TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

00:00

so which is worse, FATAL or deadEarth, and in what ways? haha

Papayaman1000

FATAL. By far.

You already have a laundry list of skills to roll for your character, including the panamax circumference of various orifices, if it's a female character.

No, that isn't a joke.

BESW

FATAL is more socially offensive and is arguably not a game at all. deadEarth has some socially offensive elements, but not to the same level.

Papayaman1000

Also, it has a (something something HARD METAL) theme song that was likely "composed" only in the loosest sense, and while under the influence of a can of spray paint.

Shalvenay

@Papayaman1000 ...yeah. I take it that in play, it just goes downhill from there?

Papayaman1000

And FATAL demands that everyone dares enter the authors' collective magical realm. In the whizzard sense.

Shalvenay

00:03

@Papayaman1000 you'll have to unpack that slightly for me unfortunately :/

Papayaman1000

NSFW, mostly. You asked for it.

Shalvenay

@Papayaman1000 "It's urine. It's sterile."

BESW

And we're done. Specific examples of why FATAL is so awful quickly reach places that have no business in a chat that tries to Be Nice.

Papayaman1000

If you want an exhaustively long (and bloody hilarious) review of it, then here's one. Be warned, reading it constitutes agreeing the authors of the column to reap your first born as compensation for not only reading, but analyzing and comprehending the source books. Both editions. Yes, they made two.

@BESW If I dragged it out back behind the shed labelled "P1k and Shal's quarantined and horrifying analysis of FATAL", it might be okay. From a strict chat rules standpoint. Never will it be from a moral standpoint.

BESW

Let's not test that theory, please.

it is my scientific-ish opinion that hatchling #dromeosaurs esp in their northrn range wer approximatly this murder… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/873377945137463296

Tweeted by GreyGriffon on June 10, 2017 at 3:15 AM

Papayaman1000

00:09

[I'm saying a private chat. But "private" chats are kept as public records... yeah, let's not?]

trogdor

@BESW today in "We hijack your themes": my mother made some tea with ginger an tumeric

BESW

@trogdor Sounds nice.

trogdor

I added honey and some chocolate in it

BESW

Ooer.

trogdor

(not very much chocolate)

but it is very good

the honey may be in larger amounts because I just can't get enough of it in tea

the whole thing has a ton of strong flavor

Papayaman1000

00:13

But anyways, FATAL can generally be described as the following image, but with something incredibly horrifyingly dirty and NSFW instead of vomiting blood.

And we'll leave it there.

Shalvenay

or "NSFW mechanized in the worst possible way". and yeah, we'll leave it here.

Papayaman1000

@Shalvenay See? This one gets it! Friend Computer is pleased.

btw, hey there @Magician

just discussing the worst RPG of all time

I'd argue at least on par with Hybrid

BESW

Today's dose of beauty: Spinning Moonlight by our neighbor David Wyatt, from his Imaginary Village series. #Devon… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/873431253009268736

Tweeted by terriwindling on June 10, 2017 at 6:46 AM

Shalvenay

@Papayaman1000 I take it Hybrid is #3 on the "worst RPGs of all time" list?

SevenSidedDie

00:29

@Shalvenay I think it may be #0, being not actually an RPG.

Papayaman1000

@Shalvenay Yep. Also known as "Klu Klux Tabletop" by those with a soul.

Shalvenay

@SevenSidedDie heheheh.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW That's gorgeous.

BESW

00:41

@SevenSidedDie My Twitter feed went a little crazy about GE2017, so I was glad to see gems like that one also.

See also:

Japanese photographer Miyoko Ihara's series on the bond between her grandmother Misao and her cat Fukumaru… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/873478353843630080

Tweeted by womensart1 on June 10, 2017 at 9:54 AM

Papayaman1000

@BESW nice.

nitsua60

01:07

@Shalvenay Big-picture: is it a resource-rich or resource-poor world, how do divine and arcane magic work, is magic a 1%- or a 100%-of-people thing.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 nods so economics and magic frequency/mechanisms -- anything else?

nitsua60

Honestly, I don't do any of it on my own--it's always with player-input. So I might come to the table with "I'd like to do a ______-centric world/campaign," but I'm never insistent.

There'll be plenty of campaigns and settings over the years. No need to disgruntle a player before session 1.

The Oracle

01:46

2

Q: How to help a new user reformulate their first question?

