TRPG General Chat

BESW

00:41

Sahoni_Stuff wrote a twitter thread with an incomplete definition of mudcore.

I'm gonna be adding this term to my vocabulary now.

user15026

@BESW "it's all over the place and I hate it" hard same and I am glad someone found a word for it

BESW

01:00

@Ash It's such a perfect word.

Everything is dull and grim.

user15026

It works so well

Bardic Wizard

05:04

I came out as nonbinary to my gaming group today!! Since it was (technically, still is) National Coming Out Day in the USA I thought it might be a good day to just say what I’ve been considering for months

6

And they’re actively making an effort to use my preferred pronouns now which is really nice

Anyways that’s just a nice vaguely-RPG-related thing that happened

BESW

@BardicWizard Grats! That's really nice, thanks for sharing it with us.

Xirema

That's really cool!

Most of my gaming group knows I'm trans because I've told them individually, but I haven't actually said so to the group as a whole. X)

Bardic Wizard

05:22

@Xirema that’s pretty much what happened here; my bff knew since I told him a while ago, and I’ve mentioned it in passing but never really just said it since I was a little worried about people’s reactions

BESW

On that note, I'd like to share Smatterbrain's Pride Turtle, for those who find Coming Out Day rather a lot. More turtles here and here.

4

Adeptus

05:59

@BardicWizard Which pronouns should we be using?

BESW

@Adeptus The Pronoun Assistant script lifts pronouns from a user's info and appends it to their name.

2

Adeptus

06:16

Thanks

lisardggY

08:06

Hola.

kviiri

Hi lisardggY

One thing I've been wondering about pronouns, what's the origin of them being listed in that exact format?

lisardggY

As in, third-person-slash-third-person-possessive?

kviiri

yes

lisardggY

wait, not possessive.

Whatever.

Good question. I'm guessing tumblr would be where it was popularized.

kviiri

objective I think

My first instinct would be that the inflection needs to be disambiguated in some cases but as I can't think of such case off the top of my head, so it might also just highlight that "hey, these are pronouns" because just ending your flairs with "he" or "they" might seem like you dropped off mid-sentence

lisardggY

08:15

Yeah, that's the one.

@kviiri I've also seen people who have different pronouns for the subjective and objective, but it doesn't seem very common

But I haven't seen someone specify their posesssive pronoun, usually.

kviiri

I hope the script understands "they/he"

lisardggY

Hebrew just has the one case for both subjective and objective, usually, and again, the possessive is usually not noted. Also, the language itself is a lot more strongly gendered so it's impossible not to note the gender everywhere.

kviiri

(I am kinda used to my gender not being explicit in every sentence about me so I modestly prefer "they" :D)

@lisardggY Semitic languages are so fascinating, I've been wanting to learn Arabic for a while after a co-worker (who is a bit of a polyglot) told me that it's so logical, "well-engineered" language that it feels like it has to be a conlang :P

lisardggY

I think they only feel that way at cursory examination :)

kviiri

Yea x)

That usually happens when one digs deep enough

OTOH another thing I'd like to learn is another Finnic language. Karelian has a lot of historical relevance, but Estonian has a lot more practical use

lisardggY

08:27

There's a lot of structure that feels remarkably engineered. For instance, Hebrew words have roots - for instance, K.T.B which is the root for words related to writing. Or K.R.A to reading. And you have clear structures for different tenses and cases, so "he wrote" is katav (b and v interchange ) and "he read" is "kara" - both the same declension of the root.

hichtiv is "caused someone else to write" and hikri is "cause someone else to read" (generally, the first means "to dictate" and the second "to read out loud"), and they're basically taking the root letters and applying the template for the case/tense to them to get the well-known meaning.

Which is all nice and well until you get to the exceptions. And the changes to meaning over time. And to phonological changes that cause sounds to switch places.

kviiri

Yeah, the root system is particularly fascinating!

Fun fact: the Swahili class generally for inanimate objects and artifacts is prefixed with "ki-". Eg. a knife is kikata. The plural of such words is prefixed with "vi-" instead, eg. vikata for knives.

The word for "book" in Swahili is borrowed from Arabic, so it's kitabu, with the plural vitabu

Even though the "prefix" is actually a part of the root!

IIRC kimono has the same deal

lisardggY

There's a think in Turkish there's a thing where suffixes change to harmonize with the preceding vowel.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

08:44

Can't comment directly on Turkish, but a related language, (Kazan) Tatar, tends to prefer alternating vowels with consonants, and prefers keeping all vowels either 'hard' or 'soft' in the whole word.

Also, kitab is a word that sure does travel a lot.

kviiri

I think there's some social dynamics on literacy and books spreading that might influence it

In Estonian, the word for a "book" is raamat which come from the Ancient Greek grammata or somesuch. In Finnish, we have almost the same word raamattu except it refers exclusively to either the Holy Bible (usually capitalized) or figurative bibles

SmokeDetector

09:24

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad ip for hostname in body, blacklisted website in body, potentially bad ns for domain in body (200): Yahoo mail Down bringing about document connection disappointment? Contact client assistance by Emma Emily on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

AncientSwordRage

09:50

@lisardggY Lots of turkic languages do this Vowel Harmony!

