TRPG General Chat

BESW

00:34

**Cool RPG stuff:** [Bundle of Holding](http://bundleofholding.com "buy RPGs cheap in bulk, support charities & indie designers!");
[Storium with the Stack](http://goo.gl/forms/jvz9Bs6jg8 "an interest survey");
[Fate Core/FAE conversion guide](http://drivethrurpg.com/product/177639/Fate-Accelerated-Core-Conversion-Guide "pay-what-you-like by Fred Hicks");
[Storium launch](https://storium.com/ "Still no native library of storycard art, though."); [Venture City SRD](http://www.faterpg.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/venturecitySRD-CC.html "not on fate-srd.com yet").

Shalvenay

02:05

hey there @DuckTapeAl

Malice Vidrine

02:19

There, fixed my user icon.

Shalvenay

@MaliceVidrine ah.

I stick with the default because I'm too lazy to fiddle with avatars across multiple Stacks

Malice Vidrine

It seemed time to have at least one place where I had A. virens as my public face.

Shalvenay

@MaliceVidrine -- so, on settings -- one of the other things I have a penchant for is "world-smashing" -- i.e. taking bits of radically different sorts of worlds and putting them together

for instance, "how would a dragon interact with the US National Airspace System?"

Malice Vidrine

hehe

Shalvenay

or one of the wilder ones where a wyrmling and an airline pilot find themselves in the same room

BESW

02:29

And the bartender says, "We don't serve jokes here."

3

Shalvenay

@BESW hahaha

Malice Vidrine

Or if the Nauptre Reliquaria set up shop on the Russian steppe in the 14th century....

BESW

You know we avoid that kind of language here.

Malice Vidrine

Some of you do, I'm sure.

BESW

There's a standard Stack-wide policy against "vulgar terms and anything sexually suggestive" which this chat room in particular is very supportive of.

Malice Vidrine

02:41

Hm. That's kind of unfortunate, as it prevents me from referring to a character from one of my favorite science fiction novels by name.

Shalvenay

puts a gnoll pup on @BESW's head

BESW

At the absolute least you could choose bleep it with no loss of understanding from folks who would recognise the reference.

You've already been dismissive of this policy in the past. Please be respectful of the people you've chosen to talk to and the space you've chosen to join.

Miniman

@MaliceVidrine It's occasionally inconvenient, but the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.

BESW

→ 1 message moved to Trash

Malice Vidrine

@Miniman - That's debatable.

As I'm not willing to take such a policy especially seriously, I suppose I ought to part ways with the chat here. Good meeting you all, hope you keep well.

BESW

02:46

Sure, but this isn't the place to debate it. If you want to challenge the policy, take it to Meta Stack Exchange.

Miniman

@MaliceVidrine Bye!

nitsua60

03:09

@waxeagle Sorry, yes. WE for "Wax Eagle." I was not trying to claim credit for your win =)

@MaliceVidrine Peace.

@BESW Thank you for handling that well. I can't suppose it's easy or fun.

BESW

It could've gone better.

nitsua60

I didn't witness it, but it seems like a strangely-fast decision to disavow a group that, for a week or so, seemed to be really suiting her well.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Different things are important to different people, I guess.

nitsua60

Along with an impressive constellation on the star-board once or twice =)

@Miniman No truer words....

doppelgreener

@Emrakul Reminded me of your history-erasure thing: SCP-055, the self-keeping secret.

BESW

03:25

@doppelgreener You mean @Emrakul.

doppelgreener

Whoops, yes I did.

BESW

@nitsua60 There were a few previous incidents that hinted at an underlying disconnect. I respect her for recognising a situation she couldn't remain in without further drama, and bailing before it got bad.

Magician

@doppelgreener What even is that site?

doppelgreener

@Magician The SCP Foundation, home of creepypasta. Its fictional conceit is it's a foundation keeping anomalous objects contained which, usually, don't follow the rules of how reality should usually work, and sometimes threaten a large number of people or all life as we know it.

