TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

01:53

hey there @Skyler

Ben

02:14

Quick question for any 5e enthusiasts… When referring to a mimic's abilities, it says uses the phrase "object form only". In what circumstance is a mimic not in its "object form"?

cc @KorvinStarmast @Shalvenay @Miniman

also @nitsua60

Never mind... I found it

David Coffron

04:22

@nitsua60 it's just every other rule that simply casts a spell is the lowest level of that spell unless otherwise noted (see magic items, class features, monster/racial traits, and even blessings and charms) idk why this should be different.

Thatguy

06:41

@DavidCoffron Can you please elaborate on the comment you posted earlier, what exactly do you mean about the Edits?

David Coffron

08:40

@Thatguy The one about editing close questions? It's just that when a closed/on-hold post gets edited for the first time it gets put into a feed for high reputation users to decide if it needs to be reopened. (the assumption is that the user read feedback and edited their question to be within site policy). If you edit the grammar, that first edit gets pushed through anyway, and we won't automatically see if the OP edits the question. Your edit was fine, and you don't have to wait.

It was just something to consider

The Oracle

09:04

0

Q: How can I reward a good answer without driving more attention to the bad one?

I think the accepted and most upvoted answer is horribly wrong to a question. The why does not matter now. The third answer I find really great, and I wanted it to get some attention. So I placed a "bounty to reward existing answer", which had the opposite effect, it generated 4 upvotes for this...

discussion

David Coffron

10:09

rpg

doppelgreener

10:58

o/

kviiri

The eaglet is starting to look like an eagle

2

doppelgreener

Oh my gosh, it is!!

BESW

11:18

Tonight's snack: microwave-popped kernel popcorn sprayed with olive oil and sprinkled with curry powder and garlic salt.

doppelgreener

@BESW Sounds delicious. 8)

kviiri

@doppelgreener "chirp chirp! I is adalt nao"

> Eaglet: "look at me fly momma"
> Mom eagle: "yes baby I see you"

doppelgreener

Its flight feathers are growing out. :D

kviiri

The cottage was nice, although I was super sleepy most of the time

Food --> three hours of coma --> sauna --> three hours of coma --> cheese and wine --> bed

Thatguy

@DavidCoffron Understood!! I appreciate you telling me, I didn't know that, but thank you very much for the update.

doppelgreener

11:32

@kviiri Sounds amazing. :D

kviiri

It was ^^ even the cheese was pretty good even though the shop we stopped at had a rather thin selection

kviiri

11:49

I also felt a very strong urge to play NetHack, after all these years

nitsua60

@DavidCoffron Interesting. I can see that. I guess the mental model I have is that wish can cast an 8th-level spell, so "I wish to cast 8th-level dispel magic" parses just fine for me.

Shalvenay

12:57

hey there @Helwar

David Coffron

you missed put on the rhyme: "Hey thar Helwar!"

Helwar

13:13

hi!

thar? I'm lost if it's more obscure than "thou" :P

Shalvenay

@Helwar how're things going?

Helwar

somewhat ill, salt mines had a fugue of residue that ended in the river and eventually on tap water. I don't drink tap water but I do cook with it... I got the alert to not consume tap water in the afternoon, when I had already eaten breakfast and lunch

so.... i've got the runs

xD

David Coffron

@Helwar it's an accent usually

Shalvenay

ouch man

Helwar

@Shalvenay yesterday was the bad day, today i'm "better"... but at work, not at home. So... mostly the same amount of bad :P

Shalvenay

13:22

@Helwar ouch

David Coffron

@Helwar 1 hour has passed roll Constitution

Helwar

@DavidCoffron don't joke, i make hourly visits to the throne >_<

Shalvenay

hey there @SirCinnamon, welcome to the RPG.SE lair :)

Sdjz

13:42

Anyone care to guess why my Q&A is being negatively received? I just don't see it (probably because I wrote it myself)

Helwar

@Sdjz No idea, I had just read it and found nothing wrong with it

David Coffron

@Sdjz just a consequence of self Q&As. Give it some time (some people are unfairly judgmental. See my comment on this question)

Ben

At what point in a story arc do you give away important plot points?

