TRPG General Chat

kviiri

20:01

The US political system is rather unintuitive from my point of view, but a brief stint of intensively playing Liberal Crime Squad taught me the basics quite well :)

And the Simpsons.

Shog9

Yep...

KorvinStarmast

@Shog9 Who is Derpy, and how did this political discussion arrive here?

Shog9

@KorvinStarmast SPArchaeologist, apparently. And, no idea.

SPavel

@KorvinStarmast In order to assemble a Supreme Court of Stack Exchange, we first need to understand what SCOTUS actually does

Shog9

But, clearly @SPavel's fault

SPavel

20:04

Then the SCSE can rule on guidelines for XY problems and frame challenges

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri It is designed to be inefficient for the express purpose of preventing concentration of power in too few hands. If that's not intuitive, I suppose that's OK because it was devised as a rejection of all other forms of governance before it ... and it is often called "the great experiment in self government" for good reason.

That good reason being that, as a particular form, it is comparatively new when measured against all other forms.

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast What I meant was more of a mechanical sense: stuff like bicameral parliament, presidential veto, Supreme Court (and indeed the precedent system) are all foreign to me

SPavel

@KorvinStarmast I don't know about all other forms

KorvinStarmast

@Shog9 We have an accord

Shog9

Anyway... The executive branch of SE is pretty easy to identify. Folks earn power over others by way of earning reputation and/or badges, and put that power into action as they see fit. The guiding principles tend to be the same as which allowed them to participate, which helps with a certain amount of stability.

KorvinStarmast

20:07

@kviiri, Maybe I should have said "it being non intuitive" would make sense for anyone not raised within it as being 'the norm' ...

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast But now that you brought it up, there's quite a many places where I feel the whole "avoid concentration of power" has gone spectacularly wrong. For understandable reasons, in large part, but still...

Yuuki

@Shog9 That feels like a weird measurement of "what does this government entity do?".

KorvinStarmast

@SPavel Ok, most other forms, given that there was a (failed) form arising in the late 19th century that is certainly newer

@kviiri Churchill's maxim fits at this point...

Yuuki

"The EPA doesn't do anything because if the military decides it's going to burn all the coal it wants and shoot EPA agents that disagree, then the EPA can't stop them."

Like... I guess? But that's also ridiculous.

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast Which maxim is that?

Shog9

20:09

@Yuuki so... how does the EPA decide to stop someone from burning coal?

SPavel

@KorvinStarmast I guess it would depend on how you group them. For example, post-war European democracies are a very different style of government than the US one, and much newer

Same for, for example, Franco's Catholic-Fascist Spain - do you bundle that in with old school despotism, or is it separate?

Yuuki

Besides, can you really definitively say that if the Marines march on Washington, Ginsberg isn't going to confront them with a lasgun?

She seems like the kind of person who'd do that.

Pretty sure she'd win too.

SPavel

@Yuuki Have you seen her workout on Colbert's show? Girl is buff, she wouldn't need a lasgun

Shog9

So, here's the EPA's word for how it does enforcement

SPavel

I thought the EPA didn't do that anymore

Shog9

20:13

tl;dr: if you don't comply voluntarily, they take you to court

Maximillian

And if you don't comply involuntarily you go to double court.

Yuuki

@Maximillian After which, they have to let you go because double jeopardy.

GreySage

@Shog9 Which you wriggle out of by directing all the money you saved by dumping the toxic waste directly into the river to your legal team. The system works! ...for sleazy lawyers and their employers, anyway.

Shog9

well, that's where it gets fun, right? The EPA is part of the executive branch. They hand you off to the DOJ, also executive branch. Who rely on the judicial branch to issue a verdict... Which then must be enforced by the DOJ again.

(I guess this might also involve state / local courts and associated enforcement; not much of a law buff)

Yuuki

@GreySage Alternately, you could try to convince the president to appoint an EPA director that used to be one of your lobbyists.

And then the EPA will just decide to not purse charges!

Or the DoJ won't pursue charges!

Shog9

20:19

@Yuuki right, so... That's what happens when that whole web of trust & influence starts to break down. If the executive branch decides not to enforce the law, who's going to make 'em?

Yuuki

Woo, government!

@Shog9 That's when we make our own country. With blackjack and hookers.

