TRPG General Chat

Hot RPG Questions

00:22

4

Q: When you upcast Blindness/Deafness, do all targets suffer the same effect?

When you target multiple creatures with the Blindness/Deafness spell, can you give some deafness and others blindness? Or do you choose an effect once, and all targets of the spell get the same effect?

BESW

01:37

If you're working on a Forged in the Dark game, come over and start a discussion about it on the Blades forums. https://community.bladesinthedark.com/c/forged-in-the-dark The Workshop sub-category is for tinkering on hacks. The Library sub-category is a place to post about releases (including alpha/playtests).

Tweeted by john_harper on March 30, 2019 at 10:00 PM

Hot RPG Questions

02:58

2

Q: Is the D&D universe the same as the Forgotten Realms universe?

Recently my friend and I were discussing this question. He’s convinced the default universe of D&D is the Forgotten Realms, but I have my doubts about that. I did read that certain cosmic events changed the universe as D&D went from one edition to the next but I'm unsure whether this relates to...

dungeons-and-dragons lore forgotten-realms

V2Blast

SUCH an amazing year with my friends at @Wizards_DnD. As my contract comes to an end April 1st, a space for a new Community Manager opens up!! http://company.wizards.com/content/jobs?gh_jid=4235887002 I encourage you to apply! You: Seattle based heart full of compassion & passion to bring the community together.

Tweeted by satinephoenix on March 29, 2019 at 2:27 PM

nitsua60

03:25

From an article on disputes over the term "British Isles" including Ireland: "In documents drawn up jointly between the British and Irish governments, the archipelago is referred to simply as 'these islands'."
What a delightful little bit of conflict-aversion.

KorvinStarmast

03:38

@nitsua60 as I was growing up, the Northern Ireland troubles/conflict was a very alive and big deal, so I am waxing a bit nostalgic in seeing the Irish / British friction begin again as the Brexit bit (Northern Ireland) and the EU bit (the rest of Ireland) will need to address how that latest thing shapes their situation. I expect fireworks a plenty.

nitsua60

03:52

@KorvinStarmast I certainly didn't experience it in the way many did, but among the older members of my generation and certainly among my parents' generation it was the only political talk I heard in the 80s. I am heartened that almost everything I'm hearing out of Ireland and Northern Ireland seems to be along the lines of "we worked so hard to get here, and these last couple of decades have been so good, please don't jeopardize that."

Hearing both sides talk overwhelmingly of how good it is to be at peace is reassuring.

3

I had a chance to meet George Mitchell some years back and I told him how sincerely my gramma Margaret Dolan thanked him for saving so many young boys' lives... tears sprung into his eyes.

So not all politicians are 50-foot snakes =)

Hot RPG Questions

06:14

3

Q: Can Plant Growth be repeatedly cast on the same area to exponentially increase the yield of harvests there (more than twice)?

I was looking into getting the spell Plant Growth because we work with some agrarian societies in our campaign. If you cast the 8-hour version that enriches plants in a 1 mile radius to double their next harvest over the same 1 mile every day, what stops it from increasing the harvest exponentia...

dnd-5e spells stacking

V2Blast

06:36

that parting-ways-with-players tag is a mouthful. not sure of a better name that covers all the same topics, though

V2Blast

06:58

this question still needs a few more close votes:

0

Q: Can I make the Tiamat my pet as a Ranger (Beast Tamer)?

I'm making a ranger character for the sole purpose of taming the Tiamat. Is it possible to actually do that, or is there a rule saying I can't?

ranger

no system specified, and it's not even clear what they're actually asking

BESW

V2Blast

07:36

@BESW ooh, source?

BESW

08:02

Oct 16 '13 at 17:03, by wax eagle

@ReaperOscuro no, sadly not my hand, I have not art ability. The Pitamat is from a concept artist named Talin, and I don't remember the artist on the tarrasquelichzebo mount.

It’s official. Hunters Entertainment is teaming up with @Skydance to produce tabletop role-playing games set within the stunning sci-fi universe of the hit @netflix series, @AltCarb. Coming 2020. #AlteredCarbon

Tweeted by Hunters_Ent on March 30, 2019 at 11:00 PM

trogdor

ah

I watched that show

it reminded me a lot of Eclipse Phase

V2Blast

08:52

@BESW ooh. hope it's good

a reply did ask whether book author Richard K. Morgan would be involved at all

BESW

@trogdor Do you think I'd like it?

@V2Blast Hmm, I've seen that go well and poorly.

trogdor

@BESW it's a little weird, but maybe?

V2Blast

Personally I wish it had more Will Yun Lee as original Takeshi

interesting story

Poe is also a great character

worth checking out at least

BESW

It's been my experience that involving an original creator in an intersemiotic translation of their work usually only improves the translation if the creator already has experience making original content in the new medium.

