TRPG General Chat

nitsua60

13:47

@BESW @trogdor just saw this KS for an RPG that made me think of you: playing schoolkids sussing out mysteries in their town. More Stranger Things than Nancy Drew, but still. (In fact, blatantly evocative of Stranger Things. But the art-project that forms much of the visual content predates the show, so perhaps it's just serendipitous bandwagoning?)

Oh yeah, the link.

BESW

@nitsua60 That's why it's in the pin!

nitsua60

$380K pledged of $10K goal.... there's got to be a message buried in there.

BESW

It's not quite close enough to our interests to back (that whole "80s" thing isn't a big draw for us), but it's definitely pinworthy.

nitsua60

Quote of yesterday:
Me: I came to check on you and you were snoring last night.
4 y-o: [giggles] I don't *snore*, daddy! [aside] Sometimes I oink....

BESW

Seems legit.

doppelgreener

13:55

@nitsua60 Potentially a bit of both; the front cover that invokes Stranger Things ('cause it's four kids) could've been done after the show.

nitsua60

Quote of two days ago:
Me: alright, kids, I'm going to steal mommy away to go to dinner.
6 y-o: Hmm. It's not clear to me that you *can* steal her. I mean, you *are* her husband.

@doppelgreener And the soundtrack for the promo video... That's the part I'd call "blatantly" evocative.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 Oh, I haven't watched it. And there's also the 80's thing, yeah.

BESW

Stranger Things was good, though much less about invoking the 80s as invoking the fictional 80s invented by nostalgia media.

nitsua60

@doppelgreener I mean, if someone wants to make a product that appeals to those with childhood nostalgia time-located in the 80s, I don't think you can look at kids on bikes with walkie-talkies trying to solve a mystery and say "they ripped off Stranger Things." I mean, that's de facto shorthand for fictional depictions of the 80s.

BESW

@nitsua60 I highly recommend Paper Girls.

doppelgreener

14:01

I'm cautiously interested in Tales from the Loop. The art sure is amazing, but RPGs aren't played with art. I'm told a bit about the game but not much to judge its quality by. They appeal to their previous games, and by all means their previous games have some impressive reviews (and awards) but e.g. Coriolis had a mixed review from RPG.net on being very flashy, but quite average in substance. From the summary at the very end:

> First a word on editing and typos. Generally the book is at least average, with a few scattered typos, but there are a few major errors that really should have been caught before printing. The rules for firing at a distance aren't complex, but the explanation is completely impenetrable. The hit location table is about to be revised, as the designers apparently momentarily forgot about the bell-shape probability curve of 2D10. There are a few references to rules that have been changed or moved. In this Internet age, I won't let this detract from the final score, however, as Jarnringen have…

DForck42

mornin

doppelgreener

@DForck42 Good morning!

DForck42

@doppelgreener how goes it?

nitsua60

@doppelgreener I've recently had my head turned on this point, though. Kingdom Death: Monster is a three-phase board game/RPG whose mechanics don't really stand out too much from other good games. But the writing and art are astoundingly evocative. (And achieve a lot in very little space. It's not silly sidebars or quotes from Elminster, it's just suffused through the whole presentation.)

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 Oh, yeah, that can count for a lot. Masters of Umdaar is a wonderful setting, but its mechanics are just Fate Accelerated with specific aspects and a de-powered stunt economy. But the setting is just so unabashedly fun and they deliver it so well through all the material they provide for character creation that I love it.

(which is to say, the mechanics may just be a slightly altered fate accelerated, but they provided a lot of material to plug into fate accelerated which helps make the game what it is)

@DForck42 pretty well :)

DForck42

14:12

@doppelgreener :-D

doppelgreener

how's things for you?

3 and a half days until Hatmas!

DForck42

@doppelgreener good. gf is going to new Hampshire Saturday to go see her parents, I'm following wednesday

DForck42

14:48

ooooh, good question on reddit

[5e]if you cast hypnotic pattern in the dark and the intended target doesn't have dark vision, does the spell still work?

LegendaryDude

@DForck42 We have had some recent questions very closely related to that question

DForck42

@LegendaryDude oh yeah?

