TRPG General Chat

12:04 AM

@Lord_Gareth i am down with stackizens doing curation at all times

5

no pressure on you specifically doing it unless you want to, per normal

can anyone recommend a system that works in a fantasy setting with slow or non-existant character growth that has slightly more mechanical crunch than Fate Core?

doppelspooker

@THiebert fate c--oh... wait........

Dungeon World?

Shalvenay

yeah, DW was kinda coming to mind as well

Lord_Gareth

> [Dandwiki][1] has a markedly poor reputation in the online RPG community; material from it is often dismissed out of hand, and users are encouraged to avoid it and to not incorporate work posted there into their games. Is there a consistent reason for this, and if so, what is it?

THiebert

is it free or cheap?

doppelspooker

12:06 AM

@Lord_Gareth yes good

Shalvenay

@THiebert the player materials (playbooks) are downloadable, not sure about the GM stuff

Lord_Gareth

@doppelspooker The sacrifice is commenced, then.

THiebert

is it highly dungeon-focused, or is over-land combat and NPC interaction accounted for?

Lord_Gareth

A link to the site in question was incorporated, partially for the sake of explicit completeness

And partially because other innocent people need to suffer as I have suffered.

THiebert

I mean, are like random above ground fights, and dramatic social encounters something that are easily managable with the system, or is it solely focused on dungeoneering as the name suggests?

doppelspooker

12:10 AM

those of you involved, thank you for helping out preventing what could have been a far more ... advanced situation. that could've gotten pretty ugly. garbage fire entirely averted.

Lord_Gareth

Shalvenay

@THiebert it can handle combat encounters outside of a dungeon context per se, and I don't think social conflict would be too troublesome either

doppelspooker

with that crisis averted i'm going to head to sleep. (@nitsua60 EVERYTHING IS NOW ON YOU no presure)

THiebert

garbage fire?

doppelspooker

goodnight folks!

@THiebert super terrible situation to be in or have present. things are garbage, and things are on fire.

THiebert

12:12 AM

@Shalvenay I personally prefer Fate still, but it might be hard to sell my group on it again, so i was looking for something crunchier

@doppelspooker but where was it? the DnDwiki question?

Shalvenay

@THiebert DW's probably worth a shot then

doppelspooker

@THiebert there was not one, but there could have been one, and the dandwiki question was its possible site.

Lord_Gareth

The idea is not to have extended garbage fires.

The last few we've had have, like Centralia, burned for years to the detriment of everything they touched.

(I say, brushing burning garbage from my lapels)

THiebert

@Shalvenay i mean, really, they're going to want to play 5e, but it just doesn't work well for that group. honestly, i'm not sure much will work for the group as a whole, it's just so hard to break it up

Shalvenay

@THiebert what are they trying to get out of their game?

doppelspooker

12:16 AM

@Lord_Gareth ask BESW about guam's garbage fires sometime.

THiebert

@Shalvenay What do they say they want, or what do i observe them trying to get out of a game when they play?

Shalvenay

@THiebert both

Lord_Gareth

@doppelspooker I dunno man, Centralia is such a hell pit that its most frequent use in fiction is as a literal hell pit.

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth There's a user who drops 500-pt bounties every few months because he realized that was the only way to not have the tools he didn't feel equipped to use. Also, recognize that rep (theoretically) isn't just a measure of what you know, but of putting that knowledge to good/productive use here.

(Sorry for the necromancy--it's been a busy couple of days.)

THiebert

the two guys that i'm closest with want to build interesting characters, and have a plot that revolves around those characters, and how they change and react to forces in their lives. It may be on a large, world-saving scale, or a smaller, personal one. They essentially want a cool story. Two other guys seem to be very in it for the gamey aspects. they want to fight things, and build characters that aren't cool because of who they are, but because of what they can do.

They like combat and puzzles, and tend to gloss over almost all social interactions in the game, in order to get to the "good part"

Lord_Gareth

12:19 AM

I have a severe sarcasm problem.