V2Blast

@BESW Eh, probably depends on the role they take. If it's basically just as a story consultant or something, I can see it being useful. If they try to be the lead writer or something, I can see how it'd cause issues.

BESW

09:00

"Map-making: Using vintage floor plans," I love using old blueprints! I've never gone quite as hardcore as Sophie Lagacé does, though.

vicky_molokh

@trogdor I have a great suspicion that it's the other way around.

Yep. Altered Carbon is 2002, Eclipse Phase is 2009.

BESW

I mean, Altered Carbon is mentioned as an inspiration in Eclipse Phase?

vicky_molokh

I admittedly don't remember the bibliography.

trogdor

It's about the order I have seen them in

Not which I think took ideas from the other

BESW

09:15

But so are, like, a hundred other books dating back to... [glances at list] ...at least the mid-80s.

vicky_molokh

My introduction to EP was a strange one. Essentially, my Transhuman Space GM was apparently heavily influenced by exposure to EP, and as a result the THS campaign felt more like an EP campaign in tone. Somewhere along the way I found out about the influence and checked out the other setting.

trogdor

@BESW anyway, I enjoyed it, but I have no idea if you would like it, the story has a sort of garbled message

I think the action is good, and most of the characters were fun

vicky_molokh

This was a somewhat funny turn since there's a lot of THS 'DNA' blatantly present in EP.

trogdor

It's a little dark

vicky_molokh

So the reverse flow was funny.

trogdor

09:16

But the story,... Is a little chaotic

BESW

I'll give the Netflix show a shot for background entertainment, but I can't get too excited about another transhumanist RPG that's drawing on the same material all the others have.

I'd like to see a transhumanist RPG inspired by futurists like Okorafor, please. That'd be new and fun and different.

trogdor

I think that's fair

It's basically trying to say something about what happens when someone doesn't die (or at least comes back when they do)

But,... It sort of fights itself on the moral of the story

BESW

Also I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and guess that whatever the book was like, the show's gonna use cyberpunk aesthetics but completely miss the philosophical point underlying it.

trogdor

@BESW could be, seeing as I never read the book I couldn't say

vicky_molokh

@BESW What are the differences, in a nutshell?

trogdor

09:23

The main character has all the same immortality as the people being criticized, but it seems like he gets a pass for,... Being the main character

@vicky_molokh I don't know if there is a "nutshell" explanation for that

vicky_molokh

Well, I can think of key differences of transhumanism between THS and EP.

So I'm curious what is the difference in transhumanism between the EP/THS/AC/etc. group and Okorafor.

(I'm not sure whether giving an example of what I see as the differences between the former two would be warranted.)

BESW

@vicky_molokh It's not rooted in the "canon" of a handful of English-speaking white dudes, which leads to a narrow conversation about a narrow set of topics within a very specific world perspective. By deriving inspiration from envisioning the future through the lens of other peoples and cultures, movements like Africanfuturism see the human identity and its connection to both nature and technology in completely different ways, through different epistemologies and values.

Cyberpunk, in particular, is based in a vision of the future as a remixed and intensified present, specifically intensifying capitalist and individualist values. This is completely unlike the visions of augmented humanity we see in stories like Binti and On a Red Station, Drifting, where humanity's relationship to natural and technological innovation is framed in the context of collectivist cultures and family obligations.

(And not the anemic outsider's-perspective version of collectivism and obligation that culture tourist authors like to sprinkle into their scifi as an exotic alternative, but written with the compassion and cutting insight of people who have experienced the complexity of those realities and seen how technology and nature influence them.)

BESW

09:43

There's a sadly common notion that good scifi authors need to have read "the canon" of major influences or they'll repeat things which have come before or not be able to build on the old ideas to get to new places. This is nonsense, and people who believe it usually wind up doing the same things with very minor modifications and being praised for innovation by people who've also only read the same books.

Meanwhile authors like Okorafor who came to science fiction through their lived experiences are actually doing radically interesting things because they aren't stuck trying to spin off the same tiny handful of decades-old inspirations.

BESW

09:56

(To be clear, I don't actually value innovation for its own sake so much as the craft telling of a good story; but I am weary of the same stories in the same styles dominating a genre that supposedly prides itself on creatively imagining futures but keeps imagining the same future for the same people.)

vicky_molokh

@BESW Now I'm torn between wanting to read it for the innovation, and being put off because it's described as collectivist (long story short: I was born in a collectivist society, was glad to see it fall, and wouldn't want a collectivist future).

BESW

And I don't mean to imply judgement on anyone who enjoys those kinds of stories. I personally am weary of them, and jaded by how many of their writers and readers actively reduce the opportunities for other kinds of stories to take root in the genre.

With stories like the Imperial Radch series and The Tea Master and the Detective out there, I'm saddened that I could have predicted at least a half-dozen of the authors who dominate Eclipse Phase's inspiration list but couldn't tell you a significant difference between each author's works.

