TRPG General Chat

I'll be in the train Turulta at half twelve and should be Helsingissä 14:34.

I have a random hotel near the station booked for the two nights, not much else planned yet, and given that we are knowing each other from here it should be obvious that I'd be up for some random gaming and/or generic chatty hanging-out.

@Rubiksmoose In the Detecdt Magic sense, I still kinda think that the spell was cast as Conjuration, but the ongoing effect of it it whatever the spell school that is active is.

@NautArch How does a spell change school? I think that both schools happen.

@Helwar Open ended questions or questions without clear acceptance criteria are like that.

Which is kind of weird

8:05 PM

Hopefully, you get some decent ideas to use.

Helwar

@ColinGross yeah, thanks for your help

teleporting clamps in is an interesting idea

Q: The Mystery Behind mxyzplk's Misshapen and Non-Thematic Avatar

@Rubiksmoose That may not be unreasonable. Maybe I'm having a hard time in a use-case scenario for this.

When does it matter?

ANd for what?

The Oracle

1

mxyzplk is - and has been for a long while - a very active user and moderator. Ever since I've started reading RPG.SE, every time I visited the site, I've seen his signature on post after post, either providing quality content or helpful moderation. However, one thing I couldn't figure out was: ...

0

Q: What stack do I go to for RPG information designed for people who actually want to enjoy the game?

This stack appears to be entirely designed for Rules Lawyers and has little to no useful content for players who want to enjoy the game they choose to play, any suggests of somewhere else one might find a more congenial community? I feel this issue is systemic affecting all aspects of the site an...

discussion

@NautArch these are very good questions

I imagine that some of the wizard's class features that interact with school this would matter for.

@Rubiksmoose ahhh, but in that case they have only cast one spell: Wish.

8:06 PM

Well, if you know which school the spell is in, it makes it easier to determine their property taxes.

And those features are about what spell did you cast.

I forget who texted JC about the Interactions with Reactions issue. @DavidCoffron, was that you?

Could have sworn it was an @D-somebody

@NautArch that is a fair point.

@TheOracle Looks like someone fundamentally misunderstood the Stack concept.

@Axoren I tweeted it. twitter.com/dcoffron/status/998576969091571712?s=20

8:09 PM

@TheOracle I hope they find a better suited corner of the internet.

@GreySage maybe they were looking for the rpg chat?

@GreySage yeah but it is still unfortunate. I wish we could've saved it. Most of us DO like roleplay but many questions aren't framed to consider that

@DavidCoffron Still no response? I guess JC only responds to certain people.

@Rubiksmoose goes back to the whole "have a problem you need a solution for" thing :)

@Axoren I've gotten replies before. It's hit and miss

@NautArch very much so. This was spawned off a comment bringing up the issue.

8:10 PM

@Rubiksmoose look at the havoc you have wrought!

@NautArch bwhahaha!

fwiw, if you wanted to think on it and can come up with no cases where it actually matters I'd happily accept that frame challenge as an answer.

@DavidCoffron I'd think you'd need to draw the sword first.

@GreySage Or they are playing games that have a heavy rules-based culture? Most questions I follow are concerned with “how do I make this game fun”.

@NautArch The sword?

@Rubiksmoose Not having in-rules cases doesnt mean there isn't a table case, though. It just makes it harder to answer because there isn't something you're trying to solve for specifically.

8:12 PM

@TheOracle I feel like no matter what stack is suggested, the instant that person goes to that stack is when everyone stops enjoying the game.

@Axoren otherwise I can't hit or miss. I'm not attacking

Is Jeremy Crawford currently impaled on a rock in Albion?

(Or “how do I make it fun in the time I have” or stuff.)

OH, I thought he meant like a sequestered Excaliber

@Axoren Yeah.

8:12 PM

@Axoren That is a very specific question lol

@Rubiksmoose Maybe I'll post it on the main site :P

@Axoren Excellent decision lol

@NautArch I thought the whole thing that sparked this was whether a wished divination effect would be blocked by cranium rat maybe im conflating two discussions? ( @Rubiksmoose )

What's the worst that could happen? It get's put on hold or deleted by mxyzlplx (sp)?

