TRPG General Chat

BESW

01:59

ORUN, Post-Apotheosis Space Opera RPG by New Agenda Publishing. Not quite ascendant themselves, the Luminaries travel to different worlds as advisers, troubleshooters, and peacekeepers in the post-apotheosis galaxy. They explore lost star systems and ultimately help enlighten worlds and their people, waking the galaxy from its disordered indolence.

"Itch.io’s inaugural Creator Day eschews revenue cuts" by Chase Carter for Dicebreaker. Indie platform Itch.io’s inaugural Creator Day eschews revenue cuts for 24 hours, giving creators 100 percent of profit from digital sales.

Huetopia wrote a twitter thread of "BIMPoC creators to check out & support on this #CreatorDay !!"

Itch Creator Days First Chimera Bundle by Ryan Boelter, Chimera RPG. This bundle gives you access to both the Chimera Playset and the tower building game Our Final Gathering, a game that blends the gameplay of Dread and Reflections with the Highlander franchise Immortals.

Marvelous Mutations & Merry Musicians! by wendi y. a game about post-post-apocalyptic kinda-solarpunk musicians travelling the once-wastelands

Creator Day TTRPG Deep Cuts Bundle by theinstagrahame and 20 others. Pick up this mixtape of hidden gems from a group of fantastic indie TTRPG creators.

Sonja & Conan versus the Ninjas (English version) by GuillaumeJentey. a ttrpg to play adventure like in Pulp magazines and Z movies.

mole.mole by Cezar Capacle. Create and live spontaneous, epic stories in your favorite setting

Sci-fi character portraits project by Ashen Victor. Character portraits for your sci-fi games!

Heroes of the Moebius Guild by Jon East. Bad news: There's way too many dungeons. Good news: We have some eager volunteers to take care of them.

Agouro by Raul Fontoura. A game of inevitable prophecy

Legacy of the Lost by BasiliskOnline. A Belonging Outside Belonging game of community and discovery in a post-apocalyptic sc-fi galaxy.

Jamila R. Nedjadi is on twitter collecting itch.io Creator's Day sales.

Typhos Games shared on twitter "a thread of some of my favorites for you to go support for #ItchCreatorDay!"

BESW

02:44

"Getting the narrative right" update on Frosthaven Kickstarter by Isaac Childres. Don't read the comments.

A. B.

02:55

What the bloody hell is "solarpunk", anyway?

bobble

a genre

A. B.

Been wondering for some time. Everyone seems to know except me.

bobble

4

A: What are genres? Are they a useful concept?

Let's start with what genres aren't. When people debate the definition of say, Science Fiction, what makes these debates possible is the belief that an objective, correct definition of Science Fiction exists. However, the assumption that genres have objective, coherent definitions doesn't hold up...

there's a little bit about it in there, with some links

A. B.

k

neat

somebody made this genre up on purpose?

bobble

I'm not sure I can explain it well

A. B.

03:01

looks like basically sensible future but also with steampunk fashion-wise? (except without the steam).

(OK, there is me explaining it not well.)

not how I'd have thought of doing it but I can see it being fun.

I like the little blimp :-D

bobble

airships are best ships

BESW

@bobble Hah, the solarpunk examples in there are so awkward. It's a very weird example of genre, as it's simultaneously describing a pre-existing category of works by a broad slice of authors across multiple decades and genres, but also creating a new subsubsubcategory of what I semi-affectionately call splatpunk to re-categorize those works into, and that new category is an aspirational one, anticipating the birth of a type of fiction that the term's coiner didn't think existed yet.

...I never finished reading Radiance, its prose style kept getting in the way of my actually knowing what was going on.

bobble

I remember one terrible library book that was partially written in the in-universe slang, and thus was unintelligible.

BESW

Hah. Yeah, that kind of choice can be done really well so that it stays comprehensible, but it very often... isn't.

One of my pet peeves, which made me put down a book last week, is when the author refuses to explain anything to the reader until there's a "natural" reason for the in-universe characters to explain things they all already understand.

Medix2

03:18

@BESW Interesting, the feeling of not knowing stuff about a universe when everybody in it obviously does know those things is one of my favorite moments. I just get to sit there and wonder and wait

BESW

@Medix2 It can work, but it has to be the right kind of not-knowing and too often there's so much I don't know that I can't understand even the most basic elements of what's going on.

I also dislike "I am the first-person narrator and I have a secret past that is central to my identity and my place in the world which I will constantly allude to but not explain until several chapters in."

Like... with some very very specific exceptions, relying on hiding information to create tension suggests to me that the author doesn't think what's happening will actually be very interesting once I find out what it is.

A. B.

Haha, that's a point.

Besides, you kind of can't do anything with anything you read that doesn't make sense without the secret information until you have the secret information, so you usually forget it. And if there's lots of that before you get told the secret information, then that'll all have gone out of your head by then and they've wasted a large chunk of the book.

Maybe on the second reading it'd work, once you already know the secret information that makes sense of the other stuff, but in that case why not just tell you at the start?