How does one help a new user reformulate their first question, when the question needs serious work, when they have no reputation? This question was rightfully put on hold as too broad, but there might be a specific, answerable question in there. There are various permutations of helping a user...

discussion

nitsua60

02:19

@Papayaman1000 is my new most-favoritest person on the planet!!! =D

trogdor

02:31

aw man, I thought that was me :P

Captain Bohemian

07:44

does holding a job one doesn't like to make money really represent taking the responsibility of an adult?

Miniman

@CaptainBohemian Yeah, pretty much. "You should love your job" is a lie adults tell kids.

Captain Bohemian

I don't mean that.

I mean as an adult, one needs to take a job one doesn't like to make money to show the responsibility of an adult. As a kid, in contrast, one can major in any discipline which interests her even that discipline won't lead to paid job easily.

That seems to be what my professor means.

Shalvenay

13:07

hey there @eimyr

nitsua60

16:13

I don't know about that constrast. As a kid--read: in my late-teens--I made the decision to leave a major that I really liked but in which I had little prospect of making a decent living and switched to a major that I liked, but maybe not as much, in which I had excellent career prospects.
To the extent that the decision was made with awareness of and weight given to the life I'd have as "an adult," I suppose one would call it an "adult" decision?
It sounds like you're talking about decisions that respect one's future self vs. not, rather than respecting the age at which one makes the decis…

Yuuki

16:28

> Playing a mind flayer PC for a one-shot. What's his alignment?
> Currently lawful good while on vacation. He is a guest on the surface world, after all.
> Besides, who wants to flay minds on their days off? I leave work at work.

Shalvenay

lol

hey there @Yuuki, how're things going?

Yuuki

Pretty good although it seems like my D&D opportunities have dried up.

Shalvenay

@Yuuki awww...I'm in a holding pattern between campaigns, myself

Yuuki

My prospective run of MoP and SKT with friends has seemingly disappeared into the aether.

And Tuesday is just a terrible time for me given how far I'd have to drive.

Shalvenay

right now, I have time galore (despite getting hit 4 times by CyberSquirrel1 in the past 7 days)

doppelgreener

16:42

@nitsua60 Personally I found a profession I find enjoyable and that has good career prospects, studied it in university, and went on to join a company I enjoyed and could respect. There was a lot of luck that went into things working out that way. However it's not all sunshine and roses all the time. Part of being responsible is being practical and realistic: doing work is a great way to stay alive and healthy, and often the work available doesn't align with stuff one would enjoy.

I don't think "love your job" is entirely a lie, but the expectation everyone should be able to love any job, and always be able to find work doing the things they love, is not realistic. On the other hand, doing jobs you don't like is not the essence of adulthood.

Yuuki

@Miniman Granted, it's a bit difficult to communicate "while loving your job is idealistic and probably not practically achievable, choosing a well-paying job despite hating the work it represents while financially stable does not make for good mental health and living a happy life requires some sort of balance between the two, the weights of which is entirely subjective" to a child.

Bit of a mouthful that.

"You should love your job" just rolls off the tongue more.

doppelgreener

yep, i agree with that

Yuuki

"You should love your job" is a good starting point because it conveys the importance of mental health and at the very least, not hating your job.

Once your child matures, you can get into more nuanced discussions about balancing financial stability with enjoyment of work.

I didn't get the "you should love your job" talk as a kid and I ended up majoring in geophysics which I changed out of after three years.

Three years of college with nothing to show for it even with a scholarship is a big waste of money.

Although I guess I got core credits for those three years so it wasn't a complete waste.

doppelgreener

There are also jobs which weren't what I wanted, but I was able to find enjoyment and reward in performing them.

Yuuki

tl;dr life is complicated and adulting is complicated

doppelgreener

16:56

I once flipped burgers for McDonalds. That wasn't, y'know, an ideal job. But after a while it was satisfying being able to do it well, and I worked with people I liked.

After that I worked as a waiter catering for functions: wedding parties, corporate events, birthdays, etc. That in itself wasn't all that amazing, but I got to help people have an amazing night, relax, take care of everything for them so they could focus on the important things (whoever's getting married, etc) and that was incredibly rewarding.

Yuuki

Arguably, singlemindedly prioritizing money over everything else is perhaps the opposite of an adult decision.

doppelgreener

Yeah.

nitsua60

17:16

@doppelgreener Yeah, I feel like "contentment" is a... maybe not a virtue but a mindset or a goal that can seem like caving when we're younger, but from a different perspective reveals itself as a super-healthy way to live.

