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12:06 AM
There's SO MUCH out there for Free RPG Day.
 
@MikeQ is there a daily rep floor?
 
Nope! Although rep cannot drop below 1.
 
12:25 AM
10 hours ago, by AncientSwordRage
POWER WORD WALKIES!
@BESW how would you like feedback?
 
Invite sent.
 
12:42 AM
@BESW what do you suggest people check out for free rpg day?
 
I'm not gonna specifically recommend much/any, but I'll share some of the things that come across my feeds.
Free RPG Day 2020 Trophy Bundle! A sale hosted by Monkey's Paw Games. For today, all Monkey's Paw Games Trophy Dark content is 100% off. It's true! That's six Trophy Dark incursions for the price of none!
Free RPG Day Sale! A sale hosted by Viditya Voleti. This day really helped me start looking at different systems and new outlooks at design principles when I just started getting into the medium and being a designer in it! It's very important to me and my growth and I want to share some of my work with others as well! Even though it is Free RPG Day, I'm not really in the position to give a bunch of my work for Free, but this is a helluva deal!
Free RPG Day 2020 A sale hosted by Mina @ UFO Press. Grab four of our one-shot storytelling games, 100% off this weekend.
April Kit Walsh wrote a twitter thread "about RPGs that are Free as in Free Culture" and "some options to use open licensing to foster a community of collaboration and shared innovation and offers a legal hack to tailor CC sharealike requirements to our medium." Ajey Pandey adds that Quest is CC-BY and Bolt is CC-BY-SA.
 
1:08 AM
@HellSaint It's hard to imagine sequences of events that lose one lots of rep (say, thousands) that wouldn't trigger autoreversal and/or staff review....
 
@nitsua60 honestly even hundreds seems unlikely haha
unless idk the person deletes an answer with 20+ upvotes?
Why did I just get +3 upvotes in this random question? rpg.stackexchange.com/q/128698/43856 haha
Last activity on it seems to be like more than a year ago
 
...if I deleted my account, I suspect some very prolific long-term users would lose a h*ckton of rep.
 
user15026
I thought at a certain point they kept the rep?
 
user15026
I don't remember for sure
 
@BESW would you be comfortable with Walkies being shared with some in my gaming group who like daily walks? Totally understand if not.
 
1:13 AM
@BESW I think your votes are changed for Community votes
 
As an expanded playtest group who is going to give feedback, okay. Otherwise wait until it's completed and published.
 
128
A: Don't throw away all votes when a user is deleted

Shog9I'm not gonna call this completed; as you and everyone else reading this know, we do still throw away some votes for some user-deletions... and probably always will for the reasons you noted in your proposal. But we have a system in place to prevent the most disruptive forms of vote deletion, a...

 
@HellSaint A dupe was made just now, but I guess it was deleted? yup, found it; it's deleted
 
@BESW Yes--explicitly stated as playtest, feedback requested. Any particulars you'd be interested in? The two people who asked (after I told them how much I'd liked it) would both be playing solo.
 
@Medix2 ah that would make sense.
Someone actually managed to make a dupe of that question?
People are interesting.
 
1:16 AM
It wasn't a perfect dupe, was just asking what happened if a PC became zero inches tall from Surges, didn't think it needed to be deleted but ah well
 
@Medix2 They'd have a heck of a time finding pants that fit, that's for sure.
 
 
2 hours later…
2:50 AM
These Games Are Free Sale A sale hosted by Riverhouse Games. There are GOOD GAMES in here. Yes.
2
 
3:13 AM
Oh, and for people wondering what kind of game rpg.se just doesn't really... work... to ask questions about? [gestures above]
 
@BESW writhe
 
@Rubiksmoose Spoilers!
 
 
2 hours later…
5:11 AM
4
Q: Can minor illusion or prestidigitation create a spyglasss that works?

Sam LacrumbCan I create a lens that will function as a magnifying glass or spyglass with Minor Illusion by using the illusion as a focus to warp or bend light as a lens might. Alternatively, can Prestidigitation create a spyglass or magnifying glass? You create a nonmagical trinket or an illusory image tha...

