TRPG General Chat

12:02 AM

Yeah, it's one of those things where they're probably trying to satirize the stuff but struggle not to also/instead glorify it. And either way they're still depicting the stuff.

(And, you know. Dan Harmon isn't exactly the guy I'd go to for a mindful treatment of those themes.)

Bardic Wizard

@trogdor neither have I, but mike mcmahan who’s somehow involved with that show is the executive producer (I think) of Star Trek lower decks, which I have watched every released episode of so far so I think I recognize the name. My world is Star Trek and RPGs and school, so I’m probably the wrong audience though

trogdor

Yeah I have been mildly interested in seeing Star Trek lower decks but it seems like their main sources of humor are people being inept and embarrassed

Bardic Wizard

@KorvinStarmast you sure about that? It’s close enough

trogdor

Which isn't my jam

Bardic Wizard

@trogdor not really, there’s a little of that but a lot of the humor is in taking Star Trek tropes and turning them on their heads. There is some of it though, so you may want to avoid some of the episodes — I know trekmovie does a spoiler free review for every episode so you might check those out first since they usually mention stuff like that

trogdor

12:20 AM

I'm going mostly off of the trailers they released to be fair

Bardic Wizard

I think the worst episode with regards to that, off the top of my head, is episode 5, Cupid’s Errant Arrow, where most of the humor is Mariner’s failed attempts at exposing Boimler’s GF as evil/a parasite

@trogdor yeah the trailers show the show at its worst, not in its best moments

trogdor

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that

Bardic Wizard

Tv shows always seem to do that

Hot RPG Questions

1:03 AM

3

Q: Are there spells that prevent a magic user from using a summoning spell?

Which spells can stop a magic user from using a summoning spell either by stopping the spell effect or by stopping the magic user from casting? I can only think of two: Counterspell and Anti-Magic Field Are there any others?

nitsua60

1:43 AM

In other news, a shocking number of kids new to the HS RPG group--like, the majority of new kids--indicated on the signup form that they'd be willing to run games. Even those who've never played.
Or, at least, that's how we-all (student leaders and faculty advisors) read their responses.
What they *intended*, it turns out, was to communicate was "uh, yeah, direct-message is cool by me."

Joel Harmon

@nitsua60 Ah, September.

BESW

Bardic Wizard

1:58 AM

@nitsua60 and this is why our school club uses game master and GM instead of dungeon master and DM. Apparently the same mistake happened a few years ago

nitsua60

@BardicWizard I tend to use GM to de-center D&D, but the kid making the form uses DM and we didn't notice/care when we saw it. Now we'll know =)

Looks like we may end up playing a modern fantasy game at my table, in a setting where magic is super-rare (and generally unknown) but these kids have some, somehow.
I think I'm going to bolt an old FUDGE magic system I liked onto some *Tales from the Loop* classes.

Joel Harmon

@nitsua60 I've had some success playing in a modern fantasy setting using Dresden Files RPG.

Incidentally, the next novel comes out tomorrow-ish. I hope it's actually delivered on the right day this time around :(

BESW

...I'm still curious about what an approachable dramatic Peter Grant magic system would look like.

nitsua60

@JoelHarmon I certainly have Dresden sorta in the back of my mind, but only in the more-mechanical sense, not necessarily the themes/tone. But a DFRPG specifically built as such might be pretty fertile ground. Care to highlight its strengths and weaknesses?

(I've only read 2.2ish of the books, btw.)

BESW

@nitsua60 There's two, actually! The Dresden Files RPG was the Fate game just before Fate Core, and then there's Dresden Files Accelerated which is a Fate Accelerated drift.

Joel Harmon

2:10 AM

@nitsua60 (The first one feels like a first novel, the second one feels like he's establishing a pattern. They do get better)

BESW

(I much preferred the earlier novels to the later ones; his technical skill improves but the themes and characters got... rough for me to stomach.)

nitsua60

@JoelHarmon (and @BESW) I kinda have Highlander: the Series in mind as much as anything else. Not mechanics, obviously, and probably not period-costumed flashbacks, but the notion that the characters are unthinkably-different from the normies in the world they inhabit, and have to carefully use their "power."

Joel Harmon

@nitsua60 I believe I played the non-Accelerated version, but I'm not certain. I liked the non-vancian magic available. "I'd like to hack that cell phone. How? Because I'm the greco-roman god of the internet. Tell me what's on it."

BESW

@nitsua60 Hmm. Shades of Ngen Mapu.

Joel Harmon

The system was also good at mixed combat; trying to talk someone down while they're trying to knock your lights out is pretty natural to represent.

@nitsua60 Please tell me you're also keeping Sean Connery as an Egyptian/Spaniard.

nitsua60

2:16 AM

@JoelHarmon Juan Sanchez Villalobos de Ramirez, chief metallurgist to the Court of St. James? Of course!

