TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

00:01

@A_S00 and I think you hit on the core problem with the antagonistic style -- either the system needs to be balanced for it, or you need participants who you can trust to stick to their rules, which is especially problematic for someone with the power of a D&D DM

A_S00

yeah, if your DM is more invested in "beating" the players than in having a good game, there's not much the players can do about except stop playing

mxyzplk

@doppelgreener Yeah, so this has caused me to meditate upon the "helpfulness backlash" we sometimes see. When we get a new user that has some posting issues, people do the usual close-comment-edit stuff. And that's good. But then when the person is obviously getting a bit snitty about it - people HELP THEM MORE. And often that gets them to complain about "dogpiling" or, if they don't understand community users can do things and not just mods, "mod abuse."

It makes me want to say "hey - if someone kicks back against issues on their first question, maybe just leave second question closed and don't be so helpful." SSD has a good counterpoint that well, maybe it's a good initial filtering function, no sense having their disagreement with our site paradigm linger. Thoughts?

A_S00

@Shalvenay I think PvP in 3.5 is a super fun way to have a battle of wits if both participants enjoy the nuts-and-bolts of optimization, but it's (a) super non-narrativist (because effective strategies in 3.5 are often not cool-seeming strategies), and (b) likely to ruin games and friendships if you try to do it in a long-running campaign.

nitsua60

@mxyzplk I definitely think I'm guilty of "overhelping" in some of these cases. Particularly in this one, perhaps. I did have a twinge of remorse when I saw one of the users comments to the effect "I woke up this morning and had all these messages!"

mxyzplk

Like in this case if second-question-kinda-same-as-the-first just got closed with a comment of "too vague" and left there - on the one hand it'd never get reopened, but on the other hand maybe it would have avoided a flameout. The question is whether the flameout would just have happened later anyway

A_S00

00:04

I really like arena one-shots, though

mxyzplk

@nitsua60 Yeah. Just something for folks to think about. If someone's having a hard day, "a lot of help" can be interpreted as "a lot of people getting on my s**t".

nitsua60

@mxyzplk what's the rate-limiting like on newer users?

mxyzplk

rate limiting of what?

nitsua60

posting?

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk Because of our comment-deletion policy and lack of hivemind, a lot of peoplpe won't reliably know what the second one is, alas. So although that has some merits, it might not work that well.

Shalvenay

00:06

I've seen similar backlashes on other Stacks from people who are accustomed to speaking from authority without speaking authoritatively

doppelgreener

We're all in and out; I didn't ever see his first question and had no idea there was a first question that had anything like that scale of trouble, for instance. And I'm one of the regulars!

nitsua60

I.e. if a new user posts three of four problematic posts quickly, then starts getting (natural) feedback from a bunch of directions, could that be part of (some) problem(s)?

mxyzplk

@nitsua60 None I know of if they are open/upvoted. If they're bad, they get auto temp post blocks not super quick but eventually. We have had one recent site addition who bumped into them but it's not usual

nitsua60

Okay.

mxyzplk

@doppelgreener Well, I suspect if it's undetectable to the naked eye it's probably fine. In this case though I don't think any of the site regulars engaged with it thought "oh this is going well."

oh, well, reading your next line maybe so

:-)

no worries

@nitsua60 but 3-4 closed posts definitely does it

doppelgreener

00:09

Yeah, I think we have to work on the basis there's going to be some helpfulness dogpile.

Good thinking on the subject though and I think you made a very good concise summary there of what actually winds up happening.

mxyzplk

We mods are ambivalent about leaving "comments deleted" comments, we do sometimes but not other times and saying "why" can just aggravate someone who's spinning a little too fast

Yeah. No big deal, just wanted to say that if anyone does happen to see someone getting "loads of help" and they're getting upset, perhaps help a little less, or a little slower (that question'll still be closed tomorrow).

Or, maybe the occasional flameout is the cost of liberty.

so to speak

just because someone got sad doesn't mean the right thing didn't happen. it's possible the counterpoint is valid of "get them on board or lose them faster rather than slower, with slow they just corrode the site over time rather than just leave"

shrug

something to meditate upon

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk A meta question suggesting something like that will at least give the people who've read it and come across these situations (like me) some pause for thought about whether they might be exacerbating a dogpile effect.

nitsua60

this ^^

after taking a breath, of course =)

doppelgreener

It's probably a good thing to put out there in our site's public consciousness as a concept.

mxyzplk

ok will consider it. maybe after a cooldown period so it's not "personal"

doppelgreener

00:16

Like I've been given the concept of crybullying; now I can recognise an excellent well-disguised form of harassment related to that might've been completely invisible to me before. It's related to victim playing, another concept I'm glad I have available on my utility belt of "things I'm capable of recognising".

Putting that out there is going to help us articulate and recognise what's going on sometimes similarly in ways we might never have done so before.

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener basically, assuming the personal case

mxyzplk

heh this did make me think of something my daughter has said to me - she identifies a certain type of person as "she's the kind of mom who always 'wants to talk to your manager.'"

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk Haha, yes. In these situations things definitely accelerate toward a tipping point and the person either gets it, or decides this isn't the place for them and leaves.

