TRPG General Chat

BESW

00:43

Shaenon Garrity's comic summaries of the X-Files are awesome.

doppelgreener

00:58

@BESW Apparently D&D 5e's magic runs on The Weave. If that's in-game knowledge, its people have more or less deduced their version of string theory. I am increasingly sure they'd know about hit dice. :)

4

BESW

01:58

A flamingo made of diamonds is born in Venice.

Tweeted by MagicRealismBot on February 22, 2016 at 1:48 AM

Campaign hook for a Weird Heist game, or a Weird Veterinarian game?

nitsua60

kidney stones=rubies. (Do flamingos even have kidneys?)

wax eagle

@nitsua60 very quick research indicates that yes, they do

nitsua60

Excellent. Rubies it is, then!

wax eagle

birds don't have bladders tho...

Shalvenay

02:26

hey there @nitsua60

BESW

02:41

Can Dungeons & Dragons Make You A Confident & Successful Person? | Idea Channel | PBS

►

Interesting ideas that we've probably seen explored elsewhere, but concise and well expressed and bringing in various contexts that I haven't seen before.

(Also contains one of the better images of an owlbear I've seen for a long time.)

BESW

02:59

@doppelgreener Because I've been watching a lot of Idea Channel lately, you've reminded me of mathematical realism and now I'm thinking about realism vs fictionalism in a D&D world.

While we can debate the reality or fictionalism of maths in our existence, in D&D maths exist objectively (mathematical principles are discovered, not invented, by people living in a D&D world) because --whether we invented or discovered maths ourselves-- maths were used to create that world and are inherent to it.

...but would a D&D-world mathematician be able to distinguish this? Would he also debate with his peers about the reality or fictionality of maths?

Shalvenay

@BESW that is a really good question!

BESW

...further, would a D&D-world mathematician be able to discover/invent mathematical principles which are discoverable/inventible in our world, but which we don't know yet?

Shalvenay

@BESW observability is one of the questions that doesn't get asked often enough in RP

BESW

Would there be other mathematical principles he could discover/invent which would be true inside D&D but not true/useful/supportable in our world?

I think at the end of the day the answer is "Shut up, I'm killing dragons."

Shalvenay

@BESW hahahaha

BESW

03:11

The fictional world isn't rigorous enough to stand up to such meta-inquiry.

Shalvenay

@BESW indeed, it is not -- very few fictional worlds are

BESW

It's curious, though, to see which fictional worlds are considered as sufficiently rigorous.

Regardless of their actual rigour, some worlds are viewed as rigorous and some aren't.

Some people don't even consider our personal reality sufficiently rigorous for meta-analysis to yield any useful results.

Shalvenay

@BESW what are examples of this? (worlds that are perceived as rigorous but aren't, worlds that are not perceived as rigorous but are, and worlds that are rightly perceived as rigorous)

BESW

Others expect, eg, Star Trek to be rigorous enough to withstand scrutiny but Doctor Who to not admit similar analysis.

One of the biggest attractions of Lord of the Rings is its simulation of rigour.

A setting like, eg, Spirit of the Century, doesn't have sufficient internal mechanism for a rigorous physical or mathematical analysis to hang itself on.

All fictional worlds will eventually, given sufficiently rigorous analysis, collapse into either our own reality or unresolvable internal contradictions.

At best, you'll get a fictional world which is content to allow active contradictions as a truth state.

But I think the only reality which might be truly rigorous in its own state is our own; rigorous fiction is simply hanging its hat on the same hatrack as our reality. And even then, we're still poking at bits of our reality (like the realism or fictionalism of mathematics) and going "Hmm... undecided. More tests!"

doppelgreener

@BESW that was fun to listen to

BESW

04:21

@user26914 Hi! You'll need at least 20 rep on any one Stack Exchange site before you can type in chat rooms, but you're welcome to hang out until then.

BESW

05:24

→ 64 messages moved to Not a bar, but plays one on TV

Adeptus

05:43

For those that are interested, Scrivener is half price again

2

Ben

@Miniman, been a while but if you're around would you care to continue that conversation about possibly re-rolling our characters?

