TRPG General Chat

Ben

12:05 AM

Ohio!

bobble

Hawai'i!

BESW

12:20 AM

opossumest asks on twitter "if a library were to have a little section with ttrpg books (ESPECIALLY low resource beginner friendly ones) what would u recommend?"

JazzElves wrote a twitter thread "about on-ramps and games, entry points into the hobby in general, and entry points into sub-hobbies," in the context of what opportunities are offered by the success of the PbtA Avatar game.

Ben

1:49 AM

Question

Using this as an example, would it be worthwhile making a meta post about the value/benefit of making a completely separate v. heavily editing an original post to meet the guidelines/site requirements?

BESW

Basic TCG Jam : Stellar Rhythms hosted by Viditya Voleti. We're making a community-driven and created trading card game for everyone to play! The goal of this jam is to, as a community, collaborate on one focused theme - in this case, the space station Star Central Station!

Upcoming Kickstarter: The Price of Coal: A Story Game of Labor Rights by Jennifer Adcock. A tabletop roleplaying game about labor rights and the Battle of Blair Mountain.

BESW

2:38 AM

A New World For Whom? (twitter link to Google Drive download) by Pedro Lhullier. An original setting of Latin-American fantasy.

@BESW Loving the premise for this; it's set forty years after Indigenous people across South America united against Western exploitation and used their magic to rip the entire continent into an alternate-universe Earth without colonizers.

2

Glazius

2:56 AM

@Ben You mean, writing your own answer to actually answer the question instead of editing the link-only answer to add the same information?

Ben

@Glazius Yeah

BESW

Pretty sure we already have a meta about that.

Not exactly the same, but presents the principles which would apply:

6

Q: Edit vs own answer

There were 2 answers for this question, both more than 50% right. I ended up adding my answer, but should I change the other answers? On one hand they contain factual errors, so they should be corrected. On the other hand we will end up with 3 identical answers, what is the point of that? So w...

16

Q: What should I do if the most valuable response came in a comment rather than an answer?

Yesterday I asked a question, and while I received some really solid answers, I found the most helpful response to come from a comment. I have already urged the commenter to boil down the essence of their linked article into an answer of its own. Not just because I found the resource particularl...

discussion comments answers-in-comments

708

Q: Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?

I think we can all agree, this sucks: If you've been around a little while, you've probably encountered hundreds of answers like this in various forums, some of them even marked as "The Answer" by well-meaning1 forum admins looking to close a thread. We could try to enumerate the commonly-observ...

discussion link-only-answers not-an-answer

Ben

3:18 AM

The consensus I'm getting is basically "both are viable, just depends on what you want to put the work into" (following the guidelines of "don't change the OP")

bobble

There's a story-ID answer on SF&F that I edited from link-only to add an explanation of why it was correct, and there my hand was forced by how much I don't want to make an SF&F account

BESW

Haaaaah

Hot RPG Questions

3:39 AM

10

Q: When casting the Control Water spell underwater, does the Part Water option create a cube of air?

The control water spell has the option to separate water and form a trench on a cubic area of up to 100 feet per side: Until the spell ends, you control any freestanding water inside an area you choose that is a cube up to 100 feet on a side. You can choose from any of the following effects when...

dnd-5e spells area-of-effect underwater 3d-space

BESW

4:21 AM

My view is: with very few exceptions, finding the link is not the effort that goes into making a good answer. For the same reason it's okay to take someone else's answer-in-a-comment and use it as the basis for your own proper answer, it's okay to turn someone else's link-only answer and use it as the basis for your own proper answer. It's good form to credit the person, but the work of expressing a solution as a coherent and actionable set of sentences is what turns a reference into an answer.

And the Stack Exchange's philosophy, in this case, is unusually in agreement with me: it doesn't care at all about attribution. The Stack's only concern is that the person who displays the best mastery of (and submission to) the Stack's content-creating goals, gets rewarded with reputation to unlock more content-creating/curating tasks for the person to perform.

Glazius

4:59 AM

Hm! Avatar's interesting. It's largely Masks with some Burning Wheel influences in a structured combat section. Most importantly, it's got an easy model for that bit where Aang "fought" Zhao by dodging around while Zhao burned down his own fleet, in the idea of getting knocked off balance, an interesting evolution of shifting around Labels that's more universally applicable.

Hot RPG Questions

6:33 AM

2

Q: What rules apply when Saving Throw proficiencies overlap?