I.e. the fact that 2 out of 3 or your pad were created using alien tech, and biology, harvested from a battle between the two, and that your 3rd PC is living out their own Evil Predestination storyline?

Sdjz

13:57

@DavidCoffron Thanks, I see that does make sense. In my case though I think I already what originated the question. I actually played the build in a campaign and thought I'd share.

David Coffron

@Sdjz which is why you got my upvotes. It's a good question to be asked and you had a good answer. Some people are just automatically opposes to that for some reason

Sir Cinnamon

@Shalvenay Um, hi!

David Coffron

@SirCinnamon ur new to chat right? ;P

Sir Cinnamon

@DavidCoffron Haha i've been a little busy at work, no time to advocate alternative keyboard layouts

David Coffron

@SirCinnamon but my new keyboard idea ABCDE is so innovative c.f.

Sir Cinnamon

14:09

@DavidCoffron I'll take twelve!

Sdjz

@DavidCoffron Oh I see, thanks :)

Shalvenay

14:26

hey there @Anaphory

Anaphory

Hey!

How's life treating you?

Shalvenay

alright here, as for you?

Anaphory

Excellent! On holiday, just visiting friends in Turku. Amazing weather, Time for reflection, fun-programming, drawing, listening to short stories, etc. Learning random stuff about vikings and ships because those topics recur in museums.

kviiri

It's a nice town

Anaphory

I went for a walk on Ruissalo today, I'll explore the town in more detail on Wednesday.

(Part of exploring the town will be visiting museums, and Wednesdays are a lot better for that than Mondays.)

kviiri

14:41

Turku is pretty much the oldest "civilized" place in Finland, too bad a lot of its history was lost in the 1827 fire

It had lost a lot of its status before that because the Czar considered it to be too close to Sweden so he moved the administration to Helsinki

David Coffron

16:33

I could've sworn this question had been asked before for a different swallower. Anyone re member?

(Might have been a different but related feature instead of FoM)

Shalvenay

hey there @ACuriousMind

ACuriousMind

ahoi

Shalvenay

how're things going?

ACuriousMind

Just back from work, about half an hour before I run off to join one of my FATE tables

Shalvenay

ah, nice

nitsua60

16:58

@Sdjz it's only one downvote.... I assume if a post of mine doesn't have a downvote it's just not being seen.

David Coffron

@nitsua60 /me goes to downvote all of your posts to prove they've been seen

Sdjz

@nitsua60 Ah yes I was surprised at the time because the downvote came first, and with nothing but a single downvote I got worried :)

David Coffron

:P

nitsua60

@DavidCoffron I appreciate the validation =)

@Sdjz Yeah, I don't know. Nothing jumps out at me, but it's only one....

Sdjz

@nitsua60 but, but it was 100% downvotes! Ah nevermind, probably overreacted.

Premier Bromanov

18:37

Greetings. I just wanted to pop in and say that if you're looking for a solid fantasy book series, you should read The Malazan series by Steven Eriksson (first book Gardens of the Moon). This guy turned his DnD campaign into a pretty unique world and his writing is excellent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Erikson
I'm on the second book and it's superb. Very mature, but not often gratuitous.

nitsua60

That's ^^ a nice combo that you don't find too often.

Also, long time no chat, @PremierBromanov o/

Shalvenay

18:54

hey there @PremierBromanov

David Coffron

19:25

~~

Quick! Name the first word that pops in your head. First 5 are part of my next character design

Premier Bromanov

20:01

@Shalvenay Hello! I'm not as active because I moved out of the place that had all the books, so I can't make as many good answers lol. But I'm hopefully starting a new job with way better pay (50-100% more money than normal, at least 200% more than right now as I'm being paid minimum wage salary) so I might have extra cash lying around to buy the books.

@nitsua60 you are also part of this reply lol

Shalvenay

@PremierBromanov ah.

Premier Bromanov

but I have to move away from my home town to another state and thats always hard. I bet. I've only ever lived here

BESW

[wave]

Premier Bromanov

Hi!

I think I need to take advantage of this beautiful day and ride my bike. Toodles!

