TRPG General Chat

@Shalvenay g'day. How's it going?

Shalvenay

@linksassin alright here, as for you?

I'm alright. Banging my head against mods on other stack sites again though.

Shalvenay

@linksassin oh :/

@linksassin Big Mood.

12:04 AM

Someone made a sexism comment "X is only for young males don't push your gender-specific tags on the rest of us" in an answer on meta and I flagged it. My flag got declined.

Answer has -6 votes but mod doesn't see a problem with it.

Where?

Writing.se. writing.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1916/33442

Like it's not the worst but I would have liked a mod to remove or edit that part of the answer. Or at least comment that that kind of attitude isn't ok.

Oh. This chat is not associated with Writing.

@BESW I know. Shalvenay just asked how I was and I said banging my head against mods.

Ah.

12:08 AM

I don't expect anyone here to do anything.

Ah, one of my favourite culture-dependent things: What counts as a suitable answer to "How're things going?" On the internet, it's never really clear whether the question is a gesture of politeness or a genuine inquiry

@ACuriousMind True. But I've found that "not much, you?" rarely sparks an interesting discussion.

The users here are quite insightful and have several times provided a useful response to my current issue.

@linksassin Oh, nothing against your response. I just lurk around here :)

@ACuriousMind So how are things with you? :P

12:24 AM

Quite well, I've got two days off work ahead of me

Excellent. I would love to trade you.

Eh, it's days I didn't take last year - now I'm taking them to game with some people I otherwise rarely see

Enjoy.

12:55 AM

@DavidCoffron I'd be down for starting RoT sometime soonish... mostly because we're maybe a session or three away from finishing HOTDQ :)

@V2Blast Just saw an edit of yours a few minutes ago -- Are you aware that posting a question link (either rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/{anything} or rpg.stackexchange.com/q/{anything}) will automatically convert the link into a title?

Could save you some time. :)

i.e. these two render identically:

Note that this could potentially change the argument of the answer to ["Can I use Minor Illusion to create a wall, hide behind it, and attack with advantage?"][4].

  [4]: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/50000/…

vs

Note that this could potentially change the argument of the answer to rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/50000/….

Ooh, when did they implement that?

barring the quotation marks

@BESW it's been around for as long as I can remember

Also [Link text](link) works for if you only want to paraphrase the link

it does, but the point of this is you don't have to embed the title yourself

you just put the link

It'll go and grab the current title of the question for you, no need to copy and paste, no chance of errors creeping in.

The title is baked in at the time you save the edit, so if the title of that question changes later, that won't be reflected in this post unless this post is edited again

1:38 AM

@doppelgreener I'm aware - just don't think it looks as easy to parse mixed into text when editing the question itself

(i.e. mid-sentence)

1:58 AM

> Just passing through. Whenever you move through a zone without stopping, you can inflict one stress on a target of your choice within that zone.

3:13 AM

New Blades in the Dark. Straight outta Duskvol yo. What's the Akoros Geneva convention analogue? #ttrpg #roleplaying #bladesinthedark #tabletop @EvilHatOfficial https://youtu.be/KwvvD9YNHOI

Tweeted by GuildofGamingTV on March 25, 2019 at 10:09 AM

3:49 AM

Question for the room. What do we do when the question has so many incorrect assumptions that it's difficult to know where to begin?

For instance, this question has a lot of incorrect rulings beyond the unclear question. It's possibly a duplicate possibly not. I've voted to close as unclear for now.

A: How do we handle it when the asker's problem is just that they're confused?

22

Do what we do best: solve their problem to the best of our ability. From my experience we can sort these questions into three categories. 1. Their question is incomprehensible or really does not have an answer as posed. These should get closed as unclear, naturally. We should try our best to co...

Ok so closing as unclear is the correct first step?

I'm asking because the thing they are confused about would be a duplicate. But their actual question possibly isn't.

Get it closed first. We can worry about specifics later.

4:49 AM

Afternoon all

@Ben g'day. How are you?

