TRPG General Chat

1:37 AM

Cortex Prime's new licensing options look super suspect, but I'm gonna wait for a solid write-up rather than try to talk about it myself 'cause I'm definitely not qualified.

(And here's hoping they just weren't thinking through the license's implications, and will make significant changes in response to the feedback they're getting.)

2:38 AM

> It is tempting to see the end of the sentence "even if you can't see it" as being the only mechanic that this spell skips; however. if the spell says that the named target becomes the spell's target, then that's exactly what it does.

@V2Blast I think that's ungrammatical perhaps?

It was better before I think

Also I can't remember what the usual formatting of spell name is

Adeptus

2:50 AM

@nitsua60 about 1kg of chocolate... I think I agree with everyone else, easier in my teens.

nitsua60

Only 1 kilo? That's not bad. My rule of thumb (developed over far too many hours spent discussing and researching this with friends) is that it takes at least 3lb of sugars and fats to get to 5K.

3:03 AM

ooof

@nitsua60 Back-of-the- ~~napkin~~ google calculations say it's 2 pounds of Kinder Eggs (about 46 eggs).

nitsua60

@BESW Okay. That sounds like... not a pleasant lunch =)

I don't think it matters what kind of sweet it is, any ammount that counts for that is going to make you sick

High fructose corn syrup is probably where it's at in terms of calories-per-gram.

Actually... hrm. Pistachios seem to be a major contender.

Pistachios hmm

3:13 AM

Only about 834 pistachios, maybe?

I think short term that's fine but if you eat that many in one go you might have problems later

But the contest rules may or may not specify digestible calories, which would make a difference; the burn test doesn't exactly simulate body absorption potential and pistachios may be a significant example.

nitsua60

@BESW Contest "rules," such as they are, are that the food should be one line-item on a grocery-store or restaurant's receipt. So 3lb. ground beef would be fine, as would 3 loaded bacon cheeseburgers.

@BESW We did have a guy try to do 3 1-lb bags of pistachios once.

Macadamia are also very calorie-dense, but it's hard to get good ones out here.

@nitsua60 3.5lbs of mackerel is an option....

3:37 AM

Meanwhile in Highly Inadvisable Technicalities, 2 milligrams of U-238.

> 1. Mel's Country Café in Texas sells the Mega Mel Burger with 1.5 pounds of ground beef, a pound of bacon, 1/4 pound of American cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickle and bun. It weighs in at an estimated 4,556 calories.
2. Fifth Third, a minor-league baseball park in Comstock Park, Mich., offers the Fifth Third Burger, which totals an estimated 4,800 calories. The $20 burger features five beef patties, five slices of cheese, almost a cup of chili, lots of salsa, and corn chips piled on an 8-inch bun so colossal it was featured on the Food Network's popular show Unwrapped

I don't think we have any vision impaired chat users, but you never know 🤷🏻‍♂️

@BESW huh... In which part?

@AncientSwordRage Thank you

@AncientSwordRage Which part of...?

According to my quick calculations, 2 mg of Uranium-238 contains about 5000 calories.

@BESW ...the burger's contains enriched uranium?

@BESW OH!

(Converted for food calories, not energy calories, so I may be off by a bit)

@BESW that gives bomb calorimeter a whole new meaning

3:51 AM

And that's through decay, not through fission. You need even less if you're calculating by fission potential.

@BESW you need... 8kg to reach critical mass and begin fission I think?

Well yes, but by this point we aren't talking about whether it will create that much energy, just whether it contains that much energy in some form.

@BESW true

The 5000 calories by decay would take something along the line of hundreds or thousands of years to fully express?

And neither is exactly digestible.

I hadn't considered that

(side note: video with more on calories and bomb calorimeters by researcher Giles Yeo)

I mean obviously not digestible, I mean the timeframe

3:56 AM

@AncientSwordRage I just accidentally hit the period instead of the comma. Fixed :)

@V2Blast I'm not sure if you even need a 'however' after ;

@AncientSwordRage The word "however" was already there. I just fixed the punctuation around it

@V2Blast not sure if it needed fixing then...? I'm no grammarian though, the punctuation in the new version of (excluding erroneous periods) doesn't read right to me

@AncientSwordRage The fixed version is indeed grammatically correct. The original version was not.