@vicky_molokh You may be confusing collectivism with communism; they sometimes overlap but are not at all the same.

Collectivism is a cultural value that is shared by many indigenous groups, including the one I live in, and rarely looks like the extremely specific and very nationalized collectivist-communist ideology of Marxism–Leninism.

vicky_molokh

10:12

@BESW Oh, then we are on the same page, I guess. I have my share of things I'm tired of even though I recognise they're fun for other people and that's OK. (Though your opening looked like it was prepared to be judgemental.)

BESW

I am rather judgemental about the people who act to perpetuate a monoculture by excluding people and perspectives, then pat each other on the back about the inclusiveness of their genre. I am not judgemental about people who simply like that one thing but still welcome other people into their shared spaces.

Nothing is perfect in this world, and so it's not only okay but necessary to like imperfect things. I just advocate liking them critically, which means staring their flaws in the face without flinching.

vicky_molokh

@BESW I'm about to leave soon, so won't dive too deep into such a deep topic, but I would say that the overlap is big enough that I stand by my statement. (I'd also like to note that communism-the-ideology never achieved communism-the-end-goal-society-type.) My dislike is not limited to the specific implementation as seen in USSR, but rather to some of the basic principles that have been necessary for the creation of this implementation.

BESW

I suggest that you look into indigenous implementations of collectivism, but caution that they require being open to unfamiliar epistemologies.

At any rate, my overarching point is that the most visible transhumanist futures (and most visible scifi futures in general) are written from a small handful of similar perspectives and we keep re-hashing those same themes, motifs, and assumptions finer and finer. I love finding stories about what the future looks like to other kinds of people, other kinds of cultures and ideas, other ways of knowing.

Carcer

10:29

is collectivism not fundamentally the idea that we're better off working together and sharing over pursuing purely individualistic goals

BESW

And not in the "othering" sense. In the sense that I've only been getting one perspective my whole life and I'm sick of it and I become a better person when I know how other people see the world--which means the stories can't be people like me guessing how other perspectives would see the world.

@Carcer It's... complicated. In this context it's about identity and power structures as much cooperation.

It's about how you know who you are.

(And it's not on the opposite end of a spectrum from individualism, though that's a tempting simplification to make. Collectivism is actually an imperfect academic term made to encompass a variety of unique cultural values which share some elements Western academia considers similar.)

Carcer

fair enough

BESW

But yes, in a broad sense collectivism tends to include making decisions which prioritize the impact on your community over your personal gain.

Dec 15 '17 at 1:57, by BESW

A Pasifika epistemology is likely to say that present moment is the least important thing. It is created by the generations of past harvesters, and it is an obligation to the future harvesters. The focus is not on you and how the community depends on you, the focus is on the community stretching back and forward that you depend on.

Dec 15 '17 at 1:58, by BESW

Pasifika cultures "walk backward into the future." The present is the least important part of time, a moving blip defined by what came before and moving into what will be.

in The Factory Floor, Jan 10 '17 at 22:51, by BESW

A good physical example is harvesting taro: you can't harvest taro now unless the last person who harvested it cut off the corm so it would grow back. While you're harvesting taro now, you have to be the person cutting off the corm so it will grow back, because that's what the future needs.

in The Factory Floor, Jan 10 '17 at 22:52, by BESW

The act of harvesting now is created by the past and defined by the future.

...that got linked in the wrong order. Oh, well.

One thing I love about In a Red Station, Drifting is that de Bodard combines transhumanist technology with the cultural value of family continuity and ancestor veneration, to simultaneously allegorize the present values AND offer creative speculation about how those values would influence technology.

(NOT, notice, how technology would influence those values.)

A very popular thing for "classic" scifi to speculate about is how technology will change our values: will it drive us to commodify human experience or free us from material limitations on valuing all life; make us atheist and sow existential despair or uplift us and make us more optimistic and faithful?

And sure, sometimes you get awesome stuff out of that, like Leckie's Imperial Radch.

Hot RPG Questions

10:47

2

Q: What playable races were cut between 4e and 5e?

I'm just starting out with D&D, and while I haven't played yet, I'm in love with all the things in the PHB. But I am a sucker for self-torture/more content, and I was wondering what got left behind when 5e came out in terms of playable races. What playable races were cut in the transition from 4...

dnd-5e dnd-4e races edition-comparison

BESW

But authors like de Bodard and Okorafor take their cultures' values and project them across the stars to see what their perspectives can do with the future.

Carcer

ah, I recognise that name. Partner is reading Akata Witch/Warrior

BESW

So, you know. Transhumanism's fascinating, but it rarely manages to even acknowledge the diverse possibilities of humanity.

@Carcer Oh, the Sunny books are great!

