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21:00
@SPavel A Russian guy died in the sauna championships less than ten years ago too. Personally, I disapprove of treating sauna as a competition even when no casualties are involved.
lesbian romance novel about a female astronaut who travels into space in search of love: "is there wife on mars?"
@BESW ewwwwww
@kviiri Russians going into Finland do not have a good survival record
@trogdor he did! in this one he was flapping his wings around :D
Last time you guys only lost because we had more guys than you had bullets
21:01
@Rubiksmoose Like, I'm a regular on this IRC channel where we discuss the IT consultancy biz, strategy games, formal computer science, math etc geeky stuff. And jokes. I have this problem where I try to describe some really cool computability thing and people just reply "I was totally expecting a punchline by now"
@Yuuki And now I have David Bowie stuck in my head. I do not disagree with this.
some stuff i read about eagles said they never get pushed out of the nest, and don't need to -- they're often eager themselves to get started on flying and don't need prompting, but the parents might do things like put food on a nearby branch to encourage them to fly to it.
@SPavel tl;dr every Russian victory
@Yuuki Not even close to true
@SPavel The nickel mines in Petsamo are nice, it's a shame we lost them. And some biz about Karelia
21:02
Khalkin Gol was won due to superior tactics, the European theatre was won due to superior logistics, Napoleon was beaten due to terrible logistics, I could go on
@doppelgreener We did that with my first child, put chocolate chips on the ground out of her reach to encourage her to crawl
@SPavel By convention, the outcomes of the Winter and Continuation wars are referred to in Finnish as "defensive victories" (although I think the usage is waning)
Okay, there's that and people insisting on fighting during Russian winters.
@kviiri hahaha! That is amazing. And I'm not sure I've ever seen you do it in here even.
21:04
@Yuuki Again, no - Barbarossa started in June, as did napoleon's invasion
@Rubiksmoose Yeah, I'm not exactly in my usual mode here :P
@BESW No, and sadly I had to google it to understand it :)
Napoleon didn't even last til winter, the Grande Armee was booted out by October
> 24 June 1812 – 14 December 1812
I feel like that includes winter.
Maybe not, it's possible that Russian winter doesn't begin until January.
@Yuuki Napoleon began the retreat in October, by then the army was already shattered
@Yuuki Regarding this, there's a fair bit of discussion among historians about the true extent of the Russian winter and its effects... the Western powers have a history of considering Russia as a "less worthy" state or a barely civilized wilderness, and exaggerating the effects of the winter season are a plausible psychological and political defense because heavens forbid the Russians actually having good strategies, men or equipment amirite?
21:07
@BESW I'm so glad I'm the only one here right now. I just laughed pop up into my nose.
The keys to his defeat lay in the Russian fall: the dirt roads turned to mud as the rains came, bogging down artillery and supply trains. Partisans burned crops, denying the army any forage.
In the summer Napoleon was doing well
@kviiri Actually Russian strategies tend to be very bad, but the equipment varies in quality. For example, at the start of WWII, the best tanks in the world were Russian.
At the start of the Napoleonic wars, however, Russia was using garbage obsolete equipment, same goes for WWI
"we need good tank for motherland" was a good move by the Soviets, but instead of writing doctrine for those tanks, they shot all the officers
@kviiri I guess, but personally I don't think blaming your losses on the winter season is really a good defense when it's not a particularly rare phenomenon (it's a quarter of the year).
So what happened was that conscripts drove the great tanks straight across an open field, and got bombed by Stukas
Hitler's plan was to win before the winter
It did not work out that way
What would be the consequences of making all attacks genuinely simultaneous in combat? (Initiative is only a factor for abilities and order of literal rolling)
@DavidCoffron How do you separate an attack and an ability?
What about movement?
21:12
@Rubiksmoose Now try this one. (cc @kviiri)
No I mean like abilities that rely on you going before someone else would still trigger if your 'initiative' were higher
Movement would also be simultaneous
Area-targeted spells become either ridiculously strong or ridiculously weak.
@DavidCoffron So everyone decides how to move and then goes "ok here's how I will move"?
