TRPG General Chat

12:00 AM

@doppelgreener I have one of those. Seems to roll OK (I haven't done any testing, like roll 1000 times and record the results). The little one inside kind of bounces & rattles about, so it gets randomised well enough.

trogdor

lol

right there with you half the time

course the rest of the time it is usually straight up raining enough to flood somewhere (exaggeration but that is already being done XD)

user15026

It's -8C (feels like -19 with wind) right now. I'd take any sort of warm right now

user15026

Bonus points for no ice (I keep slipping on sidewalks :/ )

doppelgreener

@Adeptus i hear there's record heat there & more to be expected :(

trogdor

@Ash yeah, sometimes I feel the exact opposite, but then I remember the first time I encountered snow

it was fun, but it got old real fast

especially for someone who grew up in a place where it never happens

Adeptus

12:08 AM

In Adelaide, we've had a couple of days over 40 this week, but the usual dry. Today's going to be high 30s, but humid. I'm not looking forward to leaving the airconditioned office...

user15026

@Adeptus Yikes, thats warm even for me....

trogdor

ah yeah, Humidity is a constant state on Guam

user15026

@trogdor I like snow when it is outside and I am inside with a book and hot chocolate and I can just look at it but be warm :P

trogdor

even in dry season when it isn't raining, we still have water surrounding us without much land as buffer

@Ash that is the perfect placement yeah

XD

or even just not there

that is cool with me too

user15026

@trogdor I also like that option yes

trogdor

12:12 AM

I in particular recall that the air hurt my face, and then my Grandmother tossed some know down the back of my shirt, because I guess the barbarians in the Mainland U.S do that kind of thing for fun :P

I was especially unappreciative at the time, of course

now it is obviously something I can laugh about, all the way to the "it doesn't snow here" bank

user15026

12:30 AM

@trogdor The first snow of the year is always exciting but then I just hate being cold and damp too much to appreciate it. I have family that like winter sports and snowmobiling, but I'm the one inside making the hot chocolate :)

trogdor

lol

my father stayed on this island partly because it never snows here

but there must have been other reasons because my parents apparently lived in Florida for a short while

though to be fair I have not often heard very many good things about Florida without hearing things that make me not want to visit there too badly

also to be fair, he has always been a much more adventurous and outgoing person than most of the military guys who hide themselves on the bases for their whole deployment

he has mentioned that when he first came here, there were numerous guys saying how bad the island was, nothing to do here and all that nonsense, but he suspects even then that they had just never bothered to actually like,..... explore it at all XD

Adeptus

1:04 AM

"Nothing to do here" usually translates to "the thing I used to do somewhere else, I can't do here"

trogdor

I would guess that could very well be correct

but regardless, it is still kinda a self poisoning thought when you put no actual research into it

Adeptus

I've lived in a couple of largeish country towns. People made the same complaints about them. There were some things you couldn't do, sure. But we mostly kept ourselves entertained. D&D and computer games are good for that.

BESW

I once met a guy who said he'd "been everywhere and done everything" already. I asked how he liked the view from Fort Soledad and it turned out he'd never been further south than Cocos Island.

Dude hadn't even been to Gef Pa'go.

trogdor

yeah it astounds me when people make claims like that in a place that they have not scouted fully

BESW

1:19 AM

And that's just the, you know, easy touristy stuff.

trogdor

I can understand if you feel like you can't easily find something to do, but saying that nothing exists to do is a misdiagnosis of the problem at best

personally, I have relied on other people a lot when looking for things to do while traveling

so I can sorta half understand the perspective of some people who are here but have not been here long enough to know what potential things there are to do

nitsua60

Have flagged this question asking for a post-notice suggesting Back It Up! Anyone else noticing a stream of poor answers come in, or am I just cranky because the Pats are down 28-9 in my alt-timeline?

BESW

@trogdor Just open a Sunday copy of the Pacific Daily News: every Wednesday there's the Chamorro Village open market and every Thursday is the Mangilao Donne' Festival; at least once a month there's free guided hikes and a free outdoor movie night; there's three major art galleries and concerts both classical and pop; and that's just the stuff that's always available which I can think off the top of my head!

trogdor

@BESW yeah I mean,... I don't need that advice

but that is a neat set of things to start with for sure

BESW

Right now... [rummages] Pale San Vitores has a nightly "Year of Love" light park until the middle of next month. This Sunday the Guam Symphony is doing its Young Artists Awards. The Governor's Cup Ladies' Golf Tournament is next week. Next month there's a car racing weekend, a marathon, and a 100-year memorial ceremony for the Cormoran. Then in May there's the Mango Fair, the Micronesian Fair, the race to swim to Cocos, and a tennis tournament...

And of course there's the UOG theatre productions--I only do posters for the four proper "UOG presents" plays, but they've got at least twice as many again with other groups using the space throughout the year.