Carcer

I shall have to give them a perusal once he's finished

BESW

Okorafor does great Africanjujuism. I really hope that someday I can see the short film inspired by Hello, Moto.

And HBO is doing a TV series based on her post-apocalyptic Africanfuturism novel Who Fears Death.

Carcer

10:56

executively produced by GRR for some reaosn

BESW

I mean... it's an award-winning novel of magic and power that shows up on lists of grim/gritty/violent speculative fiction fairly regularly.

Carcer

grim gritty violence does sound like GRRM's wheelhouse, sure

BESW

> I met Nnedi a few years ago, and I'm a great admirer of her work. She's an exciting new talent in our field, with a unique voice. Even in this Golden Age of television drama, there's nothing like WHO FEARS DEATH on the small screen at present, and if I can play a part, however small, in helping to bring this project to fruition, I'll be thrilled. (source)

He pitches it as "an Africanfuturist novel about a young woman who becomes a great, powerful, and dangerous sorceress."

Her Lagoon is also aggressively transhumanist in very surprising ways, though it's set in contemporary Lagos.

I doubt she'd call it transhumanist though--or care except to roll her eyes. [grin] Okorafor is understandably weary of people trying to label her fiction, since it doesn't fit neatly into any established boxes except "excellent, you should read this."

I read transhumanist ideas into Lagoon and that's all I can accurately say.

BESW

11:46

...I'm about half an hour into Altered Carbon and they're pulling a Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

BESW

12:16

Okay so it's not exactly Censored but it's close enough and they don't need to act so smug about it. "Aeon Wave" did the same thing.

Shalvenay

hey there @Carcer

Carcer

hello

Shalvenay

@Carcer so, on the druid-gank questions, one of the things that came to mind for me was that while a character's levels give them a certain set of capabilities, it doesn't necessarily give them the psychological tools to use them effectively, or to quote Jeff Cooper, "It is the man, not the gun, that wins."

Carcer

sure. Sometimes you turn yourself into a fish for no good reason

Shalvenay

not even that

mind if I drop a link to an archived blog post that discusses this sort of thing in a different context?

Carcer

12:30

I'm not your boss

Shalvenay

web.archive.org/web/20131103034905/http://…

Carcer

I have familiarity with this context

Shalvenay

@Carcer ah, even better then

Carcer

though admittedly I never got deep into eve

enough that I understand what he's talking about though

D&D has a weirdness here of course where being high-level necessarily implies that you have good combat experience, and because it's a turn-based game in practice everyone gets a lot of time to think tactically about what they're going to do

Shalvenay

@Carcer I would say "not necessarily" -- the turn-based nature of the game does introduce something of a meta there that's not the same as real-time play, but that's more of an OOC thing

Carcer

12:40

"The druid gets surprised and in his confusion isn't able to effectively fight his attackers" makes perfect sense but it is probably inconsistent with how things would've gone down if that druid had been any player character

Shalvenay

@Carcer yeah, RPing this sort of combat-psych stuff can be rather hard

Carcer

I wonder if there's a way to get people in that mindset

Shalvenay

it's not impossible but it's something that requires a bit of delicacy by the DM

(in order to make sure that it isn't considered as unfair)

think of what it's like to be introduced to something like "scry and die" tactics the hard way, because the DM just did that to your party with a high level wizard NPC

Carcer

like, what if you give surprised players a literal six seconds to declare what they're going to do on their first turn

Shalvenay

@Carcer I'd say it's less the time pressure and more the actual element of surprise

Carcer

12:45

well, it's difficult to create genuine surprise in the same way as you might have in a real world situation. But time pressure could produce reactions which are closer to a realistic response

Shalvenay

@Carcer that is true on both fronts

ACuriousMind

13:08

@Shalvenay Help, DST happened. Are we playing now, in an hour or am I an hour too late? :D

Shalvenay

@ACuriousMind we are playing an hour from now :)

ACuriousMind

Phew :)

BESW

@Carcer This would be a case where some systems are better suited than others.

En Garde! is a turn-based game that gives you as long as you want to determine your actions... but in complete ignorance of the other characters' actions until the end of the scene when you all learn how it's resolved.

Fate would just give the ambusher a boost like Surprise! or let the ambusher create an advantage on the target like Caught flat-footed.

KorvinStarmast

13:30

@Carcer I have played games where we had a 15 second decision rule in combat. It sure puts a premium on decision making.

Carcer

I've considered it but never actually played a game that way myself. I'm not sure I would actually run a game that way

anything I run now would include my partner and he suffers somewhat from decision paralysis and finds time pressure highly unenjoyable

KorvinStarmast

@Carcer Oh, for sure, the table has to IMO be well used to "combat as war" as the game mode. For a "beer and pretzels" kind of game it does not work.

