@Ben not great; my singing group for school was supposed to have a video together for the virtual open mic today and things went kinda badly
Not enough people submitted the audio submissions, 1/3 of those who did needed to redo it cause the alto part track doesn’t match the soprano 1 tempo, and we literally only filled one solo cause the people putting in the work are mostly altos and us altos only had one solo to do and most of us can’t hit the soprano solo
and the video submission deadline for open mic is at 5 and it’s 4:16
@AncientSwordRage You've asked a question about a technology that we as a species haven't developed into a viable prototype and said "why would a civilization with bronze age technology who depends entirely on agriculture to survive develop this technology?". As we, with our current level of technology, don't have a concrete idea of the limitations of such a technology, it's hard to imagine what a society so far down the tech tree would have a need for circuits...
...before things like reduction of labour required to produce the food stock (ala modern farming). Based on our understanding of silicon based electronics though, high levels of precision and engineering are required to make a circuit that works. Even simple circuits require resistors and/or logic gates to do computation.
@BardicWizard War of Ashes: The Fate of Agaptus by Sophie Lagacé is a fantasy adventure setting/system that adapts Fate to high-crunch tactial combat without losing the character/motive-driven elements of Fate. Its tone is described as "grimsical;" think "the Muppets do Game of Thrones."
@AncientSwordRage I think both the question and the answers are struggling with the idea of technology as a hierarchy, with our specific development path being a default order rather than just the one we stumbled onto.
So, your question pre-supposes that the society has created (by accident or by design) those components, but is somehow limited to bronze age technology whose economy is agriculture based. From an amount of work per head of population required, a big part of the reason we flourish as a society now, is that we have freed up time to enable the people who are better at thinking to think for a living instead of digging up the ground for a living.
@illustro I don't think I'm asking why, but if it were developed/discovered serendipitously what is the first problem as a society they'd try to solve with it if any
@Shalvenay that's one of the answers and it's pretty darn good
To give you an example, in the 1400s, in our society, between 50 and 75% of all employment was in the production of food. That doesn't leave a lot of the mental capacity of the spieces left fr non-food related work
As some of that left-over needs to go to clothing people, and reproducing...and then of course there was the horrific death rates and low levels of mortality in a pre-industrial society that hasn't discovered bacteria or anti-biotics
I think part of the reason I didn't really want to anchor it in a time or place, is that I did not want the answers to be "this would used to defeat invaders/wipe out plague/make rugs for royalty X"
True, but you also introduced the idea of electrical circuitry to your question by mentioning cable bacteria (whose job is conducting electricity in the hypothetical circuit)
So, you've tied the question to an electrical engineering topic, but said "you don't have access to electrical engineering"
@illustro alternate pasta can develop practices at different times. The practice of Electrical engineering arose because of the study of electronics not the other way round?
IF you want someone, without that knowledge, to design a circuit by growing bacteria (which require a level of technology that is quite high to know about in the first place), then you need to give them a pre-ciruit reason to have produced circuits like that in the first place
@AncientSwordRage Off the very top of my head, astronomy and architecture would get a MASSIVE boost from automated counting tools.
Astronomy and weather patterns would feed into agricultural efficacy, and the ability to calculate things like architectural loads and heat exchange would lead to more advanced and efficient designs for homes and storage. Might wind up with stuff like yakhchāls, bâdgir, and qanat thousands of years ahead of our progress. See also: more efficient energy systems like windmills and waterwheels.
@Shalvenay you need some way to compute, and if you are using electricity (which the question is), then you need resistors. If you are using something else, then you need some form of logic gate, though which to apply the logic of the circuit (regardless of what is flowing through it)
But, yes, like @BESW said, if you want things that an agrarian society would use such circuitry for once it has been discovered (regardless of the mechanism of the circuit itself) then counting things is going to be the first thing anyone would want to do...because counting things is hard for a brain to do accurately
@illustro that is an excellent point, but I'm happy into chalk it up to either dumb luck, eons of chance, or something else that makes sense. Its not an insurmountable problem in my eyes
I'm not buying the notion that agricultural societies are necessarily limited to agriculture-based brainpower. That just seems like an oversimplificiation at best.
And even if it weren't, agricultural-focused thinking is still big on logic, deduction, and the physical sciences.
