TRPG General Chat

4:07 AM

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Q: Is it reasonable to add missing system tags when the system is certain?

As per What to do when an edit guesses the system being used rather than waiting for the querent to clarify?, editors should not guess the missing system tag (e.g. dnd-3.5e) without asking the question maker, in case they are wrong. This is reasonable, as it's hard to be 100% sure (e.g. Pathfinde...

kviiri

9:44 AM

@Anaphory it's a good game with a good amount of variability to keep one hooked :)

Particularly interesting stuff comes around every five levels

Anaphory

Indeed it is. I shall see whether I manage to not play too much today, I have other stuff to do.

But I was already thinking whether I could squeeze in a dungeon level or two.

kviiri

I have floors to mop and a thesis to write :)

Going to finish a bit about Cole-Vishkin algorithm today.

Anaphory

10:09 AM

Exploring a dungeon level was faster than getting through the caller queue for unlocking my English bank card, which tends to become blocked far too often, in particular when buying train tickets online.

kviiri

10:20 AM

@Anaphory Have you got favorite starts? (As in species + background)

Anaphory

(And another one.)

Currently going Minotaur Berserker with plate and polearms.

kviiri

Minotaur berserkers are lovely and straightforward :)

Anaphory

I played around with hill ork necromancers yesterday, but found the very first levels to fragile and skeletons not stable and agile enough to like it.

kviiri

Later in the game it's good to remember that Trog only opposes spell magic, so training some Evocations is helpful

Anaphory

Obviously I had a multitude of random deaths due to be mobbed by adders, just too many humanoids, two uniques in the same bigger hall etc., but the big problems I didn't know how to deal with were the last room of the Bailey (twice, the second time I managed to escape by blinking to the stairs) and the Shoals with far too few and powerless ranged weapons to deal with everything in the water.

I have not taken on player ghosts, killer bee hives and hordes behind sealed doors.

kviiri

10:31 AM

You've learned the game quite fast to reach the Shoals so quick :)

Usually leaving runed doors alone is smart, yep

Anaphory

In particular when they have windows besides them showing you three player ghosts and a deathyak in exchange for some coins and a potion of curing :)

Is there a way to steer what kinds of gifts Trog gives?

kviiri

While there's no single "correct" order to play, generally I'd recommend clearing Lair of the Beasts about as soon as you find it but skipping the proper sub-branches for now (Snake Pit/Spider Nest, Swamp/Shoals and Slime), then finish the Dungeon (D:15), the Orcish Mines (but not Elven Halls) and then do the easiest Lair sub-branch for your char

ACuriousMind

@Anaphory I never enter the Shoals if I can avoid it :P

kviiri

@Anaphory Trog tries to be helpful :P so not really, except only training the weapon skills you want.

@ACuriousMind I don't think Shoals is usually too bad, but it's usually my second Lair rune :) at least unless I have an unlucky game without rPois

Anaphory

Concerning Trog, I was confused when he did not appreciate me killing the slaves.

Given that his slogan is “Kill them all!”

kviiri

10:48 AM

I think he used to like it, but the Slaves were since changed to reduce the grindiness aspect of killing them for minor benefits

Even weirder is Trog doesn't give piety for killing undead, despite them being generally associated with magic :p

Anaphory

> You hit the leopard gecko skeleton.
> You destroy the leopard gecko skeleton!
> Trog accepts your kill.

What do you mean?

That he doesn't give more piety for it?

kviiri

11:00 AM

Wait, hmm

Maybe they changed it then. Or then I just remember wrong

Anyway, this is better :)

Also noteworthy that despite having the air of an axe maniac berserker god, Trog also gifts ammo for missile weapons if you have them trained (or maybe just having one is enough? Can't remember)

Anaphory

When I first saw an ant, I was panicking. But it turns out they are far less dangerous than in Nethack.

@kviiri Ah, that's why I was asking. I got slings and throwing weapons from him, but I would have preferred getting some melee weapon.

kviiri

@Anaphory Yes, Trog does that from time to time. I think he skips the ammo 100% if you don't have the relevant skills trained to some level

But you'll eventually have dozens of gifts so undesired ones will be kinda outliers

Anaphory

I shall not throw anything for a while, then.

Anaphory

11:33 AM

Shit! Joseph cast me into the Abyss. Time to panic, I guess?

kviiri

@Anaphory Abyss is survivable if you don't panic :)

Basically keep moving and try to keep and eye out for exits

An exit might appear if you kill a few creatures

But they also spawn randomly. Keep an eye out for neqoxecs in particular, it's a rather common Abyss demon that can mutate you

Anaphory

Went into a dead end with no wands and followed by a wretched star and a tentacled starspawn.

kviiri

11:50 AM

:s

Teleports still work although IIRC they fire slower in Abyss

kviiri

12:03 PM

@Anaphory The summoning ability given by Trog is very potent, btw

It costs piety so should be used sparingly, but it gives you an appropriately angry ally who is some melee hard-hitter (eg. a Deep Troll) and berserked for awesome power

Anaphory

12:21 PM

Oh, yes, I've used that once or twice, but I'm still not consistent enough in using Trog's granted abilities. Also, berserking seems to not last very long, and I always fear that my berserk power will leave me crippled in the middle of a big melee.

trogdor

12:57 PM

eh? my granted abilities you say?