BESW

Moving can be rough. The settling-in is helped a lot if you find a way to engage with the local community as a peer, like joining a sport or service team or the like.

ttfn

SmokeDetector

22:04

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer: Can vampire-bitten corpses be affected by the Resurrection spell before they rise? by kyle on rpg.SE

BESW

Now that's the kind of spam we know and use as springboards for WoD campaigns.

HellSaint

Graaah, I was off for a few days and I come back writing the most extensive Q&A I remember doing.

Aaand it gets closed.

trogdor

22:22

@BESW lol

back on track it seems

nitsua60

22:39

@HellSaint Many people on the planet would be offended by the casual use of those first few words; some are likely in this room or will be looking over today's conversation. Would you mind (a) if I went back and edited your message and (b) being a little more careful with language in the future?

HellSaint

@nitsua60 Don't mind at all. Will be. Sorry for that.

nitsua60

No worries--we all let it slip most days. Some of us just have the courtesy to do it in front of our small, impressionable children, rather than in front of strangers on the internet =)

HellSaint

It's pretty common to use it (or My God, My Lord, Dear Lord, etc) here to express surprise or being tired. I never actually thought people got offended by that (not too much world experience it seems).

@nitsua60 I'll use the fact that you're here and ask for help. rpg.stackexchange.com/q/123456/43856 - Since I'm already getting Too Broad votes :P do you have any suggestion on how to make it not get closed? It's a pretty frequent situation for many people and I would love it to not get closed and forgotten haha

BESW

@HellSaint "I'm not referring to any particular group/person I've played with, but a general set instead."

27

Q: Why was my question closed as too broad, unclear, or opinion-based?

There are a good number of questions, especially from users new to the site, that get closed as too broad or opinion-based. This is a post we can link them to for more guidance than what comments can reasonably provide, and more focused than "read the help center". Feel free and add answers/tips ...

discussion faq questions close-reasons

0

Q: When asking, how broad is "too broad"?

Hoping to hear some others' perspectives, so as to better-calibrate mine to the community's. I'm struck by two of yesterday's questions, one closed as too broad, the other answered many times. Now I totally get that context matters: we can answer questions about spell use and expect relatively t...

discussion closed-questions

nitsua60

@HellSaint Yeah, I'd suggest changing the lede to make clear: "this is something I run into with new players all the time, here's how it should look from the experienced person's POV."

(Rather than "here's a thing that might be useful," that makes it "here's a thing that has been useful.")

@HellSaint Interesting. Where's "here"? Here, in the northeast US, I read it as frustration.

(Personally, that a reason I urge my kids to eschew such language: it tends to be imprecise, if nothing else.)

HellSaint

22:50

@nitsua60 Brazil :P

or, more specifically, south of Brazil haha

@BESW I'm a little confused if that's a problem by itself or if it's the way I wrote it that made it unclear.

What I mean is that I had dozens of groups with new players and I'm not talking about any specific one of them. I don't see how the question would get better by narrowing it to a specific group that I have played with instead.

BESW

> If your problem is "I have a player playing a paladin and he's bugging the other players being a stick-in-the-mud and it's causing bad feelings" - that's a good question! Overthinking it and instead asking "well how have paladins been handled across D&D versions" is a bad question - both by the rules, and because it's a lot less likely to actually help you! Ask about your problem specifically. That overcomes most scoping issues. (source)

Questions are judged by their ability to attract good answers, and answers which address a particular problem by explaining general principles are better than answers which explain general principles without application.

Feb 9 '17 at 21:41, by BESW

@fectin Long, grueling experience has shown that when we design questions to be as broadly applicable as possible, answers tend to be so broad and vague that they're useless as actionable solutions to anyone.

How can we vote on answers if we don't know whether they're helpful since there's no particular problem to weigh them against as a solution?

nitsua60

@HellSaint I also think (personally) that self-answering (in one composition) an opinion-dependent question like this is a high-degree-of-difficulty proposition. Self QA on "how much damage does foo do?" strikes me as pretty safe. In this case, though, there may well be other useful POVs to bring to bear, but the presence of a well-fleshed-out answer whose author "unfairly" knew to write it before anyone else might crowd out competition.

All that ^^ means that some may be more critical when reading the self-answer than they might be of an independent answerer.

