@SPavel There's a few countries that do that, plus a few that limit the quantity or range of characters that can appear in a name, and some that require names meet certain qualities. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_law)

@doppelgreener The Hungarian list has some pretty good RPG character names

Artemon? Eliezer? Those are some great wizard names.

Hungarian names generally sound pretty awesome

Hmm, I've been thinking

@kviiri uhoh

@NautArch Yeah it's usually a nasty symptom

Some of my friends have been pestering me for that Firefly style TTRPG, and some (with a non-empty intersection with the former group) want more Apocalypse World...

Come to think of it, Firefly has a rather post-apocalyptic feel. Or post-apocalyptic has a Western feel

@doppelgreener Random contribution: My children all have 2 middle names. There are no naming laws that I know of in Canada, but it messes with some online software. Fortunately you can usually omit all middle names with little consequence.

@kviiri I think post-apocalypse generally has a Western feel to it. You frequently have the lone wanderer, the focus on self reliance and isolation. Very similar genres IMO. At least thematically.

@kviiri Easy, just cancel the campaign after a few really good sessions

@AVeryLargeBear Yeah, I'm thinking of hacking in some spaceships in my AW now

@MikeQ ttttttttttttt

@MikeQ oof

Sorry, I was drinking tea when you posted that and it sprayed all over my keyboard

@kviiri Out of curiosity, what's the Firefly-esque RPG?

@AVeryLargeBear We hadn't agreed on a system. Fate was on the table, but I'm still a bit wavering about it

@kviiri ooh, isn't Fate good for everything? :P

@kviiri Ahh, so it was more of a Firefly motif than an actual Firefly game?

@GreySage Two is not bad, Spanish people have dozens

For example: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso

@SPavel Latinos I've met generally have 1 middle name and 2 last names, but those were South American

@GreySage Spanish people are not Latinos

But they are Hispanic

@SPavel Thats a bit of a mouthful

@SPavel You don't know. Maybe a Spanish couple moved to Argentina. Then they'd be Spanish and Latino

@NautArch Probably (for any setting at least), if you know how to run it, but I'm not really comfortable with it yet

@AVeryLargeBear Some say that is what drove Picasso mad

@AVeryLargeBear Yea

There does exist an official Firefly RPG I think, but I have no idea what it's like.

@kviiri Halfway through the first session, the DM rolls a critical failure and the game is cancelled

@SPavel That joke was already made, friend :P

@kviiri Also, the combat encounters are in random order

@SPavel I can imagine that having to introduce myself with all that would make me quite mad.

@SPavel VTC duplicate joke

@kviiri sorry, bad joke. was referencing a complaint from earlier in chat (maybe yesterday?)

@NautArch I dunno, I think it was ok as a serious question too! :)

@SPavel Pathfinder 2e will probably come out strong, but my Nostradamus sense tells me that it will go down the same pitfalls as before

@MikeQ In Russian, we call an old joke "boyan" after a 9th century bard of the same name, implying that even at that time it was well known

@kviiri Apparently fairly good? RPG Geek rates it 7.6/10, and it's based off Leverage, which is a heist RPG. (Specifically Leverage is the kind of heist where you know the heroes are going to win and be awesome, but you're playing for the fun of seeing how they'll be awesome in overcoming their challenges.)

There is also a gesture where you place your palm face down at your belt, then flip it face up ("when I was yea tall, this joke already had a beard yea long")

PF is a slightly less insane version of 3.5, but it certainly isn't a "fix" by any means - It has a lot of the same problems (quadratic spellcasters, overly complicated action economy, too many splat books resulting in a bloated ruleset) and the designers are very reckless with their rulings and tend to shoot themselves in the foot

In Finnish online discussion, IRC in particular, when someone posts a link that was already posted, people will respond with just "w".

Standing for "wanha" which is a very old-fashioned spelling for "vanha" (old) from back when Finnish still insisted on having v and w separate :-)

lol, IRC

Aw, I missed the conversation about Firefly-esque RPGs

Ironically, while writing a tweet about loving Edge of the Empire over Age of Rebellion due to it's Firefly-esque feel of a crew trying to survive and keep their ship in the air.

@OneCritWonder Never too late to bring it back. (Fox, pay attention to what I'm saying here)

I see what you did there.

@OneCritWonder I thought you might, but decided to add the parenthesized remark just in case ;)

Have you messed with the actual Firefly RPG ... or the Firefly board game for that matter...

@AVeryLargeBear There's an actual Firefly RPG (Margaret Weiss Productions) that I own a copy of. Cortex Plus game system.