:P

kviiri

1:13 PM

@Anaphory Important to know is, berserking lasts longer when you're actually fighting (and times out very quickly otherwise)

So if enemies just keep on coming, you might run out of juice.

But even worse is sparse enemies so you can't hit them all dead :P

Or ranged ones

@trogdor Trog is the magic hating god of Berserkers in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

trogdor

mk, I figured it wasn't me regardless, but I had to take it

XD

kviiri

(although Trog's not really THAT magic-hating - using spells is not cool but everything else like wands, scrolls, potions, rods, magical weapons etc goes)

trogdor

1:54 PM

huh

not sticking to his principles there eh?

kviiri

@trogdor Maybe so :>

There used to be a god of magical devices called Pakellas, who was quickly removed after adding because they worked quite badly

In my headcanon, Trog is an aspect of Pakellas who tries to get people to use more magical devices by banning normal spells.

trogdor

2:19 PM

Lol

KorvinStarmast

2:30 PM

@NautArch Hmm, thanks for the alert, when I first read the question, the level differential didn't "click" in my head.

NautArch

3:02 PM

@KorvinStarmast no worries it was a weird question (but with some interesting edge-cases and thought provoking)

doppelgreener

3:53 PM

Hey folks. Quick question so I can check my observations. Over the past few months when someone's been unclear about their game, my perception has been it's turned out to be D&D 5e once clarified like 90% of the time or more. Does that match your experiences?

Discard cases where it never got clarified, and disregard cases more than a year old.

Mike Q

@doppelgreener Yes, with common reasons being either 1. they assume this is a D&D website or 2. they don't know any other TTRPGs

doppelgreener

(also 3. don't know there's multiple editions of D&D)

kviiri

I think I've seen it turn out to be Pathfinder more than once, but 5e is by far the most common.

Rubiksmoose

4:23 PM

@doppelgreener That is correct from my experience. There have been a couple PF ones but I would say 90% 5e sounds fair at a first guess.

(if not a little low)

Spam alert.

doppelgreener

4:50 PM

@Rubiksmoose thx, destroyed

The Oracle

5:56 PM

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Q: Revisiting our "never guess the game system" policy

We have a policy that says we never guess the game system someone's playing when we need to know it but it's not clearly stated in the question. Conditions for our site have changed since it was formed (sometime well before 2017) and it's come into question a few times recently by newer members. ...

discussion policy

KorvinStarmast

6:24 PM

@doppelgreener Mostly, with a few other cases.

Trish

6:58 PM

@doppelgreener it might be, but Guessing is BAD.

doppelgreener

7:43 PM

Is it?

At almost universally being D&D 5e, and being able to tag it, tell the person what we did and why, and give them an opportunity to correct, I'm not sure how true that is.

Carcer

8:11 PM

I'm not even wanting to just presume it's 5e if unspecified

my issue is when an answer includes quotes and page references to an actual 5e book and we sit back and go "oh, hmm, we're not sure what you're playing"

I think this is a problem with calling it "guessing"

kviiri

Well theoretically there could be another system which coincidentally matches

Carcer

and a pig could theoretically fall from the sky onto my head at any moment

kviiri

I don't disagree with the current policy, really. It's Kafkaesque at worst, but it's at least enforceable

"only guess when you're 100% sure" isn't

Carcer

isn't this kind of thing the reason that the edit system works the way it does?

edits require approval and that?

kviiri

Only for rather small amounts of rep

Carcer

8:18 PM

I have to admit I've got no idea what the thresholds are on that.

kviiri

Not to mention often the tag doesn't even get edited in, but someone just answers

@Carcer But by all means, drop an Answer on that meta

I would but I'm too tired

Going to bed right now --> good night everyone

Carcer

nah, I expect my opinion to be unpopular so I've got no desire to write it down in a way it can be downvoted. My ego is too fragile

BESW

8:56 PM

@Carcer I think you're focused on the specific word "guess," at the expense of all the surrounding context.

We're not against it specifically because it's a guess (although, as several have pointed out, we have multiple actual cases where a literal quote from one edition turned out to not be an accurate indicator of the system the asker was using).

We've learned from long experience that getting users to tell us their own systems is good praxis for many reasons. One of those reasons is that we tag it wrong often enough to be a bit of a problem, but much more important reasons include fostering engagement and user retention.

@Carcer We could replace the word "guess" with "inference" in the policy to make it more accurate but less accessible.

The underlying goal isn't avoiding inaccurate edits, but helping the user learn to include the basic elements of a good question rather than learning to rely on us to do it for them.

Carcer

9:43 PM

bleh. I guess I'd probably be happier just leaving comments that say "it looks like you're playing 5th edition D&D, can you confirm?" but I feel like I've seen those be deleted

BESW

We do leave comments like that.

They get deleted once the asker responds.

