TRPG General Chat

doppelgreener

00:00

@nitsua60 or that triple-pointed boomerang thing

nitsua60

That doesn't hold nearly as much beer. The capacity of a 175-g discraft is close enough to 40 oz. for most mathematicians =)

BESW

00:22

Yes, but what if it's non-Euclidean?

Great Deals on Apocalypse World & Dungeon World System PDFs: http://bit.ly/2cKFMIL

Tweeted by DriveThruRPG on September 19, 2016 at 4:51 PM

This is a problem my IRL group faces, because we sit on an L-shaped couch facing a TV with our Skyping members.

UrhoKarila

01:59

NON EUCLIDIAN GEOMETRY, YOU SAY?

he shouts, an hour since the conversation has died

Ran my group a 'dungeon' that was built <s>in</s> on the surface of a tesseract once for the fun of it.

It was meant to be an interesting and engaging experience for my table of technically-minded engineers & CS majors.

Most of them chalked it up to 'well that's weird' and left at that.

Shalvenay

heh

UrhoKarila

It made my day to find one of my players in our CS club room between classes building a model out of a cut-up sponge and cannibalized ethernet cable, though.

Shalvenay

hey there @UrhoKarila btw

UrhoKarila

I've been here for a while, just lurking

Left the tab open while I went out for the evening

Ben

02:19

OK, so: playing Dark Heresy, my Character is a Techpriest. Our group is standing "Bert and Enrie" style behind a platform, watching a group of Nurgle worshippers in a Summoning Circle. Next thing: --pop-- Nurgle Demon.

Shalvenay

hey there @Ben

also, hey there @nitsua60, kidlets to bed yet?

nitsua60

@Shalvenay yup--a while ago. Been working on event detection.... (Of the numerical simulations kind, not of the "listening for a kid coughing" kind.)

Ben

Everyone does Willpower checks. Arbite fails; throws up. Scum fails; passes out. Techpriest passes: "Ok... a Giant Demon just materialized out of thin air... Nah. Smoke and Mirrors."

@Shalvenay how's it going?

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 ah. you available to talk now?

@Ben alright here, in a DW game nowadays so there's that :D

Ben

\o/

nitsua60

02:22

@Shalvenay yes, though it'll be my second-priority process.

Shalvenay

@Ben so, what else is up on your end?

@nitsua60 text only, or would voice be OK?

Ben

Got two new games to keep me occupied, so three in total. One is Numenera, one is Dark Heresy, and the third one (which I am yet to join) is another system I don't remember the name of haha

nitsua60

text, preferably--I'm not really good at timeplexing aural+textual (if you didn't notice last night!) Timeplexing text+text will work much better for me tonight.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 right

@Ben xD I take it that takes up most of your free time these days?

Ben

Yeah, which is good, cos otherwise I'm just sitting around doing nothing. I would have contributed that time to trying to set up some more 1v1's with you, but unfortunately due to time differences that's a little tricky :(

Shalvenay

02:28

@Ben yeah

Ben

Quick question to anyone lurking... is anyone familiar with the Dark Heresy system?

UrhoKarila

02:44

Not me, sorry

Magician

02:58

@Ben I ran a game in it, years ago.

Ben

@Magician I have a question about one of the Talents in the Lathe Worlds book

More of a clarification of the rule

Magician

Hah. I'm afraid I won't be of much use there. Didn't get around to that book. Not that I remember much of the system, either...

Ben

No worries

BESW

04:47

Some of these earnest little Kickstarters give my sympathy pains.

> Arcana has a new system for working out ones equipment, rather than choosing, say, full plate Armour or Hide Armour, you instead gain the ability to decide what pieces of equipment your character is wearing. this means that your freedom over what types of equipment your character uses is much more in depth. there are 8 pieces of equipment, Head, Shoulders, Arms, Hands, Torso, Waist, Legs and Feet. You could decide to have Metal legs and feet, but cloth arms and torso with a leather hood and shoulders, and this would be your Armour.

trogdor

but is there any particular reason you would do that?

BESW

There's a link to a demo on the main page if you want to find out.

**[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!");
[playtest](http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/788/follow-needs-playtesters/ "Help playtest Ben Robbins' new game!");
[playtest](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By3enwcFNlhKa0lpbXNjTFpWZkU/view "Help playtest an RPG for kids 4 to 7");

Chemus

05:20

@BESW I recall 2e having something akin to that; piecemeal armor from...Fighter's HB?

