TRPG General Chat

12:02 AM

6

Q: How would Eilistraee react to being worshipped by characters outside her target demographics?

I know that for example some gnomes worship Gond (human god) as well as certain elves follow Mystra (also human god), but how would deity like Eilistraee (whose entire existence revolves around drow) react to being worshipped by half-orc or even human? Would she even care or would she just ignore...

BESW

Apr 2 '17 at 23:29, by BESW

It's also useful to remember that D&D's concept of polytheism is completely unlike any real-world pantheon I've ever heard of: it's a monotheist's misconception of polytheism.

AncientSwordRage

> and some of them --like Vecna-- got "Does Not Play Well With Others" on their daycare reports all the time.

I Miss getting BESW answers on main

BESW

1:19 AM

@AncientSwordRage Aw. I'm glad my attempts to make them Extremely Readable were appreciated (even though often the person I was most trying to amuse was myself).

Glazius

1:57 AM

I think it's hard to write an answer people will have fun reading if you don't at least have a little fun writing it. Too much fun is a caution, but.

BESW

Often I'd amuse myself by giving examples of an answer in action, but have the example be re-enacting a scene from some semi-obscure novel or TV show, or an amusingly off-beat take on a popular bit of media.

AncientSwordRage

2:45 AM

@BESW Extremely Readable is extremely appreciated

bobble

3:32 AM

The answer I'm most proud of is something that might not be readable or entertaining, per se. It has the very specific purpose of being an exhaustive timeline of a novel (which I re-read just for the answer) and is probably only interesting if you also care out the novel :)

BESW

4:04 AM

Petition: more scifi needs to use the word 'optico-video'.

@bobble [very impressed]

bobble

thanks!

BESW

May 5 '15 at 9:42, by BESW

Personal examples: this is my most upvoted answer, and this is the answer I'm most proud of.

bobble

My highest-voted Lit answer was a 1-minute Google copy-paste, and my highest-voted Puzzling answers are due to sacrificing some homework time to FGiTW some novelty mazes.

Shalvenay

yeah, my top upvoted answers aren't my hardest-researched ones either

Bardic Wizard

4:27 AM

@BESW oooh those look good!

@Sos been there, tried that, have suggestions

I run a game through the local library, and more than once I’ve emailed with people around game sessions (we meet once a month on zoom) to figure out what they’re doing in their downtime. Some forms this takes: actual pbp (not often, only happened once), a couple of indie games that focus on character studies and background to flesh out characters, and once just swapping questions about the character with someone

In another group, me and three friends (we meet weekly and my friend GMs), we have a setting that’s basically post apocalyptic SF, and we develop it as a group. So we toss ideas about the world and characters around in our text chat, but we also share memes, jokes, and other unrelated things

It depends on group dynamics and the general tone of the game though

A. B.

4:52 AM

What does Graffiti Speak do? Can't really tell much from the blurb.

Sos

7:03 AM

thanks @BardicWizard that's some good stuff

AncientSwordRage

7:42 AM

@BESW noted

AncientSwordRage

7:59 AM

@bobble ::being impressed intensifies:: :-D

Favourite question and my Favourite answer

Trish

9:10 AM

My most voted answer and my personal favorite are much apart...

Trish

9:24 AM

Though, my 2nd personal favorite broke the character limit

kviiri

9:35 AM

I have been so passive for a while I don't exactly recall my favorite posts, but lemme check...

Okay, I'm actually kinda proud of my highest-voted question.

As an aside, I never did get around to trying the advice in a live situation. I still hope to, someday.

Though that's not exactly my favorite type of RPG I'm considering there (I generally prefer collaborative storytelling over hidden agendas and all that, but OTOH there's no harm in doing something else from time to time)

For my top-voted answers, I think they're all essentially the same answer ("Talk to your players, talk to your GM, treat the RPG as a normal social interaction in terms of acceptable interpersonal conduct, leave games you are not happy with")

I think this is a fun answer from me because it touches the issue from so many angles.

BESW

10:04 AM

FontJam hosted by Speak the Sky. A jam for making fonts!

BREAKNECK A collection of playbooks for Galactic 2E by Riley Rethal about the high speed sport called dartracing and being on the run. It is inspired by episode 1, many chase sequences in sci-fi and real life racing.

AncientSwordRage

10:26 AM

@BESW as opposed to a Jam Font, which is much stickier

BESW

Or something that QWERTY was designed to minimize.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW Dvorak FTW

BESW

(For those wondering, the keyboard layout in which the top left alphabet characters are QWERTY, was designed not for ease of typing but to keep the complex inner mechanisms of 1870s typewriters from jamming up if you typed too fast. By the time typewriter technology had advanced so that layouts designed for ease of typing, like Dvorak, were practical... QWERTY had 60 years of inertia that it's been coasting on ever since.)

AncientSwordRage

10:50 AM

@BESW it's a bad layout, but the inertia it has is pretty crazy

I always assumed that getting used to a different keyboard layout was easy, but I stopped when I started sharing my phone with my wife? I'd pass it to her so she could google something while her phone changed and get a WTF face back when she saw the Dvorak layout

kviiri

QWERTY's badness is memetically exaggerated though (/me points at the popular "designed to slow down typing" legend)

BESW

Yeah, and it’s actually a very very good layout for its purpose: keeping 1870s typewriters from jamming while used by speedy typists.

kviiri

I haven't felt the need to learn Dvorak yet, but one thing I've been considered is switching to US QWERTY for programming

Many of my friends already do it, because several special characters that are commonly used in programming are easier on American layouts than the Finnish one

Wikipedia on US QWERTY and the Finnish multilingual.

AncientSwordRage

11:06 AM

I've got a strong urge to make a font where each letter is on a jam jar, and have ligatures that mean words are just one wiiiiide jam jar

kviiri

Several coding-relevant characters, including square brackets and braces, inequaiity operators, the caret and more are much easier on the US layout and in exchange you lose scandics, which are seldom used in programming anyway even here. (Many languages don't even accept scandics, outside literals or even at all)

AncientSwordRage

11:29 AM

@kviiri scandics? Like the o with a cross through?

