TRPG General Chat

BESW

09:55

Hah! This thing works.

eimyr

Is that for FF?

BESW

FF, Chrome, and Github.

lisardggY

Desktop notifications is a bit hardcore for me. I'd rather just have browser toolbar notifications.

eimyr

nice

BESW

@lisardggY Is there a way to get that for comment/edit/rep notifications?

lisardggY

10:02

@BESW Dunno. I could only find StackAlert, which seems to only do inbox notifications.

Dunno if rep notifications are even officially available via the API.

BESW

I'll settle.

eimyr

@doppelgreener Mawwage sounds like something that happens to you when you are being swallowed whole by a Sandworm or Sarlacc.

lisardggY

@eimyr Maybe it's the Sarlacc's monthly salary.

eimyr

@lisardggY What on Earth would a Sarlacc want to buy with its salary?

BESW

Breath mints, tentacle massages, teeth-whitening strips, BBQ sauce.

eimyr

10:11

That makes sense. Indigestion relief, home-delivery services, Jedi repellant.

@BESW The hover tooltips in your Timely starthing are an absolute pleasure to have. Thank you, BESW.

BESW

[bow and a flourish]

Most of the time I can just copy-paste from the descriptions, but sometimes the creators are really bad at "pithy summary of what we offer."

eimyr

What an interesting question there.

BESW

?

eimyr

It feels as if we already answered "My players did something that does not break the campaign, but avoids it. Wat do?"

0

Q: Lore friendly way of disadvising certain actions to your players as a DM

So I have just experienced my first D&D Game, and I was thinking about starting with creating my own world (to play as DM in). I am looking into this on the daily by searching google for anything I need (more rules, character creation , etc ...) If your players suddenly say something (in any gi...

Lymia Aluysia

(It's not immediately obvious to me how avoiding the campaign isn't breaking it)

BESW

10:26

Depends on how the group/GM views the nature of the campaign and the game itself.

For some, the campaign is the prepared material, but the game is whatever the PCs are doing.

eimyr

@LymiaAluysia Breaking campaign, to me, is solving it or making it irrelevant. Say, the characters are supposed to kill a dragon in the dungeon and they collapse the dungeon without entering it or teleport the kingdom away so the dragon is no longer an issue. Avoiding the campaign is players saying "nah, we don't wanna do that, let's go fishing instead".

@LymiaAluysia The first one is usually either bad prep, over-reliance on railroading, PC-power/challenge mismatch or wrong plot for the genre. The latter is a mismatch between GM and player expectations of the game plot/structure.

E.g. in my current game (I'm GMing) there is a quiet assumption that the PCs will follow the plot hook at least a little bit to establish the main universe/story elements and then they will do whatever they like within it.

In some other games players are expected to follow GMs story, being railroaded or not. In some the GM describes an ad-hoc situation and players can totally ignore it, but the onus is on them to figure out what to do.

Sorry, for walloftexting and perhaps a bit of overzealous explaining.

Lymia Aluysia

It's fine. I just wasn't sure it's too meaningful of a distinction. At least, from my prospective, avoiding a plot hook and breaking something basically have the same result.

"I guess it's time to improvise."

Nzall

The most important part is that the GM and the players agree on how they want to play the game. players that want to explore don't want the campaign forced on them too much, while GMs that want to tell a story don't want the players to ditch it right away

there is always a middle ground, but it's important that the scope of the game is established early

BESW

Put it this way: In my very first campaign I built a hollow egg-shaped world with floating islands in the upper, middle, and lower areas. I fleshed out the middle part, with two warring empires, a rebel force, a sinister mastermind manipulating things, a scarily powerful assassin guild, and a lot of complex interconnected alliances, rivalries, goals, and motives.

Nzall

@BESW let me guess? the players avoided that part entirely?

BESW

10:39

About 2/3 of the way through, someone blew up the island everyone was on and they fell for about two days (in-world time), landing at the bottom of the hollow egg with no way back up.

I hadn't created any plans for how the story would turn out, and I had the lower world prepped already.

But the things which had been important the entire game suddenly became secondary-to-insignificant. All the PCs' work building connections and understanding the details of the middle level were sudden irrelephant.

My level of prep for the area they were in didn't change, nor did the level of improvisation I needed to do.

But the campaign as a coherent narrative movement, the story of the PCs gaining allies and resources and understanding in order to effect change in the world, was pretty much wiped clean.

Lymia Aluysia

eeesh. I guess I was underestimating what kind of insanity would result in "breaking the campaign".

BESW

(Also all but one of the PCs died from the fall.)

Lymia Aluysia

What was their motivation for doing something like that? I have trouble thinking of how a story like what you describe would progress to "oh, let's just blow everything up and be done with it!"

Aether

@BESW If you were to do it again, what would you do differently?

BESW

The answer to both of those questions is, I wish I'd been better at working with a particular player who was very un-invested in the story and just liked to have his PC act out in random ways.