BESW

I've been watching early Columbo episodes on my own, and for family night my mom and I are watching episodes of The Saint, Danger Man, and The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, and it's been very interesting to think about how each of them handles exposition and mystery differently, and what each show thinks the story's tension should be.

Especially since Columbo stands out as the show where they usually show you the crime being committed --who and how and why-- before the detective ever arrives.

A. B.

Yeah, I'd forgotten that, that's an odd move. And it does work.

The point isn't so much what happened, as how he's going to prove it.

Hot RPG Questions

3

Q: Can beholders swim?

According to this question the fly speed can only be used for flying, and otherwise swimming speed is equivalent to half of normal speed. However beholders have a normal speed of 0ft, and flying speed of 20ft. Can a beholder swim? If so, would its swimming speed be equal to half of its flying spe...

A. B.

03:31

tries to imagine a beholder swimming. Doesn't think it would work very well.

BESW

This is not at all to say that I think it's always bad for a story with keep mysteries and secrets; but that the mystery or secret is most effective as a source of tension and satisfaction if it exists for the sake of something else, rather than being its own reward.

The "detective stands in the drawing room explaining the case" scene isn't satisfying because we learn the solution; it's satisfying because of the display of competence and the sense that we could have followed the logic if we'd been more careful.

The delight of watching Columbo solving a case is watching the act of him solving it, not the solution itself.

Just like the reason we think of jump scares in horror films as cheap is that they so often serve no purpose to the story or characters, they exist only for their own sakes. You can use a jump scare to better purpose and I love it when films do.

bobble

03:44

I absolutely do not mind if I can guess the plot of a book from the blurb or from the first few chapters. The joy is always watching the characters experience the events. (This is also why I love re-reading, to watch them again)

A. B.

Columbo and similar detective stories make for a rather different kind of story to one where you don't know who did it until later. You already know who he's after, and it's usually not long before he knows it too (just can't prove anything yet), so the whole cat-and-mouse game is visible to the audience and it's about that.

(The odd thing is that it does still read as a puzzle, only the puzzle is not "who did it and what" but "how are you ever going to prove that".)

reads some more of the "solarpunk" articles

It seems to be basically "Hebden Bridge but we're calling it a genre now" :-D

> We have grown up under a shadow, and if we sometimes resemble fungus it should be taken as a credit to our adaptability.

:-)

What on earth, Singapore has biodomes now?

searches

From a cursory search it seems to be mainly the one, but it's glorious. Well done them.

BESW

04:10

@bobble I frequently go actively looking for "spoilers" before or even while watching/reading a story.

trogdor

04:40

I don't usually do that unless I'm sure i'm not going to watch/read/play something XD

Hot RPG Questions

05:08

6

Q: Profit from Mending

A low level spellcaster with no tool proficiencies would like to earn some money in downtime. How much could typically be earned per month by using the Mending cantrip to repair assorted items? Mending This spell repairs a single break or tear in an object you touch, such as a broken chain link,...

dnd-5e spells cantrips downtime

BESW

13:19

The Warren by Bully Pulpit Games. The Warren is a tabletop role-playing game about intelligent rabbits trying to make the best of a world filled with hazards, predators and, worst of all, other rabbits. It is a game about survival and community.

Thomas Markov

13:30

Do we really need a tag volume

Probably synonym it with 3d-space

BESW

And then when somebody goes to tag a sound-related question....

Thomas Markov

@BESW amplitude? :P

BESW

If it went to meta I'd expect a synonym proposal to show a problem that volume is causing and why a synonym is a fix for it.

Akixkisu

13:57

@BESW Do you think we should merge weight and 3d-space ?

Medix2

I'm confused what 3d-space should be used for? Questions like this or like this? Or both?

Akixkisu

@Medix2 no idea, it apparently includes all variations of volume.

Medix2

Cuz there's a lot of these

Akixkisu

@Medix2 yup.

So maybe we should also merge area of effect into 3d-space?

Medix2

Well, many aoe questions aren't about the third dimension at all

Like whether a line can be placed between two grid-squares or how many squares a circular aoe hits or how big cloud of daggers is, and so on

Akixkisu

14:04

I don't know.

It is so broard and has no use guidance.

Medix2

I mean, the use guidance is "For questions that primarily involve calculations, coordinates, and movement within the imagined 3-dimensional space of the game world."

Akixkisu

@Medix2 and what is that "imagined 3-dimensional space"?

Seems pretty encompassing.

Someone_Evil

I'm not sure we need a tag for calculating the volume of a thing, but I certainly don't think it's the same concept as 3d-space is for

Akixkisu

We have about 500 questions about volume.

That is more questions than most tags.

Medix2

We... do?

Akixkisu

14:09

But you do you, let me know what conclusion you come to.

Someone_Evil

Unless someone's made a flat-world RPG, most gameworlds are gonna be three dimensional. But, at least for several versions of D&D AFAIK, a lot of things are only well defined/commonly used for two dimension (eg. flat battlemaps). So the considerations when the third become important are a distinct topic (for which we have the tag)

Medix2

This search has only 98 and surely has false positives from things like "a great volume of work" "a loud volume" and "Dragon Compendium Volume X"

Thomas Markov

The tag description of 3d-space seems to fit volume calculations just fine.