A couple of the groups I played AD&D 1e and OD&D with were all members of a wargaming club. our combats did not drag on as I so often see in later styles ...

kviiri

Afternoon

@KorvinStarmast I might be wrong but aren't those games more "brutal" in terms of damage per max HP ratio than modern incarnations of DnD, too?

trogdor

@BESW if that's making you mad the rest of it might be hard to stomach

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri Depends on how you set up HP. Modern monsters do more damage per hit than back then.

kviiri

13:42

@KorvinStarmast Ok, gotcha

KorvinStarmast

Example = goblins: the current version has them doing 1d6 +2. I'll defer to Mr Collins for some of the OD&D maths comparisons.

(Mr Collins posts here sometimes, his blog has some interesting discussions on the Old School numbers ...)

kviiri

I've been reviewing my 4e books and it's really striking how bloated HP everything has, compared to the damage rolls.

(They redid the monster math, eventually, alleviating the issue)

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri IMO, 5e is similarly bloated, but I guess not as much.

trogdor

@BESW (the show is going to be smug about a lot of things as I recall)

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast This bloatedness contributes to longer combats, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was in epic-tier 4e. Epic tier monsters in 4e quite commonly have hit points in several hundreds, even over a thousand, but attack damages don't really follow.

KorvinStarmast

13:46

@kviiri This fella here.. nits pointed me toward his blog which covers a bit of OSR type stuff.

@kviiri As I never 4e'd, I guess I am glad to have missed that. :)

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast Luckily, the badness of it increased gradually. It was quite tolerable on lower levels (and in all fairness, I started playing in the Post-MM3 era when they had fixed the worst of it already)

May 12 '18 at 18:47, by kviiri

The big guy Orcus himself has over 1500 hp. His attack deals something like 2d12+12 iirc.

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri good news ... whoa, what a pile of HP.

Ok I have to go, best wishes to all.

kviiri

Bye o/

I had to look it up --- it's actually 2d12+12 plus another 1d12 necrotic damage. He does have a special reaction attack of a similar caliber, a "save or zero your HP" attack and an area attack of similar damage as his normal attack, but the latter two are limited use (recharge with a 6 on a d6 each turn)

If it wasn't for the "Touch of Death", a level 5 character could actually survive 4e Orcus for long enough to recite the Major General's Song or something.

In a strange quirk of game design, the Wand of Orcus raises anyone slain fighting him as a Dread Wraith, but given how levels scale in 4e, it's not likely to be a significant additional obstacle to anyone capable of challenging Orcus in the first place.

Glazius

@Shal

Bleah.

Shalvenay

@Glazius is something wrong? :/

Glazius

13:58

@Shalvenay I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to drop. I realize I'm pushing the limits of your schedule as it is, and basically it's either I go to board game club Saturday night or I do this Sunday morning.

Shalvenay

@Glazius oof :/

Glazius

I've been blowing it off to try and get the campaign going, but I went yesterday and had an absolute blast, and I'm just wiped right now.

I should have been more up front about that.

Shalvenay

@Glazius we can revisit this in a couple weeks (my schedule on Sundays seems to be shifting again)

Glazius

@Shalvenay Cool, keep me posted.

Shalvenay

if that's cool by you @ACuriousMind?

ACuriousMind

14:01

@Glazius @Shalvenay It's okay - when games start to feel like a burden, something must give. If we can try again when your schedules are different, that'd be great :)

Shalvenay

@ACuriousMind cool

doppelgreener

14:13

Oh boy, the April fools joke has kicked in :D

ACuriousMind

I want them to keep the flames flanking the HNQ :D

d0pp3Lgr33n3r

time to roll with that 90s spirit

perfect

Shalvenay

patpats the dargon

d0pp3Lgr33n3r

[happy dragon noises]

Carcer

14:35

is that a neopet

kviiri

Ah, the 1990's. Long summers, spent indoors watching Saturday Morning Watchmen on the VCR

good times

d0pp3Lgr33n3r

@Carcer I don't think so, but I pilfered it off a 90s Geocities website

web.archive.org/web/20091027083023/http://geocities.com/Area51/…

Using a neopet is an even better idea though

A 90s pre-redesign neopet

kviiri

15:00

I think neopets flew largely under my radar, that thing looks like a Digimon to me

KorvinStarmast

15:15

@d0pp3Lgr33n3r I can only say that your sense of humor, visually, was quite jarring when I logged on this morning. It evoked a "yuck" response. (Which I guess was the intent?)

Hot RPG Questions

2

Q: Lucky Feat: How can "more than one creature spend a luck point to influence the outcome of a roll"?

Lucky is a feat that only targets either you or something that's attacking you. How would there be more than one creature that can manipulate the outcome of the roll? Is this only referring to if you try to alter an attacker's roll, but they also have Lucky, and they try to change their own roll?

dnd-5e feats

kviiri

Hmhm. Someone's linked to my SO meta question, methinks, for its views and faves just broke badge thresholds.