Aaron

Ello everyone

Shalvenay

hey there @Aaron

Aaron

00:19

So it's been awhile since I've been on here but I have a question and I'm not 100% certain it fits the main section.

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener probably the case. I'm glad I was able to "get it" fairly quickly re: Stackizenry

@Aaron shoot

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay i don't know what you mean by that, but i'll clarify crybullying isn't the current scenario.

Aaron

I'm helping run a RP game and we use a homebrew system. We have had some balance issues and one of the things I was hoping to help solve these issues was to figure out the value of every stat. For example when I played DND 3.5 I ran across a lot of stats being referred to by a gold value, STR equaling 1k gold ect. That isn't the exact value but I don't remember the actual values. What my question is, is there a guide or example somewhere I could use to build the values?

doppelgreener

a crybully is someone who will assault a person unnecessarily while whipping up public compassion for their own side as a victim. the current ordeal is just a user who thinks they're being wronged and is genuinely trying to press back against it.

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener yeah -- I agree with you there, I'm just saying that "assuming the personal case" is a common failure mode of people

doppelgreener

00:23

@Shalvenay right, just not a thing that involves crybullying or victim playing. they're separate out-there special concepts I just brought up right now because they were good examples of things I only recognised once I was shown a concept around it.

Like, I had a paradigm shift between being unable to see crybullying and being able to see it.

A_S00

@Aaron I don't know of a good guide for this, but my first thought is that valuing stuff by gold value in 3.5 is going to very quickly run into enough problems that it wouldn't very helpful

Aaron

Right I'm using it for a homebrew system and just used 3.5 as an example

Shalvenay

@Aaron what sort of balance issues are you having? this sounds slightly XYish

A_S00

so you're looking for a guide for, like, quantifying the value of abilities in any given ruleset?

LegendaryDude

@doppelgreener reminds me of when I first learned what gaslighting is

Aaron

00:25

@A_S00 Pretty much.

doppelgreener

@LegendaryDude yeah! it was like one of those moments for me. (and both the behaviours i mentioned can show up with gaslighting. heck, the crybullying i've seen involves low-scale gaslighting.)

LegendaryDude

and then I realized all the times I had been gaslit in the past without realizing it

Aaron

Part of the issue is different GMs having different balance ideals. I released a guide of examples of 'balanced' abilities cause we let people make their own powers.

My hope is if I put a value to abilities more a better balance can be achieved.

A_S00

hm...I definitely don't know a guide to point you to. It does occur to me that these kinds of quantification schemes are often about "equivalencies," like "how many GP is this ability equivalent to" in 3.5 (even if that scheme does have problems). Does your homebrew system include something useful and easy-to-quantify (like gold, or Shadowrun's character building points, or something) that you could use as a basis for your equivalencies?

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk Also, just read this and it made me laugh. Brian once put to us quite firmly there's a reason you get a gold badge for staying on as a moderator for a year, I'm beginning to really appreciate what he meant.

BESW

00:44

@Aaron There are some guides like that for specific systems (I can think of D&D 4e and Fate right off the top of my head), but they usually run into problems with edge cases even in their own systems, especially when they don't explicitly state playstyle assumptions. Any attempt to generalise values across systems or playstyles is doomed.

@doppelgreener I have, on occasion, frustrated crybullies on the Stack by refusing to play the bad guy however much they insist I am, until everyone else goes "...wait a minute."

doppelgreener

@BESW Yeah, as far as I've seen it also involves baiting the other person into behaving correspondingly poorly.

nitsua60

@LegendaryDude Having children. Serious gaslight ~~moment~~ decade.

BESW

We get 'em every now and then, toeing the edge of Stack policies and waiting for someone to comment/flag/vote appropriately, then claiming abuse.

@doppelgreener This is much easier in places like Stack comments and Twitter, where the limited space for dialogue encourages oversimplifying complex situations and moving toward extremes and false dichotomies.

Aaron

Sorry I'm back)

BESW

We aren't sorry you're back!

Aaron

00:53

lol. Thanks

@BESW Right we have a magic item system but honestly I'd like to put a value to the stats before I put a value to the items. Perhaps I'm being a bit optimistic as the more I think on it the more complicated the math becomes

nitsua60

@Aaron so I don't think "what gold->stat conversion would be good for my homebrew" will get a great reception mainsite (though you're always welcome to try), but remind me what problem you're trying to solve?

BESW

Simple systems are the best.

nitsua60

@BESW (for some goals)

=)

BESW

@nitsua60 Tell that to Nancy Willard.

Aaron

The problem being balancing and making sure that there isn't a huge gap between our players in Strength

How to quantify that into a value would make things much simpler.

BESW

00:56

Fate can balance itself nicely because the system is already designed from the ground up around the mechanical concept that "+2 = something nice" and a general once-per-scene assumption about nice things.

You want +4 of something nice? You can't have it every scene. You want more nice stuff? lose +2 somewhere else. etc.

nitsua60

@BESW [rummages for referent]

BESW

Most systems aren't built out of such straightfoward blocks.

@nitsua60 Here.

nitsua60

@BESW true this ^^

BESW

Many systems don't care about such equivalencies until after their foundation has been firmly laid.

