TRPG General Chat

BESW

12:39 AM

…I did not expect my “misunderstood dragon” metaphor to get starred.

AncientSwordRage

12:51 AM

@BESW it was a good metaphor

nitsua60

The star, itself, is also a metaphor.

AncientSwordRage

@nitsua60 oooh meta

AncientSwordRage

1:35 AM

Hi Slate

BESW

2:36 AM

Misha Panarin wrote a twitter thread arguing "that "puzzles" have absolutely ZERO business being in fantasy RPGs/Dungeon Crawlers."

Kickstarter: Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game by Magpie Games. An officially licensed tabletop roleplaying game set in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra

What Waits Beneath by Nevyn Holmes. A journaling game of underwater discovery

Bundle: NBiTTRPG Month: Disabled Designers by Ell and 7 others. This is the first of four bundles being run by Nonbinary TTRPG Month! This bundle includes 6 games by 6 designers who are nonbinary and disabled and a PDF with creator bios.

Gabe Hicks asks on twitter Do people want more solo rpg / journaling games they can do in a digital medium? Like if Roll20 had some solo journaling games with built in macros for rolling and everything?

Jennifer Kretchmer shared on twitter "The Disabled Professionals in Tabletop Directory submission form."

kiive_kobs wrote a twitter thread about how Pathfinder handles classic "monstrous" races.

Colostle - A Solo RPG Adventure. An exciting solo RPG where you explore a castle so huge it has mountains, valleys and oceans within its rooms!

"Bioessentialism in Gaming," a YouTube video essay by LegalKimchi.

2

goodguy5

3:58 AM

So, I actually just had this come into play. I ruled that the enemy was reduced to 1 hp. Their original HP max was like 160 and they had taken ~90 damage.

bump up their exhaustion to level 4 (thanks, sickening radiance) and now their hit point maximum is reduced.

That said, I count damage up, not health down, for bad guys. Anyway, felt good for everyone at the table.

Hot RPG Questions

6:37 AM

3

Q: Can I use the Acrobatic Performer feat to Earn Income using the Acrobatics skill?

Can I use the Acrobatic Performer feat to Earn Income using the Acrobatics skill? The description of the Acrobatic Performer feat says (emphasis mine): You're an incredible acrobat, evoking wonder and enrapturing audiences with your prowess. It's almost a performance! You can roll an Acrobatics ...

AncientSwordRage

10:10 AM

@HotRPGQuestions this seems overly complicated... is that typical of P2E?

AncientSwordRage

10:44 AM

@BESW 1) I love this person, 2) referencing both ERBOH and Hamilton (I suspect) was a pleasant surprise

BESW

There's definitely some extended Hamilton bits.

AncientSwordRage

I haven't seen it, but it looks amazing

BESW

I am legitimately baffled by "it's just fiction/orcs aren't real" arguments because it implies the person... thinks stories aren't influential? Creating fiction to understand/explain/question reality is one of the most fundamental human qualities, and yet people who have chosen to make a hobby of using codified structures to tell stories are saying that stories are, or should be, completely disassociated from reality?

I dunno, it's one of those "Is it more generous to assume you're saying this in bad faith?" things.

Anyway, here's a couple more links.

Knights of The Braille are sharing contact info on twitter for requests to beta test an Accessible Version of the Avrae Bot Compatible Character Sheet for D&D on Discord.

BasiliskOnline is asking on twitter Hey #ttrpg game designers have you made your own system? Id love too see your original system games here for me to boost and check out!

AncientSwordRage

@BESW people/groups in power are seldom negatively effected by fiction, and I can see them being blind to it

BESW

Kickstarter: Fedora Noir by Caroline Hobbs. A story game about a Detective and their Hat.

The Tower & The Garden RPG by forkfrenzy. A cybermetal tabletop roleplaying game.

@AncientSwordRage I keep flashing to that blinkered, incurious "documentary" show on Netflix about Reagan-era toy ~~advertisements~~ shows, and how they interviewed men older than me who said that the "life lessons" at the end of the episodes of shows like He-Man were their only moral touchstones as children.

