TRPG General Chat

5:03 AM

Help A Diwata With Her Rent. A bundle hosted by Pammu with content from 29 creators: buy 69 items for $10. Regularly $299.80; save 96%!

5

user15026

5:20 AM

Aww, I was just about to bounce in here with that :)

@Ash Bouncing is not redundant!

user15026

gestures above that bundle @BESW linked has so many good bits! It's awesome and if you have the extra money you will probably find many awesome fun times inside

Here's a Twitter thread where Pammu is talking about each creator and game in the bundle.

user15026

Oh, I hadn't seen that, that's a helpful.

[grin] My notifications went KAPOW when they mentioned my "game" in the thread.

user15026

5:29 AM

Travelling Librarians is hella cool.

user15026

I can imagine your notifs went emphatic confetti gestures

trogdor

What is it exactly? I can't open that at work

What is which?

trogdor

The first link you posted

Help a Diwata with her rent

> Hey, everyone! Sin, aka Diwata ng Manila, has been struggling with paying off their backlogged rent for a while now. A lot of harrowing personal events that occurred last year accumulated a massive amount of debt between them and their landlord. They've been trying their very best to take commissioned work and do more of their game design to pay things off, but there's still a ways to go.
Paying this off will make sure Sin and the pets in their care isn't in any danger of being evicted. It will also enable them to focus better on saving up for some of their bigger goals for 2020, like pre…

SmokeDetector

5:33 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Non-latin link in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (83): How can I replace a lost Horn? by nununu on rpg.SE

trogdor

Ah ok so it's a lot of RPGS

XD abd one of them is from you, cool

Yeah, the call for contributions went out in one of the Discord servers I'm in, so I offered it.

Ben

5:50 AM

@BESW It's not LLKoM is it XD

No, it's my Traveling Librarians game guide.

LLKoM is on hold.

Q: How deadly is Dust of Sneezing and Choking?

6:25 AM

@nitsua60 Ouch.

@NautArch Nice! Hope you all had fun.

Hot RPG Questions

5

Dust of Sneezing and Choking is a magic item that can be fairly debilitating to low-Constitution characters, but I'm curious how dangerous it is to inhale this stuff. In particular: ...you and each creature that needs to breathe within 30 feet of you must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution savin...

dnd-5e magic-items breathing

What kind of information should be put in a tag description?

@BESW Oooh. (It'd be nice to be able to sort/filter games when viewing collections on itch.io...)

@jgn Generally speaking, the main thing it needs to convey is what sort of questions the tag would be appropriate on

@V2Blast I saw one tag that seems to have a whole game pitch, a whole page of text, which seemed a bit strange, I'll find it again.

Some of them definitely need some cleaning up

I've seen some that were just copied from the product description on its website or on DriveThruRPG, which is a definite no-no

6:40 AM

@V2Blast Ah, that may have been the case here

rpg.stackexchange.com/tags/lovecraftesque/info

It looks like it was but drive thru have changed their description since, that makes sense.

the revision history on the tag wiki says "created using the developer's answer to Q "What is Lovecraftesque?", with some edits for consistancy and readability" as the edit reason for the edit that added most of it

so yeah

Yup, found it mostly pasted out of this answer rpg.stackexchange.com/a/79971/59609

The tag should have something like "Lovecraftesque is a game by X studio", it doesn't need the huge blurb right?

also, you can type [tag:nameoftaghere] in chat (or in a question/answer, which is mostly relevant on meta) to have it format as a link to the tag: lovecraftesque

Neat!

the full tag wiki does allow for a bit more room to describe the subject of the tag, though I'm not sure if there are any generally accepted guidelines around what should/shouldn't go in there

will have to look

Q: What is a tag wiki? How do I write a good one?

7:54 AM

Relevant MSE posts (keep in mind that both of these are quite old, and also specific practices may vary from site to site):

44

As the title says: What are tag wikis, and how do I write a good one? Return to FAQ index

support faq tag-wiki

25

Q: Tag Wiki best practices

The tag database-design has no tag wiki, and SO invites me to help create one. I've got the reputation. I think Database-design really needs a tag wiki. I'd like to help. But I don't feel quite up to creating a tag wiki on my own for three reasons. First, I'm not too sure what a good tag wik...

discussion tag-wiki

(it seems Jeff Atwood's blog post quoted at the end of the answer to that first MSE question is based on the top answer to the second MSE question I've linked)

Another related blog post: stackoverflow.blog/2010/08/01/tag-folksonomy-and-tag-synonyms

And finally, related site help pages:
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/help/tag-excerpts
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/approve-tag-wiki-edits
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/trusted-user (there's some overlap in info with the above, but they're not identical)

8:21 AM

Seems that something like "Use it for X game" would be better than a blurb about what the game is?