 
 
1 hour later…
6:25 AM
8
Q: Is this homebrew Misty Hook spell balanced?

Bardic WizardIn a game I play, my GM allows a lot of custom homebrew (with approval), including spells. A situation has come up where my sorcerer is trying to make a version of Misty Step pulling a nearby creature to you, instead of teleporting to a nearby space. My GM doesn’t have much of an opinion on it ye...

 
Free RPG Day Interstitial Playbooks A sale hosted by R.E.M. Speedwagon. For free RPG day, you can claim both of my interstitial playbooks, absolutely free! Interstitial: Our Hearts Intertwined is a game by Riley Hopkins, and found here.
 
7:16 AM
@nitsua60 I'm terrible at coming up with playtest questions!
 
@Rubiksmoose You around buddy?
 
7:37 AM
It's Moose's sleepingtime.
 
Seems so.
 
He went to bed about... three hours ago.
And that was staying up late, we were watching a show.
 
 
3 hours later…
10:58 AM
4
Q: How does Magic Jar interact with Find Steed?

Felype BrasilThe description of the Find Steed spell states: ...While mounted on your steed, you can make any spell you cast that targets only you also target your steed. The Magic Jar spell is a "Self" range spell. How would these two spells interact? Would both your souls go into the same container? Could...

 
 
2 hours later…
12:39 PM
@BESW what do you use for synchronisation (if that's what you do)?
 
@ThomasMarkov clicks finger guns aaaayyyyyyy
 
just got driveby downvoted super fast
 
@AncientSwordRage The Chrome extension Netflix Party, with Discord for voice chat.
 
apparently the question I answered was a dupe.
 
12:43 PM
I mean I feel it is
And if it isn't then I get to go ask about every single feature in individual questions ...
 
Yeah, dupe looks fine.
 
Oh @AncientSwordRage, I just read the novel Invisible Library by Cogman. Dunno if you'd class it as an urban fantasy but it's a solid entry into the portal fantasy genre, first of a series. Got a hint of Thursday Next to its setting, which I appreciate, though it's a lot more staid than Next.
I'm gonna read the next book but if they insist on staying in the British Victorian world much longer my interest may not be sustained.
 
I just found an optional rule that gets my max 1 hit cheese up to 858 damage
 
Incrementally painful cheese
(painful is here intended as a play on damage, nothing more)
 
The potion miscibility table in the DMG can double the numerical effects of a potion
which would take potion of giant size from triple dice to sextuple dice.
 
12:54 PM
That's a new one to me in cheesemaking
 
its a variant rule.
so i left both totals in the answer.
 
Did the other stuff GcL mentioned not work?
 
It did.
I've got several rounds left with timestop though.
dont know what to do with them
 
You used every smite upcast maximally?
 
Also GcL's horrid withering doesnt really fit the spirit of the question it seems.
@Medix2 Yes I did. Only searing and branding smites can be upcast.
I used the smites because they specifically say they add to the attack's damage.
 
12:57 PM
@ThomasMarkov Divine :P
There's absorb elements but it has to be at the end
 
I didnt even think to see if I could work that one in
 
...my epic wizard used time stop to cast 520+d6 of nonlethal delayed blast fireballs sonicballs that would all go off when the time stop expired, and then with his last action jumped into a bag of holding to escape the blast.
 
im not sure absorb elements works.
 
(Sonic because in 3.5 it was the elemental type with the fewest things which resisted it, nonlethal because that left all non-living things unaffected. He was a librarian, he didn't want to hurt any books by accident.)
 
Answers to the other question use the Charger feat, Colossus Slayer and whatever Venomous Blades is
@ThomasMarkov Why not?
 
1:02 PM
@BESW Since he was a librarian, I imagine the blast sounded like a very sharp "Shoosh!"
 
NVM it works.
 
Yeah, it was basically Power Word: Sh.
The GM did decide that an average of more than 1,800 sonic damage would break windows, even if it's nonlethal. [grumble]
 
@BESW Now selling: Sonic Window Insurance!
 
