TRPG General Chat

nitsua60

00:43

Night, all. Hopping a plane to London tomorrow, so I'll probably be pretty quiet/invisible the next week. OTOH, if you're in the Oxford area and want to grab a drink, ping me!

BESW

@nitsua60 Have fun!

nitsua60

@BESW ty

Adeptus

01:00

London (disambiguation)

London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. London may also refer to: == Places == === Europe === England Greater London, an administrative region Greater London Authority, an administrative body Greater London Council, an administrative body from 1965 to 1986 London (European Parliament constituency) Greater London Built-up Area, an urban area City of London, a district of London Central London London Bridge Diocese of London, an Anglican diocese London postal district, a post town County of London, a county from 1889 to 1965 London County Council, a...

Oxford (disambiguation)

Oxford is a city in Oxfordshire, England, famous for the University of Oxford. Oxford may also refer to: == Places == === England === Oxford (UK Parliament constituency), the historic Parliamentary constituency of the city Oxford Canal, a canal from Coventry to Oxford, England Oxford Castle, England Oxford East (UK Parliament constituency), a modern Parliamentary constituency of the city Oxford West and Abingdon (UK Parliament constituency), the other modern constituency including the city === Canada === Oxford (Edmonton), a neighbourhood in Edmonton, Alberta Mount Oxford (Nunavut), a...

Have fun in Canada... or Kentucky... or is it Indiana? ;)

The Oracle

01:55

0

Q: What about questions that only make sense because the querent lacks knowledge

So, the question that inspired this is Where does the number added to a roll for damage come from? . The question is short, clear, and concise. It's clear what the asker is confused about, and what sort of answer they expect. This sort of question is normally an excellent fit for our site. B...

nitsua60

hmm... op is 2 questions, each of which I think is actually a duplicate....

Adeptus

@nitsua60 (shouldn't you be sleeping?)

BESW

02:11

Blades in the Dark RPG release is here! For book+PDF: https://bladesinthedark.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders. For PDF only: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/170689/Blades-in-the-Dark-Digital-Edition-Early-Access https://t.co/zuiOp4gBBp

Tweeted by john_harper on February 2, 2017 at 1:55 AM

Joel Harmon

03:47

@SevenSidedDie Ask questions and use the answers. I once had a DM ask each player what minor magic item they had. I had a coin purse with three coins. When you take a coin out, the least recently removed coin disappears from wherever it happens to be and appears in your hand.

RollingFeles

05:37

@SevenSidedDie shamelessly stolen! :P

Powerdork

05:51

@JoelHarmon So explain this one to me, please.

SevenSidedDie

06:13

@JoelHarmon Useful to start, but less for coming up with items introduced during an adventure. Apart from “what magic item is rumoured to be here?”, of course. ^^ That can only be used so often though.

@RollingFeles Enjoy!

@Powerdork Which part? I think I understood each bit of that message well enough to explain any of them in Joel's absence.

Powerdork

The uses of such an item.

SevenSidedDie

@Powerdork You pay a coin to a guard for a bribe, then pay a coin to a merchant for bread. One coin is left in the purse. Then when you take a coin out to throw it into a well for good luck, the coin you gave to the guard disappears from the guard's pocket and reappears in ~~the magic coin purse~~ your hand. Etc.

Basically it's fraud in a sack. A rogue's best friend.

Anaphory

11:01

@BESW I should go to our museum again, now that the “Queens of the Nile” exhibition is open…

BESW

@Anaphory ooh, shiny.

doppelgreener

11:21

@nitsua60 [twitch] their list of two items consists of (a) and (2)

Joel Harmon

12:22

@SevenSidedDie nailed it, @Powerdork . It's a handy little one-off, right until it turns out the guard and the baker are friends, and start talking. Then it's an interesting complication.

Urist McDorf

@doppelgreener That's perfect.

Joel Harmon

other, cheatier uses include propping open a door with one, then closing it whenever (or otherwise triggering physics with disappearing matter).

@SevenSidedDie Yes, this is only a partial solution. Another is to borrow someone else's creativity; small children have worked well for me.

LegendaryDude

@BESW I don't know specifically anything about bubblegumshoe or FATE so I won't answer the question on main site, but it seems like you would always start the Hate at 3 and get 3 build points for your other relationships

BESW

Yeah, I'm not quoting the whole paragraph.