One of the originals was SCP-173, and because it's a short horror story (genuinely creepy), I won't link to it from here.

Anyway it's a public wiki and whoever has an account can write SCPs and articles, and whoever can pass a test to show they get what the SCP wiki's about can have an account. It's gotten pretty popular in recent years. The articles are of varying quality, so there's a rating system, and low-rated articles (like single digits or negatives) might or definitely will get culled and replaced.

Shalvenay

03:48

hey there @nitsua60

nitsua60

@Shalvenay hiya

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 how're things going these days?

nitsua60

@Shalvenay good. I suppose my worst complaint is that my throat's sore from a really good RL session tonight. (FLGS was busy, and we weren't at our usual off-to-the-side table, so I had to project a lot.)

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 ah. I'm pondering eladrinlocks, druids getting turned into flowerpots, and the idea that Jherala basically is an "un-princess"

RollingFeles

04:19

Hello everyone!

BESW

[wave]

What's new?

RollingFeles

Nothing special. Apart from the fact that another cat will live for some time in my house. That would be five felines. Good news this one on temporary terms.

BESW

caaats.

RollingFeles

Something like that. Only I'm without cap, mask, and my clothes are not so tight c:

Miniman

Gah, spacing is hard.

BESW

04:32

Spacing out on the other hand...

RollingFeles

Spacing?

Miniman

@RollingFeles Writing an answer, and as usual, most of my editing is fidddling with paragraph spacing.

I rarely make spelling mistakes, but I am invariably unhappy with the overall appearance of a post.

In this particular case it doesn't help that I'm writing on mobile and don't really have any idea what it actually looks like.

RollingFeles

It reminds me of the times when I worked with web development. Specifically colleagues who worked with html with "this site should look great on mobile platforms!" requirements, when they didn't have any mobile devices.

Miniman

@RollingFeles Yeesh.

DuckTapeAl

...what? I am struck dumb with how dumb that is.

RollingFeles

04:43

That's was pretty dumb, yeah.

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl Hi!

RollingFeles

Colleagues were young students, which didn't have access to much, and sometimes, to any mobile platform. They used some workarounds, borrowed devices. Later this problem gone away.

But still I'm very happy that I always worked with server side.

DuckTapeAl

@Miniman Hello!

How are things?

RollingFeles

@DuckTapeAl hey! (here I should say something like "where are my manners")

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl Pretty good, although I still haven't found time to try out Death or Glory. You?

@RollingFeles The way people fade in and out of existence here makes that sort of courtesy much more complicated. (And much less necessary, IMO).

DuckTapeAl

04:49

@Miniman Pretty decent. Went to GDC last week, met a bunch of cool people.

Still recovering from the jet lag.

I don't know if I told you, but I got to run a game of DoG like a month ago.

I screwed up a bunch of stuff and had to fudge a bunch of rolls at the end, but the ending was super badass.

One surviving sniper running full-tilt at a howitzer that just couldn't get a hit, with bits of road blowing up all around.

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl Ooh. I haven't been around much lately (new job), so if you mentioned that, I missed it.

How was is it in terms of teaching it to your players? I guess my real question here is how long did it take for the group to make characters?

DuckTapeAl

Making characters was pretty quick.

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl Nice. Did the players "win"?

DuckTapeAl

They did! It was a smashing success.

The one survivor took out half the howitzer crew, captured the rest, and made it home with the cannon in tow.

They got a whole bunch of bonus points for that.

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl That's good to hear; it looks complicated enough on paper that I was a little concerned.

DuckTapeAl

04:54

For making characters: rather than giving a whole bunch of options, I just had them roll and told them what the next thing up and down the track was.

And since there's only like 5 rolls involved in chargen, it was pretty quick to do for each person.

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl That makes sense. So if they want to change, then you explain how that works?

DuckTapeAl

I opened with "You make a bunch of rolls, and you can adjust those rolls up or down with your 15 starting points."

And at each roll, I told them the cost for both up and down.