> "I'll cast Color Spray."
> "All of the goblins move out of the way as you cast your spell."
What if three people want to move into the same square
21:15
@SPavel Everything in a 5-mile radius takes 100d6 fire damage.
What if one person, upon seeing how another person moves, wishes to change the move - in the way that a football player will try and run the other way from the defense
And anything that survives is poisoned for d100 years.
@doppelgreener XD
Wait, when did we start playing "En Garde!"?
Honestly I can't think of a case where simultaneous resolution actually works well
21:16
@SPavel You are right. It's probably better to just to narrate things as simultaneous but leave the effects to resolve on turn order
@SPavel Again, "En Garde!"
@SPavel I dunno, the scorched earth strategies were rather good
@BESW I don't know what you mean by this
@kviiri No because the next year, the peasants all starved
@SPavel It's a simultaneous-turn dueling RPG.
And by what I know the Russians, while possessing a manpower advantage, weren't exactly bad with their tactics either in WWII either.
21:17
@BESW Not D&D, not what we're discussing
@kviiri The worst tactics
See also: embedded political commissars
@SPavel to be fair I didn't specify a system:P
@SPavel Hm, wasn't that more of an early phase thing? (I must confess I'm not exactly a connoisseur)
@DavidCoffron Implicit.
@kviiri I think they got rid of them by like 1943
Around the time they started winning
@BESW That's a good one definitely
@Rubiksmoose @BESW one of the reasons you don't hear so many puns from me here is that the best ones are in Finnish :<
@DavidCoffron I've run that before. You have to have players declare actions all before resolving them.
It's
21:20
I think you'd have to give all activities time frames and move frame by frame for it to work which would get messy.
Otherwise some things would clash
I have one good English one that's my own work but it was way more topical back when I told it the first time
It does show things a bit because you split declaration and resolution for each round.
Sep 16 '16 at 5:11, by BESW
Local greeting card's cover:
NANA NANA
NANA NANA
NANA NANA
NANA NANA
Sep 16 '16 at 5:11, by BESW
Inside card:
"WHAT, NAI?"
@DavidCoffron Then you run into problems with things like: John has one attack per round and Jack has four attacks per round, how many "ticks" is an attack?
@SPavel that's just it. Everything about timing would change
21:21
It's not exactly a pun either but...
> What do Ubisoft and North Korea have in common?
> - Both fail their launches when rushed for spiritual leader's birthday.
@BESW lol
@kviiri Why is EA the worst gaming publisher in America? Because Ubisoft is in France.
@SPavel it would be a whole new combat system
@SPavel this is one of my favorites by far
@SPavel John needs to allocate attack targets at the start of the time frame. No switching after declaration since it's simultaneous
21:22
@BESW I don't get it :<
@ColinGross What happens when multiple creatures move into the same square?
Collision
@DavidCoffron Annihilation.
Wait no, that's only when two creatures of opposite alignments move into the same square.
@ColinGross Yet more #fakerules by crooked DMs...there was no collision
You also have a number of Overkill incidents
21:23
@ColinGross that's strange. If I see someone running towards me, im not just gonna ram into them. I'll stop or dodge to the side, or put up my spear. You know?
Great, more alignment rules.
Alternately, impromptu game of Twister.
@SPavel I just realized how close "DMs" is to "dems." So many meme possibilties
@DavidCoffron Low energy DM (widely known to employ goblins) claims I rolled a 1, nobody reporting on the critical successes of my team
@DavidCoffron you might not see them it know where they're going.. It's chaotic
@kviiri On the outside of the card it looks like it's the Adam West Batman theme song. But "Nana" is an affectionate term for a grandmotherly figure too. So it's a kid bugging his nana for attention. The inside of the card, instead of being a Batman joke, is a nana's typical exasperated response to being pestered so much--"Nai" is kind of an exasperated intensifier pronoun.
21:26
@Yuuki Yeah, I always run my game with a 5-dimensional alignment grid. Law-chaos, Evil-good, Yaw, Pitch and Roll.
