@MikeQ I've had pretty good success with this as far as short adventures go.

@Rubiksmoose Tofu people! Tofu people! Jiggle like tofu, talk like people!

Anyway, I think starting with something existing and adapting and growing from there is a useful tip if you don't feel comfortable making up your own thing from scratch.

XD

Ugh meeting time.

@Yuuki Oh, just jump right into your own...wcgy?

@Maximillian Meat treated with antibiotics people.

"'World's oldest woman', 128, says she's been miserable every day of her life and her long life is a punishment from God"

Great character concept

@kviiri National Holiday in Norway, that's what's up!

Note: said woman is from Chechnya (predominantly Muslim and very unstable region of Russia) and lived through WWI, the Russian Civil War, WWII, the two Chechnya wars, a deportation to Siberia by Stalin, and outlived the USSR

@Yuuki So a meatspace game? Great. What system?

@Maximillian The Solar System, otherwise the commute is untenable

@Maximillian 5e probably. Although I’m remembering that I once thought about a hybrid Fate+4e game.

Opinion: Okay, take thoughts of 4E, put them in a box, and find them next winter.

5E is a fine choice, accessible to newbies and veterans alike.

@Maximillian Rebuttal: Do not do this, for by fall the seeds will have sprouted into a mighty tree that connects the Earth to the Outer Spheres and forms a Bridge for the Dark Things to invade our realm

If you're under a year or two of GMing experience, go with the pre-published adventure. It's what they're there for. If you need a one-off session... I'm not sure how hard it is to get hands on Adventure League adventures.

@SPavel No, it's fine, Heimdall turned off the rainbow bridge.

@Maximillian Right, so you don't want to replace it with the twisted, jagged, monstrous husk of the 4e Tree

@Maximillian … If you have under a year or two of GMing experience, dare to use your own creativity before it's stifled by the general assumptions pre-written adventures come with? (Along the lines of genius experiences with first-time players coming up with amazing ideas, sometimes more creative than some long-time players.)

Yeah genius ideas like seducing the catfish

@Maximillian Not saying your suggestion is bad. Just offering an alternative.

@Anaphory I want to agree with this, but in practice I've found that it's easier to learn good habits than to unlearn bad ones

@Anaphory I think you're overvaluing my creativity here.

As in, start with stuff that's reliable and probably overdone, then add personal touches until you like the result. Instead of starting with a completely homebrew concept and then pruning it to be "closer" to existing formulas.

@Yuuki No. I'm definitely not. You are creative enough, otherwise you wouldn't be here and you wouldn't have been a GM! :)

That argument also stinks of the "studio execs/literary editors ruin an artist's vision" viewpoint/trope. Which I personally have issues with.

@Anaphory idk I've had some uncreative GMs

Like "how can I fit a butler character into a nobles' intrigue plot" guy

Yes, there's no doubt that there have been multiple occasions of higher-ups destroying an artist's vision (Blade Runner, for example) but there are also occasions where an author or director clearly benefited from having someone rein them in (Star Wars).

A premade adventure, especially a Wizard of the Coast stamped one likely adheres to a strict set of guidelines and will be a passable, if somewhat predictable adventure. The good news is this will likely reduce chaos moments where you players attempt something so utterly wild, you have no idea how to use the remaining material in light of that.

And I feel like the latter case is probably more common than the former, tbh.

GMing your own story often consists of a rough guideline of notes and having to improvise and make it look like you were planning for such an event all along. It takes a little experience to get good at that.

@Maximillian Right, and familiarizing oneself with the formula of "passable and predictable adventure" will help build that experience

I'd say that "play a pre-made" works well for D&D because it demonstrates what the system is good for. If you want to unlock your players' creativity before they are burdened by the yoke of the Coastal Wizard, then play Fate for a few sessions

What elements work? Why do they work? What elements would I want more or less of?

Plus, I feel like most beginning "creative" DMs treat DMing more like creative writing, where they are in control of the narrative and the plot.

Also I'd recommend handing your players a 3x5 notecard and asking them to write on it "Tell me three things that are true about your character." This is a great way to get them to think about story and character building without falling into giving you nothing, shrugging 'I dunno', and/or handing you six pages of extensive backstory you can't possibly work with.