@Axoren mxyzplk

8:14 PM

@DavidCoffron Precisely it. I was just looking at that to check if it was resolved trivially.

Yeah, that one

mxy for short :D

Mister Mxyzptlk

Mister Mxyzptlk ( miks-YEZ-pit-lik, or ), sometimes called Mxy, is a fictional impish character who appears in DC Comics' Superman comic books, sometimes as a supervillain and other times as an antihero. Mr. Mxyzptlk was created to appear in Superman #30 (Sept. 1944), in the story "The Mysterious Mr. Mxyzptlk", by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Ira Yarborough. But due to publishing lag time, the character saw print first in the Superman daily comic strip by writer Whitney Ellsworth and artist Wayne Boring. He is usually presented as a trickster, in the classical mythological sense, in that he...

minus the t

I know what it's from

Well I didn't :)

I never bothered to spell or pronounce it right

8:16 PM

@Axoren impaled on a rock or impaled in a rock? because these are very different questions

For OBVIOUS REASONS

@doppelgreener I don't know. Both, probably.

@Axoren it's only seven letters ~~that canonically come from someone just mashing their fingers on a typewriter~~!

@doppelgreener When I mash my fingers on a typewriter, I usually hit the middle keys, not the outliers…

Mike Q

@TheOracle I'm not sure if this meta question is actually a question but I answered out of sheer boredom

@MikeQ Wow. That's a throwback. One updoot for you, sir.

8:23 PM

@GreySage I hope nobody rises to the bait though. It sounds like the user is frustrated and looking for a fight/to get a rise out of someone.

(despite the question itself being fairly insulting)

@doppelgreener Wait, miks-YEZ-pit-lik? I've been pronouncing in my head wrong all these years.

@Yuuki I just say mixyplix in my head. Or em-ex-wy.

@Yuuki Well ours doesn't have a t, so it's more like miks-yez-pi-lik

@Rubiksmoose I'm kind of entertained that the question formed out of frustration (or trolling) gets good even toned responses.

on-turn triggers for Ready action are very problematic

if anyone wants in on this, it's a helluva weird case. Much less cut and dry than I thought.

8:26 PM

@ColinGross I'm entertained and happy that is the case. I hope it stays that way.

But yeah, insulting to insinuate users here don't enjoy the game... or that rules lawyers don't enjoy the game.

@ColinGross rules lawyers are people too!

@Yuuki In Supergirl the accented syllables are different and he rolls the l a little, but the basic sound is the same.

@Rubiksmoose For some definitions of people

I always pronounced it muh-shee-zuh-pit-lik. Chinese pinyin uses x to represent a sound that's approximated by a combination of "sh" and "ch".

8:27 PM

@doppelgreener I've never even tried to pronounce it in my head. It's just 'diamond mod with a weird name'

@DavidCoffron go for mxy then :P

@DavidCoffron I dunno, SSD is a weird name considering I don't have a d7 in my set.

@Yuuki I do

@DavidCoffron I feel like that's the point where you should write a grease monkey script to replace "mxyzplk" with "diamond mod"

@Yuuki I have a SSD (solid state drive) in my PC though. Very nice.

@ColinGross or with 7 randomly generated letters each time you see it.

8:30 PM

@Rubiksmoose That would be entertaining as well.

@Yuuki You could. I have a d3

@Rubiksmoose youbjust combined SSD with mxy

@DavidCoffron SUPERMOD

Mike Q

5th dimensional sided die?