Which is... a problem, if they really want to care.

nitsua60

@BESW True. Tacking on a "fundamental" goal halfway--or 90%!--through design rarely works out easily or well.

BESW

01:01

So I'd say, broadly speaking, if your homebrew wasn't build on blocks that are designed to be roughly equivalent, it might be easier to restart than to add a coherent equivalency system after the fact.

nitsua60

[citation: my college course of studies. Music school, then decide I'd like a stable/easy career with good job guarantees and a little house and white picket fence and not moving kids around every few years.]

So, question to the room: what difference (if any) would you draw between a "sandbox" and a "hexcrawl." I know I've got some things in mind, but I feel like they're pretty-vaguely defined, so wonder what sorts of connotations pop up for others?

BESW

I think a hexcrawl is a subcategory of sandbox.

nitsua60

@BESW go on...?

BESW

01:16

"Sandbox" is generally a term that makes sense only as an antonym for "railroad." Hexcrawl is a particular strategy for designing a sandbox game.

doppelgreener

I have fond memories of that question where I suggested a railroading technique for resolving a situation in a sandbox game and everyone told me I was wrongheaded for doing so.

nitsua60

@doppelgreener link?

So if you were to describe a hexcrawl--give the pitch, as it were--in three or four lines, what would you say?

BESW

You can go wherever you want and be assured of interesting things to do/see/kill. The fun is in exploring cool places and discovering the world at your own pace.

Miniman

So I missed a whole big thing by sleeping.

nitsua60

@Miniman Congrats!

=)

@BESW That's pretty rock-solid, in my opinion. "Be assured" is a good phrase to have in there.

Miniman

01:27

@nitsua60 Lol.

nitsua60

(In other news, @BESW and @Shalvenay can look forward to a ship-board hexcrawl next month. I'm using the oft-derided six-foot hex for the ship's layout. Be assured of literally tens of minutes' fun exploring every nook and cranny!)

BESW

Most sandboxes are about discovery at your own pace, but don't necessarily have "every place will have a cool thing in it" or a focus on exploring a physical space.

doppelgreener

01:48

30

A: My PCs have a plan that will get them all killed; how and why should I save them?

Let's simplify this scenario to what it amounts to: there's a button, and the players want to push it, and they're not sure what will happen, but you alone know that if they push it they die. Right now, you only see the option that they die. It is inescapable that character death tends to suck. ...

nitsua60

@doppelgreener "world-level MGS." That's a perfect turn of a phrase =)

LegendaryDude

rpg.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/32475 :( I don't think this is going to work.

doppelgreener

short summary: "my players are going to get themselves murdered to pieces based on how the world is set up and there is absolutely nothing they know that will tell them this." my response: "change that bit of the world so that doesn't happen." several peoples' response: "that's not how sandbox is meant to work, you're wrong."

they're right under some forms of sandboxes, but i don't see it being a universally declarable thing that is definitionally part of all types of sandbox always.

nitsua60

@LegendaryDude I think that's worth pointing out to @mxyzplk and/or @SevenSidedDie.

@doppelgreener another excellent greenerism: "your players don't have a plan that'll get them killed, you have a plan that'll get them all killed."

Miniman

@LegendaryDude Yeesh.

doppelgreener

01:54

@LegendaryDude if you want to report a suggested edit (which is worthwhile if you feel an edit was not in good faith), flag the answer being edited and explain the situation briefly and provide the link to the review you just gave us.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Incidentally, is Tales from the Yawning Portal what you've been playtesting?

BESW

@Miniman That portal is very rude.

doppelgreener

In this instance, Troll Bourne expressed some concern on Meta (or somewhere in deleted comments) about answers spending too much time on examples provided rather than the situation the example was provided as an example of. He may be acting on that concern.

nitsua60

@Miniman nope =)

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener I suspect so, based on the edit

nitsua60

01:59

=)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Ooooh.

Shalvenay

but yeah, that sort of behavior would be a basis by itself for me to reject the edit out-of-hand as an attempt to reply

(i.e. you reply to an answer by posting a different answer or a comment, not by utterly butchering the answer you're replying to)

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay Right. In that case @LegendaryDude, you may want to ensure your answer frontloads any conclusions about the general case and then (distinctly, separately, like after a horizontal rule) handle the example scenario.

It may be Troll Bourne communicating poorly over their desires on the matter.

BESW

Frontloading the pithy answer is a good practice in most every case.

doppelgreener

@BESW It is!

Shalvenay

02:01

@doppelgreener yeah, an example of that can be seen in my question here:

doppelgreener

So, you could take that (rejected) edit as a suggestion of what Troll Bourne wants to see.

Shalvenay

5

Q: I miss social cues when roleplaying. How can I get better at not missing them?

I know, and have been told, that I miss social cues when roleplaying. This isn't a terribly huge deal when the social contract is well-set and explicitly communicated or the gameplay doesn't rely heavily on said social cues, such as in campaign-structured games using well-established systems. H...

BESW

It's hard for me to remember, because I tend to default to a more Eastern mode of discourse.

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay Yes, I recall our discussion about that keenly. It came back to mind as I was writing this even.

