Random question, why is it that in this room new questions appear in the top left corner but on every other Stack I've seen they're posted to a bot like @Hot RPG Questions
ah can't mention the bot like that. oh well you guys get the point
I find that's only disturbing if the ticker's been overstocked with extremely active feeds, while the in-chat message feeds are much more ubiquitously interruptive.
I might need to see about finding a way to get titles for new [dnd-5e] questions sent to my keyboard (it's got an LCD display that I'm 90% sure can handle RSS feeds)
@BESW In retrospect, IIRC the decision to bot the HNQs into the conversational stream was when we first gained the ability to de-HNQ individual questions and when we were, as a site, asked whether we'd like to be off completely. So we actually wanted to be obtrusive, to get more eyes on them for a while and be able to make those decisions. Perhaps the time's come to rethink that. (cc: @kviiri @Miniman @NautArch @doppelgreener @Rubiksmoose @V2Blast)
I've been looking at the "removing attribute bonuses from races" idea, particularly the one by James Haeck on DnDBeyond's blog. I don't like his alternative advantage for mountain dwarves, so was thinking maybe a "half" feat instead (ie, one of the "+1 to attribute and..." feats, without the +1 to attribute). Would heavy armour proficiency be unbalancing? They already get light & medium.
Chat? Feeds?
SE sites have associated chat rooms. This site's main one is TRPG General Chat. Check it out!
SE chat supports feeds, which shows up as little ticker pop-ups from time to time.
For the last seven years this meta post has been the place to decide what goes in our ticker feed, but i...
@NautArch There are a couple of other 2e WM notions that I might consider throwing their way, if you're in a thematic mood: (1) wild mages had a chance of their spells going off at higher or lower (spell) level than anticipated.
It still consumed whatever slot the player had declared, but you (GM) roll to see what level actually comes out. It's swingier the higher level the original casting. Like a L1 spell is maybe 1/4 of the time actually L2, half the time unaffected, and 1/4 downcast to minimal (cantrip) effect. But a L7 has a 5% chance each of being up or down 4 (!) levels, 10% each +/-3 levels, 10% each +/- 2 levels, 20% each +/- 1 level, and only 10% chance of being at level.
(There's a table, naturally.)
(2) they can actually control the effects of randomized items. The rule in the book was that they had a 50% chance to just name the outcome of a DoMT or bag of beans or the like.
"This wand of darkness is awesome!" "That's a wand of wonder, idiot--watch where you point it!" "I don't think so... I just point it, say 'nox', and suddenly it's dark. Every time."
@TheOracle If this falls prey to the monster Lack Of Interest, like the last several attempts to revive the previous thread, I'll just curate the feeds myself and anybody who whinges about it can try to get the voting going again.
> Clearly, wild mages are a risky proposition. Not every player will want to play a wild mage; not every party will want a wild mage. The DM should not add benefits to the wild mage, hoping to the make the class more "attractive" to his players. Players who like wild mages will play them without bribery. They will find the uncertainty and randomness of wild mages irresistible; these are the players for whom the wild mage was created.
An aboleth is classified as a large aberration. If someone were to use the Banishment spell, what plane would it be banished to? (if it is from a different plane?)
Or would it just be banished to the 'harmless demiplane'?
Leave a comment if you want it to be an in-chat feed, otherwise I'm defaulting to ticker.
I'm gonna add a feed and then remove it, to see if this particular kind of link actually works. Doing this might spam the ticker with backlog from the feed, so I'm sorry if that happens.
I don't personally have feelings for or against the ticker – the occasional good link pops up, but most of it I just ignore. But I'm glad we're looking into it :)
@BESW Didn't have to download or anything, just had to point my keyboard at that address and name it. That was cool
This is actually super cool to have on my keyboard! I can see the title (or most of it in the case of longer ones) and I have a button to skip to the next one, one to open it in my browser, and one to mark as read so it doesn't keep popping back up. This is super cool!
Humble RPG Book Bundle: Warhammer 40K Deathwatch by Cubicle 7 is available for the next 3 weeks. It has 4 tiers, at $1, $8, $15, and $18. It includes the Deathwatch core rulebook (at the lowest tier), the Game Master's Kit (at the $15 tier), and a bunch of supplements and adventures.
