Wait, what time is it for you right now?

Either 9 or 11, I know, but not which.

My housemate was up before I was, she was in the living room and said good morning when I first came out of my bedroom. I didn't even register her. Lol

@Miniman 10, actually

QLD doesn't do DST

Oh, right. So this is the half of the year where it's the same.

(I'm really bad at DST.)

Same haha

Btw, does anyone remember how long a question has to exist before you can bounty it?

(The help centre is painful on mobile.)

@Miniman 2 days I think?

@Ben Yeah, I just found it.

I wanna do DH/RT, but the DM doesn't like the "dark theme" of the game, which is fair. So instead we started another 5e game, which I wanted; I want to try and develop a character past level 4. But I'm really starting to feel like he doesn't like the way I want to play the game; I'm the "loose end" or the "wild card" he has trouble controlling.

I've been the one to try and clarify any miscommunication between us, and try and come to a solution, but he doesn't appear to want to be the one that was wrong.

On the plus side, I mentioned the CoS thing in the D&D Beyond server and a user there quickly offered to run it for us :)

Oh, I assumed your DM wanted to run a campaign of their own devising.

@Miniman Me or V2Blast?

V2Blast.

@Miniman Well, I assume they do, but I assume they haven't yet made that campaign yet

lol

Thanks I hate it :P

@trogdor reddit.com/r/TIHI

@Ben This reminds me of Captain America murdering half the population of the universe because he couldn't accept killing one robot.

@Miniman lol burn

It wasn't America though. So that's fine

@Ben yeah but he could have stopped it and decided not to because good is dumb

@trogdor I suppose in this context "good" is another word for "applicable"

@Ben wait how could she possibly be both of those?

Oh yeah,... That

No see that's what I was saying was bad

Also the show

It's bad

→ 16 messages moved to Not a bar, but plays one on TV

Again, not saying it's "good" as in "acceptable", I'm saying it's "good" as in "both are applicable labels"

Or at least the ending but that kinda drags all of it down really, I don't even think the ending as it was is bad,... If they bothered to put any work into setting it up

@Ben yeah no that's not what I was saying at all, I'm just saying it's still bad

Can you tell I'm maybe still mad about that abrupt ending?

We have one game where 2/3 of us are CN, and one is LG. We're currently on the way to his execution because his character consorted with demon to gain magical power (which was against the laws of his home country), and has recently been captured. He reckons he's going to repent, and face his trial, but the GM has made it clear that they are going to execute him.

The GM has even given us multiple opportunities to escape, but "it is his duty to face the consequences"

hey @trogdor and hey again @nitsua60

The other 2 of us are basically just going with it, cos, well... we getting paid to escort a prisoner.

@Shalvenay hiya

@nitsua60 now a good time for us to talk a bit in Discord?

@Shalvenay hi

@Shalvenay fire away

@trogdor Now that I think about it, it's actually continuing the Civil War stuff - Cap believes he (and only he) has absolute moral authority.

@Miniman I can't disagree with that

Though Stark can't even take responsibility for his own actions

They are both a mess

XD

I still feel like that whole movie was executed extremely poorly

Ignorance is power

> Ignorance is power: you can choose to reject a situation. Negate the effect of the last outcome you rolled, and replace it with your own.

@trogdor Yeah, I doubt the tie-in was deliberate, either.

@Miniman which one?

@trogdor I have a question over on sf&f about the effects of messing with time travel in Endgame. At the moment, it's been dv'd and I think closed as unclear, but I think I potentially haven't put across my point properly. Wouls someone be able to assist me with getting my intended question across?

@trogdor Infinity War using the "Cap thinks he's God" theme that was developed in Civil War.

Ah yeah I doubt it too

@Ben I haven't watched Endgame XD

@trogdor The ping was more just referring to your point haha, not directly at you

Mm

Fair enough

Could you use Prestidigitation (or a similar cantrip) to throw your voice?

Or actually, you could just use it to make "harmless sensory effects".

I'm just thinking you could throw sounds around, to create theremin sounds and the "chh-chh-chh… cah-cah-cah" sounds to freak out people you're sneaking around

Minor Illusion explicitly does that.

Prestidigitation arguably does it too.