@MikeQ I solved a 4D Rubiks cube once

Uniform 7-polytope

In seven-dimensional geometry, a 7-polytope is a polytope contained by 6-polytope facets. Each 5-polytope ridge being shared by exactly two 6-polytope facets. A uniform 7-polytope is one whose symmetry group is transitive on vertices and whose facets are uniform 6-polytopes. == Regular 7-polytopes == Regular 7-polytopes are represented by the Schläfli symbol {p,q,r,s,t,u} with u {p,q,r,s,t} 6-polytopes facets around each 4-face. There are exactly three such convex regular 7-polytopes: {3,3,3,3,3,3} - 7-simplex {4,3,3,3,3,3} - 7-cube {3,3,3,3,3,4} - 7-orthoplex There are no nonconvex regul...

8:33 PM

@DavidCoffron Did it turn into a moose when you finished it?

Is this RubiksMoose's secret origin story?

behold!

@GreySage How did you guess?! Well time to find another wormhole and try a new dimension I guess.

@doppelgreener Biased towards 6 and 7. Would not roll. 0/10

@doppelgreener oh goodness. I can't deal with half a pip.

@doppelgreener that's disgusting

8:36 PM

Is half a pip 0.5 in value? So those 2 sides on top of the white die would be 3.5 and 4, respectively?

@GreySage As painful as it is, that is how I am reading it lol

@doppelgreener I have one of those lol

@GreySage no. You read the corner as 5

@doppelgreener cdn.thingiverse.com/renders/5f/28/ba/a9/27/…

@Rubiksmoose Might the question you left this note for be a dupe, or are we awaiting a "for X edition" to make such a call? (Reserve Ioun stone question ...)

8:40 PM

@Axoren it's not biased. Our brains just assumes it is. As long as your throw includes a spin, the long pseudo-circular side is landed on much more frequently than either face

@KorvinStarmast It certainly would be but for: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/123279/…

@DavidCoffron Ah, I see, since the die won't have a flat face up (except for the 2 sides).

@DavidCoffron ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I feel very silly.

@DavidCoffron I can tell you right now, it's STILL biased because of the larger surface area.

@DavidCoffron Technically, you can only roll 6, 7, or pips with that dice.

8:42 PM

@Axoren when I bought one, I put the specs in a wind tunnel simulator. It's fine

The bias isn't enough to make it land exclusively on those sides, but they're more often.

Assuming the other face is a 6.

@Axoren surface area isn't the only factor

@DavidCoffron What were the deviation stats?

@DavidCoffron I feel like you'd have other problems if you're playing D&D in a wind tunnel.

8:42 PM

@Axoren I like this one, although I think it would be better if it had the numbers on either side of the corner instead of the the 'flat' sides (like the ones above).

@Axoren That's a gamescience die, I guarantee you it's fair.

(*guarantee voided if gamescience explicitly says it's not fair)

It should have a mean of 4 with a deviation of 2.

> "Your party wanders down the corridor and sees a dark figure at the end of the hallway, it's an... oh, my DM screen got blown away again."

@doppelgreener My friend has a Game Science d20 which fails to meet an expected uniform distribution.

Heavily biased towards 20s and 5s.

@Axoren I don't think it was 2

8:44 PM

@Yuuki I expected that sentence to end with a die

@DavidCoffron anydice.com/program/11cf What you should be getting.

Check the summary tag.

@Axoren I'll see if I can find the specs I had from the app.

And you should have this done for at least 70 rolls, I think

I forget what the formula was to get 1/100 degrees of precision on deviation measurements, but 70 is fine

I'd be convinced with 70, at the very least.

For d20s, I usually roll 100 times.

(so you have a "canonical" answer) it's totally cool to link a question (or answer) you post anywhere else on the SE Network here. You're a room-member, and if you feel any of us would be interested or even if you just want some friendly eyes to go take a gander, feel free to drop a link.
It doesn't even need to be an SE post. If you've got a blog you want to link or just an article you came across you really like, drop those here, too.
And thanks for asking, that's courteous. (I just think you didn't get a "serious" answer because you happened upon us when the room was in a bit of a giggly…

If I get a gut feeling that one side comes up more, I use the cup test.

8:46 PM

@Axoren ~~... two dice, one cup?~~

@Yuuki Dice don't float in nasty.