Shog9

So back to SO/SE: some folks like to think about meta as sort of a court system. Which... Is a bit of a stretch, but certainly it can fulfill that role in some situations. But... For those decisions to have any power, they have to be enforced. The executive branch - appointed / elected moderators, folks who moderate via earned privilege - has to actually care enough about what has been decided to put it into action.

If you get a meta post saying "We should delete answers that deviate from the question asked!" that means absolutely nothing unless it also manages to convince a substantial number of people with the privilege to delete answers to... delete certain answers.

This is where folks kept getting all upset about link-only answers. They'd rant on meta all day about how terrible link-only answers are, get tons of support on meta, and then... Flag answers and they wouldn't get deleted.

(ok, so mostly they did get deleted, but enough of 'em didn't to motivate further angry meta discussions)

And what it boiled down to was this massive disagreement about what "link-only" actually meant.

(hint: a lot of folks did not take the word "only" literally in that description)

So you had, essentially, a judiciary upset that their verdicts weren't being executed.

From what I've seen, this happens all the time with frame challenges, since what folks mean when they talk about those on meta doesn't match up very well with what folks see when they go back to the various sites on which such challenges occur.

Yuuki

Clearly they need to pass legislation to reduce moderator budgets as leverage.

Shog9

Now... This SCOTUS analogy starts to really fall apart completely at this point (thanks again, @SPavel!)

Because the solution here isn't a regime change or bloody revolution or even a sudden replacement of a suspiciously high volume of justices (although the rough equivalent does occasionally happen)

It's... better communication.

It's not enough to have a meta post that argues some abstract pattern is bad.

doppelgreener

or a non-bloody revolution

Shog9

20:29

You have to convince the folks with the direct ability to do stuff that the posts they're actually looking at are bad.

Which mostly doesn't happen with pithy names or cute pictures or funny memes, although any/all of those can keep folks interested if used in moderation.

It happens by pointing out specific problems, stuff folks may've been individually uncomfortable with or unhappy about but didn't realize they had the authority to do anything about.

Simon H.

That's because there's no motivation to "own" a site's community in the same way there is to "own" a country's political system.

Shog9

well. There are vastly different motivations.

GreySage

@SimonH. I would argue that the motivation is pretty similar in both cases

SPavel

@Shog9 Ironically, using memes in moderation is a terrible idea

Simon H.

All you can change is content, you don't earn anything monetarily for caring so much

Shog9

20:32

@SPavel Don't meme and mod

Simon H.

It's futile.

SPavel

Simon: Internet points are a powerful motivator

Yuuki

@SimonH. If it's futile, the clear solution is to get more tiles.

GreySage

@SimonH. In theory, that's how political office is supposed to work too

Shog9

This is one of those points where gamification stops being effective and can actually become counter-productive. You need intrinsic, not extrinsic motivators. Stuff folks care about for reasons other than what they get in exchange for caring.

GreySage

20:33

The goal is the betterment of [insert community]. Some people deviate from that

kviiri

My two cents? We have a mixed blessing in that we're a relatively small community. People know each other and the goings-on on the site and many of us trust each others' judgment beyond the simple rep score number. It makes things run rather smoothly. The downside is, it's all too tempting to attempt to moderate the site via the chat and such instead of doing it more transparently in the Meta.

Simon H.

@GreySage Right, but that should be the only goal.

SPavel

@Shog9 Right. It's fairly trivial to get many points on SE while being a despicable community member

Trish

If you want a TPK... My group manages to do that on its own...

KorvinStarmast

@Shog9 Are you referring to community moderation, or to diamond mods only? You have to convince the folks with the direct ability to do stuff that the posts they're actually looking at are bad

Yuuki

20:34

@kviiri DA: chat is public and Google-indexed.

Heck, there's a (poorly-functioning) search too!

Shog9

@KorvinStarmast read up slightly further - sorry for rambling on so

SPavel

Mods should have to run for office every 4 years

KorvinStarmast

@Shog9 I was under the impression that the "earned privilege" may have alluded to the community based moderation of medium to high rep users who unlock non diamond moderation tools as they earn rep.

Simon H.

@SPavel I second this motion.

Shog9

@kviiri that's why it's important to understand what meta actually provides. If folks think of it as the stuffy town hall to their comfortable conversation in the local tavern, it doesn't tend to get used very effectively.

@KorvinStarmast it does

KorvinStarmast

20:37

@SPavel Advocating "change for the sake of change" does not always fit a given situation. It's a bad template to cut and paste.

kviiri

@Yuuki But things get lost in the noise. It's not practical.