A. B.

Weird coincidence, but there's currently someone in Worldbuilding.SE chat proposing a story about guns jammed by magic self-propelling jam. :-)

Strawberry.

AncientSwordRage

@A.B. hah

BESW

Jay Dragon wrote a twitter thread about "the fact that all rpg texts have a viewpoint, a narrator, a perspective."

This is something I've thought about in my game texts, but haven't always been happy with what I wound up doing.

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage I mainly mean ä/Ä, ö/Ö and å/Å as they have their own keys on our keyboards (taking up space from precious coding symbols)

Though ø is definitely going to have similar issues in... I think Norwegian? keyboards

AncientSwordRage

@kviiri I'm very fond of my phone keybard, and the long press functionality, as it allows typing most of those

kviiri

11:42 AM

Yeah, though our language makes frequent use of ä and ö (and Swedish also å) so it wouldn't really do to not have dedicated keys for them in normal usage.

BESW

I think the 'okina still needs a plugin.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW uh`oh

yeah it's difficult when you get two similarish letters that are hard to distinguish

a 'classic' is the greek question mark: ;

Question mark

The question mark ? (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. The question mark is not used for indirect questions. The question mark glyph is also often used in place of missing or unknown data. == History == Lynne Truss attributes an early form of the modern question mark in western language to Alcuin of York. Truss describes the punctus interrogativus of the late 8th century as "a lightning flash, striking from right to left". (The punctuation system of Aelius Donatus, current...

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage I'll one-up that with the non-breaking space, a.k.a. the everything-breaking space.

That's actually one good reason more to eschew the Finnish multilingual in favor of US layouts: many programming related symbols require AltGr, and AltGr+space gets you a nbsp.

AncientSwordRage

good old nbsp

BESW

I fully expect that the CHamoru glottal stop character will change, just because you have to turn off auto-formatting to make the "accurate" version of the character reliably.

AncientSwordRage

11:49 AM

@BESW is this on Macs?

I've heard it has unhelpful autoformatting

BESW

Everywhere. The glotta is an undirected apostrophe.

AncientSwordRage

I'm definitely not a fan of directional quotes

kviiri

So accidental nbsp is very common when typing fast

BESW

Auto-formatting has already made directional apostrophes accepted in colloquial use, and I figure it's only a matter of time before the colloquial acceptance is codified.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW oof

I've seen the Irish Apostrophe break computer systems

@kviiri it's also been used to hack certificates in the past

because google.com and goog<nbsp>le.com are read differently

Or was it the EOL marker ?...

BESW

11:54 AM

I know the key command to make a 'typewriter' apostrophe, but I have to GREP all the text I receive from clients, and transferring text back into programs like MS Word often re-applies the formatting.

AncientSwordRage

that sucks

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage I think nbsp should still render there, but many similar filler characters could work

AncientSwordRage

@kviiri it was a case of the server system reading it as an end of line, and thus not seeing it as a different URL. I probably have most if not all details wrong

BESW

Sometimes it feels like the MS Suite devs consider the phrase "locus of control" to be the most dread of profanities.

kviiri

Our university's anti-plagiarism system raised flags for my theses (both BSc and MSc) because I used Greek letters a lot. They raise alerts because they are sometimes used in an attempt to disguise plagiarism (eg. replace T with a capital tau)

AncientSwordRage

11:56 AM

@BESW hmm?

kviiri

Of course the phenomenon, including the false positives, was well-known and correspondingly treated as a mildly amusing footnote only.

BESW

In ethical programming, the locus of control is the point of agency. In MS Word, for example, auto-formatting quote marks is turned on by default and requires a moderate degree of expertise to turn off. The locus of control for formatting quote marks is with the developers, not the end user.

AncientSwordRage

got it

BESW

When this kind of "we know what you want and will do it for you without asking" attitude manifests in programming, I call it the Ghost of Clippy.

He no longer pops up in front of what you're working on to interrupt your control of the program, but the same principles which birthed him live on in presumptive, intrusive, 'features' that pretend to know what you want based on usage-data averages which the military figured out were nonsense half a century ago, and then do it without permission.

AncientSwordRage

Averages are often misleading

BESW

12:03 PM

Veterans of The Clippy Wars will remember that there was a "go away" button you could press, but that it only temporarily suppressed him and actually turning him off for good required a not insignificant amount of expertise with the program.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I remember those days

I also remember you could swap clippy out for a variety of other cartoon creatures

BESW

When I taught MS Office programs in the 2010s, one of the very first things I taught was how to turn off the bar of buttons that shows up when you mouseover highlighted text. No matter how useless the rest of the class was, that one bit of knowledge made the students feel like it was worth it.

@AncientSwordRage Many of which were design assets from Microsoft Bob.

kviiri

I switched to using Linux in 2009 and despite losing some of the ease-of-use features, I find that with any computer, it's going to break sooner or later, and with Linux I can fix those problems

AncientSwordRage

@BESW oh goodness, that completely passed me by

I'm getting strong Encarta vibes from that picture

BESW

Hah, yeah, same "the computer screen is a window into a space" design school of experimenting with ways to make interfaces as low-friction and approachable as possible.

AncientSwordRage

12:11 PM

@kviiri that's more or less my opinion, but there're still too many things that you can't do on linux that you can on windows

BESW

....which reminds me of The Goldbergs and its treatment of the camera as a window across the air shaft which positioned every viewer as Molly Goldberg's literal neighbor to whom she would speak directly.

in Not a bar, but plays one on TV, Jan 27 '18 at 0:58, by BESW

If I had the time to learn an entire new profession I could use Linux.

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage That's true to some extent, though TBH it's been ages since I've really missed anything personally

usually it's something like interfacing with some meeting room software.

Gaming's gotten noticeably easier on Linux, not only due to plentiful native releases but also because good work by Valve and Wine teams on Proton.

I have my opinions on their business in other matters, but I got to respect their work on that.

Though I should add that my school of gaming is not very selective...

...or it is, but not in the "I need to play this specific hot release NOW!" kind.

