TRPG General Chat

doppelgreener

00:28

@nitsua60 psst

nitsua60

@doppelgreener [nods]

doppelgreener

[cautiously glances either way, then nods back]

nitsua60

Tried my first clean-and-jerk today. My trapezius are feeling it. [dejected] After 1 rep.

doppelgreener

Nice one.

nitsua60

OTOH, it shouldn't be too hard to make progress =)

(My new lifting buddy was a college shotputter, while I was a high-jumper. This is going to be painful for quite some while, methinks.)

doppelgreener

00:31

that is the feeling of muscles saying "DEAR BODY PILOT: WHAT WAS THAT EVEN EARLIER. HOW. WHY. PLEASE EXPLAIN. WILL MAKE PREPARATIONS FOR NEXT TIME. YOURS FOREVER LITERALLY, XOXO, MUSCLES."

nitsua60

How was your Monday? Scratch that, how about your month? Feeling well settled? Still figuring out some of the London-things?

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 my former personal trainer was ex-military. and, in the miilitary, a personal trainer. we discovered whole new ways to make my muscles sore all the time.

nitsua60

@doppelgreener I have a buddy whose head-canon includes the belief that the reptilians running the world subsist on a certain amount of human misery/drudgery. They used to have it easy: we had to bend over in the fields all day. Later: horrifying and commonplace industrial accidents. Now: guys like your ex-trainer sustain our overlords.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 month is weird and good. found out what's been messing with my sleep and wellness, maybe; seeing a GP. seems i may have chronic sleep deprivation that i developed back in aus due to stressful housing situation, and didn't get a chance to fix here yet. might get time off to resolve it.

@nitsua60 ...... mein gott. @BESW @trogdor

Adeptus

@BESW Chalion / Paladin were great! I got Chalion in an ebook bundle, which I bought for something else in there. So glad I gave this book a read. And Paladin was possibly better. The next in the same world (but not series) wasn't bad, but wasn't as good. (I can't even remember what it was called now.)

nitsua60

00:37

@doppelgreener sorry to hear, but glad to hear it's come to light.

BESW

@Adeptus The Hallowed Hunt was quite good, but it paled next to the excellence of the first two.

> The Dour Brotherhood of Quantitative Sorrow was founded three hundred years ago by the Archprimate Lithwick, who taught that misery is visited upon mankind by the gods, and, more importantly, they have a quota.
If the quota is met, then the gods have no cause to go visiting anything beyond the regular sorrows upon the world, and things can proceed smoothly. But if the deadline is rolling around, and the enormous heavenly lake in which the tears of mankind are gathered is running dry, the pilings of grief are showing above the waterline and the shores of sorrow are covered in the beached c…

(The Dour Brotherhood)

nitsua60

I'm pretty sure they also crossfit.

doppelgreener

@BESW no good deed goes unpunished, as i imagine they say

nitsua60

And, man, do they love telling you about it =)

Adeptus

I've had a 4-day weekend... which I spent helping my wife with her booth at a convention (and preparing / putting away before & after). So in a way I have both had and not had "a weekend". Schrodinger's weekend.

I got to see half of Nathan Fillion's talk (or Q&A), but didn't get photo/autograph, because they were too damn expensive! $100 for autograph, $110 for photo with him.

doppelgreener

00:47

@Adeptus weekends are an illusion. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )

@Adeptus awesome. :D

nitsua60

@doppelgreener Long weekends doubly so.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 hahaha, yes

Adeptus

01:07

Also got to chat with Mark Sexton, one of the creators of a short-lived comic that I loved in the early-mid 90s (Bug & Stump). Got the story of why the comic ended, and possibility of a collected re-release (if/when he gets around to it)

doppelgreener

01:22

@Adeptus I hope that gave you some good closure.

Adeptus

01:34

I'm not sure closure is the right word... if anything, it gave me hope for a return of the comic in some form (he did a one-off story for Decay comics too). Mark did the graphic novel of Mad Max Fury Road, and has drawn for some other comics, eg Judge Dredd. He showed me a couple of crowd scenes in those, where Bug and/or Stump are among the faces in the background.

He said it's part of his fiendish plan to get them their own story... "See these guys in the background of all these other stories? They're dimensional travellers, and they want their own story"

(though it may not ever happen)

nitsua60

01:55

@BESW @Shalvenay (and any lurkers) gimme five or ten minutes to square away the house....