Or, should I say, "Juan Shanchezsh?"

Joel Harmon

Indeed you should.

nitsua60

"Some things down here don't react well to katanas."

(That one there ^^ is my gift to @KorvinStarmast)

Adeptus

@nitsua60 Hunt for Red Highlander?

nitsua60

@Adeptus "One ping, Highlander." "One ping?" "One ping."

Adeptus

There can be only one ping

nitsua60

2:20 AM

You all know that the Kurgan always parries left in the bottom half of the hour, right?

Axoren

@Adeptus @Adeptus

nitsua60

(I believe @Adeptus wins the chat today.)

Joel Harmon

@Axoren But how many times did the system ping you?

Axoren

@JoelHarmon @JoelHarmon @JoelHarmon @JoelHarmon @JoelHarmon I don't know. @JoelHarmon You tell me.

Was it all just a one big ping or did it send them to you in a cascade?

Joel Harmon

There can be only one, apparently. Maybe the delayed popup on the main site will report it multiple times.

Bardic Wizard

2:28 AM

so pings are like Sith Lords? There can be only one??

Axoren

It's a Rule of Two because the Sith are dookies.

I mean look at Count Dookie

nitsua60

Pings are like katanas: it's surprising to see Sean Connery use one.

Axoren

@SeanConnery

nitsua60

He hasn't been in the room for a while: need a mod to superping him.

Axoren

If he actually responds, I'll have made Sean Connery come. In an 18+ board, that would be a double entendre. Either way, that's an achievement.

The man's a savage, but I haven't heard him do anything lately. Does he still do film?

Yeah, he's been retired from Acting since 2006. :'(

Apparently, the only thing he has done since is voice act in whatever this monstrosity is: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Billi

goodguy5

3:02 AM

nilbogs mess with action economy and need to be adjusted for in parties of less than 4

And I need to ask a question about action timing and nilbogs (and dissonant whispers).

I just don't feel like typing it now

SmokeDetector

3:31 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad ip for hostname in body, bad keyword in username, blacklisted website in body, potentially bad ns for domain in body, potentially bad keyword in username (291): How to Registration for ISO 9001? by ISO BAHRAIN on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

BESW

3:51 AM

Hounds of God by BESW. The author's commentary on an abandoned module for Fate Accelerated.

nitsua60

@BESW speaking of hounds, I poked you in discord a day or two ago, in case you missed it.

BESW

Oh yes! I'd love to see those, thanks.

nitsua60

Okay. Heading over there now....

Oh, I see... you responded. Sorry. (I didn't have a notification-bubble because the server was part of a collapsed group, maybe?)

BESW

no worries!

Bardic Wizard

4:20 AM

I wrote less than a paragraph of backstory for a character for once!!! I thought I should try giving her a chance to discover it over the course of the two-shot so we’ll see how it goes

BESW

Grats!

I know that struggle.

Bardic Wizard

I’m proud of this because I usually have to type my backstory up or write it in tiny printing to get it to fit

I’m pretty sure it would even fit in a single chat message so that’s super good

Not that I have it typed up anywhere so...

Good morning.

Afternoon

Evening

4:29 AM

@BardicWizard I wrote a relatively lengthy blog post which I abandoned, for some reason, and never published, titled "In Defense of Retconning", where I championed deliberately letting your backstory have large holes in it to be filled in when needed by the story later on.

Also, one character in our long-running Ars Magica game left a large chunk of her backstory and mechanical story flaws deliberately open, without even her character knowing it, explicitly as a hook for the GM to do with as he pleased.

That escalated quickly.

Ben

My achievement for today was to track down a song I remembered from 13 years ago that was inspired by a song that was a remix of another song that sort of sounded a bit like the song I remembered. Only took me half an hour to find it too

3

Bardic Wizard

@lisardggY my total backstory: Rose Dax was raised by her mom, Robin Dax, and her unmarried aunt Hannah Maybud. Sometime in late high school she started dating Zorah Oakapple. she hopes to get enough money to propose to Zorah soon. She is pretty formal but deadly in a fight. Likes to mock people for hiding behind a halfling bard in a hoop skirt

The rest is a hole

lisardggY

@BardicWizard Cool. Just enough to start playing her, a couple of personal connections as hooks or for you to examine her relationships, and off to the adventuring fields.

Bardic Wizard

It’s her entire reason for being in “monster infested horrorville” aka NYC

To get money for a ring

But also because Bardic Underground stuff

(Which is assumed for any bards)

lisardggY

In my current game, our GM's call for character was "you all grew up in a small village knowing each other, and you have this NPC as a shared friend". My character is a wood-elf wizard who grew up just outside the village but visited often, whose magic is a form of natural-magic experimentation that he shapes into arrowheads (I re-skin all my spells as arrows). That's it, for now.