How much sonic damage would be required to break linux?
2
 
@MikeQ 0?
 
1:06 PM
Power Word: sudo rm -R /
 
1:38 PM
@BESW portal fantasy?
@MikeQ POWER WORD SUDO
The wish spell is basically that
Often with unintended consequences
@BESW thanks for letting me know about Netflix party
 
2:36 PM
@ThomasMarkov feather fall WOW (legit great find)
 
haha thanks mate
its one of my ride or die spells. I always have it prepared/known.
 
I don't think it's conclusive but the rules don't even let you take actions outside of combat which everyone ignores
 
@Medix2 you can cast spells with a casting time of 1 action out of combat right?
do the rules actually say that anywhere?
 
@ThomasMarkov Last I checked, nope
At least this answer states: "Strictly RAW, "Actions in Combat" cannot be taken outside of Initiative order.", which is rather convincing to me
 
In one of my games, we discovered that the king was being mind cintrolled and was going to jump off the great tower in the castle. So we followed him up there and I just jumped with him and used feather fall.
 
2:48 PM
@ThomasMarkov Why jump with?
 
He was still mind controlled. We noticed he had a worm wriggling around in his eye. So me and our warlock jumped with him, then dealt with the worm when we safely arrived in the courtyard below.
 
3:18 PM
@ThomasMarkov I am now if you still needed me :)
 
Someone_evil took care of things, thanks
 
đź‘Ť
 
3:57 PM
@ThomasMarkov Btw, shameless plug of an old meta-q of mine, but I think this is the most recent 'discussion' we have on the topic, rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/q/9094/52137, the older questions I linked to in that is probably also useful reading
 
Thanks, ill give it a read
 
 
1 hour later…
5:18 PM
whats it take to get a review suspension?
 
Quite a bit IIRC
2d6
 
 
5, got it.
 
@ThomasMarkov Review suspension?
 
Apparently you can get suspended from making reviews if you take the wrong action.
 
5:21 PM
Yeah you can get suspended from the review queues
 
I didn't even know that was possible... I guess it's used for people abusing the queue or something
 
Seems like good faith reviews, even if they are not the best action shouldnt be cause for this
 
I believe that it usually comes from failing review audits? Which we don't have on this site.
 
@Rubiksmoose Yeah that would've been my assumption as well
 
> Repeated failures, especially in short succession, can lead to your review privileges being suspended for a few days or longer, depending on the frequency of the failures.
338
Q: What are review tests (audits) and how do they work?

asheeshrI recently received this rather amusing message while reviewing a user's first post: Congratulations! This was only a test, designed to make sure you were paying attention. This post has already been removed, but thanks for taking time to leave feedback for the author. What is the purpose of t...

@ThomasMarkov sometimes people will make bad faith reviews too which can cause issues.
 
 
1 hour later…
6:30 PM
Is there a button that goes between Meta and regular site that I don't know about or is it just gonna be "click the bookmared web page"?
 
There's the stack menu on the top bar (far right)
 
Or on your user page there’s a link to your other (meta or regular site) user page
 
@Someone_Evil OH, wow, guess I've never clicked that menu
 
For sci-fi games, what kinds of galactic species do people enjoy playing as, thematically or mechanically, beyond humans? For instance, in Star Trek settings, Vulcans or Caitians or Bajorans or Ferengi, while in Star Wars setting there’s the Ewoks and the Wookiees and the Trog (yoda’s species) and even humanoid varieties from other planets.
 
6:47 PM
@BardicWizard I thought Yoda's species didn't have a name?
 
@Rubiksmoose I could have sworn... it was probably fan fiction that I got that from. Oops! My point still stands though
 
I think I've only ever played one sci-fi game (star wars d20) and I played a human
XD
But I love shapechangers in every setting
 
7:06 PM
I’m also thinking space whales. Because SPACE WHALES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I challenge anybody to find a space whale that wasn't awesome.
 