And the chargen stuff is organized by how important it is anyway, so there wasn't any buyer's remorse.

Miniman

That seems pretty nice. Apologies if questions sound obvious; I'm the kind of person who'll always read the rulebook cover to cover before I start, but I know that doesn't work for everyone. Including most of my players.

DuckTapeAl

An obvious question is better than a question unasked.

Miniman

How well did it work as a one-shot? By the sound of things, I'm guessing awesomely.

DuckTapeAl

04:58

Generally pretty well.

The ending was perfect, but the rest of it was a little janky.

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl Oh?

DuckTapeAl

Like, they fought a giant worm at one point, and if I ran it the way the book suggests, they would have all died.

Without a doubt.

Stuff with toughness over 6 is crazy hard to hit.

And since you need 2 hits for a kill, it can get pretty bad.

IIRC, they had 12 people, including players, and a target number to hit of 3, with a +1 damage.

And the worm would have killed 1-3 people per round.

Miniman

Hmmm. That's probably as intended, I guess, but it does seem like it would turn people off a bit.

DuckTapeAl

I hamstrung it a bit so it looked more dangerous than it actually was, which ended up working well.

Yeah, it definitely seems like that's what's supposed to happen, but "everyone died in the first combat" is super unsatisfying.

I feel like the ideal circumstance is "everyone died in a blaze of glory, but the mission got done".

But the mechanics lean more towards "the random encounters killed you".

Miniman

That seems like the showcase scenario for the system, yeah.

DuckTapeAl

05:03

I kind of wish there were some mechanics that let you sacrifice troops for extra damage, or efficacy in general.

Like, kill one of your troops to get an automatic 6 on a damage roll.

There were several times where the party was just shooting dozens of times against a target and never dealing damage.

Miniman

Side note: minor deficiency in the new chat interface: I can't edit a message to make it reply to another message, it has to be created as a reply.

DuckTapeAl

Oh, are you on mobile?

I find the mobile chat interface to range between "actually unusable" and "unnecessarily frustrating".

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl Yeah, I'm not sure about leaving a chat tab open at my new job yet.

DuckTapeAl

Aha.

Oh, right, you're on the other side of the planet.

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl The updates they did a while back pushed it just over the "usable" line for me.

DuckTapeAl

05:07

I forget sometimes.

Miniman

Mostly.

@DuckTapeAl It's cooler if you think of it as living in the future :)

DuckTapeAl

Lol.

YOU LIVE IN TOMORROW?!?!?

Miniman

Oct 14 '15 at 12:37, by doppelgreener

Plot seed: UTC+13 is the furthest-forward time zone we know, belonging exclusively to some small clusters of isolated islands in the Pacific, except during the daylight savings time of some other countries. It's the occasional subject of a joke that people with a greater UTC adjustment are literally in the future, and events will take a proportionate amount of time to progress into time zones set further back.

The message below it is the even more important bit.

DuckTapeAl

I like it.

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl Before all that, I meant to say that this would make a great perk for officers. (Or order or whatever their special thing is called, I haven't looked at it in a while.)

doppelgreener

05:29

The UTC+13 squad have only about an hour to resolve the situation if they don't want it to become immensely worse. It's very beneficial those time zones have such low population.

DuckTapeAl

I like that name for a squad.

doppelgreener

(plot hole: don't ask why everything keeps happening to these islands specifically. i don't really want to have to work out the answer to that, do you? best i can imagine is that it's the only portion of the world that these existential threats can actually see, like the sliver of a room that's well-lit through the light coming past an ajar door.)

Miniman

05:52

@doppelgreener It happens everywhere, but since they live in the future, they fix it before it happens to anyone else.

This, by the way, is why people think there was no Milennium Bug.

doppelgreener

nice.

@Miniman no, there wasn't any because -- ooooohhh. ;D

Miniman

06:07

@doppelgreener Not gonna lie, I'm proud of that one.

trogdor

lol

Miniman

Less proud of my weird inability to remember that millennium and all its derivatives have 2 l's.