I ran a couple thousand over a few days (my teacher was letting us use it because we were competing in a UAV design competition

You just need to float them in a viscous fluid that they'd be bouyant in.

giggle [tehehe]

nothing like an answer that contains unplaytested houserule doing well! Yay me?

8:48 PM

@Axoren I usually use mercury.

If they reach a local minimum in potential rotational energy, then there's an imbalance in the weight distribution.

You'll know when it does that because one face will always be on top when it stops floating.

@NautArch You truly are the scourge of this SE :P

A fair die will continue to rotate aimlessly in water, for example.

@Rubiksmoose probably some people think that :)

@NautArch hahaha. I find that very hard to believe.

8:49 PM

@DavidCoffron OTOH, good RP-centric (or social-centric) questions with good answers tend to be among our highest-voted. We appreciate good RP questions, we just don't generate as many of them.

@NautArch I personally feel like your answer is an obvious logical choice. Make the spells do what they say they do, add a saving throw to avoid cheese.

@NautArch People believe that you're right, that person WOULD be frozen inside of a block of ice. However, the book is severely lacking rules for people being frozen inside a block of ice.

@nitsua60 In my experience social-centered questions/answers generate the most rep

You simply laid the situation out for them. "This is possible. What happens next? I guess this"

Personally, I'm disappointed at the lack of drowning rules.

@doppelgreener I pronounce it like "mix-ee"

8:50 PM

@nitsua60 And we probably close a bunch of them too, since a vast majority will be plainly opinion-based (and difficult to make not opinion-based), or when they do become not-opinion-based... they're really, really similar to a prior question (and thus dupes)

@GreySage it's more that i usually downvote for unplaytested suggestions :) But I"m learning on that one.

@Yuuki "If anyone questioned Me, or My divine Authority, they got a one-way ticket to the Moon."

@NautArch I think the important part is that you both clearly state why you answer the first portion the way you did, and then you provide a possible solution that makes sense given context which has a clear warning that it's what "this GM would do"

@BESW Genre: EDM

I'm laughing my ass off at JUST THAT property tag, before it even gets to the ridiculous part of that sound clip.

I'm going to start sneaking that in to handouts of custom spells and quests.

Q: Is the chunky non-cylindrical seven-sided die a balanced/fair die?

TO THE STACK!

0

You might have come across GameScience's seven-sided die before: There's mixed discussion of whether it might be biased toward the 6 and 7 faces (the 6 being on the opposite side of the 7 you can see in the photo). It's a GameScience die, and they tend to market themselves on making properly f...

dice

8:55 PM

@Delioth Yeah. Out-of-shape "soft" questions are much tougher to workshop into Stack-form than out-of-shape "hard" questions; I'm sure we successfully convert "soft" questions (which are already rarer) at a significantly lower rate than "hard" questions. [Research needed: apply to local board of $SCIENCE for grant review.]

"Bounty Order on Bee King
Reward: 500 Bennies
Genre: EDM
Difficulty: Beeyond Deadly"

@doppelgreener How do I report racism in comments? rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/123545/…

@Anaphory I probably can't muster up an RPG for Friday but I'm open to other kinds of funtime activities. If you're not too tired after your train ride we could take a walk around the town or go see the fortress islands

@Axoren I think you mean dicism

@Axoren that's a pretty dicy topic

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

@doppelgreener can't you just roll with us on this one?

8:58 PM

Huh. They put the 6 and 7 on the flat faces? I'd expect 1 and 7 on those would be closer to "fair" (as it would mean even if the flat faces were more or less likely, the mean would be preserved)

@NautArch i guess i can, that's fair enough. (i think. yet to be proven.)

> Item: Can of Tuna
Date: Expired
Genre: 1960s ad jingle

@doppelgreener there you go! Pip pip, old chap!

@BESW Item: Great Sword
Genre: Heavy Metal

@Axoren Surely it would be a bee queen

8:59 PM

@NautArch :D!