@AncientSwordRage And many kinds of electric flow can often be modeled as roughly equivalent to hydraulic flow; you can actually make hydraulic logic circuits and resistors. And if there's anything you can be ding-dang sure an agrarian society's thinking about constantly, it's the flow of water.
@BESW It's more a question of opportunity cost. If 75% of your population is making food, 15% is caring for the next generation who will make food or producing the tools required to make food, and 5% is the children unavailable for work, then there isn't a whole lot of population left of an appreciable age.
I'm just gonna lift this from Wikipedia because I'm not gonna do any more effort than that for this tangent.
> Agriculture allows a much greater density of population than can be supported by hunting and gathering and allows for the accumulation of excess product to keep for winter use or to sell for profit. The ability of farmers to feed large numbers of people whose activities have nothing to do with material production was the crucial factor in the rise of surplus, specialization, advanced technology, hierarchical social structures, inequality, and standing armies. Agrarian societies thus support the emergence of a more complex social structure.
@Shalvenay Neurons sort of do (in that there are one or more "activation states" of a neuron, and the actual flow between neurons is chemical not electrical). While it may not fall into a binary form of logic gate, there is definitely something analagous to a gate in a neuron)
So yeah, an automated counting tool would allow for even further complexity and speed in social undertakings... but I'd be cautious about assuming that speed would be a major factor in its appeal and the decision to apply it to a given task.
Oh definitely, agriculture enables an emergence of a more complex society by virtue of both a more consistent and plannable food supply, and an increase in your population (due to the plannable food supply). It also produces an impetus to produce technology that reduces the effort required for agriculture, freeing up more people to do non-agriculture based things (because agriculture is hard, back-breaking work without tech...)
The modern ubiquity of computing machines in all manner of roles comes from the valuing of automated speed over human judgement, and that was a cultural value. The integration of mechanical computation into society might have taken a very different path if it had been developed in a different set of attitudes.
@AncientSwordRage Personally if I was gonna do worldbuilding around plant-based computation, I'd avoid cable bacteria in favor of root networks' ability to filter and distribute chemicals and minerals.
Slower, perhaps MUCH slower, but with a lot more variables than electricity because inputs and outputs could be any kind of chemical you can feed into the network, and any kind of plant behaviour that influences the network or is influenced by it, rather than being limited to electricity's small number of qualities like on/off and frequency.
@Adeptus The reason I was focusing on electricity was because the question we were talking about pre-supposed electricity (via cable bacteria). There are definitely other ways of doing computation (ala abacus).
I love this idea, because biotech was some of our very earliest complex technology. It makes a lot of sense that an alternate history would have delved even further into breeding and domesticating plants and bacteria for specialized use.
@BESW I bought The Thousand Cousins yesterday (haven't read through it yet). I was looking at about 20 items on sale on itch.io, ended up just getting a few.
Does anyone know of a good recording of Mozart’s requiem mass, specifically the dies irae portion, on the internet for free? Youtube keeps giving me things that aren’t actually what I’m looking for and ogg files on wikimedia commons won’t play on my phone anymore
My table's reaction after they managed to survive&win a boss encounter against a guy with 300HP, 20AC, who opened combat by trying to twin-cast Power Word: Kill against two party members:
Does a Rogue with Cardsharp (Deadly Dealer) need the Quick Draw feat to keep throwing cards if he is holding the deck of cards if he has more attacks per round?
So so many things. I haven't been here in ages, have I? On the role playing front, I've dug deeply into Cyber- and other punk games earlier this year, and now I'm delving into travel&coming-of-age.
Oh!
And I meant to ask you whether you have any good pointers for safety tools in online games.
I've been looking for an opportunity to try the cyberpunk game Balikbayan: Returning Home by Jamila R. Nedjadi. It's a techno-supernatural Filipino game about returning to Earth and reclaiming it while throwing off dystopian conditioning.
And re: travel, Wanderhome by Possum Creek is looking really good.
I have seen Balikbayan that popping up while looking for Belonging-outside-Belonging games, and it did not capture my interest as much as other games in that family, but one of my friends also found it. Wanderhome is high on my list, only beaten by Flying Circus because that same friend is into aviation and 20th century history and stuff, so it won out.
I was somewhat part to a Fiasco game last week, and that showed a severe lack of tools to establish consent. I was late and someone else had done the explanations and the setup and in the post-game discussion when I asked they realized they had only vaguely explained how to establish common ground and how to veil or veto sensitive content.