AncientSwordRage

11:02 AM

@BESW wow

BESW

The "documentary," of course, with its overall "your dedication to childhood nostalgia is not just okay but morally righteous" message, thinks this is awesome.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW OH WOW

BESW

> "The idea that you could transform and that you could become something that's successful or powerful stuck with me into adulthood."

AncientSwordRage

I will admit I got a lot of my early moral views from TMNT and X-Men

but that's both different and not the only input to my upbringing

ACuriousMind

@BESW Plenty of people do not consume (or create!) fiction with any conscious awareness that they might be commenting on reality - they just want to hear/tell "a fun/sad/terrifying/... story". That there's lots of ways in which their perception of reality influences the stories they want to hear/tell is really something they have to learn, and I assume you weren't born with that understanding, either.

There's a pernicious way in which school contributes to this idea - the boring stuff they have to read in school has "meaning" and needs to be "interpreted" and since they don't need to write essays on the meaning of the fun stuff they watch on their own they start believing looking for deeper meaning in stories is for teachers and nerds.

BESW

11:16 AM

@AncientSwordRage I think the "not the only input" is pretty crucial, yeah. But to walk into a conversation about the relationship between story and humanity, and insist that the idea there is such a relationship is a false premise... at the very least belies a tragically incurious attitude.

(Screenshot and quote above are from the Netflix show "The Toys That Made Us," which is an excellent study in using the forms of a documentary to dignify a jaw-dropping credulity.)

trogdor

@BESW well also the old men who worked on the toys and the shows and were all acting worse than the expected immaturity of children and adolescents

which no one,... seemed to be interrogating at all

BESW

With the material they had from those interviews, gosh but they could've put together a much more interesting, informative, and compelling series if they'd actually done some critical thinking and independent research and put the creators' accounts in context.

Big missed opportunity.

trogdor

11:51 AM

yeah

the most surreal thing was that at no point did you have anyone taking advantage of the ridiculous gold they had on camera

AncientSwordRage

if I had to hazard a guess they wanted to draw a big feel good bucket from the nostalgia well, and didn't care it dredged up a lump of sludge with it

BESW

Yeah, it's very much about validating the viewers whose identity is tied to the products of Reagan-era child-targeted advertising franchises.

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: What check determines if a whip successfully latches onto a tree branch?

If a PC wants to use his whip to wrap around a tree branch and then swing on it, like Indiana Jones, what check would that require? Would it require an attack roll?

dnd-5e gm-techniques skills

BESW

It's in the title; "The Toys That Made Us" is not a critical statement, it's an affirmative one. The "us" reassures the viewer that the documentary is an ally, and the premise is that yes, toys really are a defining quality of the viewer's identity.

AncientSwordRage

@HotRPGQuestions Check: Would this be cool? Yes go ahead

trogdor

12:07 PM

@BESW I know, it's just it feels like a wasted opportunity

BESW

Absolutely, yes.

schroeder

12:19 PM

I've been actively involved in Stack Exchange for 10 years and a mod for 6. Never have I been more frustrated and confused by a community as I have been here. The effect is simple: I will simply no longer be posting here any longer. This is insane.

KorvinStarmast

@schroeder Are you referring to your answer about the sizes?

I found the comments to be rather off putting, and I didn't write the answer

Danger of mnemonic devices: I had forgotten this French phrase but I can still remember the mnemonic device I had used to recall it. Honi soit qui mal y pense - years ago, on a show called "my word" a witty British guy told a shaggy dog story that included a play on words, about taking two sisters to a movie - on who liked to hit him on the arm during funny scenes, and one who breathed heavily. The punchline was Bonnie's whacky Molly pants

NautArch

@schroeder What going on? Not sure if I can help, but what is the community doing?

KorvinStarmast

It took me a bunch of googling, finally digging out the original phrase.

@NautArch being nags in comments, it appears to me, and not showing an experience based answer the respect I think it deserves - not sure if that's all that schroeder is frustrated with.

NautArch

Link?

KorvinStarmast

here

Or maybe the above close/open discussion is a key to the frustration

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