But anybody who thinks there's "nothing to do on Guam" probably doesn't think watching an all-PI production of Fences is worth doing.

trogdor

1:33 AM

I was going to mention

many of these guys are probably not interested in local productions of culture

as sad as that is

(the same people probably are not too interested in culture at all, not just of the local variety)

nitsua60

thanks, @mxy

mxyzplk

5:41 AM

@nitsua60 Sho nuff

This is hilarious: workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/84746/…

trogdor

yeaaahhh that looks like my guy syndrome

"my guy is evil so obviously he is gonna kill the party now"

:'(

the especially sad thing is that the question poster doesn't seem to originally understand that he did something wrong there by deciding to kill an entire party of people, and that just being "able" to roll that incident back in game isn't enough to erase any emotional damage caused to real people from the action

CTWind

Answers like this make me sad.

trogdor

I had not gotten that far down :'(

that is not a cool response by far

Miniman

6:00 AM

@trogdor I'd submit that it probably isn't MGS - he's using MGS as an excuse, but if you read between the lines it's pretty obvious that he just did it because he wanted to.

trogdor

@Miniman that just makes it worse though

Miniman

Actually, that probably describes 99% of MGS incidents, now that I think about it.

4

trogdor

especially in the same context of "I seem to not know what I did wrong"

@Miniman either way, it's not a great mode of behaviour

it's fair enough if it is actually an established group of friends which you have been in for a while and everyone party kills

Miniman

@trogdor Well, not entirely. If he'd done it purely because he thought his character would've and "thatz teh gud roleplayz yas?", his not knowing what he did wrong would be slightly less bad.

trogdor

but in his situation of being the new guy among work friends,........ this is in no way acceptable behavior, and his seeming lack of understanding that what he did was at least a little uncool is definitely mildly disturbing to me

@Miniman yeah, I mean, I don't want to pin him down as a horrible person for that, but I kinda read into him already having been interested in RPGs before

which might also have implied to me that he should have some inkling that not all behaviors such as that which he took is acceptable in every group,....

Urist McDorf

6:05 AM

@Miniman That's just That Guy. A bit confusing terminology but you know.

trogdor

6:42 AM

I mean, personally I wouldn't want to be engaging in my RPG hobby with my co-workers, either in general or my current set of them, not because I hate them but because I didn't originally choose them as friends, and if something happens outside the workplace, it would in fact be hard to ignore it in the workplace itself

I don't condemn the idea of having workplace friends you game with, but not understanding in any way that it is a risk is alien to me

Urist McDorf

I would for a bunch of reasons (mostly convenience). In fact, that game I've mentioned I'm going to run is with my coworkers.

trogdor

and that is fine

Urist McDorf

And it's getting postponed exactly because we're like less than two weeks away from release and so games are not on anyone's mind.

Well, a game is, but not the one I'm going to be running :)

trogdor

nothing is wrong with gaming with your co-workers

Urist McDorf

(it's the one we're releasing is what I mean)

trogdor

6:45 AM

something is a little wrong with just jumping into a pre-established group and upsetting the balance

Urist McDorf

That is true.

trogdor

and something is wrong with not discussing with your group how your character happens to be a murderhobo-party-killer, unless you are already established in a group where that is a pre established thing that no one blinks at

which in this question's case was,... most certainly not the case

Urist McDorf

Yes, but some people need to be explained that because might not even realise it's wrong in the first place.

So both sides are at wrong, imo

Arkhaic

Ugh

Been a while since I've been here, need rather urgent help with a playgroup

Basically, a guy has the opposite of my-guy syndrome

So instead of doing stupid stuff because 'my guy would do it'

He doesn't do anything at all

Miniman

That's not the opposite of MGS. That's what's known as "turtling".

Arkhaic

6:54 AM

Ah

He's playing some sort of true neutral elf that doesn't care about anything but nature

Miniman

29

Q: Strategies for dealing with turtle or roach players?

How should GMs deal with players who turtle or roach? By turtle I am referring to players who obviously wanted to play because they joined the game, but when they're actually at the table they keep their heads in their shells. They're too intimidated or shy to actually role play. They just sit q...

Arkhaic

Oh, he's insistent on whether or not things fit what his character would do

Urist McDorf

Well tell him his character is just wrong for the game you've chosen to play

Arkhaic

Also trying to do that, not the DM though

Urist McDorf

You don't bring an average joe who just wants to watch tv all day to a Fate game

Miniman

6:57 AM

Ok, that doesn't sound like turtling.

Urist McDorf

Or, in general, you don't bring a knife to a gun fight

Miniman

So, he's playing an aloof character who's aloof about everything?

Arkhaic

He's not aloof about the main villain, just about...literally everything else

Urist McDorf

Basically you've all agreed to play DnD (or whatever it is you're playing), which is a game of high fantasy adventures, fight terrible monsters and get epic lewtz

More often than not, anyway.

Arkhaic

Fate game here actually

Urist McDorf

6:58 AM

Ah. Well, that's even easier.

Hold on, let me get the exact quote.