When D&D is more of a collaborative creative venture. You as the DM should not be the only person making the story.

@Yuuki Yes, and this is one of the big lessons for creative people who want to run their dream adventure

@Yuuki Exactly the right mindset. Too many DMs approach this as a "here's my story, you're in it".

As DM you are hosting a collaborative storytelling experience. Usually this means guiding them toward the planned adventure. Some will call this railroading. I prefer to think of it as, "Guys this is the only adventure I've got, can we please stop exploring the weapon shop for guild corruption? I have nothing for this."

There's a lot of sense that you should "surprise" your players so you can get an authentic reaction and decisionmaking.

@Maximillian I liked nitsua60's “Give me your name, class, level and one thing about you I wouldn't guess from those things”, but I haven't tried it.

@NautArch Usually it's more like "here's my story, you're next to it"

Sometimes there are great player hooks.

Which, in my opinion, doesn't really work unless your players are master-class method actors.

Sometimes there are distractions so big that you never get to the main story arc you had planned.

This is why I never plan

@Maximillian The way I'm building mine is to create hooks and a main story that progresses. If they opt to do side things, I'll indulge, but the main story will still move forward.

I think we may be talking about different things here

You have to find a happy balance for your table.

And for my world, that's bad news for their world. Incentive for railroading is built in :)

@Maximillian … Or you can start making up stuff about guild corruption, if your players turn out to love investigation.

I've been surprised by a DM on more than one occasion and that always results in OOC performances because I go with my gut instincts, which is "non-confrontational jokester".

There are tools for building an adventure, and there are tools for managing sessions and gameplay

@MikeQ can't have one without the other, though!

DMs shouldn't be afraid to talk over future plot points or hooks with players and try to formulate a cohesive and sensible story before the party actually gets there.

@NautArch Not necessarily. There are ways to run freeform unstructured adventures, while maintaining structured sessions. But yes, in general, a GM should have both sets of tools.

I can also conjecture that the second set of tools - how to manage sessions and gameplay - is easier to pick up. Treat players fairly, know when and when not to railroad, know the rules, know when to handwave things for the sake of simplicity.

Also, try observing bad GMs and learn what not to do in-game

Running a session as a GM is 10% knowing the game and 90% being a decent person

That 90% consists of extremely transferable and employable soft skills

@Yuuki An 'adventure roadmap' is okay to help give the party an idea if they're in Act 2 or Act 4.

@SPavel I'd say closer to 50/50. I wouldn't want a GM who doesn't know the rules well enough to enforce them, so they let the players boss them around.

@MikeQ Being a decent person has nothing to do with being nice

@MikeQ Neither does enforcing the rules automatically equal good fun

There are many groups that are not on a first name basis with the rules, and get their fun from hanging out; a good GM will run with that when it happens

50/50 is saying that the set of rules in a TTRPG, in their entirety, is equivalent in complexity to the set of rules for social discourse.

And that can never be true. It just cannot.

My first GM had a very rough grasp on the system rules, so success or failure was 100% their discretion - if we could convince him that something should or shouldn't work, and he agreed, then it would or wouldn't work.

@MikeQ That's a GM that is not very good at the social aspect of GMing.

We soon learned that the GM had very poor scientific knowledge, so we could just technobabble him into letting us get away with anything

A socially adept GM would realize that his group wanted to resolve conflict by the rules, and sought to incorporate more of that and less "your honor, if I may call Jeremy Crawford to the stand"

@MikeQ did you have fun?

The GM is in charge and is welcome to rule on the spot, look up a rule, or make a temp decision and defer to later research. The party should go with their decision as a matter of trust. The key is to keep the game moving at a good pace and not get stuck in a rules quagmire.

@KorvinStarmast I did because I was younger and thought that any form of chaos was hilarious. The other players did not, because they expected some sort of structure and fairness and a semi-cohesive story.

Honestly, an evening of BSing technobabble sounds like great fun

if everyone else is in on it, naturally

@MikeQ Ah, interesting variation in fun there. Do you all still game together?

@SPavel Reverse the polarity!

@Yuuki If you do that you lose experience levels.