10 ft vs 30 ft range, 1 hour vs 1 minute duration.

@Ben But also, if you want people to think you're sneaking around, the correct method is to bounce bits of pottery off their head.

That's not a skyrim reference. Lol

Or is it?

It's a Groundrim reference

@Ben I take it you haven't played Sekiro yet :P

@Miniman Ohh true.

I have, but not extensively, and not for a while. My controller is busted.

@Miniman oh yeah you can throw those at people

@Ben Oh, good. I was certain you'd played it.

You would think they would be ready for a ninja to muder them after someone threw something hard and sharp at them and they walked right to where it was

@trogdor You do eventually get a better way to achieve the same effect.

Yeah. I'm in that "on the wall" phase. I can see why people both like and dislike it, and I am yet to make up my own mind

@Miniman but they still fall for the first one XD

@trogdor I mean, you'd think they wouldn't watch a guy murder their buddy then forget he ever existed just because he ran around a corner, but here we are.

@Miniman maybe they didn't like him very much and assume you don't either

XP

@trogdor Yep, although some of the later enemies are much more perceptive, so when they turn to look at where the shard came from they just straight up notice you.

Wow

Ok

Fair enough

The improved version can do the same thing on a delay, so you can set it up then hide before it goes off.

And of course there's always candy of invisibility.

Oh that's clever

Definitely a way sneakier way to do that

But like I said, straight throwing hard sharp stuff at someone isn't very sneaky to begin with XD

But somehow those idiot Samurai still fell for it constantly

@trogdor Yeah, it's basically a ceramic shard catapult with a mechanical timer.

Ok that's pretty cool

I was kidding, sadly.

Oh

Dang

Oh well

lol

I'm sorry for toying with your emotions like that.

you're tearing me apart Lisa

@Miniman lol I've survived a lot worse

@V2Blast Oh hi mark

"Hug Proxy" would be a good name for a band.

That's a good name for a band

hey there @user11547911, welcome to the RPG.SE lair :)

@BESW WE ll there you go. I learned something today. Now I can go to bed.

@Ash I just finished it too, it's a good story

@Ben yeah I'm aware of Bethesda sneakery shenanigans

I made a stealth character in Fallout 3 and it was ridiculous what I got away with just for crouching

It's so cool how many awesome stories are free online!

@trogdor I'm sure I've seen a parody of this. PC has sneak 100, and vanishes whenever they crouch

I've started reading some free books on my fire tablet and so far I've read two good ones and none that are downright bad

@Ben they also had items you could use to go Even higher than 100 if you were already maxed out too

Though the covers of a lot of them don't look like something I want to read

Still, it's extremely nice to have already found some I like

I was intrigued by a Starfinder "explore the universe"-type campaign someone advertised on the D&D/TTRPG server I'm an admin in (no, not that one, a different one :P) and somehow got sucked in because the DM decided to set it for Sunday night so I could play...

so now I'm reading the Starfinder rules. never played it before

@V2Blast From what I know, it is very level dependant.

@Ben what do you mean?

Like, if you're level 1, and you loot a level 2 pistol, you can't use it until you're level 2.

ah

I'm still just figuring out how to make my character

Personally, I have no experience with it, I've only heard ramblings from my GM

@Ash yeah I figured that too, that's why I downloaded about 5 of them a couple days ago

also I'm intermittently watching that instead

I figure if I don't like what I'm reading I didn't pay for it anyway

Maybe I should be less picky about what I try too

Seems like what I should try too

I lose Nothing except a little time

And that's going to go by anyway

I have some trouble branching out to other genres when reading though

So I'm going to have to work on that a bit if I want to read non sci Fi/ fantasy stuff

If you know some own voice autistic ones I could start with that

I've only relatively recently realized that was even a thing in books and I've enjoyed all the ones I've read so far

(I've mentioned "an Unkindness of Ghosts" before for example)

I only read that mid last year

And it was the first one

But it's a great book and it was good and I loved it

@Ash definitely wait for a time that you can afford some emotional weight

@Ash no problem I'll look the ones you've mentioned up

But yeah it's,... Not exactly pulling punches

@Ash you are probably the person to ask about this. Considering the last time I spoke about any LGBTQI issues, I presented my stance on the issue rather terribly, but hopefully I can redeem myself.