But once the island exploded? I wouldn't change much except make the fall less lethal.

It was my first time GMing, and a lot of the players' first time playing, and we did amazing stuff and overall I'm content with how it played out given the kinds of RPGers we all were at the time.

I'd do a lot of things differently now (starting with changing the system entirely) but for the BESW of 11 years ago it was a very good show and instrumental in shaping the BESW of now.

Lymia Aluysia

10:51

I guess I haven't had a player like that before. I have had players come up with weird goals before, and work towards things I hadn't expected, but... well, it made sense as a story and in-character.

BESW

He was another player's younger brother, and several years younger than everyone else at a time in our lives when that was significant for emotional maturity.

I still haven't gotten a grip on the "teen in an older group" dynamic.

Lymia Aluysia

I ran my first long-form campaign when I was 14-15ish, IIRC. That one went way better than a lot of the later campaigns I ran/played in with that playgroup, really. Because for some of our players scheduling started becoming a problem. :(

BESW

This is the game:

The Tale of The Dwarven Cleric, or I Poke Him: 101 Stupid RP Tricks, Volume One.

Dec 26 '12 at 12:06, 7 minutes total – 36 messages, 2 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked Jun 25 '13 at 19:03 by BESW

Island explodes, everybody falls.

Jul 5 '13 at 2:43, 20 minutes total – 62 messages, 4 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked Aug 16 '15 at 9:45 by BESW

Nzall

@BESW I think Darth & Droids managed it quite well with Sally: give them control over a mainly dialogue NPC at one point, then slowly give them more control

BESW

25

A: Dealing with players of vastly different skill levels?

Short Version: Maybe P is overwhelmed by bookkeeping and it's distracting him from situational awareness. Help him make a mechanically very simple character without fiddly bits or conditionals to keep track of, so he can focus on making good choices rather than having good bookkeeping. Invite th...

@Nzall Darths & Droids is, in my opinion, an excellent model of how a GM can graciously incorporate the players' strengths into the game's dynamic, even/especially when those strengths take the game in directions the GM wouldn't have gone on his own.

Lymia Aluysia

10:57

I guess it probably helped a lot that despite everyone being involved being pretty young, it wasn't our first time playing/GMing a RPG.

BESW

Yeah, experience helps a lot.

...as does socialising with the other people outside of the game.

The one common thread I've found between "group works well" and "group doesn't work well" is that cohesion, commonality, and effective communication are directly proportional to how much time we spend as a group doing things other than role-playing.

Lymia Aluysia

We were playing on IRC, so, I guess that actually worked in our favor.

The channel we made for the game also gave us plenty of opportunities to talk about stuff outside the games.

BESW

Exactly!

This is one reason my group has a chat room on Skype.

And even then, I collaborate better with @doppelgreener and @trogdor because they're here too.

trogdor

yep

certainly a helpful thing

doppelgreener

@eimyr that's mawage. mawwage is about wove.

BESW

11:07

It took me a long time to realise how much work goes into group cohesion, because my first four or five years of RPGs were spent almost exclusively gaming with people I saw a lot, as a group, in other contexts. The cohesion just happened invisibly.

The first time I tried to run a game with people I didn't see outside of the sessions, it was a hot mess and I couldn't figure out why.

Lymia Aluysia

It's not something I'd have thought of without someone mentioning it, at least. It does line up with my experience. We did have to remove a player from the game 4 or so sessions in, and what do you know, they were the one who only showed up on game day pretty much.

BESW

It seems so blindingly obvious on reflection: Groups work better when they do stuff together.

But the RPG context, especially when using systems with a lot of rules for everything and grant social power to the GM, has a tendency to strip away our recognition that it's just another group activity with our friends. We (or at least I) start to treat it as a unique case.

Lymia Aluysia

@BESW I suppose that IRC is biased towards not having to deal with that. You end up making a channel for games, and if you recruit from IRC, most of your players are probably going to stay there outside game days too.

Nzall

So what started with a light nicean salad lunch ended in throwing out butter that's 2 months out of date, moldy salami slices, the container both were in and the bread I already buttered

Lymia Aluysia

It doesn't help that you have stuff like PbP where people recruit players just for a single game, and stuff like that.

Nzall

11:12

At least the salad was fresh

BESW

Sounds less like a salad and more like a slaad.

Nzall

I bought the salad and the bread from a local lunch provider. The butter and salami were in the company fridge basically since I started here 10 weeks ago

BESW

@LymiaAluysia Aye. I suspect this is why Storium has been gradually opening and forefronting its social spaces.

For Storium to work well, the majority of its participants can't just be Storium users. They have to buy into the Storium community.

I think their mentorship games will do this very well.

Lymia Aluysia

What's Storium anyway? It sounds like it's basically trying to be a community for freeform RP. In the vein of forum games I've seen on fansites and such.

BESW

Kinda, yes. But with mechanical structure that each game can indulge or ignore to its choosing, and a very large selection of pre-made worlds, adventures, characters, and mechanical pieces to use as-is, mix and match, or build on.

