TRPG General Chat

NautArch

00:19

@Himitsu_no_Yami don't forget about half speed with grappled creature. How's the total weight looking?

Himitsu_no_Yami

@NautArch already factoring in the half speed, I think the enemy is light enough to just barely be within carry capacity

NautArch

Dang, 50' fly speed.

Himitsu_no_Yami

yep

nitsua60

00:45

@NautArch Yeah, that's why it needs a dash.

@Himitsu_no_Yami Now you just need to convince the player that a STR-based Aa Rogue is the way they needed to go.

Expertise in athletics, bonus action to dash =)

BESW

Kurt Potts' Birthday Bundles: Solo; Little; Fantasy.

Rubiksmoose

01:18

@V2Blast Thanks for cleaning that link up BTW :)

V2Blast

@Himitsu_no_Yami aarakocra :P

@Rubiksmoose :thumbsup:

Hot RPG Questions

01:35

8

Q: Can a druid/trickery domain cleric use Invoke Duplicity and Wild Shape, then cast spells through the illusion?

I am DMing a D&D 5E game. I have a player who wants to use Invoke Duplicity and Wild Shape, then cast spells through the illusion. My thoughts are Wild Shape says the druid can't cast spells, and Invoke Duplicity says the cleric casts spells as though the caster were in the duplicate's space. So ...

NautArch

02:09

@nitsua60 a very cool move

Peter Cooper Jr.

@nitsua60 And yet, not the subtlety I expect from a Rogue.

nitsua60

02:43

@PeterCooperJr. It's, like, the roguishness of Fezzig, not of Vizzini or Inigo.

GcL

03:58

Oi @Ben, you around?

Ben

04:28

@GcL wave

GcL

04:49

@Ben We've not been conscious concurrently recently.

How's the corruption system going for you?

Ben

Yeah, I've been a bit tied up lately with work.

GcL

I blame the cats. It's probably the music they listen to.

Ben

I've seen all your comments about rewords and everything, it's been really great :D My only main thing is that I am thinking about nerfing the whole system a bit.

@GcL Sneaking some of the 'nip when you ain't watching :P

The idea is that it's meant to be a flavour system - sure it can have some mechanics to it, but I don;t want it to be a permanent deficit to the game. You're going to be potentially building 2 or 3 major afflictions throughout the campaign, and as it is, you'll have disadvantage on rolls, creatures will be able to track you freely, etc. It really stacks up.

GcL

@Ben I was wondering about what the target number of afflictions was.

Ben

So I'm thinking that Minor afflictions are simply just flavor text, then the Major afflictions are -2, etc.

Yeah. In my campaign, I don;t see them having more than 4 or 5 at most

GcL

05:02

I figured the decent into hell flavor was slogging through uphill odds. Actually, I figured the creatures tracking wasn't such a bad thing. Any diablo-esq hero I imagined was going to cut through the mundane creatures. I was thinking the player (and character by extension) would grow tired of it.... like cutting down the denizens of hell was a wearisome task of mowing an endless supply of weeds.

Ben

Yeah, the campaign is designed for levels 1-5

3-5 players

GcL

05:22

@Ben So running the entirety of Diablo 1 before L5?

Ben

Yeah. Basically level per level. Diablo is on the 5th level, so players will be level 5. Figured it would be the smoothest way.

I could be convinced to double it (potentially), but I'd really need to pad out the story events

GcL

05:38

L5 just doesn't take that many encounters to get to.

Ben

Ok thats a fair point

linksassin

06:45

@Ben I think the bigger issue is how much of the game you want to run before 3rd level. In 5e most class abilities don't really come online until 3rd level. Gameplay at 1st and 2nd level isn't super fun. Increasing the level range would let you get through this a bit faster.

Hot RPG Questions

07:29

2

Q: Does an Adamantine greatclub always deal critical damage like other Adamantine weapons?

In general adamantine weapons always deal critical damage on a hit: Whenever an adamantine weapon or piece of ammunition hits an object, the hit is a critical hit. - Xanathar's Guide to Everything, page 78. However, in SKT chapter 6 room 14 (page 154) it says: She wields an adamantine ...

dnd-5e weapons special-materials storm-kings-thunder

The Oracle

0

Q: Improvement on Deleted Answers Help Page - deletion due to rpg.se policies

Deleted answers help page starts with the sentence: Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. And goes on to give examples of non-answer answers. Yet, deletion can also be performed when an answer does indeed answer the question, but it disagrees with the rpg.se...

discussion help-center deleted-answers

kviiri

08:12

Oh hey, Diablo. How topical, my commune mates are playing D3

I am mostly a stranger to the series. A friend made me play a bit of D2 and... well. It feels like a game that could've gotten me seriously addicted in my early teens, but too bad I was in my mid-twenties x)

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: I don't like a fellow player, what should I do?

We're playing online. I don't like the player, not the PC, the PC themselves is fine, which kinda makes this worse, if it was the PC, I could chalk it up to good RP. This player also isn't unlikable/overtly terrible like in rpghorrorstories where I can call them out that what they're doing is w...

problem-players group-dynamics

AncientSwordRage

08:48

@kviiri it's addictive at all ages I think

AncientSwordRage

09:21

Does anyone listen/watch Beyond Heros ?