The author of the post is using the word "however" like the word "but". The word "but" is a coordinating conjunction, and can be used to connect 2 independent clauses using a comma. However, the word "however" is not a coordinating conjunction. You can't connect 2 independent clauses with "however" using only commas (that's a comma splice); you need to either separate the 2 independent clauses with a semicolon (to indicate a closer relationship between the 2 independent clauses) or a period.

@BESW What seems to be the matter with them? I haven't had a chance to look at recent announcements

4:14 AM

@V2Blast that's crazy, but I should expect no less from the English language. However, I'm not sure I can see myself holding to that style.

@AncientSwordRage A lot of people incorrectly use adverbs like "however" as if they were coordinating conjunctions, so it is a common error. It's one of my pet peeves :P

@V2Blast I find it easier to go with what the people writing are comfortable with, rather than prescribing a particular usage

So long as it's widely intelligible I mean

from the discussions I've seen, their newly-released "non-commercial" license is
(a) *implicitly* binding in all terms for anyone using any part of the Cortex System; (b) forbidding the use of Cortex IP in anything "the general public" would consider "inappropriate for minors" which is just *woof;*
(c) demanding that all such creations be "fully compatible" with Cortex Plus (no hacking the game to be too different from their own vision); and
(d) using software IP language copy-pasted into the license in ways that make no sense and is thus ripe for abusive misinterpretation.

Oh and also they own everything you design and you're not allowed to put it on any distribution platform they don't approve of.

The damage control they've been doing on social media suggests these are not intended outcomes of the license, but we'll see if they take any action to fix the mistake or if that's just pure rhetoric.

And frankly if it's a mistake that should be just as alarming, albeit in different ways.

It has big "trust us we're a small company and you're like family, don't worry about the legal details we all understand each other" energy, which under the best of circumstances is absolutely true until the company expands or changes hands and other pressures outweigh their loyalty to the integrity of the company/fanbase relationship--at which time all the messy legal stuff that wasn't an issue then, becomes a very very big issue.

Ah, okay. I saw that Mellie responded to some of those concerns in the comments of the Kickstarter update, but as you say, it remains to be seen what changes are made based on that feedback.

A company that doesn't build in protections for its clients from itself at the beginning, BEFORE it has the capacity to do great harm, it a company that's either not interested in the protection of its clients or not being realistic about its future.

(See: the Stack Exchange)

@V2Blast Yeah, at the moment it's all at the level of "trust us, we'll never ACTUALLY feed you to bears, that's just a little clause legal made us put in."

4:29 AM

Part of the issue may be the potential disconnect between Mellie being the community manager at Fandom vs. the license being written by Fandom's legal department (whoever that may be).

Hopefully Fandom has some sort of internal/focus-group feedback process that these sorts of things go through before being announced - and if they don't, they should probably add one.

From a bigger picture perspective, they appear to be perpetuating the OGL culture that Wizards modeled in the d20 boom/bust years, where small indie companies make tiny profits off material that functions as free advertising for the big fish, with a model that very few of the indies can ever become self-sustaining on without the big fish's licenses, so they crash and burn from the oversaturated market or when the big fish wanders off to do something else.

GcL

@V2Blast However, the author of the post would use anything but.

There are other ways to open your IP to other creators. The indie space is full of innovations specifically emerging from frustration with existing models for handling IP in this industry.

@GcL :thinking:

11:37 AM

@V2Blast Given that Fandom's legal department has to be staffed with people who feel comfortable representing a company whose business model is tweaking Mickey Mouse's nose with "Fair Use" disclaimers...

The entire fandom wiki concept is making money by hosting other peoples' content based on other companies' IPs. Which makes me deeply suspicious of the claims that this non-commercial isn't exactly license isn't exactly as intended.