DuckTapeAl

Dammit. @doppelgreener, you mentioned SCP-055, and now I'm stuck on that damn site.

It's worse than TV Tropes.

:P

doppelgreener

@DuckTapeAl better than tv tropes! because i forget tv tropes almost as soon as i leave the article. but SCPs stay with me forever, and ever, and ever, including when the light is off and i am trying to sleep.

DuckTapeAl

Indeed.

I forget the number, but the one with the stone that changes colour, and opens a portal to another world when you stick it on a mirror still creeps me out sometimes.

The whole 'people who are there but you can't see' thing is one of the scariest things to me.

Ah, it was 093.

doppelgreener

06:30

@DuckTapeAl Like The Mysterious Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your House, from Welcome to Night Vale. :D

DuckTapeAl

I don't think I got that far in Nightvale.

I love what I've heard, but I don't have a good venue for listening to it.

BESW

08:59

I'm not sure what the purpose of this comment is.

It's saying things I generally agree with and which don't contradict anything I've said, but I don't think they'd improve the answer to include.

Can anyone shed light on this for me?

Magician

It seems to be a new user doing a forum thing.

Just adding their thoughts to the topic.

BESW

1.1k rep and eight months under his belt at English Language Learners though.

Magician

09:28

@doppelgreener SCP is delightful, thank you for the link. For some values of 'delightful', that is.

eimyr

09:52

@doppelgreener @MAgician I need to feed SCP to my Mage players before the game.

eimyr

10:29

@BESW thank you for the excellent guineas. I'll have you know, that it's actually my GF that's obsessed with guinea pigs.

Well, more than I am, for all it's worth.

BESW

Feel free to pass 'em, then.

eimyr

I did.

I guess I am sort-of induced into guineapigness.

BESW

Just a little bit, yeah.

eimyr

-_-"

BESW

> Psimitar. You can use Combat instead of Provoke to make mental attacks, and your attacks have weapon:2 when doing so. Your targets defend with Athletics as normal against these Combat attacks, but mental armour ratings (and not physical ones) reduce the stress you inflict.

eimyr

10:39

@BESW Name it ESPada.

BESW

But then it wouldn't be a Marvel reference!

eimyr

marvels in his ignorance of Marvel

@BESW instagram.com/p/BDNdgWQHYL8

BESW

@eimyr Aw, a miniature hippopotomussus.

eimyr

Called Dobster.

BESW

Obviously.

eimyr

10:42

Or Dobby, because his original owners had no imagination.

I think I should call @AshleyNunn to the above ^^

@BESW Also, it's not shaven, just a hairless breed - adopted, as we don't want to proliferate the breed's popularity. It's a genetic disaster, but a loved one.

BESW

@eimyr Psimitar. Cable isn't exactly a top-charting Marvel character; a lot of folks probably went "Who?" at the end of the spoiler.

eimyr

This is not a scimitar. Not even close! contains anger for future use

BESW

Careful, free invokes usually go away at the end of the scene.

(I only know about it from the end of ~~Cable and~~ Deadpool.

eimyr

I think it looks more like a fancy spear. A spontoon or corseque or something.

I guess it wouldn't make a good Psy-pun.

BESW

Ummm. "Cortexque"?

eimyr

10:53

Spetum could become Psitum

Or, heck a simple Psear would suffice.

BESW

"Ballistic Flaming Hogspawn of Science" wouldn't be a very good band name, but that shouldn't stop anyone.

eimyr

where did you get it from?

BESW

The Image comic series Injection.

nitsua60

12:55

@Miniman you around with a minute or two to chat?

Miniman

@nitsua60 Sure!

nitsua60

In your answer to markovchain--well-written and -reasoned, by the way--you say in one spot that it's trivial to gain advantage on an attack. And I've seen that sort of assertion in other places, too. But I don't end up seeing much advantage at my tables, and I wonder if I'm missing places I should be awarding it, or times in play when I should be seeking it...

What are the sources of trivial advantage you're imagining when you write a line like that? Aid Another?