@kviiri I am tempted to mail you my copy; I tried with little success to get a few friends to play it ... not much interest. (firefly RPG)

@KorvinStarmast Aww. :(

TBH I'm more interested in hacking AW for Firefly at this time, but it might still be worth a shot

@kviiri There seems to be an agreed urban legend that Joss Whedon played some Traveller when he was in college; I had already watched a few firefly episodes when I heard that, and my response was 'Ya think?" :)

For some reason, Joss has been reluctant to speak much about that, though it is possible that he was trying to avoid a lawsuit?

@KorvinStarmast I had been pestering my SO to watch Firefly with me for quite some time and we finally watched most of the episodes over the course of one loooong night when making candies for Christmas presents. Then we found out we had made too little caramel around 3:30 AM and had to make a fresh batch... we had Firefly running all the time on our kitchen monitor (yes we have one of those)

@kviiri Drive Through RPG has Firefly marked down from 49.99 to 19.99 ... guess they are having trouble moving the product ...

It was certainly an experience. I don't remember much of the episodes anymore but the sleep deprivation did give the series a bit of an extra sense of surreality...

@kviiri Heh, and why not? A layer of surreal seems appropriate to that series ... :)

@kviiri I can relate, my first time seeing Firefly I was on a week's worth of painkillers. Best experience I've ever had watching a tv show.

@KorvinStarmast We eventually switched to Star Trek: TNG and that was absolutely wacky.

Then again, the first season and many later episodes too are even when sober and not sleep deprived :)

Oh wow, only 19.99 now? Hmmmm.

I totally need another book on the shelf of "I'll never find people to play anything but D&D and even that is like pulling teeth."

@OneCritWonder I'm sure that you could wrangle up some of the chat folks here for an online game

@kviiri Caramel candles?

Story of many of the RPG Discords I frequent / moderate I'm afraid.

It's 45 minute drive for me to the various game stores in the area. The one on this side of town closed.

@OneCritWonder Just because you complain about not finding a game doesn't mean you have time to play even if you do find one

@SPavel Yeah

aramis wrote a great answer on Whedon and Traveller at SFF.SE Aramis has good Traveller-fu.

Pick two: Game is in a time slot/location that works for you, game is a system you enjoy, players don't fall into any hobby gaming extremes.

@Maximillian Or you can pick all three and be the problem player yourself :)

@kviiri Then the group will disband and you have none of the three

Convergence occurs, resulting in a singularity that obliterates gaming.

@GreySage This is true. I'm just faux complaining.

@SPavel Some bad RPG groups have a rather impressive half-life!

@kviiri And social ramifications that last for decades, just like radioactive decay.

@Rubiksmoose If we treat all language in a spell as mechanical, then we open up a lot of problems.

Flavor say not exactly that, but if we look at something like MIrror Image and focus on the language of "Three illusory duplicates of yourself appear in your space. Until the spell ends, the duplicates move with you and mimic your actions, shifting position so it’s impossible to track which image is real", then we have the problems we see with Mirror Image and those duplicates.

@NautArch I mean, I also think this but haven't seen any examples. I don't understand what issue you are pointing out with mirror image honestly.

@Rubiksmoose When it references duplicate illusions in your space, then you'd think that you could target those illusions specifically.

@NautArch But then the rest of the spell goes on to tell you how it works.

It's the later language regarding the specific mechancis that explain what that means.

@Rubiksmoose So...flavor text?

That is why it is important to read and interpret things as a whole. One sentence informs the next.

@Rubiksmoose and that's what my answer is saying, no?

But it also means that one sentence does not stand alone. SO do you read the first sentence as the requirements or the second sentence? I'd say in general that you go with the sentence that actually describes the mechanics (who/how to target and the dice rolling.)

But I also think the intent is clearly NOT to target yourself for a lot of reasons, and Crawford backs that up.

Is that a contradiction because I told you to give it to somone else (your choice) then limit your choice?

All the spell is doing is saying: "This spell take HP from you and gives it to someone else. You can choose who that creature is as long as you can see them."

@Rubiksmoose Or, to follow the spells phrasing, "Bob is on a diet and can't have a cookie. Take a cookie and give it to someone". Just because the second sentence doesn't explicitly exclude Bob from the set of 'someones' doesn't mean it invalidates the provision that Bob can't have a cookie, so you can't give one to him.

@NautArch flavor text and rules text are indistinguishable in 5e. The "flavor text" IS part of the spell

This is about the Life Transference question?