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage It didn't really click for me

My tastes are somewhat specific nowadays I guess

AncientSwordRage

@kviiri yeah it does feel like most dnd shows online are more fun for the participants than the viewers

I was trying to figure out if the current one is set on Theros, how they have existing characters, but they've just explained they're travelling between worlds

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage I meant diablo the video game

AncientSwordRage

@kviiri oops

linksassin

@AncientSwordRage I definitely found that with some. There are too many inside jokes or references you don't understand for the game to be enjoyable for viewing.

kviiri

09:35

@AncientSwordRage x) no worries

V2Blast

@AncientSwordRage I have not, but I've read some of the episode summaries/writeups on the site and seen some clips

AncientSwordRage

10:35

It seems like Beyon Heros violates @BESW principle of safe narration (You should phrase things as 'My character says X', not talking in character)

(apologies if I've misframed/miscredited it)

BESW

10:56

I dunno what Beyond Heroes is?

MikeQ

Why does talking in-character mean unsafe narration?

BESW

I wouldn't say it automatically does, but narrating character is an RPG technique that's useful for a lot of reasons, including but not limited to bleed reduction.

If Beyond Heroes (whatever that is) demands in-character RP, or stigmatizes alternative narrative styles, that could be unsafe because it's taking away tools from players.

(Bleed is the term for when players experience the emotions of the characters they're playing. It's not an inherently bad thing, for a lot of players it's a sign that the game is good. But it can be unsafe if the players and groups don't have the tools to handle it, and forcing players to use techniques that encourage bleed is a basic violation of consent.)

The TRPG Safety Toolkit includes some tools for bleed management; in particular, helping people disentangle their emotions from the emotions of their characters after a session. Many of these aftercare tools were developed in LARP spaces and a sign of a really good LARP is one which makes space for structured aftercare.

For a lot of my group, describing characters' actions rather than inhabiting them is less about bleed and more about just being more comfortable not doing voices or feeling pressured to improvise extensive dialogue.

(We usually get invested in characters, but not immersed in them.)

2

AncientSwordRage

11:46

@BESW Beyond Heros is the 'official' WotC D&D campaign on their youtube channel. You don't have to speak in character, but from what I've seen a lot of the players do

Something I find, is that narration over directly speaking as the character makes it easier for me to watch

BESW

I wouldn't say that violates any safety principles, then. A lot of people find first-person dialogue key to enjoyable games. My group does it semi-regularly. We swap techniques around as it seems appropriate for each moment in the scene.

I find streamed games difficult to follow no matter what techniques are used.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW 'Violates X principle' is just the way I find easiest to express they're not following it

it's possibly more extreme/dogmatic than I intend for it to be

AncientSwordRage

12:03

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica congrats

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage Thanks!

AncientSwordRage

I had some time left, but I'm never confident where a bounty goes if I leave it too long

or if you get the full amount

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage It gets divided up equally between the AI which runs the stack and the user which has the answer with most upvotes.

Or something like that.

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica damn dirty AI

nitsua60

@doppelgreener can you think of a time in the three years I was moderator that we had to unwind answers that came in on a question that relied on a system tag after a well-meaning user had "guessed the system"?

I was elected something like ten vote-reapportinoments after you, so I think of myself as the younger of two fraternal twins =)

doppelgreener

12:14

@nitsua60 my brain is having trouble parsing that today, but if you mean all the times someone guessed at the system and their answer was deleted ... I think that happened a lot? :P

nitsua60

@doppelgreener No--someone tagged based on a "guess" and someone else answered, but that answer ended up being erroneous (because the guess had been wrong).

AncientSwordRage

@nitsua60 starting to sound like a SEDE query

Someone_Evil

Unless I'm reading the timeline wrong, there wasn't any system tag on that question when it was answered

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 from what I understand, if we mean this question, we don't know for sure the guess was wrong, just people didn't agree the guess should be made (yet)

personally this is the exact situation we were noticing; it's pretty obvious this is going to be D&D 5e and the policy is saying "noooo, you can't be sure, don't do it"

and now a whole lot of trouble is happening on account of not being able to just go "yeah, this is pretty clearly D&D 5e, let's handle it as such"

NautArch

12:45

@doppelgreener although, to be fair, the trouble is the same trouble we always have when it's 'obvious'.

doppelgreener

it is, yeah

nitsua60

@doppelgreener Well, I'm obviously prompted by this question, but what I'm really wondering about is the sometime-cited risk of "if we let people guess at tags, then someone could answer with the wrong info then it gets clarified and we need to delete, and that person's effort was wasted and anti-rewarded." But I can't remember ever seeing that actually happen.

(To be clear: that's not the only risk that's pointed to, but it is one.)

NautArch

@nitsua60 I'm fairly sure, but could easily be wrong, that the answer was posted before it had any tag.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 I have not seen that happen in several years.

nitsua60

@NautArch Yes. I'm not talking about that question, though.

NautArch

12:47

Oh!

then nevermind :)

which question are you referencing?

nitsua60

None.

doppelgreener

I have seen people assume a question with no system information at all was D&D, but that's a different scope. We see it a lot in system-agnostic and social questions where people tend to assume the game is D&D, or works like D&D, or that the solutions that apply to D&D will definitely apply there with no issues. Sometimes they'll do it in spite of the question making it clear what the system was and that it wasn't D&D.

nitsua60

I'm referencing one of the risks cited when arguing against allowing users to use expertise when tagging system: that an incorrect "guess" could allow for an innocent (other) answerer's efforts to be wasted.

NautArch

ah, gotcha.

yeah, i guess that's the big risk. It's also moreso that the querent may get incorrect information.

For me, it's more of the latter than the former.

nitsua60

@doppelgreener Hell, people answer things tagged with other systems as if it's dnd5e. I've written a whole answer and only noticed as I was about to (or just just) hit POST ANSWER.

NautArch

12:50

I personally have less of an issue with an answerer 'wasting time' than I do a querent getting bad information.

Someone_Evil

I mean, I wouldn't expect to see that a lot because answers without a specified system tends to get closed really quickly and guesses reverted, to it's really hard to answer a question with a guessed system tag

nitsua60

@NautArch a querent who didn't specify their game? I'm not too moved by that.

