TRPG General Chat

A. B.

12:01 AM

Would be an interesting idea for other people, that.

Normally, actually doing anything tends to get skipped.

In RPGs, I could probably do reciting doing the stuff better than skipping to the emotions.

The heck with trying to make things sound exciting without there being any things, you know?

BESW

No, I don't know, because you're alluding to specific things that nobody else here knows about.

If you just want to rant vaguely, that's fine, I guess, but if you want a conversation you're not giving anybody anything to actually engage with.

A. B.

Well, what he and she say.

BESW

"things," "doing the stuff," "other people," "anything," are referents to meaning that you have context for but we don't.

A. B.

I'm talking about those articles.

"Other people" is just that I wouldn't want to imply that I personally could enjoy anything right now. I'm having a bad time.

But am prepared to engage in theoretical discussion of what might be a good way of playing a game if things weren't too bad to allow any possibility of enjoying anything.

BESW

12:17 AM

A ritual is an action that we do the same way every time, usually triggered by some event or need. If the GM turns on background music when it's time to stop socializing and start the game session, that's a ritual. Saying "Roll for initiative" when it's time to start combat is a ritual.

A. B.

Regarding said theoretical discussion, you know Progress Quest?

I'm not sure that what you just said is the same thing that article you linked me is talking about.

BESW

Rituals create patterns in our brains that reinforce habits and feelings. The phrase "Roll for initiative" makes a lot of D&D players feel something even when they hear it outside of a game session, because it's a ritual.

So when The Strix says rituals make things psychologically sticky, that's what they mean: if a game dev wants something to stick in the player's brain, to make sure it's important to the player, ritualizing the thing is a really powerful tool for doing that.

A. B.

Well, the hell with that.

(I have it in for psychology.)

At least, I think Progress Quest is the name I'm thinking of, just a sec.

Yes, it is.

BESW

If talking about how peoples' brains work is verboten for you, then I don't have much to offer to this conversation, since game design is about engaging with peoples' brains.

A. B.

Games have a tendency to automate out the actually doing anything and turn into Progress Quest except when you hit something new or plot-related.

Which for me makes the plot-related stuff seem a bit meaningless.

Serious question: have you actually read the article you gave me the link to? Because I feel like we're talking about two different articles.

A. B.

12:51 AM

T_T

Glazius

1:05 AM

Oh hey, Jalopy! Watched a real fun video essay about that one, from Noah Caldwell-Gervais, about how much it reflected the time in his life when he was trying to get as many miles as he could out of a car he bought fifth-hand. youtube.com/watch?v=1pcDAjTBfcA

A. B.

1:17 AM

T_T

Ban me.

Everyone else does.

I'll find somewhere else, and get banned from that.

AncientSwordRage

1:35 AM

@BESW that's a good read

Glazius

@A.B. Well, you can flag your own posts for moderator attention, via the dropdown on the left, if you feel like you really need to have a computer stopping you from coming here. But if you're doing it because you've split the world into two halves - places you belong as you are right now, and places you never will belong - I'd advise against it.

A. B.

There are no places I belong.

Thanks for noticing me.

I thought this was a "this is not a proper posting, don't encourage it" scenario.

I'm not asking to be banned, I just wanted to cry whatever happened, and crying usually automatically implies banned.

AncientSwordRage

@A.B. I think we're ok with crying in here 👍🏻

It's a very human reaction. Crying is the body's way of saying something intense is happening, please notice that. It's a human social cue, it should be listened too thoughtfully

linksassin

@A.B. I'm not really sure what you are referring to. Generally so long as you aren't putting people down you can complain about things here.

AncientSwordRage

@A.B. I think that games that automate too much are sometimes flawed games

I'm constantly hearing people wanting animations to be removed from pokemon go, but that waiting is part of the game

I did genuinely think it was talking about spell rituals, and I was going to explain how wanted to mash up 4E-like powers and Mouseguard 3-action conflict into ritual spells

A. B.

1:49 AM

@linksassin Aw thanks! This is not the case everywhere on the Internet.

@AncientSwordRage Definitely mash up spell rituals.

sptrashcan

Having read the Gamasutra article, I'm not sure I would characterize the phenomenon being discussed as "ritual" so much as "associative mechanisms", but that's splitting hairs.

linksassin

@A.B. We expect you to be respectful and mind your language but understand that sometimes life just sucks.

A. B.

That's a heck of a challenge these days.

AncientSwordRage

@A.B. you're doing great so far, but completely understand if you can't in the moment

A. B.

Does this chat have a rule that jokes about countries and people from them are OK if and only if the country is a former imperialist power?

AncientSwordRage

1:53 AM

@A.B. the idea being that actions come in threes, to chain more than three you have to burn an action. You go 3, 5, 7..etc

@A.B. that probably not ok here

A. B.

Which?

Also don't quite follow you about the actions in threes.

AncientSwordRage

The jokes, but it depends on the joke

linksassin

@A.B. Targeted jokes that could be offensive aren't allowed. Regardless of target. As we said "be respectful" and that includes everyone, even people not in this chat.