There were definitely moments when I refrained from suggesting things or felt awkward for things going on in the scene and didn't know how it could be X-ed by others or by me, and as it turned out there had been no established ways to do it. So I thought you might know some ways that work and some ways that don't work in the vein of translating X-cards and other tools to online play.
I have not really played sensitive-rich games online with people I don't know well from face-2-face games, so I'm a bit at a loss.
I've been struggling with this myself, and it really hammers home the inescapable fact that safety tools can empower a group's willingness to care for each other--but never force it or replace it.
I have yet to see any online-specific tools that seemed useful.
But you might consider whether The Buddy System is a useful structure to add to your table.
In my games, we're usually playing with Discord voice-and-chat, and we use Script Change's buttons as both verbal cues ("pause") and server-specific custom emojis, so people use voice or chat as they need.
It's... not great? I want to do more.
Oh, and check out Wanderhome's "Journeying Tools." It's not tailored for online play but I think it's a super helpful way to frame safety conversations as social scripts:
@Ben This is all UK based, but initially I was referred to an 'Educational Psychologist' from my GP. Now I'm trying to find someone via my GP but not luck so far
The Guardian Spirit deliberately creates a liminal space that is both in character and out of character, as the player needs. This is supposed to make it easier to "interrupt" play, because it's still part of the game.
In any case, some general pointers (we are currently game hopping quite a bit) are already better than wanting to establish consent and comfort without knowing how.
I've recently struggled in games where I know everybody's supportive, but I'm so used to being the GM that I don't know how to self-advocate without just taking over.
There've been a few instances in recent games where I felt like a GM was, in their hurry to support specific players' requests, not giving time for the whole table to calibrate to the changes.
I'm going to be facilitating a GMless game (Wanderhome) soon, which will be interesting, and at some point in the near future it looks like I'll be filling a sort of "table manager" role so the GM can focus on the gameplay.
We haven't nailed down details yet, but I'll be offering to help with session pacing like taking breaks and ending with time to do a debrief, doing check-ins to make sure everyone's okay and not confused, calibrating expectations, and probably some bookkeeping tasks as well.
One of the biggest improvements I've ever had at any of my tables (ping @Anaphory ) was making sure to wrap up the gameplay part of a session with at least fifteen minutes to reflect, recap, congratulate, complain, and plan, without anyone feeling pressured to wrap it it up fast because they have to be somewhere.
(And also making time at the beginning helps a lot too, but that wrap session is absolutely crucial. If it's rushed, people won't bring up sensitive concerns and needs until the situation has already become a dire problem.)
Just... making space for people to talk comfortably... is massive.
Wanderhome also sounds interesting because it does yet another distribution of ‘traditional GM responsibility’ among players. Although it doesn't sound like it would address your problem of divesting your ‘suggestive story power’.
Safety tools, mostly, are ways to pry open those spaces and give explicit permission to speak, and structure to the speech, for people/groups who would otherwise feel like they were interrupting or not be sure how to express their needs.
eg, every Wanderhome character sheet has the Journeying Tools listed right there in the same space as all the powers and features and moves the character has access to during play.
I didn't notice the need in myself or the people around me until I made space for it to come out. Not saying it's the same for you, but--my own experience is that a lot of problems just remain as a buildup of irritants because we don't know how to ask for solutions; for me it sometimes doesn't even occur to me that something IS a thing that could be fixed, it just feels like an inevitable part of the game experience that I need to endure if I'm going to play at all.
@illustro And I thought folding laundry was a chore
I started thinking up my generation ship/heist novel as a simple easy to write story, and I'm dragging myself more and more into the world building and realising I have more important/sensitive topics to cover than I realised
@ThomasMarkov A distinction between a hollow sphere and a full one are not something that would be a consideration for Wizards. In common English, a sphere is not specifically a hollow item, and only references the surface shape, not whether it is hollow or not.
@Medix2 These optional rules and variants as written will apply the diagonal rule to one (when measuring a range), but not when applying an area of effect (such as a sphere). The latter uses shape overlap (over half) to determine distance or not
I suppose, technically that's probably correct, but that's only because you're measuring from the edge of a creatures space rather than a point centered on the creature.
IF the creature is not in the Area of Effect then there is a creature shaped hole in the middle of that AoE diagram.