@Rubiksmoose "oh not again"
 
@AncientSwordRage That was the bowl of petunias. The whale had a much more interesting series of thoughts
And also, that is an upper atmosphere whale at best
3
 
@Someone_Evil something something round... Something something ground
@Someone_Evil true
 
7:23 PM
@Someone_Evil hahahaha
 
So space whales for sure, possibly shapeshifters. Anything else? Besides humans...
 
I mean, non-humanoid is (while a tall ask) quite cool to me (and some others). Also, maybe especially for sci-fi, organisms with biology which is not earth-like is an interesting prospect
 
@BardicWizard traveler is good for this stuff wiki.travellerrpg.com/Lifeform
 
@BardicWizard Something nonhumanoid would be nice.
Mantis-like, starfish-like, quasi-cephalopod-like.
 
@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica traveller has a starfish race
 
7:42 PM
Alright, I’ve got the Whalin, basically space whales that are silicon based biologically, the Suna which are like centaurs but are completely bald and covered in scales, and the winged humanoids (for the kindergartener) the Winged (which is only the translation of their name, it’s hard to pronounce)
 
@nitsua60 Yeah, I figured that was the case.
By the way, I pinged you a few times on discord. Did you see the messages?
 
8:01 PM
Hmm... why is this help article on the private beta still in our help center?
 
8:12 PM
Extremely good question!
 
8:53 PM
@Someone_Evil that detective, is the right question
 
@MikeQ I'm not sure which way I'd go with it in the future, though. I get the RAW, and obviously I'd have to rule that way in AL, but I feel like allowing it is more in the spirit of the Rogue's "knows how to exploit subtle...."
 
I checked the alchemist's fire again, and apparently it's not even supposed to deal damage on a hit, so...
 
9:27 PM
@Someone_Evil On the new Meta answer maybe also change the "it" in "This means to specify what game system it is" since you can't say "This means to specify what game system the question is" (or just changing a few of the instances of "it" throughout to more explicit/concrete words?)
 
Yeah, say it now (comment edits are fun aren't they?)
 
@Someone_Evil I was just tracking the antecedents and stuff and I was like "Oh this sentence is linguistically interesting! Wait... that's probably bad for reading"
 
@Medix2 You're... welcome?
And thanks for catching it!
 
@Someone_Evil I get to make more syntax trees, that is always good
Yeah the other thing I'm not sure is how to title Meta questions
I guess you just want a title that is what somebody would be wondering, maybe? Probably different Metas have varying ways of formulating their titles
Since it could be something like "My question was closed for not having a system tag; what does this mean? "
 
That's an option, but this was specifically written for the help page where that would look slightly odd
 
9:36 PM
Also this post is to be used under the Help page right? It would feel weird to link it under a question closed for not adding a system tag instead of just explaining that they should add one. Though one could do a "see this question for more details" hmmmm
 
And including it in the body should cover someone searching for it (that style is common on MSE FAQs)
 
@Someone_Evil Ah yeah, seems good to me then
 
I feel like that meta should say that not all questions need a system explicitly somewhere. Did I just miss it?
 
@AncientSwordRage Portal fantasies are stories centered around a person moving from one world to another, stranger one. In the most famous ones it's usually a child and the travel isn't entirely deliberate, though Invisible Library isn't doing that part. Summer in Orcus, Alice in Wonderland, Spirited Away, Akata Witch, Wayward Children, Kindred...
@AncientSwordRage You're welcome! There are some similar apps out there for more/other services but NP is what's been working best for our needs.
 
2
Q: Why do I need to specify my game system and how do I best do it?

Someone_Evil I asked a question and it got closed with users asking what system I was asking about. What do they mean, and why do I need to say it? Someone said my question was missing a system tag. What do they mean?

 
9:50 PM
@BESW oooooooh. I was raised on TLTW&TW as well as The Wizard in the Woods... definitely my jam
oh and sort of the premise behind MtG story lines (sometimes)
@BESW I'll have to give it a go
 
So my players just tried to get down the side of a pit using a javelin and a lantern of revealing, and might just have angered “something big, faintly glowing green and moving in the distance”. Being an evil GM and ending on a cliffhanger is fun.
 