AncientSwordRage

@A.B. I'll explain in a but when I've finished with the laundry

Bit*

sptrashcan

When the player's actions have a cognitive or haptic mirroring to the character's actions, the association between player and character is strengthened. It's why Infamous: Second Son has you turn your controller sideways, shake it, and wave it around while pressing a trigger to have your character draw graffiti, and it's why the Trash Pandas micro RPG has you shake around dice in a box and pluck them out.

linksassin

1:55 AM

But yes, it can depend on the joke.

A. B.

I have legitimately seen that said by a moderator in another chat I was recently banned from.

linksassin

@A.B. Seen what? "It depends"? That's because it does. We can't judge a hypothetical.

A. B.

That it's OK to poke fun at any countries that are former imperialist powers and anybody from them, but not anywhere else. The context was an American member saying that he was getting a bit fed up with so many members taking the mickey out of Americans and could they knock it off.

Glazius

This chat has no rules. It has a code of conduct, shared with the site, but moderators act at their discretion. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/309645/… We have cut down every law in England to pursue the Devil, and if the Devil rounds on us, I suppose it'll be our fault for letting them get so strong in the first place.

linksassin

@A.B. Probably a blessing in disguise getting banned from there. That's the equivalent to saying "we allow racism so long as we agree with it"

A. B.

1:59 AM

When asked her definition of "former imperialist power", words to the effect of "google it, stupid".

linksassin

@A.B. That "google it, stupid" would probably get them banned here. We don't tolerate insults like that.

A. B.

Hah. You may have a point.

They were a moderator.

AncientSwordRage

@A.B. in Mouseguard (a game I'm inspired by) you pick 3 actions to perform in a round. They can be over of 4 options: attack, defend, maneuver and feint. So you might feint, feint, attack. You then compare it to your enemies actions of attack, feint, maneuver .. and for each see how one beating the other effects your character

linksassin

As I said, blessing in disguise. There's a reason this is the only community I really participate in.

AncientSwordRage

@A.B. that's not always a sign they know what's best (source: I am a moderator)

A. B.

2:02 AM

:-D

Unrelated: what sort of tom-fool code is this? 31 101 31 31 30 177775 177775 31 33 131 101 31 31 100 177775 177775 101 33

Answer not expected, just complaining.

The server I usually talk codes and puzzles in is the one I've just been banned from.

sptrashcan

I believe there is a puzzle stack exchange that might have more people willing and able to tackle that question, provided that it isn't the place you were banned from.

A. B.

That's true.

I don't really have the heart to join any more places right now.

AncientSwordRage

@A.B. in time though maybe?

sptrashcan

@AncientSwordRage Are the actions blind pick and then simultaneous reveal?

Glazius

Maybe the oldest RPG with ritual elements I've encountered is Ben Lehman's Polaris, which ritualized its negotiation and flow prompts ("you ask far too much", "it was not meant to be", "we shall see what comes of it") to steep you in the language of chivalric tragedy.

AncientSwordRage

2:09 AM

@sptrashcan in Mouseguard yes, probably in the game I'm making as well

Glazius

though the actual name "ritual" was first put into my lexicon by Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine

sptrashcan

I think Polaris is neat but I don't want to engage with its mode of story telling. If you give me a character to play, I am going to try to have them succeed. I don't like games that ask me to act against the interests of the character I am portraying.

AncientSwordRage

@a.b anyway, I was thinking, if the mechanism for rituals in my game would get you to pick three actions for a ritual, then to make it more powerful have you burn an action out if your next three. so your ritual might be [Feint, Feint, Attack] + [Extend ritual, Attack, Attack], as away to get rituals to always contain odd numbers of actions

linksassin

@A.B. Any additional context for that?

A. B.

@AncientSwordRage That sounds good.

sptrashcan

2:15 AM

@AncientSwordRage I vaguely remember a game that could be played online in the days of BBSes, which portrayed a duel between wizards. Every turn you could add one character to a sequence that represented a series of magical gestures, and you could cast different spells by completing gesture sequences. It was blind-pick-simultaneous-reveal but granular enough that you could get an idea of what your opponent was aiming to do and maybe cut them off before they could finish.

It's not quite the same but I was reminded of it.

A. B.

@linksassin Context for what, the code?

@sptrashcan That sounds like an excellent game.

linksassin

@A.B. Yes. What's the problem to solve? Next number?

AncientSwordRage

@A.B. still in its proto-infancy

sptrashcan

@AncientSwordRage the other thing I'm reminded of is how UTF-8 encoding works, in that it consumes slots from sequence chunks in order to extend the sequence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8

Ben

Ohio

A. B.

2:21 AM

o/

linksassin

@Ben California

A. B.

@linksassin No, it's to be decoded to reveal a message.

nitsua60

@A.B. I think you'll notice, if you watch closely, that this room tends to be full of very caring and generous and patient and wise and friendly people. I can testify that much of my fondness for this community comes from some *very* hard times when I've come in here and said "hey, everyone, I'm with my [loved one] in the hospital right now, I just need to unwind, mind if I plop down?"
That said, throwing out non seqiturs with dramatic language isn't, in my experience, a great way to get genuine engagement. If you need to unload something, say "Hey, I'm just going to unload this: ...." If y…

3

A. B.

And that's just a small chunk of it, the full "text" is huge.

nitsua60

[creakily dismounts soapbox]

A. B.

2:22 AM

All the same eight numbers, though.

bobble

@A.B. also note that Puzzling has a strict attribution requirement, mostly because people continue to try to cheat on various competitions.