@Yuuki Use the sonic screwdriver!

@Yuuki Please, that would never work, everyone knows that the positron generator is a unipolar system

@KorvinStarmast The other players are still part of my tabletopping group. I have since GMed for some of them. The then-GM is no longer part of our social group, although that is for other reasons that I won't discuss here.

@GreySage I'm reversing the polarity and then you're reversing the polarity. We're just confusing the polarity at this point.

What you actually need to do is compile a GUI in Visual Basic that would allow you to patch KDE2 under FreeBSD

@Yuuki If you can confuse the polarity enough, maybe you can get it to give you 10 free levels.

@Yuuki Broke: Reversing the polarity. Woke: Oscillating the polarity until an electromagnetic field with its own polarity forms.

By using PWM you could even get fractional polarity

If my calculations are correct, we've just cracked quantum computing

@HellSaint Had to ask OP about sourcebooks. They've asked a few questions that imply they don't/haven't read them.

Amusing rules specific to my table: Players are not allowed to educate the pesantry about representative forms of government and rally them. Real world engineers are not allowed to explain the real science behind something (such as a crossbow) to defeat a rules argument (D&D is an emulation, not a simulation. It cuts corners). If you're about to do something funny that is just funny for you at the expense of one or more other players enjoyment, please just don't do it.

@Maximillian I'm being repressed!

Please do not let real world engineers attempt to construct devices out of multiple magic items, such as the infamous portable hole / bag of holding vortex arrow.

"We've got some trees here, and doing some math based on this one tree, we have enough cubic mass to build a crude trebuchet....."

@MikeQ Thanks, and sorry about that. :(

Oh no no no you don't want real physics fireball. My first DM did that.

"Fireball fills it's volume and you cast it in a 10' wide hall."

@Maximillian Fuel Air Explosives are a real world fireball.

So he channeled the remaining volume of the fireball up and down the hall.

Good news: we got the baddies. Bad news: we also got us.

@Maximillian Good luck educating peasants, they can't even read

@Maximillian That happened to us in 1e AD&D. ouch!

@KorvinStarmast The rest of us do occasionally reminisce about the utter chaos of that game though. It was my first full campaign and the experiences were very memorable, although none of us can actually remember the plot.

@Maximillian I usually let attempts at "scientific magic" backfire hilariously and painfully :P

Marxist dialectic is great, but there are fields to plough and kids to feed (and not the other way around)

@MikeQ Heh, who needs a plot if you are having fun? 8^D

Then using a protractor our 2E wizard used lightning bolt to optimally bounce off stone walls in a ruin to hit multiple targets.

I've had... interesting parties.

@Maximillian If my players tried that, I would insist that it's at least a move action to draw the protractor from the wizard's belt, and a standard to aim

@KorvinStarmast Basically, I had convinced the GM to let me create objects, with some specific limitations. But soon I learned to abuse this, by creating concepts or energy. During the final battle, I "created" a directional thermonuclear blast.

None of this "using tools the wizard doesn't have, in timeframes that he hasn't got" nonsense

Anyway, the important thing is to keep the game moving so that people don't pull out phones and go on reddit.

High INT doesn't mean the wizard is trained in geometry, show me the skill ranks and we'll talk about it

@Maximillian So I'm going to have a similar rule for my superhero campaign in which no less than 3 physicists will be participating.

@MikeQ Sounds like fun! 8^D Things that blow up in game are fun by definition, I think?

Let's make it a DC 20 INT check, for every point you miss the DC, there's a 1% margin of error on your angle...let's hope you don't hit the fighter again

@SPavel It's all about that Knowledge (engineering).

Or a Medieval Ion Cannon! :)

@Yuuki Nobody puts points into engineering

@KorvinStarmast By comparison, the other party members specialized at things like "Punch things really hard" or "Be good at lying", so there was a very gross power imbalance

Ironically, I think I am going to have more problems getting them to break physics and think with superhero science then with them trying to challenge rulings with physics.

@SPavel I thought that gnomes did that reflexively.

@KorvinStarmast No you're thinking of Profession (Gardening)

I forgot how I got onto this topic, what was I talking about again?