Miniman

05:31

@BESW Reading their description, I can't hwlp but think that they've never looked beyond D&D.

"Very unique"...no.

BESW

@Miniman Exactly. I run across one of this sort of Kickstarter every month or so.

(I've yet to see one get funded.)

Miniman

@BESW In some ways, that seems like a good thing.

BESW

Yeah. I hope the designers figure out why, so they can explore the wider world of RPGs and not have to re-invent the wheel in their future designs.

Miniman

@BESW There's that, too, but not being nearly as nice as you are, I was just thinking about the market ~~potentially~~ already flooded with varying quality D&D derivatives.

BESW

That too.

Miniman

05:47

Then, too, this is a specific instance of a broader phenomenon - wide-eyed hopefuls with rather naive Kickstarters crop up in every category.

BESW

Also I found this Kickstarter that looks like something which should go on the Timely RPG pin, but... not sure.

Miniman

I'm trying to remember if any chatizens know German, but I'm not sure it's ever come up before.

BESW

Well, I know some of them have played The Dark Eye.

SevenSidedDie

06:10

@Miniman Very, very poorly. :)

@BESW That's sounds like a classic fantasy heartbreaker. I wonder what its (heartbreakingly) buried wonderful idea is?

kviiri

In general, people tend to overcomplicate stuff that'd work just well with just more focus on the actual idea behind it all.

I think that after implementing the core idea, every additional bit of complexity has to be justified - "how does includng X improve the product enough to warrant the added complexity".

That's one of the ways I see video games have gotten worse lately, they're too insistent on adding unfun extra content that gets in the way of the player.

Chemus

06:31

@Miniman like @SevenSidedDie, meine deutsch sind ganz schlecht.

SevenSidedDie

@Chemus Meine Deutsch jest nicht gut. And my newer Polish keeps overwriting/interfering with it.

(Never mind my deeply-embedded French. It's like kudzu when it meets other languages.)

kviiri

Meide den kummer und maide den schmertz, dann is das leben - ein schertz (du lieber Augustin!) Kauf dir ein auto und fahr gegen Baum, dann is das Leben - ein traum, HUHHEI!

(that's about all the German I know)

I also could probably sing along at least a third of the words from Papst und Sultan.

I think it's "ist", not "is" though... not sure, I usually only sing these, not write.

Chemus

@SevenSidedDie Ja, Ich ...hatte Deutsche Klassen vor fast 20 jahren...

Uhh, it's kinda late to ask, but if I give a setting-specific answer, how is that viewed when the (new) questioner didn't give any setting clues?

BESW

06:47

Make it clear it's setting-specific and explain why you've chosen to answer for that setting.

kviiri

@Chemus Does the system in question have a "default" setting? If yes, I'd just answer based on that and note that the answer might vary based on the choice of setting.

Chemus

@kviiri yep, ist = is, when using masculine, plural and neuter cases

(das is neuter, so "das ist")

@kviiri Sigh. I already did it. Well perhaps there's hope yet :)

kviiri

@Chemus It's nothing to lose hope for! ^^

Chemus

oops, I misremembered; "Ich bin, du bist, er sie und es ist", it's not for plural, but for fem, masc and neutral (formal)

kviiri

I know Swedish, English, some French (enough to get the gist of what people are saying) and tiny bits of Swahili.

In addition to Finnish of course.

Now that Duolingo and such are in I might pick up Italian and continue my French.

Chemus

06:58

well then you're significantly better than this 'Murican.

kviiri

We have mandatory Swedish at schools, because Finland is an officially bilingual country (it's a recurring hot topic in political conversation if it's good or not). There's also a two foreign language minimum - Swedish + English is a common pick. I took French and English as "long" foreign languages (3rd and 4th grades up) and Swedish as "short" (7th grade up).

Chemus

Yeah, I took German two years in high school... not quite the saame effect.

*for 2 years...

kviiri

07:20

What's your native language?

I worked a bit on the suggestions I got here, for my Cthulhu Dark scenario. I made the locals less open about the tales of sorcery and curses, because they're a stain on their families. Instead, the players can find the graves of those accused of witchcraft in the woods, should they look. With appropriate engravings of course.

