@Sava on your recent answer, can I suggest that you flesh out the Amber example a bit more? Particularly: you mention what the GM did and it's implicit that you suggest something similar, but can you talk about why you think that was a good way to proceed? What did you, a player, get out of it that made it good for you?

@nitsua60 Right, good suggestion.

hey there @Sava

Thanks--I've learned around here that sort of thing makes the difference between expertise and experience.

welcome to the RPG.SE lair :)

@Shalvenay Hi and thanks. ^^

Damn, wall of text... XD

[overheard at Vegan Club] Two players are arguing over whether a particular song is sung by Steven Tyler or by Keith Urban. GM: make an arcana check and I'll tell you!

@nitsua60 Dare I ask what song they were talking about? Because those are two very different artists.

I don't know, I can't imagine, and my ears did whatever the aural version of going cross-eyed is when I heard them arguing thusly.

That's all to say: I think the arcana check was probably the right call =)

Now I'm wondering if Urban covered something Tyler did.

@nitsua60 Or a seal. Kids these days...

Loose seal!

Wrong seal of Rassilon the first time.

Now I wonder if it would be legal to have a Magic Mouth sing instead of talk. Where would Gregorian Chant fit in there?

And then there's Seals.

@BESW I never thought I'd see "crofts" in a band name, but they do look the part.

@Ash oh, there you are. I have burnt cookies!

(Brought them to Vegan Club.)

@nitsua60 My mental image for "vegan club" is a few people using clubs to hit a tree, while others stand under it with baskets, trying to catch the fruit.

@nitsua60 I am so reusing Vegan Club at some point in one of my games.

I figure it's a sprouts and green-apple sandwich, double-decker, cut into triangles with a frilly toothpick.

(Miss you, Mitch.. Miss you.)

I'M FOR 'EM!

Are you a member?

Tries to fit a club between two slices of bread.

(too soon?)

@nitsua60 A friend once asked at a restaurant if she had to be a member of the club to order the sandwich. The waiter came back with a hand-made club membership card, to general applause.

@JoelHarmon Nice! XD

Nice.

Apparently the Toy Hall of Fame's D&D exhibit features Gary Gygax's copy of Dragon Magazine #1.

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

Yeah, hi. Didn't know there was a general chat or I'd have stopped in a bit ago.

Hey @Shalvenay

Also, welcome, Glazius.

waves

has the latest D&D news been shared here yet?

preview of Dungeon of the Mad Mage:

And also, WotC is hiring a game designer for D&D:

and also, regarding the possibility of 5e conversions of old Eberron adventures, Keith Baker redirected to Crawford and Mearls; the latter responded that they'd look into it

@Rubiksmoose [wave]

@Anaphory You're making progress :)

We played Labyrinth: War on Terror with a friend yesterday. It's a... complex game.

Rules-wise, it's actually far simpler than it looks, but the sheer amount of event cards in the game makes it feel quite chaotic.

Oh, look. I see more starred comments now that I have a FullHD monitor.

@MikeQ I'm going to delve in an evil conversation, then.

One of my players argues that, since his character is chaotic good, he needs to do chaotic things such as stealing or messing with the outcome of luck games (he bet on one contestant in a brawl and sabotaged the other guy's equipment). Other players argue that I should shift him to CN.

regarding this question, i've got vague recollection from earlier editions that the soul is what makes your body, you know, do things and be alive and/or not a vegetable, but i can't remember what stuff would imply that.

does D&D 5e talk about that too?

@doppelspooker The only thing that comes to my mind is that having a wisdom and a charisma score does that, so maybe try looking in the description of those ability scores.

@Zachiel Haha, oh wow. Alignments, amirite!

I feel tempted to bombard the stack with Dungeon World alignment questions just to subtly promote the idea that alignments can be an actual mechanic and consistently promote good roleplaying instead of chasing some strange ideal in excess. But then again, I don't like them much in DW either :>>

@kviiri I think that cheating is against the law (thus chaotic) but it wasn't done for the greater good - just to win the game, so it's effectively CN.

Stealing is harder to decide: getting a valuable item from a drunken guard, is it CN or CE or jus chaotic stupid?

