TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

00:19

@AncientSwordRage I'd say "playable" and "non-playable" if I needed to make that divide in my games (it might be possible to have peoples who are defined for background reasons, but aren't playable because they got subsumed/introgressed into another bunch of folks or simply sort of fell off the radar, so to speak)

Jack

Not sure why my answer to rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/195034/… is getting negative votes. That is so annoying, esp. because of course people rarely say why they're downvoting. Any insights?

AncientSwordRage

00:34

@Shalvenay the question asks for in game terms.

Shalvenay

@AncientSwordRage ah, as in something usable ICly? that's a tougher one :/

AncientSwordRage

I do like the idea of an elf looking at a human and thinking 'I could play them... But I don't know how to trick an ogre'

Shalvenay

@AncientSwordRage snickers XD

BESW

00:52

Procedurally generated maps of various kinds

@AncientSwordRage ....huh. That seems like a category error.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW that's amazing

Joshua

Beware the unidentified potion in the tomb.

BESW

01:11

@AncientSwordRage Houses with blueprints! I'm in love.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I'll fire up my Pinterest boards 👀

BESW

Back in the day when I did maps on grids I'd try to find old blueprints and use those.

AncientSwordRage

I was never that organised

Thomas Markov

02:55

Self accepts aren’t pinned, right?

bobble

> Self-answers that are accepted will never be pinned to the top.

1030

A: How does accepting an answer work?

What does it mean to accept an answer? The system allows you to mark an answer as "accepted", in order to indicate which answer solved your problem or most thoroughly answered your question in the end. Accepting an answer is beneficial as it rewards posters for correctly answering your question a...

Yuuki

05:19

I'm having a discussion with someone over the binary nature of 5th edition (dis)advantage. While we both agree that having multiple levels of advantage is not great for various reasons, the question of advantage vs. disadvantage is a bit more thorny. As far as I can tell, the main advantage, so to speak, of having advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out no matter how many sources you have of either is that you save time on combat turns via eliminating accounting.

On the other hand, having multiple sources of advantage be canceled out by one source of disadvantage, or vice versa, might be considered a "feels bad" moment by a player.

Not really looking for an answer here, as much as I am looking for anything that I'm missing.

Is there any other particular gain to be had from designing the advantage mechanic in this way?

BESW

Yes, but so far as I can tell not in any way D&D is exploiting.

BESW

05:44

Long Live the King of Monsters! (playtest) by BESW. The King of Monster Island is dead! It's time to choose Monster Island's new king... in free-for-all combat! (access pass)

3

AncientSwordRage

09:17

@Yuuki I'll be honest I had never thought about that

nitsua60

13:31

@Yuuki My understanding is that it's not so much the eliminating of accounting that was seen as the benefit of the current method, but the elimination of an incentive to be fishing around for just one more source of (dis)advantage. It sets the cutoff at 1, rather than leaving it open-ended.

BESW

14:23

@nitsua60 Counterpoint: having advantage and disadvantage cancel each other turns it into a never-ending contest to see who can think of just one more justification or counterjustification.

Making conditions not stack with themselves but cancel each other is a weird flex.

In a more narrative system that's focused on encouraging players to one-up each other with intricate descriptions it'd make a lot of sense, because the buildup is the point.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@nitsua60 It does eliminate the arms race, but also at least once produced a strange 'I will obscure the battlefield so both we and the enemies get both Disadvantage and Advantage so that nobody would be able to get only Advantage or only Disadvantage ever'.

MikeQ

@Yuuki Ease of gameplay by taking out all the number crunching. It's clearer when compared against previous editions. Sure it may briefly feel bad when advantages are cancelled by a disadvantage, but it also feels bad when every combat slows to a crawl while players add up various +2/+1/-1/-2 modifiers from lots of different sources.

BESW

@MikeQ One thing I appreciated about the update from Fate 3 to Fate Core, was that it removed all negative modifiers. A negative modifier would instead be a positive modifier to the target number/opposing roll. This reduced mental load, but it also made everybody feel more awesome because nobody had to make their numbers smaller and instead people got to be overcoming bigger numbers.

It's a design principle I've tried to keep in mind ever since, including in my recent update of LLKM.

...And now I'm imagining stacking advantage where you wind up rolling opposed handfuls of d20s.

Akixkisu

15:03

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica What is strange about that?

Causing a symmetric effect for an asymmetric benefit is often a fun mechanic, especially in war gaming.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Akixkisu The fact that a participant in a combat would create a circumstance not for the sake of an innate benefit thereof, but because of this peculiar way the circumstances don't stack in the RAW.

Akixkisu

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica That seems like an intententonal meta reading.

You have to understand that as the player.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Akixkisu Yes, I think it steps into the meta too much for feeling natural.

Akixkisu

In character/world that is just how things work.

The player would create that dissonance.

It is the same old not a physics, but a game engine concept of abstraction.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Yeah, it's an understandable abstraction, a simplified way of implementing diminishing returns, but one that indeed feels more dissociative due to the special sharp cut-off.