Miniman

@Ben I don't 100% remember which conversation you're referring to, but sure!

BESW

06:04

@That_Knight_Guy [wave]

That_Knight_Guy

@BESW Hello!

BESW

What's new?

That_Knight_Guy

Not much. Just finished my homework for the night

How about you?

BESW

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around a particularly complex NPC.

doppelgreener

@BESW James?

BESW

06:07

Yeah.

He's really hard to reduce to a set of short, pithy phrases.

doppelgreener

Anything you want to talk over? (Maybe in Fate chat)

BESW

Not right now. I'm mulling him over while doing laundry.

doppelgreener

Ok. :)

BESW

(My car's in the shop, so I'm stuck at home and I find myself doing chores as well as work.)

doppelgreener

When it's convenient, let me know what you've got so far for his modes and aspects, and I too will mull it over.

BESW

06:10

Modes are easy:

> TELEPATH (9) - Deceive, Empathy, Hallucinations, Provoke, Rapport, Will
BANTER (9) - Contacts, Deceive, Empathy, Provoke, Rapport, Will
CULTIST (9) - Burglary, Contacts, Deceive, Notice, Provoke, Rapport, Stealth

I don't have much for current aspects, except the idea that it's probably best to not try to capture nuance in each one: I think he's best described as a collection of extreme aspects that contradict each other in interesting ways.

(Context for the rest of chat: James was a ~20-year-old cult initiate played by Greener in a 30-years-ago flashback focused on the youth of a PC who was also an initiate. James was later established as an NPC antagonist in our contemporary campaign, and due to some world-spanning paradigm shifts he's going to be a reluctant ally of ours soon. I'm working on rebuilding him to reflect his new role.)

doppelgreener

@Magician 13th age question may need your assistance to clarify.

Magician

Seems reasonably clear to me, especially with the new comment.

doppelgreener

@BESW We can start with the basics. Concept: Idealistic Leader of the Black Raven Hivemind. Telepath: Burdened with the Gift of the Crystal Skull. Cultist: Chaos makes society flourish.

Magician

I can't find a ready-made list like the querent is asking for, though.

BESW

@doppelgreener I think an equivalent request would be for this Atomic Robo timeline which obviates the need to read the entire comic collection and expansion material in order to get an understanding of who's who and what's what.

doppelgreener

06:21

@BESW Yeah, just had to check.

BESW

06:42

@doppelgreener Hmm. That's a very good start. Got any ideas for the Omega? Something about his "thief" element?

doppelgreener

@BESW "Ninjas are cool"

hahaha not necessarily actually

BESW

Or his position in Hollywood's social strata?

Networking the Weird and the Wild.

doppelgreener

Hmmm. If he has Contacts, who are his Contacts?

BESW

@Xavier Hi! You'll need at least 20 rep on any one Stack Exchange site before you can type in chat rooms, but you're welcome to hang out until then.

doppelgreener

apart from, yaknow, his hivemind participants. those aren't his contacts though, they're him. And having contacts in your own organisation is boring.

Maybe he's a film producer. Or in his off time he's become a wicked investor in startups. Kinda helps when you have psychic powers and a literal army's brainpower at your disposal.

BESW

06:48

@doppelgreener Influential figures in the Weird community, and in the social/political communities that frequent Hollywood.

Given his cult's previous work in creating modern tech that could survive Weirdness, he may be a tech guru helping rebuild the film industry.

doppelgreener

Shadowy entrepreneur of a hundred startups

Do we need something weird? He's probably got a company doing R&D on that thing. Wait a minute, what are our enemies doing with those? Wait, that's who that customer was? NOooooooOOOooo~

BESW

I think that, in the new Weirder world, he's probably pretty "out" about his cult and what it can do.

doppelgreener

@BESW Eccentric entrepreneur then?

BESW

When Godzilla and a bunch of vampires are petitioning for seats on the UN, a cult hivemind isn't gonna get a lot of attention--especially in Hollywood.