Someone_Evil

I don't think adding those extra words are valuable. (No need to change tags either way). To users who know, system tags are to be put on questions. Users who don't know (ie. some new ones), the problem isn't the tag blurbs, it's knowledge of the tags themselves.

If X is a thing, it seems obvious to me [X] should be used on questions about that thing

Some other topics are a bit less clearly defined, so describing their agreed upon use is more applicable

Q: Which nations did the Warforged fight for in the Last War on Eberron?

Usually I'll change tag wiki excerpts like "X is a game published in Y..." to "For questions about X, a game published in Y..." if I'm already editing it to make other improvements. But yeah, not really a necessary change on its own

It's more useful to make that focus explicit for some non-system tags, so people aren't adding tags to a particular question when the topic of the tag is only mentioned in passing/a minor detail with regard to that question

e.g. "For questions primarily about X..."

Hot RPG Questions

6

I'm currently creating a Warforged character for a one-shot, so I need to decide who he/she/it fought for in the Last War (Warforged were created as weapons, so each of them must have fought for or at least been owned by someone). However, the lore is not entirely clear on the matter of who emplo...

dnd-5e lore eberron warforged

8:43 AM

Morning

9:14 AM

@Someone_Evil I mean, as a replacement to the 8 paragraphs or whatever it has now.

9:26 AM

/wave

10:05 AM

[gurps-4e]: "Use this game for GURPS 4e questions" would not actually be very helpful, because that's already implicit in how the tag system works. Instead we describe the game (including things like publisher, year, subject matter) so that people can verify that this tag is, in fact, for the specific game they're expecting.

That's not as important for tags like [dnd-4e], but it becomes more important for many other games. It acts as disambiguation and confirmation this is the right tag for your game.

It also doubles as that people who don't actually know about the game can learn a tiny bit about it, to help them understand the context of questions and answers about it, and maybe they can go off and learn more still.

Q: What does leveling up feel like as a character?

10:51 AM

BTW, would appreciate a second set of eyes on this question to make sure I'm not off-base:

0

I am trying to grasp the narrative feeling of leveling up as a character in D&D 5e. Supposedly at the end of a session a Sorcerer has enough experience points to level up. I am using the Sorcerer class as an example due to the innate nature of their powers. How does that feel to them and how is...

dnd-5e sorcerer

and thoughts on whether the recent edit (focusing on 5e sorcerer, instead of all characters/classes in all editions with sorc as just an example) makes it narrowly scoped enough to be answerable

Carcer

11:05 AM

scoped to the 5e sorcerer is narrow enough to be answerable, I think

frustrating question by virtue of treating the abstraction of experience mechanics as something which is meant to be understood narratively

Carcer

11:25 AM

scoped by edition alone would probably have been enough

and I don't think I'd have a problem with a question asking whether D&D generally has ever narratively justified the game mechanics of levelling up and how

hm

the OP seems to like jgn's answer but the thing is that answer is unsupported by anything, it's just a collection of ideas on how one might narratively justify the sorcerer's mechanical changes on levelling

maybe there's really two questions this needs to be, the first of which being "does the game provide any narrative justification/description of what is happening when a character levels up", and "how can I narratively justify/describe what happens when a character levels up?"

and the latter question definitely needs to be scoped pretty tightly to be useful at all, and even then it's probably idea-generation and out of bounds.

12:04 PM

@Carcer That'd make for an interesting history-of-gaming question

but yeah

basically the question seems to be a mix of those two

Carcer

well, it could be interpreted either way I think, but it might well be that the OP understands that the game text doesn't actually describe this and is looking for ideas like jgn's

"How is that explained in a narrative fashion?" feels like an appeal to the game's text, though

implying as it does that there is an explanation

rather than "How can that be explained"

I wonder if any of the licensed D&D-property novels have featured passages we'd recognise as descriptive of gaining levels?

1:38 PM

Food poisoning is no fun, team

Hi all, I read D&D 5e player's manual a couple times now and I fail to see any mechanic about Good and Evil magic. Has that been removed? So far it seems that Alignment is just a roleplaying guideline (personal opinion: a poor one) and it has no mechanical effect on the game. Is that right?

@STTLCU Almost entirely. As in: I can only think of a handful of items/interactions where alignment actually comes up.

out of curiosity, such as?

@STTLCU The sprite can detect someone's alignment. Some magical items can only be attuned by certain alignments.

thanks!

1:49 PM

There might be some celestial statblocks that mention how they'd interact differently with people of different alignments? I might be imagining that, though.

@STTLCU Correct all the way

One way it's useful though is as a roleplaying guideline for the GM

@STTLCU With the "exception" being Protection from Evil and Good, but that's for Fiends, celestials, etc.

Some plot-points/NPCs in published adventures fork based on alignment. Like Patrony McAdventurehand will give you different hints/resources depending on your alignment.

@goodguy5 Right: it says it's about Evil and Good, but it's not.

