TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

00:25

@Emrakul we'll see how it goes

Joel Harmon

02:25

@Shalvenay I believe classic Traveller characters could actually die during char gen

Shalvenay

@JoelHarmon yeah, that's what I was referring to

Joel Harmon

I took it to mean "permanent disabilities"

which, of course, also happens

trogdor

03:01

@BESW oh, wow

BESW

@trogdor She'd mentioned when they optioned it, but most optioned books never go further.

trogdor

fair enough

it's still kinda surprising either way

nitsua60

03:47

@Adeptus you around? (probably not, as it's super-late where you live)

Miniman

@nitsua60 It's the middle of the day, actually.

nitsua60

(whoops; incorrectly had him in my head-map as a European)

@Miniman In other news, I snagged "Epic" today. I'm not sure how to feel about how validated I feel... =\

Miniman

@nitsua60 If you think about it, it's really a consolation prize for all the rep you lost to the cap.

nitsua60

Yeah... I ran the /rep page through a script the other day (as I was getting super-close) and found about 5K "lost" rep =)

Miniman

@nitsua60 11362 for me :(

nitsua60

04:00

@Miniman similar percentage, though... about a 20% "haircut"

Miniman

@nitsua60 Closer to 25% for you.

nitsua60

yeah, I was doing it in my head, off of my memory of your current total, and then splitting the difference between us =)

You around 58K these days?

Miniman

Nah, 54.5k.

nitsua60

@Miniman I was thinking 20% of my "full" rep lost to the haircuts.

Miniman

@nitsua60 That is what that shows: (FullRep - ActualRep) / FullRep simplifies to 1 - (ActualRep / FullRep)

trogdor

04:08

@nitsua60 is that after adding the lost rep in and then leaving it out?

Miniman

I just didn't want to have the formula for FullRep in there more than once, it's messy.

nitsua60

@trogdor No, just must have mis-counted my "missing rep" the other day. I only got something in the five-thousands, but Mr. Data here =) is getting 6714.

(Great--I just lost another thousand rep.)

Miniman

@nitsua60 You're welcome!

trogdor

@nitsua60 what, just now? that seems a little fast

Miniman

@trogdor I negative bountied one of his answers.

3

trogdor

04:10

how can there be that many people voting on your stuff in like, one second?

@Miniman lol

nitsua60

I'll bet someone like SSD has a pretty low %age among Mortarboard holders. I assume that with that many good answers he must pull 100 rep every day just from new people coming to the site and "discovering" him. (Thus the concentration of rep onto days with "overvoted" posts is low, compared to a 5e-farmer like miniman or me.)

Miniman

@nitsua60 13%

trogdor

meanwhile, I have not moved from 595 rep for a few months, and I couldn't care less XD

not that being unhappy about lost rep is bad

Miniman

@trogdor [starts singing Play the Game]

trogdor

I probably wouldn't be to happy to learn I didn't earn rep when I got an upvote for something

@Miniman which game is that, the one I eat peanuts at and throw the shells of said penuts into the middle of?

XD :P

nitsua60

04:16

Play of the game from tonight's Curse of Strahd session: party enters dark room and hears lots of rustling. Druid (three levels lower than rest of party) fires off daylight. Party sees twenty-five vampire spawn in the room. Druid hides under a table, while spawn are all disadvantaged and taking 20 damage each round. Four round later he rakes in 4500 XP for using one spell slot. Now only two levels "low."

trogdor

lol

nitsua60

@trogdor not unhappy, just unreasonably aware =)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Breaking through a wall might have been a good move.

trogdor

@nitsua60 well, whatever it is, I just don't want you to think I am shaming you for that awareness

nitsua60

@trogdor the only unhappiness I feel around rep is when I'm at 200 on the day and find myself less-willing to downvote something because I'm "afraid" I'll end the day at 199 rather than 200. Then I feel shame all on my own, without needing anyone else to shame me =)

@trogdor no shame taken =D

Miniman

04:19

@nitsua60 You shouldn't feel shame about that - it's dumb that it works like that.

nitsua60

@Miniman is it possible to query on the posession of a badge?

trogdor

@nitsua60 well that is actually part of my point, I am proud that I don't care that much about rep, but I don't want it to come off as putting people down for any amount they do happen to care about it

Miniman

@nitsua60 Yep.

nitsua60

@Miniman I feel shame/stupid that I let something that dumb it influence what I know to be more-responsible behavior (voting my conscience).

