TRPG General Chat

AncientSwordRage

00:10

Never try to shave a yak, messy business

bobble

how about shaving a ferret

AncientSwordRage

01:04

@bobble not unheard of

Ben

01:43

@AncientSwordRage I'm picturing a shaved llama, except even more funny

@MikeQ Heyo

MikeQ

Howdy, are we shaving animals today

Ben

Against our better judgements; apparently

bobble

s/out/our

Ben

ty lol

bobble

Spell out those words, mister

Ben

01:48

@bobble Please, "Mister" was my father. Just call me Ben

:P

bobble

Don't stick your tongue out at me!

trogdor

lol

AncientSwordRage

@trogdor hands up, this is an acronym!

@Ben much less funny for ferrets

Ben

02:15

@bobble I had a friend that would physically express himself by using the MSN emojis. It was always awkward

Imagine a person pulling that expression.

This same person thought it would be cool to sabotage my 8th grade english assignment by denying me a copy of an AMV which was required as part of the assignment. They were an odd one

trogdor

02:37

@AncientSwordRage you hands up, this is a lol

I'll take all your humor now

Ben

All your humor r belong to us

Good grief I am starting to feel old. I think "hey Netscape, that's a blast from the past!" Then I think "oh hey yeah, I remember when MSN was a thing... Oh it ended in '05. Almost 30 years ago... almost 30 years ago...

[When people don't understand your humor because you're old, not just from a different country] O_O

trogdor

lol

I feel so much younger now

thanks

:P

Ben

You're welcome XD

bobble

04:09

@Ben Either that '05 is wrong or you did some math very wrong :)

Ben

?

Like you mean '05 wasn't almost 30 years ago?

I mean, yeah it's closer to 25, but still Lol.

Hot RPG Questions

04:32

2

Q: Is it possible for a creature to be Mythic without being Legendary?

Is it ever possible for a creature to be considered Mythic without being Legendary? Is there an example of such a creature?

kviiri

07:18

Ah, MSN

When people complain about Telegram stickers being bad, I remind them that back in my youth it was perfectly common for people to have animated dancing letters or something bound to auto-replace their text

Personally, I was very very precocious and serious, so I used a FixedSys font with plain back color and no emoticon auto-substitution.

The last time I used the Messenger (through Pidgin, though) was in 2012 when I wanted to contact a couple of old friends during my trip to Tanzania

BESW

07:32

Heh. I remember the MSN/AIM divide.

kviiri

I remember at one point, for roughly a year and pretty sure not more than two, mobile Messenger was a serious-big feature in cellphones aimed for young people like me

Pretty soon after there was already WhatsApp

And Facebook messenger of course

kviiri

07:46

My primary social media has been since 2011, I fool you not, IRC.

(It was a standard for Computer Science students back when I started, around 2014 or 2015 was a massive crash when almost everyone preferred Telegram or WhatsApp)

Powerdork

07:58

Interaction on IRC has shaped my life.

Carcer

08:10

the oldest friends that I'm still in regular contact with are people I talk to primarily over IRC

Xirema

My middle sibling and his friends used an IRC server all the way until 2020, at which point they switched over to Discord.

A. B.

T_T T_T T_T T_T T_T

And yes, IRC is great. I think I probably joined it long after it was supposed to be obsolete, not sure.

Carcer

@Xirema we made a discord server, but then none of use it and we still chat in IRC instead.

kviiri

08:36

I use roughly IRC > Telegram > Discord (but still very non-negligible amount of Discord)

A. B.

I got let back into the CicadaSolvers Discord server but I'm not sure whether everyone hates me or not and I don't know how to tell.

kviiri

The next two would be Signal, then plain telephone calls, then WhatsApp, then HAM radio, then cryptic signals sent by shuffling my window blinds, then smoke signals, then carrier pigeon, then TCP over an elaborate network of highly trained running couriers.

A. B.

:-D

kviiri

@A.B. Judging by the fact they let you back in, they don't. I don't know the particular society at all, but I know I've certainly angered literal dozens of people online and IRL and many of them are still my friends or at least cordial acquaintances :)

AncientSwordRage

@Ben I remember MSN (messenger) and using AIM.... I always assumed troggy was about my age, so either I'm old or I was just online too early for my own good

I was born the year the Berlin wall fell, so genuinely not sure which it is

@A.B. what kviiiri said ^

kviiri

08:43

I was born a few weeks before the USSR fell. They just couldn't take my energy

AIM wasn't ever really big here, everyone used MSN

AncientSwordRage

I'm not sure I'm happy with the idea of people in chat being younger than me....

kviiri

(or IRC, for the slightly-older folks)

AncientSwordRage

I've used all three growing uo

Carcer

if it helps, I'm slightly older than you

kviiri

I'm still not quite used to people born in the 2000's being adults but such is life and I'll adapt x)

Carcer

08:46

I know it is bizarre

shouldn't be allowed

kviiri

Oh quite the contrary, I like the fact there's young people moving about

AncientSwordRage

@kviiri I'm not used being considered an adult myself

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage Well on that topic, I know many people of my age still use the term "adult" to reference the "real adults" :D

AncientSwordRage

@kviiri hah! Yeah I know what you mean

A. B.

@kviiri @ancientswordrage Not really, it was a 7-day ban and it ran out. Thanks for answering.