@Zachiel What is the purpose of alignment in your game?

@kviiri that's hard to define. The adventure path we decided to play ties it with fate - there are tarot readings where the alignment of the character and the alignment of the tarot card determines if it's a favorable or unfavorable prediction, but it's a flavor mechanic with no teeth. Then, there is the usual "spells that work differently against different alignments". Lastly, there's the expectation pof taking certain sides (again, no teeth)

I suspect that to some players, chaotic alignment is a quick excuse to engage in antisocial behavior that they can't express freely in real life - while I'd like real life reactions to inform the behavior of NPCs: the guy stole a valuable from a drunken guy? Social stigma and mistrust - but still, that guy who stole the sword has a degree of plot armor: he's destined to be the hero who saves the day.

Also, it devolevs in playing reactions that distract from the main course of the game, which is saving the city they all care for.

Maybe I should just say "let alignment inform how you choose to get things done, not which things you do"

@Zachiel ah ok, so you're playing what, 3.5e?

Because if you're playing a game where alignment has none/almost none mechanical effect, I'd just drop it --- it's a flavor mechanic without concrete impact apart from causing unwanted conflict around the table.

@kviiri Pathfinder

Ok, they have alignment based spells and all, right?

@kviiri Right now, no, but there's a cleric. Also, I should check their enemies as well.

@kviiri I've found that letting people roll with advantage once a session when they follow their alignment helps a little bit to get people to remember "oh right, I'm the guy who wants to do the thing".

Anyway, it's the stolen item part that matters the most to me. You meet a drunken guard. You decide to help him get back to the garrison and rehabilitate. Then, all of a sudden "what do I need to roll to steal his sword without the otehrs noticing?" (Nothing, of course, it's too bulky). "What about his money, then?"

And I'm all "what? Why would you?"

Because it helps buying better equipment, of course. Murderhoboes et al.

You might want to interrupt that campaign with some expectation management

...I should add "in Dungeon World" and that "roll with advantage" is "3d6 drop lowest", shouldn't I?

Doesn't Dungeon World already have XP for following alignment?

Yeah, but it doesn't work quite as well in retroreflection as your BIGs in a Burning Wheel derivative. They're too narrowly written for people to realize they did them, and because they don't matter in the course of play they often just get forgotten about.

They're more pointed at, like, spotlight action? So I find it helps to add a carrot at point of use.

Might just be my players, though.

can someone remind me how to do line and paragraph breaks within quote/spoiler blocks?

Double space?

Or is there a way Markdown doesn't trundle right through a single linebreak?

Oh, right. Actual HTML linebreak elements.

<br />

oh, I had nbsp; in my head, but of course that's ridiculous: it's the break I want, after all!

>! <p>like this
>! <p>for each paragraph

I think you mean "each <p>aragraph."

=D

nice try sheep

isn't that the big spider in Fellowship of the Wizards: Harry Awakens?

that's the one

@nitsua60 I just put the spoiler markup on a blank line (and every line in the text) glad to know there's a better way

@DavidCoffron I'm not sure I'm quite following your comment--mind explaining a bit? (And slowly: I'm working on a horrible night's sleep.)

(Your comment from mainsite, not the line above ^^)

Umm... You stated that a character has a precedent for death with no soul and the not even wish would be able to prevent such a death, but lesser magic like clone and Magic jar keep a body alive in some capacity (albeit "catatonic" or "inert")

@nitsua60 I might just mention that a powerful fiend might have magic able to preserve a body without the soul since we know some mortal spells can do so in a lesser capacity.

@DavidCoffron I guess I'm trying to get across that when a soul is taken it's insta-death.

Like "normal" death is souls wafting toward some destination but magic might grab hold and shove it somewhere else.

But "YOINK" might be very different.

Oh, but you're saying the devil might keep you "alive"... interesting.

Is that right?

@nitsua60 Yeah. Something like that. Rather than taking your soul later, they take it right away and keep you alive in some fashion. Although they'd have to be pretty powerful because that sounds like the kind of magic a lich would have loved to have access to

@DavidCoffron Interesting, and reasonable.

your soul is kept safely on the moon and pilots your body remotely

And I think it ends up at a similar place: devil's got agency over your soul--either in your body (my formulation) or elsewhere (your formulation)--and can do bad things to you whenever it likes.