@BESW It's second hand, but the second source seems to imply it's accepted by the people themselves. I brought it up as they said something like "Oh, I'd never use the word indians! I know Native American is PC term"...which is wrong. Just trying to correct (what I thought was )a misperception

@kviiri That's amazing

In the Navajo language, they have an animacy class that includes humans and lightning at the same level

@lisardggY Biblaridon has a great (conlang) video on Triconsonantal words

but they explain how they happen

lisardggY

10:09

@kviiri And similarly, when foreign words are borrowed into Hebrew, they're treated as new roots that can manipulated similarly. Technical terms are often borrowed like this, so you can have an English word like "configure" taken in and then you have lekanfeg (to configure), kinfagti ("I configured"), ze kunfag ("it was configured"), etc.

AncientSwordRage

10:22

@BESW I wish I could run those scripts at work

lisardggY

10:35

@AncientSwordRage I'm pretty glad that my employer, in the official user profiles in the internal network, has an official field to fill in your pronouns.

kviiri

Oh yeah, we have vowel harmony in Finnish too

Each (non-compound) word has, save for some fancy terms that are foreign loans, either only front vowels (ä, ö, y) or back vowels (a, o, u) with middle vowels (e and i) appearing freely. Suffixes of words change to reflect this

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY I don't think we have one single official profile shrug

lisardggY

I was pleasantly surprised when I started.

And also an option to record yourself pronouncing your name, which is very helpful in an international corporation.

kviiri

I've occasionally just gone the old-fashiomed way and anglicized my name

AncientSwordRage

10:50

thats very cool

lisardggY

Oh, in completely different news, I gave my convention talk on RPGs-turned-books-and-shows last week. Went well. Thanks for the the tips regarding John Rogers, @BESW - he was a great addition to the list.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY That sounds interesting!

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY This is cool as an option, but I'm wary that it may mislead people into underestimating the degree to which figuring out phonemes from a join, real-time pronunciation can be tricky. Having an IPA transcription nearby OTOH has always been helpful for me, since then I can check up how each of the non-obvious phonemes is pronounced separately, and can make sure I'm not missing any when trying to process a word purely aurally.

(IOW: it's cool to have an audio file attachment, but it's also important to retain a precise written transcription even if you have an audio file.)

lisardggY

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica There might be a field for that as well. None are mandatory, might take a look.

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica that does rely on everyone understanding IPA

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

11:07

@AncientSwordRage When engaging in an international context, you certainly have better odds of avoiding a misreading by using the international phonetic alphabet, than by doing the thing Englishmen do with the 'Nosferatu starting with nos like in nostrils'.

lisardggY

IPA is international in the same sense that "ISO" is international - sure it's an international standard, but not something that everyonehas to know.

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica It's definitely worth learning IPA

kviiri

I kinda like the approximation of English words in English context, except it never works x)

(for me)

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@kviiri Yeah, it's super-unreliable, and worse, it can fail without notification in an international or even cross-dialectal context.

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica english is attrocious

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

11:11

Well, not atrocious, no.

At least assuming this is a serious statement.

kviiri

Plus for many things we say eg. in Finnish there isn't really an easy way to map to English, including many common names. Mine would be difficult and I can easily come up with dozens of even harder ones

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

(Like, language supremacism is bad like, okay?)

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica semi-serious having seen how many things I (a native speaker) take for granted in English

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage Native speakers taking things for granted is normal, at least for native speakers whose native and first language are one and the same.

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica It's the only language I know

well, I know smatterings in other european anguages

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica for instance foot -> feet, Sheep -> Sheep, house -> houses

lisardggY

11:14

English had a couple of interesting events on its history, but many languages can boast of that

AncientSwordRage

how is anyone supposed to get that?

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage The awareness of peculiarities, or a reduction of for-grantedness, seems to be achievable through a mixture of actually studying and analysing one's language (grammar, phonetics and all), and of learning and comparing to other languages.

Hot RPG Questions

1

Q: Can you scale-down spells in Pathfinder?

A couple examples: Fireball does 1d6/level up to 10d6. If you're 10th level, can you cast fireball, but have it only do 1d6 damage (or 6d6 since you wouldn't get the spell until lvl 6) Another example: Kineticist's Kinetic Blast. It's basically a cantrip (but its actually a Spell-Like Ability) ...

lisardggY

Hebrew has standard plural suffix for masculine nouns and for feminine. But sometimes words use the other one. Why? shrug. Because language.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY yeah, that's true

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

11:16

@lisardggY You also have words that are masculine in the plural and feminine in the singular (or vice versa), right?

kviiri

I was twenty-something years old when I realized that Finnish actually uses the singular partitive for many plural forms x)

AncientSwordRage

I'm not trying to say English has a monopoly on peculiarities, it's just the one I've noticed the most

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

(I can think of only one example of such a shift of a word between plural/singular in Ukrainian.)

lisardggY

No natural language can boast of clean syntax. As we said earlier, any language that claims clean syntax is hiding something.