Re: "adults": is it just me or is the world falling apart? Either is possible.

AncientSwordRage

08:55

@A.B. as mods (not the blue name here in chat) we ban people and we only re-ban them if they're trouble.

No re-banning and it sounds like you're not troubling them

Also, we've had to ban people that are absolutely loved by the community, so it's not a direct correlation between ban and hatred

kviiri

If it's a mass Discord, as in used by people who don't really know each other, chances are people don't really remember you unless you're a repeat offender

(Then again, my main experience with wider Discord communities is one where short bans are very common-place due to high traffic and contentious topics)

A. B.

Oh, this mod remembers me, all right. If this mod didn't remember having had rows with me a few months ago, I wouldn't be getting 7-day bans for absent-mindedly asking a question in the wrong channel.

What I can't make out is whether everybody else in general thinks I'm a troublemaker who should just leave, or not. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people who know who I am; you see, it is a very "mass" Discord, good expression, there are currently 521 members online and that's unusually low, but there's only a couple of dozen people who do most of the talking.

AncientSwordRage

09:23

@A.B. that sounds extremely harsh, unless it's for explicitly contentious topics

There's discord servers I'm.on where talking about food is restricted to certain channels only

@A.B. my guess is if they do know you, it may only be from the ban? Which means if they got to know you, they'd realise you're pretty cool

A. B.

Basically, I was talking about something, and Artorias deleted it.

Quite a long chunk. There's a kind of policy on there that mods are allowed to delete any messages they like if they think they're not contributing anything useful to the discussion or basically for any or no reason, to "keep the logs tidy for members' reference". I forgot this and asked why Artorias had deleted that. Wham 7-day ban.

Artorias has a bit of an "I'm a mod, I do not explain" policy. I had to PM another mod even to find out how long I'd been banned for this time.

Quite honestly, whatever they say, I think Artorias just did it on account of having it in for me. What I said, which was on-topic as far as I could tell, followed a long stream of inane jokes about prime numbers and "OMG that proves it's a conspiracy :-)" by some of the longest-established members. Those were not deleted.

So I'm increasingly not sure whether to bother with that server any more, but then I don't know where else to go. I'm suffering from a lack of motive.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

09:39

You seem to be not having a good time there, judging by the usual commentary.

A. B.

I maybe would if I didn't keep getting swatted. But I don't see any likelihood of that.

kviiri

On a personal level, I'd advise you not to worry about how the community feels about you too much about it. Chances are that if this mod is really being like that with everyone, you won't exactly stand out because of having been victimized by them.

On a moderator level, I think it would be the best if we did not discuss your moderation record in other online communities here. I think it has a fairly high probability of turning unpleasant

A. B.

That's good advice. I can't make out whether it's just me or not :-D I criticised things some of the mods had done a while back, and Artorias and one other mod - not any of the others, though they back them up if asked - have apparently never forgiven me for it. But I think it probably isn't just me. Other people have told me that Artorias was quite notorious as a troll there until being made a mod.

Are you a mod, kviiri? Didn't know that.

I'm tempted at this point to post "Do you want me to leave?" and tick and cross poll options under it. Good idea? Terrible idea? I'm leaning towards "terrible idea", myself.

AncientSwordRage

@A.B. they're not, but in chat they're a room owner

kviiri

09:57

I'm not a mod-mod, yeah. I'm a room owner, so I do moderate this chat room though

AncientSwordRage

I shall from now on refer to myself as a modmod

BESW

The modmod is sworn rival of the rockermod.

kviiri

I've occasionally used the term "Demimod" of myself, wrt. having maximum user privileges on main

AncientSwordRage

@BESW ah, but what about the modmodmod?

You've heard of reduplication, now let me introduce the concept of triduplication

BESW

Ah, the dread modra.

kviiri

10:09

mod-mod-mod sounds like something that happens in programming golf

Hmm, does our chat support inline monospace code snippets

it seems yes.

I haven't really done a lot of code golf but we have this very traditional assignment for starter programmers: "for a given year N, return whether it's a leap year based on these criterion: it is divisible by four, and not divisible by 100 unless it's also divisible by 400"

In our latest introductory programming course, that assignment has a sequel: given a year N, return the next leap year after N based on the same criteria. Eg. for input 1782, it should return 1784, and for 1899, it should return 1904

BESW

Interesting.

AncientSwordRage

@kviiri that's fun

BESW

I'm also now thinking about all the calendars for which no such solution exists.