(And my suggestion is ToA spoiler by extension.)

Any suggestions on an edit?

Today in Unboxing: The Shetlands!

@Zachiel Chaotic doesn't mean you are somehow obligated to do chaotic things

@MikeQ It also doesn't mean you are excused when doing chaotic things

...which leads to the question

What does chaotic mean?

@Zachiel Correct. None of the alignments should be used to justify being a jerk to other players.

This is why alignment is... generally out of fashion.

@MikeQ it's not even "to other players" - it's to NPCs (directly)

But if I do something chaotic for personal gain, and I get caught cheating, and the guy we're trying to get something for is unamused by the fact... well, we have a problem

I considered asking people not to play evil nor chaotic characters, but then the adventure had (flavour) options for those characters

It doesn't really say much, it doesn't really do much (in 4e and 5e) and it's being used to substitute personality with a slot in a vaguely defined 3x3 box.

@kviiri I know. Still, my system of choice is 3.PF

(for a whole lot of different reasons)

But alignment is well known in the memery surrounding DnD (including video games borrowing mechanics from DnD) so the influx of people bringing in the desire to play up alignment is still great.

@Zachiel yea, I understand that it's harder to surgically remove alignment from that :(

I also like and DM 4e, but I'm unsatisfied by the pacing of their adventures and the gamification of out of combat rolls. I find skill challenges weak and awkward and just rolling to see if someone makes it like in 3.e weird

@Zachiel At my table I tell players that alignment isn't important. They should behave according to their character's motives.

@MikeQ which in my case still amounts to "murderhobo stupid"

In-universe (at my table), alignment is understood to be a purely magical concept and not an ethical one

well, maybe "chaoshobo stupid"

I'm a bit lost of how I'd want to do non-combat and exploration stuff in 4e

I'd like to create combat heavy dungeons with secrets to find, but I definitely want to avoid dungeons where the players feel a completionist urge to sweep every room for treasure. So far my plan is to create dangerous enough dungeons that attempting a full clear is going to be risky as heck (with no long rests in the dungeon allowed)

@nitsua60 I'm not sure. It's good enough as is. I'd add the bit on devil keeping you alive around when you say "Whether this happens ever in-game week, or every time the character does something the devil doesn't like, that's up to you." with some precedent for how magic can maintain soulless bodies in some ways, but you could also just leave without. Its a secondary distinction

@kviiri You could try imposing some sort of time limit, e.g. "You have three days to enter the ancient temple and retrieve the magical amulet, otherwise the princess will die"

@MikeQ Yeah, I'm generally using "clear the quest in one long rest" limitation, combined with a time management system that throws hurdles at the party if they dally during the quest.

This just in, my typing's bad with a mobile keyboard

@Zachiel If the character's motives are nothing more than "cause as much trouble as possible and let my companions clean up the mess", and the other players think it's a detriment, I would talk to that player OOG and tell them to reconsider the character idea

@MikeQ I'm already talking to the player but my guess is more that he just likes the opportunity to do the "fun" things like messing with NPCs, getting stoned, oh look a safe haven amidst the chaos, why don't we settle here?

There are fun things, and then there are things that are fun for one player and annoying for everyone else. Generally, those problem-players either adapt their playstyle, or leave.

Last campaign we had to travel from the capital to a port and he and another guy disappeared for a while and came back after buying an elephant, just because it was unconventional.

@kviiri I need to restat my 4e monsters so that they actually pose a threat.

They faced a solo monster 2 levels higher and they came away with scratches. 1d12+4 physical damage + 1d10+9 acid damage for being swallowed, with level 22 PCs, was really laughable. I mean, I'm fine with people escaping the swallowing by getting "phasing" or finding ways for the trapped character to spend healing surges. I'm less fine with two dailies (everybody in range 20 is prone and everybody in range 5 gets pulled in) making a whole (different) encounter just a waste of time.

Maybe try giving enemies more firepower? Up their offense and action economy rather than just defense?