A. B.

It's not anything I can really talk about.

What's that? Not allowed to discuss puzzles by other people, or not allowed to discuss them unless you say where they're from?

bobble

You have to say where they're from

(And then people try to lie about where it's from and get themselves a ban)

A. B.

Can do. Why would anyone do that? Or are they trying to pretend they wrote them?

linksassin

@A.B. Cheat in puzzle competitions.

Ben

2:28 AM

@linksassin Lel

bobble

@linksassin and on scholarship applications, and in work hissy fights, and on math homework, and on entrance exams to "high IQ societies", etc.

(yes there is a story behind every one of those and more)

Ben

I'm lost... I tried to read back, but I'm still missing something haha

A. B.

Well, I don't think this is a competition, so it doesn't much matter who knows where it's from. At least, I don't think there's a prize for it. It's an ARG, so naturally nobody knows what the heck it's all about.

@bobble :-D

linksassin

@Ben You're not the only one.

A. B.

Me, or one of the others?

sptrashcan

2:32 AM

I dunno, there was an article on ritual in games that I thought was pretty interesting, but we seem to be pretty far afield from that at the moment.

nitsua60

@Ben are you looking for this?

27 mins ago, by A. B.

Unrelated: what sort of tom-fool code is this? 31 101 31 31 30 177775 177775 31 33 131 101 31 31 100 177775 177775 101 33

Ben

Maybe. Don't make any sense to me though :P

Much like my current Picasso-code I'm working on. Lol

Hot RPG Questions

3

Q: Can you select Bracers Of Armor to work with Armor Focus (feat)?

Can you select bracers of armor +X as a valid choice for the feat Armor Focus?

Ben

Plugins are really confusing sometimes

sptrashcan

I don't understand the criteria by which questions are evaluated as "hot" - that one seems pretty handily answered without much controversy.

bobble

2:39 AM

107

A: What are the criteria for questions to be selected for Hot Network Questions?

Basically the same formula used to select the questions shown in the "hot" tab on a site. We have a few tweaks: Successive questions from the same site are penalized by increasing amounts. So, the first question from SO in the list gets multiplied by 1.0, the second by 0.98, the third by 0.96, ...

nitsua60

apropos:

Apr 15 '19 at 16:04, by nitsua60

Watching the HNQ feed makes me thing the "velocity" term in the hotness equation is too twitchy. When we have a question with 4 upvotes and one +2 answer hit the HNQ... that doesn't really seem right to me. What do you-all think?

Apr 15 '19 at 16:06, by Someone_Evil

@nitsua60 It seems maybe less like "hot questions" and more "recent, real questions"

also possibly of interest:

35

Q: Which sites appear most often in the Hot Network Questions list?

Is there any data about which Stack Exchange sites have their questions end up in the Hot Network Questions list the most? In particular: What percentage of hot network questions comes from each site? What about all-time, this year, this month? What percentage of questions from each site end...

discussion hot-questions statistics data-analysis

(spoiler alert: RPG's up near the top of that list)

sptrashcan

Hm. Interesting.

nitsua60

Apropos of nothing: I've been asked to give a schoolwide address on the topic of the Chauvin trial tomorrow. Not gonna lie, I'm feeling a bit of pressure/performance anxiety.

sptrashcan

I think that's an appropriate feeling for the circumstances.

linksassin

@nitsua60 oof. No pressure.

Ben

2:50 AM

I agree... oof.

AncientSwordRage

@sptrashcan that's literally what inspired me, as well as Eternal Darkness, Sanity's Requiem

sptrashcan

@AncientSwordRage I think it could be interesting. One thing I think about a fair bit is ways to simulate commitment in a tabletop context. In real-time games the time difference between when you need to commit to a choice and when that choice takes effect is a major factor in play, because it makes you play with various degrees of incomplete information.

It's hard to manage that kind of incomplete information in a tabletop context, though. Some wargames have things like written orders with simultaneous referee resolution, but that's a pretty big cost in time and effort.

AncientSwordRage

3:08 AM

@sptrashcan thanks

sptrashcan

There are things like Mouse Guard, and also Robo Rally and Yomi, that have simultaneous resolution, but the cost is often that you have to pick from a finite and usually fairly small set of actions that have deterministic resolutions, which is kind of a bummer if you like the "anything can be attempted" nature of tabletop roleplaying with a human referee.

I think about how to thread that needle a lot and I don't have any answers yet.