NautArch

@nitsua60 A querent who didn't know they had to specify a game.

nitsua60

Seems like a good learning experience to me....

doppelgreener

@NautArch I don't, personally, find it a big risk. Like, people who actually calculate risk for a living calculate it as such: risk = chance x damage. The damage incurred by getting hit by lightning is catastrophic, but the chance is almost zero, so the risk is low. Here, the chance is low (nonzero, but from what I see it's less than 1%) and the damage is moderate and reversible.

Meanwhile, the current policy means on a regular basis (multiple times a month) we will encounter significant strife and frustration, people getting annoyed, answers getting deleted, etc. Chance is high, damage is low but exists. That's more of a problem by itself.

NautArch

12:54

I'm honestly very confused about what folks are debating here. Are you arguing that we should guess or should not?

doppelgreener

@NautArch nitsua60 is opening this up on this scenario: people guessed the system, answers were made, and the guesses were wrong.

I'm just discussing the scenario and the current situation with a specific question being representative of what had me interested in loosening up the policy or disposing of it as-is.

NautArch

Gotcha. Although in that scenario, I don't think the answer came when a tag was up. But I could be wrong on that.

nitsua60

@NautArch there is no question--particularly not a recent one--that I'm referencing.

doppelgreener

I mean, I'm not specifically talking about it coming up while a tag was present myself. Someone just made an educated guess at the system and answered accordingly.

NautArch

Either way, I'm more on the side of "this is really obvious and there are enough 'tells' for me to make a well-educated guess based on my expertise".

nitsua60

12:58

In the metas on "guess the system" the specter is raised: "but if people guess the system, other answerers will in good faith answer and their efforts will be wasted and have to be deleted which is a black mark on innocents."

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 meanwhile, to be clear about it for NautArch's sake, I am talking about the current situation around this question that is happening, so that might be confusing :P

NautArch

But if our overall goal is to get querents to understand our system and put tags in or provide the level of detail we really like, then I get the no guess thing.

nitsua60

I was trying to remember whether, in 3 years, that had ever happened.

@doppelgreener Ofc.

Someone_Evil

Hmm.. mostly musing: if a good question was asked without system specified, an edit guessed it and good answers came in, and then the querent comes back and says they meant a different question there's little harm in having them post that as a new question. We could even offer to disassociate it from their account if they don't want to touch it. My quess is that's its gonna be really rare anyway

nitsua60

Personally, I'm wondering if SSD's Gordian Knot-cutting approach of "stop treating them differently" wouldn't have been a more-convincing approach on the last go-around.

doppelgreener

13:00

@NautArch Yeah but we don't handle other situations that way. Do we do that with post formatting? Clear phrasing? Paragraph breaks? We don't close the question then unless there's literally nothing we can do about it ourselves—e.g. the whole question is a screen-filling blob of nearly incomprehensible text nobody has the will to sort out. We teach by doing it and showing them what we did.

Someone_Evil

@nitsua60 Wouldn't stop treating them differently mean the system would have to be specified in body?

nitsua60

As for the "we've got to teach people" argument, I've finally realized that I should have pointed out that positive reinforcement exists, not just negative reinforcements.

Do we really have a flood of people who've met "hey, I think this is X, I've tagged it as such, that helps experts find it" failing to learn from that example?

Crap--a minute late to a meeting. Gotta run.

doppelgreener

We often even edit in citation to answers when it's missing, if we can do that and want to do it, to help improve those answers. Then those people learn a bit about how we handle citations.

BESW

Non-D&D questions get "guessed the wrong system" answers semi-regularly despite being properly tagged, so.

NautArch

@doppelgreener Also true, but that goes back to me wanting to make educated guesses and not agreeing with the hard stance :)

doppelgreener

13:05

@BESW yeah, in this whole issue though my observation has been that anyone not asking about D&D is always fairly clear about their system because they're super aware they need to do that, and it's the D&D questions where people take for granted that D&D is the only question that exists on this site so they don't need to say.

BESW

Yup.

Ultimately I think the problem is that we've been saddled with a tagging system that doesn't support tag priorities.

NautArch

And those of us familiar with D&D recognize them as such (and generally edition)

BESW

@NautArch Except for, like, the people who think Unearthed Arcana or Tomb of Horrors are edition-specific titles.

I've seen a couple of comment struggles between people convinced UA is either exclusively a 3e thing or exclusively a 5e thing.

Ditto famous adventures from one edition that get republished as another.

NautArch

@BESW ah, true.

but the content within can often be determined

but not always. When it's not, though, the experts generally realize that and ask.

doppelgreener

@BESW could you unpack that last bit about not supporting tag priorities?

BESW

13:12

@doppelgreener We don't have tools for things like flagging tag categories as actionable in their absence (eg, an automatic "It looks like you're writing a question without a system tag" popup).

Which, of course, isn't something that can just be added to the existing system, because emergent folksonomies don't mesh with that.

Someone_Evil

Mhm... I wonder how much we would have had to scream to have that added as part of the new ask page

BESW

The tag system was designed with the assumption that tags are not co-dependent and no tag categories could be necessary, all tags must be sufficient.

It would have to get re-worked from the ground up with a different attitude toward the nature of tagging, to accomplish the kind of tagging job we're asking it to do on rpg.se.

Peter Cooper Jr.

Anyone have any idea how often Stack Overflow has to deal with someone asking a question without a programming language tagged? Or do those just go into an abyss where nobody ever sees them so they just sit around unanswered?