Currently in the waiting room at the doc's. I think I might have a chest infection :(

[wave] Infected chests aren't fun!

But, I've been off from work for the past two days, and been bingeing Adventure Time haha

@Ben I hope you feel better soon

5:04 AM

Thanks. Should just be a few hits of antibiotics

Sweet, sweet antibiotics

Sounds good

I have abs of steel from coughing so much. Lol

@Ben Sweet. I got a viral throat infection and an unrelated bacterial ear infection 2 months ago right as my health insurance was running out. I thankfully got antibiotics and a cough suppressant while I still had insurance

That's lucky haha

It always seems to hit right at the end... It's like it knows......

5:21 AM

@V2Blast What country are you in? I've never honestly thought about whether I had health insurance on not when going to the doctor.

USA! USA! USA!

clearly we are a well-put-together country

unrelated:

. @JeremyECrawford Are you planning on waiting until the next batch of Artificer UA content is released before running the poll?

Tweeted by gutsdozier on March 25, 2019 at 4:04 PM

@gutsdozier Yep!

Tweeted by JeremyECrawford on March 25, 2019 at 6:08 PM in reply to gutsdozier

Ah... I mean poor people deserve to die right?

@linksassin Say what you will about Andrew Yang as a candidate, but at least he's getting UBI into the mainstream discussion

frantically googles Can't say I entirely agree with some of the policy I'm reading but UBI is an absolute must as we become more automated.

Note: I'm Australian so hadn't heard of him till now.

We have like, a thousand people declaring they are going to run for this election

I hadn't even heard of this guy till now

5:31 AM

I doubt he'll win but at least he'll get the message out there and hopefully get others to adopt the platform

and who knows, we've had more ridiculous candidates win...

Hoo boy no comment on that one

I don't want to start getting into that, I'll probably never stop

As strange as your system is. At least the person you vote for actually serves their term.

We have upcoming elections too (parliamentary, next month)

Because we vote for parties they can literally just change the people in charge because they don't like them and there's nothing we can do about it until the next election.

@linksassin eh, ... That depends entirely how you define that

5:38 AM

@linksassin The US president rotates the cabinet too, but does your country also rotate MPs (or equivalent)?

7 leaders in 10 years...

In 1965 Tom Lehrer published a song expressing incredulity that the actor George Murphy had been elected a Massachusetts senator. He facetiously suggested that Ronald Reagan might enter politics next.

We vote for one person, who yeah then changes a whole cabinet of people

@BESW Bad move, haha

And we have an electoral college

5:39 AM

In theory we vote for our local representative and then they vote within the party who the leader is.

But they can change the local rep for another party member under some circumstances.

Our cabinet resigned last month, but it's so close to the election it's hard to see it as anything other than a political stunt

They're still acting ministers, keeping the administration up but making no new initiatives

MPs (assuming you mean Members of Parliament) are most equivalent to our senators, whom each state chooses directly but it's up to each state to decide how its senators will be chosen.

Cabinet is chosen but the leader who is chosen by the party. It's kind weird.

We also have the equivalent of party whips, which are chosen within the party by the party.

We have both MPs and Senators. Two house system with a similar voting system.

I think we have whips too. But they are the leader of the upper house I think

5:42 AM

But in theory, the electoral college actually does the voting that counts

At least for President

Which means the candidate with the most actuall votes from people doesn't necessarily win

The electoral college used to be more transparent, at least.

Also, we have horrible levels of gerrymandering

Yea, and the college seats aren't proportional are they?

We have lots of elections here. European Parliament every five years, presidential every six years, parliamentary every four years, municipal every four years. We were supposed to have regional elections too but the legislation bringing those was bigged down in various disputes

We have council, state and federal elections every 3-4 years. all compulsory voting too.

Not that that's a bad thing.

Our elections are a lot shorter than the US though. 2-3 months max. Rather than a year

I sort of feel like compulsory voting would be a good thing if we had anything close to a functional democracy

But right now we have so many other issues to fix before we consider that, I think

5:48 AM

It all really makes me appreciate more how Baha'i elections are set up.

anyone been following the Thai election?