--- that makes me wonder... does Humble Bundle have RSS feeds (including maybe a separate one for RPG book bundles)?
...seems there's one for the Humble Bundle blog, but that's it
without any way to filter to just the RPG bundle posts, seems a bit too irrelevant to be worthwhile. (I mean, there might still be worthwhile deals in there, but I figure it should probably be at least mostly on-topic :P)
Okay, I might have to get in on this. What's the keyboard and how do I set it up like this? (For a month now I've been thinking of finally splurging on a keyboard that's a step up from the 20 year-old hand-me-down that I'm currently working off of. About a dozen keys' labels are worn off, there's a divot in the left SHIFT key evocative of thousand year-old stone staircases, and (most troubling for online ringing) too much of the number pad occasionally sticks.
@nitsua60 You caught me at a good time, I just tabbed back to the chat before the ping! It's the Logitech G510s gaming keyboard. You'll need to Logitech Gaming Software but it's pretty lightweight and unintrusive. It runs in the background and unlocks everything that differentiates it from a normal keyboard
You'll just paste the RSS feed's link in there under subscribe to new feed
And for the record while the keyboard is a bit expensive it's honestly well worth the money. The programmable keys are really nice, you can also make it any RGB color (but I'm boring and stick with FF0000 red). Mine last me a good long time and I'm probably rougher on them than most (I always ended up wrapping the cord too tightly around it so it gave out but for someone who knows what they're doing it's probably not super hard to replace/fix)
I take mine with me for my laptop so it's constantly being moved around and wrapped up
I honestly hate any keyboard that isn't this nowadays.
Thinking about the keyboard reminds me I need a new bag... I've been using my old bookbag from highschool but the keyboard is a little too big for it to fit properly
@Ben My brother and I figured out that since the 'lock was 0 HP and not dead, the familiar could still float around as she tried to make her death saves. The wizard poured a healing pot down her throat, so that got sorted out after two successful death saves.
@nitsua60 How many hours a day are you at your keyboard? If it's a lot, a nice one isn't a bad spend. Like your favorite size kitchen knife... might as well get a nice one given how much you use it.
@Himitsu_no_Yami You might want to look into an aluminum frame keyboard if you're traveling with it a lot. They tend to be more rigid and durable. I use one for conferences... well... used to anyway. I don't know if there is one with a braided cable, but that would ameliorate the wear and tear issue for the cable.
@GcL In the before-time, maybe an hour a day in aggregate. Nowadays, basically full-time so's I'm thinking it's be nice to treat myself to something decent. (But I had in my head, like, maybe fifty dollars worth of decent, not hundreds! Because there will be an after-time, for this I hold out hope.)
And the non-uniform resistance of some keys isn't a huge deal for my typing, but (I'm being ridiculous here) for the online bell ringing it's a little problematic. Because "good striking" is measured in milliseconds.
@Carcer Yeah, not sure how we're going to handle that. Newbie DM, applied the rules in a somewhat slippery way over the course of a fight, but on the whole we just got in over our heads and didn't run away. So I think it's a legitimate 0.5PK. Considering bringing in new characters and regrouping with the rest of the party at another (less lethal) entrance to the dungeon.
@nitsua60 That's cool. For that use amount, a high quality keyboard is probably overkill. Mid range and comfortable seems like it would more cost effective.
You could still do a device based news ticker... just not integrated with the keyboard. Could probably find one for your desktop somewhere as well. I recall Windows has an annoying messaging bin that you can add stuff into. Notifications bin?
There's a bit of a discussion going on right now - oh, you use those forums, don't you, hence you probably already know - about the best way to show prospective new players that GURPS can be played simply.
I suppose people coming from something like D&D which doesn't have as many parts you can unscrew and put back in the box might look at the discussion of fearsomely complicated optional rules and assume that all those rules are going to be in their game, too, having not got used to the idea of optional rules.
This Stargate role-playing game I keep trying to join is getting ridiculous.
All new applications have to go through this one person. I've been trying for a couple of weeks, at least, I think. He kept not answering my e-mails, and finally one of the moderators sent him a message reminding him to look at it, and he asked me to meet him in chat at 8pm on Thursday and we'd sort it out.
Waited for a whole hour, later got an e-mail saying his Internet had been on the blink and try again Saturday.