That might be actually hard on Linux.

Hot RPG Questions

12:49 PM

3

Q: Do potions and breakable things carried by a character break or are damaged when a character falls?

I'm referring to fall damage but also from falling on it's face when a character becomes unconscious. Does a saving throw exist, or a mechanism to handle equipment damage from fall?

dnd-5e equipment falling potions

AncientSwordRage

1:00 PM

@kviiri that's good to know

Trish

1:11 PM

@BESW the QWERTZ variant was needed because Z is much more used in german than the Y.

Though the assignmetn of the hyphenation and such is much different between qwertz and qwerty: ,; .: -_ are right of M on QWETZ, opening the space up for öäü

kviiri

@Trish That's also the case for Finnish QWERTY

Trish

@kviiri finnish qwerty (or rather: scandinavian qwerty variants) borrow that part from qwertz afaik, because there are äöü and the a with circle and slashed o needed somewhere

also, 3d level keybindings for the win!

kviiri

@Trish Norwegian (and Danish) is actually slightly different, they have the æ and ø where we Finns and Swedes have ä and ö

Trish

@kviiri yea, something like that, but they just swap the characters.

I do love my 3-level kybindings, how else to put µ@€{[]} on the keys by just one keypress?! ALT-GR for the win!

kviiri

@Trish Danish (for reasons I don't know) has them in swapped order compared to everyone else x)

Trish

1:26 PM

@kviiri usage ammount. The reason is how often a key is used. ö on a german keyboard is the leftmost, as ö is the most used of the three.

also, dead keyys make the keyboard a lot cleaner. I think Scandinavian keyboards use them too?

kviiri

@Trish Googling this, it seems the two symbols have almost exactly the same frequency in Danish, so I suspect this is not the cause

Trish

wow: "Computers with Windows are commonly sold with ÖØÆ and ÄÆØ printed on the two keys, allowing same computer hardware to be sold in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, with different operating system settings." - XD

3 keys, each has (depending on chountry) one of two characters, and there are 4 viable settings.

kviiri

Yes, my work laptop has exactly that. (I hadn't actually realized it has duplicate symbols before today)

Trish

if you want to mess with your colleague: flip his keybinding to danish :P

kviiri

;D

And the Finnish layout has to work for Swedish too since it's an official language here (but luckily, we share the ä and ö symbols and Finnish has no equivalent to compete for key space against å)

(okay, probably less about luck and more about the fact Finnish orthography had some Swedish influence due to being a colony)

Devils _Spawn

1:33 PM

I need help.

kviiri

@Devils_Spawn Hi, what's up?

Devils _Spawn

Not D&D related. But I thought talking in this chat would help because of the all the people here.

Trish

Honest question: arent all those scandinavian countries inhabited by descendants of dane on the north-east side an svíar on the baltic side?

Devils _Spawn

How do I get out of mobile chat? I'm stuck in this. Version. I need help ASAP. It's so frustrating

Trish

@Devils_Spawn I don't deal with D&D 5e if I can help it :3

Devils _Spawn

1:36 PM

Why's that @Trish?

kviiri

@Devils_Spawn Open the hamburger menu (should be in top left), select "Full site"

Devils _Spawn

I would show you a pic of what I'm talking about, but I can't. I can!t show images.

And thank you @Kviiri.

Trish

@Devils_Spawn The game designers made a really really bad statement, declaring that GMs should use their players as guinea pigs to develop new content.

kviiri

@Trish I think it's a bit muddy, there's been a lot of back-and-forth influencing but culturally I think Sweden and Denmark have been the two dominant powers of Scandinavia for all of history, pretty much

Devils _Spawn

Thank you so much, a million times @Kviiri. And I see what you mean @Trish.

Trish

1:38 PM

@kviiri Norway literally was founded by dane exiles, but dane and svíar are terms for the pre-early-medieval tribes.

kviiri

@Devils_Spawn Heh, no worries :)

Devils _Spawn

Thank you. I was losing my sanity.

Trish

@Devils_Spawn plus, the rules are obviously written so bad that we need to allocate 98% of the site to 5E.

kviiri

@Trish And that's basically been Norway's position in history for much of its life, too --- being tossed between the rivaling Sweden's and Denmark's spheres of influence every so often instead of being allowed to stand as a nation of its own.

Trish

@kviiri Ask the fins, they didn't exist on any map but had been a Swedish province for most of their time.

(Nobody asks the Sami though!)

kviiri

1:41 PM

@Trish Being a Finn, I'm well aware x) though tbh I think Sweden is one of the better overlords to have been under.

Devils _Spawn

Yeah. You're correct. In my opinion, it just depends on your DM

kviiri

Much of our enlightened state tradition is inherited from the relatively progressive Swedish customs. And if that wouldn't've sunk in otherwise, we got just a bit shy of a century of encroaching Russian autocracy to remind us why those institutions are worth it.

NautArch

@Devils_Spawn As with most games that require DMs.

:)

Devils _Spawn

Yep :)

kviiri

@Devils_Spawn My personal opinion is, with DnD 5e (well, most editions of DnD by what I know) it depends a bit too much on the GM to my taste.

Devils _Spawn

1:45 PM

Yeah, but the DM needs to be good or yeah, the DM is like that.

NautArch

My one experience with Scum and Villainy (blades in the dark) also seems to require good GMing.

kviiri

After the outcry against DnD 4e, which had a well-defined, and therefore somewhat restrictive playstyle, I guess Wizards of the Coast wanted to leave as much as possible in the hands of the GM to not alienate anyone, which is a stance that won't chase anyone away but neither will it actually help people figure out how they should be GM'ing.

Trish

you mean you had your own military cavalry units under Carolus Rex? And yea, I believe you that Sweden is 10000 times better than those bloody russians. But dang, you had the best sniper of WW2 (Simo Häyhä) and Lauri Allan Törni who managed to get Finnish, German **and** US high awards while serving for 3 different armed forces...
first defending Finland and gaining medals of freedom, Cross of liberty, Mannerheim Cross... Then, after Finland lost, training to become a saboteur against the Soviets in Germany (and ending up somehow gaining an iron cross 2nd class), surrendering to Britain, em…

Devils _Spawn

Yes, some DMs do that, and others don't. One of my DMs (cat of doom 2, I didn't want to ping him) he's a great DM and he doesn't do those things.