@MikeQ GMs that had a poor grasp of soft power

@SPavel Right, I suppose I had misinterpreted "being a decent person" as "letting the players do whatever they want", but I'm guessing you meant something different?

Being a decent person has nothing to do with letting players do whatever they want and everything to do with supporting the discontinuation of the penny mint.

@Rubiksmoose Physicists? Oh man do not have a power clash between Unstoppable Force / Immovable Object

You will cause them all to blue screen of death.

@NautArch That might explain it. I initially flagged it as Unclear because I was like "What?", then I had to re-read every Monk feature to make sure I was not crazy.

@HellSaint The username rang a bell and I looked up their history and found similar questions.

I've just read a very good answer about contributing as a Wizard at low levels. rpg.stackexchange.com/a/37362/30214

I think, playing at level 1 turns out to be a good idea, because it could teach a player that they should not forget about all the spells in their spellbook besides Fireball.

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Actual answer: cast sleep. Just kidding, I'm not sure if this is true for Pathfinder :P

Well, the actual answer in both 3.5e and Pathfinder is "cast Grease"

(Playing a Sorcerer now, so can't afford to learn Sleep)

Grease in PF is a bit absurd. It solves many things.

@Anaphory oh right! Everything's closed then?

Alternately, Color Spray.

Well, basically anything that disables without killing

Wizards are awesome with that

Common misconception: The optimal party is not warrior, thief, mage, priest. It's wizard, wizard, wizard, wizard.

Oh yeah, Grease was stupid earlier too!

haha! I knew there was a dupe of that martial arts question: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/79321/…

Or at least very very nearly a dupe.

@MikeQ No

It's Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Artificer

@Rubiksmoose this one at least makes a little more sense since the Shocking Grasp is a melee weapon attack.

@Baskakov_Dmitriy In 5e, maybe. I was referring to older editions.

Me too

I was speaking about 3.5e

Or PF

No Artificer in 5e, I'm afraid (unless it's a subclass of something)

@Rubiksmoose I liked the older title that asked if you could "attack with a monk"

Wait, PF doesn't have Artificers

PF has alchemist. 2/3 caster, gets buff spells and an AOE blast ability. 5e has artificer in UA.

Has 5e introduced any new classes at all, btw?

One of my engineer players challenged me on exactly what PF Grease is. It's not flamable. It's slick. Can it be used as a lubricant? Can it be used to make a superconductor? What's it's freeze point?

I wanted to throw dice. :|

And what have you decided?

Err, I mean, new classes after PHB. Not compared to earlier editions.

@MikeQ Lol, didn't notice that. I'm now imagining a Barbarian using a Monk as an improvised weapon.

@kviiri Nope. Just subclasses.

I decided many of his questions were out of scope because he just wanted to use Grease to solve everything.

It's not universal solvent.

5e's artificer is similarly scaled to arcane trickster, except with transmutation instead of illusion and enchantment

He did not like my response of "It does what the spell says it does."

@Rubiksmoose yeah, that's a dupe. It wasn't a dupe before the most recent edit (not by OP) specifying unarmed attack. I'm not sure if that was querent's intent, though.

@MikeQ Oops. I didn't notice you also commented on the dupe. I changed the title of the old question too.

@Maximillian I wouldn't have liked it either

Such a boring reading of that!

You ok there buddy?

fresh young corn getting shucked

This feels like "I'm silly and random" shenanigans.

→ 7 messages moved to Trashcan

@doppelgreener thanks.

@MikeQ he's on time out for a bit

@NautArch His original text question said "can I still use my bonus action to punch."

So it's safe to assume yes, he was asking about Unarmed Strikes

@NautArch also to be fair, it took a very good amount of search foo on my part to find that dupe. The only reason I tried so long was because I knew it existed.

@HellSaint ah, then yes! It's a dupe.

@HellSaint I wonder if a huge-sized magus can deliver Spellstrike if they wield another creature as a one-handed weapon...

@MikeQ I lost it with the "as a one-handed weapon"

It was the awful title and sparse body that made it especially hard.

@HellSaint Well, I hope you find it again.

Knowing where you lost it should help make it easier to find.