Magician

Is there a collective name for the... cultural trend of being Weird? There's hipsters, and punks, and... Oddbals? Wagers (Weird Age)?

BESW

06:53

(a lot of people probably think "Oh, yeah, my aunt was in one of those in the 80s.")

We haven't established any vocabulary or slang yet.

[spitballs madly] The Nibiru-1 Object is associated with the new Weirdness. N-1 = None... no. 1-O = Wonnoh? Meh. N1O... N10... N-Ten... Antenna?

Magician

Noneabe (wannabe) - for people who're not Weird, but really want to be.

Spelling is hard.

BESW

Heh.

@Mazura [wave]

Mazura

Why not detect evil? Or know alignment? rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/75984/…

@BESW Sup yo!

Miniman

@Mazura Just because someone is evil doesn't mean they're a doppelganger.

Mazura

No, but if the party is good...

Miniman

07:03

@Mazura Still lots of potential reasons for it, though.

Doppelgangers is one, for sure.

Magician

Don't forget intellect devourers.

Mazura

OP says they're a cleric, so they're either good or evil, right?

Miniman

@Mazura Nope.

Mazura

I see. Ok carry on ;p

BESW

> A cleric's alignment must be within one step of her deity's, along either the law/chaos axis or the good/evil axis. (source)

Miniman

07:07

@Mazura Clerics can be any alignment. Technically any alignment within one step of their deity.

doppelgreener

@Magician @BESW Remember that "become a vampire" spam we were getting a little while ago..?

Ben

@Miniman I'm back again haha. It was in relation to this question

Miniman

@Ben Ah, yeah. I remember now. I was giving the mean advice.

Ben

"Re-roll and balance better?"

Miniman

Well, "See it as an opportunity not a problem".

As of last Friday, 3 of my 4 players have rerolled.

Ben

07:09

Yeah. Which is fair comment. No one really gets it right on the first round.

Miniman

2 of them are definitely happier with their new characters, 1 remains to be seen.

It's also worth pointing out that their new characters are several thousand times easier for me.

Ben

Honestly, part of the problem is that everyone is very attached to their characters.

Magician

This bird laughs like it just defeated Sailor Moon. https://vine.co/v/M9h2D3pt6iJ

Tweeted by RainbirdArt on February 18, 2016 at 8:21 AM

Miniman

Running a campaign with an imbalanced party is tough.

Ben

Our DM has made comment of that regard once or twice

doppelgreener

07:11

@Magician <- @Pixie

Miniman

Note: Not a weak or strong party, just an imbalanced one.

My players' original group consisted of one tank and 3 ranged squishies.

trogdor

@doppelgreener I agree

XD

Mazura

@Miniman Is my comment here what you're talking about?

BESW

@Miniman Been there, tried that, ragequit d20 systems.

Miniman

@Mazura Nope.

Mazura

07:12

What unbalances a party?

Miniman

@Mazura For example, for a while my players were running with one extremely tanky melee and 3 extremely squishy spellcasters.

So if I focused on the melee it was kind of boring for me and 3 of the players and kind of frustrating for the melee.

If I didn't focus on the melee I'd be likely to cause character deaths.

Mazura

So a warrior with 20 in Constitution... ? ;)

Ben

@Miniman Ok, so say the party survives. Personally, I really do want to multi-class, and definitely at least as some form of healer. Currently at level 5, what class should I go with?

Or, more broadly set, what would be your suggestions to balance out the party better, other than re-rolling?

Miniman

@Mazura It's not about individuals. Ben's group has 5 melees with hardly any spellcasting capability. Every character is a perfectly normal character, but the party is a very strange one.

@Ben You're the Eldritch Knight, right?

doppelgreener

There is the option of playing games like Dungeon World where the concept of an "unbalanced party" is strange and foreign

Ben

07:15

No, I'm the BattleMaster

Mazura

I'm only barely familiar with old school D&D. Was this always a problem?

doppelgreener

Or if you think putting laser weapons and energy beings in your fantasy adventures is cool, then there's Masters of Umdaar, a game inspired by He-Man and Thundercats and other 80s/90s cartoons like them. Also a game where an unbalanced party is a strange and foreign idea.

