TRPG General Chat

doppelgreener

00:02

@nitsua60 yeah it's not quite on point for this situation, it just springs to mind

I didn't want to bring it up in the actual comments on meta since analogies are only useful as far as they're analogous

Stop Being Evil

did the half kitsune querent delete their q?

Someone_Evil

Yes

Stop Being Evil

Damn

Someone_Evil

Particular good answer you wanted to give?

Stop Being Evil

No, just feeling like I (or we) accidentally chased them off

Someone_Evil

00:11

It didn't seem like that to me. I'll give you their final comment: "I have runit by my dm and their fine with it and said that they would help me figure out what i dont under stand to the matter has now been resolved thanks"

Stop Being Evil

Ah, didn't see that. That's better

Someone_Evil

Sometimes folks just need to be reminded that their GM is there to help them :)

Stop Being Evil

Well I feel better now! Thanks

Also I looked at the race writeup, and its subraces were all "who was your other parent?" and included tiefling

Thomas Markov

00:42

@nitsua60 I’ve drafted three messages so far and I’m not satisfied with any of them, so instead I’ll just ask you to level with me on one question: given that declining the flags can potentially enforce a flag ban, and you did not intend to get anyone flag banned, why was “decline” chosen instead of marking the flags helpful and leaving a comment like the one I described in this comment earlier?

BESW

...that comment is baffling. If a post is an answer, marking a "not an answer" flag as helpful is encouraging a misunderstanding of what the flag system is for in a way that makes more work for flag handlers in the future.

Thomas Markov

@BESW But the meta discussion has showcased one thing quite clearly, and that is that this is not a case where we can reasonably expect every user to come to the same conclusion about what is and is not an answer.

BESW

That's true of every case.

We've had users argue vehemently for the answerness of 'obviously' not-answer posts many many times.

(And it's entirely reasonable to not want to get someone flag-banned, but still mark flags as inappropriate when they do seem to be inappropriate. You seem to be arguing that a mod should only use mechanics that might result in punitive measures if they're happy about the punitive measure? I'm also pretty sure the chat has already gone over this principle in relation to whether or not the last close-vote has a different moral weight than the first one.)

Declining one flag doesn't get somebody flag-banned. A multitude of declined flags does. That's by design, to give room for the site to enforce its policies while giving feedback on mistakes and opportunity learning before the hammer comes down. Not declining flags because eventually it'll result in a ban... subverts the whole point of that system.

We often advise users who are enthusiastic about using their new privileges, to go slowly and wait for feedback so that they can course-correct before the weight of multiple downvotes/flag declines/rejected edits/etc add up. Anybody who does a ton of flags all at once is running that risk of getting banned before they can adjust based on feedback. And mods who choose to mark 'helpful' flags that aren't... are subverting that feedback so even if the flagger is going slow, they aren't learning.

(I'll also mention, in light of our recent election, that "helpful flags" is a stat people look at to judge a candidate's understanding of the site's priorities and the quality of their participation. Encouraging moderators to mark poor flags as quality... I dunno, the candidate scores are always nonsense but they're one of the only things users can use as reference without spending hours digging through --often partially-deleted-- histories.)

Frankly the current site issue I'd be more worried about is that patterns of behavior aren't being tracked from one part of the site to another, so users get a free reset on supervision when they go between mainsite, chat, and meta; while users who respond understandably based on the totality of that behavior are told off for instigating and escalating.

Quinn Welsh-Wilson wrote a twitter thread about why it's "unfair to both kids and adults" to say that TRPGs use rules to help adults do what kids do naturally.

"InThe News - Feat. LatAm Breakout, Reach of the Roach God, Horse Girl, Down In Yongardy and more" Youtube video by C. A. Berlitz

"A Thousand Thousand Islands team is creating a RPG campaign book about a roach deity" article by Chase Carter for Dicebreaker. Reach of the Roach God’s many-legged book was funded on Kickstarter within the first half hour.

Ian Yusem shared on twitter pages of layout and color from the Mothership RPG anthology.

The Orrery Folly by BESW. A totally normal roadside attraction. (no previews or visuals on the itch page yet, because I was struggling to get it in before the jam deadline)

Thomas Markov

01:21

I think we can all agree that this is not an answer

BESW

...I fail to see how spam is relevant to the topic.

nitsua60

@doppelgreener It's really close, though. I mean, there's like a slip of paper's slim difference 'tween the two. (I'm sitting here thinking about OP, who believes they will have the problem, vs. a reader who possibly has the problem... and it's making me go cross-eyed.)

@ThomasMarkov I don't have strong feelings on whether someone gets flag-banned. I certainly don't give it any thought as I'm working through the flag-queue. Someone flags something NAA, I don't think it's NAA, I don't really think it's helpful to flag as NAA something I think isn't NAA, so I decline. (Not that it matters, but I don't think I actually handled these flags. But I agree, so I don't mind taking point.)

@BESW I read it as throwing in an obviously-we-can-agree-on-this bit of lightheartedness. I might be wrong, but I'll choose to persist in this belief =)

BESW

I like that interpretation.