Hah, I did some digging and it was from a joke made in a comment. Kinda funny :D

Rubiksmoose

15:38

Nice!

which one would that be?

kviiri

83

Q: When should code formatting be used for non-code text?

I just got to review an edit having to do with this post: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23677922/access-ios-and-android-calendars-from-delphi-xe The edit did no change to the post apart from introducing code formatting like this to words that aren't code, such as iOS and Android (while cur...

discussion review edits code-formatting faq-proposed

I had honestly no recollection I had asked that

Rubiksmoose

oh goodness @d0pp3Lgr33n3r why?! lol

I saw a comment and thought, "did someone make a silly look-alive account" then saw the diamond XD

d0pp3Lgr33n3r

@KorvinStarmast 90's internet baybee

@Rubiksmoose because!!

Rubiksmoose

It fits so well, at first I thought it might have been a site effect as well. But then nobody else's was like it. Bravo.

d0pp3Lgr33n3r

15:55

:D

@trogdor good morning!

Hot RPG Questions

16:37

4

Q: Does destroying a Lich's phylactery destroy the soul within it?

The MM entry for a Lich mentions destroying a phylactery is a difficult endeavor but the only way to prevent a Lich from rising again and again. Does destroying the phylactery destroy the soul within? If not, is there existing lore explaining what happens to a Lich's soul when its phylactery is...

dnd-5e undead soul

KorvinStarmast

@d0pp3Lgr33n3r geocities is where color went to die

d0pp3Lgr33n3r

@KorvinStarmast and live on like some undead aberration

KorvinStarmast

@d0pp3Lgr33n3r heh, the wayback machine allows us to revisit that graveyard, but bring a cleric with you! Turn Undead! Eeep!!

Hot RPG Questions

17:54

1

Q: Is there such a thing as never melting snow?

In order to make the Snowcasting feat more useful in warmer areas, or during warmer seasons, I am looking for a source of snow or ice that never melts. This can be a spell that enchants snow or ice in such a way (preferably permanent), or supernatural snow or ice that simply never melts for one r...

dnd-3.5e magic weather

nitsua60

18:04

@MikeQ rpg.stackexchange.com/a/45831/23970

Some discussion ^^ of the geography (and laws of nature) in FR changing in-lore to reflect changes made to D&D rules/setting material by TSR/WotC.

Joshua

Why the snow all of a sudden?

GcL

18:25

Someone rolled a 1 on control weather

Joshua

Note to self: just because you can make planetbuster scrolls doesn't mean you should sell them to the highest bidder.

user15026

@GcL whoever that was I have some words for them

V2Blast

18:44

@KorvinStarmast get high level enough to use Destroy Undead

trogdor

19:38

@dopp3Lgr33n3r morning, my goodness

that's quite the thing

BESW

20:06

@trogdor I watched two episodes and I don't think I'm going to watch any more. It's aggressively mediocre.

trogdor

@BESW mk, that's fair

I didn't think it was extremely good

I did find it entertaining enough to watch through but I also wouldn't watch it again myself

and if the first couple episodes don't give you any confidence in it then I think the rest of it is a waste of your time

no big deal

BESW

It's not even failing in interesting ways, which you know I'll watch gleefully. The best actors and most interesting concepts are sidelined and fail to fit into the larger narrative because the main qualities of the setting and plot are cookie-cutter predictable with a heavy ladling of mismatched aesthetic to cover it up.

It's like Tim Burton Does Cyberpunk.

V2Blast

20:25

fair enough

I don't disagree

mostly I watched for Will Yun Lee

he was criminally underused

also Dichen Lachman, whom I've loved since I first saw her in Dollhouse

MikeQ

What show is this? Is it Altered Carbon?

BESW

Yeah.

MikeQ

Ah. Saw the whole thing. Agreed, overall very mediocre.

BESW

@V2Blast Yeah, I kept going "Wait, you have that actor and you're wasting them on THAT role?"

MikeQ

There are some neat gems of thoughtful science fiction concepts, sprinkled here and there, but otherwise it was a blah recycling of well-established filmography and scifi noir tropes

trogdor

20:32

I won't disagree with any of that

BESW

@MikeQ And way too much "ooh lookkit me I'm gritty and edgy! Look ma, no clothes!"

trogdor

lol

BESW

"Very nice dear, but can you develop a theme coherent with your stylistic choices?"

trogdor

they can't

MikeQ

Yes, precisely. Much like how jumpscares are overused in horror, the writers were relying too heavily on cheap tricks and shock value

Overall it wasn't bad (except the ending, which was.) but focused too much on a bland A-plot with bland characters, and all the potentially interesting ideas were tossed into this big messy pile on the side

BESW

20:36

It makes me both want to see an Ancillary Justice adaptation, and fear what they'd do to it.

trogdor

@MikeQ the ending pretty much threw away the only message they had

BESW

@V2Blast And Tamara Taylor! ...and apparently later on they have Matt Frewer? I shudder to think what they waste him on.

trogdor

@BESW yeah best you don't know that, I forgot he was even in it

BESW

Oh, Matt Frewer. You're so good and get wasted in so many things. You almost made me keep watching 12 Monkeys.

