TRPG General Chat

trogdor

1:15 AM

lol

Hot RPG Questions

1:26 AM

2

Q: Does the spell Web work with the Graviturgy Wizard's Gravity Well feature?

The Graviturgy Wizard's Gravity Well feature lets the caster move creatures when casting spells: You’ve learned how to manipulate gravity around a living being: whenever you cast a spell on a creature, you can move the target 5 feet to an unoccupied space of your choice if the target is willing ...

Axoren

1:37 AM

Does anyone remember the term "______ the mage", which used to be a term about focusing and defeating the mage as a priority?

It was an older term from like the 80s

Ben

1:56 AM

Focus on?

No idea tbh lol

Yuuki

gank?

Axoren

It was along the lines of Gank but it was a weirder word

Gank, Gimp, something along those lines

Geek the Mage!

Ben

TIL lol

V2Blast

2:18 AM

@BaconyRevanant Not that surprising to me, haha. I've been not all that active on SE lately. (Mostly just busy with life/other stuff.)

Ben

@V2Blast I know the feeling lol. The last 4 weekends I have had birthdays, family gatherings, and house renovations. I am exhausted

V2Blast

I started a new job early last month, so I've been balancing that with my existing part-time job and other life changes

Sounds like a busy month for both of us!

Ben

@V2Blast Yup, definitely requires some prioritization.

nitsua60

@BESW Alright, I give up. I can't suss out what this festival of onomatopoeia is trying to convey =\

V2Blast

2:35 AM

@nitsua60 I think it's a reference to the Ylvis song "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)"

Ylvis - The Fox (What Does The Fox Say?) [Official music video HD]

►

Axoren

@V2Blast "What does the mod say?!" Needs details or clarity. Needs de-de-details or clarity. Opinion-based op-op-opinion based.

V2Blast

lol

Axoren

The secret of the mods, ancient mystery, somewhere deep in the tags, I know you're hiding!

nitsua60

@V2Blast I, like Pooh, will simply say "aa-aaaa-aah" to convey Understanding, even though he Hasn't Got None.

Axoren

I once based an entire NPC on Stonehenge by Ylvis.

Song gave me such Gnome vibes it was a done deal the second I heard that song.

All their songs are fantastic

Helwar

2:54 AM

I've built dungeons and puzzles according to music I was hearing at the moment....

Axoren

It's great for the creative process, isn't it?

Helwar

I was doing Alexander Raids in final fantasy xiv when I had to design a weird hypercube dungeon, and the solution was going "Forward and back, and then forward and back, and then forward and back, and then one step forward"

FFXIV OST Cruise Chaser Theme / A11 ( Exponential Entropy )

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Axoren

@Helwar Lol

I think on my of DMs had the idea to preserve a long lost society's consciousness in an ancient computer because he was watching Log Horizon at the time and the opening theme just consists of "DATABASE, DATABASE, LIVING IN A DATABASE!"

Helwar

haha

One of my newest players described his character in a way that made me think of Darker than Black and and the beginning of the main theme "Now I lost it, I know I can kill"

and as soon as I made the parallel inspiration came through

xD

Axoren

In my last in-person game, we actually had a hypercube dungeon and I was the only one who could figure out how to map it. I was an Unsanctioned Knowledge Paladin.

In that same game, I learned how to use a Laptop.

Helwar

3:02 AM

@Axoren ingame or in real life? xD

Axoren

Both. The player playing the wizard couldn't figure it out, even though his character should have the Intelligence and knowledge to figure it out.

So, I developed a coordinate system, confirmed I had predictive power, and then taught it to everyone in the party.

Once I started guessing where we were on the map, everyone was like "How the hell?"

Helwar

wow

Axoren

Somewhere in a backup, I have the map.

Helwar

I couldn't have managed to learn to navigate my own Hypercube if I hadn't made it myself

xD

well, I should go to bed before the sun's up

nice talking to you ^^

Axoren

@Helwar An old revision of the map: i.imgur.com/kRsSyYv.png

4 dimensions, Up-Down, East-West, North-South, and !!!-???

We used Z for vertical travel, X for West-East, Y for North-South, and W for the Weird one.

bobble

3:10 AM

makes sense, makes sense

Axoren

And every direction Pac-Man'd in on themselves.

So if you ran 3 rooms in any direction, you ended up back where you started.

bobble

Did the rooms move?

Axoren

No, they didn't. However, things in them did.