Akixkisu

15:08

@BESW Reminds me of that one time a friend convinced me to play Borderlands with them, and I would shoot my sniper rifle at the head of an enemy, but they had too many hp so didn't die.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica That is because you come to the table with that expectation, I don't have it- so it feels quite normal to me.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Contrast the way LANCER does accuracy/inaccuracy: you add/subtract all accuracy/inaccuracy modifiers, and roll the final resulting number of d6es along with the d20, but only add (or subtract, if at a net disadvantage) the highest of the rolled d6s.

Akixkisu

It would feel weird in other games if someone wanted to introduce it instead of a different established ruling.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

I think for diminishing returns, LANCER's approach is neater, but of course does suffer from being essentially a mixed dice pool in disguise. And doesn't really solve the avoidance of an arms race of modifiers.

Akixkisu

It is more orderly and symmetric.

KorvinStarmast

15:40

@Yuuki simplify play

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica that's what they were trying to avoid

Akixkisu

17:17

rpg.stackexchange.com/posts/195049/revisions Idk, one might as well submit that as a new question and link it in the comments.

@ThomasMarkov rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/195049/…

Thomas Markov

@Akixkisu It looks like the same question repackaged without the designer reasons.

To me, It seemed the question had two elements: the question as it is now plus an inquiry about developer intent.

Akixkisu

@ThomasMarkov which doesn't seem to be their question.

But in any case, we should reopen it.

To me it looked like two questions as well - first why did the designers do this and second, what are your catch all suggestions that will improve our game. Neither of which suit our stack (atm), but the new question is stackable and answerable and it would be a disservice to anyone who has it if we leave it closed as that creates an awkward situation where they would have to (knowingly) ask a dupe to get an answer.

Thomas Markov

17:37

Im abstaining until OP confirms they are cool with the change because we've had situations where a question was closed, someone edited, we reopened, then OP reverted to the state it was in when it was closed.

Akixkisu

That indicates to me that you think the question substantially changed and didn't just have a dev int attached to it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Because if that wasn't the case, then we could have left it open.

Exempt-Medic

18:31

@ThomasMarkov I'm debating undoing that edit tbqh

It's a substantial change into a completely different question that the OP never asked

Like, that is the kind of edit I would make, immediately undo, and then link to for the OP to look over and debate about making themself

Thomas Markov

@Exempt-Medic and this is why I skipped it in review :P

Exempt-Medic

@ThomasMarkov And why I debate opening a Meta XD

Thomas Markov

@Exempt-Medic nananananananananana

The Oracle

19:06

0

Q: Was this edit too substantial?

Our GM has us roll new initiative every round. Just how broad of a change is this? The above question was edited from this state to this one. This can also be looked at on the revisions page. I am wondering if this edit was an edit too far, that is, if it made a significant enough change to the...

Trish

19:40

@Exempt-Medic I just did. because that rewrite was too much.

@Akixkisu we shouldn't if the edit was a violation of the edit guidelines - which it was.

Akixkisu

@Trish Debatable.

I personally agree with Exempt-Medic's answer, but I also think that there is some merit to a different interpretation.

I think there are essentially two different courses of action that I think are okay solutions, one which I prefer and one that is also valid, but I wouldn't want to make the case for it.

Thomas Markov

Well now we’re about to reopen an off topic question.

Akixkisu

19:56

@ThomasMarkov The trick is to add another layer of escalation and make the situation even worse, I bet we could come up with something like reopening, instantly closing and then reverting to edit 3.

Exempt-Medic

@Akixkisu Ingenious!

Hot RPG Questions

20:32

4

Q: What is the source of the "rulings not rules" statement?

Questions and answers here often say things like, "5e is a game of rulings, not rules". I think there's sufficient evidence to support that interpretation (for instance, the introduction to the DMG), but do the rules themselves ever actually say "rulings, not rules"? I searched here and everyth...

dnd-5e content-identification

Thomas Markov

@Akixkisu This was a fun one:

10

Q: What do we do when a question is covered as a subset of another, but the answers are insufficient for answering the special case?

Taking a look at the revision history of the question, "Can an Arcane Trickster or Eldritch Knight with the Magic Initiate feat (picking the wizard list) use spell slots to cast the chosen 1st-level spell?, you will notice six gold-badge open/close actions. You might be tempted to say "looks kin...

discussion duplicates

Thomas Markov

20:45

VTC if you have votes left

@Akixkisu Why did you vote to reopen?

Stop Being Evil

21:03

@Exempt-Medic I... never realized that was something I could do, but now it seems completely obvious

Akixkisu

@ThomasMarkov I did so before the rollback, and then forgot to remove it thereafter.

Thomas Markov

@Akixkisu Ah, you were the first reopen vote

I thought the list was most recent first

eyes @StopBeingEvil dissapprovingly :P:P

Akixkisu

@ThomasMarkov I think I was the second, but someone - pryo? Removed theirs after me - maybe because they saw the rollback.

BESW

23:15

Kickstarter: HULL BREACH Vol. 1 by Ian Yusem. A sci-fi horror anthology digest for the Mothership RPG. A manifest of new, eclectic terrors from 20 independent authors.

momatoes wrote a twitter thread on "Community-Copies-by-Email—a Retrospective and How-to."

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