THiebert

guy #5 like chaos, saying absurd things, cutting genetalia off fallen foes, and being absurd

doppelspooker

@Lord_Gareth (i heard the song singing that)

THiebert

@Shalvenay

I also have 2-3 other players who are super occasional, and I'm not sure I could tell you what they like or want to get out of a game

The group is sorta split now, with the "Gamey" two being part of a game I'm running after work, but they're expecting to start playing with everyone else again eventually as well

Shalvenay

yeah -- that's a tough one

nitsua60

@DForck42 I feel like Tales from the Yawning Portal was (partially) intended to help there. Certainly their version of ToH helped one of my characters go 15 --> 16.

Shalvenay

12:29 AM

hey there @nitsua60

trogdor

@doppelspooker it also immediately started playing in my head

Adeptus

@Lord_Gareth You have severe sarcasm. I'm not sure about the "problem" part...

nitsua60

@DForck42 I'm more in line with what greener said a few messages down: even with playing every week, multiple times most, I feel like there's way more stuff being published than necessary. (But I run an AL table and an AL site, so I have to have at least passing familiarity with all of it.)

THiebert

@Shalvenay I'm kinda hoping that I can just get something going for the others, and leave the gamey stuff with the work group and the story-focused stuff in my friend group and call it good

but then I'm DM/GM for two different games and that's a lot of work

trogdor

@doppelspooker please do not do this thing :P lol

Shalvenay

12:34 AM

@THiebert yeah. my problem is that my campaign ideas wind up with a zillion and two moving parts and send me diving off into this weird, super-in-depth world-mechanics/logistics/worldbuilding side that's a poor fit for most playstyles out there

Lord_Gareth

You have scope problems.

Shalvenay

(it's the "do you really want weekly homework to go with your RPG session?" sort of problem)

@Lord_Gareth me?

Lord_Gareth

Yes you.

Who else is confessing to channeling Tolkein's incessantly chatty ghost?

Shalvenay

yeah, I probably do -- my brain is very capable of flitting up and down abstraction stacks like a butterfly

Lord_Gareth

Generally the answer to learning to handle scope problems is to try and do things with an inherently specific scope.

Shalvenay

12:36 AM

@Lord_Gareth my problem isn't Tolkienesque worldbuilding AFAICT -- its more that I want to engage the players in parts of the world to a depth that requires too much knowledge of the RL I'm drawing on

Lord_Gareth

Don't write a whole class, write a single archetype. Don't write a magic system, write some themed spells, etc

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth so I should stick to the short-form stuff instead of even trying to build a campaign?

Lord_Gareth

@Shalvenay Yeah that was Tolkein's problem. Couldn't get through one chapter without learning entirely too much about the BOTTOMLESS GRANARIES OF MORDOR

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth it's different when you're reading a novel vs actually participating though I reckon

Lord_Gareth

@Shalvenay Nah. Consider instead limiting the focus of the campaign in a manner that prevents you from throwing the entire world on the table, though. For instance, a campaign set against a backdrop of revolution in a single city-state.

nitsua60

12:38 AM

@doppelspooker Looks like it worked out =)

Lord_Gareth

Or one in which the PCs are pursuing a target and thus cannot stop to, you know, wander over yonder or else the guy they're after is gonna bug out to another dimension

Scope is not the same as depth

I can write you eight thousand pages on New York City

But NYC is a specific scope

It doesn't involve any of the rest of New York, or the East Coast, or the United States

Shalvenay

OK, so shrink the geography basically?

nitsua60

@Shalvenay hiya

Lord_Gareth

It can imply those things, because people come from those places and go to work or live in NYC

But a campaign in NYC should not end up in LA

Geography can be a great way to limit a campaign's scope because it stops you from going ham on every part of your world at once.

If you go ham on the single setting of your campaign you're at least going ham with relevant information.

Shalvenay

yeah, I can see where you're going there re: geography. I don't think you're grasping where I'm going though

Lord_Gareth

12:40 AM

Possibly not.

Shalvenay

food here tho

Lord_Gareth

I've eaten nothing today and am strung out on insomnia and caffeine

(I make healthy life choices)

...Aaand the Dandiwiki querent reverted the tonal edits.