Akixkisu

@Medix2 oh, you are right I looked at the wrong search page, embarrasing it is only 100 which is more than most tags.

Someone_Evil

Contains the word does not mean is about. Volume is also used for other things, sound as previously mentioned, books

Akixkisu

14:13

Yup I'm looking through false positives right now.

Medix2

It's also not like every question about volume will automatically actually use the word "volume" but tracking those down would be more difficult

Someone_Evil

And for at least some of these, the concern isn't about the 3d-ness of it, but simply amount of something (typically liquids obvs)

Akixkisu

33.

Medix2

I take it that is the number that, to your understanding, would gain the tag?

Akixkisu

That doesn't account for questions which are about volume, but don't mention it.

no those are the false positives.

Medix2

14:17

Ah, so 65 then

Akixkisu

Of your search.

Yes.

Medix2

So page 8/34 in the tag list (8/19 counting only tags on 10+ questions, but that number is arbitrary)

Akixkisu

yup.

And that doesn't account for questions which are about volume, but don't mention the specific phrase.

(the most common false positive was a Dragon Compendium btw, not sound or the sheer volume of material - if you are curious)

Medix2

Makes sense given the hobby

Akixkisu

Someone should write a better use guide for 3d-space btw.

One that makes distinct which tags it doesn't apply to and which things it does apply to.

Medix2

14:25

What's wrong with the current description?

Thomas Markov

@Medix2 it sounds like it applies to questions about volume and apparently it shouldn’t?

Medix2

But also, the way tag wikis get used across Stacks is... extremely varied

Like just look at this thing

Akixkisu

Movement in 3d-space in outer space makes sense, but movement and calculations in 3d-space could be anything from a volume of water to jumping up in a dungeon to battleship manoeuvring or applying 3d area of effect on a grid.

Medix2

Those all feel like they fit under "3d-space" to me? So I don't think that's bad?

Akixkisu

@Medix2 sure, but there is the problem that it has fewer than 30 uses even though it existed for more than 10 years - why is that?

Medix2

14:29

Probably because nobody thinks to add it, and why would they?

Thomas Markov

I don’t think that’s a problem.

I mean yeah, we could use it more when it applies

Akixkisu

@Medix2 exactly.

Medix2

Editing the tag wiki is not going to make people use the tag more

Akixkisu

@Medix2 what would make people use it more?

Medix2

In full honesty, nothing

People won't use a tag unless they know it exists and the tags people know about are the extremely common ones that people know exist (cue self-maintaining cycle)

Akixkisu

14:33

Well such a productive conversation, have a nice day.

Medix2

And you as well, goodbye

bobble

You can add it to questions yourself? I monitor all new Puzzling or Literature questions and retag/edit quite a few.

Someone_Evil

@Medix2 Or the name matches with words they were already using a checked for tags. That doesn't always make tags used correctly though (see tools)

Medix2

For me, with 43.5 thousand questions, tag efforts are going to be best spent on tagging new questions as they come in. But I pretty much gave up on tags after realizing that aren't taxonomical, or rigidly defined, and that various stacks use them completely differently and the general Stack guidance (helping experts find questions) doesn't apply to TTRPG.SE well at all

Thomas Markov

Yeah, we don’t really get people to use the tags. We as the active users doing curation add tags as appropriate to new questions and retag old ones when we think we need to.

To me, this one seems to low stakes to need to do a proper retagging project.

Akixkisu

14:48

@Medix2 I used your input to open the meta. I think this framing should take that into consideration.

The Oracle

0

Q: Should we add the "volume" synonym to the "3d-space" tag, or would a "volume" tag be a good addition?

We have a 3d-space tag which applies to all kinds of various things - should we add a synonym "volume" to it for the more than 60 questions about volume calculation, or would a "volume" tag be a good addition? Or are both options unhelpful?

discussion tags

Medix2

I am a bit confused how we could add the volume synonym for questions that don't have the tag... is there an implied retag effort?

Though I will probably end up writing a "volume is a helpful subset of 3d space to make a synonym out of and probably isn't specific enough to warrant it being its own separate tag" answer when I'm off work... in 12 hours XD

Thomas Markov

15:18

Lol instant downvote. I wonder who that could be.

I really think you’re making this more complicated than it has to be @Akixkisu

NautArch

15:55

Coming in late here and I guess I'll wait on meta response, but the 3d space tag I don't think is needed for questions about volume.

NautArch

16:14

Oh, I see.

Hrm

I might actually suggest we include it with weight. Keep 3d space for navigating in 3d and not about weigh and measure.

Thomas Markov

16:43

@NautArch that’s perfect.

BESW

21:59

@Akixkisu My consistent position has always been to let askers choose their own tags without interference until an actual problem (as opposed to a speculative one) is identified.

The term of art is emergent taxonomy.

It's one of the few instances where I don't have any major notes for the default Stack standards.

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