TRPG General Chat

nitsua60

00:43

@Shalvenay Got it. Won't be there for the session, though.

Have fun.

Hot RPG Questions

02:28

2

Q: How do Human Traits Work?

I'm a relatively new player to the D&D scene. I'm creating a human ranger and was puzzled at the logistics of human traits, and I can't seem to find the answer anywhere, although I might just be bad at researching. On D&D Beyond, when looking at the human race, under "Human Traits" it gives a li...

V2Blast

02:46

@BESW good read, thanks for linking

Shalvenay

04:04

hey there @Aza, long time no see!

BESW

08:30

system-antagonistic

vicky_molokh

Jokes aside, system-antagonistic seems to be an attitude that does exist in some RPG circles.

I've seen it the most in Storyteller circles.

Hot RPG Questions

08:50

3

Q: When do characters level up?

I'm a new DM with a group of very new players. I've read through the rules and some of the Player's Handbook (I just haven't finished it yet). We are still within the first arc of the campaign and have plenty of time to figure everything out and for the players to reach the end goal, so I'm not s...

dnd-5e character-advancement new-gm character-levels

Zachiel

09:05

@Shalvenay I feel horrible at phrasing questions today, but I posted it. I hope I'm not beating aroung the bush too much.

Link in the feeds, and thanks for the title.

trogdor

09:20

@BESW um,... how is that a thing exactly?

trogdor

09:37

ah ok it's a typo

Someone_Evil

@BESW New tag?

The Oracle

12:56

0

Q: What rules do we want for homebrew review questions?

There seemed to be a strong consensus in this question that we're not happy with how homebrew review is working on the site right now, and that the way forward is to get some additional rules around it to try to cut down on the most common types of problems these questions have. What sorts of ru...

discussion tags homebrew

BESW

→ 39 messages moved to Not a bar, but plays one on TV

Re: moved messages. One of the few things the Stack Exchange did pretty good with its social infrastructure is that users aren't publicly shamed with enumerations of what they do wrong. This helps us re-integrate into the community without being haunted by our mistakes. RPG chat is working so hard at being respectful and welcoming, please don't fudge it up by pasting gossip to the starboard.

The Oracle

14:33

1

Q: Do we want a [homebrew-review] tag separate from the [homebrew] tag?

The vast majority of the homebrew questions we get are asking us to review their homebrew, either directly ("Is this balanced?") or indirectly ("What LA should this race have?" or "How much should this magic item cost?"). However, we also get a nontrivial number of questions about homebrew that ...

discussion tags homebrew

Glazius

16:20

@Shalvenay give us a bing when you're ready to go

Shalvenay

@Glazius I think I can be ready soon here, yeah

ACuriousMind

This time I'm here and ready :)

Shalvenay

alrighty then, will be ready in a moment :)

@ACuriousMind @Glazius ready when you are :)

Zachiel

17:04

@Shalvenay I just feel badd at questions now.

KorvinStarmast

18:52

Zachiel, you aren't bad at questions: what you are confronting is quite a challenge given that you are switching systems, and that the system you are moving to seems to assume some system mastery ...

Glazius

19:48

tinyurl.com/FellowshipPlaybooks <-- free to download playbooks for Fellowship, a PbtA game about adventurers from disparate walks of life coming together to help their world and fight an evil overlord. There was some interest in a demo today, figure I'd offer these up and ask if anyone else was curious.

It's a game that makes you very much the custodian of your own people (you are the Dwarf, everyone expects you to talk about the Dwarves, or the Heir, and everyone expects you to talk about your kingdom) and has a really interesting approach to conflict framing and resolution.

If anybody's curious I could put together a little something for 2 to 5 not-me players. There's an interesting part to it that you can't really see in a one-shot; the Overlord is kind of a character and gets more tricks as the players get more powerful.

2

ACuriousMind

20:26

@Glazius Looks intriguing, I like the playbooks' focus on determining aspects of the character's culture. I'd be up for it, tending to play a Halfling.

