TRPG General Chat

trogdor

01:15

lol

Hot RPG Questions

01:26

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

01:37

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

01:56

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

02:18

@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

02:35

@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

02:54

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 )

►

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

03:02

@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

03:10

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

03:42

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

03:45

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

05:28

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.

07:00

(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

07:15

(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.

07:41

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.

08:04

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

08:31

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

08:44

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.

09:01

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.

NautArch

12:49

I just discovered that Tom Jones has an entire album of covers and it's glorious.

His Burning Down the House is really good.

Thomas Markov

13:28

@NautArch It's not unusual for Tom Jones to be glorious.

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 I feel strangely old recalling those bygone days. (checks to see if there are any kids on my lawn ...)

Hot RPG Questions

13:56

3

Q: When can you see through your Ersatz Eye?

The description of the Ersatz Eye from Xanathar's Guide to Everything reads: This artificial eye replaces a real one that was lost or removed. While the ersatz eye is embedded in your eye socket, it can’t be removed by anyone other than you, and you can see through the tiny orb as though it were...

dnd-5e magic-items

Medix2

14:15

@HotRPGQuestions I'm tempted to answer this with "the phrase being ambiguous requires assuming a sentence structure that people do not actually use"...

Since for me, "When I went home, I pet my dog, and I love cats" is just ungrammatical, and is the sentence structure of the supposedly ambiguous form

Thomas Markov

@Medix2 You should absolutely post that answer.

Because after reading the description and your brief commentary here, I absolutely agree.

Your silly example highlights perfectly the silliness of reading ambiguity into the statement.

BaconyRevanant

Yeah, I'm unsure why both of the already posted answers don't point it out.

NautArch

Did y'all think Brondahl's investigation question is too opinion-based?

Or do you think that multiple approaches showing experience is okay?

Thomas Markov

I think it's probably okay for good subjective.

They present what seems to be a clear problem with each approach, and I think good experience can solve those problems.

NautArch

I just think that any of those options is reasonable. And I can come up with reasons for all of them.

Thomas Markov

14:31

Which means we should monitor the question and use our votes to deal with unsupported answers.

NautArch

fair enough. We'll see what comes in.

Just the fact that I can support any and all of them suggests to me that it's going to be opinion-based.

Akixkisu

@NautArch looks fine, with that kind of question it is all about monitoring if the community makes it a problem, but until that happens it is a good question.

Medix2

@ThomasMarkov Well because there's really this: "When eating food, I use a spoon, and I hate forks."

But, for me, that's still ungrammatical. And the very least, it is not something I'd expect a native English speaking rules writer to come up with

Well, answer posted now

The Oracle

14:48

0

Q: Is it possible to get the SE system to enforce system tags?

I'm new here, but I've already picked up that Standard Policy is to tag questions with the system that you're playing in, and that the vast majority of questions can be closed a "Lacking details" if the system isn't specified. There's also a homebrew and a system-agnostic tag that would cover the...

feature-request game-systems

doppelgreener

15:26

@TheOracle Notably not merely an actual question but a feature-request; I've downvoted it since I don't want to see such a system switched on even if it is available.

Akixkisu

16:52

@doppelgreener Oh, curious I think you are the first person I hear about that doesn't want a feature like that. What do you dislike about such a feature?

BaconyRevanant

17:19

@ThomasMarkov I think you've massively jumped the gun on answering that size question

Thomas Markov

Okay

I can edit my answer just as easily as they can edit their question. If they add more details about their problem I can add more details solving that problem.

BaconyRevanant

I guess that's true

But also as a general guideline we usually don't want questions getting adjusted after answers are already up

Mostly to prevent invalidating answers

Which I understand you're not too bothered about

Thomas Markov

@BaconyRevanant When was that made a guideline?