Post to meta

ok

Sometimes I'm really not sure why I ask questions to which I know what the answer is going to be...

"For those wondering everyone in my D&D group has access to this account."

@doppelgreener what do? I'm not sure how to adress the way they are updating this question of the off topic things it is getting updated with.

isnt that against the ToS?

@Rubiksmoose ....why? Why would a person ask very important questions about a group, and make that account available to everyone in the group?

And apparently the parents have the final say about who is/isn't in the group?

This story is getting weirder and weirder

@MikeQ Yes, I do mean something different

@Rubiksmoose That might explain some of the "WTF?" responses we got the other day ...

its a bit out of our hands

Sometimes I feel as if we're being tested.

@MikeQ "We go to school at St Brutus's Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys."

Looks like the account is suspended now atm

@Rubiksmoose It would appear as though we've been had?

But then again it's not a catastrophe of any magnitude.

I thought the only people with joint accounts were unfaithful spouses and old people

@KorvinStarmast I honestly have no idea....

@SPavel Hey, young people can have arthritis too.

Heh, I bit on the first question, and guess who argued not to close it as a dupe ... me. DOH! Egg on my face if that's the case.

@SPavel I've been using Facebook for ~ten years now, but I don't think I'm effectively the same person I was back then. I have a joint account with past me.

@KorvinStarmast To be fair, it is not a dupe so I think it was still a good choice.

before the question was locked, I was considering asking if it was in fact assault. I feel like there is a tightrope walk when trying to be tactful about this. Only this girl can define if it was assault, yet questioning the validity of the claim almost seems like victim shaming or something

It's possible that the entire gaming group is asking about the same situation, asking different questions based on their individual perspectives... but why would they be using the same account?

@MikeQ That is my question

speak of the devil

@kviiri Past you is dead

@Rubiksmoose wait what

@MIkeQ No idea, but if that's what's happening, it does explain a few of the odder vibes that was coming off of that ..... like the rep dump and bounties?

@SPavel The Finnish word for the grim reaper literally translates to "scythe man". I like to think he's the guy who handles conventional death, and the deaths of past me's are handled by a man wielding a lesser instrument... like a cheese grater

@kviiri An hourglass

@kviiri You mean trolled?

@SPavel How do you reap souls with an hourglass? (answer: very carefully)

@KorvinStarmast And how the accepted answers keep being swapped every hour

@kviiri You don't, he spends the day on Reddit and uses the hourglass to measure time until he can clock out and go home

Can you chat while suspended?

@HellSaint In less neutral terms, I guess. Although I'm still not going to assume any bad faith and besides I don't think things are really going seriously south anyway.

Doesnt appear so

>This user has been automatically suspended for posting inappropriate content and cannot chat for 8 minutes.

Ok, so we wait 8 minutes and then hear the explanation of this whole fiasco?

@PremierBromanov Ok, so it seems like chat and mainsite suspensions are independant (at least in some cases)

I'm wondering if we're just being trolled at this point.

assuming he stays suspended and not banned

@kviiri Same.

Well if anything they're getting a valuable lesson on why not to share login credentials

I'm excited, I haven't been part of a fiasco ever since the Linguini Fiasco

@GreySage We been punked, perhaps?

My search-fu is failing, I was looking for a question on how to GM as a new GM using modules, when your group is all power gamers that would know them already.

@JohnP "Don't" (7 times favourited answer, 5000 upvotes, 10000 bounty karma)

@Maximillian We were wondering about that since day 1, but @doppelgreener (I think it was him?) made some research and there was no evidence of that.

@kviiri I think someone else has his account. Very different manner and syntax then the first question or their discussions here.

@GreySage No, you cannot, on any SE chat room. When I was suspended here, I also could not chat at History SE or Christianity SE

@HellSaint To be fair, Doppel only had a little bit to work with, and it if was only one account, how much would he be able to dig up?

It's always struck me as weird that the chats are way more "porous" than the main sites

@JohnP Ask them not to metagame, then GM as you normally would. Or if they're guaranteed to metagame, then... just pick a different module?

@HellSaint correct, no evidence of anything amiss

@KorvinStarmast I'm not blaming doppel in any way.