It was relatively easy for me to read but it was my first "access intimacy book" and I don't have most of the discrimination based issues the Main character does

So I definitely caution that it could be a hard read at certain points

But I definitely think it's worth it

As long as you have the emotional energy to spare

At the time of reading,

This might be better off in Not A Bar, though?

And of course you can take breaks too XD

@Ben You can flag messages and ask @BESW to migrate them if you want.

Yeah, I'm aware, thanks. I decided to have the conversation there regardless, so nothing to worry about (unless they feel these messages should be moved as well)

@linksassin How is your day going?

just finished watching the Matt Mercer-Stephen Colbert D&D video

you can really see how it's taking him back to his youth playing AD&D :)

@Ben Yeah not too bad. I have a pathfinder session tonight which I've been building up to for a while.

Big group of orcs attacking a small village. Players are tasked to defend it. We'll see if they can figure out that the Orcs are being mind controlled by a mind-flayer before it's too late.

Kill the Illithid fight is over. Otherwise they might be going close to a TPK due to the superior numbers of the orcs.

@linksassin Oh this reminds me. When "building the world", the GM likes to ask for certain details from the players, to sort of "include" them in the world building.

He asked me for a "commonly known D&D monster"

That was dangerous haha

@Ben Why would you choose illithid? That's asking for trouble

Oh no I said "owlbear". Haha

@Ben much better choice

But it could have been anything. I was dancing around Beholder, or Illithids… I even mentioned the Tarrasque haha

Not sure what I would choose.

Gellatinous Cube

Now I'm regretting my choice hahaha

@Ben The Dungeon Master is the most iconic monster in D&D

@MikeQ [gasp] how monstrous

My most used would be NPCs. I rarely use monsters. I don't love the idea that there is just random monsters roaming around otherwise civilized societies.

Even my orcs get class levels

@Ben What's the most commonly known monster in Dungeons and Dragons...hmmm...this is a real puzzle.

@Miniman Definitely the mimic. I mean it's in the title Dungeons and Dragons.

Dungeon mimics are terrifying also.

@linksassin Yeah if you want an interesting story, resorting to the "Here be monsters, thus you should punch them" routine won't cut the mustard

@MikeQ I rarely find punching things cuts anything.

But yes, exactly.

Especially in settings where monsteryness is a spectrum, and you have (superficially) monstrous sapient folk

Because at the end of the day, the real monster is humanity, or society, or something thoughtful like that

@JackBrooker Welcome to the rgp lair!

@MikeQ Well, I don't think that's the way the DM intended it - if anything the town we are in is known for its whaling trade. I think it's just in regards to the "monsters found in the surrounding areas"

@JackBrooker hi hi hi!

@MikeQ Yes when "whaling" was announced, we all recoiled

@MikeQ Particularly if you run a spectrum of grey campaign instead of Black/White Good/Evil

@linksassin As soon as the DM says the kobolds live in a tribe and wield spears, the whole "jolly hunt for monsters!" narrative gets iffy

My current BBEG is a Drow Sorcerer who is going around destroying Magic Schools and Wizard Towers because Wizards "stole magic". To some degree she is correct, the original wizards did terrible things to those with innate magics a long time ago.

Even if the DM doesn't want to have That Discussion, it's right there in the middle of the room, like an elephant or unstrategically placed table

@MikeQ My party had to rescue a group of goblins being persecuted by the local farmers in their 3rd session.

@linksassin Have you saved the dragon from the princess yet?

@MikeQ Not quite, but I do have a dragon that protects a local village by burning it down every few years.

The benevolent red dragon is helping the locals avoid extra taxes. The king waves taxes in case of dragon attack.

Ah, so it's like Chaotic Good insurance fraud

@MikeQ Pretty much, the dragon doesn't like this kingdom because it killed a bunch of it's dragon friends when it was first estabiished. The local townsfolk have a series of measures in place to avoid doing anything to help the king.

Though I think my players are going to miss out on that particular storyline. Things are coming to a head too quickly on the main quest. And it's the far side of the world.