Trish

@Devils_Spawn you can't rely on getting a good DM, especially with 5E. PAthfinder has a much better approach: Rules over rulings. The DM can be wrong to interpret rules, but there are Errata how something is to be handled if it was unclear. 5E goes "invent your own solutions, we don't bother with Quality Control"

kviiri

1:52 PM

@Trish Hey, I don't have anything against the Russians per se, but Sweden had a long history of constitutionalist institutions while Tsarist Russia had a long tradition of autocracy. (To be fair, thanks to its autonomy the Finnish people probably fared much better than most Russian subjects did --- including the Russians themselves!)

Trish

@kviiri Russia is the only country to ever grant a season military rank and file... So you see how sane they must be.

Devils _Spawn

Yeah. I think I only prefer 5e because I haven't played any other editions. Btw, does anybody want to join my D&D 5e campaign?

Trish

@Devils_Spawn if you swap to a better ruleset ;)

Devils _Spawn

Which ones? I've only played D&D 5e before, nothing else.

kviiri

@Trish My understanding is that "General Winter" is mainly a Western term. (I mean, it wouldn't even make much sense for Russians to attribute their military victories to "stupid Swedes/French/Germans forgot to pack winter clothes and rations!" would it?)

Trish

1:58 PM

@Devils_Spawn what ruleset you want is dependent on the setting and what you want to play.

5E might be mallable, but not as mallable as for example GURPS

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

I don't think I ever heard 'General Winter' spoken in East-Slavic in my life.

kviiri

@Devils_Spawn One system that made me fall in out of love with DnD in general was Apocalypse World, a game set in the post-apocalyptic wastes in style of Mad Max and similar (hacks and derivatives exist for a vast range of other settings, including Ancient Iceland, medieval DnD-style fantasy, contemporary drug cartels, space opera, etc)

However, it depends a lot on what you want.

A lot-lot.

Trish

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica it's more of a trope

@Devils_Spawn My RPG career started with TDE, the dark eye, a german counter-product to D&D, which is really detail oriented. The only D&D variant I actually like is Pathfinder, as I find class systems badly designed. Ok, StarWars D20 is a compromise I can live with, but that's more a 3.5e offshoot. And many 3.5 is ok. Shadowrun (4Anniversary to the bone) is good too... and WoD...

kviiri

Apocalypse World (plus many of its derivatives) shines vs DnD in that you can tell a lot of story in one sitting because conflict resolution is blazing-fast. In DnD, the lion's share of our sessions often went into elongated combats, in AW your action scenes are much quicker and you can basically get an entire story done in one night.

Trish

Powered-by-Apocalypse can be a fun game, but my current favorite actually is Legend of the 5 Rings.

kviiri

2:07 PM

You do lose, in exchange, the tactical combat engine of DnD which is frankly one of my favorite parts of DnD.

Devils _Spawn

I've heard of Apocalypse World before. Star Wars D&D exists? I thought I was thinking it didn't exist.

Trish

Shadowrun shines where players go all tactical planning for a whole session and then, in classic action film manner, the plan flies out the window as soon as anything happens.

@Devils_Spawn no, Star Wars d20 exists. It uses the same core mechanics as D&D, but not the same game

kviiri

However, my friends in general want less combat and more story, all while still playing DnD instead of something better suited for collaborative story building, which is why I don't really play RPGs anymore.

Devils _Spawn

Cool. The things people think of these days, right?

kviiri

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica A few military history buffs close to me, many of them particularly interested in popular military myths, dismiss General Winter as outright anti-Russian or anti-Slav propaganda due to the connotation that Russians can't win wars without their opponents screwing up with the weather.

Trish

2:10 PM

Star Wars d20, Saga Star Wars and StarWars d6 are the "older" ones, FantasyFlightGames-StarWars is the new set of 3 game lines with special dice. StarWars fnas at times say d20 doesn'T exist, because they prefer d6 or Saga, but FFG is a good game but for its need for special dice.

kviiri

@Trish Yeah, I can't say I'm particularly in the PbtA team myself anymore. I used to think of it as a silver bullet, but I've grown a bit out of that "one solution to all problems" mindset.

Devils _Spawn

Wow. That's cool

kviiri

Oh shoot look at the time. I'll be back later :)

@Devils_Spawn See ya o/

Need to go pick up an item from a friend

Devils _Spawn

See you later

Trish

@kviiri I acually would love a Margaret Weiss marvel-heroic-roleplaying game, but the rules are like nowhere to be bought anymore and it's super focussed on the Marvel Civil War in comics in its supplements.

the oldschool Marvel and DC games where you used d100, or the Mutants and Masterminds spiritual successors make designing heroes fun.

RevanantBacon

2:20 PM

@Trish I dunno if I would necessarily call that shining. The whole reason that happens in films is because audiences enjoy it less when they're told what will happen and then it happens exactly that way. When you're the person actually trying that kind of stuff, it's generally much more mentally rewarding for a well thought out plan to go off without a hitch.

Something about spoilers and the Unspoken Plan Guarantee

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Yeah, at least for me and for many players I played together with in a planning manner, the point of the plan is usually to minimise nasty surprises and unexpected failures.

Trish

2:37 PM

@RevanantBacon it's that the players actually manage to forget about their plans and at times activly sabotage their own plans!

New players resort to Plan Violence way too often, while actually good players manage to pull through their plans.

@RevanantBacon that's why I like how they made Ocean's 11 and Italian job. They only showed us enough of the planning to get the gist of the main plan, then showed us the details as they executed it... or in a look back on what actually happened.

RevanantBacon

@Trish That would be an Unfolding Plan Montage

Trish

@RevanantBacon in ocean's case also Gambit Roulette.