LegendaryDude

@BESW I figured there's probably more in there to make you think otherwise

BESW

12:32

[edits in a little more of why I'm confused]

Ahriman

@BESW I'm confused about "New Hates may be added later in play. ("Like, Love, and Hate" BGS 27)"

I would think p27 then gives ou an answer about later Hate...

BESW

The parenthetical is the citation for the quote.

Ahriman

ah

felt like that was a reference to alater part of the book

[slinks away]

LegendaryDude

Hmm

I would think, even if it's in the character creation section, you take the 3 Hate

Does it makes sense that it would grant you 3 build points for your other Relationships outside of character creation?

BESW

I'm not sure.

Kinda, sorta? But if so, my next question will be about getting a new Hate by converting negative Cool.

'cause that's not supposed to be nice, and it already gives you a Hate rating proportional to your negative Cool.

Popping three Hate on top of that, and then giving you 3 Relationship points... I dunno, seems weird.

doppelgreener

12:50

It certainly strikes me as ambiguous now that I think about it

In-game, acquiring a new Hate comes after deliberately trying to make things worse or stuffing up or etc

It's easy enough to reason that you don't get a benefit for this hate you just picked up midgame, you caused some trouble and this is the consequence for it

It's also easy enough to reasonably infer that a 3-point always comes with a 3-point relationship bonus, 'cuz that's how it works in the paragraph talking about acquiring hates, right?

BESW

If I were pressed to ad-hoc it right now, I'd say that the amount of "free" Hate is GM fiat based on the narrative situation incurring the Hate, and you don't get bonus Relationship points for it outside of chargen.

LegendaryDude

@doppelgreener Those were my thoughts exactly

BESW

And, of course, we do know that BGS is pretty aggressive about applying narrative logic over mechanical consistency.

The Oracle

14:06

0

Q: Community Promotion Ads - 2017

It is a bit late into this new year, being that we're already in the second month, but we are now cycling the Community Promotion Ads for 2017! What are Community Promotion Ads? Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar....

discussion community-ads

Urist McDorf

14:21

Kind of weird seeing old (years-old) answers get edited out of nowhere. Is that normal on SE?

BlackVegetable

Occasionally. Someone might be trying for a badge as well.

Urist McDorf

That's a weird badge to promote necroediting.

Anaphory

14:47

It's there to say “Look, Necroediting isn't bad!”, because it might be useful to update old answers, and there isn't much reason for “new is always better”, so editing old stuff is preferred.

Urist McDorf

Fair enough.

LegendaryDude

There are other good reasons to edit or answer old posts

For example, there are a lot of dnd-5e questions that were asked during the playtest

It's likely a lot of those answers are now out of date with the official rules being published

Urist McDorf

That's fair.

LegendaryDude

In general we want to be the best source for information so old questions and answers are no less valid than recent ones

And if something old is not right, it's best to fix it

Urist McDorf

But shouldn't those have been initially tagged with "dnd-next-playtest" or something else that specifically mesntions the version?

LegendaryDude

15:00

We migrated all dnd-next questions to dnd-5e

The dnd-next tag is a dnd-5e synonym

gotta step away, conf call

Anaphory

@LegendaryDude IIRC There was a discussion with a very quiet consensus to undo that now, but I think it's still the case.

(Your general explanation does, of course, still apply.)

Urist McDorf

16:33

Oof, rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/94188/…

On any other site that'd probably provoke a shitstorm. Dunno about this one.

BlackVegetable

16:57

That was a weird feeling. I thought, "yeah, I'd close that one if it hadn't already been closed" only to realize my closing privileges don't extend beyond Stack Overflow.

doppelgreener

17:11

@UristMcDorf That is why it's been closed quickly and we're going to need to be pretty vigilant about comments. (Also, please avoid swear words in this chat, so that we can maintain a hospitable and welcoming atmosphere. May I suggest "furore" or "hoohah"? :D)

@BlackVegetable You could flag to close or bring it to our attention in chat! (Usually we post a VTC request with a link and reason)

Urist McDorf

@doppelgreener Sorry about the swearing. In my defence, the first time I came here I did ask about the chat's policy and the answer was "it's fine as long as it's not directed at someone" or something along those lines.