Fibericon

06:47

So I kept joking that my wild magic sorcerer would accidentally cast fireball on top of himself one day. Turns out that's actually in the table. He has 10hp. He could instantly die even on a successful save.

nitsua60

12:39

@Fibericon How often do you roll for surges? (Given the absolute lack of guidance in the PHB I'm always interested to hear others' practices.)

BESW

Nov 9 at 5:46, by Fibericon

Ah. We agreed during character creation that if there was an opportunity to roll on that table, I would. If there was an opportunity to roll to see if I would roll on that table, I would. Maximum wild, basically.

nitsua60

Thanks. (That's the way I like to play it, too.)

@Miniman I know it's completely off-base so wouldn't even mention it in comments, but I feel like a nice coda to your Surveilance System answer would be to point out that 1gp/day and a dozen urchins would probably be just as effective.

BESW

@nitsua60 Baker Street Irregulars?

nitsua60

exactly

BESW

...now I have a villain I'll never use: epic level charisma-based warlock with the Leadership feat who gives all her followers attuned Rings of Hivemind.

Miniman

12:45

@nitsua60 He's weirdly specific about what he wants - you really only need one person to use the crystal balls.

BESW

We never actually meet her.

nitsua60

@Miniman it's just a nice parallel to real-world: remotely watching/following someone continuously is really expensive and requires high-tech; a low-skill human's still a cheaper way to do it =)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Heh. I'd argue that these days, a surveillance system is much cheaper than hiring watchers. He's watching places, remember, not people.

I really want to apologise to HeyICanChan for plagiarising his signature formatting, but I'm not sure he ever visits chat :(

doppelgreener

13:08

@Miniman Is there a way for an urchin with little magical ability themselves to activate a beacon that gets the attention of the scriers in a watchtower/scrytower? That could aid the surveilance system significantly. Get the urchin to keep an eye on a few spots, and set off a beacon if there's something worth paying attention to going on.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Sending Stones (ugh).

doppelgreener

We'll yet make the Cystarchy 2.0: Now Cyst-Free.

Miniman

I couldn't help but think about that - 5e's options just don't hold up.

doppelgreener

Cystarchy 2.0: Not As Good As The Original But At Least All The Cysts Are Gone, then?

Miniman

Not even that, really - you have to know about a place to look at it, so for a totalitarian government this is actually pretty useless.

Trish

13:18

5e: not as bad as 4e, but still not the warm feelings of classic 3.5?

Miniman

@Trish Well, when it comes to creating surveillance systems for totalitarian governments, anyway. I wouldn't presume to judge them more generally.

doppelgreener

@Miniman okay. so, just ordinary security system. alright, haha

Trish

@Miniman well, you could make the last action of any shift showing the thing he saw to the next shift. then the next shift would be familiar with that point. So you only had to have the building inspector use that item once after he observed the building, to familiarize the first of the watcher crew.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Yep :(

@Trish Yeah, getting everyone familiar with the location isn't an issue - it's just that you can only monitor locations you know about. So you're not going to see the secret meeting place of the blasphemous rebel traitors.

The original cystarchy, on the other hand, individually monitored every citizen.

Trish

But I guess the cheapest system might be to summon tiny imps with some kind of mental communication and put them into overwatch places.

you can still bind demons for a year, can you?

Miniman

13:23

@Trish Theoretically, but it's really tricky to pull off now.

Trish

now, someone has to make all those dis-organizers!

(and if we give them out for free, the imps in them will tell us all those juicy secrets!)

doppelgreener

Still, the urchins with sending stones sounds potentially pretty useful, assuming you can't gather enough staff to watch every single location all the time, and I think that's a pretty safe assumption to make. Most surveillance systems exist as a proactive deterrent that makes you avoid doing Bad Things, not based on the idea that you are being watched, but that you might be being watched.

Trish

sending stone + free imp-dis-organizer + scryballs?

doppelgreener

In Queensland, there's lots of red light and speeding camera boxes -- but urban legend says something like only half or a third of those camera boxes actually have a camera in them at any given time, because cameras are expensive. Wanna take the odds that specific camera box isn't working today? Probably not.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Oh, it'd definitely be useful - I'm just sticking to what the OP asked for. It's not the best surveillance system we could make, but he was pretty specific about what he wanted.

doppelgreener

13:26

People would be behaving in public spaces even if they're not being watched, because there's the high odds they are.

@Miniman Sure, and I'm thinking about the Upgrade Plan That You Didn't Know You Wanted.