LegendaryDude

@DForck42 Like this one

Though the hypnotic pattern question seems more nuanced

I mean, the effect is pretty much you take a glowstick or a sparkler and draw swirls in the air

so yeah, can you see it in the dark? It doesn't say it emits light, but it does say "Each creature in the area who sees the pattern..."

It's a good question, as DM I'd say they are affected by it (color is light, after all). You should ask it here, I'm interested to see the responses we get here.

UrhoKarila

@LegendaryDude I feel like playing that literally would be some pretty top-notch rules lawyering. Could be fun if your group's into that sort of thing.

LegendaryDude

15:04

@UrhoKarila Yeah, that's why I'm such a fan of 5e, because it's really designed around not being rules-lawyer-y and when you try to lawyer in it the game kinda stops working

Coming from Pathfinder, 5e was a godsend.

UrhoKarila

Yeah, 5e seems pretty straightforward as an RPG

I've heard interesting stories of people taking 3.5 and turning it into an almost legalistic meta-game that requires intimate knowledge of how to abuse the rules. Never played with a group like that, and not sure if I want to, but I think it could be an interesting game.

A legalistic metagame, at least. Probably not so much of an RPG.

nitsua60

@LegendaryDude Second this--should post it @DForck42 =)

LegendaryDude

@UrhoKarila Oh sure, definitely. One of my players loves that kind of stuff. He also loves that 5e doesn't require him to come up with some ridiculous combination of rules to do something crazy and over the top, he can just do it because 5e doesn't restrict you in that way most of the time.

DForck42

15:23

@nitsua60 posted: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/91767/…

feel free to add more details if you think it necessary

Baskakov_Dmitriy

15:43

@SevenSidedDie May I ask for reopening this question for a moment? I want to add my experience from LARP in Russia. Clearly not mentioning any particular sellers. :) rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/77237/…

49

Q: Prop Coins: How to get many coins for little (real life) money?

This related question on prop coins inspired me to revisit an old problem we're having at a fantasy LARP I'm co-organizing. So far we have not yet found a currency which we can use throughout the LARP and which is cheap enough to be able to get our hands on a fairly large amount of coins. We ar...

SevenSidedDie

15:59

@Baskakov_Dmitriy That's somewhat contrary to the purpose of closing questions.

DForck42

@Baskakov_Dmitriy ...no...

SevenSidedDie

16:15

Notably, it wasn't closed because of suggestions of particular sellers. It was closed because it became obvious that it was just collecting an endless list of recommendations for what to use.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

Can't it be fixed in any way?

BTW, it's not a true "list question", because some ways are definitely worse or better than others.

SevenSidedDie

@Baskakov_Dmitriy That's still a list question. List questions aren't a problem because they break voting, they're a problem because they cannot have a definitive answer.

@Baskakov_Dmitriy In theory maybe, but I can't see how it can be fixed.

DForck42

it's honestly a better question to ask on reddit.com/r/larp

Baskakov_Dmitriy

16:38

@SevenSidedDie Some answers will have to die in the process.

And the question itself will probably have to change a bit.

Would it be OK to ask and self-answer a similar question, with one answer that covers pretty much all the ways to solve the problem?

I really have a lot of knowledge about this in disposal, it would be bad if it can't enter RPG.SE under any circumstances.

SevenSidedDie

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Not if it's really just the same question, asked to get around the close. That would just restart the process of endless new answers, because it wouldn't actually avoid the problem of everyone thinking they just have to add their 2 cents.

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Not everything has a home at RPG.se.

5

One day, some new user may ask a similar question, but from an angle that somehow is different enough to make it work and not generate a recommendation list. That would be great.

Abraham Ray

17:14

How would the trivia nwp be handled in find 4e or dnd 5e?

DForck42

@AbrahamRay huh?

LegendaryDude

yeah, wut?

Abraham Ray

I'm taking about learning a bunch of random facts mostly .

LegendaryDude

@AbrahamRay Yeah, but what is nwp?

nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie "tow cents":literally, in this case =)

@LegendaryDude non-weapon proficiency

("skills" in their 2e incarnation)

LegendaryDude

17:22

I got it. That doesn't exist in 5e, at least not by that name. Quite confused, I was.

nitsua60

@AbrahamRay closest you'd get in 5e would be "Knowledge (Int)" I suppose.