Miniman

@nitsua60 Inspiration, True Strike, hiding, the Help action as you say, lots of class features and spells.

Maybe I should say that it's trivial to get advantage on an attack if you set out to do that.

nitsua60

Good point.

You can easily get it, but at a decent (1 action) cost.

(But a single advantaged action can be much better, situationally, than two 'regular' actions.)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Exactly! If your players aren't concerned with getting advantage on their attacks, and many aren't, they'll generally prefer to attack twice rather than attacking once with advantage.

nitsua60

12:59

But when they're up against something with AC25, you really want that advantage.

Or perhaps against the lycanthrope your rogue is better as a spotter for your caster than firing mundane arrows.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Yeah. Or if they're a Rogue, or casting their best spell, or...and so on.

nitsua60

Cool--just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something big where I should have been giving my players advantage more often. Nope. They're not seeking it very often.

@Miniman On another note, did you ever find the Anthropomorphic Mice?

Miniman

@nitsua60 Yeah. Although you might be forgetting to hand out inspiration - almost everyone I know who DMs 5e (including me) admits to forgetting it a lot.

One guy I know added a rule that players get 3 inspiration at the start of every session, which I think is a bit extreme, so I'm using the same thing but with 1.

nitsua60

@Miniman I've done that (1 off the top) a bunch of times, but given how much my players forget to spend it I've not felt too bad about not doling it out a lot.

I even tell my tables explicitly: any time you see anything you think worth rewarding, mention inspiration because I often forget... [crickets]

Miniman

@nitsua60 Yeah, even with the houserule my players don't use it much.

nitsua60

13:05

Which I find kinda funny, as the same players (coming from 3.5) talk about how much they love the mechanic.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Yep! Your page reference got me straight to it. I actually replied to you a while back, but I think you weren't around.

@nitsua60 I have to admit, when I'm playing I often don't remember it, which is silly.

nitsua60

@Miniman Okay.I only ask because SSD made a comment doubting whether it was really a good entry for the list; I was curious what you thought.

Miniman

@nitsua60 I'm not sure it's a good entry for the list, but it's a harmless bit of fun and a nice Easter egg. Might be worth adding the page number so it stops confusing people though!

nitsua60

@Miniman I'm the sort of mathy-nerd who's always sitting there visualizing the skewed-right advantaged to-hit curve and contemplating expectation values for both advantaged and non-, so I definitely seek it out in some occasions.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Oh, when I'm making an important roll it'll generally spring to mind. But when I fail a roll I'll often think "Damn, should've used inspiration!"

nitsua60

13:10

@Miniman "Easter Egg" is exactly what I was thinking. I sat and read the DMG cover-to-cover when I first got it, and had had no recollection of that when the races question came around. So when I found it I was like "hah, they bothered to put it in the book, let's throw a little fun the Stack's way." I was a little curious if the stack would "tolerate" some fun.

Miniman

I think I tend to think "It's important for this roll to succeed, better use inspiration", but not necessarily remember to think, "It's important for this roll not to fail, better use inspiration."

And I think I'm not alone in that.

nitsua60

@Miniman As for page number, it was looking back at that entry that made me think that calling out the exact pages (285-287) in the "sources" list would be a good idea.

@Miniman Yeah, that's a strange little gestalt-shift to keep in mind.

Of course, I don't get to play very often at all, so it doesn't come up too often for me... =(

Miniman

Interesting tidbit from data.SE - my longest answer is still my first one.

@nitsua60 Another houserule a friend of mine uses is that inspiration the players spend goes to the DM.

nitsua60

Interesting

@Miniman to use on behalf of NPCs/monsters?

Do they then flow back to players, or is the DM a sink?

Miniman

@nitsua60 Yeah.

nitsua60

13:17

@Miniman My longest answer is also an early one, and I think is simultaneously one of my best and one of my worst. I think the concept there is rock-solid and I'd love to communicate it well enough that it ends up in every GMs toolkit. I've taken three different stabs at writing it up, though, and that's the best I've got.