LegendaryDude

I'll see what I can do. My thoughts often take some time to congeal into something that isn't a spaghetti string of ideas.

BESW

02:01

But the Stack is super Western in its styles.

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener (p.s. I need to talk to a couple folks in the community in question as I seek out more examples)

LegendaryDude

And then I go back and edit that spaghetti and it gets worse, until someone points out something painfully obvious that I can do to fix it and then it all becomes clear.

I don't have the time to reorganize that post right now but if someone wants to take a whack at it, please be my guest.

I do want Troll Bourne to feel like he's being heard; a flat rejection with no edit attempt or comment might send the wrong signal.

BESW

(In very broad strokes, Western discourse tends to present the conclusion first, then explain how you reached it; Eastern discourse tends to present the evidence first and then bring it together for the conclusion.)

doppelgreener

@LegendaryDude Leave a comment on your answer saying you declined his edit ("declined" is a good word to use here, "rejected" can be more harsh) but you're looking at how you can revise your answer to make it more pointed toward his question.

Shalvenay

that guy really doesn't get it. he just edited his question into an answer.

drew an automatic VTC from me for it

nitsua60

02:09

@BESW [is curious...]

Shalvenay

and I'm on edge whether to rollback his question edit because seriously -- that's worse than anything I've seen from a user on DIY

BESW

@nitsua60 See parenthetical above.

Miniman

@Shalvenay I was about to rollback, but it's only going to cause an edit war.

nitsua60

@BESW (ah, sorry, slowly catching up)

Shalvenay

@Miniman yeah, it seems like that the user in question needs to be pulled aside

nitsua60

02:12

@BESW Interesting. I think I'm a largely-Eastern math teacher, then =)

doppelgreener

I have flagged his question for moderator attention and linked to the revision and the conversation we just had.

@SevenSidedDie @Mxyzplk If you're there check flags. Things are getting weird with that Troll Bourne guy. He probably needs some intervention and to be shown what he needs to do.

LegendaryDude

Sadly, I think it's a lost cause. He suggested a second edit to my answer which eliminated all but two sentences of my answer.

doppelgreener

@LegendaryDude rpg.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/32476 Oh dear. :/

I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish.

BESW

@nitsua60 Differences in East/West discourse forms are a major cause of frustration and dismissal by each party, because it changes how we listen as well: without knowing what the goal is, a Westerner often has difficulty following the evidence; while stating a conclusion without first giving evidence is a great way to get Eastern-style talkers to ignore you as a pretentious idiot.

LegendaryDude

Living up to his name at this point...

doppelgreener

02:14

@LegendaryDude That crossed my mind hours ago when he posted his meta. Didn't want to say it myself. :P

nitsua60

It does bring up some curious issues--and I'm thinking about some other bad experiences I've had, not this particular user--that bring my "don't start a pissing match on the internet" instincts into conflict with my "you're a user with privileges for a reason, and it's an abrogation of duty to refrain from citizen-moderator activities."

LegendaryDude

Anyway, I'm going to step away from all this for a while and watch the OA. Have a good night all, hope this gets sorted out.

Miniman

@nitsua60 That's a matter of the level you're teaching, surely? I don't know the American terminology, but the top maths classes tend to introduce a new concept by proving it, whereas lower level classes just give the concept as a statement of fact.

nitsua60

@Miniman eh, probably.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 Right, it's a little like that "don't help too hard if they're struggling already with the existing helping" dogpiling thing mxyzplk was talking about earlier.

BESW

02:16

> Beware lest ye contend with any one, nay, strive to make him aware of the truth with kindly manner and most convincing exhortation. If your hearer respond, he will have responded to his own behoof, and if not, turn ye away from him...

nitsua60

Still, though, even in elementary classes my instinct to do exploration, experimentation, discovery, hypothesis, then present a "fact" tends more to this (oversimiplification of the) "Eastern" rather than "Western" mode. I think. As I'm only four minutes into the concept =)

@LegendaryDude Good luck. Nothing will burn down that won't get fixed =)

BESW

> Not everything that a man [...] can disclose [can] be regarded as timely, nor can every timely utterance be considered as suited to the capacity of those who hear it.

nitsua60

@BESW Amen, brother.

"Cast not your seed on barren ground," in other words?

@doppelgreener Actually, what I'm thinking about is more the "I clashed with @foobar last year, still have an aversion to them, and now I see something of theirs that needs closure/edit/downvoting, but I don't want to get into another clash."

SevenSidedDie

There. Things should be quieter for a bit now.

nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie @mxyzplk feature-request diamond-mod profiles include a "buy me a beer" button.

doppelgreener

02:21

@SevenSidedDie the suspension reason says "voting irregularities"

hmmm.

BESW

[is making Venn diagrams for social groups]
[random color choices have the native Americans in a red circle]
[sigh]

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener Indeed. I was in the middle of dealing with a different set of inadvisable choices when I saw the flags about the editing weirdness. So, that's that for a bit.

Shalvenay

I just hope he sees the light about how Stacks work

I wonder if these types of problems are what lead some people to call SO hostile?

doppelgreener

I'm rereading the current state of his question. I can't tell if it's an answer or if there's a statement that's expected to be interpreted as an inquiry, but the statement made is hard to understand anyway.