DForck42

I still don't understand the question tbh...

eli5?

Abraham Ray

@DForck42 I just it's a appropriate question for the board.

LegendaryDude

@AbrahamRay You seem to missing some words. ;)

DForck42

@AbrahamRay ahh

Abraham Ray

17:43

Missing word is thought

DForck42

@AbrahamRay you doing ok today? your writing's more scrambled than it was the other day

LegendaryDude

On mobile?

I recognize "find" in the sentence "How would the trivia nwp be handled in find 4e or dnd 5e? as autocorrect replacing dnd with find

Abraham Ray

@DForck42 I'm on my smartphone and it's pretty cold outside right now, that's all

DForck42

@AbrahamRay ahh, there you are

I was just a little worried..

Abraham Ray

Thanks for understanding

DForck42

17:57

@AbrahamRay :-D

nitsua60

18:39

@AbrahamRay The other thought I had would be to ask a player with some "trivia" skill/background feature for the related skill check and grant "trivia knowledge" on a natural 20. That is, even if you aren't trained in medicine, maybe you just happen to know a lot about the spleens. (Then again, I wouldn't model a trivia NWP in the first place; just another thought as to how one might.)

Abraham Ray

@nitsua60 thanks!

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 Hah, unintentional pun!

DForck42

does anyone have a list of the standard planes for dnd (at least for 5e)

?

nitsua60

@DForck42 DMG does. You have it handy?

(PHB has it in an appendix, too, IIRC)

DForck42

@nitsua60 nope

nitsua60

18:46

Just a list? I can type it up in 60 sec....

DForck42

sure, if you don't mind

I'm doing some world building on my lunch break

and working in how the different planes got created

nitsua60

I don't believe there's much in 5e as to the how of the planes. Just the what.

DForck42

@nitsua60 correct

I'm creating a world for a campaign

an as of now have no actual plans to play with people campaign

but I really dig world building and want to have something to use when I DO start something

SevenSidedDie

@DForck42 You going to use all of them? 5e covers all the planes previous editions mentioned so that DMs can assemble a cosmology à la carte from the menu, but previous editions didn't feature them all. It might be a bit crowded. Or lead to creative details of how they all fit together. :)

Trish

@DForck42 standard planes? Material, 4 elementals, magic, those I can come up from the top of my mind. Add the various "alignment" realms (nirvana, hell, abyss... iirc 9 in sum)

nitsua60

18:48

More than that, @trish.

Trish

@nitsua60 those are only those I remember without looking up between reading comics :3

SevenSidedDie

I think the outer planes number 16? 14? Something like that. Always was interesting how they didn't align perfectly with alignment matrix.

DForck42

@SevenSidedDie that's a bit more than I'm really interested in

Trish

9 did perfectly (nirvana=LN or something, hell LE, Abyss NE)

LegendaryDude

There's also the Shadowfell and the Feywild

DForck42

18:50

I currentl have: material plane, underdark, thinking astral plane, the elemental planes (not sure on how many i'll use yet)

LegendaryDude

Demiplanes that have more direct influence on the prime material

nitsua60

@DForck42 Material + feywild&shadowfell. Ethereal. 4 Elementals. Arcadia, Celestia, Bytopia, Elysium, Beastlands, Arborea, Ysgard, Limbo, Pandaemonium, Abyss, Carceri, Hades, Gehenna, Nine Hells, Acheron, Mechanus. Astral. Positive & Negative. Outer.

SevenSidedDie

@DForck42 Ethereal

nitsua60

(From "inside" to "outside")

LegendaryDude

@DForck42 Underdark isn't technically a separate plane

DForck42

18:51

@LegendaryDude true

LegendaryDude

It's just a place under the surface

DForck42

@LegendaryDude it's more of a region of influence, iguess?

@nitsua60 ty

nitsua60

That's all of them, excluding demiplanes (Barovia, anyone?) and the inter-elemental demiplanes. (Ooze, smoke, &c.)

