TRPG General Chat

BESW

00:09

IDOL by Sweet Cyanide. Light up the night, kill the dawn, become an IDOL

"The Trouble With Kickstarter" essay by Aaron Marks on Cannibal Halfling Gaming.

"Free to Download: Indie Japanese TTRPG Emo-klore" article by Andrew Girdwood for Geek Native. Emo-klore is free to access and download tabletop roleplaying game. It's been made by various members of the Japanese roleplaying games YouTube community and as a showcase.

Raging Grannies by Alicia Furness. Rid the world of evil between tea and bridge.

Upcoming crowdfunding project: CyberMetal 2012 by World Champ Game Co. A tabletop rpg of demons, metalheads, and weirdos surviving and thriving in an isolated city of warped technology in an alternate timeline. Single-session or Campaign play. 2-5 players and a gamemaster. Demon worshiping, drug running, debt cancelling, consciousness uploading, and whatever the hell else you can come up with in a low-fi cyberpunk sandbox.

Spotify playlist: CyberMetal 2012 the unofficial playlist accompaniment to the tabletop rpg CYBERMETAL 2012

Zine Month 2022 hosted by Feral Indie Studio will be a February alternative to Kickstarter and ZineQuest. Learn more in the newsletter; website coming soon.

2

AncientSwordRage

11:08

Homebrew idea: Swap dragon flavours for Giant flavours

Now we have: Gold Giant, Blue Giant etc. And Storm Dragons, Hill Dragons, etc

trogdor

11:33

lol

Hill Dragons

AncientSwordRage

@trogdor yes :D

Exempt-Medic

13:11

@ThomasMarkov Is updating open5e links to D&D Beyond links something we should do? I swear there's a Meta on this somewhere...

Thomas Markov

@Exempt-Medic I'd imagine ddb would be the most stable off-site link.

Exempt-Medic

Yeah I'd certainly assume that as well

Thomas Markov

Plus the ddb page provides the basic rules page number (which usually correlates to the phb page number)

Exempt-Medic

I guess I could go update these and maybe these hmmm

But I also don't know how much I care about updating links on spells when the spells aren't being used as sources/citations/references

Thomas Markov

Please consider changing the accepted answer to Adeptus' answer, which provides a complete list of official sources. — Thomas Markov 1 min ago

@Exempt-Medic I wouldnt worry about it too much. Maybe if there are any high-traffic and high scoring answers that could use some touching up, fix those.

Exempt-Medic

13:22

@ThomasMarkov A funny tooltip on that one

Thomas Markov

Yeah I saw that.

Wonder if that's been reported on meta

Exempt-Medic

I wonder what happens if you do it three times

Two kinds of people right there XD

@ThomasMarkov Yes

Thomas Markov

13:33

Looks like we may be due a revisit on designer reasons questions.

Which, if we bring them back, I've got my downvotes ready for any answer that isn't actual designer statements.

I will probably not contribute a for or against answer to that one, though I likely will write up a conditional answer, an "if we bring them back, we need some written guidance for them".

Someone_Evil

13:54

If you don't mind, Imma see if I can't get that notion into the question :)

Thomas Markov

@Someone_Evil Even better. I dont much care either way if we bring them back or not, but I really want to avoid "I think it might be..." answers, because well articulated speculation will get runaway upvotes from HNQ.

Someone_Evil

As I understand it, those answers are what got the question type banned first time around

nitsua60

@ThomasMarkov I'll probably just drop my usual old saw: "this whole project works a lot better if you describe your actual problem, rather than trying to tell potential answerers what the answer should look like."

Thomas Markov

@Someone_Evil That is my understanding as well.

I think there is room for "idle curiosity" questions, though problem solving is the generally more useful question type.

And I dont doubt I'll write my fair share of frame challenges to designer reasons questions if they come back.

At least, for questions where there does seem to be a problem to be solved beyond curiosity about what someone else was thinking.

nitsua60

@ThomasMarkov Ballpark: what fraction of d-i questions you've seen do you think fall into the buckets {idle curiosity, thinking of tweaking something but I'm hesitant, I need to win an argument, rant, other}? [edited]

Someone_Evil

14:09

Which of those buckets do "I'm frustrated with a rule outcome" fall into?

I suppose there's an implicit connection to tweaking, but that also includes a mindset change

Thomas Markov

@Someone_Evil I think most of them start here.

Something like "This is what this rules interaction seems to be, did the designers intend these rules to work together this way?"

And sometimes that falls into idle curiosity and sometimes it falls into tweaking and balancing.

nitsua60

Oh, sure, I'm probably missing "sturm und drang" as a good bucket. Editing....

Thomas Markov

I think "I need to win an argument" and "rant" are usually the same thing, and theyre pretty rare imo.

I think the standard formula for those is usually "my dm ruled it this way, I didnt like that, help me prove the designer wouldnt have ruled it that way"

Someone_Evil

I think there's also a fair chunk of "unknown" where there isn't enough info in the question to know the actual end

Thomas Markov

Digging through older posts, I think the most common formula I see is similar to this recent question that we had a meta about. It presents something of a problem to be solved, and then asks "why would the designers do that?" as sort of a tag-along question.

BESW

14:18

Thomas Markov

Once they all believed in dragons
When the world was fresh and young,
We were woven into legends,
Tales were told and songs were sung.
We were treated with obeisance,
We were honored, we were feared,
Then one day they stopped believing-
On that day, we disappeared.