KorvinStarmast

@Shog9 OK, thanks.

SPavel

@KorvinStarmast For sure

doppelgreener

Short summary of the main reason moderators are elected for life: we have to be able to do unpopular stuff. In fact, at least half the time for most things a moderator does, the only people who notice it or know about it are probably unhappy about it, because we closed their question or removed their inappropriate content or suspended them from the site or held up a policy or etc. If we had to also be populists, ensuring everyone liked and approved of us all the time (especially going into an election cycle) it would compromise our ability to moderate — in that we couldn't do so effectively. — doppelgreener ♦ Mar 9 at 12:00

Shog9

y'all probably know better than most that the folks who wield the most influence aren't necessarily the ones with the most direct power over what gets closed / deleted / etc.

SPavel

20:38

@Shog9 The problem is when people bring the town hall stuff into the tavern

Leave the chat to arguing about how to use the star function correctly

Shog9

@SPavel I'm not sure that's necessarily a problem.

SPavel

And SCOTUS memes

Shog9

(Granted, I'm terrible at chat; I tend to use it as a way to spit-ball or hone arguments for later use in other venues rather than... socialization)

KorvinStarmast

@SPavel There are usually "let's move this to a chat room for its own topic" ways around that problem, aren't there?

Yuuki

@kviiri Why not bookmark conversations?

SPavel

20:39

:43805113 I don't want to be That Guy, mostly because I've been on the wrong side of That Guy too often

Plus creating a secret Shadow Meta in the non-primary chat is a little tyrannical

Simon H.

@Shog9 Well, isn't that what this is about?

Trish

The elf just grew a tree at the 5 demonic days of the year... OF COURSE it becomes a demonic tainted thing with leafs from pure demonic sulfur...

Shog9

@SimonH. my lack of social skills? Maybe. I'd probably be able to tell if I had... uh

Simon H.

It's not just memes and shallow jokes here, the conversation gets deep

SPavel

@Trish Why do you have demonic days of the year?

Trish

20:41

that's in the calendar of the Dark Eye..

GreySage

@Trish Was the elf expected to do something that would stop the tree from growing for those 5 days? How do you stop a tree from growing selectively?

kviiri

@Yuuki I'm talking in a more general sense.

Eg. new users who haven't ever been to chat.

KorvinStarmast

@SPavel how is using a chat room tyrannical?

Trish

ir was never expected for ANYONE to do something in those days...

GreySage

@Trish Wouldn't ALL the plants be evil in that case?

Yuuki

20:42

@Trish A tree that grows pure sulfur? I think you could use that to corner the gunpowder market.

GreySage

Like, plants don't really stop growing ever

SPavel

@GreySage If you've ever had to maintain a lawn you would already know that all plants are evil

Trish

@GreySage no, he just... jused magic to grow it from just a seed...

Yuuki

And if you can get one that grows pure phosphorus, you might be able to start an agricultural revolution.

Simon H.

Is it evil sulfur?

Because sulfur is useful

Trish

20:43

@Yuuki demonic sulfur... the apples would transmit the most deadly disease: Duglumspest.

KorvinStarmast

@Yuuki Wouldn't that be the closest to a self licking ice cream cone that we could get to? ((phosphorous producing trees))

SPavel

@Trish That's not very elfy of him, elves are like "what's the big rush it'll only take 20 years"

Trish

yep, not very elfy...

SPavel

Disbarred by the elf council

Has to live as a half-elf until he can pass the elf exam

doppelgreener

Basic practice on this site is we can discuss policy, moderation, curation and etc on chat -- but decisions that affect the site get made on meta where the full community has input at the pace of meta rather than at the pace of chat.

2

KorvinStarmast

20:45

@SPavel Disbarred or disbarked? I thought we were talking about a tree there ...

Simon H.

They temporarily took his elf ear extensions away

doppelgreener

I imagine the chat tyranny thing is a reference to what happens when policy decisions get made in chat. We've also had problems when curation decisions have been made in chat without any visibility on mainsite, resulting in major question overhauls that get rolled back because nobody knows the question got workshopped with its author in chat.

kviiri

Nothing beats a bit of curation on a rainy day.

doppelgreener

(Thus resulting in a meta request to please not do that in chat, and if you do, link back to it so everyone has visibility.)