Enemies patrolled in 4-dimensions, so until we had a map, we couldn't chase things down or reasonably escape

Between any two rooms, there were a number of paths that lead between them

At one point, we tried barricading the doors, but the enemy would just go around.

bobble

*(vague Ender's Game memories)*

Axoren

My favorite part isn't even that I managed to figure out the dungeon for the party. It's that my character was an Unsanctioned Knowledge Paladin. The implication that Vector Spaces and Laptops are Unsanctioned Knowledge.

"Who taught this Paladin Calculus? They're getting demoted."

"If I see him playing just ONE MORE FLASH GAME between Crusades, I'm gonna take away his magic!"

Yuuki

3:42 AM

does anybody know anything about talespire? one of my friends mentioned that it was coming out in a week and half and they wanted to use it over Roll20

Axoren

Note sure. We switched to FoundryVTT almost a year ago.

bobble

*not

Axoren

^Thate

Looks like a more intentional and focused Isometric 3D tabletop than Virtual Tabletop

Yuuki

@Axoren how is foundry?

Axoren

@Yuuki Spectacular with the right modules. It's still not v1.0 last I checked.

Yuuki

3:45 AM

the thing about talespire is that it seems like everyone needs to buy a copy whereas foundry looks like a one-purchase only (by the DM?)

Axoren

For 5e, things are VERY clean once you have your compendiums setup and there's D&D Beyond integration to fill your Compendiums

Foundry is one-time purchase per license. I footed the full bill and setup a Digital Ocean server to run it on, and we run 3 games a week on it

Foundry hosts a webapp that anyone with the link can connect to, and then you just give them credentials for the campaign that is currently active

It has a much better lighting engine, with better vision, and token management is cleaner and delegable to players. Player lights a torch? They can change their own vision. You can also check a player's vision by selecting them.

There's also measurement templates built in.

And if you're learned in the ways of Node.js, you can write your own plug-ins for it.

Yuuki

hmmm

Axoren

The things we used the most of out of it is the Compendium system, which is like just a bag of things that fall under one category. Items, Creatures, etc.

Once you've statted up Dire Wolves? They have a character sheet that you can import by clicking and dragging onto the map.

Want to give out +1 weapons? You can drag them directly into player inventories.

And I don't use D&D Beyond integration, but some of the other DMs do. I'm pretty sure you can import creatures sheets directly from D&D Beyond

They have their own compendium associated with your campaign encounters on D&DBeyond

That all being said. It looks like Talespire is a very different experience. FoundryVTT seems to cater to 2D Flat games, whereas Talespire is trying to emulate the Table experience.

Yuuki

yeah, it looks like it's trying to provide a more immersive experience that might not be as fully-featured

Axoren

Talespire looks swag. If you end up trying it with your friend, let me know how it goes.

Foundry was a blessing for our group, but that's because we were in Roll20 hell.

Even Maptool is an improvement.

Hot RPG Questions

5:28 AM

3

Q: If you transmute Ennervation to another element, do you still benefit from the healing?

If you transmute Ennervation to another element, do you still benefit from the healing? The spell reads as follows: Whenever the spell deals damage to a target, you regain hit points equal to half the amount of necrotic damage the target takes. But considering the healing aspect is a vital part...

dnd-5e spells magic sorcerer metamagic

A. B.

7:00 AM

(from Mnemonic)

> One thing to note here, if you do use shapeshifting or transformation in your stories or worldbuilding: resist the temptation to treat gemfolk as “infiltrators” or spies. There are lots of reasons to change one’s appearance, and stories that treat transformation as a form of deception misconstrue those reasons and reinforce existing stigmas that make life harder for people who live outside of society’s expectations.

Queer people. I’m talking about queer people.

What happens when you're the wrong kind of freak that nobody's representing? :'-(

By the way, those Twitter threads about it both appear on my computer as "You’re unable to view this Tweet because this account owner limits who can view their Tweets".

BESW

yeah, Dee recently made it so only people who follow them on Twitter can see their tweets.

A. B.

So long as you know.

BESW

Thanks. When I originally linked the conversations, they were public, and I didn't think to check when I re-linked them today.

A. B.

Also, it seems a bit of a waste to have a race that can shapeshift any time they want earmarked to represent people who want to shapeshift once and then stay that way. But there you are.

If that's what the author is trying to get at.

BESW

7:15 AM

(a) that's not an accurate description of queerness, and (b) Dee isn't saying the gemfolk are earmarked as queer; they're saying not to use gemfolk to perpetuate anti-queer stereotypes.