Chemus

07:53

Wow, sry. Native english speaker. Just get lazy when typing on a tablet.

kviiri

No prob :P I noticed you said you were an American but there's plenty of native Spanish speakers too ^^

And other languages aplenty, too.

Chemus

Yeah, but the vast majority of native-born speak [american] english pretty exclusively (often poorly). And legal immigrants are supposed to be able to speak english too, actually that's for citizenship.

Anaphory

Ooooh, languages! I like them!

kviiri

I wish I was better at Swahili, it's a really cool language.

Anaphory

Aside from a bit of German sign language, I have never properly ventured out of the Indo-European family.

But now that I work in a linguistics department, there might be some more incentive to pick up other things, maybe Indonesian?

More incentive because I might have a chance to actually use something.

kviiri

08:06

I have a friend who studies Assyrian. I need to ask her for names for some ancient gods or something.

I wonder how suspected witches would've been buried after mob justice in 1700's Finland.

I think there were basic judicial safeguards against such accusations in place, but this is the work of scared people... probably a rogue priest with some devout followers, with no connection to the law.

Maybe a spooooOOOOky mausoleum in the woods would work.

Anaphory

I'd guess not on christian graveyard soil but buried somewhere random.

A mausoleum would give too much recognition to someone considered damned.

kviiri

08:21

@Anaphory I was thinking of the type that seems it's meant to keep stuff in.

But a fair point.

Anaphory

If you need a good place, maybe the witch had some devout followers, too, who put the body in a crypt?

kviiri

Or loving family members or something. Here, the truth is that none of the people buried inside (even the ones actually guilty of utilizing the curse) never had any magical powers, they just used the natural instincts of a horrible creature to inflict terrible calamities on their enemies.

Anaphory

You may actually not be wrong:

It is said that after her death, she dug her way out of her grave on more than one occasion, which led to her being buried head first, and with a boulder on top of the grave to prevent any further escapes.

(This is Lancashire, but it was the first reasonable hit googling for witch hunt burials)

kviiri

There's a creature guarding a pile of its eggs under the floorboards of a rotting lodge. It's usually dormant, waking only occasionally to check up on its eggs. If it finds any eggs missing, it goes to retrieve them, killing anything it finds in between.

So local "sorcerers" stole the eggs, hid them in the houses, fields or barns of their enemies, chanted spells and jinxes and lo, a few days later the enemies are dead, or lose their crops and cattle.

Now it's 1850's, the area has been mostly desolate since the people feared the curses too much and not all witches were ever caught. The eggs have been forgotten.

kviiri

08:58

Reading Worm, I have the urge to role-play masked superhero vigilantes.

doppelgreener

10:44

@kviiri New headcanon: masked superhero vigilantes who duel and give up their superhero mask after losing. (But might come back with a new mask.)

oh and they fight crime when they're not distracted by all the dueling.

BESW

@doppelgreener I think The Middleman did that. But they were luchadores.

doppelgreener

@BESW these... these superheroes aren't luchadores! [nervous sweating] what are you talking about.

BESW

Well, and most of them didn't do a lot of superheroing.

Sensei Ping trained the Middlemen though.

He wore the mask of El Sapo Dorado, in honor of the greatest luchadore he ever faced; Sensei Ping only won that match because El Sapo Dorado suffered a heart attack during the twenty-sixth day of battle.

doppelgreener

oh wow.

BESW

Their new leader, El Maestro De Ceremonies, thought Sensei Ping had killed El Sapo Dorado and was wearing his mask as a trophy. So he led the luchadores in a blood feud against Sensei Ping.

Other luchadores included El Comelon, a 329-pound man who could squeeze through spaces the diameter of a tennis racket, and Cien Mascaras, who was once a man who wore a hundred masks until an Aztec mummy cursed him to be a hundred men wearing the same mask.

...The Middleman is kinda weird.

nitsua60

11:07

@Chemus ein bischen sp\:ater: 'ich auch =)'

Anaphory

12:53

@nitsua60 Just use "a" or "ae", everything else looks very forced and confusing!

(probably 'ae', if you want it to scan as „Ich habe keine ‚Ä’-Taste“ instead of „Wer braucht schon Diakritika?“)

But curious how many people here can produce at least a smidgeon of German – apparently in many cases at least enough to say that it's only a smidgeon ;) Which is the important bit, in addition to “Does someone here speak [Language I can communicate in]?”

nitsua60

@Anaphory Those adjectives do a pretty good job of describing my four college semesters of German =)

BESW

@Anaphory No hablaba nada de alemán.