BESW

@Shalvenay In part, yes.

SevenSidedDie

02:25

@Shalvenay I always hope so, but from past cases I give less than even odds. Most people who get to this point are just in the middle of a drawn out, hard bounce off the site. Not terrible odds mind, just less than even.

@Shalvenay I imagine so.

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay In another part -- we've got a mostly cohesive viewpoint on how things should be done. It changes from time to time, and the community mostly stays up to date. Imagine if there were several more versions about what's right, and parts of the community are still firmly adhering to pre-change practices and just as firmly espousing it.

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener yeah, that probably doesn't help matters either

BESW

Yeah, check out Meta Stack Exchange discussions some time on subjects that we've managed to reach consensus on.

Heck, somebody in worldbuilding chat tried to invoke freeze peach a day or two ago when trying to argue with the Be Nice policy.

Shalvenay

@BESW I wonder what predisposes people to consider the typical Stack response to a poor quality question or answer as hostility

@BESW freeze peach?

BESW

@Shalvenay Say it out loud.

Shalvenay

02:29

@BESW oh LOL.

BESW

@Shalvenay Because they're used to communities where the only communication is agreement or argument.

Shalvenay

@BESW good point on that -- that seems to be the "default" mode most fora operate in

nitsua60

@Shalvenay I was with you on the "freeze peach?" =)

doppelgreener

@BESW there are times people have been asked to swear less and responded by raving about censorship etc

nitsua60

@BESW I wonder if the Greeks had it this rough? (Probably not. They could just label a dissenter mad and kill them. Then write a play about it.)

BESW

02:32

-52

Q: How is the policy of letting people edit another person's questions justified, under USA law?

Given that Stack Exchange, Inc. is based in the USA, how does it justify the policy of allowing someone to edit another person's question? If someone objects to the grammar, formatting, etc. of a question, they can post a comment. No one should be allowed to edit another person's submission. Th...

discussion edits copyright

doppelgreener

@BESW oh my goodness

A_S00

@BESW I was hoping it was still Troll

BESW

Nah, we're on broader trends.

nitsua60

@doppelgreener and somehow linking that xkcd on the matter doesn't quite seem to ever get someone to come around =)

BESW

@nitsua60 It gets linked every. time.

doppelgreener

02:34

@nitsua60 there's an extra thing i wish that comic said: that the right to free speech is a contract between you and the USA government; private corporations have no obligation to provide free speech.

nitsua60

@BESW yep, actually, just got to that point in the meta.SE answer =)

doppelgreener

because that's the mistake a lot of people in this position are making.

BESW

@doppelgreener Second panel.

"Or host you while you share it."

doppelgreener

@BESW hmm, guess that counts

oh boy, that comic was actually provided in answers! that's fantastic.

BESW

On a more RPG-ish note, I'm putting together broad cliques for a Venn diagram to underpin my BGS relationship map and I'm having trouble coming up with a name for one of the groups.

nitsua60

02:37

Don't forget, all--there are pearls out there, too!

BESW

I've got Jocks, Nerds, Activists, Business, Law Enforcement, Gearheads, that kind of thing. I need a circle for folks who identify as minor law-breakers. Fake IDs, drugs, vandalism, etc.

nitsua60

Sketchers?

Greasers?

NWA?

Turf-warriors?

A_S00

"my crustpunk friends"?

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Fringers?

doppelgreener

@BESW Oh man, someone even invoked the Inigo Montoya meme. This thing is full of nice surprises.

nitsua60

02:40

@SevenSidedDie DOG? (Stands for "Disciples of Gus", though they don't know it.)

BESW

Like, we've got a guy who pulls elaborate pranks that aren't supposed to hurt anybody but are often illegal. And a girl who does illegal things as part of activist protests.

nitsua60

@BESW The Weather Underground?

BESW

I feel like they should have some sort of "fighting the man" kinship despite being otherwise totally uninterested in each other.

nitsua60

@BESW The Breakfast Club?

[mic drop]

BESW

@nitsua60 You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

nitsua60

02:43

[faint inaudible harmonica playing]

Oh, sorry. I dropped the mic.

=)

BESW

[amused]

BESW

03:08

...okay, these Venn diagrams are getting insane.

nitsua60

@BESW you just need more spatial dimensions to represent them in =)

BESW

That would definitely help.

nitsua60

(Coincidentally, that's sorta-related to the topic of my recent thesis.)

BESW

3D printing Venn diagrams?

nitsua60

@BESW A new(ish) method for discovering the most-useful (for some definition of "useful") number of dimensions along which to characterize a dataset.

BESW

03:15

**[Timely RPGery](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nKltjD1HJ954pS3QZZL-E_ckNaKEeedxMKn7XwdFiio/edit?usp=sharing "Click for full source doc; please suggest items to pin!"):**
[Bundle of Holding](https://bundleofholding.com/ "Great bulk deals with bonus charitable donations!");
[Writing the Other](http://writingtheother.com/writing-inclusive-games/ "A workshop on writing inclusive games. Feb 11 - Mar 4");
[Hatmas gallery](http://meta.rpg.stackexchange.com/q/6640/4398 "The Hattening is upon us!");

nitsua60

Hatmas end tomorrow?