Shalvenay

@Glazius yeah, I can tell where this'd have been a much better fit than DW for what I'm doing

Glazius

I'll let it float for a bit, I know people are likely to be out for the long weekend.

Shalvenay

20:46

one thing that irks me is sort of the conflation of race and class if you will that seems to be present in the playbook selection

Glazius

Yeah, it deliberately breaks from later D&D in that regard.

Shalvenay

@Glazius yeah, I recognize that from the very early forms of D&D

@Glazius I do wonder why?

nitsua60

Updoots if you agree:

Hi agirlnamedfia, and welcome. Unfortunately we've learned we don't handle requests very well, as you can see at the various links in the close-notice. That said, I strongly hope you'll pop into Role-playing Games Chat and ask the same question: I, personally, have played or run all the adventures you're talking about, and I know plenty of other chatizens have, too. You'll need 20 reputation to participate, so I've thrown you an upvote to get you 1/4 of the way there. Hope to see you soon! — nitsua60 ♦ 2 mins ago

Glazius

21:05

@Shalvenay I think part of it's that it is asking you to define your people so much? If you are an exemplar of your people, then when you define your people you're also talking about what you're good at.

With D&D you're dealing largely with races and professions defined by someone else, and you can explore the interactions without any particular investment.

nitsua60

Also, this, in case you were wondering about losing dozens-to-hundreds of rep:

40

Q: Massive user removal in one night?

I woke up this morning to find that I suffered a massive drop in reputation points across the network because lots of users had been removed. What happened to those users? Was there a database cleanup?

discussion support deleted-accounts

Carcer

@nitsua60 I seem to have escaped unscathed

BESW

[checks]I lost 30 points yesterday, and 20 last month, from removed users.

trogdor

21:21

@BESW so their votes just don't count anymore after that?

BESW

Yeah.

trogdor

huh

Carcer

see the big meta there

Shalvenay

@Glazius yeah, I just expected it to not be so one-dimensional XD or at least, be consistent in the dimension it adopted

trogdor

huh

I also don's seem to have lost anything

though I guess I am maybe not high enough rep to tell?

I dunno

Carcer

21:40

you'd have gotten a notification of lost rep due to a user being removed if it had affected you

BESW

If you've also gained rep during the period, the rep counter may not report the loss but you can see it if you click the dropdown.

Carcer

I note the comments in the meta post seem to suggest that it's exclusively or almost exclusively affected users who were active a few years ago

trogdor

@BESW oh you can still see it? I thought it was legit hidden if you lost points but gained the same or more

ACuriousMind

Nah, you'll always see a "-X user was removed" entry in your rep history

Peter Cooper Jr.

Yeah, I lost a little bit across a few sites. Not a whole lot, but enough that I was curious. Thanks for the link.

trogdor

21:42

ah

BESW

agirlnamedfia

Hey everyone, this is my first visit to the RPG chat so feel free to tell me if I'm doing something wrong, it's been ages so my chat skills are rusty :) I've got a recommendation question for a DND 5e module, is this where I ask it?

BESW

[wave] Hi! Yes, these chat rooms are much less formally structured than mainsite, so if a question doesn't fit the formal Stack Exchange requirements we can discuss the subject here instead.

Peter Cooper Jr.

@agirlnamedfia Sure! You can link to your closed question, too here.

BESW

I'm not personally able to help because I've no experience with D&D since before 5e, but @nitsua60 and others here are well versed in it.

agirlnamedfia

21:55

oh yeah, linking might be easier, it's here: rpg.stackexchange.com/q/148724/55728

basically, I need some help picking a module within some specific parameters

Peter Cooper Jr.

I started DMing with LMoP, and then did STK. STK was fun, but very sandboxy. It very much is giving you a world and you need to do quite a bit to fill it out.

I've heard that Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is good to new DMs too, but I haven't looked through it yet since I don't yet know if I'm DMing or playing it.