@Miniman so could you run that "lost rep %age" on Mortarboard holders?

shh..... here he comes now [looks awkwardly at SSD]

Miniman

@nitsua60 You could, I suppose. Although I just realised that it doesn't take bounties into account.

trogdor

04:21

lol

Miniman

Or accepted suggested edits.

nitsua60

so bounty must have short-code '9', I think

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 I recall reading somewhere that they changed it so that your own downvotes aren't counted for the day's 200, possibly for that very reason.

nitsua60

edits '16'?

Miniman

@SevenSidedDie Are you sure? I'm pretty sure I've missed rep cap by downvoting. Like, a bunch of times.

@nitsua60 Yep, if you click the little "i" next to VoteType it shows you a table of all the codes.

SevenSidedDie

04:24

@Miniman Not entirely. These kinds of things, even when they show up as assertions in MSE posts, are black-boxy and never quite convincing. Too much about the details of how the site works is obscure.

nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie well, now that I grabbed "Epic" and have forecast that it'll take me another three years to grab "Legendary", I've vowed to stop worrying about rep-capping.

@Miniman that seems a lot ~~easier~~ less fun than perusing the plain-text /reputation page and back-figuring what they "must" be.

Miniman

@SevenSidedDie Huh, apparently you're right and I'm wrong.

SevenSidedDie

@Miniman Oh cool, it's all negative rep for the day that's ignored. I didn't know that. (See! Obscure and black boxy!)

Miniman

@SevenSidedDie From downvotes, at least - I imagine using over-cap rep to fuel bounties wouldn't work out so well.

nitsua60

I just noticed a ten-point discrepancy between my /reputation page's number and the one displayed in all the "regular" mainsite places. In fact, now that I think of it it's been there for a couple hours. The badge tracker told me I'd gotten "Epic" one upvote earlier than my achievement bar showed +200 and the badge award, at which (later) time my badge list also newly showed "Epic." Any thoughts?

SevenSidedDie

04:29

@Miniman It sounds like it still would if it was before hitting the cap (there “lost” rep after hitting the cap doesn't suddenly appear after losing rep), but again — uncertain. It would take Sciencing it, and that stuff is hard to Science properly. Or asking a MSE question, I guess.

Miniman

@nitsua60 There's lots of weirdness around stuff populating slowly, I wouldn't worry about it.

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 Rep is often out of sync and gets recalculated (daily, I think?) to keep it relatively correct.

trogdor

@nitsua60 I have noticed things like that seeming to happen, if I understand what you are saying at least, sometimes stuff like that takes some time to update everywhere on the Stack

nitsua60

different scripts checking for different things at different frequencies, and all?

Miniman

@nitsua60 I fixed it for bounties, but accepted edit suggestions would be way more work than it's worth.

@nitsua60 That sort of thing, yeah.

nitsua60

04:33

@Miniman which we know, from the end of the /reputation page, weigh in at the 1% level.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Incidentally, in case it ever comes up: data from data.SE will always be out of date.

nitsua60

@Miniman is it last night's dump?

Miniman

> The data is updated early every Sunday morning around 3:00 UTC. The last update was Jul 10 at 6:26.

nitsua60

@Miniman now I'm really at 25%--24.97%, to be precise. As precise as one can be without suggested edits, that is... =)

Miniman

@nitsua60 I don't know about you, but for me it's 24 rep from suggested edits, so...eh.

nitsua60

04:36

60 for me.

maybe I did more edit (suggest)ing while a newbie?

Miniman

@nitsua60 I'm pretty sure you've done more editing in general :P

Yep, well and truly.

nitsua60

When I search for (2) in my /reputation page the highlights are heavily clustered in the top 1/6 of the scroll bar.

do you have a version of the query that tabulates lost-rep %age for all mortarboard holders?

Is it wrong that I want to tell a user that cursory googling for ____ probably qualifies as "looking in the wrong place"?

(I'm not going to, but I want to.)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Well, I didn't.