ACuriousMind

3:04 PM

@Trish Blades in the Dark does this well with its flashback mechanic that allows players to retroactively explain how they planned for a sudden problem - if you can get the players to commit to doing heists without actually planning them beforehand

it's hard to get people used to other systems to accept that the whole premise of the mechanic is that you don't make a detailed plan beforehand

Trish

@ACuriousMind heh.... wich is why shadowrun GMs in my experience put players under time limits

ACuriousMind

eh, my SR players usually have a lot of fun planning for a long while

but they have a good group dynamic where they usually converge on a rough idea relatively quickly

kviiri

3:22 PM

I've usually been reluctant to play SR because my understanding is that it has a really, really complicated ruleset and the game favors extensive planning instead of more fast-paced action. Nowadays I think the planning aspect might be nice if done eg. so the players can discuss the specifics outside the session, sort of naturally timeboxing the discussion

ACuriousMind

you can treat most of the complicated rules as optional if you don't like them, really

also the planning usually involves several breaks for short scenes of legwork gathering info, it's rarely only extended discussion

AncientSwordRage

@ACuriousMind I think you might need to be quite experienced to know the effect of ignoring them though?

ACuriousMind

@AncientSwordRage It's usually rather obvious - you're ignoring a class of modifiers or you're not using some specific rule for an action and instead resolve it through a general skill roll.

E.g. I don't play with many of the negative modifiers that can affect hacker rolls (different grids, grid quality, ambient noise unless it's really noisy, etc.) and of course that makes hackers overall stronger and more consistent but also speeds up their actions considerably because you don't stop every time to table all the modifiers

in any case SR is one of these systems that extreme optimization will break anyway, so talk to your players :P

AncientSwordRage

(nW|C)oD systems, I think limit you to + or - 5, which seems simpler

@ACuriousMind how do you know ahead of time that ignoring the noise modifier is going to be more or less impactful than grid quality?

or say there's a modifier that effect multiple skills checks, and only breaks one of them?

ACuriousMind

3:41 PM

could happen, but the only annoying complicated system I can think of right now which you really shouldn't consider dropping is recoil

@AncientSwordRage you can't tell that anyway ahead of time because that entirely depends on the surroundings and how often the GM remembers these modifiers exist ;) if all your targets are on the same grid, grid is essentially irrelevant and noise isn't, but if you're in a quiet space and your targets are all on different grids it's the other way around

AncientSwordRage

@ACuriousMind but as a novice GM I wouldn't know that....

Maybe there's a Q there above what things you can ignore?

ACuriousMind

Well, if you've read the rules I think it's rather obvious that recoil is what make it so not every one is shooting full salvos from big rifles all the time, you don't need to have a lot of play experience to see that

but in any case I'd say playing with "all rules on" and just seeing which ones you have to drop because you forget about them too often anyway is probably the best approach :P

AncientSwordRage

4:04 PM

@ACuriousMind that does seem obvious to me I guess

but maybe only because you just described why

@ACuriousMind true

however, a smart person learns from their mistakes, a wise person learns from others mistakes...

The Oracle

0

Q: My profile picture is distorted

This is what my profile picture should look like: But resized. Here is what it looks like in my profile: You can notice the wrong proportions, although I don't know why they happen. I'd like to know if there is anything I can do on my side to avoid the bug, and for my photo to appear with norma...

bug

Thomas Markov

5:08 PM

@Medix2 y u delet

Medix2

5:22 PM

@ThomasMarkov Realized I hadn't actually covered whether understanding speech included languages you don't know

Like, if I could suddenly understand everything you say, does that mean I know the intent behind it? The meaning? Just the sounds? Etc...

Thomas Markov

5:38 PM

@Medix2 that works lol

Medix2

I assumed that was just going to happen, since people decided to undelete... but I guess something went wrong this time

Thomas Markov

6:14 PM

unsupported answer can delete.

Christian Martinez

Ok

Thomas Markov

@NautArch In the question you closed, I think the user is asking about the short rest rule, and closing it as a dupe of a question answered by the short rest rule isnt correct

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: Does the Wall of Ice block line of sight?

The Wall of Ice spell creates ice that can block movement: You create a wall of ice on a solid surface within range. In real life, ice can be either clear or opaque, depending on factors such as the presence of internal debris and air bubbles. Is the Wall of Ice opaque and blocking vision? Or i...

dnd-5e spells line-of-sight wall

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov okay, I thought they were just asking how to identify.

kviiri

6:52 PM

@Devils_Spawn If you want input on your campaign, I can take a listen

Devils _Spawn

So you won't be a player, but you'll watch and listen?

kviiri

Ah, no, sorry. I was under the misconception you wanted feedback or ideas on something, but I checked the logs and seems like I was mistaken x)

I don't really play DnD anymore, so I'll probably have to skip

RevanantBacon

@ThomasMarkov Isn't there a table in the DMG that describes what creatures are considered appropriate encounters for players based on level vs CR? I don't think that that question's opinion based.

On the other hand, it's probably reasonable to say "this is being closed because that question is literally answered in the book"

Thomas Markov

@RevanantBacon having a non-opinion answer doesnt always mean the question is not opinion based. Youre welcome to workshop the question into a non-opinion based question.

Devils _Spawn

Oh, okay. Anyone else want to join my D&D campaign?

Thomas Markov

6:58 PM

@Devils_Spawn There is extensive guidance in the DMG about creating encounters, I'd give it a read

MikeQ

@Devils_Spawn Do you have information about it somewhere? Joining campaigns is a time commitment, and I imagine most people might want to know what they would be signing up for.

Devils _Spawn

I'll invite you to the chat room

RevanantBacon

@ThomasMarkov Hmmm, do you think "How do I determine what monsters are an appropriate encounter for level 1 players?" is both close enough to what they're asking and also not opinion based?