(I think I conjugated that right.)

Anaphory

@nitsua60 I'm not surprised about the latter, the former is a pity.

nitsua60

I sometimes wonder if some shenanigans my father pulled when I was six permanently biased my brain's language competence toward computer languages, rather than human languages....

UrhoKarila

There could be worse things, I guess

Anaphory

13:10

@nitsua60 I have for a long time liked both, and am in fact making a living of that! I don't think they are exclusive.

doppelgreener

13:33

@Anaphory Do I understand correctly that this means you have the mythical power to... explain technical things such that ordinary people can understand!?

Anaphory

@doppelgreener I sometimes have that power, although that's not what I meant! What I meant is that I'm a computer modelling researcher in linguistics.

nitsua60

@Anaphory oooohhhh! I must pick your brain some time. I supervise our school's computational linguistics club (such as it is).

Anaphory

@nitsua60 Happily! Though I should say that while I have done some cognitive science and modelling of language procession as an undergrad (which is my connotation of “computational linguistics”), I'm working in phylogenetics and modelling language diversity and language evolution, on a more abstract level than looking at individual speakers.

nitsua60

13:49

Given it's only high schoolers, we're trying to do the most basic of introductory exercises/adventures. Basically, trying to throw out there the ideas (a) studying language isn't only learning to speak/write/read; (b) applying diverse techniques to language can tell us some really interesting things.

our participation in NACLO is an organizing principle

How does a mouse survive combat? Don't get into combat.

UrhoKarila

Or it finds the sword of Martin the Warrior

Anaphory

@nitsua60 Wohoo! I can do that.

@nitsua60 “It's not what you fight, it's what you fight for!”

@nitsua60 Ah, 2015 has some nice tasks! I did try to solve some old International Olympiad in Linguistics puzzles once, they had a similar vibe.

nitsua60

14:08

@Anaphory yeah, this is the contest used to select the 8 american and 4 canadian kids who will travel to the ILO.

Somewhere there's a nice succint description of the nine problem types they focus on...[rummages]

pp.11-12 of the handbook

one of my favorites is one with nine cartoons and nine number sentences to match ("I caught two large fish and five small fish" &c.), but we're told that one speaker is fibbing!

Anaphory

I do like the semantics/translation allocation puzzles.

nitsua60

I was wrong: it's seven cartoons and sentences

Anaphory

In IOL, there was one where you had to make a semantic leap from “canoo” to something like “waterhouse”, because the number of “house” occurences obviously did not match the frequency of any mopheme in the other language (some South American one, where Chili is a loan word from).

nitsua60

I like the caveat on part (b) of that problem. I'm sure one playtester just jotted down something inane with the tag "I'm a liar, too."

@Anaphory Yeah--it's fun to challenge the kids to stretch their imaginations like that.

when you realize that "big" + "jump" = "rabbit", you're having fun =)

BESW

@BarbalatsDilemma Hi!

UrhoKarila

14:32

1 g
2 lies
3 a
4 c
5 d
6 f
7 e

Paya hach'a challwawa paya challwallampia challwataxa

?

nitsua60

I have no idea--away from files. But googling "naclo a fish story solutino" should get you there

UrhoKarila

Used a wrong number in part b, but otherwise correct. Woot!

Anaphory

14:48

Wohoo, well done!

BarbalatsDilemma

15:02

@BESW Hi BESW, I just dropped in to see what you guys get up to in RPG SE

BESW

As you can see, the chat is kinda wide-ranging on topics. If anybody wants to talk about RPGs, though, the other discussions are happy to move along.

You're welcome to hang out and lurk or chat as you like!

I see you've been playing D&D 5e.

BarbalatsDilemma

Cool, thanks. Yeah I've been around the site a bit before. My friends and I have moved into D&D 5e, one friend is DMing right now while another is looking to start his own campaign

I played 3.5e before that, but I had a friend who was a real 'expert' in that, so I didn't visit the site much back then

BESW

Cool. I started in 3.5 and spent some time in 4e before moving away from D&D-like games entirely.

Still curious about running a 5e one-shot adventure if an appropriate one ever comes my way.