Just to be clear haha

@SPavel So the solution is not to GM them? Silliness.

@JohnP Change stuff on them, so their metagaming becomes worthless

@KorvinStarmast Not entirely correct: Stack Overflow chat and Meta Stack Exchange chat are different servers from the "all other SE chats" server and chat suspensions are per server

@JohnP IMO a newbie GM should not GM for powergamers

@Rubiksmoose I'll check on this.

Do we have a meta post on how to deal with crime?

@HellSaint Yeah, sorry if I came off wrong on that. @ACuriousMind Thank you, as I didn't try to interact on those two chats, I'd not have noticed.

@GreySage Ah, but there's the rub. I am not sure what to change or how to do it without skewing encounter characteristics.

@kviiri I would much rather assume good faith until proven otherwise even if it is disappointing to be taken by the occasional troll than to do the opposite and malign a person genuinely seeking help.

on the bright side, if that's the player in question they don't seem unstable in a dangerous way.

@JohnP Why not post a question, it's much more effective than chat most of the time.

@NautArch Unless that's a person with five personalities?

@JohnP You can ask them to be nice to you and not power game too much. Also, remember yourself and them that if you want to change something in the module, you can (unless you're playing AL), so their knowledge might be wrong.

And we don't know which one we are talking to? (Three faces of Eve, etc ...)

@GreySage that's why I was chcking in here. I thought something like that had been posted, about the time I posted a similar question about creating worlds and mixing editions.

@JohnP Maybe back up a bit: Why are you using a module that the players are already familiar with? Knowing your motives here could be useful.

But if they really want to powergame and want to go RAW on the module, sorry, but I agree with @SPavel - it would be better to get some more experience on DM'ing before trying to DM for these people.

@Rubiksmoose Yea and like.... the site process really works. There's so little harm a troll can actually cause to the site

@MikeQ The current DM also wants to play, and I would like to get better at GM'ing. But there are a couple players that have every module, every supplement on herolab, etc.

From my experience, DM'ing for hardcore powergamers (that usually are also Rule Lawyers) is... hard to say the least.

@KorvinStarmast Plot hook, all the PCs are actually just split personalities of the same character in-game

@JohnP If your goal is to surprise them, keep them guessing and excited about the adventure, then that's not possible if they know how it ends. But if your main priority is just GM experience, then it doesn't matter if they know the story. Run the module, take notes of what works or fails, ask them for feedback. Rinse and repeat until you are more confident in your session-management skills.

@GreySage Sounds a little like an Eternal Champion/Michael Moorcock thing, or a Campbell "Hero of a Thousand Faces" kind of thing.

@GreySage I saw that movie! (Identity)

Oh good, looks like SevenSidedDie handled it.

@MikeQ That makes sense.

That got bad.

when in doubt, let SSD handle it

@doppelgreener I don't read the mainsite anymore, what ended up happening?

@SPavel rocks fell

@JohnP My wife likes John Cusack. Is the movie any good?

@SPavel the kid's account was compromised by someone else in the group, looks like. They're suspended now.

Comedy hook, Death has a pale horse but has no idea how equestrianism works and instead his horse pulls him up by the scruff of his neck like a mother cat and gallops around.

@KorvinStarmast I liked it a lot. The critics didn't. But I'm a big Cusack fan as well. GPB, Identity and 1408 are in my top movie list.

@doppelgreener While I was at least partly right to "smell a rat" (so was Wibbs) I surely didn't have this in mind as what was going on. Nice sleuthing by you/SSD/whomever. tips cap

@Yuuki The coat of arms of the town of Orimattila has a reaper horse on it: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/…

@KorvinStarmast no sleuthing, they said so themselves in an edit

@doppelgreener I got that from the context, but what did they dooooo

It's so cool I'm going to have it in one of my games.

@SPavel bad things.

@JohnP If you're still losing sleep about not surprising the players, then just "re-skin" parts of the environment and story. Change NPC and town names. Change some of the loot. Change up the order of encounters and other challenges.

@doppelgreener Ah, well then, I guess confession is good for the soul, if not for the RPG.SE account.

@JohnP tell me more

Have them wake up dead, that's a real surprise! (Don't do this.)