@MikeQ I think I'm going to double their damage dice

Also, everyone should have at least one ranged attack

Original 4e monster math was botched, so if you emulated that, I can see that happening :)

Rule of thumb that's worked in other systems: The enemy side should have somewhere between 0.5x to 1.5x as much action economy as the player side

@kviiri post MM3

@MikeQ That's useful for my PF game

blogofholding.com/?p=512 A level 24? Their damage per hit should be around 32.

We have 6 players and the adventure is for 4

@Glazius this was automated damage for swallowed enemies

@Zachiel Which adventure is it

Yes, right. That's basically the extra attacks that a solo gets, so it should still be around 32.

@MikeQ Curse of the Crimson Throne anniversary edition

@Glazius Now that I think about it, that monster might have been pre-MM3

@Glazius Seeing these 4e damage numbers feels a bit funny after getting used to the 5e paradigm of bounded accuracy :P

I think 4e is a generally soundly-designed game but bounded accuracy is a really good change in 5e.

I wish I had some 4e in my life. I have the books I care about, some dungeon tiles and some minis.

But few people to play with and too little time :|

@kviiri I have all of the books and haven't played in almost 5 years...

@DavidCoffron Do like the guy who sold them to me did: find someone gullible to buy them

@kviiri they aren't all in the best quality (my basement flooded while they were in the bookshelf downstairs). Otherwise they'd have gone to Amazon a while ago

I still have all of mine on a shelf. Not as much of the Essentials line, but some of the metaphysics writing now that they could shed the old plot was really interesting.

I never really understood the desire to have a "metaplot" for RPGs

Like Carceri. It's now a prison for the former siege weapons in the war against the Titans that all the gods made together, except the ones who you'd think would have a problem with making a divine prison, so when something escapes it runs into their afterlives to deal with.

@kviiri The difference between good metaplot and bad metaplot is the difference between giving PCs a reason to want to do things and giving PCs a reason why they can't do things.

@Glazius I don't understand what you mean

@kviiri "You've been selected to take part in the Game of Making! Tell me what crazy magic item you want and I'll tell you what you need to bring to the gods themselves to forge it for you!" versus "As a result of MakingCon '16, the Game of Making has progressed and now cloaks are impossible. All your cloaks break and you can't make new ones."

@Glazius But... why does it have to be either of those?

GMs also need ideas to play the game and it would be nice if the same books they bought that contained the rules to run the game also contained ideas?

I confess I don't really understand restrictive metaplot, but positive metaplot is just a worked example in a textbook.

Sure, but is there any reason to eg. work up contrived schemes to explain changed rules?

To me, that's way worse than just saying "the old rules didn't really match our vision, try these ones"

Yes, that's the restrictive metaplot that I don't really understand. "Assassins stopped existing! Buy the new Thieves' Player Option book to find out how to legally make something similar!"

@Glazius But Assassins stopping existing doesn't really have anything to do with the metaplot. Mechanical changes happen because of mechanical reasons and the metaplot is written to reflect that, not the other way around.

@nitsua60 i feel like this is why there is immense value in having smaller, easier to learn, easier to pick up and play RPGs, and for a group to be willing to play many of them.

through playing various games we learn what works and what doesn't work, how some games succeed and some fail, and we better appreciate what we enjoy out of games and what we want to play and experience most. we also learn things to help us get more out of the games we enjoy because we can bring in strengths and weaknesses we learned from most other games.

fate's my favorite go-to system but that's on the back of things i've learned from a lot of success and failure with it and with other games, and that's also why i recommend other games as introductory games when someone's looking to break out from D&D.

when groups are into movies, board games, video games, television shows, books, and other types of media they don't seek a monotony of the same project day after day; it's unusual we do that in tabletop games.

@kviiri I've heard that How to Host a Dungeon can be good for this, since you end up creating large swaths of dungeon that may have interesting story (and knowledge of which may eventually be tactically useful) but little treasure. At that point if your players are being completionists, that seems to be another term for "enjoying exploration for its own sake."

Well, the original time happened in the transition from AD&D to AD&D 2E, when assassins stopped existing. Books at the time were still written with heavily natural-language rulings and prized natural-sounding explanations for things like why a chained-up fighter can survive a minute of dragonbreath or why a commoner only has 1d4 hit points.