Doesn't the English definition of another rule here? ": different or distinct from the one first considered "

@ColinGross Yes, plain reading shows us that another cannot be the same creature who took damage

@ColinGross It's about whether to consider that line as mechanically relevant

@DavidCoffron That's the meaning of "another" as I understand it as well.

Probably as relevant as damage type.

@AVeryLargeBear Unfortunatly in 5e, every line is "mechanically relevant" unless stated otherwise (that's how plain reading works)

"the target takes 3d6 fire damage" the word "fire" and "target" seem pretty relevant.

@DavidCoffron Agreed. Just trying to clarify what they were talking about.

Though this does come back to my previously stated desire for more structured spell definitions.

@ColinGross So does "the" because it implies a specific selection rather than "a"

I think it's more that the spell says "You can give cookies to others. YOu can generate cookies and give them to someone you can see." Clearly the language is unclear because both the querent here and on twitter didn't get it. All they had to do was include "other creature" in the second sentence with all of the specific mechanical directions.

THey didn't, so it's kind of unclear (although it's painfully obvious it is supposed to be a different creature.)

@DavidCoffron Yeah. All words matter.

@ColinGross #Allwordsmatter :P

@NautArch Well... if you're a programmer the meaning of "another" could be taken to be an other, but the value of the pointers could be the same. I'll let myself out.

But if we use the "all words matter" then the Mirror IMage problems of Illusions in your space become more real. We take that as a description of what's going on, but only use the attack mechanic because that's what it says to do. But having mirror images in your space would have other effects if we read it like that.

@ColinGross dont bring up pointers...

@DavidCoffron Good poi... idea

@NautArch It does haev other effects no?

@NautArch The mirror images are in the same space as the caster. Like the matrix effect of dodging... or at least that's how I imagine it.

such as visual identification

"it’s impossible to track which image is real""

@DavidCoffron So you're saying I can dodge bullets?

@ColinGross No, but a person only has a 1/x chance of targeting the right image

@DavidCoffron So when I'm ready to cast it, I won't have to.

@DavidCoffron nope, it's just the mechanic of what to do when someone attacks you with a melee or ranged attack.

@ColinGross No, I'm saying that when you're ready, you won't have to.

@DavidCoffron only in the case of an attack.

otherwise, no effect.

@Yuuki But could I, if I wanted to?

@Yuuki Thank you! I can always count on @Yuuki to go down pop culture rabbit holes

cast a save spell? you know the target, no problems.

@SPavel Something something ergo concordantly.

@NautArch that doesn't make sense. If I go to kiss you, there is still a chance I hit an illusion

@Yuuki wrong reference :(

disappointment subroutines engaged

@DavidCoffron That's a kind of melee attack in this day and age!

@DavidCoffron not per the spell.

It's from Computer Boy, the memest early 2000s Matrix fan remake

@NautArch I fundamentally disagree with that

@DavidCoffron I got multi-attacked by my neighbor's puppy in that way this morning.

@DavidCoffron Then write an answer for the question about it

@NautArch Is succubus's kiss an attack?

@NautArch Ew. That's a gross question

Added my own answer to Can you cast Life Transference on yourself?

Magic missle and blight work differently

but if it does more than just help keep you safe from attacks, then it's a lot more powerful than the spell level and concentration allow for.

Crawford agrees, by the way

@NautArch You don't need to track targets for magic missle and blight to work, they just do

@DavidCoffron which target are you trying to hit? How do you know what the real target is?

@DavidCoffron That's the whole trick with magic missile and shield. Someone should come up with a scissors spell that negates shield.

@NautArch You just target the craeture, the duplicates aren't creatures

@DavidCoffron But you could try (and fail, wasting your spell slot) to target one. THe point of Mirror Image is that you don't know which is the real target.

@NautArch You point. Always aim for center mass... that's how patriot .... errr... magic missiles work.

It's magic

@NautArch I dont think you can mis-target RAW

@NautArch Or that they're moving around and it's hard to swing and hit the right one.

@DavidCoffron Xanathar's covers that

@NautArch Xanathar's gives an idea of how to cover it. I'm not wholly satisfied with those optional rules

@NautArch It's unclear WHY the attack roll has an issue hitting exactly. It's it a shells game? is it blurry? is it mis-targeting

You just get the mechanic... tell the story around it as you see fit for your aesthetics

So waht's the difference between attempting to cast a spell at a major illusion of a caster and the mirror image illusions?

@ColinGross Always aim center of mass is what I learned in the military firearms training I got ... and IMO is great advice. (Headshots are for experts, like Carlos/Gunny Hathcock) (were you joking about patriot missiles?)