BESW

It's that "read me the rules," then?

nitsua60

@Miniman Ooh, poor @eimyr =\

Miniman

04:44

@BESW Not exactly - there is actually an interesting ambiguity there.

nitsua60

@BESW It's the desire I have to respond to "I was hoping there was a word from the devs" with "there was, and they published it in the book where they describe every other thing of a type with this thing you're asking about."

@Miniman I agree, there's a small ambiiguity.

Miniman

Really, it's more of an "idle curiosity which the querent didn't have the books to look into so just asked internet strangers".

nitsua60

In my mind it's question-worthy, because you have to look in more than one entry to get (what I think is) the right answer.

BESW

18

A: What Do We Do With "Read The Book To Me" Questions?

There's at least two kinds of easily confusable questions here though: I hear the DMG has rules for X. I don't have the DMG. What are the rules for X? Are there rules for X? What are they? #1 is a deeply problematic question that asks us to engage in violating copyright: the person should buy...

nitsua60

But it's not worthy of saying "I looked around, perhaps I'm not looking in the right place?"

IMO

Miniman

04:46

Similar to me being like "Hey guys, is there a Dungeon World move that lets me turn people into frogs?"

BESW

They're not asking about the ambiguity.

They're the first case: "I don't have the DMG. What are the rules for X?"

nitsua60

@Miniman As long as you follow with "I looked around... I mean, I didn't read the book, but I looked around."

BESW

A good answer rarely saves a poor question.

Miniman

@BESW True, but what about a poor question that turns out to be a good question despite the querent?

nitsua60

@BESW but I think it may be a weird cultural artifact of OGL-effects. In previous editions is it fair to say that "I didn't find a rule for this on the web" was equivalent to "there isn't a rule for this"? 'Cause it sure seems to me (an outsider) that all the "core" 3.x/4 stuff is out there in official capacity.

BESW

04:50

@nitsua60 4e isn't really, but I get your point. Not sure it's relephant.

nitsua60

So now it's 5 and you actually have to ~~own~~ have the books to have the "full" game in your hands. But people may not be used to that.

BESW

@Miniman That'd be great. But that question would be, "I'm confused by this rule," and what we've got is "Is there a rule?"

Miniman

@BESW I think they might actually be a weird hybrid of the 2 cases, actually: "Are there rules for X? I haven't really looked."

As I said earlier, more a matter of idle curiosity than anything else.

BESW

That the answer is "There's a confusing rule" doesn't magically turn the question into "This rule is confusing."

nitsua60

I guess I'm wondering if he's actually done what would be a "reasonable" amount of research in recent edition(s), but turns out not to be appropriate in this one.

BESW

04:52

@nitsua60 Possibly. But do we really want to accept questions that would be appropriate for other systems but not the one being asked about?

At this point, I think the subject should be taken to meta.

nitsua60

@BESW Oh, I'm not really thinking about question-propriety, right now. Sorta still playing cultural catch-up for my two lost decades =)

Speaking of which, have you heard about this new game Dungeon World? It's awesome!

Miniman

@BESW I'm not sure that's necessary - it shows a clear lack of research, and I've downvoted it as such, but there's not really a close or delete reason here.

BESW

Kultural Ketchup is the name of my new line of international condiments.

3

Miniman

@BESW As in, equivalents of ketchup in different cultures?

nitsua60

Before I star that, please enumerate some of your brand's offerings...

=)

BESW

04:57

Succulent Soy, Cumin Crave, Pickled Paradise...

nitsua60

okay, I give.

Gotta run, all. It's way too late 'round these parts for me to still be up =\

BESW

ttfn

Miniman

@nitsua60 Cya

doppelgreener

05:28

20

A: How much the players can narrate in Fate? How much can be prepared beforehand by the Gm taking that into account?

I don't have my books handy, so I can't quote rules for you, but here's my recollection based on several years of playing Fate: Players can narrate their own actions. And they can answer questions that you ask them - filling in blanks and taking a portion of the burden of narration from you. Bu...

oh, perfect opportunity to warm up fate chat

Magician

05:53

3

Miniman

@Magician Not to sound obvious, but what about hide armor?

Magician

@Miniman Not sure where I put it...

Miniman

@Magician Heh.