Bees are a matriarchy

@doppelgreener now I have to find my research

Item: Intelligent sword (rapier)
Role: Foil

@SPavel Not sure if you remember the conversation about the Bee King, the king that would pull piles of bees out of a bucket. It was your own invention, but you might have forgotten.

@Axoren He is not the bee king, he is just a king with bees

9:00 PM

@Delioth if its fair it shouldn't matter where the number are

Every face should be equal not just a comparable mean

@DavidCoffron what is this communist malarkey

@Axoren (in case that was serious though, I don't see anything wrong with that comment, but per normal if you see something wrong please flag it & if you're not sure we'll spot what you're seeing then feel free to explain with a custom reason)

@doppelgreener Not serious.

@SPavel comparable mean is my new manifesto

@doppelgreener It's just discrimination against a fellow community member who happens to be a dice! That's such prejudice!

9:03 PM

ok :)

But not serious, lol

well I wouldn't be surprised if they happened to be our resident expert on the topic either

@Anaphory We can also just laze around if thay's preferable to you, although I'd love to introduce you to some of the more interesting scenery around here :)

@DavidCoffron Yeah, that's why I put "fair" in quotes. As I said even if they aren't "fair", they'd at least be closer to it. Wouldn't be equally likely to have each face, but would in the long run have the same mean, which is at least fair-adjacent. In any case, I'd allow that particular kind of fair-ish dice at my table

Be that the urban wasteland atmosphere of Sompasauna or the natural beauty (and hopefully not many screaming kids) of Lake Kuusijärvi

9:06 PM

Opposite sides should still probably conform to the standard of opposite sides adding to the die size + 1

Anyway, I'm off to bed, we can work on this tomorrow. Nitey!

ttfn!

@Delioth But you can't have that with an odd number of faces

@DavidCoffron Of course. But that doesn't mean to throw it out as a standard anyways. There are two sides that are directly across from each other, they should probably add to size+1. With this particular shape there aren't any other faces which are directly opposite, though there's probably a pattern (or should be) in the corners.

(On that note, it's also impossible to achieve on a d4, simply because there isn't any concept of "opposite" since all sides are adjacent)

@Delioth I think that standard only applies to d6. My d20 doesn't have opposites adding to 21 (at least the one I carry with me)

9:22 PM

@DavidCoffron Yeah I don't think any of mine do either...

Well, standard d20's do. I've never seen a real d20 that didn't add to 21. Though... IIRC they do make "counting" dice where you can rotate the piece 1 face at a time to count up or down. I know all of my d20's add up

@Delioth maybe I'm just misremembering.

Q: Why do the opposing sides of a D20 generally add up to 21

17

Most D20s I own (with the exception of poorly made foam ones or MTG spin-down dice) seem to have all opposing sides add up to 21 (20 + 1, 15 + 6, etc). Why is this? Who started this?

dice

Same, mine must be weird

Could be one of the counting dice, IIRC they're used for games where counting and keeping that count is used a bunch (like MtG or some other board games)

It's for dealing with flat dice (manufacturing flaw). a potentially-flattened d7 should have that too, you are right.

9:25 PM

Now that I think of it those could be good to keep a pair of for RPG's too; one to count up semi-persistent bonuses in the given fight and one to count up semi-persistent penalties (or just bonuses on the current roll and penalties on the current roll)

Or it might just be an equal pain to keeping track of those modifiers mentally. Not sure

9:51 PM

In my experience there are few things more disappointing than biting into a piece of fruit and having it not live up to your expectations.

This apple is not nearly as crisp as it should be.

There is also biting into a piece of fruit and then realizing it's a different cultivar.

Finding out the apple you're eating is a Red Delicious is a special kind of hell I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies.

10:08 PM

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Tweeted by fredhicks on May 29, 2018 at 4:32 PM

user15026

@Yuuki They're just so mushy

10:24 PM

@doppelgreener How do I do a tag request?

I think your dice question should have a tag signifying that it requires experimental validation.

So people don't give opinions

@Axoren just make the tag?

hey there @KorvinStarmast

that's not what tags are for, but you can go ahead and add a tag that you feel categorises the question

@Axoren Tags describe questions, not answers.