AncientSwordRage

@BESW this is the system I like, and I always have to consciously back track when I want to question tags on this site (and often on Sci-Fi)

Glazius

@doppelgreener Still, in all of those cases there are formatting conventions that other people can agree upon that it can be argued the querent doesn't know.

BESW

13:18

@AncientSwordRage My problem is less with the system, and more with our Stack Overlords' conviction that customizing the system to each site's needs can be done exclusively through soft policy hacks.

Glazius

But in this case, the querent must know (or be able to find out) what system and edition they're playing, and unless they've done something like link to materials from a particular game system without specifying that (which the dragon-god question did not do; the link was added later, as an assumption) we can't know that this is not their thirty-year old constantly-updated Rolemaster hack.

doppelgreener

@BESW gotcha

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I agree, unfortunately I think we're never going to be in a position to leverage anything more than that

doppelgreener

@Glazius the way i'm thinkinng of it, in all those cases and this case, we have sufficient information to make those changes ourselves.

@Glazius in the past five years it has never been their thirty-year old constantly-updated rolemaster hack. It's been D&D, and usually D&D 5e, and usually whatever we guessed was right.

BESW

We're here because the Stack Overlords thought their extremely programming-specific curation system was generalizable to literally any subject without any hard-code modifications. This means there are certain impossibilities on our end no matter how hard we try, and I think finding a truly satisfactory system-tag policy is one of those impossibilities.

NautArch

13:21

I'm trying to think of a case where I thought it was 5e and I was wrong. And I can't really think of anything. Not saying i'm infallible :)

BESW

@doppelgreener I'm positive I've seen a couple of "Oh, it's actually a bizarre homebrew hack of two D&D editions and some random other thing" questions where the guesses were right about one of the influences.

Someone_Evil

Pretty sure I've been surprised by a question turning out to be PF at least once

doppelgreener

The dialog around this issue keeps falling back on specters rather than what's actually happening and that concerns me. "It could be {wild example that has simply never happened recently} for all we know". The damage people imagine would happen is also, I imagine, a specter at this point that outgrows anything we've actually seen.

BESW

@Someone_Evil Yeah, PF/3.5 mashups were pretty common during the 4e era.

doppelgreener

@BESW My current estimates put this kind of situation (or a 30 year rolemaster hack, or an OSR retroclone, or so on) as something like a once-a-year occurrence.

BESW

13:24

I think part of the disconnect here, is that the conversation about system tagging first got momentum during a time when there was a lot more diversity in which D&D editions (and D&D-likes such as Pathfinder) were being asked about. During the 4e era, "assume it's the most recent edition" was much less reliable and we DID have more problems with guessing the wrong system.

I wonder what would happen if there was no policy and we just leave the tagging as a free-for-all like the Overlords intended.

doppelgreener

@BESW I fully agree, and that same conversation has simply continued with the same arguments being made because they were made previously.

There's a lot of baggage to it.

@BESW I do too, and I expect it would be pretty unremarkable and very little would actually go wrong. I expect maybe one question a year would have fuss over someone being wrong, but I'd prefer that to what currently happens.

BESW

Aye. But since I don't actually contribute to the mainsite these days, it'd be irresponsible armchair philosophy coming from me.

Glazius

At this point it probably would be very little because a question about any particular non-dnd-5e system is a once-a-year event.

doppelgreener

(oof, that got me right here)

Glazius

I exaggerate, of course, it's closer to once a month.

AncientSwordRage

13:31

@Glazius I would love to challenge accepted there, but I roleplay as much as BESW contributes to mainsite these days

doppelgreener

I've had not much tabletop RPG play happening recently either, but the games I've been playing are ones where issues we run into are trivially resolveable without much effort because the game is clear and internally consistent and all moving parts have a clear interaction with one another.

And if the issue isn't that, they're bigger philosophical issues where an answer won't be found by asking the internet.

BESW

@doppelgreener And/or the game is clear about leaving certain things to the group and doesn't have anything to say on those subjects.

doppelgreener

(Or if they are found, they need space for ranging discussion, so, not Stack Q&A.)

@BESW Right.

Glazius

@BESW In that case though you could still ask a social question or expect something good subjective - we're not coming up with helpful things on this, can somebody give us some pointers?

BESW

@Glazius I could. I have in the past. I don't anymore.

Medix2

13:37

@nitsua60 Meanwhile closing it doesn't stop people from pre-writing an answer since they'll assume the system either way

BESW

These days I'm not super thrilled about being a cog in the Stack Overlords' machine, and the kinds of questions I'd ask aren't the kinds of questions rpg.se can answer usefully without extended back-and-forth discussion to establish context and limits. H*ck, there are entire systems I've learned to not ask about in this chat because people get squirrely about them, I'd hate to imagine the mainsite responses.

NautArch

@Medix2 I have 100% written up answers in notepad waiting for it reopen with a copypasta.

BESW

@NautArch Yup, done that.

Medix2

@NautArch Meanwhile we edit in every other possible tag for them XD

NautArch

@Medix2 true true

Someone_Evil

13:44

@Medix2 The thing is our tags are only a matter of curating content for use later. System tags are the only exception because we also use them as the sole source of which system it is about on a lot of questions. There's nothing wrong with editing in the tag if it is specified in the question

Medix2

Ah that was brought up actually, sorry (still getting through the chatlog)

@Someone_Evil Yes but imo, you can't say "we need to teach by making them do" and then edit their question for formatting, links, tags, titles, and everything else except a system tag. You're teaching by showing quite a lot there

It's just a weird disconnect to me that invalidates that particular argument for having an asker edit in system tags themself

Someone_Evil

@Medix2 Mhm (and to be clear, I'm not firmly on either side of the argument)

NautArch

@Medix2 Except the difference is that the other stuff is ancillary (i think). The system tag is a primary need of basic information. CLeaning up is just cleaning up. But I often prefer to get a querent or answerer to do that work themselves. Teach a man to fish, don't fish for them.