Like, I get not changing established questions with established answers

But recent answers to recent questions should be made to keep up with changes to a question.

kviiri

@Akixkisu For one, asking about systems without their tags would be impossible for new users

Thomas Markov

@kviiri Is that disagreeable?

bobble

17:27

@ThomasMarkov
"The Size section of the basic rulescontains this info." <-- space needed

kviiri

@ThomasMarkov Yes

Thomas Markov

but why

kviiri

...why wouldn't it be

"Sorry you can't ask this question because it's not a real RPG" is not a position we should take even implicitly

Thomas Markov

Oh, you mean new users wouldnt be able to create tags for systems that dont have tags yet

I thought you meant "new users wouldn't be able to post dnd-5e questions without adding the dnd-5e tag" and I was like "yeah thats the point"

bobble

A relevant meta post from Lit worrying over our "all questions must have work tags" policy combined with "new users can't create tags": literature.meta.stackexchange.com/q/608/11259

kviiri

17:30

Hm yes, I kinda implicitly assumed the list of "system tags" would be somehow centrally curated

@ThomasMarkov ah yes, I see I was a bit ambiguous. I mean systems without extant tags in our tag db

Thomas Markov

@kviiri Right, that makes sense.

NautArch

18:01

@BaconyRevanant I think it is a read the book to me question

BaconyRevanant

It very easily could be. I'm just hoping for them to give a specific example of what's confusing them.

If it's like "what size is [creature], because of [obvious reason if you read the book]" vs "what size is [x] because of [two contradicting sources]"

Then that'll tell us what the actual problem is

But I don't think they actually articulated what the problem is very well.

NautArch

@BaconyRevanant Not at all. I can't figure out what they are asking.

And @Someone_Evil's comment added another possibility.

That question really needs to be closed.

nitsua60

I just threw them the rep to join chat and invited them. That said, I'm off to take a kid to the doctor.... Have a good day, all =)

NautArch

@nitsua60 Good call!

Even though the not enough rep was my fault :(

hope all is well with the kiddoo

Thomas Markov

Yeah, comments have made this less clear, VTC'd.

NautArch

18:13

I've got a better feeling about what they're asking, but the fact that they haven't even tried to find the rules for it is disappointing.

@Someone_Evil I rolled back your edit because it isn't clear at all that that is the actual problem.

I would much rather OP either come in here to figure out their question or review the rules before editing to ask.

Us guessing isn't helpful.

Someone_Evil

@NautArch Did I misrepresnt the querent's comment then? Half of it was taken from that

NautArch

@Someone_Evil They've got a few different comments each kind of saying something different.

Given they haven't yet tried to figure out what their question or is or read any rulebooks, I don't think it's in our best interest to put words in their mouth.

Or I'm wrong and that's exactly it.

Well, they didn't actually say that was right, just that htey put SE's edit back.

I dunno, this doesn't seem like a great idea, but i'll step away from it unless they come in here for help.

I'm also not sure what to do about the answers now.

Akixkisu

@kviiri that is addressed in the meta.

Someone_Evil

I think the original question is putting a specific meaning to "big" which doesn't convey to how those ingrained with 5e think about it

NautArch

@Someone_Evil I honestly am not sure at all what they asked or meant to ask.

But the fact that they haven't read the book at all, is very concerning. We don't do read the book to me questions.

doppelgreener

18:26

@Akixkisu requiring a system tag causes trouble when a system tag does not yet exist, and causes trouble and creates tag tax for questions that are not about a system.

the same concept was floated in 2018 and people decided against it then:

2

A: Can our tag-prompt nudge toward including system?

NB: I no longer think that this is a good idea after more experience on this site I think this has its heart in the right place. But I'm also not in favour of forcing every question to have a system tag of some kind (even if it were technically viable): that just makes it a tag tax, and unnecess...

this also presumes people are okay with [system-agnostic] being used in such a way, which i am not, because that tag has multiple serious problems and should not just be picked up and used this way

NautArch

@Someone_Evil I think their question is really I have a monster (phoenix), but I don't know how 'big' it is. I also want it to be the BBEG, and that may mean it's a different size. I'm also confused about actual creature dimensions vs creature size.

Akixkisu

@doppelgreener are taxes for tags like freeform and system agnostic an actual problem when prompting new tags to appear through inquiry?

We have systemic issues either way.

This is a common issue rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/183636/…

People who have to create new tags to ask about something - how many of them do we see in a year?

More than 5?

bobble

(just a note for this comment - suggesting chat for a very new user, especially one who just got the rep, doesn't really work. blame caching)

(though that question's answer says a mod can force-refresh a chat profile, and mods/ROs can let people in a room even if they're too low-rep)

doppelgreener

18:42

@Akixkisu Yes, of course this is an issue. I've written extensively about it and advocated for multiple potential solutions. "Make system tags mandatory and make non-system-ness take up a tag slot" is not, however, the correct solution. There's that saying that when all you have is a hammer, everything tends to look like a nail, and it applies here.