AncientSwordRage

Toki Pona! (not a natural language though)

kviiri

11:17

@lisardggY We Finns love to boast about clean pronunciation at least, but even that's not exactly true

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@kviiri In the sense of low orthographic depth?

lisardggY

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Not really. "chair" is masculine (kisseh) but uses the feminine plural suffix (kissaot instead of kissaim), but it's still masculine, so adjectives will still carry the masculine suffixes.

kviiri

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Yes

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY Arabic does the same I think

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY I am disappointed.

lisardggY

11:19

So you get kissaot yafim (pretty chairs), not kissaot yafot or the theoretically appropriate kissaim yafim.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Though superficially that still looks like straddling the line, syntax-wise.

lisardggY

Children and non native speakers regularly trip up on those many non-standard words

kviiri

The language mostly follows one letter, one phoneme. But not quite always. The most prominent example is a fairly recognizable one: the "äng" (velar nasal) which – almost corresponds with "nk" or "ng" in the words. But in rare cases, the correct pronunciation of words with these pairs of letters is still without the velar nasal

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY What do those sound/feel like to a native speaker?

kviiri

Mainly compound words where one part ends with n and the other begins a k, eg. näkinkenkä. But otoh you probably wouldn't get funny looks having the velar nasal there

lisardggY

11:21

@AncientSwordRage you hardly notice the irregularity unless pointed out, in which case you shrug and say "ah, yes, it's just one of those words $

kviiri

it's a bit like the glottal stop in English, not necessarily "correct" as in "the way you pronounce the word when you actually think about it", but it's still the way you pronounce many words when in actual speech, as a sort of automatic optimization trick

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@kviiri Are exceptions all etymologically logical, or are some of them just 'random' on a word-by-word basis?

AncientSwordRage

@kviiri I've always been told that the only glottal stop in english is in Uh Oh

kviiri

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica The former – either foreign loans or compound words where the nk or ng happens to be split between the two compounds. I can't think of other cases where it wouldn't be the velar nasal

Also, some words have longer vowels in common speech than the spelling'd indicate – most commonly country names. It's a remnant of Swedish influence

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage I'm not entirely sure that is true. It probably varies by dialect, with the first vowels in a word being likely candidates to be preceded by one.

lisardggY

11:24

John McWhorter likes bringing up on his podcasts all sorts of "you know all those weird exotic things that happen on other languages? Well, here they are in English as well"

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@kviiri Ah, so it's seems not all that confusing for someone who actually knows the words and their morphology well. We have a similar kind of ambiguity in our otherwise orthographic shallowness with дж and дз.

lisardggY

Because "official" English might not have them, but they happen in various dialects, accents and vernaculars.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY There's an official English? My impression has been that Englishmen are extremely antagonistic towards having an actual official form of their language.

lisardggY

English as it is taught in schools, before they tell them that "real vs. slang" is a form of class warfare.

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica except those that speak the 'official form'

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

11:27

@lisardggY That's the thing, from what I've seen, English is taught in schools differently across the world.

@lisardggY That phrase there in the quotes would be an example of the 'Englishmen seem very antagonistic to the concept of official language' observation.

@AncientSwordRage Well, is it really the official form if it varies wildly?

lisardggY

Sure, but for an average American, there is "proper English", whereas regional dialects or sociolects are "informal" or wrong.

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica there is an unofficial official pronounciation called 'Received Pronunciation'

lisardggY

I'm not talking about an institute like in French or Hebrew, but lf a social expectation that a certain form of English is preferred. It's diffrerebt in different places, sure.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage 'Unofficial' undermines the 'official', though.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY Thats the key, different in different places

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica by 'unofficial' I mean there's no government mandated institute

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

11:33

@AncientSwordRage Exactly. There isn't an NGO to whose standards the Anglophones of the world look up to as the official benchmark either.

AncientSwordRage

yup

lisardggY

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica No, I don't think it does. Social norms and conventions are much stronger than a governing body that has no real power.

@AncientSwordRage It's mainly key to the fact that treating "English" as a single entity is misleading in many contexts.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY They're very limited. Whatever the RP standard establishes in London may be semi-followed by English English, but then gets ignored by forms of Colonial English in New York and Singapore.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY the problem though, is that it's a multi-dimensional continuum, so being separate distinct entities are also impossible to nail down

lisardggY

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica But there are 300 million English speakers in the US. 60 million in the UK. I don't need an international standard when each of these locations are big and interesting enough on their own.

I can talk about how English in the US enforces a "proper English" as a way to reinforce social and ethnic superiority without needing this "proper English" to be the norm in every English speaking country.

Hell, you can make interesting socio-linguistic claims about a single US state, or even city.

AncientSwordRage

11:40

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica My favourite thing, is people assuming words/phrases like "Normalcy" or "do the needful" are new inventions of those who have corrupted english, when actually, they're archaic phrases that persisted past their use in the UK

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY For daily life in one's region, it's unnecessary. For ensuring there are no miscommunication, misunderstanding, or ambiguity when two people from different dialects communicate, or when writing documents that are to be read by future generations or when reading older works, it's helpful to have a well-defined standard.

lisardggY

@AncientSwordRage But why would it need a "Originally spoken in England" stamp of approval, if there wasn't an underlying sentiment that "Indian English is inherently inferior and any neologisms they create are invalid"?