@Shalvenay Hail Shalvenay ... is all well?

@BESW This describes a question that requires an answer which is scientifically validated.

10:26 PM

@KorvinStarmast pretty much, yeah :) as to you?

right, tags should categorise the question based on the content of the question, and do not ever do anything like describe the type of answer that should apply.

@Axoren I doubt that tags have any way to prevent opinions .... :)

@KorvinStarmast I disagree. :)

@Axoren That's just semantic shuffling, and Korvin is also right: we've tried using tags to circumscribe answers before and it doesn't work.

@Shalvenay Doing OK, we went out of town for a couple of days, refreshed, and now back to the grind. At least the dogs are happy to see us return.

10:28 PM

We've already got a site-wide policy that opinion-based answers need to be supported with something like experience (one's own or another's).

@Axoren Sometimes I think it's best to "let the stack work" in terms of the comments/community modding if the questions / answers get loopy.

Alright

And with that, I have a few RL things that require attention, be well all. :)

At the very least, the statistics tag applies, as well

@KorvinStarmast Take care

@Axoren Oh, sure, good call there

(I think? It's dice statistics! I'm not 100% sure, but if your gut says it belongs go for it)

10:58 PM

hey there @Skyler

Skyler

Hey Shal

hows it goin

I don't know where this thought belongs--its own post, an answer here, incorporated into the above--so I'm just going to comment it post-it-style to be sure I don't lose the thought: I feel like this is an example of how we fare better when question-posts are used for questions, rather than for dictating the form of answers — nitsua60 ♦ May 4 at 2:56

(similar sentiment, I feel)

@Skyler alright here albeit a bit puzzled, as for you?

Helwar

11:28 PM

@ColinGross your answer to my question is the top voted :)

HellSaint

@Axoren For now, I don't see the need of a tag for one question. Stating it in the body of the question seems a better solution. If we get more questions on that line, we could get a tag for that.

But as for designer-reasons, adding a tag to try to limit the answers went badly.

Yeah, tags are for sorting questions, not limiting answers. We have other tools for dealing with chronically poor answer quality on a question, and we know from experience that tags don't work for that anyway.

HellSaint

Yeah, I was going to say that: If I go in the search and look for [dnd-5e] I know I'm only looking for D&D 5e content. If I go in [gm-techniques] I know what I'm looking at. I have no clue what kind of question is a [scientific-validation] question.

Tags are used to help users find posts that they can answer, or that answer their question.

A tag about how a question gets answered does neither of these things. When we've used tag wikis to communicate guidelines about how to answer, nobody notices anyway.

2

hey there @Helwar

11:43 PM

Morning/Afternoon/Evening everyone

Yawp.

@HellSaint I saw that tag and was also confused.

@Yuuki I missed the context of this, but it cannot go un-starred, regardless.

one relevant point on that topic is that [rules-as-written] being used to describe answers rather than questions was a large part of its problems. tags shouldn't have rules attached that invisibly affect the question and answers by their presence -- they should just be categorisation. returning to just "rules-as-written categorises and describes the question", and no longer carrying implicit requirements, made that tag a lot more straightforward to handle.

Right. I follow now (saw the edit).

If anything that tag shouldn't really even exist, since 90% of the time questions along those lines are just met with "Science and D&D don't mix"

Though, my experience of this is that physics and D&D don't mix... so generalization. Which is also bad

it's fine if a tag is only used by 1% of questions

or even if it's only ever used by 1 or 2 questions (see: a lot of our game tags)

11:52 PM

I honestly can't think of a way to word the tag-wiki appropriately.

That said I only spent about 30 seconds thinking about it :P

maybe-you-need-worldbuilding.se-instead

@BESW Not a bad idea. Lol.

im-so-sorry

In other news, I spent 3 weeks developing a plugin. It's ugly, but it works. I then managed to refactor it in to a much more efficient and versatile program to allow for future development in under 8 hours. Feeling accomplished