SPavel

Yes exactly

KorvinStarmast

20:47

@doppelgreener Since I was unaware that this had happened -- I presumed people used Meta for such things -- thanks for explaining.

doppelgreener

That's this post:

22

Q: The role of chat at RPG Stack Exchange

TL;DR? Meta is where consensus happens. Questions and answers, have to be good questions and answers without chat. Any Stack Exchange site has three realms for interaction, Main, Meta, and Chat. Main is where the business of the site happens, in our case we ask and answer questions abou...

Simon H.

@doppelgreener What's wrong with editing your own post? Shouldn't the author be the authority on that?

doppelgreener

@SimonH. it was the author 100% changing the question with no visible reason why when the old one just need minor changes (but in chat we worked out it was an XY), or more often, one of the chatizens they were talking with (like BESW or I) doing the huge change for them.

SPavel

>Stars aren't voting and there are no special tags.

Except here where they are, and we have the special tag jeff

doppelgreener

all mainsite sees is a 100% change on 95% good question with no explanation, and that sets off alarm bells

Yuuki

20:50

@doppelgreener So... we should turn off all the alarm bells?

Simon H.

@doppelgreener So the author talked in chat, improved the post based on that conversation, and then those changes were rolled back? What reason would there be to roll it back? I don't understand that.

SPavel

@Yuuki "We were getting a lot of alerts so we turned off the alerts" - are you one of my users?

Trish

YAY! the White mage is slipping to the dark side... she wants to study the remains of the tree, keeping them for studies and makiing demonic tainted napalm

KorvinStarmast

@doppelgreener While I recall reviewing that post a while back, it didn't register at the time as having major importance .... and it was a "before my time" event. thx

Yuuki

@Trish Is demonic napalm just napalm that sounds a devious cackle when you set it off?

Trish

20:54

they also threaten to put the elf AND the mage to the stake XD WHO needs to be an evil GM if they deliver stuff on the silver tray like this?!

Yuuki

@Trish Maybe you misheard them and they're going to put the elf and the mage to the steak?

Trish

na, demonic napalm is just plain better. it burns hotter...

Yuuki

Although if the elf is vegetarian, I guess that's still pretty cruel.

SPavel

Mages make poor steak, no muscle

Yuuki

@SPavel Ah but they have a lot more fat and marbling.

KorvinStarmast

20:55

@Trish Demons don't need napalm, they have hellfire. ;)

SPavel

@Yuuki No they don't, wizards are lean and wiry, like a jerky

Simon H.

That should do extra necrotic damage or something

SPavel

@KorvinStarmast Maybe they just love the smell of napalm in the morning

@SimonH. I, unfortunately, read that as "erotic damage"

Simon H.

@SPavel I can't even imagine...

doppelgreener

@SimonH. You're missing part of what I'm saying

Your question is asking ABC

KorvinStarmast

20:57

@SimonH. I seem to recall there being a 3.5 supplement about erotic something that got some people a bit disturbed.

doppelgreener

Another user comes along and replaces it with a question asking XYZ

What would you expect others to do?

Trish

it just is plain easier to make the demonic tainted napalm... and people dying from it go directly to hell

Yuuki

@SPavel That's the demonic napalm used by succubi.

KorvinStarmast

@Trish Even the innocent victims?

Simon H.

@doppelgreener Oh, someone else did the edit. I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Thank you for elaborating.

Trish

20:58

yep, ESPECIALLY those

SPavel

@KorvinStarmast Book of Erotic Fantasy, it wasn't disturbing so much as low quality

Simon H.

@KorvinStarmast The book of erotic fantasies or something... I don't even want to know.

SPavel

Book of Vile Darkness and Book of Exalted Deeds have some sexytimes stuff

But very hamfisted

For instance, BoVD straight up has sadism and masochism as capital-e Evil

KorvinStarmast

And on that happy note, I excuse myself from this discussion.

Simon H.

@KorvinStarmast Nuuuu come baaaaack

Yuuki

21:00

@SPavel yay subcultures intolerant of other subcultures woo

SPavel

BoVD (or was it Savage Species?) also says that Good communities kill monstrous creatures on sight, and only Evil communities welcome them

So D&D Good is basically "kick out everyone who is different"

kviiri

Oh bother, alignment discussion incoming

/me sighs and wears his Alignment discussion hat

doppelgreener

Right. But, sometimes it was the author. And sometimes they were asking "How can my wizard learn this spell?", to which someone would ask "This is unclear, please state the level and system." Then they'd replace the question with "How can I have a bard manipulate an elder demon?" which is a different question. And this user is completely new.
Moderators or senior users see them doing something funny, and go "hold on, let's take a step back, roll back please, just clarify that point and ask this separately."