Arkhaic

We're still trying to coax him through phase 2

My brain's pretty much fried because the session has lasted 7 hours

Magician

Oh. I was going to say that quiet back-row characters can be ok in D&D in large groups, as sometimes people are just there for the fantasy aspect, not for the actual heroics. But Fate is different.

Urist McDorf

fate-srd.com/fate-core/game-creation

The first pillar is arguably the more important one

But here both the first and the third deal with the problem

Magician

It does sound like the character fails the Proactivity and Drama requirements.

Urist McDorf

Yep

Arkhaic

7:00 AM

He had great drama in the last game we played (in a different system, switched to Fate for various reasons)

Player basically always plays this character

Miniman

@Magician Incidentally, is there a way to search your site? When I thought the issue was turtling, I was looking for your article, but I couldn't find a way to search other than Google, and Google was failing me.

Urist McDorf

That's not exactly what the drama thing is about. It's more about characters being important to the world, more or less.

Arkhaic

Ah

Yeah, the entire species of wood elves he made is actively anti-drama

Urist McDorf

I think so anyway. Might be wrong now that I'm rereading it.

Magician

@Miniman There's a search bar on the blog itself (upper right corner). But I don't recall any articles about turtling that I wrote.

Urist McDorf

7:03 AM

Right, I misread it. It's the other way around. The world is important for them, all the time.

There's always something at stake

Miniman

@Magician Didn't you write about three types of players using animals as metaphors?

Urist McDorf

(and here I remember Tigtone)

Magician

@Miniman Don't... think so?

trogdor

@UristMcDorf I do think the group's reaction was too strong, but I also have sympathy for the fact that as soon as they let this guy into a specific outside activity, he did something emotionally damaging

Urist McDorf

("Nothing? Nothing at stake? Then I myself shall put the very world at stake!")

Miniman

7:03 AM

@Magician Hmmm. I really thought that one was you. Oops.

Magician

Heh, no worries.

Dramatic = wants to do stuff. Proactive = actually goes out and does stuff. Competent = often succeeds.

trogdor

my response in a similar situation would be to ignore that guy too, at the very least as long as he continued not to show any inclination either to apologize or learn why I suddenly didn't want as much contact with him. if he did at least show that he want to know why he got the reaction he did, I would most likely at least attempt an explaination

Arkhaic

Ended the session, took like 20 minutes to convince him to sleep on it and come back later

Miniman

@Magician Also, I'm probably being daft, but I still can't find the search bar...I've got the menu with tags, comments, and subscribe, but I'm still not finding search >.<

Arkhaic

Thanks guys

Urist McDorf

7:06 AM

@trogdor Me too, but I think they should've realised he might not know that it's emotionally damaging. I personally wouldn't expect a player who's only ever played vidya to realise that chaotic randumb killing is not okay, for example. Especially considering how many associate sandbox with GTA and similar games.

Magician

@Miniman Oh, huh. It's not showing if you're not the site admin. How peculiar.

Urist McDorf

So it'd also be my fault for not explaining that aspect of the game to the player.

trogdor

@UristMcDorf yeah, again, actively colluding to exclude him was definitely an overly strong response

Miniman

@Magician Ah, good to know I'm not crazy :) I kept wondering if you'd used a black textbox on the dark green background or something.

Magician

Try it now :)

Miniman

7:08 AM

@Magician Sweet!

Urist McDorf

Now that I'm reminded of it, here's "The Begun of Tigtone" for those who haven't watched it. It's a piece of mostly absurdist humour that happens to be done good (which is an extreme rarity with absurdist humour).

I really like it.

Miniman

Man, I can't find this article anywhere. This is going to bug me.

Urist McDorf

But is it going to turtle you?

SevenSidedDie

7:53 AM

@Miniman I know the article you're thinking of and I can't find it anywhere either. I suspect it's one of the blogs that have died out over the past decade. I think it might have been Brand Robins, but I can only find his famous post about his turtling brother coming out of his shell.

And I can't remember what the third animal was. Turtle, roach, and … hm.

RollingFeles

8:05 AM

@JoelHarmon I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you relevant story from my DW session, but I don't have much time this days to share it here. I'll ping you when I'll be ready to deal with it.

Miniman

@SevenSidedDie From memory, it was wolf - the player who hunts the spotlighy.

Urist McDorf

I know I'm the wolf

I also know that the only time I haven't played a leader-type character in our regular gaming group nobody did

So that's funny

CTWind

I definitely fall into roach.

trogdor

@SevenSidedDie @BESW "For the game I used the setup stakes from the books about the shape-shifting cat being hunted by the brutal village warrior." this is great, reminds me of our Egypt game

also, that was a pretty kick-Butt story

doppelgreener

10:11 AM

@SevenSidedDie Wow! I've never seen that one before and that was so good to read.

trogdor

it was really good

trogdor

10:55 AM

if nothing else, I am a sucker for stories about shy people opening up in RPGs

doppelgreener

12:09 PM

@trogdor yeah :') i imagine this is a category of stories i could definitely go for

trogdor

@doppelgreener :)

The Oracle

2:05 PM

0

Q: The [templates] tag has been burninated/re-tagged away into [character-templates]

Apparently we had a templates tag on these questions: How many templates can be applied to a summoned creature(s)? (asked September 2016) Where can I find extra templates for pathfinder? (asked September 2016) Can a PC apply a template to a construct gained as a class feature? (asked January 20...

discussion tags burninate-request

nitsua60

3:10 PM

I think I've thrown more downvotes on that "intentional failure" question than all else combined this year.