I'm a playing in a custom setting. The DM says all races are allowed, including the Human (Keldon) variant, from the Plane Shift: Dominaria handbook. One of the traits of the race is this: Keldon Resilience. You have proficiency in Strength saving throws. If the character class (such as Barbari...

dnd-5e saving-throw racial-traits proficiency

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, pattern-matching email in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (263): Casting a Somatic, non-Material spell while holding a focus by Sharon Kate on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose @ThomasMarkov)

Thomas Markov

8:38 AM

DND Beyond will no longer be supporting Unearthed Arcana

4

AncientSwordRage

8:50 AM

@ThomasMarkov AKA "Why did you make us support cross-class sub-classes then pull it from production!"

@HotRPGQuestions Oooh Oooh! Can I make/add a plane-shift tag?

BESW

9:15 AM

> Plane Shift. Once per session while you are on an aircraft, you can transport that aircraft and all its contents to an alternate dimension with which you are familiar.

> Plane 'Scape. When you leave an aircraft, regardless of its condition, a method of doing so safely always presents itself. For example, a convenient parachute, a friendly teleporter, or an adjacent getaway vehicle.

AncientSwordRage

> Weather Light. Once per session when you are affect by bad weather, you may decide that you are only lightly effected by it

V2Blast

9:42 AM

@AncientSwordRage I don't think it's a very clear tag name, especially given that there's a spell by that name in D&D 5e (and probably previous editions of D&D, as well as the general concept of shifting between planes (across most/all editions of D&D, and probably other RPGs too)... Plus I'm not sure a tag is necessary in the first place for just 6 relatively short PDFs of unofficial content for a single edition of a single RPG.

AncientSwordRage

@V2Blast Let me rename it. I'm definitely interested in following that tag, so I wouldn't mind having some questions tagged as such

Oh wait... I made it and filled it in but I can't rename it

face-palm

V2Blast

@ThomasMarkov Indeed. On the plus side, DDB just rolled out a containers feature.

AncientSwordRage

Sorry @V2Blast got very over-excited about that tag

> Oh! And one more thing containers cannot go into containers.

hmmm

V2Blast

@AncientSwordRage Based on this search and ignoring all the results about the spell (i.e. most of them), here's the full list of questions about D&D 5e Plane Shift PDF material - Ixalan: vampire's Bloodthirst on downed enemies (or with other attacks, or with Sneak Attack),

Kaladesh: Pyromancer sorcerer (...or that plus Elemental Adept), Kaladesh: gifted aetherborn, Innistrad: living wood, Will there be one for Eldraine? [closed], and What are the Plane Shift series considered?

I don't think there'll be future Plane Shift releases, but that's just my own guess - I think that if they do put out future MTG crossover products, they'll be actual books, like Ravnica, Theros, and Strixhaven (which is upcoming). (And given D&D being D&D, I'm pretty sure you'll know if they put out another MTG crossover.)

So that's just 8 questions, plus the Eldraine one that's rightfully closed because we can't predict the future.

AncientSwordRage

10:01 AM

@V2Blast you're right about that I think, based on a twitter post from the main/only author

I think it sharing a name with the spell is pretty good argument for it having a tag, to help distinguish it from the spell

Also having the wiki means we can record on the site what it is, including links to the pdfs/articles

V2Blast

@AncientSwordRage Mods can rename tags, BTW. So let me know what you think it should be renamed to.

AncientSwordRage

@V2Blast I think this is why I assumed I could rename it here...

does mtg-plane-shift work for you?

V2Blast

10:39 AM

@AncientSwordRage Sure, that'll work for the moment. Further renames/discussion can be suggested via Meta if needed :)

AncientSwordRage

10:53 AM

@V2Blast I look forward to them!

thanks!

Thomas Markov

11:35 AM

5e answer to a 3.5e question

AncientSwordRage

@ThomasMarkov great question title though

NautArch

12:15 PM

TiL about Jim Thorpe's olympic history (or had that history refreshed)

Thomas Markov

I was a big fan of Ian Thorpe.

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov Jim Thorpe > Thorpedo

Thomas Markov

Jim Thorpe only won two medals at one olympics right?

NautArch

Yes, just two: the pentathalon and decathalon

Thomas Markov

Ian Thorpe won 5 golds, 3 silver, and a bronze across two olympiads.

NautArch

12:25 PM

Very specialized :)

Older Thorpe was simply an athlete.

Thomas Markov

I like it when people object to the claim that Michael Phelps is the greatest athlete of all time.