Compulsory voting is how you get things like UBI and healthcare. Force them to cater to everyone not just the rich and educated that bother to vote.

I don't dislike the idea of compulsory elections, but I dislike the memes akin to "if you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain" that often accompany it.

Thaksin Shinawatra wrote an op-ed in the NYT: nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/…

@kviiri There is some truth in that statement however.

5:52 AM

@kviiri we have some serious problems with voter suppression in the US

So replacing that all with everyone voting kinda sounds good to me

If you complain about something but then choose not to do something about it when given the chance you are part of the problem

there are two partisan gerrymandering cases in front of the Supreme Court

hopefully they make things suck less

my hopes are low

@linksassin It blatantly ignores the fact that in many places you have absolutely zilch chance of influencing the carefully pre-arranged outcome. And it doesn't even mean only places like North Korea

And, you know, that injustice doesn't magically go away if the person mentioning it doesn't have a stainless character. It's pretty simple ad hominem.

@V2Blast It baffles me, really. Gerrymandering was a known problem in the 1800's, how come it hasn't been fixed?

5:54 AM

@kviiri I said "some". In those places there are bigger issues than voting or not.

@kviiri Because it's built into the system that those in power are enabled to consolidate it.

@kviiri mostly because it's benefited both parties in general - the fewer competitive elections there are, the less they have to spread out money and effort

In Australia the people who don't vote or deliberately vote invalidly are often some of the loudest critics of the government.

How should one vote, if they disagree with the whole premise of the election?

2

@kviiri yeah not much voting can do in that situation for sure

5:56 AM

I think democracy needs more mechanisms for election rules to be changed outside the control of the people who stand to benefit from the system

2

@kviiri That is a unfortunate reality for many I suppose. If I had an answer I'd be a lot richer I think.

I'll reiterate that I like the idea of compulsory voting, but at least in the US we have other things we need to fix before we consider it

I think it's important to avoid overly simplistic either/or frames to complicated situations.

@BESW This is why we play RPGs not politics right?

And I'm not trying to sound too anti-America here, my country's got its problems too. We have static electoral districts so gerrymandering isn't really one of them, but there have been some minor incidents that suggest our politicians aren't exactly inviolable either

6:02 AM

Nomic

Nomic is a game created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber in which the rules of the game include mechanisms for the players to change those rules, usually beginning through a system of democratic voting. Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed. The initial ruleset was designed...

That sounds like a great game.

...I wish House of Bards had stronger political mechanics. I could just use that for my Ancient Egypt game.

I wonder if game theory provides a good solution to beating Nomic making some homo economicus assumptions...

Although, the Ancient Egypt game might be a very good candidate for a GS121 port.

The strategy board game I just bought, Cuba Libre, has an interesting if simple political simulation meshed with the wargame

The Batista faction (Cuba's pre-Castro government) has a US relations track. As their relations worsen, Batista has to pay more to accomplish the same operations. US relations are mainly decided by periodic support checks to see if Batista is still popular enough

Factions can shift support, Batista towards itself, Castro towards itself, while the Directorio faction wants to keep people away from the excesses of both sides

I can't wait to try this game out

6:11 AM

Interesting.

I think it's kinda weird though, that Batista's action to build support is called "Civic action" while Castro (and the other guerilla factions) have "Terror"

My Egypt game has, as a major element, the rival priesthood factions jockeying for power and influence in Egypt, and the international politics of the surrounding nations like Crete and Babylon.

@kviiri That sounds like a deliberate lens choice.

@BESW It's kinda weird since the game otherwise underlines pretty well that Batista was no good

Huh. Failed attempt at satire?

Might be a bit uncharacteristic for GMT games

Actually, it might be a holdover from Andean Abyss, an earlier game using the same engine

@BESW Cool, is it historical?

6:19 AM

@kviiri Historomagical.