LegendaryDude

Barovia is a demiplane within the Domains of Dread, which, iirc, is in the Shadowfell? :boggle:

SevenSidedDie

@LegendaryDude UNLESS IT ISN'T. :D That's a setting conceit I've always enjoyed.

nitsua60

18:53

For the listing of the sixteen alignment planes: take the sine of position in the list to get your good-evil value, cosine of position in list to get law-chaos value. (suitably-scaled, of course)

diego

@DForck42 You can check out this article on The Great Wheel that lists most of the major planes, descriptions of them, and how they relate to each other

SevenSidedDie

@LegendaryDude Depends on edition. Prior to 4e (where Shadowfell was invented), Ravenloft was just a very large demiplane, and hung out in the Astral along with the rest of them.

nitsua60

Then report how quickly you performed those 32 trig-operations to @Trish. And remember, this is for posterity. Be honest.

</Count Rugen>

Trish

@DForck42 if you go go for more than 4 elementals, you might need to tell your players what those elements or concepts are. Earth Water Air Fire are platonic, exchanging earth for wood and metal you get the chinese 5-elements. Other variants might be more difficult diamettral sets: Fire-ice, Stone-Air, water in the center and all in some harness of the 'life spark plane'... all up to you.

LegendaryDude

@SevenSidedDie It's an idea I've played with myself. I have a homebrew world and the campaign we were running was going to venture into the Underdark from there; my plans were for the PCs to eventually emerge not in their world but on the Sword Coast. It didn't pan out because Curse of Strahd came out and so we just moved everything right into FR.

Trish

18:55

@nitsua60 whaa? I only need results on die operation evaluation.

nitsua60

[ahem]

NEVERTHELESS!

=)

Trish

shocks the room with a defi

SevenSidedDie

19:11

@NautArch Please see my update– the rules differentiate when a creature is or isn't blind outside it's blindsight radius. Bats are not. — LegendaryDude 30 mins ago

@LegendaryDude Bets on how soon someone builds a character that hinges on bats having infinite 20/20 vision because RAW doesn't say they see poorly…

LegendaryDude

@SevenSidedDie XD

SevenSidedDie

@LegendaryDude Or as I like to call them, Cave Eagles.

2

DForck42

so, I'm thinking 3 "material" planes, shadowfell, feywild, and the main plane (haven't named it properly yet), then 4 elemental planes, and then 8 alignment planes (not including NN, cause why would they care enough to create a plane and ruin my symmetry?)

nitsua60

@DForck42 also, you hate modrons?

=)

DForck42

@nitsua60 omfg, yes

we had a sorc accidentally summon one with wild magic...

it just went murder bot on everything

nitsua60

19:18

So you're going with 1,2,4,8 for your planar maths...

DForck42

@nitsua60 heh, i didn't even realize i had done that, but yeah

nitsua60

Wait. If you weren't thinking of that, what symmetry would have been broken by NN?

DForck42

@nitsua60 cause i was drawing with circles

and started of with lawful, chaotic, evil, and good

and filled in the holes

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 (Modrons are LN)

nitsua60

[ahem...]

@SevenSidedDie NEVERTHELESS!

SevenSidedDie

19:21

@nitsua60 Saw that coming

DForck42

@SevenSidedDie lol

nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie doesn't make it any less annoying, does it?

=)

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 Is it annoying? :)

DForck42

I'm also making basically every player race as a descendent of elves in some way or another

nitsua60

(I've really got to stop. I'm developing a problem. If only this platform were somehow designed to subtly but constantly produce behavioral prompts....)

feature-request nega-stars in chat

SevenSidedDie

19:24

@DForck42 Reminds me of the Elder Scrolls universe a bit. And Shaintar.

It's a nice worldbuilding detail.

DForck42

@SevenSidedDie haven't played either

i haven't worked out any details yet, but essentially the elves are the first to appear

the dwarves will be elves that moved to the mountains and cursed by the elf god to be "ugly"

the drow are elves that actively revolted and were shunned to the underdark

humans are elves that left the forests and created their own gods, losing their long life in exchange for adventure

tieflings and half-orcs are basically the same

SevenSidedDie

I like the gnome origin that has them as descendants of elves and nature spirits (dryads n' such).