Each character has cards that represent qualities, relationships, motivations, items, and so forth. They can play those cards to overcome obstacles set by the creator of the scene.

Each obstacle needs a certain number of cards to be overcome, and the specific cards played influence the narrative of how it's overcome and the tone of the outcome.

When a character runs out of cards of a certain type, that means something important has happened to them: they've accomplished a personal goal, or have the opportunity to change a personal quality, or no longer have use of an item, etc.

If the creator of a scene includes no obstacles, then the scene plays out essentially as free-form PbP.

Lymia Aluysia

11:24

I see. Eeeeeeeeh. Maybe it'd be neat to check that out some day.

BESW

(There's also a limit on the number of cards each character can play per scene, so some obstacles may require cooperation, or the group may need to choose which obstacles to address, and there's a soft cap on the length of a scene.)

It's free to play, with extra options (like more pre-made worlds) and privileges (like hosting many games at once) unlocked through subscription.

Lymia Aluysia

A lot of rules-light systems I've seen, I've ended up asking myself "Why would I wanna use this over just playing freeform" a lot. But I guess it makes sense for something with accessibility as a goal.

BESW

In my experience, as a gamer but also as an artist, writer, and designer, limited options fuel creative use of the options available.

doppelgreener

i agree ^

speaking as half of those things and then some other things instead of the other half

plus, lightweight games have play goals in mind and help push those goals

lasers & feelings is a tiny one-page RPG which helps push star trek parody nonsense about lasers and feelings and it's great

BESW

One reason I like RPG systems is that they provide a scaffold for encouraging a particular kind of play, and a framework for limiting analysis paralysis and performance anxiety.

(One reason I avoid most D&D-like systems is that I find they don't actually do this to my liking.)

Structures like ARRPG/Unwritten's "Brainstorm" mechanic come to mind.

They take a broad "Why is X happening?" question and break it into discrete chunks to be dealt with one at a time.

It's the sort of thing you can, of course, do in freeform too.

But they're learned tools and skills, and more experience and learning is required to recognise when to implement them, and group communication in a freeform game needs to be top-notch to signal and agree on it.

While in ARRPG, when someone asks "Why is X happening?" that's a trigger to consider starting a Brainstorm.

Nzall

11:34

@BESW Those 2 stories were glorious

Lymia Aluysia

Most of my earliest RP experience was RTD, or stuff like Paranoia played as freeform, so, it's not something I'm unfamiliar with. But those were one-shots, so, maybe not.

Nzall

Is there a site that groups stories like that where you can just navigate directly from one story to the next?

Lymia Aluysia

Maybe I should try to do more stuff like what I did back then now. More spontaneous one-shots along the lines of "let's just play something, figure out what later." Might warm me up more to rules light systems like that, since that seems ot be what they're designed for.

Nzall

years ago, I sometimes binged rec.funny

BESW

Greener has a story about how the fate point economy took a difficult decision about having something bad happen to his character (which might have taken half an hour to agonise over without any support from the system) and made it a split-second "Yes, of course!" decision.

Lymia Aluysia

11:36

Maybe not so much the one-shot part, but, they definitely seem more geared towards a more spontaneous "let's play something" than "here's a neat game concept I think you guys would like".

BESW

@LymiaAluysia I recommend also looking at systems with tension-building mechanics. Cthulhu Dark is a small, free system with beautiful escalation baked into the mechanics and the GM prep.

It mechanises the rising tension of a horror story in ways that could take groups years to master in freeform, or a system that's uninterested in that part of the story.

Lymia Aluysia

If only if any of us had an interest in horror. :D

BESW

@Nzall There are a few more saved in the conversations tab.

@LymiaAluysia Well, Danger Patrol does rising and falling tension too, though more abstractly, in a pulp heroic context.

Lymia Aluysia

Still probably worth reading the system still, at least.

BESW

And then there's stuff like Dog Eat Dog and Dogs in the Vineyard, where the mechanics are designed to force players into decision-making modes they wouldn't normally go towards.

> To know how well you do at something, roll:
- One die if the task is within human capabilities.
- One die if it’s within your occupational expertise.
- Your Insanity die, if you will risk your sanity to succeed.
Then your highest die shows how well you do. On a 1, you barely succeed. On a 6, you do brilliantly.

> If the Insanity die is the highest, you roll it again to see if you gain one Insanity point (you start at 1 Insanity, and hitting 6 drives your character retireably insane).

> You can always re-roll once, but your Insanity die has to be part of the re-roll.

That's the core of the rules, and it's got two essential traits.

eimyr

11:45

Somehow I dislike the idea of introducing behaviour modes to tabletop behaviour.

To me it bears little relevance when one needs to address some issue at the table.

BESW

First, you never fail (there's an extra rule for making it possible in rare circumstances, but it hardly ever matters). The thing is, you're facing horrors which mean that guaranteed success at everything you do STILL may not be enough to succeed.