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage Oh yeah, it's interesting how in some ways Colonial Englishes have more reverse-compatible features than English English. IIRC the American accent is somewhat reflective of the 1800s English, and there are phrases in Indian English dialects that English English forgot.

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica much to 'English English's detriment

@lisardggY I'm not making a comment on stamps of approval or inferiority

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage Yeah. Reducing reverse-compatibility is not nice.

AncientSwordRage

11:44

if anything I'm making a point of the arrogance of some people thinking others' aren't speaking 'proper english' when a) that doesn't exist, and b) the thing they think isn't proper is arguably more proper

lisardggY

@AncientSwordRage I know, I'm just saying that defining a "standard language" will, de facto, always be used to define social hierarchy.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica "American accent" is also not really a thing. I think I read that a classic "southern" accent, common in south-eastern states, is the one that is similar to 1800's English.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY I guess it might lead that way, but we're there without an actual 'official' standardisation

@lisardggY I've also heard the australian accent is the cockney/london accent slowed down

lisardggY

@AncientSwordRage And yet, children will be corrected at school for using idiomatic or regional English. "Correct" and "Standard" might be themselves regional (and contemporary), but that doesn't change the fact that they're treated as correct, while other dialects (almost always those of immigrants, lower social classes, etc) are corrected as, at best, "non-standard".

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY I suppose I could've used 'at least some of the North American accents of English, common within the south US of A', had I known how wide or narrow the reverse-compatibility of pronunciations was.

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica There's also the mid-atlantic accent

transatlantic?

lisardggY

11:49

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica The issue I have with standardization is that it inevitably leads either into irrelevance (e.g. Esperanto as a standard language, or the Hebrew Language Academy, whose neologisms are often treated as ridiculous), or to an attempt to straightjacket language and culture into a a narrow, approved list.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY My point is, people are doing this without a standalone official guide to that, adding something in that 'approved' of regional variations would be better than nothing

lisardggY

Or, in things like IPA, into a technical jargon.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY Ultimately, language is a tool. A communication protocol. Its purpose is conveying meanings across time and space. Value judgements like 'ridiculous' are highly subjective. So long as a nation can practice self-determination in establishing a standard that can minimise chance of misunderstandings when conveying meanings across time and space, it's nice to have that standard coexist with the many non-standardised dialects.

2

lisardggY

@AncientSwordRage I don't think it will be, because a standards body will either reinforce the existing dominant cultural approach (in which case it will exacerbate any problems there might be) or it might go against them, in which case it will be ignored by many. Just like you can't really fix inter-player problems with in-game mechanics.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY but it doesn't have to, we're just shifting the blame onto the standards body not the people behind it.

lisardggY

11:53

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica It's a communication protocol that is self-adjusting and ever-changing. "ridiculous" is subjective, but everything about language is subjective. "A nation" can practice self determination in establishing a standard because it wants to squash down on its minorities, for instance.

nitsua60

@AncientSwordRage nuh-uh =)

AncientSwordRage

@nitsua60 UH-HUH!

lisardggY

@AncientSwordRage Not shifting the blame, just saying why I think a standards body is not the right solution.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY is there a solution then? (is there a problem in the first place?)

lisardggY

@AncientSwordRage There are many problems, different ones, ni different places. :)

I'm just suspicious of standardization of language as a solution to any of them. Because language is almost never the problem, it's often just a symptom of the problem (which might be racial or ethnic or social inequality, or something else)

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

11:56

A protocol that randomly changes meanings of signals across time and space is OK ad hoc, but is terrible for conveying meanings into distant lands and far future.

(Also, unfortunately, often, a nation's self-determination is undermined, like how it happened with the way Russians forcefully and deliberately edited languages of other nations within their forcefully-multinational state.)

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY I guess as I don't have experience with language standardisation, I'm thinking of it as more like 'documentation' than anytingelse

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica "This is not a place of honour" and all that

Long-time nuclear waste warning messages

Long-time nuclear waste warning messages are intended to deter human intrusion at nuclear waste repositories in the far future, within or above the order of magnitude of 10,000 years. Nuclear semiotics is an interdisciplinary field of research, first done by the Human Interference Task Force in 1981. A 1993 report from Sandia National Laboratories recommended that any such message should comprise four levels of increasing complexity: Level I: Rudimentary Information: "Something man-made is here" Level II: Cautionary Information: "Something man-made is here and it is dangerous" Level III: Basic...

lisardggY

@AncientSwordRage That's a very "neutral" view of language as simply a way to convey thought. But language is tied very closely to culture, social class, race and identity. And seeing as most modern nations contain a mix of many different identities, often smushed together by modernity or colonialism or conquest or ideology and pretending to be a single national identity.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY but you can document all of those closely tied things at the same time

lisardggY

So standardizing language is part of the process of standardizing identity, which... sometimes worked? And often didn't?