AncientSwordRage

I could implement that in CSS

kviiri

I like to show particularly interested students my solution: v + (4-v%4) + 4*((100-(v+(4-v%4))%100)//100) - 4*((400-(v+(4-v%4))%400)//400)

(in Python, with v as the input year)

AncientSwordRage

10:14

@kviiri python 2 by the looks of it

BESW

I could definitely have figured out a solution for that in BASIC when I was in middle school...

AncientSwordRage

"Friends don't let friends program in python 2"

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage What's specifically Python2 about it? (I wrote it on Python3)

AncientSwordRage

@kviiri I may have misremembered the // operator

I thought that was specific to python 2

I know they handle integer division differently

Someone_Evil

@AncientSwordRage What's wrong with python 2?

AncientSwordRage

10:16

@BESW I never even used BASIC

goto Leapyear?

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage Yeah, in Python3 / is always float division, // is always integer division.

BESW

My mother dusted off my grandmother's old Tandy and taught me some rudimentary BASIC when I was... 12?

AncientSwordRage

@Someone_Evil my biggest grievance is unicode support

@BESW that's very cool

kviiri

Python2 uses the more traditional approach where division is, based on the operands, treated as integer or float division.

I think // as integer division works in Python2 too

The rough gist of my solution: we find the next year divisible by four v + (4-v%4), then we add four if that year is divisible by 100, then we subtract four if that year is divisible by 400

AncientSwordRage

@Someone_Evil I also remember having some other issues when I used to use python

BESW

10:22

> 230 IF N/400 = WHOLE, GOTO 240 ELSE PRINT "not a leap year"

or something like that.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I love it

BESW

It was a nifty little language.

I never got very far in it, but I could do simple truth trees.

kviiri

I may be facing a prospect of employment in C

Might make me miss Python

though I am a hopeless nostalgic for C stuff

A. B.

I WANT A BATH!

Sorry.

It's boiling here.

BESW

My AC's been broken for the last three days. We might get a repair team in tomorrow. I've been wetting my hair every few hours.

A. B.

10:35

Ugh, yes. Must be worse where you are.

The bath is to bits, and I don't know when it'll be un-bitted again.

BESW

Ooh, bucket shower time.

A. B.

Ha.

I don't C. Least, I don't think I C. I Python a bit. I don't know the difference between Python 2 and Python 3, though, except that whenever I try to run a program I got from somewhere else thinking it's one it always turns out to be the other. I think I've finally got the hang of running things in different versions quickly, though, so that works.

BESW

Apr 13 '13 at 0:37, by BESW

I have a firm belief that needing to take a shower with a bucket and a cup is a fundamentally life-changing experience.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW they're not so bad

It took a while, but here is leap years in pure CSS

li:nth-child(4n):not(li:nth-child(100n)):before, li:nth-child(400n):before{content: 'leap';}

BESW

Apr 13 '13 at 0:41, by BESW

(Bonus points if the bucket shower is in the dark, and/or if the water is only warm if you heat it yourself.)

@AncientSwordRage Oh, definitely not saying they're bad. Just--suggestive of a different way of living in the world.

AncientSwordRage

10:40

@BESW had them in the UK though

A. B.

Gah, I can't understand that code. I couldn't understand either of those codes.

BESW

I didn't have to do bucket showers consistently when I was a kid, but the utilities were unreliable enough that I'm very familiar with them.

@BBeast Hi!

BBeast

Hi

A. B.

o/

AncientSwordRage

@BBeast hi!

@A.B. it's not intuitive

BBeast

10:45

I'm trying to figure out if there exists something in D&D 5e which works vaguely like Pathfinder's Arcane Mark aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Arcane%20Mark as some sort of wizard signature.

AncientSwordRage

@BBeast prestidigitation does that

Someone_Evil

Illusory script?

AncientSwordRage

@Someone_Evil that works too

BBeast

Prestidigitation lasts an hour, which isn't particularly useful for signing a document.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW in-laws had a broken shower for a while, and the parents were more used to bucket showers so that didn't get fixed for short while

BBeast

10:49

Although it's probably good if you want to sign a temporary hall pass or something

AncientSwordRage

@BBeast true

BBeast

Illusory script doesn't quite manage it either as it doesn't do much more than writing by hand and is also only temporary, although a 10 day duration is also practical, and it being in any hand you like extends the possibilities somewhat. I can see illusory script being used for temporary documents.

kviiri

@BESW Is bucket shower like... an actual shower that draws from a bucket?