Either way mess and confusion was created.

Yuuki

@SPavel What if it's a community of Good-aligned blind people?

Simon H.

@SPavel Evil and Good always used to mean Entropy and Order to me, before I got into D&D

Yuuki

21:03

@SimonH. Which doesn't really help when you consider that's basically Law and Chaos.

I interpreted "Good" and "Evil" as "Altruism" and "Egocentrism", respectively.

Simon H.

@Yuuki Exactly. It's hard for me to take alignment seriously when it's that detached from reality.

It has "Fantasy Tropes" written all over it

Just look at the stats, wisdom and intelligence

They don't mean their definitions, from my observations

doppelgreener

(While the author is the final arbiter of their question, when they're doing something so wrong as what I described there, experienced users tend to hit the breaks and/or reverse what they perceive as damage.)

kviiri

Definitions of DnD attributes are prone to all sorts of problems. Most "mental" saving throws against 5e spells are charisma or wisdom, with no clear line of demarcation between the two that'd allow one to intuit which spell targets which.

Simon H.

IRL, knowledge is what you've learned and intelligence is how well you can use and understand it

But in D&D, that's swapped around completely

kviiri

Well... it's not like there's a single definition for intelligence either that's both a) accurate and b) in agreement with how the term is actually used.

Yuuki

21:07

Makes sense to me. "Wisdom" -> "whiz dome" -> the ability to resist someone trying to scare you into peeing your pants. "Intelligence" -> "in telling gents" -> people tend to want to sound smart when talking to other people, especially nobility.

Simon H.

Also, charisma is used as mental, like you said. That makes very little sense.

@kviiri IQ is very specific, IMHO.

Yuuki

@SimonH. IQ is also a terrible gauge for intelligence.

Simon H.

@Yuuki Since when?

Yuuki

Since at least ~~1996~~ 1981.

The Mismeasure of Man

The Mismeasure of Man is a 1981 book by Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The book is both a history and critique of the statistical methods and cultural motivations underlying biological determinism, the belief that "the social and economic differences between human groups—primarily races, classes, and sexes—arise from inherited, inborn distinctions and that society, in this sense, is an accurate reflection of biology". Gould argues that the primary assumption underlying biological determinism is that, "worth can be assigned to individuals and groups by measuring intelligence as a single...

kviiri

@SimonH. ...but not in agreement with how the term is actually used.

@SimonH. Well, charisma measures confidence, so it's a natural fit for some mental tasks or defenses, eg. against being scared of terrors unknown.

Simon H.

21:10

@Yuuki Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not what I mean at all. I'm not talking about social darwinism.

Yuuki

IIRC, IQ also has a well-known bias against ESL (English as second language) individuals.

Simon H.

@Yuuki People with higher IQs can do better with the information they are given, in the same way someone with higher strength isn't guaranteed to win in a fight against someone weaker than

Yuuki

@SimonH. Not what I said either. I'm saying IQ is a terrible measure for "this person is objectively smarter than the other person".

Simon H.

@Yuuki 'Smarts' could arguably be clumped into intelligence and knowledge, that's what I'm arguing

Yuuki

Also, the way IQ is calculated means that it's terrible for gauging outliers, IIRC. About the only thing it's good for is if you're "average" or not. For certain values of "average".

Simon H.

21:13

You could have the highest IQ in the world, but if you've never read a book you're not going to be able to understand Shakespeare.

Sir Cinnamon

@SimonH. Right, I think he's arguing that IQ != Intelligence

Simon H.

@SirCinnamon That would really depend on your definition of intelligence.

I don't think being intelligent is being 'smart'.

doppelgreener

there's various models of intelligence measure currently being explored and defined, many dividing intelligence into 6+ or 9+ categories

Yuuki

What, pray tell, is "smart"? Because that's not well-defined either.

Sir Cinnamon

@SimonH. I don't know, whatever you feel about the human brain, the idea that we somehow mastered measuring it with a multiple choice test in the 80s is a little silly

doppelgreener

21:15

such as artistic, spacial, interpersonal, logical, etc

the theory is that IQ only measures a certain narrow category of what we could call intelligence

Simon H.