@NautArch The mechanics

@NautArch You can't target major image with magic missle

@KorvinStarmast I always joke about patriot missiles. It's a reference to the Men in Tights documentary.

but that was a patriot arrow

@NautArch I really think you should rephrase this "It does not state that it must be one other creature or that you can't choose yourself, so there really is no limitation here that precludes you taking the damage and receiving the hitpoints." It totally does say it just not in the sentence that you want it to. You should make that a bit clearer. And I still don't see a contradiction, just a vagueness in the second sentence that is a bit confusing.

@DavidCoffron You can try if you believe it's a real thing, though.

@Rubiksmoose It says "another". Just quote the OED or Webster definition of the word.

@NautArch As far as I can tell, it's the unique nature of the mirror image spell . @ColinGross Ah. Been a while since I saw that.

@NautArch Yeah and if it's an image, your spell just fizzles.

@NautArch Major Image is a completely separate thing from the caster, Mirror Image is 3 things moving with and around the caster

@ColinGross I mean, I did...

@NautArch I would houserule that you can, but RAW you can't: "A spell’s description tells you whether the spell targets creatures, objects, or a point of origin for an area of effect (described below)."

@Rubiksmoose that's the whole point of my answer. The second sentence isn't 'vague', it's mechanically different than the first sentence.

@Rubiksmoose I like that.

@DavidCoffron Xanathar's covers this now, I think.

@NautArch How do you distinguish between mechanical and nonmechanical sentences?

@Yuuki Xanathar has an optional rule about it (one I probably would use), but its not RAW

@DavidCoffron right, but in a game, a player (or enemy) is not cognizant that an illusion isn't an illusion.

As SSD said "TL;DR: Spell descriptions are rules in D&D 5e, and you can tell that's the case because the alternative of selectively ignoring parts of spell descriptions is not supported anywhere in the text, and because attempting to apply the concept to the game anyway breaks most spells."

@Rubiksmoose When it describes exactly how it works (how/where do you target, how many dice are you rolling for damage, etc.)

@NautArch Which is why the DM has to decide what happens. Does the spell fail (no wasted slot, but wasted action? Does the spell fail (no wasted slot or action)? Does the spell fire but have no effect (wasted slot and action)? or something else.

@NautArch I think that is a very dangerously vague definition you have there.

Crawford on its optionality

@NautArch Are there keywords like target that dictate this distinction or is any description of a target valid?

@Rubiksmoose I concur

@Rubiksmoose Maybe, but otherwise you end up with the issue we're discussing with Mirror Image.

@NautArch I disagree. There's no ontology where certain terms are inheriting from the class of mechanical terms and others are not.

@NautArch From blight: "Necromantic energy washes over a creature of your choice that you can see within range, draining moisture and vitality from it. " Is thi s mechanical text (because no other section discusses target selection)

@ColinGross Okay, so let's go back to MIrror Image. DO you think it works beyond just attacks (d20 rolls against AC)?

@NautArch Nope, but in my description of the aesthetics, you're not seeing mutiple full copies, but many copies occupying the same space

errr... the copies aren't fully distinct

it's like turning the alpha value down a bit and putting different frames on top of each other.

Like Neo dodging bullets. (when he clearly didn't have to)

@ColinGross THis seems pretty distinct to me, how are you readin gnot distinct? "Three illusory duplicates of yourself appear in your space. Until the spell ends, the duplicates move with you and mimic your actions, shifting position so it’s impossible to track which image is real."

@NautArch I still don't see where the confusion with MI ios coming from mechanical reading of the spell honestly.

@NautArch Sure.... like that 80's music video effect

It's rad.

That's what Colin imagines but I disagree ^^^

But I was writing when this discussion moved rapidly in that direction. Even reading back though I don't really see

@Rubiksmoose Should other effects that require a target but not an attack roll be affected by mirror image?

Here are some specific cases in a stack question

Although I think MM and blight are special cases

@NautArch It's the appearance of them in your space. I interpret that as to mean some overlap. It's difficult to fit 4 humans in a 5' square... especially if they're twirling.

@DavidCoffron I get the issue. But I don't see how it stems from reading the text as mechanical vs flavor.

Oh that was my argument

Umm...

@Rubiksmoose See @DavidCoffron thinking it also affects save spells and other things.

@NautArch Based on what though?

I'm missing a link in this argument somewhere lol

I'll let David give the argument

@DavidCoffron OK yeah that is a mechanical statement. And an improtant one too.

@Rubiksmoose If you can't track which image is real, you may target one of the images (which may enter DM ruling territory on invalid targets)