Miniman

@Ben Hmmm.

@Ben Specced for Dex or Str? Also, any good mental stats?

Ben

@Miniman Str and Wis

Int isn't so great

BESW

In my experience, the most unmanageable imbalance was a situation where some PCs wouldn't feel like they were in danger unless attacks were very powerful while other PCs were very vulnerable to moderate attacks, and similarly some PCs could inflict power effects quite easily unless defences were very high while other PCs could only achieve moderate effects and then only when defences were fairly low.

Mazura

07:19

P.P.P.P.P.P.

BESW

This meant an encounter would tend to kill one squishy guy, and then be one-shot by the first powerful guy who got a turn.

Ben

@BESW We have a mixture of all of that in our party. And it's especially difficult because we're 90% melee based

BESW

If I made it to last longer than one turn against the powerful PCs, it'd wipe the floor with half the party. If I made it so everyone had a chance to survive, the monster might not even get a turn.

Ben

I can say that I have tried to make the melee more even however, trying to cooperate with my teammates. (Though that really just turned out to be the Rogue, as the 2 Barbarians always just run in and wreck stuff)

BESW

So now I play games where character options are defined in ways that don't significantly impact how much a PC can or can't contribute, and where failure doesn't usually imply death.

2

(Unless we're playing Great Ork Gods, and then we chose it because we want to watch our PCs suffer horribly meaningless slapstick fates.)

Mazura

07:23

But... but, we wanna fight the dawagon!

Miniman

@Ben Wis is pretty nice for these purposes. The big problem is Battlemaster - all of the multiclassing options for healing pretty much scale with level or spell slots, so if you were EK (for example), you could dip to get healing then keep leveling EK to improve it.

But as Battlemaster you'd pretty much have to leave your class behind and become something new starting 5 levels behind.

I'm not really comfortable recommending it, but you could stay in Fighter and use your level 6 feat to pick up Healer.

Ben

:/

doppelgreener

@BESW Example: Masters of Umdaar gives you characters who are defined in terms of in which way they contribute: forcefully, cleverly, carefully, quickly, sneakily, or flashily. You're always going to be fairly good at three of those. Challenges are more or less your forte depending on whether your approach will tend to work well. You can almost always make one of your top three work well.

@BESW Example 2: Cthulhu Dark usually guarantees you at least 1 die you can contribute toward doing anything, because you're probably doing something regular people can do. Then you can find ways to apply your professional niche, and you can always risk your sanity, and those will give you 1 or 2 extra dice to roll. 3 is the maximum anyone's ever going to roll. Anytime you roll, you are going to succeed, it's just a matter of how well - except in rare cases where you have opposition.

Miniman

@Ben You can heal each member of the party once per short or long rest for 1d6 + 10, gaining an additional +1 every level. You also (equally importantly) can get a party member who goes down back on their feet.

BESW

In our last Masters of Umdaar session, we fought a monster that was a cross between a Tremors graboid and a Dune Sandworm. It ate two of our characters.

One of them cut his way out and the other rigged an already-eaten car engine to explode in its stomach. In the worm's death throes it destroyed most of our mission objective, but we managed to find something useful in the rubble. Getting eaten was a gateway to more exciting stuff that led to more complications for us to overcome.

Miniman

07:29

@Ben Technically speaking, it costs gold, but 0.5 gp isn't a cost worth worrying about. On the other hand, one reason I'm really uncomfortable recommending it is that potions can do the same thing. They cost 50x as much, but it's not like gold is a huge issue. They heal slightly less, but don't have the once per short rest limitation.

doppelgreener

@BESW I made that engine explode with my spear! :D

BESW

@doppelgreener Even more emblematic, I think: A PC with a narrowly focused speciality in 21st century computing was faced with an utterly alien 4k-year-old magic-crystal-based computer system. Her player was able to come up with a decent reason why she could plug her iPad into it, so that suddenly her useless speciality was central to the story.