Adeptus

06:19

@nitsua60 I am now. Not on my usual schedule, because I had the day off work to take my wife in to surgery. (She's back in her room now)

Miniman

1 hour ago, by nitsua60

Gotta run, all. It's way too late 'round these parts for me to still be up =\

(In case you wonder why he doesn't reply)

Adeptus

As an aside... I find the new mobile chat works better without ChatSEy

Miniman

@Adeptus Is that a StackApp?

Adeptus

I don't think it's a Stack official app, but it was designed to improve (the old) Stack mobile chat

Miniman

@Adeptus Well, if it was designed for the old version, it makes sense that it wouldn't work well now that it's been changed.

eimyr

08:48

@Miniman I didn't realise...

I've just hit the rep cap 10 times

It's... impossible

Miniman

@eimyr Search your feelings...you know it to be true.

eimyr

NooooOOOOOOooooo!

trogdor

hehehe

eimyr

No, really. That's amazing and not in a good way

I didn't really have that many superb answers to justify 30% rate

The Oracle

10:14

0

Q: Is it appropiate to ask here questions that only appear if you don't own the published rules?

This post: Is it possible to stuff a Bag of Holding inside another Bag of Holding? made me ask, is it ok to ask questions here about specific rules, which are only unclear if you don't own the raw materials? As the case OP is asking there is an explicite mentioned case in each description of the...

discussion

doppelgreener

13:17

(twitter.com/levie/status/752358516950642688)

doppelgreener

13:39

Apparently the company, Niantic, has been working on AR games for a while: first in 2012 with Field Trip, then in 2013-14 a new game called Ingress, which I'm told is where a lot of the pokestop locations came from (and why they're largely works of art and monuments and other things). Started out as a Google company, then struck out on its own last year.

nitsua60

@doppelgreener "AR"?

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 Augmented Reality. Laying virtual things over real things.

nitsua60

Gotcha.

doppelgreener

The pokestops are a form of Augmented Reality: real location, now let's create some game meaning for it. So is the entire notion around catching pokemon that are theoretically right there to your left.

eimyr

Such a shame Go barely works on my phone

nitsua60

13:43

I've heard there's a horror/suspense one that you play in your own house with your phone as a "spectral detector"--it hijacks your camera and overlays ethereal images where there be ghosts.

eimyr

~~BTW there should be an RPG.SE game where you can catch a @trogdor or a @doppelgreener or perhaps a legendary mod, depending on time of the day and some other circumstances.~~ I just realised it's RPG.SE chat

doppelgreener

It is!

so realistic, too

nitsua60

@eimyr last night's game, relevant context is that this GM uses 1" oblate spheroids for mooks. Party ends up in a locked room with two dozen vampire spawn. Me, looking at battle-map two rounds in: "Uh, guys? We suck at Go."

@doppelgreener it's like the chatbots are real!

I feel like there's a real person hiding inside me!

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 That is the skeleton inside you waiting to burst free.

nitsua60

ah, my permanent companion.

He almost got out once (open ankle fracture), but we stuffed him back in right-quick.

eimyr

13:47

Does that make you a skele-ball?

Are you white on the bottom, more colourful on top with a button in the middle?

nitsua60

Btw, @BESW @Shalvenay @Adeptus @doppelgreener @Miniman: I was looking back the other day at our "Zero to Hero" conversation of a few months ago and wanted to thank you again for your feedback/input. This month I may take a stab at finally getting a workable draft onto paper.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Awesome, definitely link when it's done - if nothing else, I'm still not 100% on exactly what it is, so I'll be interested to see it for that reason at least.

doppelgreener

14:09

@nitsua60 you're welcome, keep us in the loop :)

nitsua60

@doppelgreener Actually, on the "keeping in the loop" matter, I'm in back-and-forth discussions with DM's Guild as to how much I can do that without running afoul of their Content Agreement.

doppelgreener

Oh, huh, ok.

nitsua60

Section 4(b) of the Content Agreement limits my ability to share/distribute the product elsewhere.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Ah, so you're looking at publishing?

nitsua60

Obviously talking "about" the thing, especially when it doesn't even exist yet, is fine.

But I'm not clear on when "discussing" rises to the level of "posting the material elsewhere;" and is posting elsewhere permissible before posting to DM's Guild?