@BESW My favorite

@BESW that's a fun word

Set during the reign of the Pharaoh Hatshepsut, with Trogdor playing a low-born thief who got catapulted unwillingly into high politics when Bast blessed him with the powers of a high priestess while he was robbing one of her temples.

Magic would be framed as having relationships with gods, Bubblegumshoe style: you can spend points to have things happen because of your relationship with a particular god, and you have to take time to have scenes reinforcing your relationship in order to get the points back.

Bast from the past

That avoids the wacky monotheistic-polytheism problem, because you can have relationships with lots of gods but if you're a priest of one god you probably put most of your points into them.

6:25 AM

@BESW Neat idea!

It also means everybody gets to do magic, a little.

But a priest has great magic because they've dedicated their lives (and skill points) to relationships with the gods.

...at least, for the time being.

Historically, Egyptian priesthood was more like a government job that you'd do for a few years before going into your own civilian business.

Career priests were relatively rare.

@kviiri ...now I have the Samurai Jack theme stuck in my head

7:07 AM

@kviiri It was originally a one-shot D&D 3.5 campaign that got translated into Fate years later, and now I'm working on a Gumshoe solo implementation.

7:25 AM

@BESW oh yeah this game

I had forgotten that was a thing

7:49 AM

> "<insert name here>, no!" When someone you care about is taken out of a conflict, or concedes, you get a boost with their name on it.

8:23 AM

Unusual RAW uses for Ring of Mind Shielding in DnD 5e: prevent magically savvy burglars from knowing if you're asleep through magic.

The trick is that people sleep lying down but Ring of Mind Shielding prevents using magic to know if you're lying

Sdjz

12:04 PM

@HotRPGQuestions This is the last time the HNQ bot posted here. Now I am convinced something is up. The feed that I think was being used seems to be down. Should anyone be warned about this?

12:16 PM

@Sdjz I've pinged the person who developed those feeds:

@Blue The feeds appear to have been down for the past 24 hours. Currently the the entire lackadaisical-appeal.glitch.me domain is down. Glitch.me is fine. — doppelgreener 48 secs ago

Sdjz

@doppelgreener Thank you!

No problem.

12:33 PM

morning morning

Good morning o/

1:00 PM

Sure, "Eureka", but I'm saying that shouldn't there be an inherent cost associated with that? You're still writing it into your book. That has an actual cost.

I'm not suggesting that one introduce a cost for the "free" spells, I'm just saying that it thematically doesn't jive.

1:22 PM

@goodguy5 Are you referring to the cost of transferring a spell to a spellbook not jiving with experimentation?

When you level up, you get a free spell in your book.

Copying a spell is 50gp per spell level; class spells are half, which implies that you have to experiment less to master them because they're in school.... which implies that the "rare inks" or "fine inks" or whatever are still fairly costly.

So, why do you get free spells?

@goodguy5 If you're looking for a thematic explanation, that seems like it's on the DM to narrate. E.g. In the course of adventures you pick up little bits and pieces that are useful to your craft. Taken altogether it amounts to sufficient material to copy one new spell. It is the culmination of many long hours of rumination and small accumulation of material.

Hrm.... I'm not sold, but a solid argument

Alternately, you only need expensive materials to copy spells because spells you've worked out yourself are more familiar and intimate so don't need extra fancy bits to contextualize their power, while you need fancy bits to help you customize and retain spells worked out by other people in their own unique styles and notations.

Effectively you can write your own spells in shorthand but for other peoples' spells you need to write out the full formal ritual with annotations and footnotes--and the expensive materials are part of that.

Then how do people copy your spells?

1:32 PM

(Which would also explain why scrolls need expensive materials too, since you aren't there to fill in the gaps with your own brain when the time comes to cast 'em.)

morning all!

Then couldn't you also just write junky scrolls that only you can use?

morning moose

Very carefully, by studying your style and then working out the full ritual from context of other spells in your book, and putting the full ritual in their book so they can use it without referencing the rest of your book once they've moved on.

No, because that'd be just like preparing a spell; the scroll is a spell ready to go, with all the bits filled in.

The bits are the most important part of magic!