NautArch

I think I'd say Jim Thorpe may be.

But that may be recency bias.

Thomas Markov

The hooligan in me is tempted to flag the meta post about the profile updates as "very low quality".

KorvinStarmast

@ThomasMarkov excellent news

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Can you put 3 glaives in your backpack?

asking for a friend.

KorvinStarmast

12:39 PM

@ThomasMarkov I administered the coup de grâce

@NautArch If I am a stone giant, or an Oni, yes. 😁

Thomas Markov

@KorvinStarmast They updated the quote to the 3.5 quote, so we can undelete

KorvinStarmast

@ThomasMarkov certainly one of the best swimmers ever - but can he throw a javelin?

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Was reading Thorpe's first javelin throw was at the olympic trials in NYC. He threw from a standing position because he didn't know how to do it.

He placed 2nd.

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch he was an amazing athlete.

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast and his 1500m time remained unbeaten for decades.

Thomas Markov

12:44 PM

Need one more undelete on that invisible fire answer.

KorvinStarmast

I'm your huckleberry

Thomas Markov

(again) :P

Thomas Markov

12:56 PM

My wife just explained to my 3 year old daughter that manta rays are bigger than the car and now she's having an existential crisis because she thought all fish were smaller than her.

KorvinStarmast

@ThomasMarkov Don't let her see a whale shark any time soon ... 😁

Thomas Markov

She's been to the atlanta aquarium, which has a whale shark, but it was before her second birthday so I dont think she really remembers any of it.

BESW

Hah, I was probably about that age when my dad showed me his photos of swimming with the manta rays (they migrate past here annually).

NautArch

Mantas are my favorite!

Although I do love a nudibranch.

BESW

Twenty foot wingspans are scary. He took me out a few times to meet them later, but we never got the day right to catch them as they went past.

(He would go for hours every day for a week just to be sure he'd be there when they came through, but I was not gonna do that.)

@NautArch Nudibranchs are nice, but have you ever seen a sea hare?

Thomas Markov

1:02 PM

Had a leatherback sea turtle chill beneath our boat one time, you could see her front flippers on either side of the boat.

@BESW The largest recorded manta had a wingspan of 9.1 meters (30 feet)

BESW

@ThomasMarkov Yes, but we weren't getting the literally hugest ever.

G. Moylan

True Facts: Freaky Nudibranchs

@BESW I have not!

Some sea hares get quite large, like... almost the size of an actual (though small) rabbit.

But the ones I've seen are more like thumb-size.

NautArch

Are they local to your area?

I guess I could look that up :P

I did see a lot of mantas when I went to Yap.

BESW

1:11 PM

Aye, we've got them locally.

They're hard to find in the wild, because they have such great camouflage. I didn't know to look for them until I saw a tank of adorable jellies at the marine lab.

Species of sea hare in the Mariana Islands

I think striatus is the one I saw most?

Most sea hares can ink kinda like an octopus, but they also tend to accumulate toxins from the algae they eat. The algae makes the toxins to discourage grazing by fish, so the sea hares just... borrow it for the same purpose.

G. Moylan

@BESW nudibranchs do that too with toxins and jellyfish stinging cells. It's wild

BESW

Aye, glaucus atlanticus is probably the best-known for doing that.

@NautArch Next time I'm plugged into my archive drive, I'll see if I can find any of my dad's nudibranch macrophotos.

AncientSwordRage

@NautArch they really are awesome

I'd have imagined they're related... Hare and nudibranches

I will hold off googling until my second coffee otherwise I'll ne'er get caffeinated

BESW

1:28 PM

They're all molluscs, but while nudibranchs ditch the shell when they grow up, sea hares keep it internally.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW oh nice!

Do sea hare have external gills as well (or whatever passes for gills on a mollusc)

KorvinStarmast

@AncientSwordRage I think that the song "cats on the rooftops" covers the answer to the title question of "what is living wood?"

@G.Moylan looks like a little bitty dragon

BESW

Sea hare gills are freaky.

They're deep in the body, protected, and there's a gaping hole over them that's surrounded by frilly fringe which the hares can use to cover or expose the hole.

G. Moylan

@KorvinStarmast they kinda do, they're so wild looking

BESW

(Like petals on a rather O'Keeffeian flower)

"Why Does The Sunlight Come From The North In Shaded Relief Maps?" essay for Ramble Maps.