BBeast

I suppose if document verification is the goal, the most reliable one is probably commune ("Did X write/sign the document?"), although that puts the difficulty on the verifier rather than the signer.

kviiri

I've had ones with actual shower heads only a few times over my life. Basically a pump goes in the bucket and connects to a shower head via a hose

On the other hand, washing up with just buckets and scoops is very commonplace here in rural recreational settings

Someone_Evil

10:57

I think if you want mages to have a specific signing method adding it as an effect of prestidigitation is gonna be the easiest. Though normal pen and ink shouldn't be that it inconvenient, should it?

kviiri

Showers would conserve water but usually that's not a concern here

AncientSwordRage

@kviiri thick Yorkshire accent luxury!

Fill bucket with hot water, pour on self. Soap up. Rinse with another bucket of hot water. *Water being hot is optional but recommended

trogdor

@kviiri no it's using a bucket to shower

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage For a week in March, I washed myself daily with water I picked up from a cold, cold stream a with a long-handled ladle. And it sure was luxurious

BESW

@kviiri This is what I'm talking about, yeah. You got your bucket, you got your cup, you got your soap.

@AncientSwordRage Bah, you use two buckets? Hedonist!

(Seriously though, we'd often be able to spare enough water for a second bucket just for rinsing, but it's not guaranteed and it's a pain to draw two buckets anyway; you learn to do your full wash-and-rinse with a single bucket and not get the bucket water soapy so it's still good for the rinsing.)

And yeah, hot bucket showers were aggressively optional for us, because usually the loss of piped water coincided with a loss of all utilities so we'd keep our ability to heat things for foods that couldn't be eaten safely cold, and for boiling water that we were going to drink or cook with.

AncientSwordRage

11:11

@BESW you could use the same bucket, depending on the bucket size

@kviiri I'm ok thanks

@BESW I assume that's not as bad when the weather's hot anyway?

And preserving your heating for eating/drinking is smart regardless

BESW

Part of my theory about bucket showers is that there's a dramatic difference between bucketing by choice and only-option-you've-got bucket showers.

kviiri

Hm, I'm trying to find a picture of a typical bucket arsenal of a Finnish rural sauna where one typically washes with them, but I keep finding only interior shots of these ultra-polished fancy pants saunas businesspeople rent for conference afterparties and such.

AncientSwordRage

When I had it, it was my only option while staying there, so o could have gone without (for a few more days) and showered at home instead

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Yeah, but hot water is a better solvent than cold water and picks up grease more effectively, so there IS actually a distinct improvement in ease-of-cleanliness if you can do it.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW and your sweatier in hot climates too...

BESW

11:17

Aye.

When I was very young we lived close enough to the beach that it was a better option to just bathe in the sea and then rinse off the salt.

AncientSwordRage

That works too

@kviiri I searched ”traditional Finnish sauna bucket" and some suitably rustic looking images came up

No idea how accurate they are however

BESW

I'd be hesitant to do an image search for the kind of setup we had, because the sorts of photos it would produce would be either settlers showing off their upscale "look we do it like the poor natives but it's instagrammable" versions, or the same peoples' poverty tour photos.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW hmm, that's not so good

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage Ah yeah, that works! (Usually those wooden buckets are used for löyly, which is water thrown on the stove, and people wash with metal or plastic pails)

BESW

We usually used a 5gal plastic paint bucket and a 1gal drinks pitcher.

If you were pretty good you'd only use two gallons: one pitcher for washing and one pitcher for rinsing, so you could get two people clean from one bucket of water.

(Water economy is a major consideration for these sorts of times.)

Often the water we'd have available for washing would be the roof runoff that we collected in big trash drums at the corners of the house, catching the rain from the typhoon which was also the reason our utilities were down.

"An Altogether Different River v1.02 Release Notes" now with designer commentary!

"3 Chinese Dishes Your Fantasy Tavern Should Have - And How To Portray Them Respectfully" by Connie Chang on StartPlaying.Games

For @BardicWizard: "Victorian Knitting Manuals Collection" on JSTOR Daily. The first manuals for knitting were printed in the 1830s. Those interested in the history of knitting will find them a rich primary source for research.

Shitty Ensigns by Litza Bronwyn. For every one Jean-Luc Picard, there are five shitty ensigns. This is their story.

2

Kazumi Chin asked on twitter "Have you ever played in a game where very little "story" occurred and it was still fun? What was the game and what made it fun?" and wrote a twitter thread reflecting on the results.

"Episode 288: Designing Microsettings" Recorded at Metatopia Online 2020 and published by Genesis Of Legend. Presented by Richard Ruane, Brian Yaksha, Zedeck Siew, Amanda Franck, Pamela Punzalan.

Hot RPG Questions

13:44

3

Q: Elfshadows and attuned items

So I'm aware that creatures can attune to items. Familiars and the like are great options for having attuned items being used when your slots are full. My character got a moonblade with the elfshadow property: You can use an action to call forth an elfshadow, provided that you don't already have...

dnd-5e attunement intelligent-magic-items

kviiri

14:04

@BESW I hope no one of them dies because of being sent on a suicide espionage mission or whatever

Trish

14:53

@kviiri They all die. They wear red shirts.