Miniman

@nitsua60 When a monster uses it, it doesn't go back to the players, but plenty comes to the players from other sources.

nitsua60

@Miniman I guess the inspiration-economy is a thing a group really needs to grow into.... My next-campaign personal goal is improved NPC-play; perhaps two campaigns out I'll focus on inspiration=)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Yeah, my DMing is somewhat hampered by the simple fact that I'm bad at roleplaying, especially when it comes to dialogue.

Doomed Mind

@nitsua60 Interesting read :) (also, I really like fractals)

nitsua60

@DoomedMind Thanks--I think what I need to do at some point is run one for a small (one, even) party while someone else takes notes, asks questions, &c. so that they can write it up. At least, that's my plan for attempt #4.

@DoomedMind I used it recently when a party had to escape a rioting city through the sewers. I had one map, but two sets of tables made up for whether they chose to escape above ground (through riot) or underground. So that one took up both sides of a sheet of paper. (Any time they wanted to pop up or duck down, I just had to flip the paper.) Two full sessions run on one sheet of paper, and the players were amazed that I'd made such detailed maps of the whole city and its underparts =)

Doomed Mind

13:25

cool

I tend to premake large maps, I might try somehting like this

eimyr

@Miniman I can't imagine you are bad at roleplaying. Honestly.

Miniman

@nitsua60 I'll be honest - I didn't understand your answer at all. Then I went and had a go at the actual fractal maze. Now I kind of hate myself. Thanks for that.

Doomed Mind

@Miniman yeah, its hard to understand without doing things

nitsua60

@DoomedMind I've fallen down that rabbit hole many times. I love now that I get to make large maps when I want and if I don't feel like doing it, I can still provide just as-realistic feeling (by player testimony) a setting. And if you keep decent notes--usually one index card for me--you can go back and reconstruct the topology if it ends up being a site the players want to come back to.

[The understanding of this post is left as an exercise to the reader...]
=D

Polyducks

...Who made a fractal maze?

nitsua60

13:28

11 mins ago, by nitsua60

@Miniman My longest answer is also an early one, and I think is simultaneously one of my best and one of my worst. I think the concept there is rock-solid and I'd love to communicate it well enough that it ends up in every GMs toolkit. I've taken three different stabs at writing it up, though, and that's the best I've got.

Miniman

@eimyr Thanks! But it's definitely a weakness of mine. It's partly self-consciousness, I think, as well as a simple lack of practice. None of the groups I run or play in are particularly role-playing-ish, especially when it comes to dialogue.

nitsua60

@Shalvenay actually wandered through the maze in the post at one point--you might ask him how it felt. (He didn't know beforehand, but afterward I believe I linked him the post.)

Polyducks

@nitsua60 Sweet Thorin's beard...

eimyr

@Miniman Have you ever "lost yourself" in a character? I consider this good practice.

nitsua60

this ^^

Miniman

13:30

@eimyr I'm not sure what you mean?

(The question mark there is ungrammatical but functional.)

eimyr

It's that moment when you close your eyes and start acting like a character not because you act it out, but because you think like a character.

nitsua60

"Ungrammatical but Functional" would be a really stupid name for a band. But it feels like one someone would try anyway.

eimyr

then when you open eyes and take look at what you are doing uncannily provides you with complete set of behaviours.

Miniman

I don't think I've ever done that, and honestly I'm not at all sure I could ever do that.

nitsua60

Gotta head to the office, all. Ping me if you solve the maze =)

Miniman

13:32

@nitsua60 Heh, funny guy. Cya!

eimyr

It's not a matter of skill, more of the ability to let go and plug into the character's stream of consciousness.

Polyducks

I do that in all my RP

I got into a dangerous spot when I played a character with memory loss. I'd just let my eyes glaze over and repeat thnigs I'd already said

eimyr

I try to avoid it at all costs when GMing, because then I can't see the forest for the trees.

Polyducks

this was online so it was easy to get lost in it

eimyr

Yeah.