Second, your Insanity rises quickly at the start, and as it progresses toward fatality the gains slow down.

Combined with some clever GM prep tricks, this makes for a game that successfully conveys a sense of dread and helplessness.

@eimyr It's a line to be careful with depending on the group.

Lymia Aluysia

It's interesting, and sounds like it works for what it's meant for. Doesn't really fit well the kinds of things the group I'm in usually runs though. .. intentionally, anyways.

BESW

@LymiaAluysia Oh, absolutely. I've got some players who love a delicious scare, so it's good for us as a sometimes game. But you've gotta know your group.

eimyr

@BESW Can you rephrase your last statement? I have trouble understanding the intention behind it.

BESW

@eimyr Groups need to be careful about the line between mechanics that influence the game, and mechanics that influence the players, because what's okay and what's not in that regard will vary widely from person to person.

Relatedly, I don't expect to be running My Life With Master again any time soon.

Wow, that was a dog's breakfast of an edit.

eimyr

11:52

@BESW I'm totally at loss how that relates to behaviour modes as a piece of theory that tries to explain motivation and way of thinking that affects their in-game decisions.

BESW

Then I may have not understood what you were saying, and replied to something else entirely.

eimyr

I thoguht you are responding to this

BESW

I was. But I wasn't thinking of "behaviour modes" as psychological jargon.

eimyr

@BESW <--- I understood that with the jargon meaning.

In general I'm trying to forget about modes and mode switching while at the table, because it is hard to analyse on the spot especially if you don't know your players as players very well, which is my case.

BESW

Yeah, no.

DitV, for example, is Forgeite: its goal is to make players think or feel something, rather than just simulating thoughts or emotions in their characters.

(Forge games from that period had this "make players think/feel" goal as a brute-force exploration of System Matters.)

eimyr

11:59

Here comes the mainsite Q!

BESW

Hm?

eimyr

0

Q: What does "Forgeite" mean? Where does it come from?

I have heard usage of the word "Forgeite" as a descriptive name for a certain kind of games - in most recent example it was Dogs in the Vineyard. It is implied that it has something to do with Forge and that games like that have an agenda of creating certain feelings in the player - but I'm not s...

terminology

Lymia Aluysia

Well. I'd certainly like to see how it tries to achieve that goal.

I've read plenty of opinions on that Forge site, and they weren't particularly positive opinions.

BESW

@LymiaAluysia Dogs does it by giving the PCs absolute moral and legal authority to resolve ethical/moral dilemmas, and an absolute responsibility to do so, and then providing a mechanic which implies this question: "What fallout--social, physical, societal--are you willing to risk in enforcing your resolution of this issue?"

Lymia Aluysia

eesh. That doesn't sound particularly like the most general system ever.

I'm not sure I particularly like games where you play the system instead of using the system for a campaign.

BESW

12:07

Oh, it's not general at all. Though I do suggest using the hack "The Princes' Kingdom," as its setting is a bit less distractingly problematic.

@LymiaAluysia Then Forgeite games are generally probably a bad fit for you. And for me, but fascinating to read nonetheless and I'd like to try some of them again some time.

it's my goal to be this calm when things are falling apart https://t.co/ZTygsNBxry

Tweeted by cateches on June 16, 2016 at 2:31 AM

2

eimyr

@LymiaAluysia Do you do a lot of morality plays in your games?

Lymia Aluysia

?

@eimyr What do you mean by that

eimyr

Do you like introducing moral dilemmas to the games? Do you like playing through them?

E.g. in my last campaign my GM had us decide whether to kill or spare goblin children while we were on a mission to kill some goblins who were threatening a local farm.

Also, it turned out that the goblins were not in fact threatening the farm as much as the farmer was threatening them, as they burrowed in what was in fact an old silver mine the farmer wanted to exploit illegally.

Lymia Aluysia

12:24

@eimyr Nothing particularly like that. Though the latter part is more along the lines of the kinds of things we'd be more likely to do.

That is, the situation with who started the whole thing.

I've ran something like "moral dilemmas" before, but, I don't think I'm particularly a fan of presenting it so directly, or isolated from the context of the campaign as a whole.

eimyr

I usually create (as a GM) a "no one is right" situation, where none of the factions or major NPCs in the game can be considered "good" or "righteous" and the players have to weigh their own opinions.

BESW

In one of my current campaigns, the PCs' new boss uses mind control to completely override the free will of individuals and uses their bodies as extensions of his own--but he only does it to people who agree first, and only for a pre-set limited time. For example, so that he can help someone over the first hump of withdrawal when quitting a drug.

Lymia Aluysia

I do like that approach, yeah. It's one of the major tools I use -- that is, NPCs with incompatible ideals and such (though not necessarily "wrong"). Though, I'm not sure the way my group approaches it is necessarily the same.

BESW

@DmitrySerdiuk Hi!

nitsua60

morning, all.