Medix2

@NautArch Yeah it's just something I notice, I do see what you're saying though

A big thing I believe (probably from studying linguistics) is that it's better to test something and see how it goes than to theorize that it simply will or won't work. Of course, if basically everybody agrees it won't work, it is much more likely to actually not work, but that's not the case here

doppelgreener

14:21

@Medix2 The way I saw it, we repeatedly got people pushing back on the policy by saying "it's obvious what the system is." So we came up with an excuse to do it the way the policy said even if the system was obvious so as to placate the person and get them following the policy anyway: "don't edit for them because it'll teach them to do it right in the first place" was one of the excuses. It stuck somehow despite the cognitive dissonance with the way we handle things in any other case.

Of course over time we came up with a bunch of excuses, some of which have stuck because we found they regularly placated anyone objecting.

Only, it's worked too well, and we're doing it for the excuses we came up with rather than because we still have the situation that lead us to develop this policy in the first place.

In 2018 we opted to keep the policy in large part because Pathfinder 2e and Starfinder were coming out and maybe things would return to how they were previously ... but that didn't wind up happening.

Now I'm not sure we have the policy for concrete reasons beyond appeal to tradition: we've done it this way so there must be a good reason, so we must keep doing it this way. There's also fear of the unknown ("it could be disastrous beyond imagining to not do it this way!") which this appeal to tradition confirms: “there must be a good reason to do it this way, so potential disaster must be that good reason, so that must be a good reason, so disaster is likely if we do things differently.”

There was a good reason to do it that way ... but that reason is because of the circumstances of the time, which are no longer the current circumstances!

GcL

@NautArch I'd be happy if someone started their question with, "So I'm playing D&D 5e..." I'd be more happy if they used a tag, but seems like meeting them halfway is good.

NautArch

@GcL if they say what game and edition they're playing, then they've done the heavy lifting and we can add the tag.

BESW

@NautArch Yeah, that kind of situation has never been in question. It's not "guessing."

NautArch

Yupyup

GcL

14:38

@NautArch Yeah. I wouldn't hesitate with the thought about teaching them to tag.

Medix2

@GcL We teach them to tag it, except when we don't. I think what we're actually trying to teach is for them to tag it or edit it into the title/body

Though, I'm not a proponent of the teaching thing, so don't take my word on that one

Rubiksmoose

@Medix2 Yeah that's my take. We are teaching them that they have to tell us what game they are playing in some way.

GcL

I certainly don't. Comments aren't particularly useful for trying to teach people. Like getting errors barfed out at you until you get it right isn't a particularly good teaching system.

Rubiksmoose

@GcL Trying to teach them would be a better phrasing. We have a limited set of tools unfortunately.

GcL

Yeah, it's just a crappy tool for the job. Like hammering a screw. Sure it can join boards together, but it's messy and people get splinters and whacked fingers doing it.

Rubiksmoose

14:45

I still find it kind of remarkable (but wholly understandable) that this happens. People get so caught up in the details of their own question that they don't realize what needs to be specified for others. It's like if I were to ask "How do I open my Word Processor?" without ever specifying my operating system or program.

GcL

@Rubiksmoose For the editor I use, the question most people have is how to close it.

Rubiksmoose

XD Oh dear, are you sure it isn't malware ;-)

GcL

No, that's the other editor that shall not be named.

Rubiksmoose

@Medix2 Though I also agree with this in some ways as well.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@GcL :q!

GcL

14:49

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica The first time I had to close it, I just shut the whole terminal down. It was easier.

Then found a helpful grad student who answered the question before I'd even finished asking it

Rubiksmoose

@GcL oh yeah OMNIWRITER.

Medix2

@Rubiksmoose And yet the latter also happens :(

It's remarkably easy to forget that there are things you know that others simply don't/can't because they are so inherent to your own question, well maybe, I don't actually know why people leave out system tags

Rubiksmoose

@Medix2 Indeed :( Probably one of the biggest things I've learned here in my time on SE is that asking a good, or even a passable, question is a skill and not everyone has yet learned that skill.

And even those that have can be challenged by it.

@Medix2 I'd love to kneejerk and say it's ridiculous, but... I've actually forgotten to add a system tag before. Several times.

Even after years on the site.

The thing that kind of blows my mind is when someone leaves a question, and someone asks a clarifying question of them 15 seconds after the posting and we never hear from them again. XD Who just fires off questions and never checks back?

It obviously happens, but I'm just curious about that mentality.

Medix2

@Rubiksmoose Some of that might be people seeing "closed" and leaving, some of it might be not signing back into the right account and so the comment is never pinged, I'm sure other stuff too

Glazius

@Rubiksmoose Someone who doesn't remember how they logged into the site in the first place and are using a different login that doesn't get the first login's notifications?

Rubiksmoose

15:03

Both of those are certainly explanations. Though I often hold off for at least a few minutes if I can stick around and babysit a question to try to head off that "closure" shock if possible. Though that's much easier for me since I'm a mod and can "time" the closure whenever I want since I close it with one vote (unless the community beats me to it of course).

Medix2

@Glazius Though in my experience that usually results in the new account editing the question, which can be resolved through merging the accounts though I don't know how many "It looks like you've made a new account" cases actually end with them being merged compared to how many don't end up merging

Rubiksmoose

When I didn't have a diamond I would usually vote right away with the knowledge that it would take people at least a few minutes to cast enough votes to close it anyways.