Patta

I should probably look at that again :D I was too focused on the RPG question over on the Workplace Stack for the whole day :D

nitsua60

@Patta That was an... interesting one.

"I was invited to the group poker game for the first time, flipped the table, threw a drink in the boss's face, and peed on the rug on my way out. Now they're not talking to me at work. What're they doing wrong?"

Patta

Yea, something like that :D I play in an evil campaign, and we have had stuff like people describing how they flay and torture living people and stuff. I would never play something like that with my colleagues, though...

Urist McDorf

3:26 PM

@nitsua60 Hey, it's not as clear-cut as that.

Patta

(And yes, I have run a successfull round with colleagues as the GM, Pathfinder at the time, and am about to start with a Edge of the empire Round on my new job, so I disagree with people saying it can never work)

@UristMcDorf Why don't you think so?

Urist McDorf

It's also a case of the person having wrong expectations (perhaps influenced by video games such as GTA where you can go chaotic evil and it'll be fine; it's actually somewhat expected of you) and nobody bothering to explain the difference to him.

Patta

Hmm, ok, I can see that. Kind of.

nitsua60

I don't.

Urist McDorf

@Patta It's because of that comparison to video games, actually. They have completely different norms, but an unprepared person might not realise that and figure "oh, it's like a computer game, right?" and bring expectations an values from there.

nitsua60

3:29 PM

I don't think it's the existing group's responsibility to outline the things that would never occur to them which a new member might think is alright, and why those actions aren't.

The new member should be the conservative one, checking the propriety of their ideas before expecting everyone else to keep them in-bounds.

Patta

The OP on that question was obviously not experienced with rpgs, at least. That's why I would partly blame the coworkers or the gm at least

@nitsua60: Yea, SHOULD is the real deal here. Looks like he did not know that he should.

nitsua60

But that should has nothing to do with RPGs, or gaming. It's the same should that applies to entering any unfamiliar social situation.

I don't blame the co-workers/gm, but they definitely missed the opportunity the moment the intent/action was announced. They should, at that point, have put on the brakes. "If you do that, we're probably all going to have to do this. And we don't want to do this, that's not really the game we want to play."

Urist McDorf

But it's quite likely that RPGs were explained as something like "you can do whatever you want, only your imagination is the limit". Plus, with that line of thinking you wouldn't quite know where to draw the line - it might require confirmation of every little thing just because it wasn't confirmed before and it might be a problem.

And in all honesty, if they let a complete newbie to RPGs have a "chaotic evil" character they should've at least considered the possibility of problems arising with that instead of "oh, he'll figure it out".

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 This calendar year, definitely. Same goes for my delete votes.

Patta

You are absolutely right, nitsua60. But sadly, not everyone is socially compentent ;)

nitsua60

3:33 PM

@UristMcDorf If this player had spent the session observing others' actions, acting in similar ways, and quietly checking with someone whenever they had the thought to do something they hadn't yet seen, in fifteen minutes they'd have had the orientation they needed.

@doppelgreener Yeah, it was calendar year I meant.

@Patta Probably not absolutely right... I did talk to a stranger in a bus queue in Oxford last week. When I told the headmaster's wife that she literally gasped. I may have scandalized all of England, all of the UK, all of the Commonwealth, for all I know =)

Urist McDorf

@nitsua60 Or they wouldn't, because some action hasn't come up or they're not socially (or generally) observant as a person.

nitsua60

Speaking of social competence, big challenge ahead:

doppelgreener

@Patta Wow. This question? Wow. Wowowow. Good responses but I am amazed.

@nitsua60 I was thinking, if you meant the past 365 days, there's several questions you haven't downvoted in enough, haha ;D

gomad

Is it time to put social questions, problem-player, problem-gm, etc., under the microscope for being off-topic? The answer is always, always, some variation on "Talk to them. It might get better. You might have to stop playing." Is there value in that for us as a community any more? Or has this reached the end of its tether like game-recs?

nitsua60

Tonight's session is first since a player death. Any good experience to share?

Urist McDorf

3:39 PM

Wow. Ouch.

@gomad Maybe not to the community, but for the random person who's just looking for a recommendation.

gomad

@UristMcDorf - yeah, but we've got a huge number of questions and answers. I wonder if it's time to start putting duplicate tags when these questions come in and referring them to existing answers. A random person can get value from asking, "What system to play Thundercats?" but we don't let them anymore because it's not right for us as a community.