AncientSwordRage

heck, teach non-standard english in class

but to teach it, you need to have it documented

"This dialect arose because of these things"

etc

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

12:01

/me is unsure whether it has just been exposed to an act of veiled Sapir-Whorfism.

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica that's a whole 'nother kettle of badgers

Sapir-Whorf is largely discredited

lisardggY

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Nah, quite the opposite. Language doesn't change your cognition, but it's an expression of your identity.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY Ah, OK.

lisardggY

Hmm, I see what you meant. Yes, I do think that when a country squashes a langauge or dialect, there's a Sapir-Whorfian element here in that it tries to eliminate the identity of that language's speakers. But still, it's not a question of cognition but of identity, which is a claim I can stand behind. :)

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY I should point out that I am not in any way advocating squashing of dialect. My stance has always been a preference for the reverse-compatible far-reaching standard and the highly fluid nonstandard to exist side by side.

AncientSwordRage

12:18

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Do we need a tech-lang, that focuses on being future proof and being universally translatable? I think neither is possible

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage 'Universally translatable' seems a pretty low bar achieved by almost any 'complete' (but not in a Turing kind of way ^_^ ) language.

Future-proofness cannot be perfect. You will need to add new terms sooner or later for new tech.

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica but they can be made by using existing words

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

But having a framework whose new terms are mostly predictable from a functional PoV seems viable.

AncientSwordRage

Navajo is famously loan-word resistant

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage Easier said than done.

I mean, it can be done, but whether it will be transparent without hindsight is something I'm less confident in.

AncientSwordRage

12:22

> For example, the phrase for English tank is chidí naa'naʼí beeʼeldǫǫhtsoh bikááʼ dah naaznilígíí 'vehicle that crawls around, by means of which big explosions are made, and that one sits on at an elevation'.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica oh yeah, not easy

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage Ah, yeah, that's actually a pretty good one. Descriptive. Yes, this is one of the ways such a language should behave for 'future-proofing'. Obviously this can get slow, but we're already hypothesising something in which precursors would talk to the species of the next Reaper cycle, not something for everyday vernacular use.

AncientSwordRage

Agreed

Toki Pona also has this feature

RevenantBacon

12:40

@AncientSwordRage Considering how humans tend to behave, I could see this method backfiring, but it's also super cool to read about.

lisardggY

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Ah, of course, I'm sorry if it seemed I was saying you were.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY I was more worried that I gave the wrong impression.

AncientSwordRage

@RevenantBacon fully agreed

AncientSwordRage

13:00

Hey everybody

It must be 'logging onto RPG Chat' O'clock

CollinB

Sounds about right

Thomas Markov

@AncientSwordRage yup.

AncientSwordRage

@ThomasMarkov woop woop

Bardic Wizard

@AncientSwordRage pretty much (for me it’s “waking up” o’clock too)

nitsua60

13:25

8d

Dice Service

•

AncientSwordRage

13:36

@BardicWizard it's a good morning routine

AncientSwordRage

13:57

@nitsua60 thats not a bad roll

Bardic Wizard

14:13

@nitsua60 what’s that one for?

AncientSwordRage

@BardicWizard it's a face

8-p

but tongue up

CollinB

14:35

8d6

Dice Service

•

CollinB

4d6rr1

Rip

AncientSwordRage

15:17

@CollinB I don't think our dice work that way

nitsua60

15:39

@BardicWizard Rearranging questions on a quiz. I'd picked them out in book-order, but wanted them scrambled a bit.

MikeQ

But that means any of your students who are avid RPG.SE chat users will know the answers!

nitsua60

They'll know what order the questions were in, at least....

MikeQ

Yes and that will boost their scores by +50%, because knowing is half the battle

nitsua60

Yo, Joe!

Bardic Wizard

16:12

... what’s this a reference to?

NautArch

@BardicWizard G.I. Joe

Bardic Wizard

16:26

@NautArch ... never heard of it

NautArch

Big 80s franchise

Thomas Markov

@NautArch The 80s was the relaunch.

MikeQ

Didn't they make a live action adaptation in the 2000s-2010s, like they did with Transformers and TMNT?

Thomas Markov

@MikeQ Yup.

AncientSwordRage

@BardicWizard ::blink blink::

Thomas Markov

16:30

With Channing Tatum in the lead role

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov I'm not sure how big it was originally.

Thomas Markov

Big enough to be one of the running gags in That 70s Show lol

MikeQ

The "kung fu grip" GI Joe action figures were introduced in the 70s. But the cartoon show started in the 80s.

Thomas Markov

Yeah, the toys were big enough to make a TV show out of.

Hot RPG Questions

2

Q: What happens when an unconscious creature fails their saving throw against a Banshee's Wail?

A Banshee (MM, p. 23) has the Wail action: Wail (1/Day). The banshee releases a mournful wail, provided that she isn’t in sunlight. This wail has no effect on constructs and undead. All other creatures within 30 feet of her that can hear her must make a DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a fail...

dnd-5e monsters saving-throw unconscious

Bardic Wizard

16:41

@AncientSwordRage I’m a highschooler with no interest in pretty much anything from after the very early 1900s that isn’t Star Trek or RPG related.