@BardicWizard but did the players enjoy themselves?
 
@AncientSwordRage hopefully... we had to cut it short bc one had family stuff today, but if you’ve ever watched Star Trek TNG encounter at farpoint, everything but the Q is this week (and next week’s) plot... they’re about to meet the farpoint alien
 
@BardicWizard I vaguely remember it
 
Oh that's really hard to pull off satisfactorily in a game like D&D where player agency is limited to characters' bodies.
How are you going to keep them from feeling like spectators?
 
10:07 PM
Related, but not relevant
12
Q: How can I emulate TV Shows with only 2-3 main characters?

PureferretI watch a lot of TV. Probably too much. Shows like Buffy the vampire slayer and Firefly have a whole slew of characters, which is perfect for a gaming party as you fill in the slots to the point you think you can handle. But some shows like Supernatural focus around only 2 characters maybe thre...

 
8
Q: Can I use Flash of Genius on an initiative roll?

Ryan C. ThompsonThe Artificer's Flash of Genius says: When you or another creature you can see within 30 feet of you makes an ability check or a saving throw, you can use your reaction to add your Intelligence modifier to the roll. On the one hand, an initiative roll is an ability check, which means that it's ...

 
Similar problems different premise, but it's something I found myself doing a lot when I first DMed
 
Yeah, a lot of great TV/film/book scenarios just don't work when the audience is also the cast, and the number of characters is expanded.
That's why I appreciate innovations like Black Armada's expanded and rotating roles: if you've got a game conceit with a very limited number of characters to be played, you can create extra roles like "watcher" who add detail and play NPCs so the GM figure's load is reduced, and you can rotate all the roles each scene so everybody gets a chance to play the character, to be the GM, to be watchers, etc.
And I've found that expanding player agency outside the character's body, like how spending fate points can establish truths about the scene unrelated to the character's actions, and the player gets to decide what KIND of bad thing happens to them even if they didn't choose THAT a bad thing would happen, really opens up potential stories without making players feel bored or helpless.
 
@BESW same scenario, done different. They’re in the tunnel system and have just found a heartlike structure... who knows what will happen next?
 
10:27 PM
TIL there's no way to see what question a duplicate close vote pointed to if you've already voted to close the same question
 
Normally there'd be an autogenerated comment, but the closer deleted the comment (and/or the vote). It was to this question btw
 
@Someone_Evil Yeah I found it now, just an interesting thing I hadn't known about; oh maybe the timeline tracks those things
Hmm nope, doesn't seem to
 
Not for you (ie non-diamonds) as far as I know
 
Don't deleted comment links still persist in the linked questions section?
Or was that something that was fixed?
Or "fixed"
 
Not forever, AFAIK. Probably just a caching thing?
 
10:40 PM
@Rubiksmoose I don't see it there now at least, err, well, I didn't see it between the comment having been deleted and my own reposting of the link
 
20
Q: Questions not removed from "Linked" when comments are deleted

ArjanThis has been reported a long time ago; things might very well have been fixed by now. I can hardly imagine this is a real issue, but maybe it's not too nice for SEO or the data dump? So: A question on Super User had its comments about duplicates removed by a moderator. However, the "Linked" sec...

 
OK well at least that seems to align with expected behavior.
 
@BESW I'd love to see an off-site guide/on-site q&a about transitioning to a non-D&D system that has to cover things like that.
I can imagine the last group I played in pushing back on those kind of concepts
 
For my group it was as simple as identifying (a) things in D&D we were dissatisfied with and (b) an alternate game system associated with an IP we all liked.
"Hey, here's a game about the thing we like, and it seems to be addressing the stuff we aren't liking in D&D!"
"Ooh, let's try it."
 
Getting players involved and invested in contributing to the challenges their characters face has been an absolutely amazing leap when it comes to satisfaction and engagement in the stories.
For my group.
And it tended to happen when we moved to PbtA that puts some of those things in the player's hands.
 