Nah. Two days +/-

BESW

The 9th.

nitsua60

More + than -, I guess =)

Grr.... There's one hat I still pine for. I'm shocked my usual activity hasn't generated it, frankly.

BESW

03:29

...Venn diagrams may not be the right way to go.

nitsua60

Is this group membership you're working on?

BESW

Yeah.

Using it to practice with this relationship software.

BESW

03:44

On the bright side I've got my info much more consisely expressed in list form now.

**[Timely RPGery](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nKltjD1HJ954pS3QZZL-E_ckNaKEeedxMKn7XwdFiio/edit?usp=sharing "Click for full source doc; please suggest items to pin!"):**
[Bundle of Holding](https://bundleofholding.com/ "Great bulk deals with bonus charitable donations!");
[Writing the Other](http://writingtheother.com/writing-inclusive-games/ "A workshop on writing inclusive games. Feb 11 - Mar 4");
[Andromeda](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/202271/Andromeda--A-World-of-Adventure-for-Fate-Core "Epic space opera reminiscent of classic sci-fi in this new World of Adventure for Fa…

A_S00

04:30

@mxyzplk if the downvote on this answer (rpg.stackexchange.com/a/92702/30299) is yours, I would be interested to hear why (in a not-picking-a-fight kind of way)

Shalvenay

04:40

@A_S00 not mxy -- but the general RPG.SE policy is to not rely on Fair Use when it comes to copyright stuff (not all countries have it, and it's not terribly reliable because of issues related to DMCA/equiv notice-and-takedown bots etal)

A_S00

good to know, thanks

BESW

Fair use is a legal defense, not a right.

(ie, it's not a reason the rightsholder can't take you to court; it's a reason you can win if they do.)

A_S00

@BESW Is that a valid critique of an answer to a question in the form of "Is X legal?"

BESW

An answer can invoke fair use, but it should be clear what that does and doesn't actually entail.

If anything, a fair use answer would be a frame challenge in form of "It's probably not legal but you might be able to get away with it anyway because."

And we've got some pretty clear guidelines on how to make good frame-challenge answers.

(Specifically, making it clear why the frame needs to be challenged, and how the challenge is still a solution to the querent's problem even though it's not an answer to their question.)

nitsua60

It also strikes me--and IANAL--that fair use principles are vague and shades-of-grey enough that even copyright lawyers don't like to make prospective statements that rely on fair use. (I have lunch with a copyright lawyer most days, and have probably asked her more questions about it than she had to deal with passing a few states' bars.)

BESW

04:50

Yeah. Fair use is murky and messy and changing.

A Fair(y) Use Tale

►

A_S00

@BESW Wait, my understanding is that the Fair Use doctrine doesn't say "you can do this even though it's illegal," it says "using copyrighted things isn't illegal under these circumstances"...is that not correct?

Shalvenay

@A_S00 right, but it's an affirmative defense

BESW

@A_S00 The assumption is that it doesn't meet those conditions unless/until you can prove it does in court.

Shalvenay

@BESW right

nitsua60

Oh, wow. In today's installment of "Portmanteaus for the Win," we have Banks Sued over "Craptacular" Loan Practices

A_S00

04:52

OK, so a better answer might have been something like, "It might be legal because (blah blah fair use), but it's probably a bad idea because (you might get a C&D anyway, and if you do, you have to comply or fight it in court, which would suck)"?

(i.e., draw much more attention to the caveat that I put in parentheses at the end?)

Shalvenay

@A_S00 yeah, and takedown bots don't give a )($@#*@$ about fair use anyway

A_S00

are there automated takedown bots for things like character editors on github? I thought they mostly just existed for audio and video

BESW

I'm not sure fair use qualifies in this case anyway, really.

Fair use is for education, reporting, research, and criticism.

The reason the HeroForge works is that it's building on 3.5's OGL.

That is, Wizards of the Coast has explicitly said it's okay to use certain parts of their material for commercial purposes within limits and conditions they've established.

LegendaryDude

I've wondered, Roll20 has a generic character editor which essentially lets you create whatever you want. Do they get away with it because it's free?

A_S00

HeroForge does not restrict itself to OGL material, if that's what you mean

LegendaryDude

04:57

If they started charging for their service for all users, would they get hit with cease and desist from Wizards if people started making non-OGL compliant characters using the generic character sheet?

BESW

@LegendaryDude They get away with it under the "not my problem" doctrine; the same reason YouTube doesn't get sued for hosting when someone uploads copyrighted material.

LegendaryDude

But even Youtube has to comply with DMCA complaints

BESW

@LegendaryDude Very likely. But still, not fair use--just "not something we're bothered by yet."

A_S00

Also, I don't think "education, reporting, research, and criticism" is an exhaustive list...the key consideration I believe is whether the use is "transformative," which means it "supersede[s] the use of the original work"

BESW

@LegendaryDude "Has to" is a strong word. This is a venue of copyright that's still very new, legally speaking, and still very amorphous.