Mazura

It's my one damn job on this ship and I'm going to do it!

doppelgreener

@BESW and then she made the attacking spaceship's entire payload activate inside its own cargo bays, and destroyed it and saved the day.

Mazura

@BESW What was the reason? USB-crystal2.0 port?

BESW

07:41

@Mazura Another PC had spent the previous adventure lost in time and space, and we'd established but not gone into detail that he'd visited Atlantis. Which is where this crystal computer is from.

So she spent a fate point to say that he'd been consulted on designing it, and he'd installed a Linux emulator and a USB port.

doppelgreener

@BESW That was me actually! I think I was the one who declared there were USB ports, so that she could do her thing.

BESW

Ah, right.

Mazura

The OG Backdoor. Nice one.

BESW

(And @trogdor was the one whose PC had been in Atlantis.)

doppelgreener

(But I love that I can do that thing. I've been spending a lot of fate points recently to the effect of: "now that other player is enabled to do their cool thing in a new way that will help move the plot forward!")

Miniman

07:43

@Ben For the sake of contrast, a level of Life Cleric would get you 2 1d8 + 3 + Wis heals per day. Not exactly spectacular. A level of Druid would get you 20 HP worth of healing per day, but only usuable 1 HP at a time, so not really practical in combat.

BESW

It makes the experience much more cooperative; one of our players had been worried because their experience of RPGs was that it encouraged conflict for resources ("Who gets the magic sword, because not everyone who needs it can have it?") and they didn't want that. Took me some convincing to get them to try RPGs again to see that some systems encourage table-level cooperation even during PC-level conflict.

eimyr

09:44

@Mazura Hey, it's Chicago city flag! I recognise it from the TED talk!

BESW

Ooer. I... feel irrationally guilty for not knowing that.

eimyr

And I'm not even American. Shame... shame... shame...

BESW

My dad's family is from Chicago, but I've only visited three times, once when I was too young to remember.

It's not a very... engaged... extended family.

Speaking of families, @doppelgreener & @Pixie here, this is for you.

eimyr

Apparently it's USA's second best city flag.

Mazura

I feel bad, I can't name the stars.

eimyr

09:52

I'm not getting into the debate about USA flag, I don't want to be hanged.

Mazura

the river, the fire, the... uh

eimyr

@MAzura nope, the river(s) are the bands

fort, fire, and two expos, which are a bit of a stretch

BESW

"The Rivers are the Bands" would be a good name for a compilation folk album.

Mazura

I like it.

eimyr

@BESW it would be better as The Bands are The Rivers.

@Adeptus Is scrivener useful as a GM tool?

BESW

09:59

@eimyr Here's the last time we had that conversation.

eimyr

Can Scrivener have a pointer between cards?

BESW

I'll have to go check.

Sejanus

hi

eimyr

@Sejanus Hi.

What's new?

BESW

[wave]

eimyr

10:06

Oh, Lithuania! How exciting! How's life in Kaunas?

@BESW I like to have a graph or a mesh of cards each pointing to each other and groups of cards all collapsible under a super-card, which also form self contained graph structure. The catch is that I NEED the pointers to also have labels each, so that I can form a structure like A----loves---->B, A---works with--->C, C---hates--->B etc.

BESW

Scrivener has ways to indicate those relationships, but they aren't that way.

Sejanus

hey eimyr :) rainy and boring and not at all exciting ;)

how about you

eimyr

Warmer than recently,a morning with no defrosting is a good one.

@Sejanus Also, I'm excited as I come from Poland next door. Slavs are uncommon around the site AFAIK.

Sejanus

are they

eimyr

@BESW Shame. I really wish there was some polished software capable of doing that.

Sejanus

10:19

is rpg generally popular in poland?

BESW

@eimyr Hmm. Maurycy Zarzycki, Martin Sojka, and Shaamaan are all Polish folk who used to frequent the chat.

(Though Martin hadn't lived there for a long time.)