10:54 PM
..I wonder if Paul Czege still believes in the Czege Principle, because it's been my experience that it's a load of hot h*ck.
Nala Wu started a twitter thread for NBi BIMPOC in TTRPGs to promote themselves.
 
@BESW I've never heard of that. But I'd be extremely hesitant to make that kind of generalization.
And am inclined to say it is wrong.
> satisfaction drops when the player is the author of their own adversity
 
As you can tell almost from the obscure-the-actual-point-and-act-like-we're-inventing-everything-we-think-of naming alone, this is from the heyday of Czege's time in the Forge.
 
That does not match my experience. At least I tend to give my players some input in the form of suggestions and I've never played a game that gave them full control. (wrt my quote above)
 
The absolute BEST gaming experiences I've had, with the players most invested and the story at its most creative, have been when the players invent problems for their own characters which they don't know how they'll get out of, and then we play to find out how they get out (or don't).
 
@BESW Yes, this very much seems to make sense
@BESW This.
 
11:02 PM
@Rubiksmoose To be fair to Czege, he didn't name it.
 
I love when players are invested enough in creating a compelling story to want to do that.
 
@Rubiksmoose I feel like Fiasco is an entire game system that serves as a counterpoint to this.
 
Not that "The Lesson of Chalk Outlines" is any less obfuscatory.
 
@BESW If anything it is more confusing XD
 
@Rubiksmoose Especially since Google returns no results for "The Lesson of Chalk Outlines" except Czege saying that's the real name of the Czege Principle.
The Forge's disc horse is utterly opaque.
 
11:06 PM
@BESW Okay I feel like the entire genre of solo ttrpgs is a counterpoint to this.
 
@BESW Yeah all I'm finding is this
 
@RedRiderX Almost by definition lol
 
So what I'm seeing is that people have said the principle only applies if the adversity you create has a clear and known solution
 
I know no one here seems to be advocating Czege's line of thinking but it really seems myopic.
 
11:12 PM
@Medix2 So a much less useful or informative "play to find out what happens"?
 
FWIW Czege has said it only applies to "social architectures" (link) so single player games I'm not sure it can apply?
 
Dare I ask what "social architectures" means?
 
I suspect he'd be better served disowning it as "Not my formulation, somebody else slapped my name on the thing" and stating his own ideas independent of the so-called principle if he wants to.
 
@Rubiksmoose I have absolutely no idea
 
So it's just opaque terms all the way down?
 
11:16 PM
But yeah, in the original context of the GM being the one who creates and resolves a tension, that is often a problem.
But it's not usually because the GM is the person in charge of both those things.
That action is, in my experience, a symptom of a GM who is using players as props to tell their own story, rather than collaborating with players to tell a shared story.
 
mhm
 
And that? Players don't tend to like that. I've played in games where the players had talked themselves into thinking they liked it, but there were still lots of rumblings and symptoms of unrest and the game fell to pieces at the first outside pressure.
 
Yeah usually if I want someone to write a story for me, I just read a book ;-)
 
@Rubiksmoose And yeah, a big problem with looking at the Forge from the outside in, is that it's so full of self-referential jargon and insider terminology that any insight to be gleaned requires more effort to parse than it's worth--the same lessons can be found elsewhere in more accessible forms.
 
@BESW Yeah, definitely more work than I'm willing to do lol
 
11:26 PM
And a lot of the principles the Forge was throwing around are incomplete forms of things that now have much more developed expressions coming into mainstream gaming spaces. Like, the "lumpley principle" which basically boiled down to "the people playing the game make the rules, not the people writing it," is trying to create the kind of attitudes which safety tools now provide specific structures and guides for.
 
11:52 PM
@RedRiderX I'll step up to bat for it, absolutely, with the caveat that engaging the rules of the game to prompt or limit your options means you don't have full control over the resolution of your problems?
 
@Glazius If following the rules of a game means you aren't the author as stated in the principle, then its point is incredibly moot.
I think the principle speaks to some truth in the context BESW provided, but in the wider of world of what games have become, it's too general a statement to have much value.
 

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