A. B.

I suppose the problem would be the actions having to all be the same length, wouldn't it? Or wouldn't it?

BESW

@nitsua60 Wow, that's a lot. If you want to spitball with me in Discord, you know how to find me.

sptrashcan

I mean, varying action lengths is definitely one problem I'd like to solve. But the bigger problem for me is that simultaneous resolution of actions that aren't on a finite list basically requires that players write notes and pass them to the referee for adjudication, and if it isn't simple to adjudicate there's a whole series of passed notes...

BESW

Hrm. If I were approaching that as a design problem, I'd first have to be very clear with myself about the difference between simultaneity in the narrative of the story, and simultaneity at the game table, and which of them I'm interested in.

nitsua60

3:16 AM

@BESW Thank you--I'll likely take you up on that.

sptrashcan

I think what I'm interested in is the idea of making decisions with limited information and seeing how that plays out. There's a certain decision point that happens in some games where you know what your best play would be if your opponent were playing according to the orthodox strategy, but you also know that they know that, and they know that you know. I think that's neat. I don't know how to reconcile it with free-form action choice.

BESW

Is "you" the player or the character in this scenario?

sptrashcan

Both, ideally. I like associative mechanics.

user15026

@nitsua60 I can imagine. Sending you much strength.

BESW

You might look at En Garde!. It's still a finite set of actions but it's not exactly a small set.

Another solution that probably doesn't fit your table-experience goals is generic mechanics; abandoning the need for unique mechanics customized to each narrative action frees up a lot of space for freeform tactics.

sptrashcan

3:36 AM

@BESW Is this the game you're thinking of? engarde-game.com

Or this? boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169/en-garde

I suspect it's the latter, although the former actually looks pretty neat...

BESW

Neither!

En Garde!

En Garde! is a swashbuckling hybrid game, part role-playing game and part strategy. The game is set in 17th century Paris where players take the roles of gentlemen duellists. The game was designed by Darryl Hany, Frank Chadwick and Paul Evans and first published by Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) in 1975. == History == Game Designers' Workshop got into the RPG field with En Garde! (1975), published as a 48-page digest-sized book in 1975, with a revised edition in 1977. David M. Ewalt, in his book Of Dice and Men, commented that En Garde! was one of the first early competing products in the role...

sptrashcan

Clearly a popular name.

Glad I asked.

The thing about generic mechanics is that if they get too generic then your actual decisions don't actually have much influence on the resolution - unless I'm misunderstanding what you're getting at.

BESW

Well, you can re-aim the customization.

For example, Lady Blackbird has one action resolution: rolling a pool of dice against a target number set by the GM.

But the size of the pool is determined by how much the narrated action is in line with the character's background, goals, and specialties.

sptrashcan

So I see three potential variables to consider in that system: the difficulty the GM sets for the action, the size of the pool you can muster, and the relative payoffs for success and failure.

Fundamentally, a lot of decision making against static challenges comes down to those factors: how hard is it? how good am I? and what will happen if I succeed/fail?

Glazius

@sptrashcan That's the price of simultaneous resolution, really. In most of the big notable cases like Diplomacy what you're scripting simultaneously serves as an attack and defense. Even scripting Attack in Mouse Guard is defending against Feints, since Attack cancels Feint. What the heck do you script to defend against "I corner the mustard market and pay off bards to ruin your reputation"?

sptrashcan

3:50 AM

Yeah, that's the pickle.

Ben

@sptrashcan It seems I am not seeing things properly because I just saw this and read it as "Yeah, that's rude"

sptrashcan

I'm sorry if I phrased it poorly. I meant that Glazius had accurately summarized the problem.

Ben

In my defense I've been staring at code all day, trying to figure out a generic structure so that it can loop as many times as necessary then figure out the format of input (how much input and how to iterate through it all) etc.

@sptrashcan Oh no, that was a misread on my part lol

sptrashcan

It's entirely possible that I want to have two things at once that are mutually incompatible. I sure haven't found a way to reconcile them yet.

Ben

@sptrashcan That's how I came up with my Mayonnaise and Promite Cruskit sandwiches

It has to be whole-egg mayo, Promite (not vegemite or marmite) and rice cruskits (bread or biscuits don't work)

Now I do realise I'm starting to talk nonsense lol

sptrashcan

3:59 AM

I cannot imagine the exhaustive search of the problem space that preceded that culinary discovery.

BESW

@Glazius Part of that issue is one of scale; "corner the mustard market" doesn't happen so fast that someone won't notice and be able to respond.

sptrashcan

Yeah, simultaneous resolution becomes even more complicated when actions are not of uniform length.

bobble

@Glazius may I play in this game :)

sptrashcan

I think the game I mentioned with the magic gestures is kind of an interesting approach to that problem: each individual gesture has the same timing, but spells have different timing because they have longer or shorter gesture sequences.

BESW

@sptrashcan There are time-scaling systems in place in some systems:

Jun 5 '18 at 9:01, by BESW

I find the time ladder to be very helpful.