Hot RPG Questions

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Q: Can Sneak Attack be used when hitting with an improvised weapon?

The Mastermind rogue in my game was well hidden when he threw a flask of holy water at a shadow demon that attacked his ally. In the moment, it made the most sense to me to allow him to use Sneak Attack while hitting the fiendish creature with the flask. The description of Holy Water says: A...

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BESW

21:06

Today in Genres Are Labels Describing Target Consumers, Not Descriptions of Content.

Hot RPG Questions

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Q: Can you teleport closer to a creature you are Frightened of?

I encountered a situation where I was Frightened of a large creature. By the words of the Frightened condition: The creature can’t willingly move closer to the source of its fear. Could you use the Misty Step spell (or some other means of teleportation) to get closer, since the rules only s...

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V2Blast

A cool article about difficulty in video games, by Rami Ismail: variety.com/2019/gaming/opinion/…

@BESW true true

BESW

21:40

@V2Blast Related: "The Physical Glass Ceiling: When The Git Gud Mentality Turns Ableist," by Holly Green for Paste Magazine.

4

V2Blast

@BESW thanks, that's another good read

trogdor

@BESW yeah I just finished reading that from the Discord link, it's some good stuff

user15026

@BESW This is one of those articles I want to tape to people's faces so they read it.

trogdor

lol

that would be useful if we could get it on all those everyones

user15026

21:55

@V2Blast Oh, I like a lot of what this has to say, too.

KorvinStarmast

@V2Blast thanks for the link, nice read.

trogdor

I do try to get better at just about every game I play, but there's a certain ceiling, at a different place depending what kind of game it is, and no amount of telling someone to git gud is gonna make them better when they already like the game and play it a lot, especially if they have some problem you don't have that gets in the way

besides which, I personally think every game should have more difficulty options,.... a lot already have "impossible mode" or wtv they choose to call it from game to game

easier difficulties are good too

BESW

It reminds me of movies that I'd never watch in a theater because I need to be able to pause and walk away for a while.

trogdor

plus, heck, if I could have, for example, just skipped the quick time events in Resident Evil 4? I would have played probably even more disgusting amounts of that game

BESW

Like, yeah, there are some movies which are designed for the theater experience and the intended impact is reduced otherwise... but for me it's reduced impact or none at all.

trogdor

22:03

accesibility options are great, difficulty options are great, and frankly yeah skipping certain parts of games if you don't like em? super great stuff

BESW

@trogdor And so often making games harder honestly doesn't significantly impact the experience except to artificially boost my investment because of forced sunk costs. In terms of story increased difficulty is usually just pointless padding.

trogdor

yeah

I mean, I still think I had more fun with at least certain games at higher difficulty

but that doesn't mean everyone wants it, and even I don't want it for every game I play

if it feels too easy and I can handle more, it's a good thing to have more difficulty, but the important part is the option

Hot RPG Questions

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Q: Players Circumventing the limitations of Wish

So I know that Wish is meant to be a really powerful spell, but some of my players from my group (I am the DM) seem to have spent some time into getting around the limitations of Wish. Now, I know that in order for no adverse (other than a mishap) you must replicate a spell of 8th level or lower,...

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Ben

22:18

Morning all

WHAT... IS HAPPENING

I just opened a new page and it's got confetti and unicorns

BESW

It's April first.

Ben

Ah

And yet google missed the boat

trogdor

oh ugh it looks disgusting

glad it's only a one day thing

BESW

[turns off confetti, grumbles about ethical programming, user-facing options, and explicit consent]

trogdor

yeah it

kinda blows

Carcer

22:46

it pops you up a notification pointing directly at the button to turn it off, doesn't it?

dopp3Lgr33n3r

@Carcer yes

BESW

A basic principle of ethical consent in programming is that users should be empowered to turn unnecessary features ON rather than required to turn them OFF if unwanted.

It's the difference between "Stop if they say no" and "Get a yes before you start."

Ben

So far it only appeared when I was trying to answer a question. It was very disconcerting and I couldn't turn it off (the prompt appeared saying that I would lose my draft)

user15026

@BESW flat affect oh joy

BESW

user15026

22:54

@BESW that face that is the face I am making

user15026

(I mean it's not April 1st here yet but it will be in 5 hours)

Ben

@Ash Don't do it. It's a trap

user15026

@Ben but there are good things I want to do on April 1st! Like learn how to make "eggs" out of flax so I can make vegan banana bread! (also a dentist appointment but that's less fun)

BESW

@Ash Flax eggs are easy, but I prefer aquafaba which is arguably even easier?

