TRPG General Chat

12:08 AM

@AncientSwordRage decently, thanks. I just finished arguing my way through a library event (it’s not what it sounds like, they put “embarrass [my name]” on the agenda because it was my birthday and they sang happy birthday to me, so i threatened stabbing them with my wooden sword)

AncientSwordRage

@BardicWizard fair

Bardic Wizard

Apparently threatening to run somebody through with a wooden sword is not permitted, even though we had permission to do “apocalypse night” with foam guns and foam swords last winter

AncientSwordRage

12:34 AM

@BardicWizard definitely double standards then.

MikeQ

@AncientSwordRage By the grace of unknown cosmic forces, I may have managed to wrangle some players together for some short D&D adventures. Maybe. Still trying to solve the scheduling puzzle.

AncientSwordRage

@MikeQ have you tired Doodle?

MikeQ

Yes. Doesn't help when most of the folks involved don't know their own schedules.

BESW

12:55 AM

I hear that. Many of my friends have jobs and family commitments that make it impossible for them to predict their availability.

Shalvenay

@BESW yeah, I daresay that I'd rather be on the extra board than work a retail schedule anymore -- makes me very glad that we're starting to see fair-scheduling laws pop up

jerking with folks' schedules like that is a good way to get fatigued workers that pose a hazard to themselves and everyone else on the road

I wonder if some of the clopens out there are bad enough that if you asked someone from $work's operations department to work that schedule, they'd say "no, that's illegal, dude"

Thomas Markov

@AncientSwordRage I restored my answer on your question about Theros.

BESW

I've got a friend who works in a mental health facility with child clients, and because of budget/management decisions way up the government tree they often have a straight choice between illegal work schedules or leaving the kids without care.

Shalvenay

1:37 AM

@BESW :/ that's even worse

AncientSwordRage

@MikeQ Oof that hit me hard. Very true.

@ThomasMarkov I can only upvote it once though :-(

@BESW that's rough

Hot RPG Questions

1:55 AM

8

Q: Curse of Strahd - Does NPC ability trump Inspiration rule?

In Curse of Strahd, the players can encounter an NPC with a special ability. Is the NPC's use of this ability supposed to be an example of "specific beats general", where their ability as written within the context of the module overrides the PHB limitation that You either have inspiration or y...

MikeQ

2:53 AM

@AncientSwordRage It's possible that they do know their schedules, but are bound by some arcane pact from giving a clear answer about their availability. I often suspect they're just not interested, despite them telling me otherwise, as they seem to have no trouble scheduling their own games.

RevenantBacon

@MikeQ I never understand people who have this problem. I have a pretty exact schedule, sun-fri work starting and ending at a specific time, same every week, sat off all day.

MikeQ

The really irksome thing is that they know each other's schedules. Some of them are siblings, or live together, or otherwise communicate with each other regularly. Why's it my job to juggle all their schedules for them?

V2Blast

3:16 AM

oof

@MikeQ do they have regular schedules? or do some of them have schedules that change week to week?

MikeQ

Presumably there is some regularity. They're adults with jobs. They've been scheduling their own games for years. And I'm sure if I dug through the many back-and-forth exasperated emails, I could piece together what each of their schedules look like

BESW

My solution was to say "I'm opening my house at [time] on [day]. Each week we'll play a game suited to whoever shows up."

MikeQ

Tried that. Nobody showed up.

trogdor

4:33 AM

oof

sorry to hear that

Hot RPG Questions

6:49 AM

1

Q: Can the third benefit of the Mobile feat prevent multiple creatures you attack in a single turn from making opportunity attacks against you that turn?

I am playing a monk. I wanted to use the Mobile feat, specifically the third option that prevents opportunity attacks, to do the following: hit creature 1 with my attack, then move away from creature 1 then use Flurry of Blows on creature 2, then move away then make an unarmed strike on creature...

dnd-5e feats attack opportunity-attack

Hot RPG Questions

7:13 AM

2

Q: How long does the Storm Sorcerer's Storm Guide feature stop rain from falling near you?

The Storm Sorcerer gains the Storm Guide feature at 6th level (XGtE, p. 52; emphasis added): At 6th level, you gain the ability to subtly control the weather around you. If it is raining, you can use an action to cause the rain to stop falling in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on you. You can ...

dnd-5e class-feature sorcerer duration weather

AncientSwordRage

10:06 AM

@MikeQ well that sucks.

BESW

1:05 PM

Omigosh omigosh.

Kickstarter: Mnemonic: A Weaver’s Almanac: A core rulebook and setting guide for the fantasy world of Mnemonic. by Dee Pennyway.

BESW

1:25 PM

3-4-5 bundle hosted by Sealed Library. "Have You Heard About The Beast," "What Artistry Is This," and "While We Wait For Death." Normally, each of these games is five bucks, but right now you can get all three for that price.

RedRiderX

2:26 PM

@BESW Is this from the same person as mnemonicrpg.itch.io/mnemonic?

That was a really evocative rulebook, but I struggled to get a feel for what a full session would look like.

BESW

Yup! This is the same person, and the same... franchise? I'm not even sure what to call Mnemonic as a whole thing, one of the amazing things about it is that it's not really like anything else.

RedRiderX

Bit off topic but I'm impressed with the amount of page design they were able to squeeze out of Google Docs for that preview.

I gave up on making anything nice in Google Docs years ago.

BESW

Oh yeah, there's a whole subset of designers using Google Drive to do amazing stuff, partly because many of them are too poor for anything else.

Last year there was a drive to buy poor game designers copies of Affinity Designer, it was awesome.