"assassins imba nerf plz" didn't fit the time. "Bhaal, god of murder, has been killed, and the gifts he gave to assassins are now gone", did.

And D&D exists to emulate previous D&D, so when 3E came to the Forgotten Realms it happened again.

I don't agree with it either.

But at the same time, if the PHB3 comes out and suddenly you can make a crystalman with brain knives when you couldn't before, it's nice to have a place to start thinking about that other than "they were here all along and nobody noticed I guess?"

Even the ultimate dodge, "they dreamed the world so it always was the way it is today, from the beginning of all things until the end of time", still leaves you scrambling for ideas about what the crystalmen have always been doing.

I dunno, I'd be totally fine with "they've always been there but we didn't write about it before because we only came up with them now".

More fine than with <convoluted explanation why this race/mechanic/whatever hasn't been mentioned before>

@nitsua60 Heh, I feel that underestimates the degree of compulsion some people have to just search everything, just in case

If you have "no long resting allowed", you could also have really obvious treasure that needs skill challenges to claim and whacks out your healing surges or advances a condition track when you fail? Less "inconspicuous wall section" more "giant force bubble full of silver tethered to four pillars"?

hello have this you're welcome

Prison colony where all the wildlife can kill you. Yeah, checks out.

lol

I wish my games were in English so I could implement that idea :D

hey there @ACuriousMind

ahoi @Shalvenay

Boom. I'm back.

Howdy, everyone.

@ACuriousMind how're things going?

@Shalvenay Very well, my ankle's finally healed enough so I can walk around (albeit at the speed of an old man)

Otherwise a bit frustrated because all of my regular RPG groups have scheduling hiccups

@Shalvenay How about you?

@eimyr Howdy, fine internet person!

internet person, as if @Anaphory

True, true.

You know I'm an incorporeal AI. You've seen the proof!

@eimyr Incorporeal, invisible AI. Yes. I have seen it.

Or is that already implied in “incorporeal”?

My mental semantic map suggests that “incorporeal” is to “touch” as “invisible” is to “sight“.

indeed

@ACuriousMind doing OK here

@Anaphory My mental map suggests that "incorporeal" is to "body" as "insightful" is to "sight" =)

@nitsua60 How's that with “inflammable”?

Inflammatory.

@Anaphory the thing with "inflammable" is that it was originally drawn from the root word "inflame" with only a suffix added, but the NFPA and co. drove the transition to the modern term "flammable" due to the false-prefix parsing ambiguity present there

@Anaphory hmmm - are there any incorporeal things that are visible?

@Shalvenay I know, I pulled it up because a related thing happens between “incorporeal” and “insightful”.

@eimyr That's what I was thinking. I think the stereotypical ghost/phantom would be an example.

@Anaphory One could argue holograms are very visible while incorporeal

Yes, that too!

@Shalvenay The issue is actually much older in that the latin prefix 'in-' can both function as the in privativum negating the meaning of the word it's prefixed to and as a prefix intensifying the word.

So even a Latin speaker could have interpreted "inflammare" as "set really aflame" and "extinguish fire" if they didn't have the required cultural context

@ACuriousMind No, the “in” in “inflammare” is pIE *en “in, into”, not pIE *n̥- “not, grave”, so inflammare is “to set into flame”, not “to set gravely aflame”.

Finally, my interest in linguistics collides with D&D

@ACuriousMind oh, wow, didn't know that

@Anaphory Interesting. Still works in Latin because "in" means "in, into" there, too ;)

Huh. I thought I knew the last page of Dungeon World questions and had thrown votes on them. Maybe somebody's been adding new tags?

@ACuriousMind Yep, that's what I meant, the in/in merger is definitely a thing. For inflammare to be used as “to extinguish” I'd want to see a reference, but I will definitely concede that a Roman thinking about that would at least have the same confusion as a modern English speaker.

I sadly do not know enough about then-contemporary Latin linguistic to know whether they would have really thought of conceiving of the in- in inflammare as an in privativum

It was just a plausible just-so story :P

@ACuriousMind I'm sure someone then had exactly this discussion, except without modern linguistics and Dungeon World thrown in ;-)

hey there @Helwar