Thomas Markov

@RevanantBacon Yeah, that's probably a good reword. But we might already have a sufficiently similar question

RevanantBacon

Why am I directing that at you lol, @Devils_Spawn is literally here in chat

Upper_Case

7:00 PM

@kviiri My Gm who ran Shadowrun ultimately dropped it for exactly that reason, and no amount of advance planning helped him get ahead of much of it. What finally broke him was, I think, the first time we tried to throw a grenade-- everything that follwed was complicated. Too bad, I really liked the game

G. Moylan

@RevanantBacon Well the concept of CR and how it should be used is included, but there is some subjectivity to applying that. Intellect Devourers, for example

RevanantBacon

@ThomasMarkov Closing for dupe is better than closing for opinion based IMO

Thomas Markov

Also it might fall under "read the book to me", though the guidance in the DMG isnt exactly simple.

G. Moylan

@ThomasMarkov There are also nuances that CR fails to address

Upper_Case

We also allow questions along the lines of "where in the published rules is [x]" and "what does [x] mean"

RevanantBacon

7:02 PM

@ThomasMarkov Well, honestly, I was thinking that as well, but I think that pointing out where something falls in a book is somewhat of an exception sometimes so I was unsure

Devils _Spawn

What do you mean @RevanantBacon?

Thomas Markov

8

Q: How many enemies will challenge my party of four 1st-level characters, but not result in certain death?

I was asked to DM for a one-shot with people wanting to try and learn the game. I have created a not-too-complicated world in which they can run around and interact with its inhabitants. The problem I face is the number and strength of foes that can be encountered. How do I prepare a challenge t...

dnd-5e monsters encounter-design

8

Q: How to design a level 1 encounter with 7 level 1 characters

Me and my friends decided to play some D&D 5th edition. The issue is, though I am a long term DM I am only well-versed in the rules for 3.5e and Pathfinder 1st, same as Open Legend but it uses a completely different base system than the other ones. Right now my adventuring party is about to meet ...

dnd-5e encounter-design new-gm action-economy

RevanantBacon

@Devils_Spawn Oh, we're talking about your question about what monsters to send against level 1 players

Thomas Markov

There's two questions specifically about encounter design for 1st level PCs.

G. Moylan

The big problem is that sometimes you throw a "deadly" encounter at a party and they manage to survive. There's a lot of chance involved

Thomas Markov

7:04 PM

@G.Moylan In my experience, being a little bit over the deadly threshold is usually just "hard"

RevanantBacon

@Devils_Spawn Take a look at the answers to the two questions that @ThomasMarkov just linked and see if those help you at all

Devils _Spawn

Ok

G. Moylan

@ThomasMarkov I agree, which is why I'm saying that CR cannot be objectively used as a satifactory answer to the question

Devils _Spawn

They don't help. :(

G. Moylan

can you link the question?

Devils _Spawn

7:05 PM

I don't know how

RevanantBacon

-1

Q: What monster would be good for level 1 players?

I'm being DM in a D&D 5e campaign. My players are all new and are all level 1. We met about a month ago and they don't know me as well as some of my other friends. Would some goblins be okay for their first monster or is there another monster that's weaker for them?

dnd-5e monsters

G. Moylan

there should be a "Share" button under the Q. Click that and paste the link here

Devils _Spawn

What Q button?

G. Moylan

Q is short for question

Devils _Spawn

I'm not on computer

RevanantBacon

7:06 PM

@G.Moylan It's the one I just put in

G. Moylan

@RevanantBacon ty

Devils _Spawn

Yeah

G. Moylan

They way the question is phrased it seems a bit on the XY line to me. The question asked is "what can I put in front of my level 1 party?" When the actual question is "how can I design encounters to challenge my players without killing them?" possibly paired with "how can I adjust combat on the fly if I realize things aren't going well?"

I believe both of those questions have answers on this site.

Devils _Spawn

Um...

RevanantBacon

@Devils_Spawn Do you have a copy of the DMG?

Devils _Spawn

7:09 PM

DMG?

RevanantBacon

Dungeon Masters Guide

G. Moylan

@Devils_Spawn Dungeon Master's Guide

Devils _Spawn

Oh. Brother has it. He can't afford the books himself

MikeQ

There are published source books with expanded rules for running D&D. PHB is the Players Handbook with the basics of gameplay, DMG is the Dungeon Masters Guide and has more guidance on how to design adventures and challenges.

Upper_Case

@Devils_Spawn That might be a problem for this particular question

G. Moylan

7:10 PM

@G.Moylan @Devils_Spawn the reason I say this is because answering this question for a level 1 party means it will be asked again for level 2, and so on. Whereas learning effective encounter design will work at all levels

RevanantBacon

@Devils_Spawn So you and your brother share the book?

Upper_Case

The DMG has information centered exactly around this issue, but reproducing it here in the forum would almost certainly tip into illegal territory

Devils _Spawn

Okay.yes we do, though I own it

bobble

@Devils_Spawn what I believe they're talking about is the clickable words on the bottom left corner of your question, directly above your profile picture if you are on mobile. You should see things like "Share", "Edit", "Close", etc. Clicking on "Share" gives you a pop-up where you can easily copy a link to your question.

G. Moylan

@Upper_Case I'm fairly certain at least some of the encounter design info is included in the basic/free rules

Devils _Spawn

7:11 PM

Okay.

Upper_Case

The approach I would recommend, if you don't currently have access to a copy of the DMG, is to plan encounters much more flexibly. Options based on how the combat is running are always nice to have, and they're much easier to use than challenge ratings (especially at levels 3 and below)

MikeQ

There are freely available online tools as well, like "kobold fight club", which help prepare encounters, in terms of monster selection.

Thomas Markov

dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/building-combat-encounters

Theres the free combat encoutner guidance

RevanantBacon

If that's the case, at the very least, the DMG has a section that roughly guidelines what and how many monsters are a good encounter for a group of characters based on their level. Don't take it as 100% accurate though, as some monsters are significantly more powerful than their CR indicates (such as the Intellect Devourer mentioned earlier, and most Dragons)

G. Moylan

@MikeQ I have used and can recommend this website

Upper_Case

7:13 PM

Though as other chat users have posted there are certainly more options than just that! But I, personally, feel that the challenge rating approach to balancing combats is overrated. It's not that reliable a rating, and the ways in which it is not reliable vary a lot between specific combats

G. Moylan

@Upper_Case I like that it can at-a-glance give you an idea of how powerful a given monster is meant to be. But as far as using it to calculate out "deadly" vs "hard" I think it's mostly useless because it can't account for the impact of abilities against a given party

Upper_Case

@G.Moylan It's better than nothing, I'll agree to that. But it's nowhere near as precise as it implies itself to be, and even within that definition is very narrow (based on the monster using its most powerful attack over the first three rounds of combat, etc. etc. etc.)