Now they say our time is over,
Now they say we've lived our last,
Now we're treated with derision
Where we once ruled unsurpassed.
We must make them all remember,
In some way we must reveal,
That our spirit lives forever,
We are dragons! We are real!!

Thomas Markov

15:43

can familiars use the ready action

Someone_Evil

I don't see why they wouldn't

Thomas Markov

yes, I checked.

Joel Harmon

"A familiar can't attack, but can take other actions as normal" implies yes.

Thomas Markov

Was second guessing myself for a moment

@Exempt-Medic thanks for that edit.

Exempt-Medic

@ThomasMarkov Wondering if a citation for "in particular, the special action granted by the tattoo to its wearer." would help, but I doubt it and there isn't really a good one besides maybe "If an item requires an action to activate, that action isn't a function of the Use an Object action" from the DMG or "If you have a magic item that requies an action to use, you take the Use a Magic Item action." from the Essentials Kit

Thomas Markov

15:56

@Exempt-Medic either way it's an action that is not a reaction.

Exempt-Medic

@ThomasMarkov Oh, true. Yeah guess there's not many attack options for a familiar

Kinda funny your first part could say "Coiling Grasp Tattoo isn't an attack so it can't be used as a reaction" and then "Coiling Grasp Tattoo isn't an attack so it can be used as an action"

Thomas Markov

question just needs a new title, I cleaned the body up a bit.

Exempt-Medic

May want to change your answer stating "Grasping Tendril attack"

Thomas Markov

@Exempt-Medic Thanks, that was supposed to be action.

Struggling to get a good title as it is quite the complicated scenario.

Exempt-Medic

@ThomasMarkov I pushed an edit with one

Thomas Markov

16:02

That works.

Thomas Markov

19:41

hmmm

I have a question.

I have found an answer to it (that leaves much to be desired) on another question that asks somewhat generally about the thing I want to ask about.

But that question does not ask specifically about it.

Maybe Ill just make a meta first instead of making a meta after we fight about it.

Someone_Evil

20:18

Without knowing the specifics, that sounds like a good distinction/clarification for a posted question to make

Someone_Evil

20:33

"This question (link) doesn't cover mine because..."

Phoenices

20:54

@AncientSwordRage this thing

I don't really like the idea of colored giants, but I love the idea of themed dragons. It makes them feel more real than color dragons.

Do land dragons take some/all of the concept of their respective giants? I assume hill dragons wouldn't be ugly and brutish (actually, having an unintelligent forest dragon might fit), but would they have a breath?

V2Blast

@ThomasMarkov Is it something you'd reasonably expect the existing question to cover? Or is it a potential edge-case that may or may not follow the general rule?

But yeah, when in doubt, you can always ask your question, and then the community can assess how to handle it.

Phoenices

Not sure what the differences in concepts of cloud and storm dragons would be. Are cloud dragons mostly peaceful but hoarding dragons, while storm dragons travel around righting wrongs or something?

AncientSwordRage

21:31

@Phoenices what's the difference for giants though?

Thomas Markov

@AncientSwordRage About 4 strength iirc.

AncientSwordRage

@ThomasMarkov badum tshhh

I meant lore wise but that works too

The Oracle

22:08

1

Q: Is this question about readying an action to cast a spell from a magic item a duplicate?

Rather than flinging my question onto main and discussing possible duplicature later, I am going to preemptively ask about it here first, in order to determine if I should ask my new question or bounty an old one. Here is my question (minor details subuject to change, per our usual editing proces...

Phoenices

22:45

@AncientSwordRage Cloud giants are these reclusive dudes that really care about their appearance and money, but don't really have any power or magic, while storm giants are powerful lightning wizard philosophers that don't care about money and are good or something.

AncientSwordRage

@Phoenices opposites then

Phoenices

23:00

You know, I somehow never thought that. Not sure why.

AncientSwordRage

@Phoenices clouds and storms are similar?

bobble

@TheOracle Should "I would subject a separate" be "I would suggest a separate", in the answer?

Phoenices

This is true, though cloud giants don't really do anything or have a real theme. Oh, I misspoke earlier - they do have minor magical abilities, but nothing special.

The problem with land dragons is that now there aren't enough kinds of dragon, unless we make each dragon type variable (e.g. not all storm dragons have the same statblock), which is an option.

whoops

strange

BESW

23:30

@Phoenices Question: why is six too few kinds of dragons?

Most speculative fiction only has one or two kinds of dragons. Even Pern has only five kinds of true dragon.

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AncientSwordRage

@BESW I'm fine breaking free form the d&d dragon tropes, if having fewer dragons helps so be it

BESW

23:49

@AncientSwordRage Both dragons and giants labor under the "inherited ethical value" model of characterization, which D&D is super attached to.

Dragons are also a good example of category creep, where the number of variations on a concept is defined by scope of the category (color, metal, gemstones, etc) rather than the themes of the setting or the number of usefully differentiated ideas and the developers have (and can implement well).

Phoenices

@BESW Yeah, I felt slightly silly writing it because I realized that was true. I think it's sort of that... it feels like the six that there are don't allow for a group of good dragons with varying abilities, and they don't allow for truly high-tier evil dragons. I'm not sure that's really true, but something about fire giant-ish dragons feels... small or petty.

BESW

Small and petty? See: white dragons?

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