Thomas Markov

@nitsua60 you get me.

nitsua60

01:36

(Back to Thomas.) Now if it arises from this meta that the community definitely thinks NAA applies where I (personally) don't, I'll recalibrate. (Probably after arguing the other side for a bit, because I have sincere beliefs. But it's not a hill I'll die on.) Or if it arises that we're very conflicted on this as a community, I'd probably even take that as a cue to be a little more conservative with my own judgment and push things toward more metas.

Thomas Markov

@nitsua60 I gotcha, thanks for that. That helps.

nitsua60

:thumbsup:

AncientSwordRage

@BESW ce n'est pas une réponse

nitsua60

(All that said, I'm also notorious for literally mis-handling flags. Like, clicking the wrong thing in the mod UI, thinking I'd effect one thing and instead doing the opposite. I can't count the number of times I've spent ten minutes tracking things down to go back and do the thing the person flagging clearly wanted to do and which I wanted to do, and then dropping a line to the flagger "m'bad, I just declined a totally good flag, thanks for the curation and sorry to pollute your stats."
So definitely ask questions if something seems really strange.)

Thomas Markov

@nitsua60 I’ve gotten a few of those.

nitsua60

01:44

Sometimes I feel a bit...
sheepish.

3

@ThomasMarkov Well now you know: that was totally me.

I'm to the mod UI the same way I was to every foreign language class I've ever taken: "thanks for your enthusiasm, but could you please find a different way to engage? You're actually making the other students stupider."

That said, flag handling isn't all scut-work. Someone notable once decided ruining their "helpful" streak was worth flagging a post with "I'm flagging because this site is for D&D Fifth Edition questions only." It's nice when a literal lol comes out of nowhere =)

bobble

165

A: Allow recovery from flag hellban

Update: Kevin Montrose makes it happen The hell-ban is no more! Long live the verbose, obnoxiously evident ban! Kevin has implemented (more or less) the system described below. Flaggers with a recent (past 7 days) flagging history consisting of at least 10 handled flags where >= 10% of flags were...

Thomas Markov

02:03

@nitsua60 it wasn’t, I showed up after you left

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 I hadn't considered that view of the question, that they're anticipating an eventuality that can be avoided. But I think it's because they've directly said they know ways to avoid it, they just want to know what to do when it does happen. (even a Google doc can be deleted or lost track of.)

AncientSwordRage

@doppelgreener yeah I agree with you, the actual question seemed kind of cut and dry to me

doppelgreener

They are anticipating a possible situation, but they're trying to create the "so, you tried to avoid it, but you're in this conundrum" Q&A.

.... The Captain America "so, you got detention" school PSA video has gone and sprung to mind

gatherer818

02:31

I'm kinda sad that question about the half-kitsune half-tiefling got deleted, because "Level Up!: Advanced Fifth Edition" just finished their Kickstarter and have a "Mixed Heritage" option in the Adventurer's Guide (read: Player's Handbook but we can't call it that) that let you combine any two Heritages (races), and I'd totally have plugged it in a comment :P (so I'm just plugging it in chat instead)

AncientSwordRage

@doppelgreener I've posted those

nitsua60

03:19

Sure. But do they *really* know ways to avoid it? (Is, I bet, what some of the answerers are thinking.)
In any case, that's the sort of post where half- and quarter-assed answers sitting there at -5 for everyone to see, or being deleted.. either's fine with me.

I try to be pluralistic in my moderation. It nicely balances my RL Roman Catholicism =)

AncientSwordRage

@nitsua60 uggh... sounds unhelpful second guessing to me... I don't think they should be considered answers

nitsua60

@AncientSwordRage I think in something as manifestly grey-area as this, I try to also step back and think of it site-side: do these posts do harm by being out there? Would the site be better if we didn't delete them, so that they should definitely be there?

The obvious "harm" would be noise crowding out good answers. But having a handful of low quality answers downvoted to the bottom of the pile doesn't create noise IMO, it just creates good negative examples.

If snappy little "gotcha" one-liners started FGITWing their way to the tops of lots of posts and this started to devolve into forum-style bashing on OPs, then I'd be more concerned.

Then again, if they get deleted by regular users, we've clearly not lost anything of much importance.

Anyway, I definitely need to hit the sack. Haven't slept past 5 the last couple of mornings, and now I'm just starting to baa-aable.

AncientSwordRage

@nitsua60 I think I disagree there, but I think the answers for the community to downvote, VTD, and move on as you say

G'night

Stop Being Evil

FGITW?

AncientSwordRage

@StopBeingEvil fastest gun in the west

It's the issue of the first post getting all the votes

bobble

04:05

1473

Q: Fastest Gun in the West Problem

I feel like there's a problem with Stack Overflow, as the number of people prowling it increases. Each question's answers are sorted by descending score and then by descending time of posting. This means that if a person sits down and answers a question in a long, thorough way, going through eve...

Hot RPG Questions

05:05

3

Q: What happens to a destroyed Pact Weapon?