Bardic Wizard

4:37 AM

@lisardggY sounds fun to play

lisardggY

Things that have been established over the 3-4 sessions we've had so far: I know very little of the world outside the area of the village but I'm intensely curious about everything and questioning in an occasionally off-putting sort of way, relatively unphased by weird things (because everything is weird) and (after a meeting with handsome gnome cartographer-bard and a short argument with the party's tielfling rogue about him) apparently pan-romantic but asexual. Or the other way around.

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: Throwing Shield Shenanigans

A player in my group is interested in making a offensive shield build. They found that if you get a quickdraw shield and modify it with the throwing shield property, that you can don it, and throw it all as a free action. Then, if they put it on a blink back belt, then it returns to their belt im...

pathfinder-1e balance shield throwing-things free-action

BESW

4:59 AM

@AncientSwordRage You asked, so here it is!

Hounds of God by BESW. The author's commentary on an abandoned module for Fate Accelerated.

...that half of my itch.io projects are about doggos was entirely unplanned.

Bardic Wizard

@BESW but not unappreciated!!

Also I had to describe the difference between my two current d&d characters and the difference I used was that one has more living family than secret identities and the other has more secret identities than living family

... I’ll let people speculate on exactly how those came to be

V2Blast

6:00 AM

@BardicWizard I figured as much. The trailers didn't look very appealing to me.

I feel like I know a surprising amount about Star Trek for having never watched more than a few clips of any of the older series or movies before the 2009 film reboot and Discovery/Picard series.

(I did own a Star Trek computer game called Deep Space Nine: The Fallen that I got for free from somewhere, I think. I think I never finished it, though I did use cheats to skip through some of the levels after I kept dying on them...)

Hot RPG Questions

6:55 AM

4

Q: Can an artificer replicate the same magic item more than once?

Artificers can take the "Replicate Magic Item" infusion more than once, each time choosing a magic item that they can make with it. Can an Artificer take the "Replicate Magic Item" infusion multiple times and select the same magic item with it, and thus create more than one copy of the same magic...

dnd-5e artificer artificer-infusions

AncientSwordRage

8:13 AM

@BESW yay!

AncientSwordRage

8:59 AM

why is my coffee all gone :(

BESW

AncientSwordRage

> The amount of coffee I need in the morning is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a lot of coffee in the starbucks down the road, but that's just peanuts to the amount of coffee I need in the morning.

@BESW this is amazing though

BESW

AncientSwordRage

Sure is

I need it especially as my body does not make enough dopamine (?)

BESW

AncientSwordRage

9:17 AM

I got some coffee with peanut butter syrup

Hot RPG Questions

10:40 AM

2

Q: How can dash be used as a main action if actions and bonus actions aren't interchangeable?

I've found two twitter chains that I can't seem to make sense of. From Jeremy Crawford: "Actions and bonus actions aren't interchangeable." [source] Also from Jeremy Crawford: "Double dash in one turn can happen with dash as bonus action." [source] So how can a rogue use both their action and bon...

dnd-5e actions rogue bonus-action

Hot RPG Questions

11:31 AM

5

Q: Does Locate Creature work on a creature who died and became undead?

Can someone cast Locate Creature on a creature whom they knew when it was alive, but died recently and became undead? For instance, if a party member was bit by a vampire and died, could someone cast Locate Creature to find the person?

dnd-5e spells divination

Thomas Markov

11:52 AM

@AncientSwordRage Im surprised that question went unanswered as long as it did

AncientSwordRage

@ThomasMarkov "What syrup to put into coffee?"

Or about magical constructs pathfinding?

Thomas Markov

pure high fructose corn syrup, of course.

But, yeah, the pathfinding one

AncientSwordRage

@ThomasMarkov bleugh

Thomas Markov

Ive a friend that puts HFC on his waffles.

doppelgreener

12:22 PM

@ThomasMarkov high fructose corn on waffles

Thomas Markov

Isn't all corn high fructose?

doppelgreener

depends what you consider high fructose

fructose is mainly found in fruits

a cup of sweet corn has only 10-20% as much fructose as an apple; and that's sweet corn, the variety with the most sugar

BESW

"High fructose" in this specific context means that the corn has been chemically processed to convert a significant amount (usually about 10%) of the corn's glucose, into fructose.

doppelgreener

right

like, high fructose corn syrup is so called because they made it very high in fructose

but if we're talking about regular unprocessed foods, corn is relatively low fructose in the scheme of things

BESW

Corn is not high fructose, because "high fructose" is a nonsense phrase without a point of comparison. "High fructose corn syrup" is "high fructose" for corn syrup.

I'd guess that corn is very high fructose compared to a steak, or silicone sealant, but those don't seem like useful points of comparison.

AncientSwordRage

12:36 PM

@BESW steak with silicone sealant is an unusual dish

BESW

...I suppose you could plastinate the steak.

BESW

12:47 PM

"Plastinate The Steak" would be a good name for a band.