The moderators act like this is all perfectly reasonable and fixing things up with him shouldn't be any problem.
Sure, but as they say, "No [games] is better than bad [games]." (I've only heard it as "No D&D is better than bad D&D" specifically, hence the brackets :P)
I think it's kind of self-perpetuating, online anyway. People look for a game, can't get one because they're vastly outnumbered on all English-language sites by the Americans, and leave again.
There ought to be a UK-specific website about role-playing. There was one, but it shut down a year or two back, I don't know why.
I managed to get into several campaigns on Euro-evening times, and am running two (but one is full and the other isn't stable yet), despite many North Americans on the server.
Now, by today those I played in either ended or ceased.
(Sounds a bit like a joke about UKers setting up their own server --> "Brexit" of the US-centric servers --> (real) Brexit's a fraught political topic we'd usually recommend taking to the bar?)
Anyway, game listings are not paper. They can take up very very many entries, all that's needed then is to sort through them based on time windows of the sessions.
This may be somewhat a worthless question as I've looked diligently without success. I don't believe the information is physically present but I thought I'd give it a shot.
In my games things have temporarily side stepped in to the sword and planet genre (lol don't ask) and I find myself in need...
@A.B. Build a separate UK version of a thing that already exists instead of sorting out how to integrate is usually the sort of discussion that leads to Brexit discussions these days.
Then it's a pity they mostly don't tag according to time zone in any way that you can sort through without opening each thread one by one and checking them.
If anybody has a more recent printing of the 5e-dnd Monster Manual and can check what the Imp (somewhere around page 76) has resistance to, I'd be very happy to hear it
@A.B. Oh, you're talking about the forum? I meant on the GURPS Discord; that one has a sheet listing games and at least most people mark time windows or timezones. I also had some luck on the FATE Discord but less so.
RPG serious. 1. In a campaign that I am running, a player is playing 2 characters at once. That wouldn't b a problem, but her two characters are exact opposites of each other; so when her character fails at one thing or cant do one thing she uses the other character... Even if her other character has no idea on what the situation is. Shes already gained some xp and equipment, but she is using A LOT of meta gaming, wut should I do?
(I.e. are they the only "double-hander" and monopolizing spotlight time, or the group feels like there's no challenge because this player snipes everything?)
How many players are at the table? Usually I don't let a player have two characters at once. Sometimes there's an NPC with listed goals and personality traits that I let the players pass around and portray collaboratively.
the group has brought it to my attention; and the person kind of destroys everything so they don't get any XP. (there are 4 players). But the problem is she's getting a huge amount chances to get what she wants, which is completely unfair to the other players. Shes able to accomplish almost any thing, stealing, fighting... etc.
because she has 2 players and not because of hard working xp
every other player has worked towards upgrading their characters, whereas she hasn't.
Probably next step is to have a 1 on 1 chat with the player, say that you and the other players have voiced concerns. You don't think it's fair that they have 2 characters.
YES THATS a great Idea. Because both of her characters are home brew races. And her stats are insanely huge because of home brew. I've tried to lower down some things, and talked with her in the past, however shes really sensitive and gets frustrated at me easily.
so its been really hard for me to make some rules with her
As the person running the game, you'll often need to impose rules on a particular player, not because you want to make a player feel bad, but because everyone else is following those rules.
Homebrew, interpersonal communications, game play procedure. The communication is probably the biggest one. You can tell them the issues you're observing and see if they can help you come up with solutions.
Definitely have a solution ready to propose, but see if they've got a proposed solution. Also, clearly define what you think a working solution should do and how that can be evaluated if it's working.
Letting them have one overpowered character can be okay, but you'll have to do some extra work as DM to ensure that other players have opportunity to do stuff.
Ok. That makes sense, I was thinking of talking with her and just having her choose between one of them. Strength or Dexterity, however I don't want to sound like i'm being mean at all, in fact in the past when I've brought up issues, it hasn't gone well.
Bring all the characters up to the same amount of xp as the current highest and tell everyone the group is getting awarded exp so everyone is getting the same amount from now on.
@MikeQ You can have the model T in any color you want provided it's black.