I think this is us seeing an available hammer and this suddenly looking nail-like, but that doesn't mean it is in fact the right tool for the job and I believe it is the wrong one.

Making our site into "system" and "not system", and giving the former a broad tag category and the rest "not system", for example, sends a very two-dimensional message about our site. That "not system" space is pretty diverse: social issues, game design, history, and so on. Meta at least doesn't do "bug report" and "not bug report", meta is actually more or less correctly calling out its four bases.

The fact we overwhemlingly are a site about D&D mechanical problems and thus overwhemlingly are about game Q&A by a 9-to-1 measure by default doesn't mean we should lean into that even harder.

Akixkisu

@doppelgreener I think we have a systemic issue, and we either have many different suboptimal choices for slight improvement by using a bad tool or several bad tools or going with the bad status quo.

doppelgreener

@Akixkisu The status quo is not improved by implementing this feature request.

Xirema

@Xirema In case anyone was thinking about making the mistake of taking any opinions I have on game design and game balance seriously, I'd like to share the weapon I handed out to our [Crossbow Expert + Sharpshooter] Fighter back when he was level 7.

MikeQ

@Xirema 1d9 cold damage?

Xirema

@MikeQ Two different modifiers: "Die size increased by 3", "damage type changed to cold"

Akixkisu

18:48

@doppelgreener fair.

Xirema

Then he got a third modifier "weapon deals an extra 1d4 damage" (coincidentally was also cold damage)

The only thing keeping him in check is the lack of +attack roll modifiers, and that only barely works most of the time. The rest of the time, he's hitting for 70-80 damage per round.

I'm in the process of migrating the campaign from Roll20 to Foundry, to celebrate all the (surviving) PCs hitting level 11, and I had to make proper writeups for some older weapons that I'd simply coded into Roll20 and forgotten about.

doppelgreener

I feel like evaluation of this issue could be done more or less as "it solves one regular problem, and that's more important than any of the problems it might create and offsets them overall." But... I don't think that's more important or offsets them. I think the current issue is an issue but has appropriate tools to address it. I think the feature request would create multiple very serious problems for which there is no recourse and would be overall very seriously harmful to our site.

Xirema

And when I got to this one I was reminded "oh, wow, I'm a really terrible DM aren't I?" 😉

doppelgreener

I think we need to improve our tools for addressing it and update site UX to help proactively address it, and I've advocated for solutions along those lines.

But this solution is not the one to go for.

Akixkisu

Do you think any of the solutions that you are currently advocating have a chance of implementation?

doppelgreener

19:00

I think there are several that have a better chance of being implemented than this one. For example, back when I was a moderator we were in talks with staff about how the UI could be adapted to tell people they should be specifying their game. But that was during the ages where Stack development was given 0 funding to work on anything except Stack Overflow... and I think we're still in that era.

44

Q: Can our tag-prompt nudge toward including system?

We get questions every day that need to be put on hold while we wait for a new querent to specify what game/edition they're playing. As of this writing I've seen three so far today--they get quickly closed, get a comment asking about system/edition, and reopened if OP specifies. Currently when a...

discussion feature-request status-deferred questions

Let me be clear here: the feature request to apply "you must specify one of these tags" on main will take some significant work on features that do not yet exist at all. There exists no interface for moderators to alter the set of magic tags. The prompt that chases you up about these tags will also need to have serious changes that might look tiny but from a development POV would be quite significant.

I believe all the changes that we have been looking at around just changing the Ask A Question UI just to simply prompt users with "hey, remember to tell us which game and edition you're playing, please", is going to take much less work than any of that.

And better yet, the prompts could be generalisable to other sites which also have subject matter they want to prompt people to include.

Heck, when I was on mod team we were asking for this as part of the Q&A Wizard, but that got cancelled.