The answer that guy linked does seem a bit biased at the end of it.

BlackVegetable

17:26

@doppelgreener Ah yes; I forgot about flagging.

The Oracle

17:38

0

Q: Can I ask to updated a question?

Or better said, Can I ask a question which as been already asked years ago and which the answer may, or may not, be different? why this question: I just asked a question which got close. I didn't realized right away how much flame it could attract and I'm ok to leave it close until it's in a bet...

discussion

GreySage

17:59

@doppelgreener Uproar, ruckus, firestorm...

doppelgreener

@UristMcDorf The policy may be different in other rooms (and not everyone in this room might be on the same page) but the authoritative policy in this particular room is avoid them completely.

LegendaryDude

18:30

Remember, RPGs are age-inclusive

It's not common but we could have younger folks hanging out in here

Plus, generally, different strokes for different folks

I curse like a sailor with my friends and in the workplace but some of the people I work with would never utter more than "darn."

So I try to keep it PG/PG-13 here

Probably closer to PG

Urist McDorf

18:48

@doppelgreener I asked in this room specifically. But yeah, sure, I'll try to refrain from it in the future.

doppelgreener

@UristMcDorf thanks :)

@LegendaryDude That's true. But, also, we've had people vouch for this particular chat being an excessively safe space, and we need that to be able to talk about some of the things we do without things breaking into argument. A general policy of avoiding swear words creates an atmosphere vulnerable people can feel safe in, and in which vulnerable topics can be safely brought up. It lowers tension and toxicity; swear words only tend to increase them and unnecessarily exacerbate argument.

well not excessively safe -- there's no excess, so that's not the word I mean -- but extraordinarily safe

bear in mind we discuss such delicate topics as politics, racial identity, religion, which edition you like best, and monks, in here.

though frequently these discussions will be moved to the Not A Bar so the general chat can proceed as normal.

BlackVegetable

19:10

@doppelgreener ...are Monks a hotly-debated topic? Like, the class? Or the Tibetan type?

Urist McDorf

The class

doppelgreener

@BlackVegetable The monk class from D&D is a bit contentious, mainly because of its strength. Various people will say they're just fine, or quite strong, or not strong at all. (The character optimisation community is in the last group.) Some people will say it's fine as long as you design encounters properly for them; others will reply that's an unreasonable expectation because of just how much effort is involved.

Urist McDorf

Also I like 4e best and think 3e is s- silly. It's silly.

Fite me.

doppelgreener

I like 4e the most as well.

Urist McDorf

Damn.

doppelgreener

19:22

Also we have this historic edict from a former moderator:

Apr 2 '13 at 2:56, by Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BESW I suggest an annual Don't mention Monks, Vow of Poverty, or physics... year.

Urist McDorf

Back when I was a boardgame playtester I had two colleagues. One was indifferent in regards to RPGs but the other was a rabid 3e fan. You know, the kind where even after we've exhausted the actual arguments whenever I brought up me running or playing D&D afterwards she just had to mention how 4e is bad. Or trying to drown me out whenever I'd recommend 4e to anyone.

doppelgreener

(as for if you're curious about vow of poverty...)

@UristMcDorf wow :'(

Urist McDorf

Eh, I'm used to it.

LegendaryDude

The general consensus from every FLGS employee in my area was always, "Don't play 4e, play Pathfinder instead"

Then when 5e came out it was, "PLAY 5E ITS AMAZING"

Urist McDorf

The Russian RPG community is mostly 3.5 adherents (doesn't help that it's the only edition of DnD that had at least the PHB released in Russian; with typos and factual errors, but it's there)

Or more modern gamers who like Fate or somesuch.

4e though?

Very rare.

LegendaryDude

19:26

When we were two years deep into a Pathfinder campaign...

doppelgreener

@UristMcDorf also less vocal because we don't even want to bother having the same arguments again.

Urist McDorf

They still use the "if 4e was good why did it fail financially" argument.

LegendaryDude

because they don't understand logical fallacies?

The Sega Dreamcast was objectively amazing and Sega still failed financially

Urist McDorf

I don't get where they are getting the "4e failed financially" idea in the first place.

AFAIU it was lucrative with the charbuilder subscription

Which is still the best piece of software associated with an RPG game

Period

@doppelgreener Eh, I still prefer to defend 4e's honour when I can.