@Yuuki What, pray tell, is intelligent? Because they're both as vague, indefinite concepts as each other.

doppelgreener

well, yes

Sir Cinnamon

(to me) IQ is a scientific term meaning "the result you get on an IQ test" - "intelligence" is an immeasurable quality

Simon H.

@SirCinnamon Right, exactly.

Yuuki

@SimonH. That's... exactly what we're saying?

Simon H.

21:17

I'd argue that intelligence is how you can respond to situations using the knowledge you have.

Sir Cinnamon

@SimonH. So "IQ" is more or less meaningless - that's all i'm saying

Simon H.

That's my definition of it.

Yuuki

So basically /s/wisdom/intelligence then.

The only difference between your definition of wisdom and knowledge and D&D's definitions is a word-swap, it seems.

Simon H.

But in the context of D&D stats, Wisdom seems closer to that view of intelligence than the Intelligence stat itself

doppelgreener

i agree with that

Simon H.

21:19

But that's confusing too, because the INT stat lists itself as, "Mental Acuity, Information Recall, Analytical Skill"

Sir Cinnamon

Wisdom is the ability to gain and use first hand knowledge - your own experiences

Intelligence is the ability to seek out, study, and apply second hand knowledge

Yuuki

12 mins ago, by Yuuki

Makes sense to me. "Wisdom" -> "whiz dome" -> the ability to resist someone trying to scare you into peeing your pants. "Intelligence" -> "in telling gents" -> people tend to want to sound smart when talking to other people, especially nobility.

Simon H.

@SirCinnamon While I understand how it's being used, it certainly seems like an amalgam of both concepts. I've never really believed in inherent "Wisdom" myself

The experiences you have and remember count as knowledge in my book

Sir Cinnamon

@SimonH. But learning from them and recognizing the patterns is wisdom

Is how I imagine it anyway - none of this applies to real life

Simon H.

@SirCinnamon I'd personally call it intelligence, because that's what is seems like to me

Like wisdom is the experiences you have and how they apply to your actions, like being able to sense intruders without directly viewing them

Sir Cinnamon

21:24

@SimonH. As a thought experiment - what does a non-intelligent but wise person look like to you

Yuuki

So what you're saying is that a game designed for dungeon delving may not be the best simulation of the human condition?

doppelgreener

in real life, things basically just come down to the ability to retain various kinds of knowledge (how many of you know someone who confesses to be bad at remembering faces or names but not the other, and can remember all kinds of facts about only specific things?) and the ability to understand and respond effectively to various kinds of situations.

Simon H.

But if intelligence is what you can do with knowledge, and those experiences also count as knowledge, then wouldn't wisdom be a sort of intelligence?

doppelgreener

which means it's down to various kinds of memory retention... and skill.

real life there's no god stat that makes someone super good at everything. there's just skill, derived from experience, learning, and practice.

Yuuki

@doppelgreener Money.

doppelgreener

21:26

money just gets you opportunities for experience, learning, and practice that you may not have otherwise. doesn't make you any good.

Simon H.

@SirCinnamon Someone who has worked hard enough to gain knowledge despite their disadvantage in retaining and using that knowledge

Yuuki

@doppelgreener You're not rolling your Money checks properly.

doppelgreener

@Yuuki sorry

i'm still looking for the errata'd rulebook

Sir Cinnamon

@SimonH. So... someone who has learned a lot but forgotten it?

Yuuki

> "Are you qualified for this university?"
> "My parents are considering donating $1 million dollars to this department."

Simon H.

21:28

@SirCinnamon Someone who has learned a lot through rigorous practice.

Yuuki

Nat 20 on that Money check.

doppelgreener

@Yuuki well. the door will be open. but you still may not be any good at anything.

you're clearly good at underhanded negotiation and bribery.

Simon H.

@SirCinnamon Think about this: how come some students in colleges and universities can get better at their subjects and have better grades despite practicing/studying less, if at all?

Sir Cinnamon

@SimonH. Intelligence

(with fat air quotes)

Yuuki

@doppelgreener That's when you hit them with the "donation is contingent on me getting my diploma" check.

doppelgreener

21:31

I dunno about you, but when I went to university I had already been learning about the subjects I went out to study. (It's why I picked those up to study, I knew about them and liked them.) I sucked at applying myself though due to undiagnosed clinical depression & generalised anxiety, and went well in my first years but only barely passed my final year.