Urist McDorf

@gomad Fair enough.

gomad

I also see that I have walked into a discussion about a social question on a different stack...not intentional, I just wondered...

nitsua60

@gomad I think there are probably a lot of dupe-candidates, but unlike straightforward rule-questions they're hard to find fast. If I see a question come in about a monk's reflexes, I know I can dupe-identify and hammer it in a minute or two. The thought of reading through four or five [tag:problem-*] questions to find the "right" dupe-target exhausts me....

@gomad But it's really similar, and that question even includes links to questions here.

gomad

@nitsua60 - I was thinking of dupe-tagging as a 1st step. Like issuing a deprecation warning. With an eye towards eventually just banning them as OT.

nitsua60

3:48 PM

@gomad If there are ones you see and think are duplicates, by all means flag/vote them as such. I think it'd be good. I just don't have the energy to go through many of them =)

I don't know that I'd go as far as ruling them OT.

Probably worth a meta listing a bunch that you think are duplicates and asking about the advisability of linking all to a canonical "talk to your GM, consider if the group's right for you" answer, and perhaps laying out your case for OT-ness?

gomad

@nitsua60 - I might undertake such an effort. Thought I'd come to chat and take the temperature about the idea.

doppelgreener

@gomad I do not think it is off topic, I do think there's value, I don't think it's reached the end of its tether (game recommendations have no relationship to this), and I feel that's a very reductive view of the answers and expertise shared.

I've written at least six problem player/gm answers so far and none of them were alike or recycled from each other.

I do see problematic social questions getting a variety of experience. Yes the answers usually involve talking about it, or the possibility of leaving, but we don't ban character optimisation questions because "ugh, these always get someone recommending a class or feats or specific spells". There's an awful lot more going on well beyond the simple suggestion of talking about it or leaving or so on.

CTWind

"To optimize for not angering your social tabletop group, I recommend the 'Social Awareness' feat." "Ugh, but everyone takes that."

doppelgreener

We share expertise on how to talk about it, what to talk about and with whom, if apologies or behaviour adjustments need to be made on anyone's part, share tools and methods and conversational frameworks available, etc. The Same Page Tool has become a staple of certain questions, but it's one of the very few social tools our hobby has, and is an effective remedy for resolving a very common class of problem.

(By "problematic social questions", I mean questions that involve social problems, not social questions that are problems -- and I chose my words poorly for saying that, whoops. I should've written questions about social problems.)

(Also, I say "at least six" because the sixth one didn't have any of those tags and didn't come up in my search, so I added relevant tags to it just before linking that. Maybe there's a seventh or eighth also not with those tags.)

Much as communication is a skill, social problem resolution or even social problem recognition is a skill, and it's one many lack. (Such as the guy on workplace who alienated his colleagues by murdering all their characters in a game he was invited to.)

It's one our community has at a usefully common rate, and each time one of these questions up we get some unhelpfully generic or inappropriate answers, but we do also get the people who are actually keyed into what's going on sharing something meaningful and appropriate in one of the few answers that will rise above the rest (or exist at all).

I'll bring the above to meta if it's raised there -- which would be reasonable if it is, since it's agreed chat doesn't supplant mainsite or meta for making policy decisions on RPG.SE.

gomad

4:14 PM

@doppelgreener - nope. That's the kind of thing I was wondering. Is there still value in these questions / answers?

Sounds like there is plenty.

doppelgreener

4:26 PM

It is my belief there is plenty.

@nitsua60 I downvoted so much stuff today that I got 2 upvotes and my rep notification only showed a +6 after the second one.

doppelgreener

4:41 PM

@mxyzplk @SevenSidedDie I'm taking up this offer on the last few flags I raised.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

4:55 PM

May I ask for some reopen votes on this question?

6

Q: How to deal with erotic role play (ERP) frequency in a non-ERP setting?

I am a relatively new roleplayer (been doing it for almost 5 months only) and I have just left my roleplay with the main group I joined. I was roleplaying in Terraria, by the way. Why did this happen? Well, things got awkward. Real awkward. it was supposed to be a war / drama server, but instea...

optional-rules

According to Meta discussion, it is on-topic here, and the close reason isn't valid.

20

Q: Are questions about roleplaying within a video game context on topic?

Based on the following question, which happens to be about a roleplaying game taking place within the (non-roleplaying) videogame of Terraria. How to deal with ERP frequency in a non-ERP setting? Recapping the original question; the user has joined a special server for a video-game that has b...

discussion close-reasons

doppelgreener

@Baskakov_Dmitriy SevenSidedDie responded by pointing out: 'In practical terms though, the question may have other problems that would make it a poor candidate for reopening, so “no, it shouldn't be closed for that reason” may not be the only or even most important factor when considering reopening.' The question has multiple other issues unrelated to whether or not it occurred in a video game, including that the asker already resolved their own issue.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

I think that I may have a very good solution for the problem the asker had, and it's not "Leave the community". Does the asker leaving make me never able to answer it, because I am not even allowed to ask it myself in order not to make it a duplicate?

doppelgreener

@Baskakov_Dmitriy The question may be closed for a reason we now agree may not be relevant, but it does have issues that mean it should be closed for some reason. The user hasn't been seen in an entire year, so there's not really much point in reopening and answering their question - we won't be helping them and it's not a particularly great question to begin with to keep around for the long term for others (see: it has issues).