THiebert

@Shalvenay You don't need to reduce the world you're building, but you only need specifics at the scale that PCs will notice them

building a dungeon, you probably want every room mapped out, and maybe a historical note that the orcish war of 1522 CE caused dozens of similar structures to pop up and this is the last surviving one. But you probably don't need to go into details about the weapons used in the war, the strategic hotspots, the generals of the war, etc., as tolkein might.

Adeptus

How does the stack deal with a querent rolling back to a less eloquent version? I'm tempted to rollback his rollback, but I don't want to ignite the garbage fire that @doppelspooker was concerned about...

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth I wouldn't say they reverted the tone edit. It's still "why is it regarded poorly," not "why is it the worst?"

Adeptus

12:50 AM

@nitsua60 It's also now a one-liner, not a descriptive paragraph

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 I mean, I'm not trying to say my edit is a perfect crystalline chandelier here but your fellow mod was down for it in preference to the current state.

nitsua60

He reverted it to greener's own version.

Adeptus

57 mins ago, by doppelspooker

@Lord_Gareth ok, thinking further and with your inputs, i'll remove the lock so that if it needs improvement (and it probably does) it can be done without waiting

Shalvenay

@THiebert I mean -- I'm not talking about an excess of pure flavor here, I'm trying to put the players in a world where their PCs need to be more detail-oriented because the details of some of these things actually matter (like screwing up your motion practice and getting the court case the party desperately wanted to win tossed on purely procedural grounds)

Lord_Gareth

@Shalvenay Yeah see that's a bit too zoomed-in

nitsua60

12:56 AM

@Adeptus I dunno... looks fine to me right now. Succinct. But if five close-voters think this is bad, I'll be interested to see that.

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth ...yeah, for a lot of players, I'm somewhat grasping it would be too far zoomed in for them to really wrap their heads around (never mind the lack of RL understanding/reference-points)

doppelspooker

@nitsua60 Gareth is probably referring to me endorsing his edit here:

52 mins ago, by doppelspooker

@Lord_Gareth yes good

Which is just after the thing Adeptus linked

Lord_Gareth

@Shalvenay It's not just that, it's that the level of zoom you're talking about sorta cuts into the dramatic nature of the proceedings. And like, if you're playing with folks who get their jollies from legal proceedings far be it from me to say you're doing it wrong.

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth I think my problem with "too many moving parts" is that I want the party to be engaging in multiple things at various zoom levels at the same time

Lord_Gareth

But I presume you came to us with this problem because they don't give a damn

A trial scene ain't about the trial, it's about the consequences of the trial.

doppelspooker

1:00 AM

So timeline is: my edit, lock, unlock for community revisions, community revisions, rollback to my edit.

Shalvenay

I haven't tried running the campaign this came from yet...but trying to run a courtroom drama scene where the stakes lie in "what does this piece-of-junk statute mean?!" is...alien to the courtroom-drama genre

doppelspooker

Back to sleep zzzz

Shalvenay

like -- it's possible for statutory interpretation to have massive consequences

Lord_Gareth

Sure.

But only if your audience A. knows B. cares and then C. cares in a positive way

Shalvenay

but most people don't connect with that the way they do a fact-driven, "fate of a person" trial

Lord_Gareth

1:02 AM

Any stage of that series of events that isn't true makes it fall apart

Legend of Dragoon did a legal-proceedings puzzle that was pretty neat but that has different connotations and a different relationship with the player

To wit, Legend of Dragoon has one player at a time (you) that doesn't have to share time with others or invite them into their home

Shalvenay

yeah

nitsua60

@Shalvenay I'm pretty sure there's a Marine Corps Brigadier General sleeping in a cell at Gitmo tonight because of an administrative procedures SNAFU.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 exactly!

when the interpretation-manual contradicts the text its interpreting... whistles innocently

THiebert

@Shalvenay yeah, I just mean build a world the players want to play in though. If they're getting punished for not remembering some seemingly minor thing from 3 weeks ago, that might be a harsh environment to play in.

trogdor

I do want to mention, it is not always fun to play a game just because that game represents IRL stuff accurately

Shalvenay

1:08 AM

@trogdor yeah -- that is a point. escapism has its appeal as well

trogdor

That being said, I see nothing wrong with trying for some amount of realism in a game

The question is, to what exact scale should it be measured?

