TRPG General Chat

SevenSidedDie

21:00

@ThomasWard We have a really intro-level “D&D, what is??” question, a less D&D-specific intro-level “what is roleplaying gaming?” question, and, at the far other end of new-to-D&D documents, the publisher made the 5th/latest edition's basic rules free in PDF. A little light weekend reading. ;)

4

Thomas Ward

@SevenSidedDie I have more important things to do this weekend, but thanks :)

SevenSidedDie

@ThomasWard I figure, hence the winkie. :) But if you want to do some independent research some time and surprise her with a show of interest, we've got you covered!

Thomas Ward

she's a newbie too, but i've already shown interest in learning.

she knows more than I do though :P

yawn I should get coffee, I'm tired

Anaphory

@GreySage In those days, I had no idea that D&D was a thing and I didn't care about the numbers generating the encounters. Which made some fights pretty damn hard.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

0

Q: What is the problem with my question about ERP in online roleplaying?

I found a long forgotten question about avoiding unwanted ERP in online roleplaying by sandbox video game server. I have experience at such games since 2013, so I felt like I may share some important knowledge. The question was closed, though, for various reasons, one of them being "the asker lef...

Thomas Ward

21:06

^ core problem, you don't ask a specific question

Anaphory

(And I have been avoiding D&D like – not like the plague, but like an overbearing elderly aunt or a particular old well-known board game – most of the time, playing purposefully written games instead. Only a recent frequent change of places means that I'm now playing some D&D and learning the ropes of how levelling works, what hit dice are, how swingy and binary D20+mod is etc.)

Thomas Ward

@Baskakov_Dmitriy as someone who had to mod a few online RPG servers at one point, before bringing a nuclear strike to the server to kill said servers (because people were getting out of hand with ERP), the answer form the "server" perspective is "You can't, technically, but if you make sure the rules are known, and routinely check what's been going on and what's been 'abuse reported', you can retroactively condemn such evil people".

This was a problem on some video games i've played that're RPGs as well, until the companies producing them went on a "GM Hiring Spree" and ended up with 25% of the gamers active at any time as GMs.

Thomas Ward

21:22

@SevenSidedDie any of those touch upon character stats creation, etc.?

diego

@ThomasWard The basic rules have everything you need to create a character. However they don't have all the options that the books have, for example they only have one sub-race option for each race, and one class archetype for each class, and one background at all.

SevenSidedDie

@diego @ThomasWard Yep, the Basic Rules don't have all the options, but do have full coverage of the “how” and enough options to be able to make a variety of characters.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

I think I know how to handle this, I posted something like what you said.
But I don't understand why did I get 10 downvotes.

doppelgreener

@BlackVegetable BTW regarding earlier -- there's about a 2-minute window in which you can edit or delete a chat post. The system warns you if a post you're editing has less than 10 seconds until it's locked down.

Thomas Ward

21:38

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Because people either downvoted because they thought the question had issues, or they thought it was unclear, or any of fifty million reasons

there's no real way to determine why someone downvotes a given post.

unless they post an explanation

(this is not just RPG.SE specific, it's SE-wide)

DForck42

@ThomasWard yup

Thomas Ward

(so sorry to @SevenSidedDie for answering for RPG.SE when i'm not an RPG.SE regular, yet.)

SevenSidedDie

@ThomasWard All perspectives are helpful! No sore toes here. :)

DForck42

1

Q: Movie with several people finding crashed small plane in forest that is loaded with gold

I saw a movie on afternoon TV between 2001 and 2004. I thought it might be called Fool's Gold, but a couple years ago I checked every movie on IMDB with that title and none of them were it. Several people hiking in the forest come across a crashed small plane. They find it is loaded with gold bar...

identify-this-movie crime

I've never seen that before, someone with a gold badge in a tag closing a questing

BESW

Ah, yes, the coveted Dupehammer.

LegendaryDude

21:52

Yep. It happens every now and then.

Thomas Ward

@Baskakov_Dmitriy I basically summarized what I said on your meta post, since I actually bothered to click the join link

0

A: What is the problem with my question about erotic roleplay in online RP?

NOTE: I am not an RPG.stackexchange regular, but this question about "what are those problems" with regards to downvotes are generically able to be answered across all of any StackExchange site; as a moderator on Ask Ubuntu here on the StackExchange network, also, I am well versed in the evils...

LegendaryDude

I need about 80 more answers in DnD-5e before I get mine.