BESW

12:31

[wave]

eimyr

@LymiaAluysia One thing that I like to do is to give the players only one side of the story (as expected when allying with one side initially) and then for them to discover that their enemies are in fact quite human too, with valid reasons for opposing them.

Lymia Aluysia

(Case in point: One time we did something like a continuation campaign of another, and basically due to them playing entirely different PCs that time, they took the exact opposite side in a conflict that was the same as one in the first campaign. So it's not exactly about the player's morality, per se either)

eimyr

@nitsua60 Hello! How are you?

nitsua60

Thanks for the queries, @Miniman. I felt so smart when I found A-Za-z on my own!

@eimyr hey! Long time not chat =)

Doing well--transitioning the kids to summer vacation-mode. First rainy day's on the horizon....

Lymia Aluysia

oh no regex

BESW

12:32

Linkbomb incoming.

**[Timely RPGery](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nKltjD1HJ954pS3QZZL-E_ckNaKEeedxMKn7XwdFiio/edit?usp=sharing "Click for full source doc; please suggest items to pin!"):**
[BoH](https://bundleofholding.com "Buy RPGs cheap in bulk, support charities & indie designers!");
[UScons](http://casualgamerevolution.com/blog/2016/01/2016-tabletop-gaming-conventions-a-comprehensive-list "List of RPG conventions in the US.");
[UKcons](http://www.philmasters.org.uk/RPGs/conventions.htm "List of RPG conventions in the UK.").

Lymia Aluysia

Linkbomb for?

oh, pinning or something?

nitsua60

@LymiaAluysia but I know you're really thinking "aww... no regex"

eimyr

@LymiaAluysia It's something that the "S" from "BESW" does. Keeping up with a list of interesting links in the star board (which is, conveniently, on the starboard)

@nitsua60 yay! Vacations are always fun unless you don't get them.

Lymia Aluysia

> Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.

nitsua60

Jan 1 at 13:59, by nitsua60

I've always assumed BESW is a team of four, working in shifts. One's always typing, one's farming links, one's running games, one's sleeping.

TIL, courtesy of Miniman, that I have the 52nd-most downvotes on site. And significantly fewer of them than I'd have predicted. Win!

eimyr

12:39

@nitsua60 Can I have the link to that please?

Lymia Aluysia

Only 52nd? You have quite a ways to go still. :)

nitsua60

@eimyr data.stackexchange.com/rpg/query/500933/…

@LymiaAluysia True. Though I guess if my downvote-rank is lagging my rep-rank that's actually a positive indicator?

eimyr

@nitsua60 Is that a number of D-votes cast or received?

nitsua60

received

Lymia Aluysia

@eimyr It might be relevant that my playgroup generally does settings closer to urban fantasyish than D&D. So situations like "obviously evil goblins" isn't really a thing we can work with.

And in a lot of situations, you generally do have a chance to talk to the other side before you end up fighting them, at least. generally.

eimyr

12:44

Hey, I'm at 33!

That's not a bad score!

BESW

Fewer than me.

Miniman

@nitsua60 You're welcome! I really do enjoy writing SQL, especially with a database as beautiful as the one SE exposes, so feel free to ask anytime if there's something you'd like to know.

eimyr

@LymiaAluysia I run primarily World of Darkness. In that setting everyone is "obviously evil", especially if they are trying to be the good guys.

@Miniman How about a ranking about downvotes cast? Or a downvotes:upvotes received ratio as controversy indicator? Or a ranking of how many other answers does a person upvote in a question where that person posted an answer of his own?

@BESW Now I want to run a game in Gone with the Blastwave setting.

Wibbs

@eimyr Only 13 for me :) but far fewer questions and answers posted

BESW

I think ratios are more informative than raw numbers, for a lot of things.

Wibbs

12:53

true

eimyr

I hope I didn't break Miniman...

BESW

Yeah, I didn't even have a turn playing with him yet.

Lymia Aluysia

@eimyr I know next to nothing about WoD. Other than apparently "handfuls of dice". But I might be confusing systems that I've never played. :D

eimyr

OK, everyone there, QUESTION TIME! Do you know of any good RPG systems for portraying military life during wartime in a visceral, absurdist but somewhat humorous way? Sort of like in Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket or Demony Wojny (PL) or Fury or Inglorious Basterds?

@LymiaAluysia Other WoD stereotypes include "brooding", "overdone", "incomprehensible arcane BS", "terrible convoluted metaplot" and "poorly written".

lisardggY

@eimyr Catch 22: The RPG?

eimyr

13:00

Is taht a thing?

lisardggY

Probably not.

eimyr

It would be perfect. It should be a thing.

lisardggY

The most military-oriented RPG I know of it Twilight 2000, but it's pretty much the opposite of humorous.

eimyr

If it's not I need to write it.

I'd name it Catch d22.