(The decline in quality of my grades over the course of my university years is actually completely linear.)

BESW

Whereas one of the reasons for my grade fluctuations in college was adjusting to a new culture because I went to university halfway around the world.

Simon H.

While I'm not the brightest bulb in the bunch, I got between 90-100% scores in school on every test and assignment without studying once in my entire stay. I knew people who actually cared about these assignments and would study entire days away at times, and would get lower grades, comparatively

kviiri

@doppelgreener Sounds all too familiar. I was in the army (conscript) before starting University (but after being admitted) and reading computer science was one of my softcore ways to rebel against the brainlessness of certain aspects of military culture.

doppelgreener

My first year was 6's and 7's (average 6.5), my second was 5's and 6's (average 5.5), my third year was 4's and 5's (average 4.5). In this system, 7 is the top grade, 4-7 are passing grades, and 1-3 are failing grades.

Simon H.

Some people are disadvantaged in their studies, regardless of how much they care about them.

doppelgreener

21:34

There is one subject I should have failed -- I completely, utterly, bombed out on it -- and I suspect I was only passed because the tutor didn't even want me to repeat & didn't want me involved again. :U

(It was a mandatory class.)

BESW

I think the useful comparison here is that neither ability stats nor alignments map usefully to real-world concepts, not even as very simplified abstractions, given even the most cursory examination.

kviiri

They're game mechanics, first and foremost, yep.

BESW

We're very complex folks in a very complex world, and D&D isn't really built for subjective complexity or social nuance.

doppelgreener

In that subject, we were graded based on our ability to do projects for outside sources that came to the university for help. The selection of projects I was saddled with, I couldn't do any of them. None of them were my technical forte. The one I chose, I really, really couldn't do, but I had to choose one. At the time I didn't have close relationships with any staff and didn't know how to interact with them and negotiate.

So I just ... didn't deliver anything that worked, and anxiety had me avoid absolutely all contact regarding any of it.

BESW

It's rooted in adapting stories that are already highly simplified representations of humanity, and it's simplified those stories even more in the adaptation. Attempting to map it back onto reality is gonna be an exercise in wishful interpretation.

Simon H.

21:38

@BESW The stats always confused me starting off, though. They're just so jarringly different from what I had expected.

kviiri

Even as a game mechanic, I think the six-attribute system along with the usual score ranges is mainly kept alive by tradition at this point.

doppelgreener

Basically the least proud period of my life, but it was a pretty garbage situation to be in anyway, especially given the condition I was in at the time.

kviiri

@doppelgreener Sounds an awful lot like my Master's Thesis. I feel you. :<

My solace is that this seems to be very common in this field.

Simon H.

@doppelgreener That reminds me of my freshman year of high school

BESW

Now, alignment as political alignment in an ideological war between tangible factions, that version works a lot better.

Yuuki

21:40

So a short summary of D&D attributes is as follows:

Simon H.

None of the classes were in-person

Yuuki

> Strength is the ability to do well on Strength checks
> Dexterity is the ability to do well on Dexterity checks
> Constitution is the ability to do well on Constitution checks
> Intelligence is the ability to do well on Intelligence checks
> Wisdom is the ability to do well on Wisdom checks
> Charisma is the ability to do well on Charisma checks

Simon H.

@Yuuki 11/10

BESW

@kviiri Yeah, ranked phrasal attributes do so much better at almost every task.

kviiri

Proficiency with a shovel is the ability to do well on well digging checks.

doppelgreener

21:42

@kviiri I am relieved to hear that's not just me who went through something like that, and for the first time I'm considering there were probably a lot of students who got similarly screwed.

kviiri

@BESW The very least they could do is get rid of the separation between the "score" and the "modifier". It's weird how "score" is supposedly the true value but "modifier" is the one used 99.9% of the time.

doppelgreener

The class was not great, the offerings for project work that year were not good, and that degree's curriculum had been completely overhauled right before I started so we were the first cohort going through the new curriculum and discovering all of its bumps and wrinkles.

Simon H.

BESW

@kviiri There's a useful mathematical model there, to allow incremental growth which feels faster than it actually is by doubling the amount of growth needed for actual advancement.

(Again, 4e did something cool with that by having your Con score determine your base hit point total. I would've liked to see more of that principle in action.)