Oh well, always next campaign.

@linksassin just make it a tavern story.

Nah, use it as a filler arc. When they face off with the BBEG, they suddenly find themselves on the other side of the world and have to deal with a completely different problem before they can get to the extremely time-sensitive main story.

The old man in the back is rambling about something... Taxes... Dragons... Insurance... "The whole thing is a scam! The dragon is on their team, cos the dragon hates the king fer killin' 'is friends, 'n the villagers know the king'll fork out money's t' rebuild the place! They's in cahoots!"

Can imagine the party dealing with that.

"So... You don't want to kill the dragon, and the dragon has no intention of killing you, it's just happy to burn the place down... And it announces itself ahead of time, allowing everyone to evacuate... So, it's just tax fraud? Well, 3 of us are Chaotic so..."

this conversation makes me think of Trogdor (not @trogdor, but the namesake)

that he burns down the thatched roof cottages for tax purposes? XD

OK, now we're asking the real questions. Is Trogdor Trogdor's namesake, or vice versa?

Or maybe Trogdor was the inspiration for Trogdor, so Trogdor used the to come out of hiding because everyone knew about Trogdor already?

@Ben Trogdor Trogdor to Trogdor of Trogdor

@doppelgreener Good morning! Mind if I quote this system-agnostic commentary of yours in Meta regarding the issue: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/42195679#42195679

@trogdor To Trogdor the Trogdor of Trogdor

Lol

@Ben google says "namesake" is used to mean both the person/thing that someone/something is named after, and the person/thing named after someone/something else

so... yes

Nailed it

Does English have a single word for the relation where two things share a name? (regardless of the circumstance --- "namesake" implies intentionality)

I don't think there's a specific word for that

@kviiri I could probably bet that no, it doesn't have a single word, because contextually, situationally, grammatically, there would be a different word for different situations

Cos you know... English has so many rules, and it both does, and does not, follow them fastidiously

@kviiri If there's a word that's spelled the same AND sounds the same, but has multiple unrelated meanings, that's one specific kind of homonym. Like date (food), and date (romantic).

"homonym" cashes out to "same name" so maybe

oh whoops I have been ninja'd

(Homograph is "spelled the same, sounds different;" homophone is "spelled different, sounds the same.")

(yeah)

homophone might or might not be spelled differently but means different things.

blep

(...did not know we had defined homograph but that does solve the "what do you call read/read" issue)

Yeah, be aware, all three of those words gets... fuzzy... because English long ago gave prescriptivism a wedgie and then took its lunch money.

You'll also often find both homograph and homophone with the positive quality (sounds/spelled the same) but considered neutral on the negative quality (might or might not spell/sound different).

And homonym is sometimes just a catchall for any similarity.

@BESW Yeah, homonyms i know of, but it's seldom used for proper nouns right?

Only because it doesn't happen very often. [rummages for examples]

@Carcer And then you have those weird words that are pronounced almost exactly the same, mean pretty much the same thing, are cognates but are spelled differently, eg comptroller and controller

The trick is, it's relatively rare for proper nouns to be homonyms AND unrelated in origin.

But if you find somebody named Park (Korean) and someone else named Park (Anglo-Scottish via French)...

But you can know two different people named Park

Right, if you meet two Koreans named Park, they're not homonymical.

What category does the same word (spelled and sounds the same) for the singular and plural fall under? Like Sheep and Sheep, or fish and fish?

@BESW That's a word... "homonymical" haha

It is now.

Hm, I looked up translations for my language's word for "person who shares their name with another person" and apparently "namesake" is also used for sharing a name without intent

#English

@Ben "Irregular" or "defective." [sigh] Hi, linguistics, can we have a chat?

@doppelgreener Disregard the previous, while the post was thought-proovoking I feel it wouldn't have had a desired impact.

@kviiri my thoughts on that have actually developed a lot since, and there's a meta I could ask after the election.

@doppelgreener Cool! I have done a bit of reflecting too, as I noted in my meta post

Although I tried to steer away from discussing the problem's nature too much, as my main point was supposed to be "we need a consensus regarding this", not trying to start a discussion there what that consensus should be.