And a measure which is unreliable [x]% of the time is unreliable 100% of the time, because you can't really know if you've hit one of the unreliable zones or not

G. Moylan

@Upper_Case Yeah I like to point out things like the Shadow. It's CR 1/2, which implies you should be throwing a pile of these things at a party, when actually doing so is very likely to kill someone dndbeyond.com/monsters/shadow

Upper_Case

In practice I really only have two combat encounter categories for 5e: "Deadly+", and "not too bad". Though I don't adhere to the full adventuring day practices that really give the CR system its edge, which is not really a fair critique of that system

G. Moylan

I've just found that no matter how many ways I represent an encounter's number on the page, it will never account for how effective one little ability may or may not be against a party

I still use tools like Kobold Fight Club to ballpark something if I'm unsure, but after having run so many encounters over time, I've gradually gained a sense of "no, that will kill them" or "maybe I can add more goblins"

Upper_Case

7:26 PM

I do like running scripts on AnyDice to calculate expected distributions of successful hits (in both directions), typical damage, etc. It's nice as a guidepost to whether or not a combat is legitimately going badly for the PCs or if it's taxing them to an exciting, but manageable, degree

RevanantBacon

@G.Moylan Between shadows and intellect devourers, there seems to be a pattern emerging of "methods of killing someone that aren't hit-point damage are significantly more powerful than the devs seem to think they are"

G. Moylan

@RevanantBacon yep. And CR consistantly fails to account for it.

RevanantBacon

it's like in MtG when the dev team introduces any mechanic other than "tap land for mana to play this card". "Tap creatures/artifacts/whatever as alternate mana source to cast"? OP. "exile cards from graveyard to cast"? Also OP. "Spend life to cast"? Extremely OP.

Upper_Case

I wish there were better guidance on how resources are depleted over the course of an adventuring day (alternatively, I wish I were aware of that guidance if it already exists). I feel like that's a core part of the whole CR approach which is barely explained, let alone in a practical way

Thomas Markov

@Upper_Case The whole 6-8 encounters per long rest thing seems unrealistic to me.

G. Moylan

7:40 PM

@ThomasMarkov That just makes for a LOT of stuff happening in a given day. I don't imagine the roads are filled with that many bandits

RevanantBacon

@ThomasMarkov Encounters include things besides just fighting monsters. Traps and other obstacles are also encounters. Only about half should be actual fights, the rest should be "get past this pit/blocked passage" and "disable this trap" and the like

Upper_Case

@ThomasMarkov I feel that way too, from a table-time perspective alone. Otherwise I feel like it's something players could get used to and start to account for, but frequently don't. Any encounter of Normal or below is basically a freebie, unless the party is pretty battered already, with Hard and Deadly only delivering what they promise if the party has already used a nontrivial portion of their resources

RevanantBacon

And generally, getting past a blocked passage is less deadly than fighting a handful of goblins

Upper_Case

@RevanantBacon That's exactly what I mean! Something like a blocked passage as an encounter is fine for counting encounters, but much harder to value as a resource sink. Sure, it's probably Easy, but I'm never sure how to account for which resources are supposed to be depleted by it

RevanantBacon

@Upper_Case For something like a blocked passage, time is mostly what would be spent, depending on the nature of the blockage. for a trap, hitpoints may be expected to be spent

Upper_Case

7:51 PM

@RevanantBacon Well, sure, but time isn't a factor in CR ratings (and the CR ratings suggest 6-8 Medium or Hard encounters, as measured by the experience points in enemy stat blocks). HP depletion, as by a trap, isn't valued by the CR calculations either but at least is something I can sort of jam into that framework

When a Deadly encounter is possibly quite easy as the first encounter after a long rest, and possibly a guaranteed TPK if it's the last one before the next long rest, the ordering of challenges (and what those challenges do to encounter-deployable resources) can matter a lot. That's what the Adventuring Day is supposed to help guide, but I feel like it's pretty detached from anything it's supposed to aid

RevanantBacon

@Upper_Case Actually, amount of damage a trap deals when triggered along with the disable DC are the only two things used to measure a traps challenge. I'm like 90% certain that there's a chart for it somewhere.

I don't even think the detection DC is taken into account for the traps difficulty

Upper_Case

@RevanantBacon The only chart I'm aware of is in the DMG, and it offers three options for damage dice per trap which fit into the categories "Setback", "Dangerous", and "Deadly". Though there could certainly be others, maybe in Tasha's? That had a section on traps that I liked, though I don't remember all of the details offhand

In any case, that just seems like another gap in the CR system which makes it unwieldy

RevanantBacon

@Upper_Case The one from the DMG is probably the one I'm thinking of. I'll check my copy of Tasha's when I get home though.

But either way, there is at least some guidance on it

@ThomasMarkov How helpful have you found the trap damge table in the DMG to be?

Upper_Case

@RevanantBacon I was mistaken, it's Xanathar's that has the expanded trap section (Tasha's has a section on puzzles). The XGtE trap section has three categories of Moderate, Dangerous, and Deadly by PC level range for traps and experience award suggestions for complex traps

And also better than nothing, but it still seems to compound the issues with CR, party resources, and adventuring days more than clarify them

RevanantBacon

@Upper_Case Ah, then that's the one I was thinking of. As to the issue of CR, at the very least traps should be much simpler to adjudicate difficulty compared to monsters. They don't do anything proactively, they have a set chance to work and amount of damage they do, a specific threat area that doesn't change, etc.

it becomes much less of a tactical challenge, and is more of a binary

Upper_Case

8:06 PM

@RevanantBacon I think you're right for the trap encounter itself (those are easier to plan out than stochastic combats)

But the entire CR system is built into an assumed pool of resources over the course of an adventuring day, and it's planning at the adventuring day level that I find especially unsatisfactory. I can handicap a single combat as needed but planning out how many PCs will still be alive at the end of the day is pretty difficult

RevanantBacon

8:18 PM

Well that was an interesting flag

Upper_Case

You got it too? I couldn't comment, since I don't know Portuguese

RevanantBacon

I used google translate and it seemed to be comments about someone's mother.

google may not be the best translator, but it gets the swear words right most of the time

Upper_Case

Those are the important ones

The Oracle

8:34 PM

0

Q: I just showed up here. Should I be somewhere else if I play other RPGs more than D&D?