Upcoming Kickstarter: The Exquisite Corpse in Maggots' Keep by Gabriel Komisar. An Interactive Adventure Book where each choice is written by a different author!

AncientSwordRage

1:38 PM

@BESW wild

@BESW double wild

BESW

The lumpy "hump" on the sea hare's back? That's the frilly cover over its gills.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I'm guessing that's also where the ink gland is?

BESW

So far as I can tell, yeah.

Medix2

1:54 PM

@ThomasMarkov My first memories are when I'm six so...

@ThomasMarkov I just like marveling at the people who have medals in completely unrelated events

Thomas Markov

@AncientSwordRage RandAlThor mentioned the 555 question in their answer

AncientSwordRage

2:16 PM

in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, 11 mins ago, by AncientSwordRage

I'll keep mine up

@Medix2 your going to love Chess Boxing

Medix2

2:31 PM

@AncientSwordRage Way ahead of you there XD

Akixkisu

@V2Blast Probably the most anticipated feature.

Akixkisu

2:47 PM

@BESW that is fascinating.

AncientSwordRage

3:48 PM

@BESW do you know much about avocados?

KorvinStarmast

They are named for lawyers 😁 (Italian for lawyer is something like avocatto)

NautArch

4:18 PM

@AncientSwordRage He used to the mayor, right?

AncientSwordRage

4:29 PM

oh I always struggle with that word 😑

Akixkisu

@AncientSwordRage do you have more unopened ones in the batch?

Thomas Markov

I dont think this question deserves to be negative.

AncientSwordRage

@Akixkisu check the post date

@ThomasMarkov hmmmmm

probably not

Akixkisu

@AncientSwordRage ah, my brain only checked the activity.

Thomas Markov

Like yeah, it's a little weak on "research" I guess, but there isn't much to research. It misses a design principle of "stuff only does what it says it does", but it's not unreasonable to expect gas breath to behave like gas breath if you miss that idea.

AncientSwordRage

4:42 PM

@Akixkisu fair!

@ThomasMarkov I guess, but it looks like the OP could have easily researched that?

KorvinStarmast

@ThomasMarkov is this the kind of question that would benefit from a "there are no secret rules" kind of answer? Any number of participants are aware of game systems where some info is withheld from player facing material ... so maybe CatLord's asking "does it do any thing else?" and hoping for more info from a different source than they have.

Thomas Markov

@KorvinStarmast thats basically waht I said

KorvinStarmast

We have a "there are no secret rules" answer somewhere on the stack, let me find it.

Thomas Markov

My prefered articulation is something like "everything you need to know is there in the description"

Which is true except when it's not lol

AncientSwordRage

They seem to have a goodish grasp of the rules... not that that should determine how you vote on the Q

but it makes the question seem out of place

KorvinStarmast

4:47 PM

Well, here's the there are not secret rules reference tweet

Akixkisu

@AncientSwordRage hm, I think it often plays a role in my voting. Generally I'm much more likely to upvote an average question by someone who usually asks poor questions.

AncientSwordRage

@Akixkisu I mean it can, I guess what I mean is it shouldn't be the only thing

Thomas Markov

Here is another answer of mine that has me thinking "how has no one posted this before"

Akixkisu

5:09 PM

@AncientSwordRage Yup, I think there ought to be a plurality of factors that go into consideration - and it is one of them :)

@ThomasMarkov tbf, it should be, but the top answer is probably more accurate. Upvoted anyway.

Thomas Markov

6:02 PM

Found a user script that restores some of the stuff our stack overlords removed from the profile page.

The Oracle

0

Q: Tags with at least 10 questions that need usage guidance

I went through and looked for tags with no usage guidance/blank wiki excerpts having at least 10 questions on the site. Here they are: bloodline 26 questions immediate-actions 23 questions move-action 23 questions aegis 19 questions inquisitor 16 questions channel-energy 10 questions If you vol...

discussion tag-wiki

Thomas Markov

6:47 PM

Things I did not anticipate being mostly uncontroversial #1: DGtS revisit.

G. Moylan

@ThomasMarkov Yeah I've been surprised about that

Thomas Markov

I guess it's only been a week, plenty of time left for it to get more interesting.