Ben

4:01 AM

@sptrashcan teenage hormones and hunger, I think it was. Lol

bobble

@Ben you mean to say you were once a teenager?

sptrashcan

Yeah. The Feng Shui shot clock is also kind of like this.

BESW

In several versions of Fate, you can increase or decrease the time your action takes (or the duration of the effect you're creating) to decrease or increase the difficulty of your action.

Ben

@bobble [old-man voice] way back when you were just a young'un, indeed I was!

BESW

This means that you can turn a failure into a success by making it take longer, or a ridiculously good success can make things happen much faster than expected.

But a big part of that is, the longer it takes the more opportunities others have to do other things while you're busy.

sptrashcan

4:04 AM

@BESW That's interesting. I have been thinking a fair bit about time as a cost.

Not just in tactical situations but also on larger time scales.

Glazius

Well, the way Mouse Guard addresses the "get creative" problem inside its scripted sections is to... allow it? Kind of? If you're trying to go all-out to drive a weasel outrider away from the patrol you can knife-fight it with Fighter or unleash your pocket bees with Apiarist, but both get scripted as Attack. (Though Fighter is the assumed default and needs no justification; the same can't be said for pocket bees.)

BESW

That's why I'm gonna play a Shepherd in Wanderhome.

Not that Wanderhome's bees fit in your pocket, but it's the same energy.

Glazius

And there's no real primacy there, either; if the weasel scout nails their Maneuver by enough to disarm you they can, equally, knock your knives into the heather or slit the catch on your cloak and leave your pocket bees struggling to get free in the mud.

sptrashcan

Saying "all these things are basically this thing" is definitely a way to handle it, and it does give you more flexibility in using the things you're good at in places where you wouldn't expect them to apply, but it also sort of squashes the fiction into a box that doesn't really acknowledge the difference between getting knifed and getting chased by bees.

Glazius

Yes, that comes out at the end of the battle where the loser demands compromises from the winner based on how bad they lost.

BESW

4:09 AM

@sptrashcan I'm not sure what the difference is, except that you've moved from pre-resolution to post-resolution already.

Even D&D admits that the same kind of action can result in dramatically different kinds of resolutions based on the narrative at play (both a knife and a greatsword use the same mechanic to determine if they hit, but they roll different damage results if they hit).

Glazius

Or, I mean, the GM has infinite weasels, maybe they just have this weasel scream "hate the bees! HATE THE BEES!", the players take the hint that this guy is stuck in Maneuver/Disarm gear, and script appropriately to dumpster him.

Ben

@Glazius In Nick Cage's voice

Glazius

So the full Mouse Guard procedure, just for reference, is:

- enter a scripted conflict scenario from normal play, establish goals (freeform)

- form up and roll for hit points (strict)

- script a volley of three ADFMs (strict)

- resolve each pair in turn with an appropriate skill roll (strict-ish)

- repeat script + resolve until somebody's HP reaches 0; they lose (strict)

- exist scripted conflict, loser compromises with the winner's goals based on how close the fight was (freeform)

A. B.

pocket bees

BESW

As loathe as I am to recommend DitV for many reasons, its conflict loop might be r🐘 to this conversation.

Glazius

4:26 AM

@BESW Vincent Baker's no longer selling it, actually, probably for those many reasons. A dedicated system hacker rewrote the core mechanics in a more generic form as DOGS: drivethrurpg.com/product/274623/Dogs

Have not purchased or read that yet though I probably should, just to see.

Ben

Them: why is your hand swollen?
Me: No reason... [puts hand back in pocket, wincing]

Hot RPG Questions

8

Q: Can you use a bonus action before a held readied action?

I know you can not "Ready" a bonus action. But can you ready an attack action and use the bonus action before the attack action when the action is triggered? The rule for bonus actions says: You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action's timing is specified, ...

dnd-5e actions readied-action bonus-action triggered-actions

BESW

@Glazius Iiiinteresting. I'm curious but wary, since the setting was terrible and exploitative but my big concern was actually the way it approached its themes and goals mechanically--which didn't get fixed at all in The Princes' Kingdom which is mostly just a setting reskin.

Glazius

@A.B. Yes. ...I'd like to apologize, actually, I misremembered. Sienna isn't statted for true pocket bees, she was just using a cunning Scientist fakery of that exact notion.

sptrashcan

I have Dogs in the Vinyard.

It's interesting, but mechanically I think it's coming from a different place than where I want to be.

To clarify, the knives vs bees thing isn't so much about post-resolution consequences per se as that the referee has to make a call about the relative efficacy of fundamentals (knives) versus wild swings (bees) after the players have already committed based on their own pre-existing understanding of risk vs reward.

BESW

4:34 AM

Oh, well that's just a matter of having a conversation to make sure everybody's on the same page before committing. Like Fate.

In Fate the GM tells you the difficulty before you commit to the action. It's as easy as that.

Ben

So I had an answer over on Arqade, then someone comes along and downvotes, saying "this doesn't answer the question". I point out that yes, it does, they then post the exact same info as a new answer.

Glazius

@Ben I'm pretty sure that's flagworthy.