@SPavel They killed Dumbledore in book 6

@Maximillian Wake up undead

@SPavel About what? Identity? Hard to discuss that plot without spoilers.

@SPavel Well they were very obviously asking questions about the same incident. And I'm pretty sure sharing accounts is banned by the ToS

hm. post deleted now

Imagine: You wake up, realize that you don't feel sleepy - or anything else. When you sit upright, your head stays on the pillow and just your body rises.

You quickly duct-tape your head back on, only to realize that instead of at home, you are in a tomb and have been dead for millenia

"Aww man. I overslept didn't I?"

Some man in a funny dress is attempting to Rebuke you

@SPavel Isn't that how the Magical History class ended up being taught by a ghost?

Finding the SE ToS is rather hard.

@JohnP I think they just couldn't find anybody else who wanted to do it

The Defense against the Dark Arts is not the only cursed Hogwarts class

@PremierBromanov It's also possible that the first question was opened by someone using a school computer, and the other players discovered the account ... and the game was on ...???

@KorvinStarmast didn't someone say there's a comment in there somewhere where he just says his whole group has access to the account?

@SPavel The most productive ghost at Hogwarts is, of course, Professor Binns, the old History of Magic teacher who fell asleep in front of the staff-room fire one day and simply got up to give his next class, leaving his body behind. There is some debate as to whether or not Professor Binns realises he is dead.

@KorvinStarmast To be fair, I think a lot of us had the sense that something could be off. The disagreement we had was how to respond to this.

Hmm, some EU4 DLC on sale

Either way, I wouldnt want to be involved. Group should disband. Or at least, fragment into other groups

@PremierBromanov correct, accounts can't be shared. In a void that would be reason enough to suspend them, but then other stuff was happening.

until that was brought up I figured maybe the player he was having trouble with was his brother so shared PC at home

@Carcer There was. if you can see edit history, they rolled it back

(and for the record, I don't think still that it was bad that we largely assumed good faith here.)

@Rubiksmoose Next time we should assume unaligned faith

@Rubiksmoose Indeed, we had that discussion yesterday, no need to have it twice.

@MikeQ Chaotic faith

Found the ToS.

@Rubiksmoose absolutely not. Even if there was a 1% chance that they were telling the truth, it's still not time wasted trying to assist someone wrapped up in sexual assault among minors

> To access some of the public Network features you will need to register for an account as an individual and consent to these Public Network Terms.

We can't cast Detect Evil on every visitor, that's just unethical.

@Maximillian is it though

@Carcer Yes, it was in the text of the question SSD closed when he made the comment that account had been compromised.

@Maximillian Does detect evil fall under GDPR?

@Maximillian It's prudent. Does prudence = evil?

Please remember to avoid gossip and backbiting about suspensions or pressuring mods for information about them. The details of suspensions are private on purpose, and being suspended doesn't give us leave to stop Being Nice about a person. Discussions about site policies and reflecting on our own behavior are, of course, quite good to have.

Does detect alignment work on minors? they're so volatile

or are they all evil

I think they're all chaotic, not so much evil.

@KorvinStarmast Actually it was in this one: rpg.stackexchange.com/revisions/122574/16

Under GDPR, alignment would fall under Biometric Data so it's definitely regulated

GDPR: General Dragon Protection Request.

@Rubiksmoose You're looking for revision 15.

ie rpg.stackexchange.com/revisions/122574/15

@BESW SSD openly commented that the user was suspended and why on the question, so

@Rubiksmoose Got it. Thx.

Frankly all of your data should be protected from dragons.

@PremierBromanov that sort of makes me absolutely sure that it's a brother he's talking about then

@BESW Thanks for that.

@KorvinStarmast Absolutely. Was not trying to reopen. Sorry if it came across that way.

@Carcer Its not for us to know, i guess

I wholly agree with BESW. A bit of drama is of course tantalizing and all but there's no need to make a mountain out of a molehill here. Basically the only thing that's at jeopardy is the poor user's account but there's not much damage a malicious poster can do to the site, assuming they're malicious in the first place. Vote and flag bad posts, keep calm and carry on.

@Rubiksmoose No worries amigo, your instincts are good ...