TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

12:45 AM

hey there @daze413

daze413

13

Q: Does Voice of the Chain Master let me cast a purely verbal spell through my familiar?

In D&D 5e, as a Warlock, I can choose a feature that lets me speak in my own voice through my familiar. PHB 111: Voice of the Chain Master Prerequisite: Pact of the Chain feature You can communicate telepathically with your familiar and perceive through your familiar’s senses as lon...

hey-a @Shalvenay -a!

Shalvenay

how're things going?

daze413

meh, slow day today. (partial?) black out in the office, which is weird coz the airconditioning is working, but not the lights? and some computers cant be turned on, but most can't? idk whats going on lol

Shalvenay

@daze413 sounds like a dropped phase?

(i.e. 1 phase is out on a 3 phase service)

Karelzarath

Agreed

@Shalvenay Also hello, @Shalvenay

Shalvenay

12:48 AM

@Karelzarath how're things going?

Karelzarath

At work, so... average.

Fixing some tests that got failed during a rework of some code. Not the most glamorous work, but necessary.

Shalvenay

ah. things are somewhat slow here. I wonder if anyone's available for a short-form game even :)

daze413

same here, our group's getting the hang of west marches style. But it would be nice if I got to play as a PC as well.

Shalvenay

ah. I just have a short-form dungeon that could use a...little playtesting :)

daze413

system?

Shalvenay

12:57 AM

@daze413 D&D 5e

Karelzarath

I'm out in an hour to pick up the gf for birthing class, so I'll have to decline.

daze413

what aspects of it are you worried about? what's the background?

Shalvenay

@daze413 mostly, the encounter I tacked on at the end being a bit on the hard side (the rest is odd, but shouldn't be too hard :)

daze413

are your players optimized?

nah, I'm sure that'll be fine.

Shalvenay

@daze413 not particularly, but the encounter shouldn't be too terrible

daze413

1:15 AM

woops, power's back. See ya round! :D

Shalvenay

2:05 AM

hey there @NautArch

nitsua60

2:21 AM

@Shalvenay hiya

Shalvenay

how're things going?

nitsua60

2:39 AM

another night in the office =(

(But that's just because I'm trying to free up tomorrow for (a) mid-day run with wife, (b) afternoon movie with colleagues, (c) AL. So I guess I should be thankful I've got that sort of flexibility to schedule myself.)

Shalvenay

heheh

Miniman

3:52 AM

@Shalvenay What sort of encounter?

Shalvenay

@Miniman bandits (1/party member) for the first wave w/ a singular thug for the 2nd wave

Miniman

@Shalvenay Aimed at a level 1 party?

Shalvenay

@Miniman yeah

Miniman

@Shalvenay It's definitely a dangerous encounter - I think how it turns out is mostly going to depend on the party's tactics.

Shalvenay

@Miniman yeah, I'm expecting it to be tight for the party

nitsua60

3:57 AM

@Miniman And whether the bandits fight to the death...?

Shalvenay

it is supposed to be the sole encounter of the adventuring day though

Miniman

@nitsua60 Well, I always assume that :P

@Shalvenay Ah, that helps a lot.

In that case, it should be pretty doable for most parties. It's still not going to be a cakewalk, but they should definitely win.

As always with level 1 combat, it's going to be pretty swingy, of course. I'd definitely recommend rolling separate initiative for each bandit rather than letting them go as a group.

Shalvenay

@Miniman nods good thinking

Miniman

@Shalvenay Any party numbers in mind? You've obviously thought about scaling, but this is still going to be very different for 2 players than 4.

Shalvenay

@Miniman 2 maybe 3 -- 4 or bigger is possible, and of course probably will be somewhat easier

Joel Harmon

4:15 AM

@Ben Congrats on the presumably healthy kid! (I know, I'm a few days behind on this)

Shalvenay

hey there @JoelHarmon

Joel Harmon

hey @Shalvenay

how are things?

Shalvenay

alright, as for you?

Joel Harmon

pretty good, over all

I have a DW game going, and last session it was pointed out to me that the rogue has, over the five sessions, managed to take a grand total of zero damage

Shalvenay

@JoelHarmon LOL

Joel Harmon

4:18 AM

you could say the cleric and the paladin defend others religiously

Shalvenay

at least said rogue hasn't tried to skulk around some of the places I've been ;)

Miniman

@JoelHarmon Badumtish.