You may go ahead and produce a self-answered question, but as usual make sure it's a good one, since self-answered questions tend to face a bit more scrutiny than usual.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

Ah, so I am allowed to do it? OK.

doppelgreener

Absolutely; self-answered questions are not only allowed but encouraged where appropriate.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

5:09 PM

I mean, not that

Why am I allowed to ask an almost complete duplicate?

doppelgreener

@Baskakov_Dmitriy This is part of why I'm saying "make it a good one". The original question has problems. If you ask a new question that doesn't have those problems naturally it won't be a complete duplicate and that won't be an issue.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

Even though it deals with the same problems?

doppelgreener

Yes.

The most recent (possibly only) self-answered question I remember creating myself is this one:

13

Q: What are the planes of D&D 4e? Where did they come from, and how are they connected?

I understand that in D&D 4e's default setting there are planes, and I know a bit about them: the material plane is where the people generally are, and there's a "feywild" where the Eladrin and other weird things are from. What are the others? How do they connect with each other? This is a preser...

dnd-4e planes lore cosmology

I created this because someone else originally asked that question. I posted an answer, then they changed their question into something else completely. I was very confused, so I deleted my answer, rewrote in my own words what was essentially the original form of their question and asked that, and saved my answer there.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

I see.

But in your case there was effectively no original question. In our case there is one, it is just close (even though it shouldn't be, if you ask me). The only "reason" to keep it closed is that the asker left.

If someone googles the question now, he might think that 1) Community didn't find a solution yet 2) Such a question is illegal here per se

I am not arguing now, just trying to undestand that twist of the rules.

doppelgreener

Speaking of, @BESW and @trogdor, at the very end of this old answer of mine in the Fan Theories section I used a couple of your group's headcanons without asking you first. Every time I come back across those I think "I should've asked first." I'd like to address that now and resolve that for myself -- Are you okay with me using those? Should I remove either, shape them up somehow, credit someone?

@Baskakov_Dmitriy There is plenty of reason to keep it closed beyond that the asker left. The comments on that question go into numerous issues which are not resolved at all.

You may be interested to read this meta question:

15

Q: What to do with “Can you take a short rest while unconscious?”

The asker of Can you take a short rest while unconscious? decided that account deletion was their preferred future on the site, leaving behind a question that's a bit of a mess. (There is also the detail that, very likely, they were not supposed to be using the site while their real account was s...

discussion specific-question

In it, we are discussing a question (now deleted) that someone asked. It had multiple concerning issues and was risking closure, and then the asker abandoned it, and it was not a very good instance of a question about short rests anyway. And then also, the user turned out to be a troll who'd been banned recently on another account.

We discussed what we should do with it, and decided we should either close it or delete it and let someone else ask about the issue properly in the future. (Settling on deletion over merely leaving it closed.)

Ultimately: we've got a low-quality question covering an issue. It is closed. It is closed for a reason reflecting one of the perceived issues and remains closed because of other issues. (Notably, only 2 of the 5 close votes may have been because it was about video games! But close reasons don't reflect that. In fact it's possible for close reasons to reflect only 1 of the 5 votes, if everyone voted something different.)

It is not prohibiting future questions on that topic and is not really a precedent for anything. Future questions that handle the topic better aren't going to be duplicates of it because they'll necessarily be quite different if they handle the topic well at all.

nitsua60

5:23 PM

Note that some of the thinking in the "delete" vein was "if it's a real problem, someone else will have it and the question will reappear naturally, and it'll get an answer." So in that vein I'd ask Dmitriy: is the ERP problem one you have, or have faced, or have witnessed, such that you'd genuinely ask-and-answer?

My usual thinking is if I've solution in search of a problem, don't ask-and-answer. If I've got a solution because I've faced a particular problem, go ahead and ask-and-answer.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@doppelgreener I remembered that exact Meta post and was going to ask to delete that old question after making my own one, because it will be totally of no use, and only misleading.

@nitsua60 I am (or was, I am on a huge break) into sandbox game RP since September 2013, and trust me, I have seen a lot of problems there, some were ERP-related. Of course, I learned the solutions for those problems, and I want to share them. Clearly, there are people unfamiliar with them.

GreySage

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Then it seems like the proper course of action would be to ask your own question (similar but different to the closed one), and potentially answer it yourself.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@GreySage So will I do.

doppelgreener

@GreySage I agree with this

nitsua60

5:49 PM

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Cool! (Not that you've experienced problems, but that you have expertise to share.)

doppelgreener

@CTWind I flagged that one as rude/abusive. Per the flag reason, "a reasonable person would find this content inappropriate for respectful discourse" -- I'm a reasonable person and I imagine I and multiple other people here who actually understand the situation would find that content inappropriate.