Aug 11 at 22:55, by BESW

Lucha Libris wrote a twitter thread showing "how I emulated Quest's "house style" for laying out my own custom content, using only Google Docs, with no professional design experience."

Jan 8 at 22:03, by BESW

@Upper_Case "How to Produce RPGs on Nothing A-Year: Google Docs" by David Shugars

Nov 1 '19 at 22:30, by BESW

"Yes, you can do layout in Google Docs (and it looks good too)." a blog essay by Dee Pennyway, formerly a twitter thread.

Oct 31 '19 at 0:27, by BESW

Dee Pennyway has a twitter thread about learning to use Affinity Publisher for designing game materials.

Bardic Wizard

2:55 PM

All these people using google docs are so much more advanced than me and my stupidly-standardized MLA formatted documents.

Hot RPG Questions

1

Q: Reverse Gravity: dropping concentration mid fall

When you cast the spell Reverse Gravity (5e), creatures start falling upwards into the air. Assuming that there is nothing in their way the spell must somehow halt their momentum when they reach the top of it, as the spell says "If an object or creature reaches the top of the area without strikin...

dnd-5e spells spellcasting concentration

Medix2

5:03 PM

Is this true (in particular, the latter half): "The only links we ban are those to sites engaging in copyright infringement, and frankly the main reason we do that is because of concerns about link rot"

Someone_Evil

Link rot is definitely a concern which gets brought up, though I'd put not advocating, supporting, or spreading piracy above it

I think we have a meta on it somewhere

Medix2

Well apparently people don't agree on the morals and ethics of it... Or at least, all the answers I've found only talk about link rot and specifically call out that they will not discuss the morals and ethics

V2Blast

Well, basically, people can disagree on morals and ethics, but they can't really disagree that piracy/copyright-infringing sites are more likely to be taken down than others and thus more susceptible to link rot

Medix2

Oh, found one on the morals of not linking to copyright infringing sites

V2Blast

It also avoids debates of what's copyright infringement or what's legal or whatever

Medix2

5:17 PM

Gotta love the phrase "debates about what's legal"

V2Blast

Law.SE exists for a reason ;)

Dale M's a mod there

Plus we don't actually say people aren't allowed to take ethics into consideration or whatever - saying "I don't offer a position on the ethics or legality of linking to "D&D Tools"" is just a way to avoid such arguments

LitheOhm's answer on that same meta post is explicitly all about ethics:

6

A: Links to "D&D Tools" / dndtools.eu and similar sites

I contend yes, addressing it would be worthwhile. Even though posting a link doesn't violate copyrights, the posting of a link does endorse a site. This endorsement flows through to copyright violation (even if not by the letter of the law, I'm no lawyer). Begin rant. Legally (again, I'm no la...

Medix2

@V2Blast Yeah that's the one I found

V2Blast

Doppelgreener also references both perspectives in her answer to another meta:

> Our primary official reason to not link to pirate sites on here is because the links are guaranteed to go dead (sooner than links might otherwise) and we don't want guaranteed link rot on our site. There's other good pragmatic concerns too, for example we want to maintain a good-faith relationship with publishers and we don't want our site to become a hive of scum and villainy.

oh, another aspect pointed out in SSD's answer to a question about answers that advocate piracy (accidentally or not):

> The legality of linking to infringing material is unclear, with conflicting legal precedents, and different ones in different countries. It's legal in the US though, so long as DMCA takedowns are processed in a timely fashion (which SE does).

so again, the mods/community tend to approach it from a "is this good to have on our site" more generally rather than "is this legal" (or "is this ethical")

On an unrelated note:

10

Q: How compatible are the published D&D 5e rules with the rules in the SRD?

As of the time I'm writing this question, Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition is published only in English, and to the best of my knowledge, no plans exist for an official translation into other languages. As a result, several crowdfunding projects have been launched and successfully funded to create ...

dnd-5e ogl

someone should leave an up-to-date answer on this question so I can reward the bounty to someone ;)

Medix2

5:33 PM

@V2Blast I might but... I don't own recent enough printings to determine all the stealth errata and fake errata and whatever else isn't just "Here's a document of everything missing, and here's whether I feel they are important changes"

V2Blast

5:52 PM

@Medix2 doesn't really need to be a comprehensive list of everything, just more a general overview of "here are the major incompatibilities (if any)" and just generally a note that the SRD hasn't been updated in years

if you have access to the compendium content on D&D Beyond (e.g. through NautArch's "Stackizen" campaigns, where I believe content sharing is enabled, and I do have all the books), you could just compare those to the SRD as needed

AncientSwordRage

7:51 PM

@BESW that looks interesting

Hot RPG Questions

8:26 PM

3

Q: Is this "Siren" creature balanced?

I just finished playing a 6th level 4 players session and the GM used this creature in a fight with us: https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Siren_(5e_Creature) Specifically it used the ability: Sing (5/day). The siren releases a debilitatingly beautiful song. All who can hear it within 120 feet must s...

dnd-5e homebrew-review monster-design

AncientSwordRage

8:38 PM

@BardicWizard the galaxy brain move is to use LaTeX then give up half way

nitsua60

8:58 PM

@AncientSwordRage There's a CTAN package for that.

Someone_Evil

@V2Blast The question is specifically interested in a translated version of the SRD so I'm not sure tracking errata (which is mostly minor anyway) is super relevant

AncientSwordRage

9:23 PM

@nitsua60 there's a package for giving up halfway through stuff?

nitsua60

9:58 PM

Yup. \usepackage[picksomesettingsforme]{iforget}
The prompt will ask which mirror you want to use for download. "Couldn't be bothered to pick" is the correct answer.

AncientSwordRage

Excellent

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