Medix2

@Rubiksmoose I wonder if there are stats on that... "Time between first close vote and final close vote where X many close votes occurred total (in particular 5)"

Rubiksmoose

@Medix2 Hmmm that might be something SEDE could handle, but I know working temporally in SEDE data can be tricky.

GcL

@Medix2 Tyranny of knowledge. Happens a lot too when people with an understanding of a thing don't even see what they're glossing over anymore. E.g. "Of course == means equality check. That goes without saying."

Rubiksmoose

15:08

@Medix2 I'm not sure either. Sometimes we go ahead and put in a merge request for them to the CM team and I'm not aware of any of those that did not go through (though I don't usually specifically go and check all of them, there's not even an easy way to do so).

Medix2

@GcL When it took me a bit to figure out what == was because it's very different to me XD

@Rubiksmoose Well I found close vote time 5 percentile though I'm not sure what that means, and average close vote speed

Rubiksmoose

@Medix2 Those are certainly... numbers.

Medix2

Apparently you can also learn who cast the first close vote on a given closed question

Also just realized that if a mod closed a question and then resigned it stays closed (good) but the diamond next to their name in the vote goes away so it seems like a single regular user somehow closed a question

GcL

@Medix2 I'm always available to VtC your questions upon your request.

@Medix2 Mods were regular users too at one time. It's a good reminder? /S

Rubiksmoose

@Medix2 If I'm reading this right 7 minutes is our average so far this year?

Medix2

15:17

@GcL Oh excellent, glad to know you've got my back

Rubiksmoose

I wonder if that counts posts that were later reopened. Not sure if that would make ClosedDate Null or not.

Medix2

@Rubiksmoose Yes, but 420 seconds sounds so much better

GcL

@Medix2 I don't know what crazy badge or trophy you're going for, but I'll help.

@Rubiksmoose Oooo... that's a good question. Is the closed/opened logged in the revision history?

Rubiksmoose

@GcL It is! So I'm guessing that SEDE has some way to log that as well. I have no idea what closeddate would be for a question that was closed twice for example though.

(at least it is for the mod history, I'm pretty confident I remember it being in the non-diamond history as well though)

GcL

Do you have a handy example?

Medix2

15:24

@GcL Apparently there's a badge for review queue things... wonder if that applies to your own questions

Someone_Evil

@Medix2 When are you able to review your own posts? (Other than suggested edits which should count AFAIK)

Medix2

@Someone_Evil I didn't know you weren't

If so, then TIL the review-queue only shows you posts from other users

GcL

@Rubiksmoose Yeah. There's a PostHistory table that records PostHistoryTypeId which is an enumerator that includes Post Reopened

Someone_Evil

@Medix2 You can't for First Posts or Late Answers at least

GcL

So both those VtC queries are only looking at questions that remained closed.

You'd have to run a query on the PostHistory table to count all the questions that got closed including those that got reopened.

Probably would have to be careful to only get the initial VtC. Subsequent VtC after reopen might be a sufficiently different scenario that it shouldn't be counted.

Rubiksmoose

15:30

@GcL Interesting. And a decent proportion of our needs-a-system questions do get reopened.

Medix2

Well I'm learning SEDE is more complicated than I might want to learn... Maybe someday

Rubiksmoose

I've tried my hand at writing some simple queries to varying degrees of success. I learned that it is different enough from other languages I've vaguely learned in the past that it will take more time than I've yet found to be worth the problem I'm trying to solve, to learn it.

GcL

@Medix2 It's TSQL... which has idiosyncrasies, but is rather performant. SEDE seems okay for learning a bit about relational databases.

It's not a toy implementation at least, and is well maintained and curated.

AncientSwordRage

16:17

> ### Current Status
First migrations are looking promising. I'm looking into a few tweaks around lists + indented blockquotes and am running another investigation to ensure that MathJax continues to be fine on sites that use custom MathJax delimiters. I'll update the schedule early next week as I'd love to get these things clarified before moving on. Stay tuned!

Re: CommonMark change

GcL

16:33

@AncientSwordRage I expect V2 will have a tsunami of corrections after the change over.

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Q: NPC Knight ability "parry" - how often can it be used?

In the Monster Manual the Knight has a reaction ability called Parry: Parry. The knight adds 2 to its AC against one melee attack that would hit it. To do so, the knight must see the attacker and be wielding a melee weapon. I'm not clear on how often this can be used - it says "against one...

dnd-5e reactions

AncientSwordRage

@GcL ay-yup

Medix2

@GcL I'm wondering if there will be any way of finding affected posts

GcL

@Medix2 V2 has an extremely sophisticated sensory input system that has evolved over a great deal of time contending with posts that are poorly formatted, have low internal inconsistency, confusingly worded, or are grammatically incorrect. The exact nature of the detection system is difficult to express in a way that you or I would find meaningful. Suffice it to say, V2 can smell them at great distance.

4

nitsua60

17:12

@NautArch Oh, I've had plenty of those. Usually when I'm halfway through writing an answer, then finally notice that the question's tagged DW or GURPS-fantasy or something =)

@doppelgreener The thing I don't want to lose track of (because I concur with that rough estimate on "how much of a problem is this"), is that we're seeing about one rough patch a year in the presence of a strong "OP must indicate system" practice. It unfortunately makes argument-counterargument nearly impossible, since the counterfactuals just aren't really available.

(I do think that the positive vs. negative reinforcement thing is possibly a new angle, that I might want to try advocating some day.)

@doppelgreener To be fair, we have the practice because (much to my surprise) the argument for it carried the day--or, at least, outpaced the argument against--pretty clearly on meta =)

@BESW The problem is (IMO) there's a persuasive contingent that has managed to hold the day with the argument that "saying '5e' and citing chapter and verse from dnd-5e materials and using vocabulary entirely consonant with dnd-5e and naming a published dnd-5e adventure (that isn't published in other editions) or the official WotC-created dnd-5e organized play system is guessing, and we don't guess."