Maurycy was working on a Polish translation Fate Core a few years ago.

His failure to participate in the Kickstarter motivated our first Fate chat games, as justification for sharing the beta material with him.

eimyr

Sorry, my connection died.

trogdor

@doppelgreener I want to get into the habit of doing things like that too

eimyr

@Sejanus It is, quite a lot actually. I'm not entirely sure though about how things are when you wear Big Boy Pants, but around my circles it was mostly stuck in the early 2000's - neither going with OSR or modern narrativist systems.

@BESW I'm sure I saw someone sufficiently Polish recently, but not on chat. Not that I would necessarily hassle these people.

The Oracle

10:41

0

Q: “Is something wrong?” Yes: Too much moderation

RPG's users and moderators have a number of problems as summarized in this question's answers. However, several mods have said that they can't accept meta feedback in the form of anything other than individually-separated questions. While I think that's unreasonable and contrary to common meta pr...

Polyducks

Hey you fun guys :)

eimyr

yo

how many hours of sleep did you have?

Polyducks

Quite a few actually. I had an early morning this morning. I've decided that I'm going to put your question to one side because it was getting next-level creepy.

However, I'm going to post my findings which highly suggest that weed was used when conceiving - if not writing - World of Darkness.

and hope that nobody gets closer than I do and I get some booty/10

eimyr

@Polyducks there are better ways to obtain booty

High Sea Piracy.

Polyducks

@Eimyr I know, I went to world building and wrote some pretty intensive work.

eimyr

10:53

Going to a pub in Newcastle.

Polyducks

Eh?

eimyr

even chloroform

I'm playing on the various meanings of "booty"

Polyducks

You smaht

You loyal

eimyr

No, I only appear smart, remember?

The Oracle

1

Q: Need help in clarifying what I'm asking for

How to design a GMPC that is not supposed to push the story ahead? Has been closed as beeing off topic, given the reason that actually I recived many answers on something I wasn't looking for, so beeing unclear. This has been clarryfied by Erik with his comment on one of my comments on one of t...

support

BESW

10:55

@TheOracle My mental spellcheck just seized up.

Polyducks

Why are @Eimyr's questions being put on hold? Some of them seem like good questions.

I need to understand so I don't make a similar mistake

eimyr

Seems they are too broad.

I would agree the ...to the GM one is, but not the other though.

Adeptus

@eimyr I've heard that some people use it for that. It's designed as a writing tool - you can have a separate file for each chapter or scene, and then rearrange them etc. You can also link notes to them. So for a GM, you could have a file for each Kingdom / NPC / plot element

eimyr

unfortunately, the community thinks the opposite is true

Polyducks

@adeptus what tool is this? It sounds useful

eimyr

10:58

5 hours ago, by Adeptus

For those that are interested, Scrivener is half price again

BESW

11:09

→ 4 messages moved to Trash

eimyr

> BESW has invited you to join Trash. See your invitations.

Well, I feel honoured.

I respectfully decline.

BESW

....that's an automagic side effect of moving someone's message.

eimyr

What is that?

BESW

Fungi!

eimyr

Oh!

You really put I in fungi.

BESW

11:14

Polyducks

:( It was relevant to discussion

BESW

> Not everything that a man knoweth can be disclosed, nor can everything that he can disclose be regarded as timely, nor can every timely utterance be considered as suited to the capacity of those who hear it. (Bahá’u’lláh)

2

eimyr

Or in plainer words: think before you speak, aye?

BESW

It was only borderline, but we're working extra hard lately to keep the chat (and the whole site) extra nice.

Polyducks

@BESW That's deep. Sold.

Alright, I'll keep the chat clean (y)

eimyr

11:22

Squeaky clean, not cringy clean.

BESW

@Polyducks I see the line most often quoted from the Bahá'í context I linked above, but it's apparently originally from the Imam Ali's "Sermon of the Gulf."

[learns something]

Polyducks

TIL!