A. B.

Is there a way of making a link look like HotRPGQuestions does?

Also, @Trish, where did you get those files for that "e-tools" thing? I didn't work out which of those links were the download one, if any of them. I might be able to open the .cab files. I have Linux and the tools they throw in with it for that kind of thing generally seem to be better than Windows'.

bobble

56

Q: Which links and sites are handled specially in chat?

There is a special linking to some sites in chat, also known as "onebox". What is the full list of supported and integrated sites? Return to FAQ index

support faq chat hyperlinks onebox

A. B.

Aha, thanks bobble.

bobble

(I have a distinctly meta feeling about oneboxing a link to the onebox FAQ...)

A. B.

15:08

:-)

5

Q: Monk casting Electric Arc from Wisdom

I have this character concept, an Archer Monk, that uses the the first action for Flurry of Blows then Electric Arc from the other two, because that does not care about MAP1. To make it work with Ki Spells, it has to be Wisdom based2. To scale in proficiency, it has to be Divine3. So on 2nd level...

spellcasting monk pathfinder-2e

I don't have anything sensible to say about this question. I just want to point out that this is an electric monk.

bobble

This is a valid reaction

A. B.

And I wanna know if it has a horse.

kviiri

@Trish So do Picard and Riker.

Trish

@A.B. Web archive, link is in the answer.

@kviiri those have names :P

Someone_Evil

@A.B. Would that be an ohmk?

kviiri

15:24

@Trish So did Sito

(though she was in yellow, I think?)

Ensign Haskell also had a name!

Anonymus 25- Reinstate Monica

15:36

@A.B. Electro! (Very bad Spider man pun). I wonder if Electro would be classified as a monk, probably Warlock is better

Thomas Markov

16:12

@Someone_Evil I have a request

Someone_Evil

What for?

Thomas Markov

Large pepperoni, extra cheese

Someone_Evil

There isn't typically cheese in pepperoni is there?

bobble

ooh ooh, get some garlic knots!

Thomas Markov

@Someone_Evil In the event that you decide its time to revisit the dont guess on meta, I think it would be beneficial to give us some lead time to prepare answers prior to posting the discussion.

I'm just thinking out loud right now, and Im not sure what that would look like

Someone_Evil

16:18

I'm not gonna promise that. Partly because I can't guarantee I'd remember, and partly because we have no concrete plans regarding such a revisit so I can't say whether this would mesh well. I'll try to keep it in mind though. Is there a particular reason you'd want this?

Thomas Markov

I think I'm going to make a proposal when it comes around.

And I would like to organize a bit with a few community members to get some feedback.

But if it isn't on your radar anytime soon, that's fine, I'll work on it and send it out for feedback to who I need to

@Someone_Evil do we have a meta post discussing quotes from sourcebooks and the policy? My searchbarmanship seems lacking at the moment.

bobble

here's something rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8416

Also, a quote doesn't prove anything - it's happened several times in the past that a querent has posted a quote from a completely different system than the one they were playing, unaware that there was more than one system. — Miniman Sep 23 '18 at 4:28

Someone_Evil

I would much rather explore slightly different avenues over just repeating a revisit. There's probably one on the horizon, but I'd like to have some handful of it's-now-different to open that with

kviiri

16:34

Sounds smart IMO

I mean, trying to find a different approach

Someone_Evil

@ThomasMarkov I don't think we have a specific one for that. I think, at least in the revisits(?), that it's been taken to no-evidence-is-good-enough, that's certainly the interpretation that is most often given is makes it the simplest though it might get a little mirky in a way we don't like wading through

Thomas Markov

@Someone_Evil I like this idea.

A. B.

Ha, yes, good point bobble. You may get questioners who haven't stated the edition because they don't know there are editions :-D

kviiri

@BESW Actually reading the Shitty Ensigns PDF now, and boy is this hilarious

"When you do anything related to your job, even if it would be very easy for a normal person, roll 2d6 + the stat you're using + any bonuses you might have."

Thomas Markov

@A.B. I had thought about that, and I think I've concluded that this is something our expertise should be equipped to handle.

Usually, at least.

kviiri

16:42

@A.B. This is indeed the case – though I think it's not quite as bad anymore?

The fifth edition of DnD is somewhat notorious for not displaying its versioning very well.

Thomas Markov

@kviiri Yeah, I think part of the issue was that there was some ambiguity between 3.0 and 3.5, and a quote from a sourcebook may not have been good enough.

Obviously this is still true of these editions, but pragmatically, it is vanishingly unlikely to cause problems anymore.

I don't think anyone would see a pragmatic issue with just tagging this question and moving on, but proponents of the policy would be against it for principled reasons.

kviiri

"No one stat can go lower than -3. If the total of your stats ever reaches -5 or lower, you are no longer a shitty ensign. Your character gets a promotion and stops hanging out with the other shitty ensigns. Make a new shitty ensign character."