To play the monsters

@nitsua60 hence the quotes ;)

1:51 PM

@goodguy5 In other news--good luck, feel better? Hope it passes quickly.

@goodguy5 Tell that to my Oxygen Not Included colony

@nitsua60 Sunday night was the worst of it. Yesterday was just getting better. Today I'm still a bit tired and sore, but okay

@PierreCathé I always forget how unpleasantly forceful and visceral the experience of vomiting actually is in real life. emojis and games make it seem so nonchalant.

@nitsua60 Nice pun, and with food poisoning the passing tends to be from/out of both ends.

Is the [on hold] terminology gone? I voted to close something a few minutes ago and it has (in my view) [closed] rather than [on hold] on it. Is that a mod-thing?

rpg.stackexchange.com/q/162912/23970 for reference.

@nitsua60 Well that's disappointing, maybe it's a diamond mod thing.

1:54 PM

@nitsua60 This made me laugh out loud in the office

Hmm... looking at the front page there are a bunch of [closed] questions asked five hours ago. Is that what everyone else is seeing, too? Or are they [on hold] for you?

Yea, I greatly appreciated that question's existence.

Because like.... how would you know if you didn't know? lol

@PierreCathé That was one of the hardest comments I think I've ever written. Once the stupid post injected notions of sexuality into the page it seemed like everything I tried to say was a double entendre.

@nitsua60 just role with it....

@nitsua60 "hardest" comment, eh?

1:56 PM

Hell--I'm still not happy with the number of times I'm stressing tabletop, in that context.

@goodguy5 oh, crap. Now it's here, too!

I'm gonna take a day =)

I find the "ttrying" unintentional typo hilarious because it sounds like you're trying hard not to burst into laughter

(I'm reminded of Mr. Green's last line in one of the Clue endings....)

@nitsua60 But if you have ever seen "the postman always rings twice" (1981 version) you'd relaize that using table top may also trigger the OP via double entendre ..

@nitsua60 I'm going to go home and have sex with my wife?

@goodguy5 Is an initial condition for baby number two ...

1:58 PM

please lord, not yet

@nitsua60 what cracks me up is that the answer begins with, like a lot of RPG question answers, "talk to her ..." though perhaps "after a glass of wine"

@KorvinStarmast That's because A lot of rpg issues are actually interpersonal issues

Though it should still probably be migrated to IPS

@PierreCathé true

Also yes alcohol might help

^ Words to live by right here

Q: New Post Notices rollout on Stack Overflow

@goodguy5 as a sometimes-rogue i think poisoning food can be a lot of fun

Someone_Evil

2:12 PM

@nitsua60 The app (at least on my android) still uses it, but it was changed in the normal view when they changed the look and several of the reasons/wordings

107

New Post Notices have been launched network-wide. Please post all new feedback, bugs and feature requests to the new announcement post. As has been previously announced, we have been working for some time on a full refresh for post notices. I am happy to announce that all initial development w...

discussion closed-questions post-notices announcements

@Someone_Evil Looks like "on hold" is gone

But it's been replaced by the close notice actually telling the author what they need to do with the question to get it open again, instead of telling them why it was closed (or put on hold)

Which makes a lot of sense

NautArch

@V2Blast Yeah, kids had a great time (and I did, too!) Started it saturday night and sunday they asked to play again so we did another 1hour session.

3:05 PM

@doppelgreener I just never noticed that with the redesign of the notice, [on hold] had gone away. TIL....

@goodguy5 that's the one, yes =)

I didn't notice either!

4:01 PM

[On hold] has always been a highly misleading thing. Good that it's gone.

As a Jira user, I agree

Yeah it was slightly misleading, but it was a bit of an improvement over what we had before

folks would just give up on closed questions completely instead of trying to improve them because in forum environments closed things don't normally get reopened

[on hold] was an attempt to signal that it's temporary, and the numbers showed it improved the likelihood a question would get reopened

4:25 PM

@vicky_molokh It was a better initial close tag than closed, per @doppel's point. Not misleading at all, from where I sit, in that the Stack has a process for either reopening, or leaving closed, questions that have a variety of issues that need to be cleared up. Sorry to see it gone.

for good subjective questions, while about to write the phrase "What I did in a similar situation", it occurred to me that anyone could write that phrase.

As for the rest of the blurbs in the close notices and alerts ... I may be to used to the old text, but I see little value added. However, some new users may see the new terms as less off putting, so perhaps these are the better idea.

When I first saw [on hold], they made me think 'Oh, it needs to sort something out then it will let my question go forward, I just need to wait'.

NautArch

@goodguy5 We've been through this. BUt yes, anyone could write it, but the hope is that the content will either be believable or not - but that the real hope is that folks will only do that when they've actually done it and not just make stuff up.

@vicky_molokh Did you not read the comments and the text in the boxes?

On hold did not happen in a vacuum. It still had the boxed/shaded text.