These things aren't clear.

@Miniman "publishing" in the sense of "if I really end up liking it, I'd like to throw it up on DMs Guild."

Possibly paired with a buddy's essay of the same name which discusses the in-universe interpretation of what it means that most people are "normals," with some having a "spark."

(It doesn't help that I'm totally not firm on what CC BY-SA and all its cousins entail, either.)

Miniman

14:21

@nitsua60 The terrifying maze of modern copyright licensing is one of the main reasons I haven't published any homebrew.

nitsua60

@Miniman Yeah... you totally need a seven-sided die to get through that maze =D

Miniman

If any non-exhausted person feels like leaving an appropriate comment on this, that'd be great.

@SevenSidedDie Huh, that aspect of it hadn't even occurred to me.

SevenSidedDie

@Miniman It always sucks shutting down an earnest newbie. :/

Miniman

@SevenSidedDie Well, hopefully it's not a shutdown so much as a pause.

SevenSidedDie

14:36

@Miniman Yeah, here's hoping.

nitsua60

15:07

fodder for a 200-word rpg?

President Andrew Johnson once said, "If I am to be shot at, I want Gnome Ann to be in the way of the bullet."

What gods have joined, let Gnome Ann put asunder.

Sadly, if wishes were fishes then Gnome Ann would starve. I guess she subsists on wishes?

Gnome Ann, the uber-cleric: "Thou [Moses] canst not see my face, for there [my face] shall Gnome Ann see me and live." Ex 33:20

@SevenSidedDie "Gnome Ann knows what to do against the purely new." -Ross Ashby

Anaphory

15:59

Inspired by trying to answer rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/84093/… without experience:

What do you use to set up an answer draft that should grow into a complete answer at some point?

nitsua60

@Anaphory many sites' metas have a catchall "sandbox" question that serves (poorly, IMO) as a container for that purpose. I, personally, just stick it into a text file on my desktop. (With a link to the question it purports to answer in the head-matter. I've learned that one the hard way!)

Also, Gnome Ann likes to see incomplete answers.

Anaphory

@nitsua60 Currently, my answer starts with “This answer will not cite experience, because overall, this is not my play style, and when I do want to play something high-prep, I play something else. I will try to hunt down experience by others – in the meantime, you are supposed to downvote this answer.” in case I submit it before adding in experience :)

nitsua60

@Anaphory Gnome Ann could challenge your forthrightness, then =)

(And ignorance of the law is an excuse for Gnome Ann, so her challenge might be daunting!)

Anaphory

16:31

I resisted the urge to post a half-thought-out not-from-experience answer and wish a good evening, for now I shall go home and then go away to play some games.

nitsua60

17:13

@SevenSidedDie that's a much nicer comment than the one I was resisting writing the urge to write: "I don't know, will you be posting redundant answers on those ones, too?"

(Read: nice job with the gentle, kind, respectful, and patient moderation.)

SevenSidedDie

17:24

@Anaphory I like to post what I have and immediately delete, so I can work on it and then undelete when it's ready. Putting "draft" at the top or explaining in a comment before deleting the post can help avoid confusing 10k+ users who see it.

@nitsua60 Thanks for the outside perspective. I felt grumpier than that when writing it… So, success!

Zachiel

19:01

Was stackexchange the right stack for networking questions?

DForck42

21:01

wow, it's been a long time since i've been in here

Zachiel

Heya

DForck42

ohla

how goes it?

BESW

The @DriveThruRPG Deal of the Day cuts 40% off horror-investigation game Monster of the Week http://drivethrurpg.com/product/143518/Monster-of-the-Week?affiliate_id=24139 https://t.co/KPbGXui3jW

Tweeted by EvilHatOfficial on July 14, 2016 at 3:17 PM

Zachiel

21:17

@DForck42 same as always. More recently, I'm trying to run a ply by forum of D&D but I want players that I already know and one of them is bad at English which means I'm probably going nowhere.

DForck42

fun

i'm working on my lvl5 dwarf fighter

Zachiel

@DForck42 less fun, I'm at a loss with trying to understand the math behind D&D 4e

DForck42

heh, yeah it's crazy

if you can, go 5e instead

would be my recommendation

Zachiel

I finally had an enemy with AC28

The ranger killed him before he got near.