CTWind

Looks like it just got nuked.

doppelgreener

Oh wow, it did! It was there just a few minutes ago.

So was the guy's comment I flagged.

CTWind

I was going to flag it too after you said it and got hit with a 'this post has been deleted' right as I submitted :-P

doppelgreener

Wow, impressive XD

That always feels kinda cool when that happens (at least for me!)

GreySage

6:11 PM

Does it bug anyone else that the icon for chat replies in the inbox doesn't correspond to the site it is related to?

I get that 'chat' is kind of a global thing, but it still throws me off to see the non-die related icon next to notifications

TSar

6:24 PM

I was taking a second look at that ERP question that @Baskakov_Dmitriy linked. While the situation was incredibly unfortunate (and I really want to help the OP of that question feeling better), I have to agree that in the end it wasn't really a nice question. I would love to chime in in a better formulated question, however.

nitsua60

6:48 PM

@TSar I think this is Thales, yes? How's life? Been a while.

Anaphory

How does one use styles of address about oneself? Or is the assumption that if you have a title with a style, you'll have someone around introducing you with style?

What if you don't? What comes after “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”?

nitsua60

@Anaphory ???

Not sure I'm following.

Are you saying "if you'd like to be addressed with a particular style, how to indicate that?"

Anaphory

Effectively yes.

Just created the “His Honorable Eminency Jonathan of the Beltcutters, Emissary of Her Imperial Majesty to the Barranoi”.

How could that guy introduce himself?

nitsua60

7:03 PM

Ana: "Hi, nitsua."
Nit: "[ahem] it's... *Doctor* nitsua."

LegendaryDude

Well, when you refer to a Catholic Cardinal, you refer to him as "Your Eminence" or "His Eminence"

The cardinal just introduces himself as Cardinal Bob

Or, y'know, whatever his name is

nitsua60

"I am, of course, the Honorable Eminency, Emissary of Her Imperial Majesty, and am pleased to cut your belts."

I'm thinking back to the Lord John Marbury scenes from The West Wing.

Anaphory

So a slightly casual way would be “I am Jonathan of the Beltcutters, Emissary of Her Imperial Majesty to the Barranoi. That is ‘your honorable eminency’, by the way”.

LegendaryDude

@Anaphory Does Jonathan of the Beltcutters have an actual title, or he just an honorable eminence?

That is, US court judges are "The honorable so-and-so"

Anaphory

Emissary of Her Imperial Majesty Aikatarin of Tevarion, Queen of Thrakos and Protector of the Islands of the Pangylies, to the Barranoi

LegendaryDude

7:07 PM

But their honorific is judge

Anaphory

He's effectively an ambassador (Excellency) and not like papal, but imperial, thus the “honorable”.

LegendaryDude

If I were an ambassador

I might introduce myself as Ambassador Jonathan of the Beltcutters

If I were really pretentious about it, I might refer to myself as the honorable

But there's something not very honorable about referring to oneself as the honorable

It doesn't sound right to me

Anaphory

Exactly. Also, he's not pretentious, just considers this his status and therefore his duty to inform others about it.

LegendaryDude

From an outsider's perspective, its pretentious: "attempting to impress by affecting greater importance...than is actually possessed."

I don't know the context but if I'm an adventurer and this guy introduces himself like that, I'm going to roll my eyes

Maybe. Context is everything.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

So here it goes.

0

Q: How to deal with unwanted erotic roleplay in a sandbox videogame?

I have founded a roleplaying community that plays on a sandbox video game server. However, some player was forced into erotic role play (commonly abbreviated as ERP). That was extremely disturbing for her, she even left the community because of that, and I don’t want that to happen in the future....

sexuality videogame-role-playing

The old question should probably now die.

nitsua60

7:17 PM

>Toby Ziegler: Can I call you John?
Brit. Ambassador Lord John Marbury: I am John, Lord Marbury, Earl of Croy, Marquess of Needham and Dolby, Baronet of Brycey, England's ambassador to the United States, and a terrorist is a terrorist even if he wears a green necktie and sings "Danny Boy". Yes, you can call me John.

Anaphory

@nitsua60 That sounds fitting, where is it from?

nitsua60

The West Wing

Season 3, Ep. 16: "Dead Irish Writers"

imdb.com/character/ch0018971/quotes

He's played by one of those actors you'll all recognize, but whose name no one knows.

TSar

@nitsua60 Hey there! Thanks for asking! Things got a 180º turn for the better recently. I can say I'm really fine, thanks everything! And you? Everything going well?

The Oracle

2

Q: Rename [videogame-role-playing] to [video-game-role-playing]

How to deal with unwanted erotic roleplay in a sandbox video game? has come with the creation of the tag videogame-role-playing. Based on Are questions about roleplaying within a video game context on topic? roleplaying situations that occur in video games are not inherently off topic. However, ...

feature-request tags

Baskakov_Dmitriy

7:45 PM

Seems like my question wasn't that well accepted. What is the problem with it?