Joel Harmon

@Miniman You'd better believe it.

SevenSidedDie

@JoelHarmon In the past 7 sessions, almost all the damage has been taken by the monk. He nearly died at one point, and only mentioned it later.

Shalvenay

(tip: there is no roguespace in the vicinity of a 143 ton railcar :P)

Joel Harmon

4:22 AM

of mild concern with the rogue situation is she's being played by my wife, and I vacillate between worry about inadvertent favoritism toward her and attempted over-compensation

in reflection, a few points:
- everyone seems to be having fun
- no one is complaining
- the cleric and pally have definitely interceded on her behalf (as well as the Arcane Duelist's)

SevenSidedDie

@JoelHarmon I find damage reception to be really uneven in Dungeon World. It's very sensitive to the kinds of situations a PC puts themself in, and yeah, what the other PCs do.

Joel Harmon

@SevenSidedDie Not even the situations, necessarily. Often there's a choice involved, and it's possible to simply never choose to take damage in exchange for something else.

SevenSidedDie

@JoelHarmon When I say situations, I'm thinking of things where the GM move “deal damage” is the obvious one to make. But yes, there are lots of other dilemmas where the player can choose “interesting” instead of damage. :)

Joel Harmon

it's also possible I'm being too generous with triggering Defend; see this question about defending an area

@SevenSidedDie I suppose I also tend to try to pick moves in roughly even proportions (of course respecting what makes sense), such that Deal Damage doesn't come up that often

SevenSidedDie

@JoelHarmon Yeah, I think I'd be more stringent with Defend. I can't see defending an area that already has enemies in it — it's undefendable. A specific person in that area can be defended, or (previously) access to that area.

Magician

4:32 AM

@nitsua60 If "ghosts" are an answer to "what happened?" then "wizard" is an answer to "why did it happen?"

Joel Harmon

@SevenSidedDie the intent in that specific situation was to defend a small area containing three characters (two PCs and an imp) engaged in a tight melee from the threat of some other imps down the hall. All were in one direction, and it seemed the 'surface area' would be about Close range, so I gave it to him.

it was discussed at the table, and Reibello brought it to the stack

SevenSidedDie

@JoelHarmon That one makes sense to me. :)

The fantastic thing about *World games is that they're so accommodating of context.

Joel Harmon

Agreed.

well, I suppose I can only speak for Dungeon World, but from what I've heard...

Speaking of systems I know nothing about, @SevenSidedDie, I was looking over your Final Fantasy mod for DW. Have you considered trying to include an AW playbook for some of the vehicle-related stuff?

Perhaps it's a poor suggestion; I'm pretty ignorant around AW.

SevenSidedDie

@JoelHarmon That hadn't occurred to me. … I'm not entirely up to speed on AW2e, so vehicle stuff hasn't been on my mind.

I think it's not (yet?) obviously useful, now I think about it. There are airships and riding-birds, but no vehicles in between. I don't think the AW vehicle rules are suited to how I want to handle airships though — more as “fast travel, with complications” kinds of things, rather than as personal vehicles that can get into fast combats.

Shalvenay

@SevenSidedDie besides, aerial combat gets really messy really fast

Joel Harmon

4:44 AM

@SevenSidedDie a kind of modified Perilous Journey, then?

SevenSidedDie

@Shalvenay I'd be okay with it. None of us are pilots or aeronautics engineers, so we would wing it cinematically and wouldn't notice where it was unrealistic.

The Oracle

-1

Q: A "How spells work" wiki answer?

I've seen a few questions about spell casting (primarily 5e, for me, since that's the system I focus on), asking about "how does it work". Primarily the response is "read a book"; which is fine, the information is available - if you are in possession of a PHB, which can be expensive for some; or ...

discussion community-wiki

SevenSidedDie

@JoelHarmon Yeah, that kind of thing.

I haven't found/written a move for airship travel yet. I need to do that.

Adeptus

@SevenSidedDie Nice (unintended?) pun

SevenSidedDie

@Adeptus Noticed it while I was writing and didn't stop myself. ;)

Joel Harmon

4:50 AM

@SevenSidedDie By introducing a new Fuel resource, you should be able to steal from a few different moves that consume rations/ammunition/etc. as a starting point.

SevenSidedDie

@JoelHarmon Oooh, though come to think, I bet I could adapt some of the AW2e vehicle moves for mounted conflicts. Maybe Nocobo* racing.