Steven & Amethyst - "The Bits!"

►

1:37 PM

XD

@goodguy5 It's not really an argument. It's a narrative to flesh out a mechanic. You could come up with any alternate that is just as valid. That's the nice thing about mythologies. Why does the sun rise? Because it's a guy in a chariot. Because someone with a fiery catapult lives over the horizon. Because a dragon insists on eating burritos every night.

I've been told I should watch more SU. I've only seen the first 3-4 episodes.

They're all equally valid narratives to explain the sun rising & setting mechanic.

@ColinGross There's a children's song in my language, whose name means "The sun is stupid"

@kviiri Do you live in a region where it takes extended vacations and have really short days for some part of the year?

1:40 PM

@ColinGross yes

The first verse says the sun is stupid because it shines so much in the summertime, when it's already warm

The second verse says the sun should shine more in the winter, so you could enjoy lazing in the apple tree even in January

I'm on board with this. I live in the far NW corner of a time zone. 140 hours of sunlight per day in the summer...

I'm liking this song more and more with each verse.

The third verse says the sun is stupid for shining in daytime only (and over the US during nighttime)

Yes. the USA has New York City and LA. Obviously no need for an actual Sun.

Plus, Florida is the Sunshine State. It's heaven's waiting room. You get all the sunshine you need when you're retired.

@kviiri this is my new favorite song

Levelling up is always going to be a discrete character change where it realistically would be a gradual progression - limitation of it being a game. Although I've had some success giving each player a little "how you levelled up" description, and eventually i'd like to have them tell me how they did it

1:45 PM

@Rubiksmoose You can spend the best 40 seconds of your life listening to it youtube.com/watch?v=DD8zU5tMj1s

But even so some of the sudden changes are hard to justify

@Rubiksmoose Sadly, the singer (Juice Leskinen) was better known for good lyrics than good singing

I was a huge fan of his poetry in my later teenage years

As with all YT links I'll have to listen at home since it is blocked here. But mark my words I shall.

@SirCinnamon Yeah, I had some players who liked explaining their level-ups too. It was quite hard at times

I think it's one of those things where you'd best not think about it too much, but I guess it's a matter of taste

Some classes (Wizard, Cleric, Paladin) have easier explanations than others (Fighter, Rogue, Monk) though that doesnt apply to every level

1:49 PM

I don't know that I've seen any RPG do level-up narration smoothly.

I guess Paranoia might count, though it largely sidesteps the issue. You spend your XP points (not experience points traitors!) and your new abilities are downloaded into your brain instantly lol

Incremental advancement and sideways progression for me!

I know kung fu

@Rubiksmoose Hm, 7th Sea might be the closest candidate, largely because what you gain when leveling up is decided when you decide how you level up

That said, I found the 7th Sea system otherwise quite awkward. It's a bit of a heartbreaker

@kviiri hmm can you explain that a bit more?

Masks/PbtA has the interesting improve via failure mechanic which often results in more smaller improvement over time and I did find it usually easy to narrate, but they weren't extremely better than D&D just in smaller steps

@kviiri I do this. It cost the players 10 days of training/reflection/class related activity that they must narrate.

2:03 PM

@doppelgreener @nitsua60 maybe look at taking this question off HNQ? I can't say for sure, but we have three answers so far that (IMO) could be improved and at least one that is only very partial. Arguably, the question could also be unclear and more details might be needed. Up to you but just thought I'd point it out to see what you thought.

(Also some more community eyes, votes, comments on that question would not hurt in general)

@ColinGross I'll go with the burrito option.

@goodguy5 If you want to go back to the granularity of AD&D 1e extended period of training and etc for each level up, go right ahead. I think the devs did that with the Wizard et al for playability reasons. It is still a game. (Also, having researched other peoples' writing and diaries and journals during a "it must be primary sources paper" in grad school, BESW's point made on the challenge there as compared to one's own notes is a nice way to perceive it).

I raise a glass to one of the most underappreciated of professions, the professional librarian/research librarian. Their ability to help me get that research done was IMO a form of magic ...