Medix2

@nitsua60 yeah... Since quoting a UA article and using the UA tag isn't enough, nor are direct quotes in general, nor are tags such as Adventurer's League and DnDBeyond, nor is linking to another question that does have a system tag :(

nitsua60

17:29

Alright--I'm gonna stop agitating for the day, and get back to work.

o7

GcL

18:03

Also that the majority of questions are about 5e. If it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, and is in a duck pond filled with ducks... it's very probably a duck.

@Medix2 Quoting 5e UA? I'd say that makes it a 5e question... unless they're actually saying "It's like this in 5e, but is there an equivalent for ...."

David Coffron

18:17

@GcL We've had questions that the OP has said something along the lines of "we play with some 5e rules and some 3.5e rules, and a bit of homebrew". Guessing just because someone is quoting rules from a particular source is not necessary; just wait for clarification

GcL

@DavidCoffron Ooo multi-system! And they said flat footed was dead!

@DavidCoffron I'm impatient. I'd probably answer with 4e rules just to split the difference.

David Coffron

@GcL I can't remember which question it was, but I know there was a bit of buzz about it as a good example of why not guessing is better than guessing (since guessing has very few pros and at least that con or more)

GcL

@DavidCoffron Yeah. Splitting the difference and going with 4 seems like the best way forward for a homebrew frankensystem monster of 3.5 & 5e.

Rubiksmoose

@GcL There's a danger there of becoming D&D-centric in our thinking and policies of course.

GcL

How many of those questions are there? Lots of 3.5 + 5e homebrews?

@Rubiksmoose Too late.

Rubiksmoose

18:21

@GcL Not many.

@GcL Not really true at least for policy. We've made a concerted effort to avoid allowing any one system to form policy too much. Hopefully, sucessfully.

There's no arguing with the actual content of the site, which is a different story.

GcL

@Rubiksmoose Where's policy encoded? If you say "Meta" I'm going to set up a card table and flip it.

Rubiksmoose

@GcL not-not-Meta :P

(It's Meta lol)

GcL

(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻

Medix2

18:34

@DavidCoffron I'm just unsure how important rare or even one-off questions are which... Well their importance and impact on a policy is super subjective, ah well

Perhaps the policy's just been discussed enough and everybody will have their sides and arguments and ultimately we'll all agree to disagree until the majority vote of those who actually use Meta shifts sides, resulting in the policy shifting as well

David Coffron

@Medix2 I think the biggest issue is that most of our users are D&D, or even 5e exclusive users. This means that we may have false guesses toward D&D or 5e discouraging new users from asking questions about the other games they play (which we should be fostering just as much if not more)

i.e. If I ask a question about another system, and 3 or 4 users guess that its 5e because of similar terms I may be discouraged from asking other questions about that system in the future because I incorrectly (but justfiably) now believe that the users here focus exclusively on 5e.

Medix2

18:51

@DavidCoffron Which is where things like "5e is not a clear statement of dnd-5e" are useful

David Coffron

@Medix2 Yeah; I usually make a point of asking, "what game and edition are you asking about" if I suspect D&D 5e. That way the user may be prompted to be more clear

Medix2

@DavidCoffron And those users clearly didn't have the knowledge necessary to rule out whatever system you were actually talking about. There clearly wasn't overwhelming and indisputable evidence such as numerous direct quotes or mentioning of terms/functions utterly and entirely unique to a given system

David Coffron

@Medix2 Right. No one has perfect knowledge of every RPG system; so it is better to wait and see.

Medix2

But yeah... This has probably been argued plenty :( I previously believed that closing a question caused no harm, but I've now been seeing harm caused by closing questions and have had to rethink my previous posts/ideas

David Coffron

@Medix2 I see where you're coming from there. I wish we had a way of letting new users know "hey! we are closing this to make sure you get the best answers you can. We aren't invalidating your question, and if you work with us we will reopen it". But there's not an easy way to say that

Medix2

18:57

I think the big thing for me right now is that theories deserve testing. Linguistics gas been plagued by untested theories that have dramatically injured and hurt the field. So it's probably from a good deal of that drama rubbing off on me

@DavidCoffron Yeah the custom close reason was rejected IIRC

Yeah this and this

nitsua60

19:16

@DavidCoffron But how many of those? (Is my point.)

David Coffron

@nitsua60 I see that, but I also think the issue of turning non-D&D-askers away is a bigger problem with allowing guessing

Medix2

@DavidCoffron Do we know that that would happen?

David Coffron

19:33

@Medix2 No; but I don't see the value in risking it since guessing the system (as far as I know) doesn't do anything positive for the site

Medix2

@DavidCoffron It prevents somebody asking an AL or DnDBeyond question only for the supposed experts to say "we don't know what game you're talking about"

David Coffron

@Medix2 That is true; maybe we hve to phrase it like "we handle all game systems here, and just need to clarify; are you playing D&D 5e?"

Medix2

I can't speak to the effect that has on an individual's likelihood of sticking around on the site or how it comes across because that varies person-to-person and there's no data, but for me that's a pretty serious disconnect. I've also seen askers frustrated with the policy as they (rightly) felt their question was plenty clear. Of course, those comments end up deleted

David Coffron

@Medix2 Yeah; I've seen that too

Medix2

@DavidCoffron Agreed, which I've seen people do, though there's still times where a question just gets closed as unclear and nobody leaves an explanation but that's a different sort of problem

It's certainly interesting the variety of welcome+closure-explanation comments. I think a big thing one should do is mention that a closed question can always be reopened

David Coffron

19:44

@Medix2 agreed; that would help a lot

Medix2

@DavidCoffron I should look into why "[on hold]" was removed...