I think your Players are the only ones who can answer that question

Miniman

@trogdor There's also the whole thing of fun being different to different people.

trogdor

Yes

Exactly one facet of my point

Miniman

I mean, I know I don't look for anything resembling reality in my gaming. I don't really care how realistic a game is, unless that realism is making the game less fun, in which case I care, but not in a good way.

Adeptus

@nitsua60 In a general sense, what should a user do if they disagree with the querent's rollback? Do another rollback? Ask the querent why in a comment? Close-vote it? Something else I haven't thought of?

trogdor

1:13 AM

Alllll the people in this room could weigh in on what @Shalvenay should do, but I think what is needed is some amount of understanding of what the players will want in the arrangement

nitsua60

@Adeptus Either comment or bring it to meta, I'd think.

Shalvenay

@Miniman yeah, my problem with that is I don't anchor to media tropes the way most people do -- most people who eschew reality are anchoring to tropes of a given genre instead, whereas I'm not relying on a particular familiarity with any genre

trogdor

Hopefully players who want a very similar type of game to the one he wants

nitsua60

Today's lesson in deductive geography:

> This occurred, as shown in the excerpt above, in Wagga Wagga at the Wagga Wagga Courthouse, which is not far from the Gobbagombalin Bridge over the Murrumbidgee River.

> Obviously that's in Australia.

(source)

Miniman

@nitsua60 Well that seems presumptuous.

Lord_Gareth

1:14 AM

@Shalvenay Those tropes don't exist to define the genre. They became parts of various genres because they have utility in evoking sets of feelings or setting up appropriately dramatic moments.

My webcomic partner gets hung up on "not doing it how it's always done" too but like

It gets done ways for a reason

Just like an embezzler keeps a true ledger so he knows how to fudge the numbers, so too must you know the tradition before you go screwing with it.

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth (See also Angry's recent diatribe on race vs. culture in D&D.)

THiebert

@nitsua60 Walla Walla Washington

@nitsua60 link to that?

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth (Hmm... I'm not really trying to instruct you to see also, but rather telling people to see also, after reading your message.)

Lord_Gareth

Crime procedural stories skip a lot of the elements of actual law and interpretation not because That's How Crime Stories Go, but because those moments don't often contribute to the building sense of drama and imperiled justice that they're going for.

Technicalities are evoked to make The Bad Guy seem like a weasel trying to shield his evil behind the indifferent Law

trogdor

@Lord_Gareth OK I was going to mention that maybe @Shalvenay doesn't like that reason but you covered your bases on the point I was going to make

nitsua60

1:17 AM

@THiebert Done. Angry filed it under "Fanservice BS," so you know it comes with an extra-generous helping of dismissiveness and scorn.

Lord_Gareth

Not to, as you point out, note the importance of technicality and interpretation in a living and vigorous justice system

Miniman

@nitsua60 Or the entire TVtropes wiki.

Lord_Gareth

If you wanna do with a fantasy court system what Sanderson did with a fantasy magic system, I'd suggest you write a novel instead of a campaign.

I would also suggest you learn how to actually write characters that feel real & multifaceted because Sanderson keeps face planting at that stage

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth whereas, I'm seeking an almost...exploratory sense of awe and wonder if you will, where the plot is emerging from places that aren't obvious at first glance

trogdor

@Lord_Gareth I don't think that particular suggestion is helpful

Shalv isn't trying to write any novels

Shalvenay

1:21 AM

@Lord_Gareth on that point -- basically, I get a sense that I want to write a crime procedural arc where the bad guys are trying to corrupt Law and Justice from the inside out and its the job of the heroes to wield those technicalities and interpretations to catch the baddies in their own hubris and belief that they are above the law

trogdor

(Or at least I assume not right now about this thing)

Shalvenay

because that is a story that to me, needs to be told

Lord_Gareth

@Shalvenay Sure. I don't even disagree. But is this the format that story can live and breathe in? An RPG campaign puts the main characters directly out of your control.