AncientSwordRage

17:51

@BardicWizard that's completely fair

Hot RPG Questions

18:21

4

Q: How does Sanctuary interact with "reflected" damage?

Through a peculiar course of events with a touch of homebrew, my cleric got to learn the spell Armor of Agathys. As a regular user of the Sanctuary spell, I wondered how these spells would interact in the following situation: Casting Sanctuary on myself as soon as fight starts Casting Armor of A...

dnd-5e spells

Thomas Markov

19:06

@BardicWizard Doctor Who?

Someone_Evil

@ThomasMarkov doctor-who-roleplaying-game

lisardggY

@ThomasMarkov I don't know if 1962 counts as "very early 1900s".

Thomas Markov

@lisardggY ...it certainly counts as after the early 1900s though

Bardic Wizard

@ThomasMarkov I’ve heard of it. Haven’t gotten to watch it yet since it’s not on anything I can watch. It’s on the list of things I want to watch though

kviiri

Jazz and rock were invented after the early 1900's tho

And board gaming made significant advancements, especially in terms of "euro games" geared towards adults

MikeQ

19:17

D&D was invented after the early 1900s. Also the internet.

kviiri

[citation maybe not needed]

Thomas Markov

D&D is almost certainly rpg related

Bardic Wizard

Okay, excepting the internet and what I have said before

and actually i can add Star Wars to that list too

And I never said I’ve never heard of anything after that era, merely that I don’t have an interest

kviiri

I play the ragtime piano and people come to me saying that it sounds like the Wild West

"That's twenty years too early my friend"

Others come to me and tell me it sounds like a Prohibition era speakeasy

Thomas Markov

@kviiri "I don't know whether to start a shoot out in the street or overcharge my friends for rent in my Boardwalk Hotel."

kviiri

19:26

...which is twenty years too late. Or not maybe that much, but still decidedly

RevenantBacon

Idea generation time: villains, thugs, and various gangster concepts needed. I'm working on a campaign where the payers are basically the city watch in an extremely high magic setting (like Eberron up to eleven). City size is borderline metropolis, so basically anything goes

nitsua60

Check out the comic Top10.

They're supers-cops in a supers-city.

RevenantBacon

One of my ideas is that one of the noble families has been replaced by a clan of dopplegangers

nitsua60

Top 10 (comics)

Top 10 is a superhero comic book limited series published by the America's Best Comics imprint of Wildstorm, itself an imprint of DC Comics. Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Gene Ha and Zander Cannon, the series details the lives and work of the police force of Neopolis, a city in which almost everyone, from the police and criminals to civilians, children and even pets, has super powers and/or colourful costumes. The series led to the production of several spin-offs; Smax, which was set directly after the series' conclusion; Top 10: The Forty-Niners, which is set in 1949; Top Ten: Beyond...

(Dropped a link, because it turns out googling "top 10" gets you a whole lotta top tens of things....)

MikeQ

What about a noble family who's just influential and manipulative and has mob connections?

RevenantBacon

19:36

@nitsua60 shocking

@MikeQ that broadly describes most of the rest of them

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: How to explain to AD&D player that items that increase Armor Class in DnD5e are overpowered?

Context: I have recently started a campaign with a new player that comes from AD&D background. He wishes to convert and import his character to the campaign. We do that once, I help him with the conversion and checked his stuff, he got 2 magical items lvl3 a bit much but I didn't mind they were n...

dnd-5e adnd-2e armor-class

MikeQ

Hm. What if a noble family was replaced by dopplegangers, but the dopple-family is less of a corrupting factor? Dunno if they'd be especially villainous villains, but it could be an interesting plot element.

@RevenantBacon What sort of themes do you want? Would the major threats come from internal factors (crime/corruption/people) or external factors (cults/demons/aliens/etc)?

RevenantBacon

@MikeQ Like I said, it's a borderline metropolis sized city, so anything goes really. For reference, I already have the aforementioned dopplegangers, a black dragon living in the sewers that runs a kobold-based extortion ring, and there are at least two rival arcane colleges in the city that have (magical) frat wars on a regular basis

There's also at least one wizard who's breaking city ordinances by summoning and making pacts with chaotic outsiders (lawful is OK though, but you need a license) and an advocacy group for goblin rights that have recently come under new leadership that's less peaceful protest than those they succeeded

Thomas Markov

19:54

Adventuring party A is investigating a string of break ins and tavern brawls in one part of the city, frequently breaking in to dwellings and starting fights themselves. The thing is, they are investigating Adventuring Party B, who is responsible for the break ins and tavern brawls trying to track down...Adventuring Party A.