8
> Player: "I turn to face the gobli..."
> GM: "That'll change your alignment. Are you sure?"
@ColinGross trained fighters don't do things like that (I use to compete in martial arts). It's not chaotic if you know what to pay attention to
@ColinGross A fighter can either know where it is or where it is going, not both
@kviiri The Opposable Joints feat is a bit overpowered in this system, I would imagine.
@kviiri do I become an antipaladin if my Yaw gets too low?
@DavidCoffron Just try to avoid stunt snowboarding.
Incidentally, this is why skateboarding is illegal in certain places. It's morally corrupting.
21:32
@kviiri Chaotic Leeward?
@DavidCoffron I also did a lot of competition sports. Usually I was moving a few steps ahead. Sometimes, collision.
@BESW His name is Jackie!
@ColinGross if momentum carried you, but in combat you aren't always running full force
In fact most of the time you aren't
(Not to be confused with Chaotic Lee Ward.)
rockets! \o/
launching in a while
in about 10 minutes
21:35
You kids and your 5-dimensions. Back in my day we only Hubward, Rimward, Turnwise and Widdershins, and that's the way we liked it!
@GreySage how did you handle ladders?
@doppelgreener Ladders hadn't been invented yet
@GreySage Is that what rocket launchers were for?
@doppelgreener You use the latter dimension
...now I'm thinking about geocentric alignment grids.
21:41
alignment epicycles
Kaja-Kelod / Kuah-Kangin
(roughly, Balinese for "uphill-downhill / clockwise-counterclockwise")
Alignment tricycle.
(where the height directions are "toward/away from the highest visible landmass" and the turning directions are which way you would follow the coast)
@ACuriousMind oh don't talk about epicycles. I designed a hyper realistic sci-fi rpg where that was actually how the universe worked and we spent forever targeting our "death stars"
I'd like to stick here and joke with you but I need to work on my thesis now, need all the concentration I can muster :|
See y'all tomorrow!
21:43
ttfn
@BESW 'til the final night?
tame the fearsome ninja
Ninja clearly being a metaphor for the thesis
Triscuits taste fine, Nana.
@ACuriousMind Can my thesis just be a video of me taming a rabbit ninja
I meant rabid* ninja but that is even better
Rabbit ninja...there's my nightmare for tonight, and the boss of my next dungeon.
Now if only I played D&D ;P
What do you play?
@DavidCoffron Being German, the "default" fantasy RPG around here is The Dark Eye, not D&D. I also play Fate, PtbA games and recently some oneshots of VtM and Cthulhu, but my sole experience with D&D are the computer RPGs based on it
@ACuriousMind Golden Sky Stories lets you play as a rabbit henge.
I've heard of three of those..
21:51
I like that the only legible word in that image is "RABBIT" :D
They have powers like drooping their ears to look sad when they fail a check, in order to gain Feelings equal to their relationship with someone else in the scene.
@BESW What does "henge" mean there, though? I only know it as in "Stonehenge", so I'm guessing I'm playing a circle of huge monoliths in the shape of rabbits?
Ah, yeah, totally unrelated: in this context, "henge" is a Japanese word for an animal with shape-shifting powers.
(see also yōkai, a more generic term for supernatural beings, which is why the D&D version is called hengeyokai.)
The Japanese word is pronounced something like hen-gay.
You mean I pronounced it right!? I'm shocked.
Hen-gay-yo-kai was how I read it
My brother always said hen-gee
22:00
@DavidCoffron both "e"s in henge would have exactly the same sound (as in "hen") but otherwise yes
Yay
Accidental Japanese proper
@doppelgreener I took my pronunciation guide from Golden Sky Stories.
@BESW it has one? :O
that sounds useful for it to have, come to think of it :P
"Henge" is Romanized poorly, imo. Should be "hengei". But then again, I'm used to Chinese pinyin.
@DavidCoffron The equivalent Romanization for that would be "henji" or "henjii", IIRC.
'g' is the hard g sound while 'j' is the soft g sound, I believe.