@doppelgreener Stocking shelves in grocery stores. Loading FedEx trucks. Those are ones, for me, that strike the same notes as your burger-flipping and catering stories.

Quote of the day, from my 8yo: "I wish instead of learning we could just read in school. That'd be the life of a millionaire."

BESW

There's also an unhealthy tendency to elevate childhood irresponsibility to a desirable status, reducing our expectations of youth by artificially extending their disconnection from the community.

"Have fun while you can," "Don't worry about being an adult until you have to," etc.

nitsua60

@BESW If you don't mind a bit of profanity in your stand-up, Iliza Schlesinger's got a few nice bits on this theme.

Shalvenay

hey there @JuneShores

nitsua60

Man, the Romans really knew how to name their wars... The Social Wars, The Servile Wars, the Sullan Revolt, The Conflict of the Orders.... Evocative!

Captain Bohemian

18:04

really don't know many wars

history is the most difficult subjects in my high school studies

nitsua60

18:38

@CaptainBohemian I despised it in high school, personally. Then, some time in my mid-twenties, I caught the bug. It's been between 1/3 and 1/2 my reading for the last decade-and-a-half, now.

Captain Bohemian

@nitsua60 Wow! You still read history in mid-twenties. I have read much history since after high school. Actually I even couldn't understand history textbooks in high school.

Sorry, I mean `` I have not read much history since after high school."

doppelgreener

i enjoy it a lot, though my high school history classes were pretty lame

the teacher's sole teaching method was to get us to sit down and transcribe a couple of pages from our textbook into our notebooks

the theory was, writing stuff down causes us to retain information

the problem is, that's so mind numbingly boring i just spent the time drawing or reading other more interesting parts of the textbook, and retained basically nothing

JuneShores

19:19

Hi hi.

I've been awake for 24 hours. :D

Captain Bohemian

@JuneShores so you should be tired now.

JuneShores

I'm past tired.

This isn't your normal, everyday tired.

This is... advanced tired.

Captain Bohemian

@doppelgreener I seem not understand history no matter which history teacher taught. But if we chose to study in science group, we didn't need to study much history in high school.

@JuneShores I guess I couldn't pass tiredness if I haven't slept for too long. I would automatically doze in whatever situation if I haven't slept for too long, like over days.

@doppelgreener In my impression, none of our historic teachers had required us to take note in their lectures. I usually just watched through windows when they were telling historic stories 'cause I couldn't understand them much.

Anaphory

20:25

History? Oh, one of my least favourite subjects at school, and the teachers didn't help either.

These days I'm practically a historical linguist, digging into books about history for work and RPGs, curious about ancient daily life etc.

Hm, I say least favourite subject in school. I should admit that hasn't kept me from, for example, celebrating a birthday with an ancient Rome theme when I was a kid – maybe 12? – and sinking some research into that, in terms of food, clothing, etc., but in terms of school subjects, that felt more „Latin“ (which I enjoyed) and not „History“.

Shalvenay

20:41

hey there @Anaphory

Anaphory

Hey!

Shalvenay

how're things going?

Anaphory

Finished some orga today, possibly going to bed soon. How are you doing?

Shalvenay

OK here

Zachiel

21:03

@Papayaman1000 I was heading out for a con yesterday and a friend of mom was visiting. I heard mom say "He's gonna go play those crazy games of him, or so I call them". Not amusing, mom.

Zachiel

21:21

In other news, never trust a GM that comes in without haveing readied anything, casually sees character sheets for the game he recently learned (used for a previous session by the guy who taught him the game), then decides to play without character sheets and changing the setting, using maybe 1/100 of the game ruleset (namely "draw tarots and compare results with a table").

trogdor

@JuneShores I have only ever done that one time, it was horrible

Zachiel

It ended up being a freeform with a bit too much of "well, do you _really_ think it's possible for your character to do that? Good luck".
I must admit it was an interesting story, so I enjoyed it, but I expected playing a completely different game.

@JuneShores I've done it once, been awake all night singing songs in the middle of a field. More like being awake for 31 hours straight.

Never again.

Beware not! Turns out the telephone number in the edit reasons of that question was a fake telephone number in the range of fictional telephone numbers used for shows and books.

Anaphory

@Zachiel BUT WHY?

@Zachiel What did you intend to play?