Wise words is wise words

Now if only you had one which prevents me from going to the vending machine for more chocolate

eimyr

11:42

@polyducks Saying "no" to yourself in small matters trains you to say "no" to yourself when you have to make good life choices on important one.

BESW

Something ~~that~~ I've recently learnt from smashing walls-o-text into comment-sized packages ~~is that~~ : almost every time I use the word "that," it's either unnecessary or would be better if replaced with something else.

(+ I have a long history of fixated fascination w/phrasal abbrv. I'd forgotten abt entirely but's now resurfaced w/glorious new abandon.)

....okay that one got away from me.

Magician

12:01

> Phantasmal Killer Suggestion Charm Person Hold Person Lock Gaze Wail of the Banshee

Person Hold Person is probably my favorite.

Gaze Wail is poetic, though.

eimyr

Killer Suggestion Charm would be a great name for a shoegazing band.

BESW

> Charm Person:
1. Hold Person
2. Lock Gaze
3. Wail

Magician

I am tempted to edit that question with wrong commas, as suggested.

BESW

@Magician Grappling is so OP.

Polyducks

omg guys, I've just earned the priv of being able to create chat rooms :)

BESW

12:08

Grats!

Polyducks

Also I've earned "nice answer"

10

A: No sunlight, just high-energy radiation?

Can planets exist around black holes / quasars? Yes. Black holes can be large enough to anchor entire galaxies - evidence strongly suggests a supermassive black hole at the centre of our own galaxy. Due to the increased mass of the black hole vs, say, a garden variety star, any planets would ha...

BESW

@Polyducks You mentioned extremophiles without mentioning tardigrades!

Polyducks

Urgh I knowwww

Those guys are the best

Speaking of world building, I was doing some professional writing for races for this space text game which was the logical reprisal of 'Tears of Polaris'

and I invented this amazing species which was a polymorphic blob that grew around an adopted skeleton

and it would calcify its body around this 'seed'

typically they'd take a piece of their planet, but off-worlders might use anything from a nut to a spoon

BESW

Shades of Gem aliens?

Polyducks

and their planet got so hot that the planet became butter-like and they could shape the rock into burrows using their spade-like hands. I may be confusing that race with another at this point.

Shades of Gem?

BESW

12:14

"Shades of" being an idiom for "something like" or "reminiscent of," and "Gem aliens" being the alien race in Steven Universe.

Polyducks

I didn't know that! Link me to a good TL;DR?

BESW

They're also beings of non-fixed body formed around a solid core, but for them the core is their permanent physical self and the body around it is a solid projection, like a cross between a psychic manifestation and a hard-light hologram.

Polyducks

Oh, just looked it up. No, not really

The alien in this context grows around the central core. They have an adopted skeleton

The alien is the projection, to use the analogy of gem aliens.

BESW

A Gem's body is semi-fixed; they can modify it at will but it snaps back to a "standard" configuration which only changes permanently if they undergo significant personality changes.

I'm now imagining your aliens as more like emanations of the Nestene Consciousness.

Polyducks

Just looked them up. They look super cute

BESW

12:23

The NC is a race of tentacle-y aliens birthed from a survivor of the universe before ours. They ascended into a gestalt being of pure psychic energy which vibrates in frequencies sympathetic to physical objects like plastic. So it uses that to make bodies for itself.

Usually it just modifies the existing plastic enough to fulfil whatever function it requires, the better to blend into its environment.

It often animates plastic window dummies, which are called Autons.

@doppelgreener I'm kinda tempted to use that star for a new version of the badge.

doppelgreener

12:40

@BESW do it :D

@BESW Thank you! I enjoyed that a lot.

Also hooray chat's working again for me so I can post the thing I wanted to post.

World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 is coming out as an encyclopedia of Warcraft lore which marks the authors, as my superfan friend says, beginning to very seriously care about their story. (When beforehand it was not so important, there were inconsistencies and stuff. Surprising to me!)

That's cool and all and it also details Azeroth's cosmology more than ever before. And has a cosmology map!

I figure some of you might be interested in stuff like this.

BESW

Cosmology Map would be a good name for a perfume.