Medix2

17:26

@KorvinStarmast I don't know how to say this other than "Please, stop"

@ThomasMarkov I may have linked one in my mega list, I'll go check

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: Sanctuary spell and Using magic Items that cause damage?

Currently have a character who has the Sanctuary spell and a wand of magic missile (also other damaging magic items) If a character uses a item e.g. wand of magic missile to damage a enemy does this constitute a "Attack" causing the Sanctuary spell to drop? (WoMM a bit different because no attack...

dnd-5e spells magic-items attack

Medix2

Only one I found is the same one bobble found

Trish

18:01

@ThomasMarkov the basic policy is afaik the scientific standard "Don't quote more than you need. Don't quote whole paragraphs and don't discuss them."

Thomas Markov

@Trish I was refering to the "dont guess the system" policy

I was wondering if their was a meta discussion that addressed the relationship between that policy and underspecified questions that had quotes from sourcebooks.

Trish

@ThomasMarkov oh, there it is generaly "unless the quote has the proper source with it... and even then, it is at best evidence of the edition played and evidence other than we play X is not sufficient.

Thomas Markov

@Trish Yeah, I was wondering if we had taken a shot at carving out an exception space for such questions, in the same way we did for questions that say "5e" without saying "D&D". It looks like we haven't had such a focused discussion

Trish

I even mentioned that players at times quote the wrong edition or system not understanding the difference, or deliberately to illustrate where a problem comes from.

@ThomasMarkov we have in the past repeatedly smacked questions shut where "we play 5e" stood alone without anything that indicates the game played. There is The Dark Eye 5th edition, Shadowrun is in the 6th edition by now. Vampire:the Masquerade has 5th edition. And iirc GURPS is... uh... 4th or 5th edition now.

Thomas Markov

@Trish Yes, but we've settled on a policy exception there.

Trish

18:07

@ThomasMarkov if it's clear enough that they play D&D... and they mention 5e

the operating part is: "provided there is also supporting context information [that it is D&D]."

Thomas Markov

@Trish Yeah, it does introduce some subjectivity into the policy.

Trish

@ThomasMarkov I tend to be super conservative with that, but then again, I was one of the 2 experts on the stack that at all was able to sift through The Dark Eye questions when we did the edition split...

I mean, if the player asks something that is clearly D&D and mentions 5E that is as good as saying D&D5e. but if it could be anything else...

Thomas Markov

So uh, we're still getting unsubstantial pronoun edits in the suggested edit queue.

Trish

though.... Tasha's cauldron is a 5e book.... ARG... that is an outlier of the policy.

bobble

18:23

those edits aren't mine, at least :) my last edit was adding an image description to that drow question

Thomas Markov

@bobble It's one user.

Medix2

@ThomasMarkov Example?

Thomas Markov

@Medix2 Yesterday: rpg.stackexchange.com/a/185683/62294

bobble

woo-whee, their "revisions" profile tab is something to see

Medix2

@ThomasMarkov Ah, huh, yeah... Not sure what we can really do about it though ?

Thomas Markov

18:35

@Medix2 The mods can super ping them.

bobble

If enough of the edits are rejected (e.g. as "too minor"), there is an auto-ban function in place. And of course talks to the user by mods or regulars are an option.

Thomas Markov

@bobble They are not active in any chats network wide, they do not respond to comments.

Carcer

they also require their edits to approved by users with that privilege

Thomas Markov

@Carcer Which is what I intend to discuss on meta.

Medix2

I think it already has been with the pronoun and suggested edit size metas. But a specific one for this case could be made

Thomas Markov

18:40

@Medix2 My issue is that for 18 months users have been approving edits that go against the consensus conclusions both of those metas.

And that 9 months ago a user asked specifically if such edits were okay and it was closed as a duplicate of the existing pronoun meta

And that 6 months ago I started flagging these edits for mod attention

Medix2

@ThomasMarkov Yeah I'm just not sure anything can done about it. Unless we want to say the consensus is law and people cannot make such edits

Thomas Markov

And that two months ago a brought it up in the community check in

So surely now I can make a meta post asking about this circumstance, right?

Is there any avenue I should pursue before making a meta discussion about it?

Medix2

Yeah, I could see that

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: Befuddle: which save?

Befuddle lists save result levels, but not save type. Is it Will?

spells saving-throw pathfinder-2e

Thomas Markov

Which, to be clear, I'm not saying we should our shouldnt be suggesting edits like this on principle, just that meta consensus seems quite clear and we are not following it.

Ive also avoided a focused meta post because its one person suggesting the edits and I dont like calling people out on meta

I thought about making a post like this, but I found that it had been closed. The read I get from this closure is "no, these edits should not be made".

I feel like this is the sort of exception the mods should handle, so Id like some input from @Someone_Evil. It feels like any meta post I make about it would really be a revisit of this one that established our current "policy", and it doesnt feel right to me to revisit that without mod input.