Ben

0

A: how long until tamed wolves stop attacking?

From the Minecraft wiki (emphasis mine): Angry wolves have a constant growling and fearsome appearance. Wild wolves become hostile when they are either attacked by a player or mob, or when they see a mob they want to eat. Their tail is held out straight, their eyes become blood red, their mouth ...

The timing is generic at this point, it all happened "2 hours ago"

So it's hard to back up

Glazius

No, the timeline's pretty clear. gaming.stackexchange.com/posts/385064/timeline

Ben

Huh, Did not know that was a thing.

TIL

sptrashcan

4:48 AM

@BESW Let me rephrase. Suppose two players are in an armed conflict, either against each other or against a referee-run opposing force. One of them has already committed to an investment in "fundamentals" - they have allocated limited resources toward being good at things that one would reasonably expect to be valuable in the situation they are now in. The other gets creative and takes a "wild swing" by using skills and resources in an unusual way.

I think this is a tough thing to adjudicate fairly!

Or rather, to adjudicate in a way that everyone finds sensible and satisfactory.

BESW

Aye. DitV handles this with dice investment before the conflict. Fate handles it with currency expenditure during the conflict or with stunt slot expenditure prior.

sptrashcan

If I had to make the call, and I was using some manner of probabilistic resolution, I would probably assign the wild swing a lot more variability in potential outcome. Standard tactics become standard for a reason: they usually work pretty good. But leaving it to the dice like that also kind of undersells the value of just the right idea at just the right time - but then the dice are also meant to represent all the stuff you don't want to simulate in detail. It's tough!

BESW

5:03 AM

Maybe leave the dice out entirely and make it a bidding/negotiation system.

sptrashcan

Yeah, but most bidding/negotiation systems I've encountered so far are also profoundly disassociative.

sptrashcan

5:16 AM

I realize I haven't yet laid out what I'm aiming for in so many words. I could do so but it's not easy to describe and I think I've been kind of tedious already. It's almost definitely the case that several of my desired outcomes are in conflict anyway.

BESW

5:29 AM

Anyone's Game: Opening Moves from Anyone's Game. A microgame anthology about starting something big by doing something small. This book features nineteen games created by a diverse array of designers and edited and published by Ringling College of Art and Design students and faculty. All proceeds go to support student participation in future Anyone's Game conferences.

linksassin

6:00 AM

Just came across this video on Safety Tools used in Critical Role. Beware spoilers for the show but it has some great examples of safety tools in action. Also the video description has a fantastic list of tools to help you with safety tools at your table.

AncientSwordRage

9:37 AM

@Glazius that's not a conflict though, that's a couple of skill checks. If it were a conflict, you would also need to have picked a goal and could work on your disposition. Say you were going round and getting people on your side, it could just be 3 lots of defend to cancel out any reputation damage

Carcer

10:44 AM

@Ben you can also mouseover the "x hours ago" and the actual exact timestamp will display in tooltip

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: Can a wild shaped character use the medicine skill to stabilize a dying creature?

The PHB description of medicine is paltry, and Wild Shape doesn't seem to cover skills like medicine, though it does say you retain skill proficiencies. In my situation, the wild shaped character was trying to stabilize a humanoid. In this case, the character had become a spider. Since I found no...

dnd-5e skills druid wild-shape

illustro

11:07 AM

@Brondahl Is this the sort of answer you are looking for: rpg.stackexchange.com/a/184230/36850

Would be interested in getting critique from other stackziens too if they think it's a fair summary

nitsua60

11:55 AM

@BESW I don't know if I'm going to do well in about an hour, but I know I'll do much better than I would have, thanks to your help and insights. Thanks for your time.

BESW

@nitsua60 My pleasure, any time!

I'll say a prayer that what you say is heard the way people need to hear it.

Medix2

12:29 PM

@ThomasMarkov Technically Action Surge still isn't clear since bonus actions are a kind of action XD

Thomas Markov

glares

Medix2

But I'm pretty sure the rules literally only use "action" to include bonus actions once, in their opening description of bonus actions

Thomas Markov

There another place, one sec

Incapacitated: An incapacitated creature can't take actions or reactions.

Then the rules for bonus actions state that if you are deprived of your ability to take an action, you cannot take a bonus action

Medix2

Yes but there's a rule that explicitly states the inability to take actions also prevents taking bonus actions

Thomas Markov

So technically theyre distinct, but still confusing.

Medix2

12:32 PM

So "actions" doesn't mean bonus actions, it just happens to end up including it

But yeah, at least we all know very well that you can't just do anything "as an action" with your bonus action

Well... maybe... XD

I'm also not sure how your answer is very different from CTWind's @ThomasMarkov ?

Thomas Markov

@Medix2 Youre right, missed thanks to sorting lol

Ill throw some points on there.