Their agency belongs to co-authors who do not answer to you.

Miniman

@Shalvenay If you want to tell a specific story, RPGs aren't really a good medium.

Adeptus

Going off on the tangent of fantasy authors... I've recently been enjoying the works of Patrick Rothfuss & Joe Abercrombie. Quite different styles, but both very good.

Shalvenay

1:22 AM

@Lord_Gareth yeah -- that is a point

@Miniman it may be better to go with a more sandboxy style of campaign, yeah -- that seems to be where my strength lies, even

hey there @NautArch

Miniman

@Shalvenay shrug In general, I think you might need to decide what your goals are and then work towards those goals.

Shalvenay

the problem is, I feel like there still need to be story arcs embedded within such a sandbox in order to provide the players with ropes to grab if you will

NautArch

Howdy @Shalvenay

Shalvenay

how're things going?

Miniman

@Shalvenay Sure, but if your goal here is "run a D&D game", those story hooks need to be ones that support that goal.

(Hooks, not arcs.)

trogdor

1:26 AM

I don't see a problem with, say deciding what would happen if the PCs were not around as a baseline

But once they touch your GM web it needs to be able to shift according to what exactly they did.

Shalvenay

yeah

NautArch

Long day, but coming to a close

Shalvenay

I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea of running a even a small campaign still

trogdor

If you can handle the game well in that area, I do think you will actually dodge a lot of issues

Not all but a lot

nitsua60

@Shalvenay Don't wrap your head around it. Like parenting, you'll never be ready. Just fail fast.

(Also like parenting. I fail at least daily.)

Shalvenay

1:30 AM

hrm...there is a point to that

NautArch

@nitsua60 those are just the fails you know about.

Shalvenay

what's the difference between "here's a NPC with a problem" and "here's a story hook" BTW?

trogdor

@nitsua60 fantastic advice as is usual

nitsua60

@Shalvenay Who starts the conversation: PC or GM =)

@trogdor Painfully learned =)

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 :P so basically, a story hook is a character in the world that has a problem for the PCs to solve?

nitsua60

1:32 AM

@Shalvenay Just trying to make a joke, really.

THiebert

@nitsua60 nice. I may have to establish that a little stronger in my games

trogdor

@nitsua60 sometimes that is the only way we improve on something

nitsua60

In reality, I'd say that "NPC w/ problem" is just one example of story hook.

PC desires in conflict with [anything] being another, "I got a job for ya" another, ....

THiebert

I'm off. gunna go catch Thor

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 ah

NautArch

1:35 AM

@Shalvenay you can have your own stories in the world that they may interact with, influence or simply be affecting the world around them. You can also build stories off of what they are doing. Both can happen simultaneously.

Shalvenay

@NautArch right

Miniman

1:50 AM

@nitsua60 It does depend on the problem, too. "Young people these days have no respect for their elders" is a problem, but not really of interest to anyone other than the elderly NPCs. "There are rats in the basement that need to be killed" is a sidequest, but not really a story hook. "Ever since the old mayor died, our crops have been failing" is a story hook.

(Although if anyone runs a campaign where the PCs are trying to make young people respect their elders, I'd love to hear about it.)

Adeptus

@Miniman "Young people these days have no respect for the Elder Gods"...

Miniman

@Adeptus See, that's definitely a story hook :P

nitsua60

@Miniman But when the rats in the basement turn out to have notes tied to their paws, with the names of PCs or notable NPCs, then it's the hook. The promise of further adventure, if only you follow this thread a ~little~ longer.

Lord_Gareth

@Adeptus I am reminded of the often-neglected worldbuilding tidbit in Greyhawk that the Free City and the continent its on is experiencing a transition of religion, in part because of the rise of a young pantheon (many of whom were once mortal, or migrated from other, extremely dead pantheons) but in main because the Old Faith is down to literally two surviving gods

Miniman

@nitsua60 Yep, of course. And, too, anything is a story hook if the PCs decide it is.