Polyducks

13:36

@nitsua60 my love, search and replace 'sertain' with 'certain' in your answer on fractal mazes

Oooh this reminds me. I once made a map of overlaying grids. The top map had holes cut in it and the two would rotate around each other when the players moved, changing rooms on the map

It was a fey forest, hence the disorientation

was really interesting seeing my players try to map it out

Miniman

@eimyr I just can't imagine immersing myself that deeply in a character, and I have no idea how you'd go about it.

Doomed Mind

@Polyducks awesome :D

eimyr

@miniman and when you read a book written in first person, with a main character that's easy to indentify with? Does it happen that you forget you're there and read as if it's your own memoirs?

Miniman

@eimyr No, that's never happened to me.

eimyr

If that's the case, you'll find it easy to divorce yourself from character concept.

I'd suggest standard abstract impersonation techniques.

Totems, mannerisms, short and long term motivators.

Miniman

13:42

@eimyr Any good places to read about these?

eimyr

dunno... I never found them useful myself, coming from the other end of the spectrum

Miniman

Also, today from data.SE: Assuming the length of a post roughly corresponds with the amount of effort it took to write, I've wasted an awful lot of time.

Interesting tidbit from that: data.SE considers tag wikis to be posts. Not sure why.

BESW

Author @MykeCole finds the roots of military fantasy in the diversity of Hannibal's Carthaginian forces: http://www.tor.com/2016/03/22/in-history-and-fantasy-diversity-is-the-tradition/

Tweeted by tordotcom on March 22, 2016 at 1:23 PM

Polyducks

Best not to disassociate yourself from you

Scary ego things lie that way!

BESW

I strongly disagree with the idea that the best way to play an NPC is to detach from one's role as the GM, but I even more strongly disagree with staying up any longer tonight. Later!

Miniman

13:49

Yeah, at 1am I should well and truly be gone, too.

eimyr

@besw detach one from roleplay immersion, I meant. Specifically to remember one's duties as a gm. And NPCs narrative purpose

nitsua60

@Polyducks ty; will do!

@Polyducks although maybe I was just going for the alliteration?

Polyducks

maybe :)

Going back to work and pretend I'm a busy bee

love ya all!

nitsua60

@eimyr I feel like this is one where the mechanics of the system may put a heavy thumb on the scales. More mechanically-intensive systems might place more of the sorts of responsibilities on a gm that make immersion a risk, where in other systems the sorts of responsibilities a gm has can be better-fulfilled while immersed?

Miniman

Ooh, while I remember, in case anyone here doesn't know:

I actually really enjoy writing SQL, so if there's any queries you'd like to run on data.SE but don't have time/inclination to write, feel free to ask.

Ok, now I'm really going to go sleep.

eimyr

14:31

@nitsua60 The true danger in my opinion lies in the tendency to treat NPC as characters and not narrative devices.

If you're immersing yourself in roleplaying a questgiver barkeep, it's easy to forget why do the PCs actually have the conversation

eimyr

14:56

@Brian Hi!

Brian

15:32

@eimyr Hello!

eimyr

Are you really from Mongolia?

Brian

15:45

?

eimyr

You have MN listed on your location.

On the mainsite profile.

Brian

What says I'm from Mongolia? Oh. MN = Minnesota, USA.

eimyr

Oh.

Brian

Also, Mongolia is abbreviated MO

(or not...site 1 says MO, site 2 says MN)

Anyway, what do you play?

eimyr

@Brian I took suggestion from the ISO codes, used for top-level domains.

well, currently dnd 5e, but that's about to change in two weeks when the next game rolls out.

You?

Brian

15:51

Lots of things. OD&D, TFT, and a couple of FATE games

eimyr

I see.

Brian

I used to play D&D 3.5e, but in the past few years I've gotten impatient with the amount of looking up various rules from 3.5 games. What's your next game going to be?

eimyr

We have quite a lively chat here usually

Brian

Seems like I wandered in at an off-hour

eimyr

well, my next game is a 4x4 format.