We also close the question while waiting for an response, to reinforce that no, we really do expect that basic system-tagging action, and to avoid wasting answerer's time before the question's been finalized.

"What system are you using" is exactly the kind of thing a comment IS for: it's an effort to provide guidance for editing the post to improve the post's quality.

doppelgreener

I've also seen several cases now where the author was an unregistered user, and now doesn't have access to their account, so they try to make edit clarifications from an unregistered state (an anonymous user) which is complicated because strictly speaking we should reject that but practically we know it's them.

Our current policy has no support for that.

BESW

I think that sort of thing is where human handling comes into play.

The policy isn't the point, the policy is an expression of our experience-based learning about common best practices for achieving our goals and principles.

And we've got human exception-handlers specifically because we know that not all situations are going to have a strict policy implementation actually achieve our goals and principles.

So, yeah, it's good to revisit our policy but I'm cynical about our chances of coming up with a policy that handles exceptions--the policy is "MOST of the time, this works well."

BESW

10:14 PM

Maybe our new policy is "MOST of the time, just tag it with 5e."

nitsua60

@kviiri I don't worry about a book from another edition that happens to have identical text and pagination; it's the person who's got a book from one edition they're quoting us but is playing another edition (knowingly or unknowingly) who I worry about.

I mean, when I was mix-and-matching editions at least the logos had the decency to read "Dungeons & Dragons," "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons," and "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition." The largest company [/citation needed] in the space has in their wisdom decided to brand each of their last three editions "Dungeons & Dragons."

Carcer

@nitsua60 yes, that is frustrating and dumb.

BESW

10:33 PM

@nitsua60 Yup, we've seen that.

But increasingly I'm not sure that site-specific policies can really overcome the Stack Exchange interface design.

doppelgreener

Actually there's a thing for that: Stack Overflow's busy developing a question wizard which walks people through arbitrary steps to help them ask their question properly. In their case that's things like "say what technologies you're working with" and "provide us with a small example of the code" and "say what's not working."

Part of the reason the themes are being unified is so that newfangled features that currently can only be launched on Stack Overflow can also be rolled out to other sites that need them.

Trish

@BESW objection!

doppelgreener

That means we could get a question wizard in a year or two that directly asks people to fill out the game and edition they're playing as part of writing their question.

BESW

@Trish Sustained!

Trish

@doppelgreener +1

trogdor

10:41 PM

@doppelgreener oh that would be really good

Carcer

that would basically solve the problem yes

BESW

@doppelgreener ...but it couldn't be a mandatory fill-in spot because a lot of questions don't need system tags.

Trish

@BESW Our current policy is working well enough. And NTARS, so... also, TINSTAAFL

NeverToughARunningSystem. ThereIsNoSuchThingAsAFreeLunch

trogdor

@BESW true but just being told to up front should help some

Trish

@BESW technically... most questions I encountered that don't need a system tag are either the social questions (problem GM/player) or history of gaming

BESW

10:45 PM

@Trish @Miniman Can we get a query for that?

doppelgreener

@BESW totally, yes. they've run some experiments and are redrafting it, at the moment it takes a branching wizard flow: "what kind of question do you have?" is the first step, then it asks specific fields based on which option you chose.

("other" is an option)

In our model the kinds of questions would be "I'm having trouble figuring out how to make something work in our game or LARP" (would prompt you to specify the game or say it's a LARP), "I'm stuck designing a game" (no prompt), "I'm having problems with my fellow players and/or GM" (game/larp prompt), and a couple of others before we reach "other".

that's what comes to mind right now anyway

@Trish also terminology or game design

trogdor

Yeah that seems like a good way to approach it

Trish

@doppelgreener true... that... and some statistics/ice questions...

doppelgreener

@Trish works well enough but based on the comments i delete on a regular basis i can also say it frustrates a bunch of people and sometimes has people low level act out

trogdor

Let them pick other at the end but only if they would not describe their problem any of the anticipated ways

doppelgreener

10:57 PM

Oh, and one thing they also built in was site redirection. So we can have "I'm having trouble in this video game" as an option which leads to "This site's about pen and paper roleplaying games played around a table with dice. You're looking for Arqade."

trogdor

Us even but I mostly mean people new to the site or who might otherwise not bother to put in system tag

@doppelgreener oooh we need that one think

I don't know that it's a constant big problem, but even as inactive on the main site as I am I still see video game questions sometimes

doppelgreener

it's only once a month or two as opposed to a constant deluge on stack overflow :P

but it's possible!!

trogdor

It's still one less thing to clean up though

If this works

Miniman

11:13 PM

@BESW Not really, sadly. There's no programmatic way to differentiate system tags.

Maybe someday i'll be bored enough to go through and make a list, but everyone else has to promise to stop adding new ones.

doppelgreener

11:28 PM

@trogdor right :)

trogdor

11:44 PM

@Miniman one last system tag:"new system since the great bordem of miniman (insert year here) XD

@doppelgreener :)

Miniman

@trogdor Ooooh, that works - all system tags going forward must have my name in them.

We should edit it into the old ones too, for consistency.

trogdor

Lol

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