(* They're “definitely not chocobos”.)

Joel Harmon

@SevenSidedDie Now that I think of it, I don't know of anything like mounted combat rules in DW.

SevenSidedDie

@JoelHarmon There's a 3rd-party supplement for it aptly named Mounted Combat. It's more personal-scope though, less about inter-mount conflicts. Lots of pre-made mounts with statistics though, which is nice.

Shalvenay

@SevenSidedDie it's more of a state-tracking thing, even if you're working at a more or less cinematic level...

although that actually gives me an idea

Energy is your resource in aerial combat (i.e. the sum of kinetic energy aka airspeed and potential energy aka altitude + your ability to turn chemical energy into mechanical energy aka excess power)

SevenSidedDie

@Shalvenay Still easy enough. The state that matters is the dramatic pacing of a scene rather than the aerodynamics. Especially in Dungeon World, where bad news / bad positioning / being unable to pull off the thing you want to do is literally decided by dice and story considerations rather than detailed positional tracking.

Shalvenay

4:55 AM

@SevenSidedDie nods yeah...it's one of those things where I'd have a very tough time adapting to trying to drive that off of purely story considerations

SevenSidedDie

This is a system where running low on fuel would be a dramatic twist triggered by an unrelated game-mechanical event.

Joel Harmon

@Shalvenay wrong scale, but I'm reminded of Ender's Game where traveling up/down a gravity well had a real fuel cost

Shalvenay

@JoelHarmon yeah, right idea :)

Miniman

@JoelHarmon Well, it does in real life, too :P

SevenSidedDie

@Shalvenay With a patient GM, Dungeon World would probably have no problem with that. It doesn't need players to have any awareness of story considerations and bakes all that directly into its rules interactions, so it happens emergently without any thought necessary from the players or GM.

(I'm terrible at dramatic pacing, so I really appreciate this facet of DW. It probably explains why I have a hard time running Fate too — it gets out of the way and lets me handle story structure, but I'm no good at that so that freedom backfires.)

Shalvenay

5:02 AM

@SevenSidedDie yeah -- I tend to not want to follow the "normal rules of dramatic pacing"

SevenSidedDie

@Shalvenay That's what I mean — the game doesn't offer the choice of subscribing to dramatic pacing, just the fact that something new has just happened that needs to be dealt with. After the fact it forms a definite dramatic arc, but it's “dumb” at the small scale and impervious to objecting to dramatic pacing and works regardless of skill with dramatic pacing.

Shalvenay

@SevenSidedDie nods

Joel Harmon

I've got to head out, or I'll never finish this answer. Bye, all!

SevenSidedDie

@JoelHarmon Later!

I should head out too, or I'm going to miss my small slice of quiet evening now that das Kind is abed.

Adeptus

5:30 AM

Speaking of maps... (well, we were a few days ago...) someone in a FB group made a suggestion I like. Use a map of the arctic. As long as America & Britain aren't "right way up", it is almost unrecognisable.

I'm not sure how different projections would affect it (or even if you can use different projections to display the polar region)

Miniman

@Adeptus Well, different projections can't possibly make the map look different :P

Also, given that the Earth is approximately spherical, surely displaying a polar region on a map is functionally identical to displaying any other region?

Adeptus

@Miniman that's what I suspected

@Miniman What I mean is, since we're not used to looking at that perspective, we don't recognise it as being Earth. Replace the polar latitude-longitude lines with a straight grid, and voila, welcome to Fantasyworld

Miniman

@Adeptus Oh yeah, I got that bit. Just wasn't sure what you meant by "or even if you can use different projections to display the polar region".

Adeptus

Now I'm wondering if a tool exists that lets you "redefine" the location of the poles and then produce projection maps based on that

Miniman

That would be pretty cool.

Anaphory

10:44 AM

@Adeptus Hm, I wonder how much of the world shape you see at those zoom levels is shaped by climate.

(or by earth rotation?)

Zooming closer, fjords near the equator look odd, but in this resolution, they are probably fine.

But there might be other features.

Aaron

1:07 PM

Good morning

doppelgreener

1:30 PM

Good morning!

nitsua60

1:45 PM

@Adeptus 3D plot of surfact/topo data (in, say, MATLAB or GNUplot) and play with the view angles. That's what I do =)

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