KorvinStarmast

@ThomasMarkov I think that most participants have observed that it was a {censored} policy in the first place, or felt as I do that making it policy was the problem in the first place. (Again, nice job on the presentation)

The Oracle

7:25 PM

0

Q: The [bloodline] tag is being used for two completely different concepts in different RPGs

bloodline is a little problematic, as it is a concept in two quite large games and both share nothing but the name: vampire-the-masquerade has Bloodlines as "sub-Clans". For example Kiasyd are a bloodline of the Toreador. dungeons-and-dragons/pathfinder do have sorcerer-boodlines, which is one w...

discussion tags

Thomas Markov

8:01 PM

Enkryptor seems really salty about my answer for some reason.

Cooper

@ThomasMarkov My least favorite example of a place where the information isn't all there is the fact that neither greater nor lesser restoration indicate that they can fix madness of various levels. I get that it's a mechanic that doesn't seem to get a TON of use, but it annoys me that I always have to remind my players of what their spells can do. They should know what their spells can do!

Trish

8:28 PM

What is wrong with pointing out that a tag is messed up and asking "can we fix it?"

Always when I have no perfect idea how to fix a tag, To me it appears that people on Meta hate me participating - and then not even saying WHAT is wrong. I am disappointed.

Cooper

I'm also confused by the downvotes there. Seems like a perfectly reasonable question and a very clearly confusing tag.

KorvinStarmast

@Trish there is nothing wrong with that question. Seeking clarity is a good thing. color me confused.

Trish

8:43 PM

@KorvinStarmast I suspect <insert explitive> <more> <more> <more> <another> that have a dislike for me personally.

Akixkisu

@ThomasMarkov rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/107637/… that is wrong, it is exactly what we do.

KorvinStarmast

I also wonder if Thomas has a good idea. @Trish if we choose to burninate the tag, what harm does that do? I don't grok VTM so let me know what I am missing.

MikeQ

Meta downvotes are typically more about disagreeing with the decision, rather than judging the quality of the answer.

KorvinStarmast

but the dvs on the question are bizarre, I think @MikeQ

Trish

@KorvinStarmast Bloodlines in VTM are pretty much "alternate classes" if you want to use Pathfinder terms.

MikeQ

8:50 PM

Bizarre? What's bizarre about them? There are 4 downvotes. 4 users saw the question and disagreed with the proposal. I see no reason to interpret this as some personal attack.

Trish

Not sure what 2.5 bloodlines are, but in PF, they are just sorcerers.

@MikeQ There was no proposal. There was just "This tag is confusing: it has 2 diametral different meanings". I understand that "burninate and split it up" can be disagreed with, but downvoting that there is a problem? I tried to dish it out better...

Cooper

@KorvinStarmast I'm not super familiar with VTM, but given that "bloodlines" are a huge part of your character's abilities, I'd think that it should keep existing but be VTM exclusive, since it's a tag that would help experts find questions to answer (?)

Akixkisu

Confirming and stating rules, supporting the conclusion is what we do, even restating rules the querent mentions. It is common practice and expected to support one's answer like this. I never will understand forming such an uncharitable reading - it eventually leads to frustration or bad arguments.

Trish

@Cooper But Bloodrager- and Sorcerer-bloodlines in PF also define a lot what powers you get. And there is only 1 VTM Bloodnline question.

eh, 2 it seems.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

9:17 PM

. . . what did I crawl into?

This reminds me of Magus and . . . HP was it? . . discussions.

Or some other term that is used in many systems and/or settings and not always in the same way.

Trish

9:29 PM

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica MAgus at least had some overlap: they were all magic wielders of sorts. But Bloodlines? There is no overlap.

Akixkisu

9:56 PM

@Trish You have a habit of framing these in a particular manner (usually concluding that something is wrong, and we have to act upon it) - that would be my guess.

Usually it involves an implicit argument.

Medix2

10:28 PM

Do people think this question should be tagged with either history-of-gaming or content-identification?

Akixkisu

@Medix2 probably history of gaming, not content identification.

Medix2

10:56 PM

It's interesting because CI has been used for "Is there a magic item that does BLANK?" and this is "Is there a rule that talks about BLANK?"

Akixkisu

11:10 PM

@Medix2 I read "based on remembered details of the content." as any kind of content that somebody remembers/knows exists but can't find/relate/associate. "Where is this content that I know about?" This question is about whether content like that exists.

V2Blast

11:59 PM

@Medix2 I don't think either tag would be necessary/appropriate, because content-identification is about "identifying game content (abilities, features, classes or other specific game content) based on remembered details of the content", and history-of-gaming is about "questions about the entire history of role-playing games: the history of game companies, trends within the hobby, developments of new kinds of mechanics, and gaming's place in culture". This isn't really either one.

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