Ben

@BESW To cook or to say?

user15026

22:58

@BESW yes, but I don't have chickpeas (thought I did but they're other beans), but I do have miles and miles of flax from the short lived "here Ash learn to be skinny" meal plan days

BESW

@Ash Fair enough. Though you can use ANY bean water, it'll just lend a little flavor/color to the food.

@Ben Yes.

user15026

@BESW Good to know.

BESW

Chickpeas/white beans are used because they're the most flavorless and colorless options.

But I like using aquafaba from black beans and kidney beans in stuff like corn muffins BECAUSE of the extra taste.

Ben

Flax is also used to make string! I know this from a Minecraft modpack. Lol

Who said video games weren't educational.

BESW

Flax is the plant used to make the cloth we call linen.

user15026

23:05

(sorry, I distracted from an important thing, I think.)

BESW

@Ash I think we were winding down.

user15026

Argh how many times do I have to opt out of SE's....madness

user15026

Is it per device at least?

Ben

@Ash A bad April fools joke, the denial of Monday, or something else?

user15026

@Ben the ethical consent things

user15026

23:06

....nope, not per device. Per device per site, hopefully?

user15026

sighs more

Ben

At what point does masochism and ethical consent cross into oxymoron territory? [Pondering intensifies]

user15026

@Ben It...never should.

user15026

Ethical consent is important even in that sort of context.

Ben

Honestly it's too early on a [redacted] morning for me to really think about it properly

user15026

23:10

nods

user15026

The avenue I'm coming from on it is also probably not suited for here, either.

Ben

In other news, Sekiro has done well to reset expectations in the Soulsbourne series, and recreate a whole new game.

I hate it, in exactly the same way I hated Dark Souls 1 when I first played it.

user15026

In that way where it's hard and you hate it but need to keep doing it til you've done it?

user15026

(Which is a thing I don't get but I know a lot of gamer people do)

Ben

It's hard because the mechanics require finesse and timing, with a level of realism that is frustrating (heavy attacks pretty much straight up kill you in one or two hits), which forces a level of repetition that borders on madness

With the completion a particular trial being its own reward.

BESW

23:17

"Avoiding Burnout," by Christopher Chinn on Deeper in the Game.

Ben

Some people would compare it to the act of beating your head against a brick wall, where the goal is to break the brick wall down with your own head. Over time, you learn that just going to the middle of the wall and beginning to headbutt it relentlessly will eventually break the wall down, but at the same time, you can also learn to look for weaknesses in said wall, and using particular parts of your head will make it hurt less.

BESW

@Ben There's a Doctor Who episode about that.

Ben

@BESW Speaking of Doctor Who, we had a discussion about which of the Angels episodes was more scary. The first one, or the multi-part episode where the angels were actually just starved formless husks that eventually grew in power to become an army of Angels.

@BESW And more on topic... was that the episode where he punched his way through that wall?

user15026

@Ben That's a pretty good explanation of it, from my understanding. (It's inaccessible to me, for reasons that I am sure are obvious)

BESW

@Ben The first one. For a lot of reasons, including a distinct lack of River Song, no silly "what contains an Angel" retcon that makes the whole concept stop making sense, and also that in "Blink" the audience also count for the quantum lock effect.

@Ben "Heaven Sent."

Ben

23:24

@BESW Precisely. Yeah they had a bit of tension in the second one, but that first one was by far the superior one. "Fear of the Unknown" and all that

@BESW I missed that one

BESW

@Ben It was very well received, won awards. I thought it was kinda silly without being fun, myself.

Ben

Oh well fair enough

I might have to go have a look at it.

I liked Capaldi, but my problem was that a lot of his episodes weren't that well written, and Oswald really got old fast

BESW

Yeah, same. Moffat needed to stop.

A big problem is Moffat's obsession with major season-finale events, because it means the other writers for the season can't do anything significant with the characters in case it messes up the dynamics for Moffat's plans.

Ben

He's hijacked the plot.

[Chuckles to self]

trogdor

23:49

@Ash I think I have all the chickpeas you don't have

Every time I look in the cupboard there are at least a half dozen cans of it

user15026

@trogdor oh, so you're the other end of the pantry wormhole.

Ben

@trogdor Ahh the days of having a full pantry, and nothing to eat.

I ate so many eggs.

trogdor

Lol

@Ash stop giving me chickpeas then, I don't want to drown in chickpeas anymore XD

user15026

@trogdor Now that I know where the wormhole ends, I'll try :P

trogdor

Lol

I wonder if I can give them back just by pushing them far enough

user15026

23:56

Worth a try :P

trogdor

I mean, they are actually pretty good stuff but we somehow have several more cans than we need at all times

user15026

Never know when you might have a chickpea emergency

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