[squint] What kind of what is that faux-aging trying to pull?

[says the artist/designer]

eimyr

@BESW @BESW I can't parse this. What kind of what is that sentence again?

BESW

Exactly.

eimyr

Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?

doppelgreener

12:56

@eimyr [slight edit] What kind of thing is that faux-aging trying to pull? [now replace 'thing' with 'what' because of not even being sure about that bit]

eimyr

@BESW I think the aging represents "I wrote on parchment with photoshop and then I sneezed"

BESW

@eimyr That sounds about right.

eimyr

But I like how it looks nevertheless.

BESW

The map is using a paper-like texture, and age-oxidation shading, to mimic an old, poorly-kept piece of paper. But the age-oxidation shading is following an aesthetic pattern, used as shading on the art instead of obeying any logic for how it'd naturally appear on the page.

eimyr

It does not break its warcraftian verisimilitude, it's about as accurately aged as WoW armor sets. I guess it fits.

BESW

12:58

Fair enough.

Given the lineart style, though, I think it'd've been better to use a stone texture and treat the lighter parts as inlays of a different mineral.

eimyr

Oh yes, the "Age" shading is basically a drawing in spilled tea.

or wood texture, te keep the brownish tone

BESW

Would wood also work.

eimyr

a Thermian argument for that shading would be that Light, Order and Life is less decayed than the other ones, esp. shadow.

Also, the worst offence against logic is inclusion of Naaru on the paper, but that error has been made a long ago.

BESW

Heh.

Which offence do you take against the Naaru?

eimyr

They are flying puzzle pieces that give you quests.

BESW

13:04

But they also make funny wind chime noises!

eimyr

So let me get it straight.

doppelgreener

@eimyr i am very amused by this implication

eimyr

You have a game about killing stuff with other players using over the top abilities, played up equipment and OMG SO MUCH PAULDRONS

And you think that inclusion of a spinning wind chime puzzle that is supposed to be the closest thing you have to an angel, that also gives you quests and acts like a self-righteous know-it-all, but is treated like the best thing since sliced bread is good design?

I'm speaking to you, WoW designer, get out of my house.

BESW

@eimyr Language?

eimyr

better?

BESW

13:08

[mutter]

eimyr

fixed

I have trouble keeping PG-13 in discussion.

BESW

It's a discipline related to code-switching, and is learnt rather than innate.

doppelgreener

13:28

@eimyr I think part of this might be what's behind my friend saying they didn't care too much about the story

like, Garrosh becoming leader of the Horde was also a thing players didn't like - they added him in earlier on in the lore and then didn't really know what to do with him. which is probably why they had him killed later, to replace him.

BESW

Mmm. In full context the sanctity of the Naaru --and the Goodness of the Light-- is called into question just as much as any other element of the lore with an assumed moral value.

It's not handled really well --every serialised story suffers from a certain incoherence of narrative, it's the nature of the medium-- but the story of the Naaru has a baked-in criticism of assuming Light = Good.

eimyr

@BESW Much like D&D alignment system

BESW

That way lies intentionality.

I read intentionality in the use of a Naaru storyline to poke ideas about Light/Good and claims of godlike benevolence; I don't read such intentionality in the potential of the D&D alignment system to support similar stories.

Supporting such a reading would require analysing the source material for evidence in favour and against; I'm just going by my gut reaction from synthesising a large but incomplete amount of both fictions.

StuperUser

13:49

Morning/afternoon/evening all. Is a question about what the current storyline (or where to find what the current storyline is) for D&D Encounters on topic?

doppelgreener

@StuperUser probably "how do i find out the current storyline" would be received well

Miniman

@StuperUser That said, if you ask it, I've got the answer ready.

doppelgreener

yeah, just the issue with "what's the current story?" would receive some protest since it'l go out of date in months

do you mean D&D 4e Encounters, or D&D 5e's version, @StuperUser?

Miniman

@doppelgreener Where to find it is good, though, and surprisingly non-trivial.

StuperUser

@doppelgreener 5e please

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