@kviiri I fear that the attempt to reach a consensus will be more likely to lead to 'whatever plurality wins will enforce its preference on the site, even though there is no consensus and probably no majority'.

As someone who does a lot of system-agnostic thinking about RPGs (or at least I like to see myself thus!), I found mxy's reply about good enough to give such questions enough breathing space.

I.e. it's not that I don't think there are ways to make things better, but I fear that trying to change things will make things worse for the agnostics.

mxy's reply leaves a lot of stuff open though

Eg. the boundary between unclear/unanswerable system agnostic, and suggested ways of handling system-specific answers to system-agnostic questions

Although it's not in the site's philosophy to pre-empt problems, and I don't think I've seen "I just assume it's DnD" in a long while, so the latter point shall be moot for now although it's something where I don't trust the votes alone.

I.e. the commenter outright ignored the question body and the tag, and assumed the opposite of it!

I don't recall seeing that, but we have had a different issue where answers assume that every RPG works like DnD (or is DnD, more blatantly). That happens even in explicitly tagged questions.

Dungeon World has a particularly colorful history in that regard

Presumably because its intentionally similar lingo can make it easy to confuse...

Oh, I do recall a DW-tagged question getting an explicitly D&D-rule answer. That was sad, funny and infuriating at the same time. In downvoted the answer of course.

Basically I'd expect system-agnostic questions, where applicable, to have a reasonably good specification (appropriate for the exact nature of the question) of what the game they're playing is like (or intended to be like)

Probably for some questions and not for others.

@kviiri But...if they could do that, then they're not actually system-agnostic questions.

Sometimes a scope of a problem is wide enough that narrowing the scope doesn't make sense (e.g. when it shows up across a very wide spectrum of playstyles).

@Miniman How so?

@kviiri Because system-agnostic doesn't mean "applies to more than one system".

I don't see what you're trying to say and how it applies to my musing

I'll try digging up some closed sys-ag question for example

@kviiri "what the game they're playing is like" is a concept that only makes sense if they are thinking about a specific game or games.

System agnostic is supposed to mean that a question is applicable to every game.

Let's not treat 'every game' and 'every system' and 'multiple games' and 'multiple systems' as interchangeable.

@Miniman No it doesn't. The tag wiki says: "For questions that are explicitly not restricted to any one particular system or rules, where the asker wants solutions to the question that are not directly tied to a game's mechanics."

@vicky_molokh They're not. But every argument I've seen suggesting system-agnostic is useful in some way depends on assuming it means the latter instead of the former.

@kviiri I guess that explains it, then. If we define it as shorthand for "multiple systems" rather than "system-agnostic", I have no objections. Other than the misleading name, of course.

it says system-agnostic, not playstyle-agnostic.

@kviiri Who said anything about playstyles?

Multiple-system can, depending on the question, be a subset of system-agnostic, in a technical sort of way. E.g. a question on how to maintain the proper mood in Eclipse Phase (which officially exists in two systems) is technically SA (though people won't agree whether the SA tag is required there).

@Miniman I did, with the whole "what the game they're playing is like" part

But yeah, a SA question may happen to be scoped to a specific playstyle, or it could be cross-playstyle, depending on what the question is.

@kviiri That...what? Whether they're playing D&D or Fate (for example) makes orders of magnitude more difference to "what the game they're playing is like" then their playstyle.

@Miniman DnD and Fate are quite extreme examples, though. And the concern might be legitimately system-independent in some cases. It might be something that recurs in several similar systems.

@kviiri "recurs in several similar systems" != "system-independent". That's my point - "multiple systems" is a perfectly valid tag, and if we're actually just using system-agnostic as shorthand for it, that makes sense.

@Miniman But why do you consider system-agnostic to be misleading?

Eg. you play DnD as a collaborative tactical combat game, your party mate keeps attacking your character for laughs. You switch to Savage Worlds as a collaborative tactical combat game, the friend persists. I don't see a reason why in this example the problem has to be construed as belonging to a particular set of systems, instead of a particular kind of game --- collaborative tactical combat (and of course the friend who doesn't get it).

A problem can occur in multiple systems not because its sources are in those multiple systems, but rather because the source of the problem isn't in the system at all.