Ned is a Hexblade Warlock. He found a magical net+1 and made it his pact weapon via his Pact of the Blade feature: You can transform one magic weapon into your pact weapon by performing a special ritual while you hold the weapon. Note that pact weapons can be ranged, and ranged pact weapons can...

dnd-5e magic-items class-feature weapons warlock

KorvinStarmast

06:17

@AncientSwordRage I pronounce it Fuh, Git Oow

not sure if that's the correct pronunciation, though

AncientSwordRage

09:01

@bobble o7 I was too tired last night to go looking for the deets

@KorvinStarmast I think it's either Gif or Gif

trogdor

or peanut butter

AncientSwordRage

I've gotten so into my character's backstory, I genuinely want to play as her mother as my next character

trogdor

XD

that's such a good feeling

although for me the closest thing to that exact feeling was me playing a character who was already another character's parent and then having the main villain replace him and I had to play said villain trying desperately to pretend to be a good parent and doing a better job of it than my actual character had been

it was ridiculous

but it's also definitely not the same thing

AncientSwordRage

@trogdor that's a whole nother level of awesome

trogdor

it was that

I would say it's the most fun I've had roleplaying a character pretty much ever

not to denigrate any of the other times because I've enjoyed it close to as much on several occasions

BESW

09:22

I do wish we'd thought of having the parent character have to pretend to be the villain at the same time.

He probably would've been a better villain than the villain too.

trogdor

lol

I want it to be clear though

I never intended him to be a horrible parent

it just kinda became obvious later that his behaviour was,... yeah

as for villainy, he was only trying to advance science XD

I know that sounds bad for him because that's a textbook villain excuse but it's true XD

BESW

I think he might've become a better person after realizing how good a villain he made.

trogdor

that would definitely have been an intriguing way to take it

AncientSwordRage

10:06

Sounds like you both had lots of fun

BESW

Honestly I mostly just got to sit back and enjoy it. Troggy and Greener did all the work.

trogdor

you did set it up perfectly though

AncientSwordRage

The mother, is an ex-adventurer and treats my character a bit too much like a party member and not her child, and at the same time doesn't want her to grow up and leave home

Akixkisu

11:18

@nitsua60 I think it is a reasonable and insightful response, quite to my liking - it shows your understanding (that I believe is flawed to a degree because it misses out on two key takeaways from that meta - mainly the none answer flag that I raised and the scope of what a comment/naa might look like) and the rationalisation.

When I know that I'm going to stub my toe and am aware of all the precautions that I can take, make explicit that I'm trying to take precautions as best as I can, I need a way to make that pain go away when I eventually do stub my toe. Then those comments on all of the precautions do not help me once I stub my toe, I'm in pain - maybe I can curse all about how my friends should have moved all of those heavy objects on the floor away - and that is supposed to make me feel better?

Don't stub your toe is not a valid frame challenge - nothing validly challenges the premise of the op. If I told them that their pain is useful and educational, perhaps they should tell everyone: I guess we can't play without our characters (advice that I wouldn't give) - good evening! That would challenge the premise of the op - but they all agree that it is a bad experience.

2

Theys all agree that the best thing is not to lose the sheets in the first place, and a lot of them offer (more or less) helpful comments.

SilentAxe

11:34

@Akixkisu But that only means that those are answers that are not helpful, answers that miss the point of the question or simply very bad answers. Which means that they should be downvoted and maybe deleted as very low quality answers not because they are not an answer.

Akixkisu

@SilentAxe we should downvote bad answers, but we should remove comments.

Clearly everybody agrees that this is a bad experience, so a lot of people offered (more or less) helpful comments.

I'm not sure we can call that a misunderstanding when everyone is on the same page.

SilentAxe

11:50

I think the biggest misunderstanding is what exactly "Not an answer" means. Is answer that answers a different question not an answer (for that question) or simply very bad answer because it tries, but completely fails to address what the question asked?

Akixkisu

Is the intent to use the answer box enough of an attempt to answer the question?

AncientSwordRage

> answers that miss the point

If they miss by too much they aren't answers

SilentAxe

@AncientSwordRage That only leads to question: "How much (missing the point) is too much?" And apparently there's a disagreement on that point :)

AncientSwordRage

12:06

@SilentAxe I'd argue some of them completely miss the point

Hot RPG Questions

15:06

3

Q: Is there a way to detect a construct?

Assume that some plausible construct is pretending to be a regular stone statue. Is there a way for a group of PCs to detect that such a statue is in fact a construct? Without attacking or otherwise provoking it. Bonus points if it works against any construct, from a distance, is usable from stea...

pathfinder-1e constructs

Hot RPG Questions

18:02

3

Q: Free Object Interaction Query

Situation came up someone wanted to take an object from their backpack and place it on the ground for someone else. They also gave instructions to a fellow character to come over and get it and how to use it. They wanted all this as a free object interaction. I said no its too much. Was I right?

dnd-5e dungeons-and-dragons actions

Hot RPG Questions

22:39

9

Q: Mechanically speaking, why does level 1 seem so different from level 2?

I find that the survivability and general performance of my party increases massively from levels 1 to 2. At times, level 1 feels like a completely different game from level 2. However, I can't fathom how or why. I think that the availability of healing has something to do with it. From a mechani...

dnd-3.5e character-advancement character-levels

Transcript for