@BaconyRevanant thanks for the points

I received 100 bounty points seconds after starting a 100 point bounty

AncientSwordRage

12:54 PM

@ThomasMarkov heh

weird

nitsua60

1:33 PM

d20

Dice Service

15

BaconyRevanant

@ThomasMarkov Yes, I am definitely not engaged in a clandestine attempt to manipulate my point into reaching a certain value <.<

Thomas Markov

@BaconyRevanant I would certainly support such an effort, were such an effort to exist.

BaconyRevanant

I'm certainly not a handful of points away from this alleged points value, and were it to truly exist, I most definitely wouldn't need precisely 4 upvotes to reach the target

Medix2

2:28 PM

@BaconyRevanant Oh my gosh, google thought your user page was in Vietnamese, presumably because of the diacritics on "Eldritch Abomination"

BaconyRevanant

LMAO

nice

GcL

2:41 PM

@Medix2 You only need to add a pinch of diacritics to make an entire page more flavorful.

BaconyRevanant

2

@AncientSwordRage Got 'em

Thomas Markov

Absolute mad lad.

BaconyRevanant

3:18 PM

XD

AncientSwordRage

@nitsua60 how'd it go?

@BaconyRevanant I'm still a ways off

BaconyRevanant

1 upvote, 2 downvotes (or 4 downvotes you give) and a 200 point bounty

Feeds

Needles & Nilbogs: Random thoughts and some project stuff

posted on April 22, 2021 by Bardic Wizard

This week’s been a little tiring and overwhelming, so I don’t have a nice polished blog entry. I’m fine, everything’s fine, it’s just a combination of technical difficulties, slight arm pain caused by sleeping on the side I got the covid vaccine on, and a big deadline coming up fast and hitting hard. Instead, I thought I’d follow in the fine tradition of the Yarn Harlot (she’s a great writer, b…

BaconyRevanant

strike that, 4 downvotes and a 200 rep bounty (or two 100's, or 4 50's or 1 150 and 1 50)

Hot RPG Questions

3:37 PM

3

Q: Does a character taking the Ready action perceive time?

The Ready action lets you react to a "perceivable circumstance." Trying to ready an action based on the initiative order is apparently possible, if you Ready based on a creature moving or attacking, rather than based on "their turn". But what about real (in-world) seconds or milliseconds? Can a c...

dnd-5e time readied-action

KorvinStarmast

4:08 PM

@AncientSwordRage Unless baseball is involved. There's no crying in baseball (movie reference, Leage of Their Own )

@A.B. the one tool folks have is to report a post to a mod as offensive. That prevents a flame war

@nitsua60 start the talk with "due process of law" and take it from there - quoting Bob Dylan's lyric from the Story of Hurricane (justice is a game) is probably for a different audience though

goodguy5

4:47 PM

@Checkforincoherentramblingsandcrackpotism I had a great time putting nilbogs, nilbogbohs, and reabgubs in a game

@KorvinStarmast I can only hear "there's no crying in baseball" in tom hanks' voice

Cat of doom2

4:57 PM

hello

AncientSwordRage

@Catofdoom2 "Hello, my name is Cat of Doom2, you are in the chat room, prepare to be greeted" ?

Cat of doom2

?

im Confused

AncientSwordRage

have you seen The Princess Bride?

Cat of doom2

yes

omg thats what that is, its a reference and a link to his wiki padge

Daily Discussion

a question will be asked daily and then we discuss about the i...

AncientSwordRage

I'm heading home from work on time for once

ciao for niao

Cat of doom2

5:08 PM

@AncientSwordRage can you take a look at my new chat when you get a chance?

BaconyRevanant

5:31 PM

I just sneezed so hard my arms got cramps -_-

Thomas Markov

@BaconyRevanant I hate that.

nitsua60

@AncientSwordRage I think it went well. (It definitely went better than it would have without @BESW's excellent and thoughtful advice!) But I couldn't find my glasses this morning, so I actually don't have any real sense of how the audience was engaged or not. Or even whether there was an audience :shrug:

@KorvinStarmast My son has just finished reading Carter's The Sixteenth Round (the jailhouse memoir Hurricane wrote) after having seen the Denzel Washington movie (in which the boy reads The Sixteenth Round and befriends Carter) after having hear the Dylan song and wondering what it was about.

Some days I really just couldn't be more impressed by the generation coming up behind me.

AncientSwordRage

5:54 PM

@nitsua60 that is impressive

@KorvinStarmast is there a baseball RPG?

nitsua60

APBA Baseball!

Not quite an RPG, but RPG-adjacent....

AncientSwordRage

As in Yip Yip ?

nitsua60

apbagames.com/apbabaseball

AncientSwordRage

Fun!

AncientSwordRage

7:36 PM

@nitsua60 I'm glad it went well, hopefully. Maybe do the best you couldn't see the audience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Akixkisu

@NautArch rpg.stackexchange.com/a/184243/44723 what concerns do you have with the artificer in general?

Hot RPG Questions

8:27 PM

5

Q: When was the Action Surge feature description changed to remove mention of "a possible bonus action"?