@Rubiksmoose hmm

I've left a comment on the partial answer and downvoted it, because it's not providing a solution

oh, I'm a big proponent of streamlining things and getting rid of unfun rules.

I'm talking purely from a "1+1=3?" perspective.

To be fair, magic doesn't have to follow Euclidian norms....

@nitsua60 I'm wondering if this is a "what should I do?" question the likes of which Interpersonal.SE closes, because it's usually a matter of opinion, and they don't state a specific goal they want to achieve (like kicking the dude out for apparent white supremacism)

@goodguy5 as with life style expenses and the actual living details, those get "glossed over" as does the penchant for a wizard to always jot down a few notes each day on the things seen/perceived/learned ...

..or they have a dream journal and make notes right after they wake up each day ...

2:16 PM

not to mention the 6 spells they start with, valued at 300gp

well.... varried for favored school

A gift from a mentor? Found buried on their parents farm?

room for improv

@goodguy5 the Wiz spent how many years learning and in apprenticeship? Same as the gift of fitted chainmail for the paladin .... (it happened before we begin)...

I'd have to add it up, but it seems like the wizard "starts" with more worth.

@goodguy5 for which they sacrificed those HD. ;)

nitsua60

2:35 PM

@doppelgreener That seems right to me. We don't know if the goal is to integrate that person with less friction, if it's to minimize group discomfort, if it's to empower the group writ large to tackle it... "what should I do" lacking "in order to ______" seems POB to me.

I'm closing this question because in its current shape it is primarily inviting opinion. However given some additional information this could be potentially answerable. That information is: (a) What is your relationship to these individuals? Is this a random internet group or a number of close friends? (b) What's your visibility into this group chat? And most importantly for this not being primarily opinion-based: (c) What's your goal? What kind of resolution would you like? We can guide you concretely in how to achieve that goal, which would make this not primarily opinion-based. — doppelgreener ♦ 35 secs ago

+1 that decision...

^ [thumbs up]

@nitsua60 Thanks for the second opinion; it's closed now.

@Rubiksmoose Sorry, tough spot at work

2:41 PM

No worries at all :)

5:08 PM

I found this nightmare fuel for you guys

GreySage

@goodguy5 Gah, my eyes!

majestic

5:24 PM

@goodguy5 I have now "treated" my group to this image as well. XD

vicky_molokh

5:39 PM

@Rubiksmoose Ok so

In 7th Sea 2e (the one I've played) charavter advancement works through Stories

The player chooses the Story and the reward for completing it

So you can have intuitively understandable ones like "regain noble title to gain the Rich perk"

ahhh that is pretty neat

Yeah, kinda. It's hard as heck to work with though

Yeah I'll bet. I can see how that would be really hard to work into an established story especially if it comes out of the blue

The value of a story is supposed to be determined in the amount of steps but there's little guidance on what steps should be like

And even less guidance when it comes to each PC having their own story and the GM supposed to add stories for enemies too

And when PCs choose stories that don't mesh well...

Or mesh too well!

6:10 PM

Hmmmm yeah the solution to the "problem" seems to simply make more issues doesn't it?

Yuuki

@Rubiksmoose It has a strong vision for sure, 7th Sea I mean

I just fear it's not too well-grounded in game design consideration

6:37 PM

Or that it's very heavily made for a particular group but fails to communicate their playstyle well

@kviiri There aren't many collaborative story telling games that handle failure to communicate very well.

I think "telephone" being one of the outstanding ones that depends on failure.

@ColinGross I mean, the game fails to communicate how to play it to me

oof

7:42 PM

@V2Blast good work on those tables. I'm still not really sure what is being asked here that we can help with, but at least now it is easier to parse.

7:59 PM

@Rubiksmoose Haha, yeah, I tried and failed to understand the question so I settled for fixing the formatting :P

@V2Blast heck sometimes that is enough to make it clearer.

