a couple Madness dice if you want. It's totally your choice: he'll be more powerful, but more erratic.

@Anaphory [wave]

Anaphory

@BESW Hi! I haven't been around in a while, y'all well?

BESW

Doing okay. Yourself?

I'm currently stressing out over my next session; gonna be running a new system that I'm not very confident about.

Anaphory

Yep, handed in my PhD and have been on the road essentially since. Not done much RPGing in between, and now I need to find new people to play with.

BESW

11:52

Grats!

Anaphory

Cheers!

Still to much work on too many articles that want publishing in the near future, but meh. The big chunk is done.

BESW

That's a good feel.

Anaphory

Yes! It's also good to be back in a position where I can travel around and meet people and not feel like time is running out. So that's what I did the last month.

BESW

12:17

@Anaphory So, what kind of group are you looking for?

Anaphory

Maybe two: One for a continuing campaign using a well-designed system, generally narrative, rules-light and not tone-black (some dark shades appreciated) and one to try new, interesting and maybe even somewhat whacky games. At least one of them physical, because the digital games I've been in in the past felt slow and made me easily go distracted.

BESW

Do you have a FLGS in the area?

Anaphory

Yep, even two, and an RPG club. I just have been on the road too much recently to stop by them properly.

BESW

Excellent!

Anaphory

Oh, and my sister just told me there's an RPG convention this weekend. Yay!

BESW

12:23

Ooh.

never been to one of those.

trogdor

we don't get many cons here XD

Anaphory

That RPG club organises like 3 a year. The one this weekend is new and in a different town and venue, though.

Aaron

Good morning

Anaphory

Good afternoon!

BESW