Lord_Gareth

1:54 AM

Who are THE SUN and DEATH ITSELF

The others having been violently slain in various extended and cruel ways by rivals or even mortals

And it's like...y'know, Nerull's gotta feel a kind of way about the fact that the closest thing he has left to a friend is his sworn enemy

How does one hold a funeral for a god? Who do you invite to mourn? Who could possibly speak?

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth Ender.

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 My feelings about this reference are complicated by what I have learned about Orson Scott Card as a human being.

nitsua60

Fairy 'nuff.

trogdor

@nitsua60 I only read the first book, and I don't know that I would invite that guy to speak at a funeral honestly

nitsua60

@trogdor From the first book, no, you certainly wouldn't. The second book, Speaker for the Dead, reveals quite a different aspect of our Andrew Wiggin.

trogdor

2:09 AM

Fair enough

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth Himself, if FR is anything to go by.

trogdor

I was warned that I might not personally enjoy any of the books after the first one

Lord_Gareth

Unfortunately it also reveals one of Orson's purely authorial flaws, which is his deep love for theoretical physics that he cannot restrain himself from expressing.

The two immediate sequels to Ender's Game go deep down the weird hole of some serious ultraterrestrial particle jazz

Like it's nice that he's excited but I should not need to consult with friends that have PHDs for your main plot point to start making sense.

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth mind if I toss you a worldbuilding thing btw?

Lord_Gareth

@Shalvenay Feel free, though my replies will be delayed by a combination of doing the dishes, drying my laundry, securing more caffeine, and ritualistic human sacrifice.

Shalvenay

2:18 AM

@Lord_Gareth haha. I'm trying to figure out what sort of wide-scale natural disaster could catch an elven society with their pants down and cripple them to the point where they couldn't get things like agriculture going on their own

Lord_Gareth

Setting or system?

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth setting is a modestly powered fantasy, system is TBD (Burning Wheel is a candidate for this job though)

Lord_Gareth

Well, the eternal classic is to just have a mountain freakin' explode and literally blow them into the stone age, but the consequence of that is to turn the survivors into refugees. If you're down with a wave of elven refugees, well, there you have it.

Totally Not Yellowstone Why Do You Ask blew them to hell and back, then to hell again

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth yeah, I was thinking that the survivors would be left in place to deal with the mess that got made of their land

Lord_Gareth

Blights or droughts work, especially if there's not magical means to treat and detect diseases

Shalvenay

2:23 AM

@Lord_Gareth some sort of novel infectious agent?

Lord_Gareth

Could go for a slightly supernatural edge, with a curse upon the land or perhaps blowback from some bright bulb who decided that what the place needed was a RIFT TO ANOTHER DIMENSION

@Shalvenay Could go for straight parasites or plagues of locusts

Crop stores will only last you so long and it's not like you can just scream at corn seedlings and make them grow faster than you starve

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth yeah, that'd seem obvious enough for elves to fight back against. (besides, the easiest solution to locusts is to start eating the problem)

Lord_Gareth

You would think, but both parasites and locusts are major causes of famine today

You'd be amazed how screwed you are by the time you detect that there's a problem

You pull up your carrots or open your corn stalks and OOPS WORMS ERRYWHERE

Shalvenay

re: parasites, yeah. we've lost enough plants to bugs here :P

something like a prion-esque infectious agent would be the kind of thing that could catch Elves with their pants down far more though -- heck, it's the kind of thing that we'd have to strain to deal with

Lord_Gareth

Keep in mind that you're asking me to flail blindly at the setting in your head.

I dunno what your elves are like or capable of

I can produce ideas, not fit them

Shalvenay

2:28 AM

well...we're talking fairly nature-sensitive elves with a modest level of magic power, but nothing grand-scale

Lord_Gareth

Sure but it's not like worms ping as unnatural

It's not a lurching infection of burrowing zombies spewing gore onto your potatoes

They're bugs, doing bug things

And the more you wanna say that elves keep their society going through explicit magical intervention

The more Totally Not Yellowstone or an earthquake or something becomes what you need

How many sorcerers can they turn out to keep the grain flowing?

Why are they turned out for that specifically and not needs such as the common defense or purified water?