Trish

@doppelgreener You mean the upgrade plann You Bought The Moment It Became Available?

doppelgreener

Also, Britain recently rolled out cameras in some public locations (that already had cameras) where the security team's monitor for the camera only activated when people were screaming or yelling, or based on some other cues. The idea being: the people watching the cameras' footage would only ever be presented with footage that was actually important, rather than tuning out from boredom while someone's busy getting mugged over to their right.

@Trish haha yes

eimyr

@doppelgreener That fantastic country with the greatest number of cameras per capita.

nitsua60

@Miniman ah--read the question too quickly; I had watching person, not location in my mind. Yes, then, tech is way cheaper these days. Still, sometimes a good urchin... =)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Is it worth pointing out the issues involved in hiring urchins in this day and age? :P

Trish

13:38

The computer is your friend. The computer is watching you. Be a good citizen and tell me why I should terminate you communist mutant traitor!

that is... can you build HEX or Friend Computer under 5e rules?

nitsua60

@Miniman controlling the salinity?

Miniman

@nitsua60 Nah, the poison is the real issue. My sister's foot was a very disturbing bright blue last time she tried to hire a sea urchin.

In case you don't know, the traditional sea urchin job interview consists of stepping on one.

nitsua60

@Miniman If you die, the urchin gets your job?

Miniman

@nitsua60 ...sure.

nitsua60

@Miniman back to serious matters--setting up a magical surveilance state--I think for the amount of wizard-time you're suggesting it's worth considering crafting scrying mirrors. Mind if I... craft (!) an answer along those lines?

Trish

13:55

scrying mirrors, maybe have them activate themselves when people pass?

/me likes the idea of imp operators.

nitsua60

14:18

Well, it's up. (@Miniman)

That was a fun little "project" answer.

Trish

heh! and... What would it cost to bind demons to sit there and watch the place for a year, calling somebody with a sending stone?

Miniman

@Trish Pretty much impossible to measure - it involves casting Magic Circle, Gate, and then surviving for an hour while casting Planar Binding.

nitsua60

And the demon's got to survive, with yucky Paladins walkin' around all sensing them....

Trish

Paladins are outlawed in a Lawful Evil Surveillance State...

and... did they really got rid of "summon monster" allowing to draw imps or such from nowhere?!

Miniman

@Trish Yep, sure did.

Trish

14:27

what about... Planar Ally?

nitsua60

@Trish why does it need to be a demon, anyway? Would a familiar do?

(Or, for that matter, aren't we just back to urchins?)

Trish

you can have only one familiar, but you can press hundreds of imps into your service... intelligent urchins would do well enough too.

or spiders. Int 4 spiders that can talk.

or... polymorphing spiders/urchins into something useful... like an imp. (I just like those tiny imps from Terry)

nitsua60

Those all work to solve the problem the way you want to do it, but OP basically asked for a surveillance camera.

Trish

true... but.... IMPS!

nitsua60

that's... hard to argue with.
=D

I had a college roommate, philosophy major, who was fond of winning a losing argument with one perfectly delivered line:

"NEVERTHELESS!"

It's pretty-much unbeatable.

(As long as the delivery's right, that is.)

Trish

14:38

hmmm, and you summon them in bulk, so, if you manage to bind them.... wait, Demons actually might be cheaper...
Conjure Lesser Demon is lvl 3 sor/wiz (unearthed arcana: old black magic) and includes a protective circle. It keeps the demons there for 1 hour (demanding concentration). 1 hour is enoug to cast planar binding, a lvl 5 spell for 24 hours, or a lvl 9th spell for a year. Costs: blood from a person killed within 24 hours (comes in 5 liter batches) for summoning, a 1000 gp gem per binding spell.

nitsua60

@Trish What's the cost in labor?

Also, "comes in 5 liter batches"? Ewwww....

Trish

1 work day (of 2 spells) for the mage for about 200 gp, 2 gp for an executioner, 2 gp for a judge to sentence some poor guy to death..

Assuming the judge does like 20 cases a day in a LE country.

doppelgreener

15:05

@nitsua60 what about by "Nevertheless what?"

nitsua60

@doppelgreener never really seemed to work. Guess I don't have the delivery =)

doppelgreener

haha

nitsua60

Allow me to demonstrate by starting an argument with you:
Doppelgreener, you should be eating only raspberries. That should be your entire diet. Unequivocally, that would be the best possible choice to make in all food situations, vis-a-vis health, economics, popularity, and happiness.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 But doppelgreeners have a minimum green intake requirement. I have been told the best food is spinach and green apples. They have been shown to be excellent food souces for doppelgreeners and raspberries, being very anti-green, have rather poor health effects.

nitsua60

NEVERTHELESS!