BESW

WoD started out as "Interview with the Vampire: the RPG," and quickly became "Cynical Corporate Conspiracies vs Monstrous Magical Murder."

lisardggY

13:01

> The adventures in Twilight 2000 typically involve a military unit which was stranded in Central Europe after the nuclear war and places emphasis on attempting to realistically depict military and social systems after a nuclear war.

nitsua60

@Miniman It's not obvious to me whether this counts downvotes on deleted posts--what do you think?

Lymia Aluysia

@eimyr Just promise me that the "handfuls of dice" don't involve any d4s

BESW

WoD uses d10s.

eimyr

Exclusively d10s.

BESW

All the d10s.

Miniman

13:08

@nitsua60 It shouldn't - data.SE isn't linked to the rest of SE, so it has no way of knowing that the person querying does/doesn't have the rep to see deleted posts.

@eimyr Nah, I was afk.

@eimyr Momonga did the first one earlier: data.stackexchange.com/rpg/query/500930

@eimyr The second one is here: data.stackexchange.com/rpg/query/501169/…

Fair warning, there's a lot of noise in that one. Also, users who've never been downvoted (like trogdor) don't appear.

@eimyr The third one is impossible, because voting is anonymous. You'll have to rely on the Sportsmanship badge.

nitsua60

@Miniman I think for each of these it'd be interesting both to see N/rep and N/days onsite. Neither is a perfect measure of "experience", but I feel like both factor in.

BESW

[looks at numbers greater than 1] Hey, I remember some of those guys.

Miniman

@BESW The only one I remember has a ratio worryingly close to pi. I wasn't expecting the Illuminati to be confirmed twice in one day.

nitsua60

13:24

I was also thinking it'd be interesting to look at something like (downvotes received)-0.5*(posts with downvotes) as a way of (partially) discounting that first downvote. But I'm conflicted about interpreting the observation that "every good answer gets one anonymous downvote" to mean that the info should be discounted. That strikes me as a bit of post hoc massaging the data....

Miniman

@nitsua60 Downvotes per rep and per day: data.stackexchange.com/rpg/query/501183

eimyr

Lol Bobby Tables right there at the top

nitsua60

@Miniman sorry, this is received or cast?

Miniman

@nitsua60 Cast.

I'm just doing what you asked for :P

eimyr

@Miniman I'm totally waiting for the upvotes cast for answers other than yours in q's that you answered

Miniman

13:27

@eimyr Done. I'm not responsible for the consequences of running that one, though.

nitsua60

@Miniman not to :P you back, but... chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/30402452#30402452 links to the "received" query, not the "cast" one =)

eimyr

@Miniman Did you just link me the Help Contact page as trolling?

Miniman

@eimyr Pretty much, yeah.

I guess the Ask Question link on MSE would've worked, too.

eimyr

Aww, I really hoped you would write some SQL, have some fun and give me some interesting insight into people's behaviour.

welp

Miniman

@eimyr My SQL skills don't currently extend to getting data out of a database that isn't there to begin with, but I'll train hard and try to improve!

Waterseas

13:33

Believe in yourself

Miniman

@nitsua60 Downvotes received per rep and per day: data.stackexchange.com/rpg/query/501169

eimyr

@Miniman is there help explaining the meaning behind int-typed columns?

Miniman

@eimyr Yeah, for example, there's a VoteType in the table list with a little i next to it. If you click the i it tells you all the VoteTypes.

eimyr

14:06

@Miniman but e.g. PostTypeId is a complete mystery

Miniman

@eimyr PostTypes has an entry too. It's about 3/5 of the way down the list.

nitsua60

14:41

question on this Q:

22

Q: Does Water Breathing + a full waterskin = infinite “air”?

I was wondering if a person could use water breathing to avoid breathing a toxic atmosphere. The spell itself states: This spell grants up to ten willing creatures you can see within range the ability to breathe underwater until the spell ends. Affected creatures also retain their normal mod...

dnd-5e spells rules-as-written

worth protecting? The last two answers that came in are both badly-constructed frame challenges from 1-rep (presumably new?) users.

I've only thrown the protect on once, and it was a knee-jerk reaction. I'm curious what the reasoned approach is =)

Joshua Aslan Smith

15:20

@waxeagle we are meeting tonight right or am I just crazy

Anaphory

@JoshuaAslanSmith It could be both, you know…

Joshua Aslan Smith

it could I am currently grinding tag wiki edits over on Beer, Wine, and Spirits beta SE to rep up since people dont post question there currently and when they do we have a really high close rate because of low quality

there are like yahoo answers level of questions and answers going on

Anaphory

Ouch.

Joshua Aslan Smith

it actually started beta last year and I totally missed it

theres 3 mods pro tempore

but its a pretty low activity site on the meta and the chat

lots of low rep casual users

so im trying to bring some of the quality we have here over there for instance

trying to get general recommendation questions as off topic but allow pairing questions

most of the tags have no info or have a synonym tag that is not a synonym

being under 200 rep is super painful Im so used to all the tools I have as a 20K + guy here to make edits and vote to close and whatnot

nitsua60

upvotes deserved, I believe: rpg.stackexchange.com/a/82801/23970

Aether

15:33

@JoshuaAslanSmith Time to ask and self-answer some good quality questions?