8:15 PM

It looked like they were taking a d20 roll, where the only significant result is a natural 1 (an encounter occurs) and trying to simplify 20 executions of that roll down to a more manageable number of dice.

So if OP clarifies their question enough to get it reopened, we can tell them to use a d%, and only consider outcomes 0-4, i.e. "realistically, only 0-4 encounters will occur, so map those probabilities onto a d% and roll two dice to find out how many".

(This is for 20 settlers; not sure whether that was just a number the OP threw out or if it constitutes the actual number they need to simulate)

@Xirema That was a given example. It looked to me that the OP was looking for a general strategy for making tables for X outcomes given Y success probability. Which seemed odd.... like the back of old stat books odds.

Seemed almost like an answer would be, "here's the formula you punch into [google|wolfram|online stats calc] ... "

Shadow of the Century. You don't *have* to wear sweatbands or legwarmers to play it. But we're not going to stop you. Available now at a game store near you.

Tweeted by EvilHatOfficial on March 26, 2019 at 4:11 PM

No this is about probability and statistics within the games. I"m not looking for what the numbers are but what the math is to move from a population to a individual. it has a specific answer as far as the math I just cant recall what it is called from College. — John 9 mins ago

GreySage

8:33 PM

@Rubiksmoose Is that referring to a new Bard subclass: College of Statistics?

@GreySage hah! that sounds like one that I'd stay away from lol

@GreySage Actually I think it's a subclass of rogue on account that the probabilities have to be discrete.

vicky_molokh

@BESW Huh. For some reason I thought Shadow of the Century is a follow-up to Spirit of the Century. Instead it looks like Starchildren: Velvet Generation RPG.

Oh dear. I appear to have accidentally overflowed my floating point numbers.

Stats for Roll [[d20]x400]
   0:         31727830821534042803654883699034277628579550244602438389279611862959509367372167294211785737918097330349374325035551361172150671457724689539970829370384420318180959318477397460643005992191200513994533379743306619818752053117894787612158263314752849792926298721850882139712216936392620986404488059543401312161886723819384331371318503743933584707615862147938770893877509912598478137195102306167873257510602132869361862673022512424035027922395904923682696340809138087624808690501294822019006715847274488967865512001 (     NaN%) Odds to Pass: 100.0000%

TL;DR: Don't try to simulate a D20 being rolled 400 times.

(At least the Trial numbers are accurate...)

@Xirema Why are you using a language or lib where that's still a problem? python or R do a pretty good job of handling that sort of thing.

8:40 PM

@ColinGross It's the natural limit of using double as a display datatype. The underlying data uses arbitrary precision integers/rationals, so that's not an issue.

@vicky_molokh Every of the Century game takes place in a different decade, and is tuned to our pop culture understanding of the sensibilities of that decade.

It's just the code that converts the data into human-readable format.

@Xirema Also something that existing mathematics packages take care of for you rather neatly.

@ColinGross I mean, I'm working in Java, so I should be able to convert the display code to BigDecimal. I think. BigDecimal has some unusual behavioral quirks though.

someone is looking at Atomic Robo Questions I think

I just got some upvotes for two different ones

9:00 PM

https://www.customink.com/fundraising/wotc_lamberthouse_2019
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user15026

9:56 PM

What the symbol that isn't the &?

Someone_Evil

Its the MTG symbol

@casskhaw The English department who says that death of the author doesn’t have to be permanent and raises the ghosts of writers from their books.

Tweeted by UrsulaV on March 26, 2019 at 1:57 PM in reply to casskhaw

user15026

10:09 PM

@BESW yesssssssss

lol

user15026

@Someone_Evil Ah, cool beans, that's not as familiar to me!

user15026

(Also, @BESW I like a lot of the replise to that thread, but that one's my favourite for reasons.)

user15026

See, you get it ;)

10:13 PM

Lol

But what is this mythical the reason?

@LanaDelRaytheon Who are we to say what "death of the author" really means? Barthes' original intent for the phrase is irrelevant.