DForck42

lol

also, from what i remember, monsters didnt' get worked out well until MM3 in 4e

Zachiel

21:20

I'm using post-MM3 stats.

DForck42

weird

Zachiel

@DForck42 I wonder if the party having ACs ranging from 27 to 29 and to hit around +21 is expected for level 12 characters.

Monsters on the other hand have around +17 to hit and 24 AC

BESW

[goes digging in old files]

Hah! I have PDFs of my group's PCs at level 12.

AC: 27, 29, 30, 30
Fort: 25, 27, 20, 27
Ref: 30, 24, 24, 26
Will:26, 24, 24, 27
Atk: +20, +20, +18, +16

Those numbers are a little lower than they'd actually be in battle, as they don't include any circumstantial bonuses like always-on combat advantage.

Zachiel

of course. They're higher than in my group!

BESW

And this is after the party lost its buffbot.

Zachiel

21:30

Do you mean you are including any buffs from powers?

BESW

I'm not including buffs in those numbers, and they didn't have a PC primarily devoted to giving everyone else buffs (they used to, but the player left island).

Also, that +16 is on the low end because it's a character who mostly targeted non-AC defenses.

Zachiel

I don't have the character sheets on my laptop but I have taken some notes during the last pair of encounters.

BESW

And my NPCs at the level were... let's see, that'd be adventure P1B, and this is before I was fully converting them from the modules...

Zachiel

I really doubt the wizard has a +23 to hit. I probably marked the number in the wrong row. That looks like the fighter, including combat advantage.

P1...B?

BESW

Paragon Adventure 1, Section B.

Zachiel

21:40

I'm running P1 (King of the Trollhaunt), with (most) monsters converted to Monster Vault.

BESW

The first paragon adventure lasted three levels, each level its own minidungeon that tied together into a story.

Zachiel

I'm currently at spoiler, which I guess is section B

BESW

(I'm using my own notation, obviously. The module I was drawing on was the Touch/Brink/Depths of Madness series.)

Zachiel

@BESW then I don't think I parsed this correctly.

BESW

I'm trying to dig through my own files to find NPCs to quote to you.

M'rr. These guys aren't my best work, and the encounters were mechanically underwhelming.

Alright, these guys were in groups together in an encounter in a half-flooded sewer.

The Drowners existed to position PCs so the Cutters could use their powers that require combat advantage.

Zachiel

21:52

I'd like to discuss about this further but it's bedtime here.

BESW

Next time you're around I'll just give you some of my playbooks.

Zachiel

That said, I have problems positioning my enemies around a fighter that marks at least two enemies per turn and makes its anti-shift / anti-opportunity reactions at range 2

BESW

@Zachiel That's legit. Most encounters I was designing for a fighter whose every attack pushed 4 to 9 squares, marked, slowed, and proned.

That's why I had weird and nasty synergies like:

- Mad Ones are Skirmisher Minions with an Aura 2 that inflicts Vulnerable 15 Psychic on enemies.
- The Mumbler is an Elite Lurker with an Aura 5 that inflicts 1 Psychic on enemies who starts their turn in it.
- Shathrax is a Solo Lurker mind flayer who can use his opportunity attack action to teleport adjacent to someone who takes psychic damage.

In another encounter, I had minions who "popped" and left unpleasant terrain in the square they died, so the setpiece became increasingly perilous as time went on and the strategy lay in controlling where the minions got popped.

But none of that is especially helpful to you because you don't want to invent new creatures tailored to the group; you want to find a universal mathematical solution you can apply to pre-made monsters.

In my experience, sadly, that was impossible: weird and wild mechanics were the only way I found to make fights consistently interesting/challenging because the numbers are rigged in the players' favour and the basic exchange of blows is kinda boring.

I had to shift up the strategy, not the numbers, to make fights engaging.

Zachiel

22:11

I also want to learn to employ the monsters strategically, but mostly I feel that the players are controlling who can get hit with positioning and my only tactic is swarming.
Maybe it also has something to do with their initiatives being like 10 more than the monsters.

BESW

Reactionary actions that monsters can take on PCs' turns helps with that.