@Yuuki except he pronounced with a hard g
So hengii kind of
22:04
@Yuuki from what i can tell that would be incorrect: the word is ε€‰εŒ–, or へんげ; romanizing it as hengei would suggest the word is へんげい when it isn't
I'm just using the examples from the Wikipedia article.
> The sound of a hard ⟨g⟩ (which often precedes the non-front vowels ⟨a o u⟩) is usually the voiced velar plosive [Ι‘] (as in gangrene or golf) while the sound of a soft ⟨g⟩ (typically before ⟨i e y⟩) may be a fricative or affricate, depending on the language. In English, the sound of soft ⟨g⟩ is the affricate /dΚ’/, as in Genesis, giraffe, and gymnasium.
(page 14.)
@doppelgreener My qualification is that I'm used to Chinese pinyin.
In that system, "gei" produces the "ge" sound in "henge".
@BESW gotcha. missed that you were the one that said it. :P works well enough for english, but it's almost-but-not-quite there
i guess it's mostly nitpicking though
@Yuuki that'd do it
this is japanese so 'gei' would tell us to do a long e
22:07
Incidentally, Google Translate does not do tones well.
GΔ›i has a bit of a dip down and up in tone, as indicated by the accent.
@doppelgreener Yeah, storyteller mode, not tour guide mode. It's the only word they give any pronunciation guide for at all in the book, presumably just because the word comes up so much and looks like a totally different English word.
yeah it is at least important we don't pronounce it like stonehenge XD
@BESW as a former tour guide, we do make stuff up on occasion
Like tough questions that we don't feel like explaining fully or ones that we don't know the answer to, but know that the person won't fact check and isn't important enough to ask the resident expert
@DavidCoffron I'm trying to find that one Parks and Rec clip of Andy giving April a tour of Washington D.C.
@DavidCoffron Hah. There's a whole park near where I grew up based on taking a local historical event and exaggerating it to the point of fantasy.
22:12
Or that ^
The guide speech we had to learn has obvious fabrications in it
Hahahaha
I do remember that
It's been a while since I watched parks and rec though
@Rubiksmoose yay! bad uses of actions!
@SPavel French had the best medium tanks as the war began, but we never hear about them due to their being awfully deployed. Russian tanks in WW II were good.
@kviiri US Army still studies Russian WW II Operational Art at War College. The White Russian Campaign (Bagration) is a clinic in how to do that.
22:30
@KorvinStarmast France had the best large tanks too, hands down: eutouring.com/cineaqua_aquarium_in_paris.html
which one do you mean? maybe Two Lovers Point?
@trogdor Nah, that's clearly a legend; I'm talking about Talofofo Falls with Yokoi's "cave."
oh
ok
I said that one because it's been turned into a huge tourist spot
not because it wasn't a legend
Yeah, but they aren't trying to pass it off as history.
That's what David was talking about.
@trogdor Are we on for Saturday night, or is that another week off? My son graduates college and we have a dinner early evening. Daughter in town. Hi odds I will not be in ToA.
22:36
mm ok
We can get a sub for me if needed, if we start asking now?
@KorvinStarmast I think we are waiting for one more week?
Ok, I asked in Back Room and got no reply ...
it's hard to keep track though, when we have skipped so many times
RL is what it is ... and we do have some time zone fun. :)
22:38
yes
cheers, talk atcha later ...
@DavidCoffron I never made stuff up, but I had the benifit of being able to just read stuff, I was very enthusiastic volunteering at the park when I was doing that
not so sure I would be willing to spend my free time on that anymore though
@doppelgreener as a student of Japanese I can say that you are exactly correct!
@Rubiksmoose yayyy!!
i used my secret powers of googling it and digging around until i found a corresponding entry on the japanese wiktionary
@doppelgreener jisho.org/search/henge this is a great resource as well in case this is something that comes up a lot 😊
22:46
@Rubiksmoose As a student of studenting I can say that you are correct that he is correct
@DavidCoffron yay students!
@Rubiksmoose Although I graduate this summer and I'm SO glad
@Rubiksmoose oh wow. thanks! this is useful.