It seems to me that instead of being a property of some set of systems, it's indeed a property of the style of the game being played

E.g. many social problems are system-agnostic in terms of their source.

@kviiri Well, to start with, it doesn't have to be construed as a particular set of systems. It's just a problem-players question. But anyway, it's not system-agnostic, because there are plenty of systems where it wouldn't be a problem.

@Miniman I still don't understand why system-agnostic has to mean the question has to be literally valid in any possible RPG system ever. The fact that we don't know of the system doesn't mean we can't have other limiting factors, eg. the style of the game.

@kviiri It doesn't mean that the question has to be valid in every possible system ever. But that means the tag doesn't actually mean "truly system-agnostic", just "applies to multiple systems".

There's nothing wrong with that - we have plenty of tags we use in ways that differ somewhat to their face value.

I never really interpreted agnostic to mean that

I guess this is just some ESL difference thing

@kviiri I wouldn't assume that - it's just as likely that I'm plain wrong about the meaning of the word.

no you are both right

agnostic is a confusing word because of the way we use it

@BESW lol

I mean, if you look up a definition the first one is just the agnostic relating to lack of belief or disbelief in God

and the second one is completely unhelpful

but we use it to mean being unsure of something or to be broad ranging and ect

it means,... a lot of things now

> denoting or relating to hardware or software that is compatible with many types of platform or operating system.

Looks pretty close actually.

@vicky_molokh ah well you got a different second one I guess

XD

@trogdor So the System Agnostic tag should really be used when doubting whether RPG systems exist at all?

@Someone_Evil I mean I'm not saying that

XD

But if going into software metaphors, I think a helpful one is language-agnostic algorithms. When someone is taught an algorithm not in glagol and not in C, but in general, non-proglang terms.

just that the variety of ways we use the word now kinda lends towards confusion

@Miniman Anyway I guess this makes the point I was really trying to make quite clear: we need to realign :)

@kviiri I absolutely agree with that! I suspect it won't go anywhere, ultimately, but I definitely agree that we need to have the discussion.

@kviiri Careful with that realignment! Someone is likely to get grinded by the gears in the process.

As with homebrew review, I think its popularity will prevent any meaningful outcome.

@Miniman Yeah, this.

When people view a word differently, and you force a realignment to ensure it's from now on, this means that from that point some fraction people will de facto be told 'You were using it word wrong, from now on stop using it that way, only use it in the other way'. When the word has been sufficiently broad / had a sufficiently high number of nuanced/differing meanings, a lot of people will get hit by this hammer.

An important thing to soften the blow is to provide alternatives that will cover the meanings that got 'orphaned'.

@Miniman This is actually something I'm not as sure about --- it sure seems to me that system-agnostic has gotten very rare compared to what it was when I started coming to this site

@kviiri Part of the rareness is due to removals of the tag from SA questions.

I wonder if I'm imagining it

@vicky_molokh I skulk the new questions feed almost all the time and even that doesn't happen that much does it?

I don't know how much it happened before my time.

I did in my short stay here notice SA questions getting closed with 'But tell me the system!' comments in tow, and SA tags getting removed from such questions.

@Ben @linksassin hi hi! I wasn't able to chat when you both messaged but I am now! So hi!

System agnostic isn't a talisman to ward off people needing more information. If people decide they don't have enough information, and the game system is one of those issues, then the question can and should be closed, and then updated with the information once supplied and then reopened.

If that does happen, good, that's the system working well.

@doppelgreener yeah. I don't always know when system-agnostic should be used and whether it's intended to mean "can apply to multiple systems" or "is an issue unrelated to system - but I've definitely seen questions tagged with it that also fail to provide specifics or explain the context of the question

@doppelgreener The problem is when the question is not about the mechanics, and people misuse that information to turn an answer into a mechanical one, when that is not what's being asked. Or when the provided information is misinterpreted as a request to change the tag.

Warding generally isn't a very constructive thing, sure.

It is normal practice to give e.g. a gurps system tag to inform answerers that the answers should be based on gurps and not, say, vtm. Similarly some people may want to tag the system to be system-agnostic to inform others.

@Whambulance how's it going

@Ben pretty good my dude, how about you?

[wave]