Joshua Aslan Smith

@aether true there are a few niggles Ive had in my exploration of cocktails and their history that would be good and could attract more people to the site and improve the quality

Aether

Yep. It will help in providing good examples of what good questions look like, too...

Anaphory

@JoshuaAslanSmith And someone might still come up with better ideas than you had.

Aether

You may even learn something new of use from another user :)

wax eagle

16:24

@JoshuaAslanSmith no go tonight, I'm away on bizniz

Jaiden Snow

16:42

@Momonga-sama, good day ^ ^ Hmm... speaking your old question with singing assassin... There was proposition of class Athasian Bard dfds.wikia.com/wiki/Athasian_Bard. Also Hey I Can Chan mentioned that official book with that class could be found here athas.org/products/ds3 . Is that class OK, or it's flawed in some way?

...*speaking about your old question...

...proposition with class...

(ugh, English is hard %_%)

nitsua60

really nice answer, @SevenSidedDie. It's nice when a good question comes along that merits a small, well-written and -reasoned and -linked essay as an answer. And gets it. From an expert.

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 Thanks! Meanwhile, the already-accepted answer is pretty much saying the same thing, but in a more digestible way. Hopefully the two complementary treatments will be help different people in different ways!

Jaiden Snow

@SevenSidedDie I'm planning to merge that Update that you mentioned not so long ago. I have a weird question: I like Hey I Can Chan's comment. Is it OK to quote it + give credits to him/her or better to merge it seamlessly with rephrasing where it makes sense?

SevenSidedDie

@JaidenSnow You can put it in a quote block with attribution, yeah. I personally prefer answers that write such things in their own words with a brief credit note since it's way less distracting to read, but I think that's a matter of taste. Either works.

nitsua60

woo-hoo! WhatIf.SE just moved into its commitment phase. Take a look if you haven't swung by yet =)

SevenSidedDie

16:58

@JaidenSnow (Prepositions are hard in every language. They're the least-translatable concepts in language, and they're extremely frequently used. I've learned French, German, a bit of Esperanto, discussed Spanish while my partner learns it, and am learning Polish now — every single one does pronouns in ways that break an English-speaking brain.)

Jaiden Snow

...**proposal** with class...

(yes, it's that hard ^ ^)

nitsua60

VtC game-rec

VtC unclear as it's got two good, unrelated questions in it. OP says they'll split it when they can.

SevenSidedDie

17:15

@JaidenSnow …proposal for the class… :) Yeah, they're hard. How to use them pretty much relies on slow, increasing exposure to set phrases that show how each one is used. Understanding the exact rules for how they're used comes after (if ever — it's hard even for a native speaker to understand or explain the rules of prepositions).

nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie This is why I regularly refer to them as prepositinos. They're the smallest identifiable unit of grammar. They also jump out of the way when you try to define them.

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 That's very fitting.

I'm currently exasperated with the differences in Polish pronouns for "for", "to", "on", "in" (which overlap as they don't map 1:1 to English). I think I'm starting to get a feel for when they're used, which I know from experience means I'm about to get complacent and run face-first into a misassumption.

nitsua60

Hopefully it'll just be a misassumptino; it won't derail your day too badly =)

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 On the other hand, a real cracker of a language-learning derail can be the best teacher. :)

Aether

17:32

@nitsua60 Prepositinos are also a little ridiculous...

nitsua60

18:36

@SevenSidedDie oh, wow. I just noticed what your clicking on my commitment link up there did to my Area 51 "commitment score". That's the easiest sixth-of-a-million points I've earned in a long time =)

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 Are there points for people clicking through and committing? That would make sense for Area 51.

(Hey, nice, it's doubled since I looked at it.)

nitsua60

I'm not sure whether I'm "top" right now because of my impressive number of referrals (1) or the commitment score. Either way it's going on the fridge =)

@SevenSidedDie yeah--I think all of us who were in on the definition phase got an automated e-mail today to say "next phase!"

So the commits are coming in quick.

SevenSidedDie

Speaking of Area 51 and languages, Slavic Languages needs more votes on its proposed questions to finish the definition stage!

nitsua60

19:14

It's really hard to un-see the word "paranorma" in the second paragraph of this answer. Now you enjoy.

Zachiel

19:29

I hate-love it when the DM starts playing "Every time you people interfere with the baddie's plans, someone dies and common people get told it was because you people were so nosy".

I also think I had half a seizure when the last kill was done in front of us, with a scrying spell, and we failed our only chance at stopping it.

Momonga-sama

19:41

@JaidenSnow NO HOMEBREW >:(

Anaphory

20:03

@SevenSidedDie And each other's brains. Conjunctions are also bad, reminding me of the Feynman anectode where he goes to Brasil and does not know the Portuguese for “So”. So he uses the regularities he knows and builds consequent-emente from consequent-ly.