DForck42

oops, I posted that into the wrong chat, lol

doppelgreener

@ThomasWard Welcome! \o/

205

A: Increase close vote weight for gold tag badge holders

Update: this is now enabled everywhere! The rules are: You can instantly close as a duplicate any question that was originally asked with a tag you have a gold badge for. You can instantly reopen any question closed as a duplicate that was originally asked with a tag you have a gold badge for....

Thomas Ward

@SevenSidedDie Hopefully I don't bring my 'dark chaos' into your site, i've been told I tend to be a little dark and chaotic sometimes :P

TSar

22:04

@nitsua60 I managed to fix a lot of family-related stuff, even on love-related matters. Things are way better now :) It's nice to know you're going fine, too.

@nitsua60 Hey, do you know by any chance Shadowrun?

SevenSidedDie

22:24

@ThomasWard I haven't seen any umbral hallucinations lurking beyond the edge of my screen or spontaneous Zalgo text yet. So I think we're safe.

Thomas Ward

@SevenSidedDie Let's make sure that's still the case in two hours

two hours to full moon and Dark Chaos Magic Rituals

doppelgreener

22:45

Apropos of nothing: autocomplete for "romanc" is both "romance" and "necromancy".

BESW

doppelgreener

@BESW d'aw.

@BESW "do you promise to love and to cherish each other til decomposition or banishment do you part?"

nitsua60

@TSar No, sorry.

@TSar That's greeeeat =)

trogdor

@doppelgreener that seems like they didn't even check the words leading up to it in that second one XD

mxyzplk

ease down there pornomancer

doppelgreener

23:03

@trogdor now now, our autocomplete isn't powered by intelligence and frankly i think i'd have moral qualms with relegating an intelligence to that.

(... but then that's got me imagining what an autocomplete would be like should Babbage have been put in charge of it. @BESW @trogdor)

BESW

> On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

doppelgreener

@BESW Hahaha! I guess it would be exactly like the current autocorrect then.

trogdor

lol

BESW

> If however any mistake had been made by the attendant, and a wrong logarithm had been accidentally given to the engine, it would have discovered the mistake, and have rung a louder bell to call the attention of its guide, who on looking at the proper place, would see a plate above the logarithm he had just put in with the word "wrong" engraven upon it.
[...] The Engine will always reject a wrong card by continually ringing a loud bell and stopping itself until supplied with the precise intellectual food it damands.

trogdor

I am pretty sure he understood that machines didn't have true intelligence

however, or ARRPG version of Babbage,,.........

BESW

23:06

trogdor

lol

that is an ingenious sounding system

but I do wonder how he would relegate the ability to determine "wrong"

Joel Harmon

@BESW IIRC, that was referring to an MP

BESW

@JoelHarmon At least one of the times, yes.

@trogdor In context, the machine has recognised that it requires a particular logarithm to complete the current task, and because it doesn't have an automatic memory system it asks the attendant to fetch the proper card from the catalogue.

The machine then verifies if it was given the right card, and if not it says "WRONG."

trogdor

ah ok

actually an ingeniously simple system then

BESW

But I feel the basic principle would be applied to spelling errors as well, if the machine had ever advanced that far.

Joel Harmon

23:10

@RollingFeles I'm interested, but heading out shortly to a busy weekend

BESW

Babbage would have approved of red squiggly lines, but felt that they were, perhaps, not aggressive enough.

trogdor

@BESW well, but then the problem is how does it know which word it needs?

because language, going at it from this angle at least, is more complicated than even math

Joel Harmon

@trogdor I think the point is it doesn't know which word it needs, but it knows the card the word is on

BESW

It can tell when a word definitely isn't right.

trogdor

@JoelHarmon but that is still a problem, why make the machine make the sentence in that case?

it sounds like you would have still had to decide the sentence in the first place and then set it up to make it

doppelgreener

23:13

@mxyzplk btw if that's a reference to my tagging, I think I got all of them already.

trogdor

that sounds like more work for less output from the machine

Joel Harmon

oops - look at the time. Gotta run.

trogdor

ok, have a good day XD

(or possibly night)

doppelgreener

@BESW Suddenly, I am very curious how Babbage would have responded to the current state of the web. Can I fill you in briefly?