If we are viewing these edits as good edits, we should be doing more of them. If these are not good edits, we should stop them all together. The former runs contrary to established guidance, so moving forward with that would require a proper revisit.

And stopping them all together requires community buy in or moderator intervention.

Sorry, Im kind of thinking out loud now.

A. B.

18:59

I wonder if that particular user is badge-hunting? If so, this particular thing should stop after about 14 more edits.

Carcer

I'm honestly of the opinion that these changes are usually improvements

bobble

@ThomasMarkov ideally both

A. B.

Just looked at the profile and noticed that "Strunk and White" was the badge queued up and it had 14 edits left to go.

Carcer

it's not worth getting into a war with someone who doesn't want their posts to use neutral pronouns, but if you suggest the changes and it doesn't ruffle anyone's feathers, where's the harm?

Thomas Markov

@Carcer And they may be, but it's a bad look, I think, when we are pushing edits through that are described as "corrected to gender neutral pronoun" but the canonical meta post on it says all pronouns are gender neutral and correct.

Carcer

19:02

well, sure, I wouldn't say they were "corrected"

Thomas Markov

@Carcer The user making the edits says they are corrected.

Carcer

but that would be the only niggle I have with that particular user's behaviour.

Yes, I can see it

Thomas Markov

I think there is the potential for harm when meta guidance and site praxis are misaligned.

"Meta guidance says do this thing" "Well the site doesnt follow this meta guidance over here, why should I follow this one here?"

Trish

@ThomasMarkov properly. Just add the meta.

Thomas Markov

I dont much care about changing the pronouns or not. My concern is that the behavior I observe on the site seems to rather directly contradict the guidance I can find on meta.

Id prefer to see the two brought back into alignment, either by eliminating the behavior or by readjusting our meta guidance.

Carcer

19:07

I suppose the thing is that meta is about enforcing such usage

Thomas Markov

Id find either satisfactory in the end, it just seems that a mod super pinging the user and asking them to stop (or reserve such edits for when an answer actually misgenders a person) is a lot easier.

Carcer

the way I see it, suggesting edits that alter pronouns to be more inclusive and those edits getting approved is encouraging, not enforcing, that usage

Thomas Markov

@Carcer It is enforcing when they are approved by the community.

Carcer

it only becomes enforcing if we start telling people off for not using inclusive pronouns or keep overriding edits to reapply them even if the author reverted

like I've had the case where someone has "improved" my British English to American English, and I responded by reverting that change

I didn't feel like AmE was being enforced - because that was the end of it

Thomas Markov

But the change does not send a clear message.

Carcer

19:11

I don't understand what you mean

Thomas Markov

The user sees that their post was edited, with approval of higher rep users, and an edit message that says "corrected to gender neutral pronouns". That does not send a message of encouraging neutral pronoun use, it sends a message of enforcement.

2

Carcer

oh. Sure. Like I said, I think using "corrected" is a mistake here and the person should probably stop doing that.

Thomas Markov

A more informative and encouraging edit description message would be much more in line with our current guidance.

Axoren

What would be the situation if a user reverted an edit to pronouns that did not misgender but were non-general?

Thomas Markov

@Axoren There would be no situation.

Carcer

19:14

@Axoren yeah imho that's a "shrug and move on" situation

Thomas Markov

I reverted them before when they werent misgendering but they made the post harder to read.

Axoren

Then it's not really all that "enforced", because the alternative is to not follow it

Like, you just can not do it

Seems more like an encourage to me.

But it might look different from the perspective of the person who got editted.

Thomas Markov

@Axoren Yeah. If we're going to keep doing it, we need to do it better.

Axoren

At the end of the day, it's more of a grammar edit when it's not infringing on anyone.

Thomas Markov

It looks like theyve started using "changed" instead of "corrected", which is a step in the right direction.

A. B.

19:18

Good.

If there's a rule that you're not required to say "they", and then someone goes around saying they're "correcting" postings to say "they", and the mods approve this, that's heck of contradictory.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Style enforcement (or perceived enforcement, or soft enforcement, or whatever you call it) was always an issue, long before noun classes came to the forefront. Before that it was things like inserting pronouns where none were needed before, changing between title styles, and others. And when a high-rep user or several *prowl* the stack, methodically making changes, that most definitely looks as enforcement.

It also means that unless actively contested and stopped, the stack style *will* shift towards the prowler's, even if allegedly there is no universal style guide.

Thomas Markov

@A.B. Looks like some time between february and march this year they stared using "changed" instead of "corrected".

Thomas Markov

19:56

I lost 60 rep yesterday for a user deletion

Trish

20:19

@ThomasMarkov 10 here... that's usual though...

The Oracle

0

Q: Can we reopen this item stacking question?