I remotely know someone who tracks language change by comparing in large corpora which preposition is used for which bit of semantics.

BESW

20:44

First game of @Games_On_Demand Origins 2016. I am the Atomic Robot. It's the Bees Knees! https://t.co/T8ZggNltTE

Tweeted by mc_ellis on June 16, 2016 at 1:42 PM

I have an in-joke with a composition teacher that someday all English prepositions will be replaced with the one word, "prep."

Anaphory

> I have a prep.-joke prep. a prep.position teacher that someday all English prepositions will be replaced prep. the one word, "prep."?

BESW

Yup.

Joshua Aslan Smith

toats

BESW

21:11

@Anaphory It's not dissimilar to the old joke that someday the English language will be nothing but differently-inflected and -conjugated forms of the f-word.

(Language snob apocalypses are a whole category unto themselves.)

"Mesozoic Gliding Mammal" would be a good name for a band.

Anaphory

21:29

@BESW So would Language Snob Apocalypse

BESW

That sounds like a World of Adventure for Fate.

Anaphory

Based around that Fate question?

BESW

Could be!

(also: use \ to tell the markdown to ignore a specific character.

Based around [that \[fate\] question](http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/26118/how-can-we-make-overcomin‌g-a-language-problem-interesting)?

becomes: Based around that [fate] question?)

Anaphory

I wanted the tag in there. Which, now that I realise it, does not make any sense, because it's not just markup, it also adds a link, which is not good inside a link.

BESW

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that doesn't work out well.

@Anaphory Actually, though, I was thinking of something more like "English snobs vs Those Future Guys from Paper Girls."

Anaphory

21:38

I didn't think about the setting. I thought “don't they often also include some interesting mechanics in those hey wait there was…”.

BESW

Those guys.

Anaphory

22:00

Maybe I should start reading more comics…

BESW

The Big Two aren't putting out a lot of top-notch stuff, but Image Comics and other publishers are doing some amazing stuff.

I'm really excited about Yohancé, which is an afrofuturist space opera debuting in a few weeks.

Anaphory

Big Two things I might consider because I know web comic artists doing them (i.e. Chris Hastings), and so far it's been mostly web comics I have been reading, I think Firefly and Atomic Robo were things I got in paid-for-digital editions.

BESW

Doppelgreener really likes Saga, and I can see why though it doesn't grab me as much. I've been enjoying Injection and Paper Girls from Image Comics, and Dents is a great free online comic (but not really a webcomic) with a new issue every Friday.

And of course there's Atomic Robo and its spinoff Real Science Adventures, also both free online and later published physically.

Anaphory

What makes a free online comic a web comic?

@BESW That I know! they are part of the things I read regularly.

BESW

There's not exactly a hard line.

I really need to give LeveL another shot some time.

Lovecraft Is Missing was great until it suffered Author Existence Failure.

trogdor

22:14

lol

that is actually hilarious

Anaphory

@BESW Fictional or real?

BESW

Alas, real. He passed away in 2014, and his wife has been looking into continuing the comic with other writers/artists based on his notes.

Anaphory

Ah.

Anyway, Need Sleep. Talk Soon, Good Night.

BESW

ttfn

nitsua60

VtC game-rec

BESW

22:22

@nitsua60 I'll just leave this here in case he comes to chat.

trogdor

@BESW oh, that is much less hilarious then

BESW

@trogdor Still darkly ironic, though.

trogdor

I thought that meant like, someone else had been making that comic but it flopped because they themselves were not him

@BESW yes but that doesn't make me feel better for laughing at it

I will get over it though, honest mistake :/

Wibbs

Bah, just had the climax of a game I was playing in ruined by the other player continually blocking my character's choices :/

BESW

Aw.

Wibbs

22:31

Even to the extent of preventing me reading the mcguffins we'd spent the entire campaign searching for

Shalvenay

as in, their character was overruling yours ICly, or the player was OOCly trying to argue that your character couldn't/wouldn't do that/

*?

Wibbs

IC

Unfortunately I've been there before with this player, both as their GM and as a fellow player, and I know there's no point in arguing my case. They just can't see past 'what their character would do'

BESW

[has a sad]

Wibbs

I won't be playing in a group with them again based on this, and I'm unlikely to want to GM them either, as it's caused problems in other games

BESW

I assume you've shared My Guy Syndrome material with them.

Wibbs

22:35

Yeah, had that discussion

Like water of a ducks back

they just don't get it

Its particularly difficult as they are one of my closest friends

hence deciding to forgo gaming with them to preserve the friendship

BESW

Sounds like a good call.

Wibbs

coz I was really, really, really angry under the surface

Shalvenay

hey there @nitsua60

nitsua60

@Shalvenay hiya

The Tale of The Dwarven Cleric, or I Poke Him: 101 Stupid RP Tricks, Volume One.

Island explodes, everybody falls.

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