LegendaryDude

04:59

Fair. There was a period of time where Youtube seemed to be very aggressive with takedowns in response to DMCA complaints, that seems to have stopped for the most part.

BESW

@A_S00 You're conflating two separate but equally important parts of determining fair use.

This is one reason determining fair use is so messy--it's got a lot of moving parts and many of them are subjective.

It's nigh impossible to be sure a fair use defense will carry.

This is not cool, and guts the intent of fair use, but it's the current legal reality.

A_S00

So, the criteria for item 1 include (separately) whether it's commercial, whether it's transformative, and whether it's educational/critique?

LegendaryDude

Fair use is tricky, that's for sure. Look at the early years of hip-hop. How much of a song sample can you get away with before you're making a derivative work and violating the copyright? At what point is something fair use? The Beastie Boys dealt with a fair use case for nearly 30 years due to some samples used on Paul's Boutique

BESW

Yeah, sampling changed the face of audio copyright dramatically.

And no discussion of copyright and trademark would be complete without a mention of Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc.

LegendaryDude

Or how about the ridiculous case of Happy Birthday to You?

BESW

05:05

The Happy Birthday to You debacle doesn't include magical phrases like "The parties are advised to chill" and "Speech-Zilla meets Trademark Kong."

(That judge was so done.)

LegendaryDude

Had he just watched the Big Lebowski? "The parties are advised to chill" sounds just like something the Dude would say.

nitsua60

@LegendaryDude There's a seventy-some-odd legal history written up of the "GMTA/HBTY" debacle that's simply astounding to read. (And really useful if your co-worker won't stop asking you copyright questions at lunch.)

[rummages]

BESW

@A_S00 If it were my answer, I wouldn't try to walk the querent through fair use. I'd just say "Fair use may be your friend," provide existing RPG examples like HeroForge, and give some useful search terms and reliable resources.

(There's also a number of systems which want to be used for that sort of thing, and legality is totally not an issue. I'm rather in favour of appreciating them with widespread support.)

Okay, important mind-blowing RPG news: Ki Khanga has were-orcas.

trogdor

05:46

WERE-ORCAS

yessssssssssssssssss sssssss

BESW

@trogdor I don't think I'm allowed to share the picture publicly yet, but I can put it on Skype for ya.

Since, you know, shared backers.

trogdor

no problem

yeah

I see nothing wrong with that XD

BESW

06:07

Also please make sure to remind me about filling out the Pack/Yohancé forms tomorrow.

trogdor

06:51

will do

BESW

08:05

@Erik [wave] Long time no chat.

Erik

I don't come into chat very often. It's such a tiny link at the bottom of the page :)

BESW

We keep it warm for ya.

What's new?

Erik

Not much, really. I joined a new RPG group with some friends, but then the DM said after the first session that DMing wasn't really his thing

BESW

Oh my. What system?

Erik

So I think I already know what happens now, either I pick it up or I am again without any group :p

D&D 5th edition, although I think it was more of a general "I'd rather be player than storyteller"

BESW

08:09

Well, I'm thinking you might see if there's a system that'd be better for your group--perhaps a GMless system or one which lends itself to round-robin GMing by whoever is willing (the number of willing goes up over time, I've found, once the precedent is set).

Or at the very least, a system with much less prep than D&D tends to require.

Erik

I have a feeling that for these guys, they prefer the gamey feel. We more often play boardgames with them than story games.

They like going along with stories and screwing around with the mechanics

I'll have to see what to do with them :) Anything new on your side?

BESW

My Geek Nights haven't been especially RPG-y lately, but we've got a lot of stuff lined up for when it gets more regular.

Bubblegumshoe is especially exciting for us.

And I'm really looking forward to Ki Khanga's publication.

Erik

Hm, I'm not familiar at all with gumshoe

BESW

But lately it's just been three of us and we've mostly been watching a lot of double features (two obscure/cheesy/weird films that go together thematically or some other way).

BGS is my first time actually using Gumshoe, though I've read a lot of it before.

Bubblegumshoe is the first version I've seen that seems to actually understand the awesome potential underlying the system's mechanics.

Gumshoe advertises itself based on the "no need to roll for the crucial clues" gimmick, but that's just an attitude which can be implemented in any system.

But the real power of the game engine is as a resource allocation game: by associating a limited pool of resource points with each important skill, it forces players to think carefully about how they use those skills and when it really matters that they succeed.

Erik

I was checking it on wikipedia; it seems each skill only has limited times it can be used? That's indeed quite different from most other games

BESW

08:20

Bubblegumshoe gives that concept teeth by creating relationships with limited pools of resource points that you can draw on to do things you'd normally be unable to except for having a particular friend, relation, or co-worker.

Erik

Hm, that does sound interesting. Makes it much more important to have connections to NPCs and the world. A thing often I'm missing in other games, where you are usually a one-man wonder

BESW

@Erik Not quite; you can use your skills whenever, but without resource points they're just raw rolls with much less ability to control your success or failure. And running out of resource points often further limits you ability to use the skill at all.

Erik

(or one-woman)

BESW

@Erik Yeah. [rummages around]

Here's a relationship map I'm working on for our BGS game: it's the result of pre-game character/setting generation and a single session.