BlackVegetable

Do we have an open meta-question about it (not the tag part)?

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie The one person on here who's a more prolific editor than me (you) just thanked me for improving their post with an edit. I feel... complete, somehow.

@doppelgreener Oh, that's much better! Thank you. — SevenSidedDie ♦ 2 mins ago

BlackVegetable

I seem to recall something about having canonical decisions defined in meta more than chat.

Urist McDorf

Oh, ERP in games.

I remember when that was a problem in Space Station 13

Probably still is

A lot of the servers ban it outright (and given the heavy admin supervision inherent to the servers in general it's easy to enforce), some don't. Not a lot of them make the distinction between wanted/unwanted ERP though, IIRC.

And yet people play them anyway.

Enough for Lifeweb to get actual funding through donations.

So that's interesting.

BlackVegetable

Encourage unwanted ERP??

Does that almost by definition make it wanted by at least someone?

Actually, nvm

Yup. That's more than enough info for me. 0.0

Urist McDorf

7:57 PM

Sorry about that.

doppelgreener

[reels back hard enough in horror at the notion to fall off chair]

BlackVegetable

No, I asked about it; no need to apologize.

Urist McDorf

Well, I explained it in a public chat

So some people might not appreciate it (see: doppelgreener)

I am sorry about forgetting people might be sensitive to stuff like that.

BlackVegetable

Yeah, we can edit that post, right?

TIL. I cannot delete my posts.

nitsua60

Yes! Kids are good, it's been a (very) busy two weeks at work but that's calming down, and somebody else plows my driveway =)
I'm glad to hear RL-things are working out--last we chatted I know things were getting... real.

@BlackVegetable You could flag it for deletion. If you explain it's yours but you're past the deletion timeout I can't imagine a mod not respecting your desire to burn it.

Urist McDorf

8:05 PM

I did that for my two explicitly graphic posts. Not all of them, because the popup asks me to only mention serious issues so I guess that's a strain or something?

Anyway

Good night.

I've done enough bad deeds for the day :^)

Thomas Ward

@UristMcDorf there's a threshold of what actually deserves mod attention

usually you can find any chat moderator to help with a "Please delete my own posted chat message", offensive or not

without resorting to flags :)

(chat mod flags also ping all chat moderators on the SE network, so you get more than just the RPG mods looking at those)

Urist McDorf

Oh, thanks for explaining. Sorry to trouble ya.

Thomas Ward

nah not a problem

i'm staring at python code for another project, this is a welcome distraction :)

Urist McDorf

Cool, good luck to you with that :)

Thomas Ward

(yes i'm an IT guy, I shall now return to that dark place again)

Urist McDorf

8:08 PM

I am too!

I also dislike Python but that's not a story for today

Thomas Ward

@BlackVegetable Unless you need something pruned form here too?

Urist McDorf

Have fun

Thomas Ward

nonresponse, disappears back into the shadows once again

GreySage

I'm also working with Python right now, and JavaScript.

BlackVegetable

I was too offended by your insult to Python to respond properly, @ThomasWard ;)

Thomas Ward

8:17 PM

@BlackVegetable erm, what? I'm primarily a python coder :P

i'm just tired of staring at this non-working code right now :p

9 mins ago, by Urist McDorf

I also dislike Python but that's not a story for today

^ he condemned and insulted python :P

anyways...

BlackVegetable

Oh, that's very different. If possible/legal, send me a gist and I'll take a look?

Thomas Ward

can't, internal proprietary code for the workplace

i think a library changed, but this isn't the place to discuss Pythonic evils.

i'll get it eventually, i did before, I'm just tired (end of week tiredness)

BlackVegetable

What if we make it all metaphorical, and call them Cthullic evils?

Thomas Ward

lol

BlackVegetable

Looping, of any nature, would be "rolling dice"

DForck42

8:20 PM

boop

BlackVegetable

Actually, that'd be a fun programming language to write: one where all syntax was defined in terms of D&D.

Thomas Ward

bleps

DForck42

@BlackVegetable heh

BlackVegetable

We'd get all confused deciding whether a question saying "Why do I get a critical miss when I roleplay a character inside of an infinite dice roll?" which would otherwise mean "Why do I get a segfault when I call a function inside of an infinite loop?"

whether such a question belonged here or on SO.

Thomas Ward

i should seriously learn D&D... my current girlfriend has a character and is in a campaign, but I know almost nothing about D&D except the tiny tidbits i've picked up from here when questions are HNQ.

BlackVegetable

8:23 PM

99% of my D&D knowledge is from Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate. It's pretty skewed, to say the least.

DForck42

@BlackVegetable heh

GreySage

@BlackVegetable Those were how I first learned about D&D too

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@UristMcDorf Space Station 13 is such a hell. Especially russian servers.

I am not surprised with forced ERP being OK there. Just like canibalism being part of game mechanics.

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