But even so, for the purposes of drawing diagrams on squares and hexes, the rule is, regardless of shape "Choose an intersection of squares or hexes as the point of origin of an area of effect, then follow it's rules as normal. If an effect is circular and covers at least half a square it affects that square." (DMG adjudicating areas of effect)
In your diagram, you have it originating from the entirety of a square, which is not correct.
Personally, it seems fairly clear that the intent is not for the caster to be affected (otherwise it would at least have some allusion to you doing that to yourself), and my player certainly would expect it, so it doesn't
For the purposes of Arms of Hadar, the caster is not in the area of effect, but any creatures, even those in the caster's square, are within the area of effect (so for example, a tiny pet on your shoulder is in the AoE even if you aren't)
@Someone_Evil Yep, and that's what I've argued for in my answer to the question
@KorvinStarmast I mean it would be thematically appropriate for a certain type of warlock (the paying for power with anything at hand), but that's not one divulged in elsewhere in the game
@RevenantBacon Sure it is, the AoE is described by the spell's description (per the rules). The rules say it is a shape that has a 10ft radius, that erupts from the caster
@illustro We have a question on whether spirit guardians changes AoE size with the caster's size. With votes pointing towards the spell coming from the creature's entire space
@RevenantBacon Actually no they don't "Typically, a point of origin is a point in space, but some spells have an area whose origin is a creature or object."
(PHB)
It is entirely possible for a magical effect to radiate away in all directions from teh entire surface of the caster
There is a difference between what the spell does on a square grid, vs how it acts in Theatre of the Mind btw. The rules saying "pick an intersection" are about translating a spell onto a square or hex grid, not proscribing that all spells must have one of 5 described shapes
And questions about specific spells or magic items (like the first two) cannot be used to generalise to a rule for all spells, because D&D is an inherently exceptions based game, with magic being the most prominent and prolific of them
Can we at least agree that the overwhelming majority of players are going to find the "doesnt affect the caster ruling" to be more conducive to fun play?
I don't really see it as either, as the rules allow for non-standard shapes, specified by the spells description. Just because they also specify rules for 5 common shapes (which they acknowledge are the most common shapes for AoEs), does not mean those are the only shapes possible and therefore we must fit all shapes into those 5 shapes
Maybe this is a bad habit, but when I DM theater of mind I give my distances in intervals. "How far away am I from the goblin?" "Eh, 25 to 30 feet or so."
And when it matters about exact range, like for ranged weapon ranges, I just make a call and usually am lenient toward the player.
@Medix2 I have in games I've DM'd (or at least had to adjudicate it for my players due to "you select a cube's point of origin, which lies anywhere on the face of a cubic effect")
@AncientSwordRage en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumscribed_circle "Not every polygon has a circumscribed circle. A polygon that does have one is called a cyclic polygon, or sometimes a concyclic polygon because its vertices are concyclic. All triangles, all regular simple polygons, all rectangles, all isosceles trapezoids, and all right kites are cyclic"
@illustro That is an entirely non-standard definition of radius. In common English, radius means the distance from a centerpoint to an edge. It is not a measure of a side
I don't know if it's me changing, but questions that make things 'unfun' grind my gears. Yes, you can read things like that, and it may even be 'right'...but dang!
@illustro I would, in fact, describe it a a circle, because in D&D 5e, there are no "cyclic 200-gons". I am making a distinction in standard that 100% applies in English.
@illustro Why would it? It's not necessary for it to state that, because knowledge of the common meaning of a given term is what is required. Using radius to describe any shape that isn't a circle of sphere is outside the common definition
@illustro But then you're going outside the common meaning of the term radius. It's no longer a circle, it's a 15-sided figure.
@illustro Except that is specifically is. The game does not require any advanced math knowledge to be able to be played, so ascribing definitions to things that would only be known by someone who has schooling in advanced math is dubious at best, and more than likely just straight up wrong
This isn't advanced math knowledge, it's a description of how you form the shape
Requiring people to know about angles and side lengths is more advanced than "make a circle and chop the edges off"
Look, I'm not really sure what you are arguing for here. You asserted, that "all areas of effect originate from a point in space" and that radii can only be used for spherical and circular shapes.
An AoE does not have to originate from a singlar point in space (and the rules very explicitly allow for it not doing so)
Does a Rogue with Cardsharp (Deadly Dealer) need the Quick Draw feat to keep throwing cards if he is holding the deck of cards if he has more attacks per round?