BarbalatsDilemma

Yeah, it doesn't take long to see some of the limitations. I've also done a superhero-flavoured Wild Talents campaign, which was a bit more freeform and a lot of fun. D&D is still my favourite though

BESW

For our long-form campaigns my group likes systems which push us toward things we want to do but have a hard time doing spontaneously.

eg, Bubblegumshoe's relationship mechanics are helping us make stories that focus on interpersonal reliance and social drama.

BarbalatsDilemma

15:14

That's cool. I might like to try something like that. Fortunately I have a large group of friends that are into RPGs, so some of them might be willing to try something a bit different

I find players in D&D can struggle with getting out of a 'video game' mentality

I am certainly guilty of that on occasion

BESW

I've found a lot of free, small RPGs that provide a number of different RPG experiences.

Anaphory

@BarbalatsDilemma envy

BESW

@Anaphory I know, right?

BarbalatsDilemma

@Anaphory about the large group?

or about trying something new?

UrhoKarila

15:37

@BarbalatsDilemma I'm kinda envious of both

Anaphory

15:57

@UrhoKarila That.

UrhoKarila

16:56

http://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/88265/25893
http://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/88264/25893

Anyone around to add more flags to these?

doppelgreener

@UrhoKarila added

FYI: Spam flags automatically generate a downvote, and six of them automatically delete an answer immediately.

There's a question/answer-posting speed limit in place that limits the amount of content new users can post. This user's probably hit it already, or will do so very soon if they post again.

In the event of spam, please don't edit out the spam (but, maybe, edit out links or emails in the spam) so that it remains recognisably spam and so that people flag it.

Ok, that wraps up my spam-handling knowledge-sharing.

(nobody's done anything wrong, this is just Mysterious Things Nobody Explains that we've learned over time, plus a good practice - that thing about not editing out all traces of spam)

UrhoKarila

@doppelgreener Cool, thanks for the explanation. Just got back from Meta seeing what knowledge it held about spam

Do users get eventually banned, should they keep it up?

doppelgreener

@UrhoKarila Worse yet, accounts that exist solely to post spam or abuse to the site tend to get destroyed. The account is deleted, and so are all their posts to the site anywhere.

UrhoKarila

Neat!

doppelgreener

In fact, that just now happened:

Spam flags pushed the posts to the point of auto-deletion (performed by Community♦, a system bot), and since that account was only ever used to post spam, that account was also automatically destroyed.

I don't know the exact parameters that lead to automatic account destruction, though.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were some features in place that would make it difficult for that user to re-register and start posting spam all over again; Stack Exchange has some pretty advanced protections against spam.

UrhoKarila

17:15

Cool to see them all work, honestly.

doppelgreener

Yeah, thought I'd share what happens for those without the rep to see it in action. :D

mxyzplk

Actually it wasn't completely automated. I deleted their account and reported them to Kickstarter for spamming. (A quick Google indicates they've made the exact same spam post and had it deleted on ENWorld etc.).

But yes, use spam flags on spam please!

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk Oh!! Wow, I thought it'd show your name there when that happens.

Is there automatic account destruction or is it always at the behest of human beings?

mxyzplk

Always at the hands of humans, AFAIK. The posts get deleted and the account may get post-blocked, but the destroying we do. We do a couple a month I'd say

doppelgreener

That's twice as often as I would've thought.

mxyzplk

17:21

Yeah not sure why it says "Community" instead of the mod in question either

we tend to see them and move on them fast.

doppelgreener

Also good call on reporting them to Kickstarter; I see they've also got a post on GITP posted just half an hour ago.

mxyzplk

every once in a long while it's a "real person" who might be able to mend their ways, but the vast majority of the time it's drive-bys

yeah they posted it everywhere

doppelgreener

(all this time I thought deletion was part of the automatic features... that would explain some of the inconsistencies I saw, like accounts getting deleted immediately vs an hour or so after all the posts getting deleted)

mxyzplk

all at the speed of mxyzplk and SSD

doppelgreener

whoosh

user507974

22:52

hey guys, need a quick opinion

a player of mine who's done DMing suggested I have an extra character for if any guests play with us. This incidentally works very well with the fact that in the first game I immediately had them wake up in cages withanother npc

What would be a balanced (for a mixed team) and reasonable 5E class to complement a few of the listed traits:
Character is 7'6" and 650 lb pile of fat (with muscles under that), kinda cheery looking but often quite the deadpan snarker, loves eating and cooking, (maybe pretty handy at mending peoples wounds).

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