Seems like in name 'role-playing games SE' is as such, but by the numbers this is really D&D (and mostly 5E) SE. I've seen this happen before on other sites (Usenet even), where the most obviously-named outlet for a hobby is kind of about the most currently-profitable aspects of that hobby, and e...

support questions

G. Moylan

When I'm in the review Queue and I click the "Submit" button for low-quality posts, when I'm asked to select a reason the button at the bottom says "Delete." Is that actually what happens or is it just recommended for deletion?

Someone_Evil

It'll be a recommend deletion unless you have the privilege to (vote to) delete that post (which will vary between 10k/20k/diamond depending on the post type and score IIRC)

G. Moylan

Interesting. It's misleading as it stands, but I suppose the devs didn't want to put a conditional label on their button

AncientSwordRage

8:52 PM

Has anyone heard of the ARC RPG? It's coming to Kickstarter soon, and kickstarter.com/projects/exaltedfuneral/arc-doom-tabletop-rpg

It's been around a while but not formally published, according to the game designer reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/ne6cb1/…

Of note to some here, she's a SE Asian game designer

Novak

9:52 PM

@trish, I'm not sure if a reference like this would be a good formal answer to your murder cat question, but is it a good informal answer? forums.giantitp.com/…

BESW

@AncientSwordRage I've been keeping an eye on momatoes' ARC for a while! Her layout and design chops are just breathtaking.

"Exclusive: The first look at ARC's alternative cover, the RPG to slay the apocalypse" Exalted Funeral and momatoes have a doom RPG project heading for Kickstarter called ARC.

Mar 19 at 23:28, by BESW

"Sneak Preview of ARC TTRPG" review by The TTRPG Factory.

Sep 23 '20 at 0:23, by BESW

"Race against the clock to stop the apocalypse in real-time tabletop RPG Arc," Dicebreaker article about ARC by Bianca Canoza.

Quickstart and play resources on the site

NautArch

@Novak Or this.

Novak

@NautArch Also a good one. It seemed fairly easy to find well-reasoned descriptions of why the cat was considered deadly (admittedly, writing a python simulator is a little over the top) but none of them that I saw met the "official" requirement.

BESW

Diwata ng Manila wrote a twitter thread sharing art for their upcoming game Navathem.

Novak

And I really hate seeing otherwise valid questions founder on technicalities.

BESW

10:03 PM

Speak the Sky wrote a twitter thread on how to add more html elements to itch pages.

NautArch

@Novak It's not a bad thing, it's just not really a stack question.

BESW

Re: the above conversation about the GM being the pivot on which a table's experience succeeds or fails: this is a major reason why I seek out games that, even when they have GMs running the game, divest and redistribute the responsibility for the table.

Novak

@NautArch Debatable. Questions about encounter balancing are valid, yes? So, "Is this encounter of a commoner PC vs a housecat balanced in 3.5e?" should be just as valid.

NautArch

@Novak That isn't what's being asked, though (I didn't think.)

I thought they were asking more of the origin of someone saying that housecats are deadly.

Novak

It's pretty close.

NautArch

10:10 PM

Not at all - one is a pretty simple question to answer. The other is much more difficult and is looking at maybe one resource only (dragon mag), but if they expand then what are the limitations of resources? My friend said that to me on the phone after playing a session of AD&D?

BESW

Upcoming Kickstarter: FISK BORG by Sprinting Owl Designs and World Champ Game Co. Brutal and accursed fishing set in the somber world of MÖRK BORG ttrpg.

Trish

10:48 PM

@Novak no. must be any official statement. GITP is not official. Math is not an official statement.

bobble

11:19 PM

can... can I invoke the room description here and ask for this ("this"=conversation about colonialism/races) to be moved to HtbD?

BESW

→ 51 messages moved to Here There Be Dragons

Done.

bobble

thanks :)

Shalvenay

D&D 3.5/FR question , let me know if it belongs on mainsite: is there some way to somehow 'mark' a lich's life-force or otherwise set things up so that killing the lich leaves a trail back to where the lich parked its phylactery?

BESW

@Shalvenay It can be argued that scrying on a defeated lich is super easy: the Will save gets -5 because you know the subject well (you just fought them), and -10 because you have the dust they crumbled into.

And if you scry on a defeated lich, it makes sense that you get to see their phylactery.

Shalvenay

@BESW yeah, that might just be the simplest route

Carcer

11:29 PM

though scrying doesn't show you the way to get to wherever the place you can see is

BESW

A canny lich keeps their phylactery in a lead box in a nondescript location anyway.

Carcer

and surely any lich worth their bone dust would keep their phylactery warded somewhere by private sanctum, precisely to avoid anyone using magic to find it

that too

NautArch

I would think a lich would be pretty careful about not leaving a trail

BESW

If I wanted to get creative, I'd do something clever with astral silver.

Carcer

the spells available really afford sufficient tools to make it damn near impossible to find a lich's phylactery if they plan well, I think

BESW

11:33 PM

Hit the lich with a custom bomb loaded with particulate of the material used to make Gith swords, and kill the lich while they're inside the resulting cloud of particles. Basically, hit the lich's fleeing soul with an astral glitterbomb.

Carcer

I should be in bed

awaay

Trish

@BESW you grabbed some too much.

BESW

Just the one line?

← 1 message moved from Here There Be Dragons

Transcript for