(See my Kuo-Toa above.)

We can talk about it later. Get some sleep!

Zachiel

In their current encounter there was one enemy that had a large area of difficult terrain around it, minions that ignored it (but mostly ran to their death) and a soldier troll who should have stayed back to kill things with his bow but instead charged to get some whirlwind attacks on the party. The result is that the party killed him before engaging with the other monsters and now the other monsters are cannon fodder.

Yeah, right. Sleep.

I need it.

g'night

DForck42

22:45

@Zachiel imho sounds like you need to bump up monster defenses and atk rolls to get them on an even footing with the chars

and possibly thier hp as well, depending on how hard your npcs are hitting

an easy encounter should last AT LEAST 2 rounds of combat, so it should have an ac where they can hit ~50% of the time and hp to last roughly that long and should hit the pcs ~50% of the time

and other encounters scale up from there

but yeah, 4e had a lot of balance issues when it came to pc vs monsters in combat

and all of the extra dragon agazine stuff makes it even worse cause those aren't balanced at all

Jack Stout

Any recommendations on a community dedicated to homebrew or tabletop design? I love RPG.SE, but this isn't the place for it.

BESW

@JackStout Depending on the exact nature of your work, Google Plus has a lot of great friendly designers and design groups.

I pop into the Fate groups on G+ every now and then, myself.

Jack Stout

@BESW I'll check that out. I see reddit has some strong discussions but I've never felt an investment in the site.

BESW

Yeeeah, Reddit's own issues aside, I've seen some very bizarre misunderstandings about the nature of Fate there the few times I've wandered in.

trogdor

23:05

@eimyr lol

BESW

@JackStout If there's a game dev whose work you like, check and see what social media they're active in and what they're linking to/talking about.

eg, I found G+ groups via what Fred Hicks was linking on Twitter, and his Twitter account itself retweets some very cool stuff.

Jack Stout

Checking him out now. I follow Chris Perkins of WotC and several rpg bloggers/podcasters/player-killers.

Even in communities that like running games, it can be hard to find people that want to pick apart, reconstruct, and build from the ground up.

BESW

There's also a ton of great game design podcasts.

Most aren't just about design, but about the design community, and give good insights into how to step into that arena.

This chat even gets into design a little bit every now and then; I've written things like Surgadores out of conversations here.

And the folks here helped me immensely with an entry to the 200-Word RPG Challenge earlier this year.

(I still need to design and layout a finalised PDF copy of Colonypunk, actually.)

Miniman

23:24

@JackStout Designing for an existing system, or designing a new system?

The best places to talk about Fate design are pretty different to the best places to talk about D&D design, if you see what I mean.

Jack Stout

My groups tackle D&D, Fate, and adhoc games. I also like studying design decisions behind good and bad video games.

I've written original systems a handful of times over the years.

Miniman

Ah, so you're looking to talk about game design in general, not tied to anything specific?

Jack Stout

Pretty much. I like games for the same reasons I like poli-sci and software.

Miniman

Sadly, I have no suggestions for you :(

Jack Stout

@BESW Looks like the 200-word rpg challenge is right up my alley.

BESW

23:45

@Reibello Hi!

Reibello

Hello!

BESW

Welcome to the Stack!

Reibello

Thank you!

BESW

Anything particular bring you to the chat, or just poking around?

Reibello

Just poking around

BESW

23:47

You're welcome to lurk or chat as you like. We're surprisingly on-topic right now, but the chat ranges pretty freely so long as everyone can be nice about the subject.

@JackStout That challenge ought to lead you to other groups too, it's a good jumping-off point.

And if you're interested I can dig up some design podcasts I've enjoyed.

Jack Stout

That would be great!

BESW

Once you get a toehold in the indie design community, you'll find it's deeply interconnected. Any particular place you start will be talking about other "neighbourhoods" where they also hang out.

(And, frankly, "indie" design is perhaps too strong a word. The RPG dev community is small enough that distinctions like "indie" or "mainstream" are kinda laughable and everybody you'd actually want to talk to knows it.)

That's why stuff like the 200-word RPG challenge is so cool: it's got folks like me, and folks who are publishing big-recognition games, rubbing elbows on an even footing.

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