Do these items stack? was closed and has comments requesting an edition and system be specified. However, the question appears to clearly indicate its game already: it cites a book (Tasha's Cauldron of Everything) that correlates with only one game, cites material from that book, and cites additi...

discussion specific-question

The Oracle

20:54

1

Q: Can we reapply the Pathfinder 2e tag to this Pathfinder 2e question?

Razzle-Dazzle and success vs Blindness is asking about two Pathfinder 2e features, linking to the Pathfinder 2e reference document for both features (2e.aonprd.com; the system is also highlighted at the top of the page). I added the pathfinder-2e tag since it was contextually clear what game the ...

discussion specific-question

Powerdork

21:17

Speaking as someone who falls under the non-binary/genderqueer umbrella, I'm just tired of people talking about pronouns that can't be attached to faces (as is the case with example characters appearing in questions).

Medix2

@Powerdork What does that... even mean? People get mad that pronouns besides he and she don't have standardized faces? If that's really what that means I'm baffled by people :(

Granted, I also am incapable of picturing faces in my mind's eye and memories. So I probably understand that even less than most people

Powerdork

No, it's relating to the discussion above.

Medix2

I understood that, just no what it meant

I just don't know what "pronouns that can't be attached to faces" means? How do you attach pronouns to faces? Stereotypical male female facial structures?

Thomas Markov

I’m not following.

Powerdork

There's significance to the pronouns of people that can be pointed to, and to the characters that they play (identities they inhabit), but I hold the following to be true: it really doesn't matter how you refer to cardboard cutouts.

Shalvenay

21:24

@Powerdork perhaps we should all use cryptopeople for that?

(you know, Alice, Bob, and the rest of the crew)

Thomas Markov

@Shalvenay maybe I’ll start writing my scenarios with stackizens. @Someone_Evil is perfect for a generic BBEG.

Trish

@Shalvenay I generally try to use those. Alice, Bob, Charlie, Dorian, Esra, Fed, Galena, Hala, Ingolf, John, Kassandra...

@ThomasMarkov And who's the Nemesis of the Nemesis?!

bobble

@ThomasMarkov be careful to get permission before you do that, please - there's a long history on Puzzling of people using fellow users in their puzzles, and a history nearly as long of people being slightly-to-very uncomfortable with it. I suspect that "get permission" would apply here as well

Medix2

@Powerdork Ah, I see what you mean now. I'll have to think on that some, haven't done so before

Thomas Markov

@Medix2 I’m still not sure I’m following.

Powerdork

21:34

In my view, it is not the place of StackExchange to litigate whether any given user's example characters having any kind of identifying marker more often than any other kind is indicative of that user's worldview, and it is not StackExchange's place to change or limit exposure to such a user's worldview, except as falls within the scope of Be Nice.

I'd certainly appreciate any efforts to help people be more inclusive, but I'm here for game help. Get at me when the question is "What should I do if another player on this shared game Discord server keeps misgendering my friends and their characters?"

Medix2

@ThomasMarkov I think nim're saying that a character being used solely for the purposes of an example, who doesn't exist in the real world or even as a character concept simply doesn't need to have their pronouns talked through and about and whatnot

Powerdork

That reminds me, I should update the pronouns listed on my profile.

Medix2

@Powerdork Welp, my poor signal has prevented my from properly editing the message... I should've checked before sending it anyway, apologies for that

You may want to update your RPG.SE profile as well btw

Powerdork

As I just mentioned, I should update the pronouns listed on my profile. I've put aside ne, nem and nir for now. But thank you for trying!

It does mean something to see people make the effort.

The Oracle

0

Q: I'd like to adapt a set of spells from AD&D to the 5th edition. Ask for review together or one by one?

There is a set of spells available only to the Vhaeraun clergy described in AD&D Demihuman Deities book. They look easily adaptable to D&D 5e and I want to do it and ask for a review. I want them to be balanced with modern D&D spells, but I'd also want to keep them evenly spaced (they were at 2, ...

discussion questions homebrew

Medix2

21:44

Yeah, if I could edit it to whim's, I would

Powerdork

> I think whee's saying that a character being used solely for the purposes of an example, who doesn't exist in the real world or even as a character concept simply doesn't need to have their pronouns talked through and about and whatnot

A use example.

And yes, that is my angle here.

Someone_Evil

@ThomasMarkov I suppose I set myself up for that with the username, though I'm not sure how I actually feel about it

Powerdork

Some may view this as cowardice, but I don't want people to have negative experiences surrounding identity and gender and neutral pronouns when they don't have to, because that kind of thing forms a negative association in that user's mind with issues of identity, gender, and neutral pronouns (including their users), and I don't want to make things harder than they already are for non-binary people.

Medix2

@Powerdork That time I just failed at English XD

I'll definitely think on this more, and wonder how it meshes with my ideology of "If somebody hates math, you do not fix this by assigning math homework"

Transcript for