@DavidCoffron that is good. I enjoy learning but student life is not something I care to deal with long term. Luckily Japanese is a work thing so I'm getting paid to learn it.
@Rubiksmoose I wish. My work barely paid me to learn how to design our website. (Only paid me during the time I spent learning how on site)
Uh... on work-site not website
Ambiguity...
22:52
@DavidCoffron ohhhh that makes more sense. But only slightly less crappy.
@Rubiksmoose Meh, now I can make websites though so I could freelance on the side once I graduate (so I actually have time). Turned out okay
Also vaguely relared I'm actually reading a book on the magical cats of Japan in which henge plays a big part.
@DavidCoffron well... I guess it does work out. Still.
@Rubiksmoose I have been low-key studying some Japanese for a while. learning some words, and learning hiragana. i've got some more immediate goals to handle first over the next 3-4 months, but after that i'll be assessing attending a biweekly meetup to learn & converse in japanese over dinner.
@doppelgreener I think the language is fascinating honestly. So different from English in so many ways. I really enjoy learning it even though it is a lot of work.
I hope you definitely have the time to attend those meetings.
23:12
thanks :)
23:22
@doppelgreener that's pretty dang cool
it's been fun learning it :D
I would love to learn Japanese but I have had serious trouble just trying to learn Spanish
I lost all my classroom Spanish because I never got to use it.
I'm slowly trying to acquire Chamoru vocabulary, but immersion is... difficult to achieve.
And one would think that would be easier seeing as I start from English
@BESW apparently as a kid I used to be pretty close to fluent
[jealous]
23:26
I hardly remember anything now though
Last night I learned a new subtlety to "saina" that I didn't know before!
I had early classes and a large amount of immerison outside of home
Saina is to manåmko as elder is to elderly. I.... guess I sort of knew that? But somebody used it to make that distinction and I went "What, what? Explain!"
(The difference between being old and wise, and just being old. And the respect and gravitas and especially the leadership position that comes with the former.)
I definitely also remember having memorized the Fanoge Chamoru in English and Chamoru,.... Switch those around for order
Oh, yeah, I don't think I ever properly knew Fanoghe Chamoru in English.
23:30
@BESW oh nice ok
Didn't know that myself
I was talking to someone about how academia on Guam struggles with integrating with local knowledge systems.
@BESW I had a paper in like, I think 3rd grade maybe, that we got that had it in both languages
So when I memorized it to be able to say it, I then read and memorized it in English
Though I don't think I said it in English to be fair, I just knew it for a while
@trogdor We sang them both every morning in middle school, but nobody ever sang it in English outside of that context, and I could read along with the English on the board, so I never bothered memorizing it--the Chamoru was the only one people ever sang when I didn't have the words right there in front of me.
@BESW we never sang it in English that I recall
Or maybe we did and I just don't remember
It sounds so much better in Chamoru anyway, despite having originally been written in English and only translated fifty years later.
23:34
I suppose it would make sense if we did seeing as we had it in English too
@BESW it does sound better yeah
I actually didn't know it was written in English
It seemed so good in Chamoru that I thought someone wrote it in that
Written in English by a Chamoru in 1919 when Chamoru was strongly discouraged, then translated 55 years later, around the time of the Organic Act.
Ah
@BESW we had it written on the board but practiced it without it on the board too until we could do it, and we also got that sheet so we could practice at home
So that helped a lot
Yeah, you were in school for more of the push to get Chamoru into the classroom.
Especially since at that time I was a very diligent study
I figured
I only ever had one semester of Chamoru class in school and that was more history than language.
23:41
Well, it hardly matters now
I don't remember much of what I learned anymore X/
1
Q: Should this answer have been split into 5 different answers?

Baskakov_DmitriyThis answer to the "Finding ways to β€œnerf” a PC that is too strong with base stats, after a long period of playing" question raises 5 different points which are 5 different methods to solve the problem. They all don't seem to be compatible, it seems to me that each solution is supposed to be used...

@TheOracle SUNDER it! XD

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