BESW

Sure.

trogdor

23:15

@BESW that still sounds like the same problem to me,.... if it can tell the word is definitely not right, that means you constructed the sentence already, or tried to get it to make one itself with no oversight

I mean, this is all just theoretical

BESW

@trogdor Well, yes, we're talking about applying the basic concept (the machine rejects incorrect inputs and refuses to continue until they're righted) to a new context (word processing).

trogdor

it just doesn't make sense to me that a logarithm and a sentence would have the same parameters in a machine

@BESW yeah, that is my whole point

I think he would end up making a whole new design for that

doppelgreener

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) powers all layout of documents on the web. However, people are generally lousy at reading instructions and lousy at writing, and will make all sorts of errors: write <b>bold text without the corresponding </b> to end the bold text region, and so on. This means half the work a browser's programmers do is figure out how to handle peoples' mistakes and not utterly obliterate a website layout in the process.

trogdor

if he were even interested in that particular avenue in the first place

doppelgreener

eXtensible Markup Language (XML) was also invented around the same time. It has rigid rules you cannot break at all ever or the whole thing explodes. Someone had a wonderful idea: what if we create XHTML, which is HTML with all the strict requirements of XML? Then people will have to write webpages correctly, or else the whole webpage will explode, and so browser makers can stop spending so much time fixing other peoples' mistakes!

trogdor

23:21

that sounds like it was a bad idea

XD

BESW

An original meaning of "hacker" in the programming context was a person who wasn't proficient enough with code to write well or effectively, but was persistent enough to keep re-writing his broken code until it did what he wanted.

trogdor

it sounds nice at first, until you are the guy who made one little mistake and can't find it, and the whole site just doesn't work

doppelgreener

Of course, almost every website has at least one error, because they could get away with it. In their wisdom, these people decided the XHTML standards couldn't be adopted immediately, or else the web would virtually just stop working. So they created the XHTML transitional standard: you're expected to write perfect XHTML, but if you break a rule at least we'll try to fix your mistakes instead of declaring your website's exploded. For now.

So the grand new XHTML transitional standard was unveiled, with proper XHTML opt-in and everyone pressured to adopt it ASAP.

This scheme was considered a failure several years later because nobody wanted to opt in because nobody wanted their website to go down due to one measly error. Absolutely everybody had switched to "XHTML transitional" but never progressed to "XHTML proper".

Thus we moved on to HTML 5, which has abandoned all pretence people should be correct and is just pretty happy-go-lucky with whatever you give it so long as it mostly makes sense.

And thus we now have machines that, given the wrong figures, will do their damned best to give you the right answer anyway.

trogdor

yeah

that is what I meant though,... one measly error SHOULD NOT get in the way of site building

I mean,.... I have to build sites for my job, I am not going to put up with that on top of every other problem and roadblock I have in my current occupation XD

it's bad enough when I make mistakes that mean something and have to fix them, or when I have to fix other people's mistakes, I shouldn't also have to hunt down ones that no one would ever actually notice because they make the whole page not work

doppelgreener

@trogdor it's a bit like if you had a car that upon detecting a screw is slightly loose would veer off to the side of the road and crash into a tree and demand you repair it.

trogdor

23:29

@doppelgreener well, I am talking about if a car had scratched paint and did the same thing

kinda not the same thing there

doppelgreener

@trogdor haha! yes that too

trogdor

lol

at least if enough screws are actually loose, I could understand the car breaking down

doppelgreener

@trogdor and now you may recognise why so many sites have this at the very top:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

trogdor

but if the car has absolutely no paint, I am not going to take that as an excuse for it not working anymore XD

doppelgreener

(that's them opting into XHTML transitional)

trogdor

23:31

ah

the ones I am working on don't have that

doppelgreener

yours may have simply <!DOCTYPE html> which signals HTML5

trogdor

@doppelgreener my coding isn't so advanced that I make whole sites with it honestly

we are using a program that helps to make sites, and to use it we can input some code that we know to do things, but we also work with modules that have pre made code to do specific things

@doppelgreener so I generally am not taking a peek at the back end that says this

nitsua60

@doppelgreener sounds like XHTML is drawing lines, while HTML5 is drawing veils =D

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 haaa yes

trogdor

I am still learning code, but if I was trying to build whole sites with it right now, with my current level of knowledge I mean, I would be getting nowhere

nitsua60

23:35

XHTML: "you may not introduce an error!"
HTML5: "eh... if you absolutely must, but we won't really talk about it."

The Oracle

23:47

3

Q: What is the problem with my question about erotic roleplay in online RP?

I found a long forgotten question about avoiding unwanted ERP in online roleplaying by sandbox video game server. I have experience at such games since 2013, so I felt like I may share some important knowledge. The question was closed, though, for various reasons, one of them being "the asker lef...

discussion specific-question

trogdor

lol,....

doppelgreener

there are fractals of context there...

trogdor

yeah

its' the perfect joke,... and the Oracle made it XD

doppelgreener

The Oracle has issues with us and wants answers.

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