Someone_Evil

@doppelgreener We got that. Is there some part we're still looking at/waiting for?

doppelgreener

@Someone_Evil When I was last in talks with staff, we hit limitations with the tag input itself and couldn't change the wording the way we needed to because it was baked into the software. We talked about ways to change the Q&A body itself, or the sidebar prompts, but that didn't go anywhere at the time.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with a link in answer, blacklisted website in answer (173): How do I deal with my group having issues with my character? by Jenny Jenkins on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

doppelgreener

i've just learned we have this box, which is very cool, although if i could change anything i'd add "4. Say what game & edition you're using"

or I'd put it in #1

bobble

I don't think y'all can edit the list

doppelgreener

19:12

many people will read only those three points because they're the stand-out feature of the dialog, but i'm guessing those three points will not be editable, but that's what we'd need

bobble

The little paragraph right before they listy, that's editable

And it already says "clearly state which system and edition you are asking about"

Someone_Evil

Here's the meta where we got those changes, btw: New ask page: How do we want to use it to help new users specify their system?

bobble

73

Q: The new ask page is now live on the network!

After rolling it out to the International Stack Overflow sites last week, we're rolling out the new ask page to the whole network today. The new page was designed with the goal of helping new askers by more readily presenting them with tips on how to improve their question. This is a combination ...

discussion stack-exchange asking-questions announcements

doppelgreener

[weeps]

this was kind of the issue when we were pursuing this: lots of parts of our site are editable, but not the parts we'd need to be editable to best resolve this specific issue

bobble

may be out-of-date:

22

A: What parts of the help center can site moderators edit?

Parts of the Help Center that moderators can edit: An introduction section on the front page (http://foo.stackexchange.com/help): "What topics can I ask about here?" (http://foo.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic): Parts of the Tour that moderators can edit: The introduction para...

Hot RPG Questions

19:35

8

Q: A player loves the story and the combat but doesn't role-play

Together with my best friend Jon, we're in a group of people who enjoy RPG's. I'm GMing for several years in this larger group. Other friends of that group also GM. I'm the most story-oriented GM, the other GMs are mostly one-shots and Door-Monster-Treasure oriented. Recently, we started a new ca...

gm-techniques problem-players

NautArch

I'm also positive we have a question(s) about creature size vs size category, but I can't find it.

Thomas Markov

found one for 4e

bobble

(some of these questions may need creature-size added)

Thomas Markov

@bobble Maybe, but that sort of project is probably best discussed on meta first.

NautArch

20:37

Every time I start to right an answer to the community meta, i end up stopping. I don't think I actually want to throw my hat in there.

Thomas Markov

@NautArch Let's talk about it this week

Someone_Evil

Is there a particular thing you want to talk about?

Or maybe that notion is something to bring up instead

BaconyRevanant

Well that was a fun math exercise.

NautArch

@Someone_Evil The thing I've brought up in dragons and here about being more accepting curatorial processes.

BaconyRevanant

A few years back, someone had posted a question about the "livestock" levels that Illithids would need for a brain farm. It recently got some activity, which brought it to my attention. Most of the answers based farm size on using humans as the "stock animal" (and one positing that perhaps a troll with a regenerating brain could work), so I proposed a variant of the farm using goblins instead.

NautArch

20:53

@BaconyRevanant FYI, they do say at the end of their question that they are asking about humans so they understand the methodology to determine the needs that they can then apply to other races with longer and shorter lifespans.

So I'm not quite sure it actually answers their question.

BaconyRevanant

@NautArch yes, I saw that when I initially read the question

It's called a frame challenge

NautArch

They know that there are races with longer and shorter, they are looking more for the breeding methdology that they can apply to other races but starting with humans likely because they understand that more.

They aren't actually saying "I want to use this with humans', they're saying " I want to learn how to figure this out using humans as an example"

BaconyRevanant

Well then, having two examples should help them even more

Because then they can see how a faster maturation rate has an exponential impact on the minimum population size needed

Did you learn math after being shown only one equation? No, you were shown multiple equations. This is (theoretically) similar

I was tempted to put in a bit where some Illithids could farm elves, who, due to their long life spans, could accrue much more life experience than a human or goblin, as a sort of specialty food item that might take the same place as a vintage wine

Hot RPG Questions

21:37

12

Q: How to handle "I investigate for <this particular thing>" checks

The characters enter a room, and get the general "what do you see" spiel. One player announces that he wants to "Investigate the room for ". (Let's say "investigate for odd books") or the rogue says he stops the group at the threshold and wants to "investigate the room for traps or other danger"....

dnd-5e gm-techniques skills

Akixkisu

@NautArch I think I'm on the same page.

NautArch

@Akixkisu Which is also making me sad.

Akixkisu

21:58

I think I have mainly 4 issues that I want to bring up. I think somebody else is going to write about the overall decline in site activity which leads to those things that are difficult and tiresome to write.