Tweeted by TimothyJClarke on July 29, 2017 at 6:28 PM

user15026

@trogdor In this case, my having an English degree by sheer determination, because...I did not sit well with the old dead white dude ideas. :P

@Ash lol

> Undeath of the Author. You can use Lore to create advantages by raising dead spirits, if you have a copy of the target spirit's manuscript as a focus.

user15026

giggles I like this.

10:24 PM

[casts spell over Shakespeare's folio]
[a Klingon named Wil'yam Sheq'spir appears]
Well, that'll complicate the authorship question.

@Ash wait you aren't also and old dead white guy? shame on you :P

@BESW lol

I never understood that

the whole "Klingons claiming human poets and authors and such" thing

not what the point of them doing it was so much as why it's included in Star Trek

user15026

@trogdor only one word there applies, so shame, shame on me ;)

@Ash yes, shame, definitely feel that because other people told you to

the best reason

@trogdor It was a direct reference to both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia attempting to claim Shakespeare as their own.

@BESW ah,... I didn't even know that had happened

also that is a strange thing for them to gun for

I feel like they had other problems

but fair enough

that makes more sense to me now

10:30 PM

It's representative of how both regimes attempted to claim themselves as the origin and apex of culture; similar to how modern white supremacists revise history to remove non-white contributions to culture and the sciences.

ah

Klingons are usually not-so-subtle allegories for whatever group the writers of the era think their audience considers a significant existential threat. The Undiscovered Country was written shortly before the Wall fell.

yeah

I do feel like sometimes they are overdone though

"Nicholas Meyer, before the Wall fell."

lol

now you are just trying to cater to me

with the Darmok and Jalad phrasing

10:35 PM

lol

(BTW, one of the reasons Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was so good is that its third act, the bits in San Francisco in the 80s, was written by Meyer. He'd previously written a film about HG Wells and Jack the Ripper time traveling to San Francisco in 1979, and for Star Trek he used all the things he'd had to cut out of that film.)

user15026

I was trying to remember which ST film was which last night (World was giving me synopses) and I still can't remember which ones I like >.<

@BESW oh wow

@trogdor You will also find that Back to the Future III has lifted the character arc of Doc Brown's love interest almost beat-for-beat from Time After Time... and cast the same actress to play it.

10:43 PM

@BESW I don't think I remember back to the Future III enough to know who the heck that was

user15026

Most of the times I saw even bits of BttF III were in French, so I extra don't recall it well.

user15026

(My school didn't have a lot of French films, but they had all of BttF in French, so we got that a LOOOOT.)

That's... amusing.

wow

uh you know what?,...... I don't think I saw it at all

I'm mostly amused that Time After Time, which won a lot of awards and was created by some very famous people, has vanished from our pop culture consciousness but the shadows it cast onto other media are very very visible.

10:45 PM

there's cowboy stuff and I do noooooooooooot remember that at all

BttF III is the one where they get stuck in the old West and there's a time-traveling train at the end.

maybe I saw it? but I do not remember it

Honestly it's the least memorable of the three, for a lot of reasons.

user15026

I remember the first one, I think I only remember the bits of the second one that I do because of repeated cultural osmosis, the third one I just remember a train and mostly writing weird Zelda fanfic with a boy I liked instead of paying attention.

I am pretty sure I saw two

I hardly remember anything about it other than that it was in the future though

and the hoverboard

I remember there was one

10:49 PM

III is kinda interesting from a production/storytelling perspective because they were concerned that repeating the formula a third time would be tiresome so they tried to shake it up with additional roles and a more spiritual definition of success, but wound up removing the time travel knots and just being kinda bland.

"so sweet-natured and bland that it is almost instantly forgettable"

They really liked making a Western--everyone on the cast and crew had a blast with the new location. But III is one of the few times where everybody having a good time making a film doesn't make me like it more; instead it feels like they got complacent and lost their innovation.

Mmm

11:43 PM

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Tweeted by EvilHatOfficial on March 26, 2019 at 7:52 PM

user15026

11:58 PM

@BESW I have noooo idea what this is about but the picture alone makes me go "yes please"