Blue is teens, red is adults, dark blue is PCs. Orange is hate, green is like, purple is love. Squares are rich, ovals are poor.

Erik

that's a pretty complex web

BESW

08:25

That kind of complexity leads to fascinating "these NPCs are real people" play.

Our first session, a middle schooler came to us to find his stolen bike.

We found out that a high school guy had stolen and crashed it doing stunts for YouTube, because his own bike was being repaired.

Solving the mystery was fun, but not the end of the story: the real play came when we had to figure out what to do with the knowledge.

Do we turn the thief over to the police? Wreck his own bike beyond repair for revenge?

The victim didn't want his dad to know the bike was stolen (he'd forgotten to lock it up and was embarrassed), so neither of those solutions would help the kid.

Our plan for next session is to force the thief to give up his bike for spare parts to get the kid's bike fixed.

And the thief is also trying to get into the extreme sports club one of the PCs is in, and we're planning to tank any chance of that happening.

Erik

Sounds like a very different kind of story from the usual kind of RPGs I've seen

BESW

The thief, by the way, is Lance Soriano on the chart. He's got a "like" relationship with the PC Willow, because as part of tracking him down she friended him on Facebook to see his protected posts.

Now he's got a low-key crush on her, 'cause she's a pretty upperclassman who friended him on Facebook.

@Erik Very much so. We've tried to run similar themes in Fate, but the system never really pushed us to do it so we tended to fall into more familiar rhythms.

I like finding systems that push us to do things we want to do but aren't doing easily on our own.

Erik

Yeah, I can imagine. One of the things that pulled me to Fate and Dungeon World is how it forces everyone to be involved with the world instead of being a bunch of outsiders. But even that part is pretty had for most of the people I play with

BESW

Indeed.

I'm thinking a lot about porting BGS's relationship model to other systems.

Like a Fate magic system where magic is accomplished through your relationships with gods/spirits/powers. You always succeed at magic, but you have to roll anyway and if you fail the roll you get consequences representing complications in your relationships with your sponsoring power(s).

Maybe you become more like the element you're channeling and you need to remember what it's like to be human, or your god gets miffed with you and you have to do a quest for them to get back in their good graces.

We're also looking to try inspectres soon, which has a system for modelling a start-up business.

Each job has a rating for how many resources you'll get for completing it, and a big part of the game is finishing the job without using more resources than you'll get.

(You can bail on a job halfway through for half the resources you've collected toward the end goal thus far, if it's getting really bad.)

And when we do want some mindless violence, there's great-ork-gods.

Oh! And I'm trying storium again.

Erik

09:16

Heh, I wish I could get some people here with that level of interest in trying out all these games

I've had a hard enough time giving FATE a go and that was only a single session

BESW

Yeah, well. A large part of my success is having a very laidback approach toward attendance, and matching games and campaigns to that attitude.

Whoever can show up on Saturday night, does, and we play a game based on who shows up. Lots of one-shots.

We actively avoid games that penalise low or erratic attendance, like games with XP progression.

Erik

Yes, but I think you also have players who are very open to trying out all sorts of games :)

BESW

My Saturday Geek Nights are primarily a social event: my friends all have wacky schedules that are hard to synchronise, so I just make sure everyone knows if they ever have a Saturday night free my place is open.

It happens that many of my friends who show up semi-regularly like RPGs, so that's a major focus of the socialising.

@Erik This also took some time and effort.

Erik

heh, I can imagine

BESW

35

A: How do I convince my group to try a new system without always having to DM it first?

I've had similar challenges, both with getting group buy-in to try new systems and with getting people to feel comfortable GMing anything at all. My solution was a long-game process of changing the "landscape" of how people at the table viewed their role in the game. I didn't set out to delibera...

I think at first there was a lot of fear of "wasting" our game time with stuff we wouldn't love.

Shifting the focus away from gaming and toward gaming with friends helped that a lot.

And sometimes we watch Netflix, or play chongka', or go see a theater production.

DForck42

14:16

mornin

nitsua60

14:30

@SevenSidedDie @mxyzplk I hate to not Assume Good Faith, but any chance this new user is a recently-banned troll-named person back for "revenge"?

In other news, VtC POB

DForck42

@nitsua60 lol

nitsua60

@DForck42 mornin =)

DForck42

@nitsua60 :-D

nitsua60

@DForck42 any more thoughts on your sharpshooter?

DForck42

@nitsua60 I started digging into things the other night, but haven't since then

my laptop's out of commission currently so it's hard to work on it at home

nitsua60

14:35

@DForck42 No worries.

@DForck42 Sorry to hear...

DForck42

@nitsua60 it needs a new fan, I think

but I'm atake it into a shop and get it cleaned, fan replaced, and new thermal compound put on

just need money for that first, and I bought a wiiu this check so it's gonna wait

nitsua60

Sorry, Troll. Gonna need to do better than that.

DForck42

@nitsua60 heh

mxyzplk

@nitsua60 yyyyeah in fact it looks like even our recently banned troll is a sock for a banned hobbit. sigh, on it

DForck42

14:50

@mxyzplk fun

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