DForck42

@SevenSidedDie i was thinking of gnomes as dwarves that got lost in the underdark

but I'm not 100% sold on that yet

LegendaryDude

I liked the gnomes as descended from fey approach that Paizo took

I liked the thirst for adventure twist they put on them

nitsua60

@DForck42 So it's all the playable (PHB?) races, just rewriting the canon on those races?

DForck42

19:43

@nitsua60 yup

and then everything else will kinda just get slotted in

as part of the time line there will be a cataclysmic war with magic, and the fallout from that will cause a lot of the natural beasts to obtain magical abilities

LegendaryDude

I tried that approach for my homebrew setting but it got complicated so in a lot of places I just started renaming things instead of actually coming up with new stuff

DForck42

my idea is that the world's actually gotten MORE dangerous as time has gone by

LegendaryDude

So for example, orcs worshipped a deity named Tazdun instead of Gruumsh

but Tazdun was just my world's Gruumsh analog

DForck42

@LegendaryDude i'm thinking of keeping the 5e pantheon, just pairing it down to about 16 or so

LegendaryDude

I made up a new pantheon that was loosely correlated with the 5e/FR pantheon

I kept some gods because they're just too good (evil, I mean) to not have

Orcus remained, Vecna remained

Llolth remained but with a new name

DForck42

20:14

@LegendaryDude neat

LegendaryDude

21:56

How to handle modern-day weapons in D&D 5e?

I'm surprised none of the answers there include mention of the table from the DMG that includes pistols, rifles, and laser weapons. :\

It's a very small section of the DMG, only granted about a quarter page of text, but it is there... and doesn't require all the "why this is a bad idea" pretext. Maybe he just wanted to know how to rule using a pistol?

Miniman

22:13

The top two answers there both mention it.

The second one is exclusively about it, even.

nitsua60

22:24

@LegendaryDude Hmm... OP says he wants to run a Walking Dead campaign, which would imply more than just a single ruling on a pistol.

@Miniman First line of each, for that matter. (And only line of answer #2.)

So I want to slap a link to the "frame challenge" meta onto the 5e modern weapons question. Do you think it belongs on the question or on nvoigt's answer?

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 To what ends are you linking that meta? Why link it anywhere?

nitsua60

So that readers/voters have a better context when they read a Q&A that says "how do I do this?" "Don't." They see that and think it's good practice, when it's... sometimes good and often fraught with pitfalls which we know well and have produced meta with good guidance about.

doppelgreener

I'm not confident of the usefulness of comments saying, effectively, "btw this is how and why this answer is useful within our policy framework and don't get any funny ideas".

they can learn useful qualities from it and be corrected later if they are lead astray.

nitsua60

22:40

I don't see it as policy, I see it as best practices and learned wisdom.

doppelgreener

it's practices and learned wisdom with operating inside our culture at least

nitsua60

Yes.

doppelgreener

hm.

Leave a comment on the question phrased as advice to incoming answers advising them on good frame challenge practices should they wish to advise the asker not to take the course of action they're seeking advice on.

nitsua60

I mean, there are currently 5 comments on nvoigt's answer arguing over its form, and no reference to the meta conversation that's relevant.

(Funny, I'd just convinved myself that on the answer was the better place to do it.)

=D

doppelgreener

Ordinarily it may be useful to leave that comment on the answer itself but, as you've just said, there's already a lot of argument busy-ness going on there.

your comment would get lost amid the noise, i think, which sort of defeats the point.

either way's valid, but one way is compromised by the current state of affairs.

nitsua60

22:42

Maybe I'll go have dinner, then maybe come back to it. Then again, maybe I won't.

=)

LegendaryDude

23:03

@Miniman Well color me embarassed. I clearly did not read the answers very well at all.

@nitsua60 Yeah, I guess I was intentionally over simplifying to offset the over-analysis of the question and it's framing.

Miniman

23:36

@LegendaryDude Hey, it happens to all of us sometimed.

trogdor

@nitsua60 oh this, yeah BESW linked this in skype a little while ago

I did really like Stranger Things, but I don't necessarily know that a similar concept would work for me in RPG form

Transcript for