If your only concern with Waterdeep is that it may be too short, I think it may be a good choice exactly for that reason. Start with something small. It's easier to make things bigger if you want to do more than to cut back if you realize you've signed up for too much.

agirlnamedfia

That's true, I suppose

BESW

That's been my experience with most kinds of RPGs, yes.

agirlnamedfia

and we only play once a month, so either STK or OotA would probably take forever

Carcer

yeah, agree. I don't have any experience with the modules in question but I think a short one to cut your teeth on is probably the better way to start

Peter Cooper Jr.

22:00

Though it has the challenge of being city-based, so you need to be prepared for your players to be able to do just about anything.

And I believe it can lead into the other Waterdeep module, if you want to go beyond level 5 and want an Underdark dungeon crawl. Or it can probably lead into Chapter 2 of STK without too much trouble either.

agirlnamedfia

My players don't want to do a dungeon crawl, so maybe not DotMW but STK, huh... good suggestion!

BESW

I also get better participant retention with shorter campaigns, because if people think they can't commit to a year-long campaign they're less likely to join at all.

Peter Cooper Jr.

But in general, with any sort of game design (and DMing is basically a form of game design), you want to plan for it to be too short rather then too long.

Since you can always take a short game and say "That was fun, let's play again", but if a game drags on too long then everybody just wants it to end.

STK chapter 1 is a pretty fast-paced get-the-characters-to-level-5-so-the-main-adventure-can-start "prequel".

So I'd expect that W:DH can lead into STK starting at chapter 2 if you want more. Though I haven't tried it.

agirlnamedfia

someone probably has, and wrote about it on the internet

:D

Ben

22:26

Morning all

Just wanna say thanks to everyone who gave advice over on Not A Bar :)

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: Would the Geas spell work in a dead magic zone once you enter it?

So I am not quite sure if geas would still be in affect in a DMZ, or do the damage if the command is not followed. It is quite confusing as some players say that it wouldn't, and others say it would. I can't really figure it out myself, because I am 50/50 on it. What happens to the geas spell ...

dnd-5e spells magic

agirlnamedfia

i'm headed off to bed, thanks for the help everyone!

Ben

@agirlnamedfia Hi!

@agirlnamedfia Bye!

Lol

BESW

ttfn

nitsua60

22:46

@agirlnamedfia Reading your question as you first wrote it by the time I got to "mess around every once in a while" I was already thinking to myself "Storm King's Thunder sounds up their alley."

Sorry to miss the whole chat =\

Ben

@nitsua60 I did too, so, you're not the only one missing out

We missed out on the chat,and the chat missed out on your expertise haha

nitsua60

@agirlnamedfia if you're up for 6-9 months of ~weekly play, SKT would be right up your alley (I think). It is a little sandboxy, but when I ran it I printed a table-sized map of the book's map, laminated it, and then the players kept track of locations, quest-lines, memorable NPCs by writing on it with wet-erase and we never had trouble with them "losing the thread," if you will.

I'll second what Peter said about Dragon Heist: it's a bit shorter than your question seemed to be describing. I do like it and it's structure would lend itself well to what you describe, I think. But the caveat about "they're in a city, if they really want to go down other alleyways do you really want to be ready for that?" is on-point.

Ben

23:31

Is it just me or is it frustrating when a post doesn't have a game tag? You have an answer (with only a slight chance it's not the answer/an applicable one), but you can't post cos they haven't clarified. Lol

Not angry frustrated, more like... I want to but I can't

BESW

Oh yeah, that's definitely a thing.

trogdor

yeah

heck,... that happens in here

people run into the chat asking for help with a class or a build or a home brew or something and assume everything is D&D 5e

XD

Ben

I used to do that a lot. Lol

For which I do apologise

trogdor

it's just annoying, no one got hurt XD

mainly it sucks if we start assuming it's always D&D 5e because then someone comes in asking an Eclipse Phase question or something

Ben

23:49

Yeah. I mean, I did it a lot. And on top of that after a while I said "just assume it's 5e when I ask". Which of course was exactly the opposite of what we want to do. Lol

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