If you don't wanna ravage the landscape you're gonna need to flex something to make a less devastating problem viable

Shalvenay

one idea BESW tossed my way was a typhoon that blew salt air deep inland and basically salted the earth

Lord_Gareth

Aye, but that makes the land pretty damn unusable for just about anything

Which brings you right back to elven refugees

Since the earth itself is soured and done

nitsua60

Zanclean flood

The Zanclean flood or Zanclean Deluge is a flood theorized to have refilled the Mediterranean Sea 5.33 million years ago. This flooding ended the Messinian salinity crisis and marks the beginning of the Zanclean age. The term was coined by Maria Bianca Cita in 1972 during the Deep Sea Drilling Project study that investigated the transition between the Messinian and Zanclean ages in the Mediterranean. According to this model, water from the Atlantic Ocean refilled the dried up basin through the modern-day Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean Basin flooded mostly during a period estimated to have...

SmokeDetector

3:32 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer: What is the reason to only give casters a single high level slot up to the upper levels? by Nimue's Goat on rpg.SE

Lord_Gareth

What in the flaming pits of Hell is that

Adeptus

Automatic spam tagger

Looks like a false-positive in this case

Miniman

Jan 23 at 18:56, by SevenSidedDie

Chat regulars: Do we want auto-spam-detection messages? There is a bot called SmokeDetector that is maintained by some SE mods. It watches for suspected spam in SEs and can notify and/or autoflag. It's already watching RPG.se. Do we want Smokey to post to RPG General Chat about probable-spam it sees? Message frequency for RPG would be about 1 per 3–5 days.

Lord_Gareth

Huh.

BESW

First false positive I've seen.

Shalvenay

3:38 AM

@BESW I've seen one other false positive from Smokey

although the post must be deleted anyhow

trogdor

Eh it's bound to happen sometimes

Miniman

3:51 AM

@BESW I'm not sure (the website is a bit confusing), but it looks like the word it objected to was "miracles".

trogdor

4:12 AM

Oooh that keyword must honestly catch a lot

BESW

Please don't spoil Thor.

7

trogdor

Yeah I will not hesitate to BURNINATE anyone who does that

BESW

@trogdor Let me know when you want to go see it!

trogdor

Is any time this weekend good? Or do you think it has not been out long enough?

Adeptus

...I still haven't seen the first two Thor films. Or any Avengers after the first. Or any Captain America. I did see Spiderman Homecoming, that was fun

Miniman

4:21 AM

@Adeptus It'd be fair to say you've cherrypicked the better Marvel movies, I think.

trogdor

I only saw the first Thor but I do have high expectations for this one

BESW

@Adeptus I highly recommend The Winter Soldier as Marvel's foray into the "Bourne" style spy thriller genre.

trogdor

I only saw Homecoming on the flight back to Japan

BESW

@trogdor Everything says it's absolutely worth seeing.

trogdor

But I liked it

@BESW oh I agree

I don't think I will even mind at all that I don't know what happened in previous Thor movies

Miniman

4:28 AM

@BESW People seem to have very mixed reactions to Winter Soldier.

BESW

@Miniman I admittedly have a soft spot for Captain America and am willing to forgive a number of lesser sins if a story does him well.

trogdor

Also, tangent via the Star Bar, I really liked both SG1 and Stargate Atlantis, I hated Universe soooo much though

BESW

@trogdor There's... one or two things from Thor: The Dark World which are probably gonna be important to know.

trogdor

Mm OK

I assume you can tell me those

@Miniman yeah I even remember us disagreeing about who was "right" I that story

Miniman

@BESW Honestly, I'd be amazed if a magical exposition fairy doesn't hand them out at the start of the movie.

@trogdor Nah, you're thinking of Civil War.