BESW

You know what problems you've faced in all those different games, but you don't tell us about them: you tell us the situation but not what's making you feel like it's a problem that needs to be solved.

nitsua60

(Or maybe I'm just projecting. Gotta run!)

BESW

So your answer looks useful to you, but anyone ELSE trying to answer it... can't.

HellSaint

23:04

Rewriting it, brb.

BESW

23:20

As you can see from the comments on the answer, everybody's coming at it with their interpretation of the problem because you haven't actually told them what your problem is. That leads to answers that try to give ALL possible solutions without any ability to differentiate between the useful or un-useful ones because expertise is useless when you don't know how your experience relates to the querent's problem.

HellSaint

@BESW if you can, check it again. I've mostly just reworded it, tbh. But if you think there are more details that I can add, either about the setting or the player I'm talking about, now it's actually possible, since I'm talking about a particular person.

BESW

> I want to help her to create her own character and, additionally, keep her interested in playing.

That's good, but why do you think she'll lose interest?

> She has never played any RPG before, but she's highly interested in playing them - she just couldn't do it before because she hadn't a group to play with.

No indication that loss of interest will be a problem, so the question comes out of nowhere.

HellSaint

@BESW Kay, I'll add that. The problem comes from experience - I've had players that had a lot of interest in playing, but since they didn't have the time for reading and by then I couldn't help them (because I didn't have much time either) they ended up just not playing at all

That's situation 1.

BESW

Are you worried she'll make an unmotivated character?

Are you worried about this problem?

HellSaint

@BESW i'm more worried about the person not liking a premade character

BESW

23:31

21

Q: Quick in-session character generation without using pre-generated ones

I'm surprised that there haven't been any questions regarding this, leading me to believe my situation is unique. I have 3 players who are extremely interested in trying D&D 5e out. They love the idea and want to play as soon as possible. However they also want to make their own characters and ...

dnd-5e character-creation new-players

6

Q: How to make character creation quick, interactive, and fun?

I am playing DnD in weekly 1 hour 15 minute sessions, with the first session focusing on the basics of the game. By the end of the second session, all 7 players (most of whom are new) should have their own characters and preferably have gotten through some simple plot hooks. My goals for characte...

dnd-5e character-creation new-players

HellSaint

@BESW this is an interesting one.

I'm not exactly worried about the quick part though, more about not having to learn everything from the book before being able to create it.

BESW

7

Q: Keeping it simple for new players

I've been DMing for a couple of years, and I have this recurrent problem. My players are now quite experienced, they know the rules, they know how to play. But every once in a while, we invite someone new to D&D to play with us (or a couple of people). When we invite someone new, we describe th...

dnd-5e character-creation new-players

18

Q: How can a GM alleviate a new player's analysis paralysis when creating a character?

My players are paralyzed about making their characters and as a GM what can I do to help? The players are new to role playing games let alone D&D 5e, and are getting bogged down. They tried out their characters in the first session, but I could tell some were not really happy with the game. Thre...

dnd-5e gm-techniques character-creation new-players

HellSaint

@BESW "Help them build their characters, step by step, keeping it simple when necessary, and allowing them to customize when I feel it's important (weapon or spell choices, for example)" - again, the problem is HOW to do it, exactly

BESW

That'd be what the answers are for.

HellSaint

Actually he mentions it's something he's doing, that's not his question though

Specifically, my problem is that they're not bored by so many rules, they just don't have time to read every possible option they are given.

Oh, that helps. Brb editing lol

BESW

23:42

(I found those by looking through the intersection of new-players and character-creation)

HellSaint

I'm essentially trying to narrow down the question to the specific person and letting the "general case" in the answer, which should be fine, as the answer is the product from all my previous tables, right?

BESW

That's how I'd try to handle it.

The Stack works best when it's providing actionable solutions to specific challenges.

HellSaint

yeah, I'm learning that it's hard to write a question about a problem you've already solved :P

I want to share my experience on solving it, but writing the question itself becomes a lot harder haha

BESW

Yup! Self-answered questions are some of the hardest to write.

I try to approach it by first writing the question as if I hadn't solved it. If I write it with my answer in mind, I'm shutting out all the other answers that it could get.

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