TRPG General Chat

Bardic Wizard

12:10 AM

@nitsua60 mastery is a strong word

And implies a lot

@nitsua60 also, I thought it was said “pay no attention to the math behind the curtain”... (I know, it’s a misquote)

GcL

1:09 AM

@nitsua60 I think that's just the group that gets to write a fancy Sigma and feel smug that they know how it ends up.

KorvinStarmast

1:27 AM

@Shalvenay I need to do a mock combat, and I wonder if we can set up a time tomorrow night.

@Rubiksmoose as do I

Shalvenay

@KorvinStarmast I think that can be arranged

KorvinStarmast

@Shalvenay what time good for you?

Joel Harmon

@BardicWizard The real trick is that numbers are recursion; you start with 0 and the "successor" function. Successor(1) == 2, successor(successor(1)) == 3, etc.

Shalvenay

@KorvinStarmast any time after about 5:30 to 6PM CDT

KorvinStarmast

@Shalvenay I will check in with you when I get home from work at about that time.

AncientSwordRage

1:46 AM

It looks like MtG is having a D&D crossover

KorvinStarmast

@AncientSwordRage I'd rather have peanut butter in my chocolate, thanks. :)

nitsua60

@BardicWizard That's what the physicists say =)

@JoelHarmon I often do Peano with this same group of kids that'll do DiffEq. I feel like it really shows them a breadth of experiences that one might encounter in maths.

Adeptus

@AncientSwordRage Well, D&D has a MtG crossover, so I guess it's only fair they're reversing the polarity...

Joel Harmon

@nitsua60 There certainly is a wide breadth of topics in mathematics.

Especially the stuff that doesn't even look like numbers anymore, like Turing machines.

If I were to design a class to introduce a bunch of late-teen-aged people to mathematical concepts, I'd consider just having them watch 3 Blue 1 Brown videos all day.

BESW

2:08 AM

Throw in some Square One TV.

Joel Harmon

I'm not familiar with that one.

Adeptus

I borrowed Secret History of the Mongols from the library. Much easier read than the version I found online. Also, something I thought was pretty cool - it was donated to the library by the Mongolian Ambassador

Joel Harmon

@Adeptus That.. doesn't seem very secret. Shouldn't the ambassador have known better?

Adeptus

Bardic Wizard

@JoelHarmon Toss in a good bit of getting to play around with those concepts and discovering stuff (even if it already was known), and you’d probably get me to sign up. (Granted, I’m not exactly in my late teens yet, but still)

BESW

2:10 AM

Square One Television

Square One Television (sometimes referred to as Square One or Square One TV) is an American children's television program produced by the Children's Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop) to teach mathematics and abstract mathematical concepts to young viewers. Created and broadcast by PBS in the United States from January 26, 1987 to November 6, 1992, the show was intended to address the math crisis among American schoolchildren. After the last episode aired, the show went into reruns until October 7, 1994. The show was revived for the 1995–1996 PBS season as a teacher instruction...

Joel Harmon

@BardicWizard I have good news, if you have some free time. I already know you read and write English and have an internet connection.

Bardic Wizard

@JoelHarmon I have no free time, that’s the problem. And already spend 2 hours on math a night.

Joel Harmon

@BESW For much younger kids, my family has enjoyed Peg + Cat (pronounced "plus")

BESW

I recently did the Thinking about Numbers book with a friend, and it's got me thinking not just about numbers but about instructional praxis more generally.

Bardic Wizard

RPGs are the reason I can do probabilities in my head

Joel Harmon

2:14 AM

@BardicWizard There is a lot of that going around here.

Really, RPGs cover a surprisingly wide gamut of skills.

nitsua60

d4

Dice Service

1

Bardic Wizard

@nitsua60 what’s with all the d4 rolls lately?

nitsua60

Assigning kids to classes.

(Usually I toss a coin, but I've already emptied my pockets for the night and I'm too lazy to go to the desk...)

Bardic Wizard

Have ‘fun’ with that...

nitsua60

2:17 AM

(This, of course, is in the case where a kid's signed up for class A of which there are two sections meeting at the same time, with the same number of kids enrolled in each. I flip a coin to decide which they'll go into.)

Joel Harmon

If only they knew.

Bardic Wizard

That sounds like it could be really hard

nitsua60

@BardicWizard It's... a twisted kind of fun. Like those logic puzzles you'd have as a kid where Alice only wears socks with blue dresses and Bob wears sandals when it rains... and if you're really patient you can unravel who bought which type of sandwich.

Bardic Wizard

That was my kind of fun.

Actually, still is.

Hot RPG Questions

2:48 AM

6

Q: Does the (MM) NPC Assassin's poison damage stay on its short swords after the first round?

Why does the poison staying on the swords matter? Because I am trying to get a grip on how much damage does the NPC assassin does in the first two rounds to a creature who begins the encounter asleep. There are a couple of assassination attempts looming in our campaign that I need to get a bet...

Bardic Wizard

Well, my Spanish teacher’s gonna kill me.

One of the exercises we have to do is answering questions supposedly texted to us by a supposed “friend”. I answered a bunch sarcastically. I’m either going to come out dead or with extra credit

If you don’t see me after Thursday afternoon, I’m dead by her hand

linksassin

@BardicWizard If they asked for texts they really should have known what they were getting into.

nitsua60

d6

Dice Service

•

nitsua60

(That kid had three to choose from among.)

AncientSwordRage

2:57 AM

@Adeptus yeah I think it's been in the works a while

Bardic Wizard

It’s from the workbook. She really should have known better, but I can be one of those kids (you know, smart but also gets bored easily)

AncientSwordRage

@BardicWizard Spanish teachers can be scary

Bardic Wizard

Also, it’s honors, so I took her seriously when she asked for creativity

nitsua60

Alright, I'll go get my coin....

Joel Harmon

@nitsua60 Surely there is an app out there that will let you take a random choice of half of a list of items?

nitsua60

3:09 AM

I have one with Thomas Jefferson on one side and his memorial on the reverse. Zero latency, (functionally) infinite battery life.

Joel Harmon

@nitsua60 Terrible throughput.

nitsua60

Good UX.

Versatile, too. In a pinch can be used as a prise.

Widely available, even offline.

Scratch that. Coin shortage, 'cause 2020.

Joel Harmon

@nitsua60 Coins also good for scratching stuff.

nitsua60

I saw Sean Connery nearly kill John Spencer with a quarter, once.

Joel Harmon

There was that Joker scene involving a pencil.

Adeptus

3:34 AM

twitter.com/JoJoesArt/status/1300838218061971456

is twitter oneboxing still broken?

BESW

I've seen no indication they have any intention of fixing it.

Chatspace features are mostly fire-and-forget.

Adeptus

nitsua60

4:12 AM

what's the link for the analytics page, again?

(wait, I bet it's on the privilege's page)

Of the many things I miss about being a moderator, "I had finally learned where links were in the mod pages" is definitely still high on the list.

A few spots behind @doppelgreener and a few ahead of "feeling like I should keep current with SE behind-the-scenes".

Ugh... 25K analytics are so limited =(

Inbox notifications of meta posts was nice.

@Rubiksmoose or @V2Blast would you mind giving me a ballpark number for #daily/#monthly visitors/activity? I'm trying to succinctly describe the "size" of the broad community here for someone.

I feel like there're meta posts that summarize some of those, but my search-fu is failling.

GcL

@nitsua60 The community is definitely larger than 3, yet not large enough to collapse under the force of it's own pedantry.

nitsua60

We're exploring that boundary some days, though =)

Transcript for