Yuuki

@kviiri D&D does need to use your score a bit more often, I'd think.

BESW

21:45

BUFFALO *bribes a valet for information*: Thank you for your discretion and intelligence. ELEPHANT: Intelligence? BUFFALO: I didn't have to break his legs. That's intelligent.

Tweeted by UrsulaV on February 27, 2018 at 2:26 AM in reply to UrsulaV

Yuuki

Like rather than rolling a CON check to recover from poison, maybe use a chart to see how long someone with a CON score of X takes to recover.

Simon H.

I like the scale of D&D's stats, though.

kviiri

@BESW I dunno, it mostly feels like a trap for new players that odd scores are basically wasted attribute points when an even one could be achieved instead

Simon H.

Even a lvl 1 monster still has a chance of getting through your AC and hitting you because the score doesn't increase too much over time.

BESW

@kviiri That'd be why 4e recommends using one of the standard arrays rather than point buy--to eliminate that trap unless/until you want to engage with it.

kviiri

21:47

@Yuuki I think they should just pick one value and use it for all purposes

@BESW Stdarray is sadly rather underrated.

Simon H.

@kviiri Yeah, but what other confusing elements of the game are new players having trouble with?

BESW

And you also get +1 to all stats at levels 11 and 21, in addition to +1 to two stats of your choice at 4/8/14/18/24/28.

Yuuki

@kviiri That's because std::vector is so much easier to use.

kviiri

When I was new to the hobby, pretty much everyone in our group associated RPGs with randomness and rolling stats was, of course, a good way to worship this phenomenon.

2

@SimonH. In DnD 5e? It'd be a long list.

BESW

(And if you pick your ED carefully, another +2 to two stats you value.)

@kviiri All toil at the Arbitrary Whim of the Numbers Lord!

Simon H.

21:50

I'm more into the RP than the roll-play personally, stats can get in the way of a good game

kviiri

@SimonH. The one that keeps popping up regarding 5e is attack (the mechanic for resolving hit versus AC) versus Attack (the action)

Simon H.

I just hate it when you deliver a speech to convince someone of something and it's all wasted because your dice didn't feel like it

@kviiri Yeah, they should've just called hit accuracy or something

You roll for accuracy, not damage like the name seems to imply

kviiri

@SimonH. Well, that beats delivering a speech to convince someone of something and it's all wasted because your GM didn't feel like it.

Yuuki

I get that it's a style choice, but I still don't like AC being a hit-or-miss check.

BESW

This is why systems like Fate and Cthulhu Dark fascinate me so, because their mechanics dramatically shift the inflection point for success.

Simon H.

21:53

@kviiri And with both problems combined, they are...!

@BESW I like CoC's three-difficulty system

BESW

Graded difficulties are nice, but BRP isn't a great system for using mechanics to push horror because failure is still a dice-led phenomenon. Most of the time when you fail in BRP, you had a chance to succeed, however small, so the despair expected in a cosmic fear game doesn't set in--it's just frustration.

Yuuki

@BESW Despair is a bit hard to induce anyways, given that there's a natural emotional distance between you and your character.

BESW

Compare Cthulhu Dark, where it's almost impossible to completely fail at anything you could possibly succeed at (another person at the table has to actually request a failure chance, and even then it's unlikely).

Simon H.

@BESW I get what you mean, but would automatic fails really fix the problem?

kviiri

Anyway, as I've played more and tried more systems, I've found the "roll-play" versus "role-play" dichotomy to not be very apt at describing the conflicts in game style I encounter.

Simon H.

21:57

I'm not sure there's really a good way without keeping rolls completely secret - fear can easily be rooted in uncertainty

BESW

The dice determine how well you succeed, not whether you succeed at all, which means that failure to confront the monster effectively is not a matter of bad dice--it's that the threat is just really that far out of your league it doesn't matter that you succeed at everything you could possibly try.

Similarly, the horror game Don't Rest Your Head grants automatic success when you invoke your insomnia-driven superpowers. Instead, the dice determine what fallout ensues from using those powers: in particular, the tension comes from how using your always-successful powers tends to make those abilities even more powerful at the cost of inching closer to losing your identity and becoming a monster.

kviiri

Small case study: no one in our group wants to do stereotypical "roll-gaming" or minmaxing. Some denounce powergaming as a heresy. But we wind up doing it anyway, because many systems we play encourage it to a significant degree.

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