NautArch

@Akixkisu Is there actually a decline? I agree it feels like it, but do the numbers show it?

Mine is really about we need to treat each other better here and trust the decisions others make even if we don't agree.

Akixkisu

@NautArch jup

NautArch

When did it start?

Akixkisu

@NautArch in q&a, all review qs (though not proportionally).

I don't know exactly but I assume with the pandemic.

NautArch

We definitely lost a lot of activity with the pandemic.

Akixkisu

22:01

But I have done 0 digging.

NautArch

At least in here :)

Akixkisu

Maybe more people are droppign 5e.

BESW

This feels like the kind of conversation we had in the year or so before 5e was first announced. Since the site lives and dies on D&D, as the shine rubs off the current edition and new questions get --maybe not less frequent but certainly of narrower interest-- users get more and more focused instead on telling each other how to Do A Stack Exchange.

Akixkisu

Could be anything really.

BESW

And yes, 2020 certainly, ah. led a large number of people to be more cynical about trusting the judgement of people in large groups online.

NautArch

22:05

@BESW well, that's interesting.

to see the cyclical movement.

BESW

It's a data set of one, since rpg.se didn't exist during the 3e rampdown, but we know that D&D is the lifeblood of this site and the user base is defined by their relationship to the franchise.

Akixkisu

Could also tie to stackexchange becoming less relevant.

BESW

[crosses fingers]

NautArch

Just move this room over to discord? :D

BESW

[grin] I've already got you in mine.

Akixkisu

22:16

Someday, someone who I work with is going to find out that I use Discord to organise links in channel folders, which go into server folders, which go into multi-server folders. I dread that moment.

My unread pdfs have never been so organised.

BESW

This is another way to organize your Links.

Akixkisu

People tell me that if I play "Breath of the Wild", then it would supplant "Majora's Mask" as my favourite Zelda title. This image, however, clearly shows that Majora's Mask is a centerpiece of the universe.

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: Does the piercer feat allow rerolls of non-piercing damage?

The Piercer feat reads(TCoE, p. 80) says Once per turn, when you hit a creature with an attack that deals piercing damage, you can reroll one of the attack's damage dice, and you must use the new roll. Does this mean I can reroll other damage dice such as crit dice, brutal critical dice or boom...

dnd-5e feats

BESW

I can make the jokes but I've never played any of the games.

Akixkisu

They have great music.

NautArch

22:42

@Akixkisu I think that dndbeyond question is reopenable. @ThomasMarkov has shown me the way.

Akixkisu

@NautArch there you go.

NautArch

@Akixkisu grazie!

While I still think it probably would go better on another stack, providing the answer is MUCH more important.

Hot RPG Questions

3

Q: Please review my Occult Caster homebrew feat

I got this feat idea thinking what I would like my Lore Bard to become. I wanted him to play with dangerous lore, one that could get him hurt in exchange from some power. On the other hand, I do not want him to get hurt badly, or to get power higher than any other character in the party. So I got...

dnd-5e feats spellcasting homebrew-review

NautArch

23:43

@Someone_Evil For that creature size question, I don't think we should reopen until OP returns to clarify. They've been given a link to the basic rules and the monster section. Give them some time to read it and figure out if they still actually have a question and what it is.

If they've changed their mind about their initial question and are happy with your edit, that's likely reopenable. I don't think it's a dupe of the related I left, but it's darn close.

But I'm not actually sure they ARE fully in agreement with the new question.

Other than "if that's what it takes for AN answer". But I don't know if that's their actual question.

Someone_Evil

They have said it is their question, and made no comment about answers or desperation for reopening, and their rollback to my edit was before the closure and two answers for that matter

Adeptus

NautArch

@Someone_Evil okeydoke. I don't think it's worth a mod reopen, but that's your call to make. THe history fo the question makes it seem like that isn't really it, but if they're happy with that, then I am, too.

THey've got a lot they don't understand because they haven't read the rules.

I personally don't believe those questions should get special dispensation for reopening.

Also, much of those answers do get invalidated. Thomas' is closest as he covers the controlled space/size issue, but that's not the focus of the answer while it is the focus of the question.

But that's an easy fix.

But the whole question really reads as "I haven't read the rules and don't undestand how this works, explain it to me"

Also, what's in there now is multiple questions about reading a stat block.

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