LegendaryDude

I really wish Wizards would do for 5e what they did for 4e with the DM workshop stuff

doppelgreener

19:31

It also lasted for several years

Urist McDorf

And you can still get access to it with the sub, I think.

doppelgreener

Oh whoops wrong community 8)

BlackVegetable

19:47

I couldn't let another day go without adding another question about Dungeon World.

BlackVegetable

20:24

I'm officially the author of over 5% of all Dungeon World questions on the site. I'm trying to decide whether that's a good thing, or if I'm annoying people.

LegendaryDude

It's not annoying

The whole purpose of the site is to ask questions

BlackVegetable

Yeah. I've just been obsessed with the game and I've also been deprived of opportunities to play it the past 7 days. It comes out in questions about how to play.

But I'm glad I learned about armor ignoring spells because if I ever had a Wizard player, it would've messed the game up.

LegendaryDude

20:40

Do you mean spells ignoring armor?

or do you mean armor-ignoring spells?

doppelgreener

@BlackVegetable you're fine. Ask away.

As long as they're good questions and you've done your research they should be ok. If you start getting steams of downvotes and closures you're causing problems but unless that's happening you're in the clear.

(for this purpose, as always, single downvotes are irrelevant and white noise from the universe.)

3

BlackVegetable

Well sure. I'm not new to SE, but I've never asked so many questions in rather rapid succession either.

LegendaryDude

@doppelgreener Maybe that's why he's only a substitute librarian and not a full-time one

SevenSidedDie

21:40

Wow, I appreciate all of the chances at misses you risked to bring us this. — BlackVegetable 3 mins ago

@BlackVegetable There has definitely been some Use up their resources, now that I look at the clock!

@JoelHarmon Oh, that's a good idea! “Hey d7child, what's would a cool ocean-themed sword do?”

BlackVegetable

@SevenSidedDie I'm just glad you weren't shown signs of an approaching threat!

SevenSidedDie

22:03

@BlackVegetable I'm trying to think of what that could have been, and not liking any of the partially formed ideas.

@UristMcDorf Technically it was a revenue success but a financial failure. Due to Hasbro's internal structure, WotC had unrealistic targets that 3.5e was failing to hit. WotC pitched 4e to Hasbro as a way to move to a subscription model, which is generally considered in industry (any industry) to be a stronger financial move. It still failed to hit the ridiculous targets set by Hasbro. Then Hasbro restructured its internals, freeing WotC from having to make D&D hit bizarro revenue targets.

So they designed a new game that took advantage of the lack of pressure. That's in large part why the release schedule for 5e is so oddly unhurried and all hardback.

BESW

@doppelgreener Brouhaha.

SevenSidedDie

@UristMcDorf So yeah, the argument that financial failure ⟹ bad game doesn't hold up. A good game can be a financial failure due to external circumstances, and a bad game can be a financial success for the same. They're almost independent variables. I'm not a 4e fan and I still think that argument it bunk. :) (I'm a BX through 2e fan, for the record. Fite.)

BESW

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Oh that's fantastic. LOLFIGSL.

BESW

@SevenSidedDie I did an image search for "put 'em up."

doppelgreener

22:18

what is this "lolfigsl"?

BESW

Living Off Land; French-Indian Guru Said Laudable.

BlackVegetable

@BESW That's definitely what went through my head...

BESW

GMTAAFTDL.

The Oracle

0

Q: How to improve "Is awakened intelligence hereditary?"

Regarding "Is awakened intelligence hereditary?", I'm curious about what can be done to improve the question, since it was closed for being unclear. It doesn't look like the original poster is going to update the question (they have not edited the question in the month since it was asked). Howev...

discussion closed-questions specific-question

SevenSidedDie

22:42

@doppelgreener An obscure room in-joke: here and…

Aug 7 '16 at 20:59, by nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie like "lol forrealz, I'm getting strange looks"?

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie thanks ;D

SevenSidedDie

(Obscure enough that I even had to look up how to spell it again… >.> )

@BESW That one I'm stumped on though.

BESW

@SevenSidedDie Great Minds Think Alike And Fools' Thoughts Differ Little.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Aha!

trogdor

23:35

@BESW lol, why I otter

4

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