@MikeQ eh, it's safer to just say no until you've got a lot of experience to evaluate homebrew or you're sure you can take away what you have given without getting someone extremely upset
Anyway @TaylorSpaulding you can let the player decide how to change their character, just give them the criteria. 1 character only. Maybe you want to restrict to official race options (at least for mechanical stuff. they could keep the descriptive stuff, depending).
Basically it's a meta-discussion to help get everyone on the same page, so that everyone (DM included) has a shared understanding of what game they want to play. It's to sync up expectations - about logistics, in-game themes, characters, the world, cover all the bases. Maybe identify what's off-limits. And so on.
Because the all-too common problem is that different players come to the table with different expectations, so they end up trying to play different games, and that causes group conflict.
Yeah DEFINTLY I learned that in this campaign. Also, is there times that players after a roll, describe what happens on there own. When does that happen?
yeah, the general rule is that the player tells you what they're trying to do, then you tell them what actually happens, if their abilities/luck falls short of their intentions.
there is no specific guidance about when and how you can elide that rule and let the players just state definitively what happens.
Some DMs like to distribute narrative burden among the players, and let the players describe events within the scope of their characters, provided that they don't start changing things that shouldn't be changed.
Then again, I'm not sure that's a good idea for your group, at least not until everyone is on board the same ship, so to speak.
@TaylorSpaulding Another crucial point - the session 0 isn't just time for the DM to impose their expectations. It should be a collaborative discussion, so that players can also voice their expectations.
Could help identify the reasons why one player wants two overpowered homebrew characters, and maybe someone can provide alternatives that fit that player's needs.
@TaylorSpaulding I'm on one end of the GMing spectrum here: my session zeroes with (RL) groups feature a conversation about what's in, (starting from a default assumption of "nothing") rather than what's out.
@RyanfaeScotland I've found that session 0 is often necessary, but rarely sufficient. Session 0 is less about figuring out everything about how the game will be played, and more about initializing an ongoing conversation about what we like and need which will continue over the entire campaign so we can course-correct as we go.
@TaylorSpaulding Personally (and I know this isn't what a lot of game manuals expect) I like it when the participant on the "losing" end of the roll gets to describe the result. So the GM describes how the PC succeeds, and the player gets to describe how their character fails.
Microscope has a really good structure for it: at the beginning of the campaign you list things that would be "normal" to include in that kind of campaign but the players don't want to include in this one, and things that would be surprising to include but the players DO want to try and work into the game. This gives a good structure to the game and is an opportunity to say "no spiders please" without it being a big deal.
And then after each session you pick something from the session (character, theme, location, item, whatever) that you want to see more of during the campaign. At the beginning of each session, you pick one thing from that list to make important in that session.
(In Microscope it's actually in terms of rounds, not sessions, but the pattern holds.)
That's a solid foundation for a recurring checking-in-and-re-affirming structure with a positive "more of this please" focus.
It's not comprehensive; bleed and situations need their own tools.
For clarity
It's already clear from several other questions that a Glamour bard may not maintain concentration on Mantle of Majesty and another concentration spell at the same time. This is not my question.
Rules
A creature may not normally cast 2 spells of 1st level or higher in the same tur...
@BESW when we were all looking at the 'shared world' model about 4 years ago, I suggested we try Microscope as an intro session so that we'd get a look at building the world together before the various GM's got their corner of it. 3 of 7 agreed, 4 of 7 said "nah, not interested" 7 out of 7 of us had never played with Microscope. sigh
@BESW yeah--Microscope's delineated structure (after I'd played it) made it clear how easy it was to have that sort of conversation--I'd worried before trying that it'd be too rigid or it's make people feel railroaded.
Chat? Feeds?
SE sites have associated chat rooms. This site's main one is TRPG General Chat. Check it out!
SE chat supports feeds, which shows up as little ticker pop-ups from time to time.
For the last seven years this meta post has been the place to decide what goes in our ticker feed, but i...
An aboleth is classified as a large aberration. If someone were to use the Banishment spell, what plane would it be banished to? (if it is from a different plane?)
Or would it just be banished to the 'harmless demiplane'?
For clarity
It's already clear from several other questions that a Glamour bard may not maintain concentration on Mantle of Majesty and another concentration spell at the same time. This is not my question.
Rules
A creature may not normally cast 2 spells of 1st level or higher in the same tur...