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 that's not at odds with what I wrote

the policy is actually less worrying to me than the dialog around it

KorvinStarmast

20:04

@doppelgreener I'll offer an "amen" to that

Just finished a new board game that I got based on a discussion in chat here about a different board game. It's a bit fiddly, but my son and I spent all afternoon playing it and learning its rhythm. The Castles of Burgundy. I have one last question that I'll probably ask at boardgames se

Medix2

@KorvinStarmast If that's the hex-grid thing with dice on the tiles, I had fun when the boardgame group I'm in popped that out one week

KorvinStarmast

@Medix2 yes it is. I completed the ships on the river as an objective, but I think that was a bit of a narrow focus.

Once you get the game's rhythm, there is a lot of flexibility. We really like it.

Medix2

@KorvinStarmast Yeah that's how it went for me as well. We were gonna bring it back but... Well we haven't met in a while

KorvinStarmast

@Medix2 yeah, that covid thing, screwing up game night. not good. :(

(Where the heck is that emoji short cut anyway?

Someone_Evil

20:20

@KorvinStarmast "Win+."?

KorvinStarmast

Win+

??

We had a way to pop emojis into chat that I can't recall.

win+.

Nope

Someone_Evil

It certainly works for me (win10)

Medix2

Perhaps win is the windows key?

Someone_Evil

Yes, windows key and period/full stop. Makes a box with emoji's pop up

G. Moylan

20:35

👌👌👌

KorvinStarmast

👌 got it

@Someone_Evil ¯_(ツ)_/¯¿Ψ௹₰👍

Rubiksmoose

21:00

@KorvinStarmast My wife and I love Castles!

KorvinStarmast

@Rubiksmoose Now that I know how it is played, I can try to teach my wife. We tried to go from Catan to Castles of burgundy, and that was a dumb move on my part since it was a new game.

Rubiksmoose

21:18

@KorvinStarmast Just FYI, it makes a great 2 player game. And yeah the leap from Catan to Castles is a little big, but it sounds like it went well :)

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Q: Does a character know the effects of a spell when they are affected by it?

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Medix2

21:53

Does this question look irregular to anybody else? The duplicate mark is quite unusual on my end

Rubiksmoose

@Medix2 Ah! That is because that was closed in the old-old closure style and when they migrated IIRC they lost their links in the notice.

Medix2

@Rubiksmoose Ah so the community bot did that thing instead?

As a fix instead of letting the link just vanish, I mean?

Rubiksmoose

These are older duplicates. Basically, before February 2013, duplicate links used to be edited into the question by the Community user rather than being shown as an automatic notice. When the notices were revamped in November last year, they had to implement a hacky bypass for these older-style closures. — Sonic the Stay-Home Hedgehog Jan 16 at 21:38

Medix2

Makes sense gotcha gotvha

Hmmm.... The desktop version of the site on mobile is different now... I can't actually view my own profile or tools and the like in the top right :(

Rubiksmoose

@Medix2 Is the site stuck in "mobile" version or in the responsive design?

Medix2

22:02

@Rubiksmoose It's on the mobile version of the site though my browser switched over to desktop mode which usually makes it look exactly like my computer but apparently something changed

I guess something changed, but it seems to work if I scroll down and switch to full site mode

Is there a way for me to view my followed questions?

Someone_Evil

Not to my knowledge

You can't search yet, nor is there a tab for it yet

Medix2

22:23

@Someone_Evil Guess I just wait then XD

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Medix2

22:49

Also gosh I wonder if I'll ever stop laughing when I see Please Stop Being Evil and Someone_Evil near each other

nitsua60

23:12

@DavidCoffron I like that turn of phrase--I may steal it for future use =)

@doppelgreener Correct--I just think it's a fair observation from "the other side." "We don't have any X, it's time to get rid of {thing that intends to prevent X}" needs to deal with "well, we think that {thing} reduces X." Trying to be fair to my imagined opposition =)

Shalvenay

hey there @nitsua60

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast I just played Terra Mystica for the first time--liked it a lot. A lot of the complexity of Terraforming Mars (no relation between developers, AFAIK), but with a light fantasy feel and perfect information.

@Shalvenay hey-ooo

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 how're things going?

nitsua60

How's flat-state life? Any plans for the weekend?

(Are those still things?)

@Shalvenay Good. Podcast's going well, kids are wrapping up school, moving on to a couple of summer projects. On the other hand, I've been tasked with redesigning my school's daily schedule, so in about two months I won't have any work-friends any more.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 actually have a few plans upcoming. had an A/C outage but it's rectified now (compressor capacitor went bad, A/C tech had a cancellation and was able to make it in ahead of sched fortunately)

also, been pondering lots and lots of stuff about house and building design (still)

and oddly enough, it added to my "lines of D&D character thinking"

on a slightly related tangent: how do folks in the Forgotten Realms keep their cities from yanno, burning down because some cow kicked over a lantern somewhere? :P

nitsua60

23:20

@Shalvenay how so?

(And a warning: in a little bit I decamp for family movie night. The girls are seeing Captain Marvel for the first time!)

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 mind if I PM it to you on Discord?

nitsua60

@Shalvenay That's a good question. My default assumption--"go with whatever Earth-1 was like, and assume magic did as much on one side of the scale as the other"--would be my first instinct. Unfortunately, I know almost nothing about RL pre-industrial fire-realities.

@Shalvenay Go for it--it'll be tomorrow before I get back, though--kids are calling!

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 my limited understanding of them is it was bad, London burned down several times in like the 1600s or so

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