(Q.e.d.)

doppelgreener

15:11

nitsua60

(lolfigsl)

doppelgreener

i think we may have different opinions on what counts as the win condition for an argument

nitsua60

Someone demonstrating to me that they don't actually participate in reasoned argument usually gets me to walk away. So, in that sense, "NEVERTHELESS" is my kryptonite =)

@doppelgreener Also, very participant-dependent. With the college buddy, if we're both laughing at the absurdities posed then we've both won.

afk a bit--have a good afternoon =)

doppelgreener

i can get on board with all of that, haha

Trish

@nitsua60 btw: Hire Imp-Surveillance Inc now!

and no: it was not 100% earnest. Imps are a very bad solution... even if they are not a terribly expensive one. look at all the cases that void the guarantee!

doppelgreener

15:29

@Trish tbh an imp-based surveillance system sounds pretty fun to deal with as a player.

Trish

hey, I would love to ourfit my players with imps-in-a-box Black-box machines for things like 'making pictures' 'dis-un-organizing schedules' and 'kneading pastry dough'. Why not add 'monitoring citizen movements' and 'recording citizen conversations' to the list?

@doppelgreener one of Terry Pratchett's best inventions just after the Diskworld and Death.

Trish

16:07

chuckles

nitsua60

17:29

@doppelgreener good work on the Dexter question. From the original title I'd have assumed it was the cleanup that OP would have been asking about. (The paucity of evidence left behind being Dexter's defining characteristic, IMO. Well, that and the drily witty internal monologue.)

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 I would've imagined the whole process from preparation to abduction to murder to cleanup.

Thanks very much.

nitsua60

@doppelgreener "How many ranks in shipping wrap will I need...?"

doppelgreener

1

Q: What's the point of requiring specific inexpensive material components?

I understand the necessity of consumable or costly material components, but what is the point—in terms of making the game more interesting—of inexpensive material components, like a leaf of sumac or a tiny ball of bat guano? I've never seen anybody even bother with these kinds of particular item...

If I remember correctly, we had a question very early on that basically asked: "D&D 5e has spell components, but I could just pick up a spell focus [or whatever the word is] and never bother with them. Why wouldn't I? Why do the components even exist?"

I'm sure it's relevant, if not a duplicate target, but I can't track it down.

Also relevant is the basic origins of spell components, linked in enkryptor's question:

103

A: What is the point of a spell component pouch?

It's a relic of earlier systems. From the "Dungeonomicon:" Material Components: A Joke Gone Way Out of Hand Material components are a joke. I'm not saying that they are metaphorically a joke in that they don't act as a consistent or adequate limiting factor to spellcasting, I mean that...

Fibericon

17:46

@nitsua60 Yeah, @BESW nailed it. Unfortunately, today was the last session. The GM suddenly announced he's moving away soon, and can't continue playing. The worst thing I managed to do was accidentally poison a party member. During a boss fight.

Zachiel

18:32

@Fibericon "accidentally" (XD)

@doppelgreener I guess it's the same here around. Then again, common people usually spraypaint the windows of the boxes right after new, clean windows are installed. I guess the police forces threw the towel in.

Common people sure like to run fast, around here.

Trish

19:25

@Fibericon like "accidentally" killing one party member after another and then selling their posessions?

BESW

21:24

The @gamerati takes a first crack at learning Fate: http://gamerati.com/preparing-your-fate/

Tweeted by EvilHatOfficial on November 22, 2016 at 8:12 PM

nitsua60

22:58

anyone know offhand if Volo is legal for AL (5e)?

nvm: yes it is, according to ALPG.

Miniman

23:21

Interesting that they're maintaining the PHB + 1 restriction.

Especially since it's almost never meaningful.

nitsua60

23:44

@Miniman One of those Aasimar subraces would have been just too good for my CoS paladin-hack.

BESW

Is "paladin-hack" the new "white hat"?

Miniman

@nitsua60 If you're level 5 or less, AL supports character changes.

nitsua60

@Miniman Even for me flying into Barovia on angel's wings is a bridge too far.

@BESW Actually, I bet there is a computer term for what I did: play a Ftr 1/Cl X rather than a "true" Paladin. 'Cause in my idea of D&D you only need 2 or 3 classes to cover the spectrum =)

Shalvenay

hey there @nitsua60

nitsua60

@Shalvenay hiya

Shalvenay

23:57

@nitsua60 how're things going?

BESW

@nitsua60 ...you ran a paladin emulator?

3

nitsua60

this ^^

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