Adeptus

4:33 AM

Quote from another stack...

trogdor

I have since decided they were both idiots acting based off of their own guilt due to personal mistakes

Adeptus

> This has more red flags than a communist matador's convention.

trogdor

@Miniman oh whoops

I have conflated those two movies XD

Miniman

@trogdor Winter Soldier is the one where SHIELD is in the middle of implementing an obviously evil plan, and they discover that they're doing that because SHIELD is actually HYDRA.

trogdor

Yeah I remember now

BESW

4:35 AM

@trogdor In Thor: The Dark World, the villain of the week spoilers Thor's spoiler, and Spoiler spoilered to spoiler so he could spoiler in order to secretly spoiler. (No, we don't know what they did with Spoiler.)

trogdor

Either way, I was actually amazingly on point otherwise

Stark and Cap were being idiots

And for surprisingly similar reasons

BESW

@nedlud Hi!

nedlud

Hey

BESW

Welcome to chat! What brings you here?

trogdor

@BESW OK cool, is that all I have to know?

nedlud

4:40 AM

@BESW didn't know chat existed. Just clicked on the button to see what it was all about ;)

BESW

Feel free to lurk or chat as you like. We're pretty free-ranging here topic-wise, so long as everyone remembers to be nice, but we're always happy to revert to RPG topics if somebody asks.

@trogdor I'm thinking I might try to prep for an Extermination game tomorrow with you and Greener, but I'm not sure if Misspent Youth works with just two players...

nedlud

@BESW yeah, just reading back a bit. I get all those super hero movies muddled up too.

trogdor

@nedlud thank you, someone agrees that the sheer number of them is getting confusing

Adeptus

My wife keeps asking, "So is [character/movie] Marvel or DC?"

BESW

They're doing a good job of keeping most of them self-contained enough that you can enjoy them with just basic pop culture knowledge of the characters.

Miniman

4:46 AM

@trogdor Personally, I don't really find them confusing, but it is certainly getting monotonous.

BESW

@Adeptus My rule of thumb for that has always been "Do you think of their street persona as the character's real identity, or their cover identity?"

It doesn't work all the time, but it's consistent enough to be useful.

Miniman

@BESW Which means which?

BESW

eg, Spider-Man is really Peter Parker, but Bruce Wayne is really Batman.

Miniman

Hmmm, interesting.

BESW

The CW television shows are breaking that down a bit, though.

trogdor

4:48 AM

@Miniman maybe I don't feel quite that way because I have skipped some

I didn't see all the Thor movies or Hulk movies

BESW

@trogdor You've seen all the Hulk movies. I inflicted them on you.

trogdor

Though to be fair I have seen, I think, pretty much all the others

Miniman

@trogdor I think a big part of it, for me, is that I can't honestly say they've made anything as good as the Iron Man movie that started it all.

trogdor

@BESW oh,.... There were not more?

BESW

Thor: Ragnarok is the closest they've come to a third Hulk film since the franchise really kicked into gear. Given the first two Hulk films, I can't blame them.

trogdor

4:49 AM

I thought there were more of them

@Miniman I do actually think that one was possibly the best still

@BESW so much fairy buff

BESW

Since the Edward Norton film, Hulk's only appeared as a major character in Avengers and Age of Ultron.

Adeptus

@BESW You mean, the Hulk origin story, and the other Hulk origin story?

BESW

@Adeptus The Edward Norton wasn't really an origin story! They got the origin out of the way in the opening credits and moved on to bigger, worser plots.

Adeptus

It was kind of refreshing to see a Spider-man reboot that didn't go back to "this is how he got his powers"

BESW

yeah, I think they've finally picked up that we're kinda done with that and want more Buckaroo Banzai.

THiebert

5:05 AM

Thor was good I guess

trogdor

5:17 AM

Twas not my favorite

That was a major factor for not watching other Thor movies

For me at least

But now this one actually looks interesting

And I feel like they have gotten a firm grip on making these movies as compared to the time when they made the first one

THiebert

I meant the new one

I just got out of it

trogdor

5:35 AM

Ooooh

Never mind XD

Miniman

5:51 AM

@Adeptus Even more refreshing to see a Marvel movie villain with relatable motivations. Not to mention an intelligent one.

Adeptus

6:07 AM

> Even more refreshing to see a ~~Marvel~~ movie villain with relatable motivations. Not to mention an intelligent one.

trogdor

@Miniman yep

I liked that villain a lot actually

@Adeptus lol

Magician

@BESW So far they've been twists on "staple" D&D monsters. It does look cool, though.

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