There's a difference between "this is an allegory, don't misuse it" and "this has the potential to be an allegory; don't misuse it."

A. B.

Well, I thought it wasn't, to the extent that "queer" takes in a lot of things besides "transgender", but I couldn't work out what else they were after.

I suppose I'm so used to everything in most of the games you post being an allegory that I got the wrong end of the stick, especially as the tone had got rather aggressive in the way those ones generally do.

I wish I warranted an allegory.

BESW

There are lots of ways to explore identities beyond direct allegory, and a lot of what I post exists within that more nebulous space.

A. B.

Hang identities!

BESW

@A.B. I can't respond to that because I don't know what you're talking about.

If you want people to respond to it, you'll have to clarify. Otherwise, it's fine to just let the statement sit on its own.

A. B.

I suppose I probably do, in many games, I'm just becoming exasperated by Vampire: the Masquerade. A game about nothing but literal magical monsters, and I can't find an excuse for a character to act as if they don't know how to human.

No amount of identities going to get me out of that.

Maybe I'm just not thinking laterally enough.

A lot of things about Mnemonic do sound awful good.

The idea of basing the magic off past memories, for instance, and the ghosts and stuff. That smells of issues, too, but in a way that sounds as if it would work, and it also sounds like it would make for a good game.

I love history, so ideas like that have a good chance of getting my interest :-)

A. B.

7:41 AM

The idea of a shapeshifting character actually sounds rather fun. I never have the least idea what my "identity" is, so it would be fun to play a character who tried something different at every stop.

Axoren

@A.B. I believe this is called "fluid", unless I'm misunderstanding you.

Or did you mean a character in a game specifically and not as a metaphor?

A. B.

8:04 AM

Oh, I don't mean gender-wise, although I couldn't swear to that, I just mean generally. It's probably just a result of not having the least idea what I'm doing.

Also, I don't mean what I think my "gender" is varies, I just mean I don't know.

I don't understand what any of it means.

BESW

8:31 AM

In Sundown by Grasswatch Games, PCs are people who live on the edges of society because they don't meet social norms. Many of them use a technomagical resource to modify their bodies in ways both large and small, permanently or temporarily, and the very fact of that changing can be the reason they're rejected by mainstream society.

A. B.

Ooh, that looks interesting.

BESW

It's a game by and for people with atypical bodies, minds, and identities. A core theme is that acceptance which requires you to be untrue to yourself, is not acceptance at all.

A. B.

Just been looking at the blurb. Besides being a game about weird people, it has dog crows and giant winged frogs. Can't argue with that.

BESW

It's got a very compelling faepunk/wildwest type of aesthetic, and the kind of gleefully creative body types you get when furries are involved in the art direction.

A. B.

Frogs and crows apart, that sounds a very nice idea.

That also sounds a very nice idea! Love me some made up animals and if those made up animals include some of the characters so much the better.

BESW

8:44 AM

Oh yeah. There's people called Strayfolk, which is anybody who's used the changing ability to give themselves a "gendered" body that is far outside the binary. For example:

> the oxen, who feel their greatest satisfaction comes from protecting others and creating safe spaces where folk don’t feel threatened or scared. They most enjoy being the caretakers of kits, who find the world draining, and seek comfort and escape.

There's crow/raven people, who "present themselves to the world as snark personified, but have huge soft spots for community. Some prefer to dress in darker colors, like the ravens and crows, while magpies and bluejays prefer flamboyance."

And there's a lot of room for the player to invent any kind of identity they want their character to explore, and if they want the setting to have a community of people who share that identity, that's very much encouraged.

A Strayfolk change can be unique, or it can be part of or in addition to a folkchange, which is "a change that isn’t unique to one person. It’s a change that many people share. New cultures and ways of life evolve around these changes"

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@A.B. As someone which played shapeshifters multiple times before (and is currently preparing another one), well, it's not guaranteed. The opportunities to try something new seem to hinge on an intersection between what kind of shifting you have access to × what kinds of approaches to solving problems are in demand. At times I ended up 'locked' into just always filling a niche that was (a) empty in the party and (b) important enough that not filling it would be a big loss.

The big example of that for me was someone to shoot Binding at enemies.

A. B.

9:01 AM

That's a point. How often you can shapeshift, and/or how suddenly somebody to, as it might be, shoot Binding might be needed, might make a difference.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@A.B. IIRC at the time the shift time was reduced to reflexive, but even so, I spent most turns shooting webs because just how useful immobilising enemies for the whole party to attack was.

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