Bardic Wizard

Let’s see... a Druid Rebellion that’s growing trees and doing other druid-y things to get some group of nature-defilers to start leaving the city

Thomas Markov

@RevenantBacon My table is already correct re: your comment

Bardic Wizard

or would that be leaf-ing the city

RevenantBacon

@ThomasMarkov Oof, missed that bit lol, was just seeing the last two and was like "hold on a second there"

Thomas Markov

Column 4 is C3/C2

Rather, 1-C3/C2

Bardic Wizard

19:59

What about a motorcycle gang, but it turns out it’s really just a couple of wizards with major image

RevenantBacon

@BardicWizard That's funny, I'm totally using it

Bardic Wizard

@RevenantBacon I’ve done this before, want more from the list?

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: What happens to an abjurer's Arcane Ward when they fail the saving throw against a Banshee's Wail?

An abjuration wizard has the Arcane Ward class feature (PHB, p. 115): Starting at 2nd level, you can weave magic around yourself for protection. When you cast an abjuration spell of 1st level or higher, you can simultaneously use a strand of the spell's magic to create a magical ward on yourself...

dnd-5e monsters class-feature wizard unconscious

4

Q: Can a ghost possess someone in the material plane while in the ethereal plane?

The possession ability of a ghost (DnD 5e) states that it can possess one humaniod it can see within 5ft. I interpreted that a ghost could use its possession ability from the etherial plane itself, since the ghost is visible on the material when in the etherial plane and as such can see the creat...

dnd-5e monsters ethereal-plane possession

7

Q: What happens when a dying abjurer with an Arcane Ward active is attacked?

An abjuration wizard has the Arcane Ward class feature (PHB, p. 115): Starting at 2nd level, you can weave magic around yourself for protection. When you cast an abjuration spell of 1st level or higher, you can simultaneously use a strand of the spell's magic to create a magical ward on yourself...

dnd-5e class-feature wizard unconscious

RevenantBacon

@BardicWizard Gimme anything you think is fun

Bardic Wizard

@RevenantBacon give me a bit to find the notes

Some favorites: some idiot from the local magic school tests an alcohol based explosive at a bar

A group of bards rob a bank using songs to distract everyone

any local pickpocket stole a cleric’s holy symbol

A noble at a party lost a magic item behind the couch and thinks it was stolen. They’re also very drunk

A sorcerer, trying to show they could get by in a wizard school, accidentally blew up the school. Again.

MikeQ

20:09

Using other adventurers as a source of conflict can work well. You can also use them as foils, to demonstrate actions or approaches that you don't what players to do.

Bardic Wizard

A smuggling ring for magic items/familiars/magical animals run by the thieves’ guild/rogues/druids/wizards

magical geneticists involved in illegal breeding

a group of thieves stealing make up — the rouges’ guild

Thomas Markov

A gender fluid dragon who uses non-binary pronouns is fed up with being referred to as "he" in all the legends and wants to teach the local populace a lesson about respect.

Bardic Wizard

I have more somewhere but they exist on a different device

RevenantBacon

@BardicWizard Ooooo, this one sounds good too

@BardicWizard This one I could work in nicely

MikeQ

A magical city setting could have some interesting con artists. Maybe a "curse support" scam.

RevenantBacon

20:15

I'm writing all of these down, they are amazing

Thomas Markov

Is it a coastal city?

MikeQ

"Your mage tower has a real bad mimic infestation. High CR stuff. Too dangerous to investigate by yourself. Just send us 200 gp and give us access to your teleportation sigils and we'll take of it for ya."

Bardic Wizard

Or, as happened to me once, a bard’s performance gets excessive noise complaints

MikeQ

Maybe some scammers use sending for spam and phishing.

Thomas Markov

If its a coastal city: one shipping company has hired a wizard to polymorph-bomb the ships of a rival shipping company. Witnesses deemed unreliable have stated seeing an enormous whale falling from the sky onto ships moored at the harbor.

Bardic Wizard

20:20

The old standby: two rogues are running a rigged shell game/other rigged game on the corner

MikeQ

@ThomasMarkov It's much easier to swim under and then disintegrate into the hull.

Thomas Markov

@MikeQ Sure, but that just screams "a wizard disintegrated the hull". A whale falling from the sky is obfuscation by absurdity.

MikeQ

For rigging games, the artists would need to get real clever, considering that the passersby (and intended victim of the con) may have access to magic too.

Bardic Wizard

It’s not always with magic...

Thomas Markov

"I swear, I saw a whale fall out of the sky and destroy the ship"

"I think you were way too drunk last night".

Bardic Wizard

20:22

Rival food-sellers start a food fight in the streets

Thomas Markov

@BardicWizard animate objects spell makes plastic cutlery lethal

Bardic Wizard

Identical twins, a paladin and an anti-paladin. The anti-paladin blames crimes on their twin.

Some kid buys an artifact that disappeared by the time they woke up

Hot RPG Questions

6

Q: Is there need for messengers in DnD 5e, if spell Sending exists?

In my campaign (DnD 5e) I would like to send players on a quest to save a kidnapped person. The person has high value information. He/she was ambushed and taken prisoner. My question is: is there a logical reason for sending a person to deliver a message instead of using 3rd level spell Sending? ...

dnd-5e campaign-development story world-building narration

MikeQ

@ThomasMarkov How much do you want this fictional city to reflect real-world conflicts and themes?