4 GMs, 4 weeks, 4 one shots.

I think we'll have Goblin Quest, Kill Puppies For Satan and Fragged Empire, with myself running Great Ork Gods.

Brian

16:00

Diverse!

eimyr

Well, my RPG club is very diverse.

These are mostly on the lighthearted, entertaining side.

Others, in the meantime are playing Saga of the Icelanders and some Firefly adventure.

Brian

Firefly is an interesting system

I like the way it uses different die sizes and how the to-hit roll adds to damage

Golokopitenko

16:15

any chemist here?

can acid be "put down" with sand?

that is, if you're splashed with acid, will rubbing yourself with sand work against it?

eimyr

If you're splashed with acid rubbing with anything that's not acidic will improve your situation.

2

I would rather rinse myself with water though.

sand isn't necessarily alkalic

Golokopitenko

I see

eimyr

you probably have better effect rubbing yourself with limestone

Golokopitenko

my party will be in the desert

so, water is not an option

eimyr

hmmm

Golokopitenko

16:19

meh, sand will have to do

OH WAIT

eimyr

well

Golokopitenko

they do have water, but they need to survive

eimyr

then it's mostly silica

quartz

Golokopitenko

hehehe I can put them in a dilemma

eimyr

wouldn't really help with acids

Golokopitenko

16:20

silica's not alkali isn't it?

eimyr

HOWEVER!

Golokopitenko

!

eimyr

it is quite possible that your sand contains calcium carbonate

Golokopitenko

CaCO

erhh

anyway, I'm a moron, it's better for me to force them to use the water they need to survive, to add pressure

eimyr

that would react with strong acids quite happily to create an acid salt and much less dangerous carbon acid

CaCO3

Golokopitenko

16:22

CaCO3+Acid -> salt+water am I right?

wait

eimyr

wait

no

Golokopitenko

no, it's not a base

eimyr

caco3 + acid -> salt + water + carbon dioxide

Golokopitenko

CaCO3 + HCl -> CaCl2 + H2O

estequiometry not checked

chemistry rocks

eimyr

yeah

more or less

Golokopitenko

16:25

I missed the carbon dioxide though

WELL.

my players won't notice

eimyr

CaCO3 + 2HCl -> CaCl2 + H2O + CO2

Golokopitenko

nyesssz

eimyr

note that you would need a lot of sand and will not work in many environments

Golokopitenko

indeed

plus

that'd be for an aqueous solution wouldn't it?

eimyr

simply put - if your carbonaceous rocks are not there to be pulverized into sand, you won't get that nice reaction

Golokopitenko

16:27

good point

eimyr

Depends on the kind of acid. CaCl2 happily dissolves, other salts will not

Salts. If your slats spontaneously dissolve, you better have your parachute ready.

Golokopitenko

explosions?

eimyr

very unlikely

the reaction will probably be exothermic, but at this point it won't matter.

Golokopitenko

thanks for the tips

I'll be heading to my friend's now

the show must go on

eimyr

16:51

@AshleyNunn Hi! Did you see the link I've awkwardly tried to tag you on?

user15026

I didn't, no.

eimyr

instagram.com/p/BDNdgWQHYL8

Zachiel

17:54

LoL. You can vote for reopening your own question.

eimyr

20:49

@trogdor Wazzup!

trogdor

hi, just woke up

eimyr

yeah, you tend to do that around bedtime

trogdor

lol

dunno what your talking about, it's time to wake up, most definitely XD :P

eimyr

Sop, for a good day, I'd like to remind you of this gem:

Aug 14 '15 at 9:02, by BESW

I am not James Gurney.

@trogdor it's around bedtime here when you wake up in your timezone.

trogdor

@eimyr I know, that is why the :P is in there

eimyr

20:54

oh

trogdor

the XD is in there because I tend to laugh at my own jokes

eimyr

do you really make that face?

trogdor

lol

apparently I make it before I BURNINATE, according to @nitsua60 I think it was

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