The fighter's Action Surge originally stated: Starting at 2nd level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional action on top of your regular action and a possible bonus action This mention of "a possible bonus action" has been a sour...

dnd-5e class-feature fighter errata

NautArch

8:45 PM

@Akixkisu I don't think it's a particularly balanced class and has some issues.

Akixkisu

@NautArch I'm curious to hear your thoughts, if you'd like to share.

NautArch

@Akixkisu I honestly would need to go back and read through everything, but we've seen a bunch of questions come up around odd mechanics of it.

But my biggest I think is the attunements and some of the magic item creation options.

It's just a really powerful class with interactions that aren't fully thought through

AncientSwordRage

@NautArch it definitely comes out of left field with some of its abilities

I wouldn't mind rolling up an artificer/abjurationist multiclass at some point

AncientSwordRage

9:32 PM

Arcane ward, Flash of Genius, Projected Ward... It would be an attempt at a caster tank.

Helwar

hum, I know some of you use Foundry VTT... would you know how to configure the "Balm of the Summer Court" feature from the Circle of Dreams Druid? Up until now I just had it as a passive feature and we did all the rolling by hand, but I've been trying to make use of the tool properly, and trying to automate whatever we can

BESW

9:48 PM

@AncientSwordRage I know of a blaseball TRPG and an olympics TRPG.

Hot RPG Questions

10:03 PM

3

Q: How can I improve the survivability or damage potential of my familiar, as a cleric 5/wizard 1?

I play a Death Domain cleric, with 1 level in wizard so I can cast the find familiar spell. For my familiar, I have a gelatinous ice cube (stats of a oblex spawn). At lower levels, it was super fun but we are now level 5 and with only AC 13 and 18 HP, it is dying in literally every single fight. ...

dnd-5e spells familiars

AncientSwordRage

@Helwar someone here does, but I forget who

Helwar

thx, I guess they will see this, or not

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I keep meaning to get my head around blaseball, but no success so far

BESW

@Helwar @Xirema and @Axoren A question for you from Helwar!

BLASEBALL: THE FIRST EIGHT SEASONS.

►

Xirema

@Helwar The short version is that it's probably going to have to be a GM-only macro.

BESW

10:08 PM

Got half an hour?

Helwar

@Xirema oh, I need to learn macros then. We'll do it by hand

for the moment

thanks Xirema!

Xirema

I recently wrote a macro that would apply the "Tundra Aura" feature that Path of the Storm Herald barbarians get to her nearby allies (3 Temp HP), and although I got the macro to work, when I tried to use it while aliasing as the player in question, I got a bunch of errors about not having permission to alter actors other than her own.

@Helwar For what it's worth, I think it would be a very simple macro. Although if it were me, I'd probably add a dropdown menu like "how many dice to use at once??" and any kind of UI element is doable, but immediately blows up the complexity a great deal.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I do, but not this second

BESW

Aug 8 '20 at 0:47, by BESW

They Came to Play Ball by Adira Slattery is a cosmic horror sports game created using the Firebrands Framework, with touchstones like the movie Space Jam, the cultural event Blaseball, and the LARP Beastf*cker.

Aug 11 '20 at 22:47, by BESW

We Are All Love Blaseball is a game jam to create tabletop roleplaying games that expands on the cultural event that is Blaseball.

Helwar

@Xirema that's how I have it in roll20 :/

thanks for the help, I'll look into macros

it's about time I learned them

Xirema

10:18 PM

@Helwar I just dumped in the Elemental Plane of Math a macro I wrote for our Sorcerer's Flexible Casting feature.

Helwar

is that a chatroom? haha

Someone_Evil

Elemental Plane of Math

RPG.SE's space for quarantining Probability/Math/Statistics re...

Xirema

It has most of the "stuff" you'd need for making a basic UI and functionality.

The trick to making macros mostly involves just writing console.log a million times with different objects to figure out what their properties are, and then figuring out how to use them.

Helwar

10:41 PM

Thank you!

AncientSwordRage

@BESW they look interesting

Hot RPG Questions

11:40 PM

3

Q: Can Bigby's Hand be healed?

Per the spell description, Bigby's Hand is an object: The hand is an object that has AC 20 and hit points equal to your hit point maximum. As an object, my instinct is to say that like other objects, Bigby's Hand could only be healed by a spell like Mending which explicitly heals objects: This...

dnd-5e spells healing

Axoren

@Helwar Yeah, for the most party, we mainly use macro declarations and have affected players self-modify. FoundryVTT with certain plugins brings A LOT to the table, but since it's still in alpha if a plugin doesn't do what you want yet, you need to make it. You can ask on the FoundryVTT Discord about macros and plugins for specific dnd5e features in their #dnd5e chat. It's very active and you're probably not the first person to need that feature.

Helwar

Thanks for the tip!

Axoren

For more complex things that only affect you (like a few rendering issues I ran into), you can ask around on the League of Extraordinary FoundryVTT Developers' discord. They sometimes take requests for anything that doesn't fill a full man-hour. Otherwise, they have a channel for commissions.

I asked there to see if someone's already done Balm of the Summer Court

Daily Discussion

Elemental Plane of Math

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