Bardic Wizard

A hag moves into a neighborhood and the local school starts losing kids

MikeQ

20:29

Or conversely, some kids start going missing, and the locals point fingers at a hag who recently moved in nearby. She's innocent, but there's enough anti-hag sentiment that she wouldn't get a fair trial if the case goes unsolved.

Bardic Wizard

Someone’s petrified all the rulers of the city and the blame falls on a local Medusa, when it’s actually some upstart kid, Perseus

RevenantBacon

@MikeQ Well, for one, the overall background magic might make Detect Magic slightly less reliable, but cons that don't require magic and instead rely on sleight of hand would still likely be better.

Bardic Wizard

Some bards get into a battle of the bands at the local high school

RevenantBacon

unrealted side note, does anyone know off the top of their head what the lowest monster AC in 5e is? I'm guessing it's somewhere around 8

@BardicWizard One of the less destructive frat fights, but still violates the noise ordinances lol

MikeQ

Black Pudding has AC 7.

Bardic Wizard

20:35

Some guy, Martin Luther or something, is arrested for vandalism after pinning a bunch of pamphlets on the local church’s door

RevenantBacon

@BardicWizard naming him Martin Luther might be a bit too on the nose

@MikeQ Awesome, thanks

Bardic Wizard

@RevenantBacon Luther Martin, perhaps?

RevenantBacon

I was just making up a table for attack bonus vs AC hit chance and i wanted to have an idea of where to floor it. Related, does anything have an attack bonus in the negatives?

MikeQ

Most of these examples seem to variants of an individual someone does something disruptive. Which is fine, but all of them are external factors, and don't really leverage the internal factors that you have available when worldbuilding a city setting.

Bardic Wizard

alternatively, this non-wizard who calls himself a “fizzy-cyst” is promoting anti-Pelor propaganda

named Galileo

Thomas Markov

20:39

@RevenantBacon dndbeyond.com/monsters/shrieker

AC 5

There are 3 creatures in the Monster Manual with an AC of 5

Bardic Wizard

the thieves guild and the nobles are involved in a feud that’s lasted a month, and they really need to make up for the good of the city

MikeQ

@ThomasMarkov That makes more sense. Minimum dex mod is -5. So the lowest unmodified AC should be 10- 5 = 5.

RevenantBacon

Hey @ThomasMarkov , how did you come up with that math for the %effectiveness increase?

Thomas Markov

P(AC21)/P(AC23)-1

Say bonus to hit is +3

AC21 gets hit 15% of attacks, AC23 gets hit 5% of attacks.

This means AC21 gets hit three times as often as AC23

Which in terms of marginal change is 200%.

GcL

@ThomasMarkov Isn't the minimum hit rate on any AC 5%?

Thomas Markov

20:47

@GcL Correct.

Say hit is +2. AC21 gets hit 10% of the time, AC23 only 5%. This means AC21 gets hit twice as often as AC23, so AC23 is a 100% improvement over AC21.

MikeQ

@GcL Would the minimum hit rate be lower with disadvantage?

Thomas Markov

@MikeQ Yes

If you AC is high enough that only a nat20 hits, then the hit rate would be 1/400 = 0.25% if the attack has disadvantage.

GcL

I wouldn't calculate it like that as it's a situational modifier. I don't think there's an effect that gives all attackers disadvantage under all circumstances and over-rules any advantage.

I mean, min hit rate is 0% if you consider situational modifications... like not being present.

MikeQ

I assume we are trying to calculate minimum P(hit | attack), so not being present wouldn't apply

Oh, there's also miss chance from stuff other than disadvantage, like Armor of Hexes. That would reduce it by another 50%.

GcL

Being hidden and not in the square that got attacked works pretty well. Attackers can still attack you, they just have to guess where you are first.

If you're not there, they're still attacking you... they just have no chance to hit you.

SmokeDetector

20:58

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in answer, pattern-matching website in answer, potentially problematic ns configuration in answer (160): How do Mushroom Vest and Boots of the Cat work together? by asad on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

kviiri

If we're discussing the impact of different levels of armor on getting hit, I think we can rule special cases like that out.

GcL

I concur. Same with advantage and disadvantage. No situational modifiers.

kviiri

21:17

Eh.

At least advantage and disadvantage occur fairly frequently and more importantly, don't completely trivialize the actual problem being solved.

GcL

Including the situation of not being present doesn't trivialize the problem. It just set the floor probability to 0% instead of 5%

Bardic Wizard

21:40

@GcL but can you be attacked if you aren’t present?

... oh, this talks about hiding, etc, whereas I thought it meant not being at the battle

RobertF

21:57

I just saw this story: https://www.geeknative.com/79415/midnight-legacy-of-darkness-confirmed-for-dd-5e/

Very exciting, I've always wanted to play in the Midnight D&D setting although it is a very bleak world.

kviiri

22:38

@GcL If the question is about the relative effectiveness of armor, it's an unproductive side track.

Adeptus

23:09

@AncientSwordRage Atomic priesthoods and ray cats... wow

AncientSwordRage

23:55

@Adeptus yup, it's pretty rad

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