Zachiel

@Anaphory A game called Sine Requie - it's ok if you have never heard about it, it managed to unsettle many governments and it's currently banned in many countries (the setting is an alternate reality where the Normandy landings failed because of zombies. So Hitler died a natural death and there is a 4th reich, which made the game banned in Germany, England was not happy with the manual for the UK part of the setting having a dirty and bloody English flag and so on).

Shalvenay

22:25

hey there @SirTechSpec

SirTechSpec

Hey Shalvenay

What's up?

Shalvenay

not a whole lot, as for you?

BESW

22:54

At the turn of the 18th century many scholars thought the mammoths of Siberia looked like this and spent their live… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/873981460348370944

Tweeted by Jamie_Woodward_ on June 11, 2017 at 7:13 PM

SirTechSpec

A bit frustrated tbh

I've got a question open (rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/101304/…) and I've gotten a few answers of varying degrees of helpfulness, but mostly not from my perspective

and I'm just like... IS THERE ANYONE IN ROME WHO has actually used the alternate resting rules??

BESW

When in Rome, homebrew your own resting rules?

SirTechSpec

Sure, but it's hard to imagine it's that rare of a problem

Considering I've heard people say (though I can't remember exactly where) that part of the reason classes aren't balanced against each other in practice is that most parties don't have that many encounters between rests, and therefore don't have to rely on the fighters as much

Now, probably most DND players like combat more than mine, and are cool with more than 1-2 between rests, but it's still something you'd think people would have a ready answer for, from experience

Shalvenay

I dunno, since in my last dungeon, the party was hip on short-resting even if it meant the druid got a lap full of live zomb for it

NautArch

23:31

@Shalvenay yeah, I thought that was a problem :)

@SirTechSpec you can counter the always at full capabilities with bigger and harder fights. It doesn't solve the root problem, but I think it is a root problem with 5e

Otherwise days take 5 sessions to complete.

SirTechSpec

@NautArch Exactly. :/

BESW

My solution in 4e was to have adventures take place in situations where (due to environment or time pressures) it was often difficult or unwise to rest too frequently. Yes, in 4e we were lucky to have two full encounters a session so we'd go a month of real-time between rests but we didn't run into any problem with that.

But it sounds like your situation is that adventures tend to have only two or three combat encounters at all?

I'm confused by what you mean by "per day" in your question.

SirTechSpec

I do think I'll try the alternate resting rules, I just was hoping for more answers like "Yes, I have done this, and here was the result" beyond Ladifas's "it went well".

NautArch

@Shalvenay I tried to give you an out when I said we've been inside the crypt for 15 minutes :)

SirTechSpec

@BESW Per 24h game time.

@BESW Depending on how you define adventure, yes. This is prompted by the experience of my HotDQ campaign which we just finished, where ~1.5 combats per session, ~3 sessions per episode was the norm, but of course many of those episodes spanned multiple days.

BESW

23:45

Sounds like you may be coming up against a genre wall.

SirTechSpec

I mostly asked in anticipation of a different format for this summer - Open Table, hence not even having the option of having an Adventuring Day with many combats (it'd be much too long for one session, and multiple sessions per adventure isn't an option.)

@BESW I guess, but based on the stories I've heard and games I'm familiar with (firsthand or not), only a limited number of DND games are literal dungeon delves, say 30%, and the rest involve significant overland travel and/or political events spaced several days apart, and it's hard to imagine even half of the players out there have the patience for 50 encounters during a week of travel.

So if anything I think it's Wizards being unrealistic in how they calibrated The Adventuring Day, considering how (I'm pretty sure) most people actually play.

Am I wrong? Do others say "Yeah, 6-8 encounters that use resources per day sounds about right for what we usually do in our game"?

BESW

It's very difficult to get a sense of what's "average" for a D&D game, of course.

I always had to fiddle with the numbers in my games, partly because of encounters-per-day, but also because of party size and composition.

SirTechSpec

Yeah, I guess. I suppose part of my frustration was hoping that switching from GURPS (my historical favorite game) to DND (the one I mostly run now) would make balancing easier, because everything is all packaged up in classes and levels and CRs and stuff.

But in GURPS I knew how to make people nervous without killing them, and in D&D I haven't got the hang of it yet.

I guess the good news about doing a sandbox this summer is that I'm more free to experiment with tougher fights without worrying that the story is about to propel the players into an even tougher one - retreating should be a lot more viable than it was in HotDQ.

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