TRPG General Chat

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BESW

00:00

> The big three questions are;
- What is your game about?
- How does your game do this?
- How does your game encourage / reward this?
John Wick likes to add a fourth question;
- How do you make this fun?

AncientSwordRage

@BESW yup! I remember from last time

nitsua60

01:03

@Akixkisu Sorry, not sure I'm following. Oh, I think I've got it now. You voted "looks okay" on the first linked A and are wondering what I think of it? Do I have that right?

As for the second, I would not have classified it as NAA. It might be a poor (and poorly-sourced/explained) answer, which the -5 score reflects, but they're definitely addressing what in-universe explanation could exist for a blue-skinned Tiefling.

The first one is pretty NAA, admittedly: "this isn't responsive to [OP]'s original question...," but I don't think it's a slam-dunk either way. Frankly, reading that answer makes me wish I knew why the question asked for an Anydice solution. It's tripping my "questions shouldn't dictate forms of answers" alert... which isn't any sort of Stack thing, formally, it's my strong inclination.

If the Q actually explained why OP (thinks they) need(s) Anydice as opposed to some other computational or analytical solution, then we-all would be able to judge whether this answer's Dyce-based approach is useful/helpful or not.

(And OP's comment to ThomasMarkov that they'd, yes, be interested in the mathematics, throws that ^^ into confusion for me.)

I realize now that I wish this question explained why AnyDice is a necessary part of the solution; not knowing (coupled with the comment above to ThomasMarkov that OP would be interested in the nderlying analysis) makes it hard for me to vote on the answer which uses a Python library. — nitsua60 ♦ 9 secs ago

Argh... I've talked myself around to thinking it shouldn't actually be deleted as NAA.

But undeleting it myself would invalidate two frequent users' previous flag-votes.

Gonna call in the reinforcements.

Hot RPG Questions

01:40

Q: Does the 'Protection from Evil and Good' spell protect from all listed entities, or just one?

The spell Protection from Evil and Good has the following in its description: Until the spell ends, one willing creature you touch is protected against certain types of creatures: aberrations, celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. In a previous session, a player insisted that the wor...

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KorvinStarmast

04:38

Our DM has just presented us with Manure Mephits. (We are battling in the sewers under a city, so he adapted mud mephits into Feces Mephits) We fight on .... and I am hoping our wizard has prestidigitation for the after party ...

3 hours later…

BESW

07:23

> The Paths Behind The World You can use paths behind reality to step from any doorway to any other doorway you can picture in your mind. Anyone joining hands with you comes along for the ride. These paths are beyond mortal understanding so no one ever remembers walking them, but all who come out the other side either soak mental stress with their highest available consequence slot, or change one of their character aspects.

1 hour later…

BESW

08:50

I was thinking about "fast travel" sort of mechanics in video games and wanted to to make something that was super powerful and freely available but always A Significant Choice without making it either NOT fast travel (by forcing it to take scenes of fighting stuff or whatever) or just a boring resource drain.
And there's something super creepy but also really cool about "you can go anywhere but you're different when you get there."

(Vaguely inspired by the alternative travel methods in Jordan's "Wheel of Time," Clines' "The Fold," Nolfi's "The Adjustment Bureau" and Remedy Entertainment's "Control")

I like the idea that something in the game can be very important without being "on screen."

2 hours later…

Glazius

10:42

The Oceanview Motel is pretty great, in part because IIRC the last two times you actually use it are subversions.

1 hour later…

AncientSwordRage

11:55

@BESW "no one never"?

But I love the consequence

AncientSwordRage

12:10

It reminds me of the 'The Ocean of Fragments' from what was then, the New World of Darkness. Anybody entering loses memories and identities, in one of the books it's suggested a vampire might be able to cure itself by losing that identifier.

1 hour later…

BESW

13:11

@AncientSwordRage Oh, hush.

@Glazius I feel like the Oceanview has a lot of unmet potential.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW wink

BESW

@AncientSwordRage One of my inspirations is Clines' "The Fold," in which a teleportation device turns out to be replacing the user with their double from a random parallel universe every time they go through it. At first the parallel universes are so similar that nobody, even the doubles, notices (at least not very quickly), but the book kicks into gear when the teleporter starts spitting out doubles who are very obviously NOT the same person.

(It's an interesting idea but Clines has a very poor sense of what makes characters sympathetic or relatable, not enough style to compensate, and struggles to stick the landing on his novels' existential horror even when it's conceptually sound.)

AncientSwordRage

13:27

@BESW sound alike good idea, subpar execution?

BESW

Yeah.

Same thing with the other book of his I read, "14," about an apartment building with Strange Geometries which turns out to have been built as a mouseover for spoiler.

He's got this thing for trying to write 'everyman' protagonists who are just selfish slimeballs with less personality and depth than the cardboard carrying box for a four-pack of store-brand beer.

BESW

13:42

Anyway, I like the idea of adding fast travel to a campaign and as much as it saddens me to say it, not every campaign can accommodate a supersonic dirigible.

The cool thing about slow travel is that it provides opportunities for character moments, like how the recent Wheel of Time series used The Ways to amplify characters' fears and goad them into extreme action that wouldn't have made sense otherwise.

I've been noodling on different ways travel can be shortened at the table without losing its character-driving potential.

AncientSwordRage

14:25

@BESW I'm on mobile, but I thought that would work

@BESW that's sad but also true

Exempt-Medic

@Trish To be fair, we actually can know what the designers intended when making a spell because the designers can tell us precisely their intent. Such questions are not really opinion-based, so much as they became off-topic because people provided opinion-based answers to them, which were then highly upvoted, when such answers shouldn't have been given or upvoted

Although... I've also seen people saying answers without citation aren't "Not An Answer" so I could see people saying the speculative answers actually should have stayed up and weren't worthy of deletion. Hmmm, I haven't thought about this specific camp before

Trish

14:57

@Exempt-Medic speculative answers are nothing but opinions. I have seen two players read the very same rule but have diametrical opinions on what the designer intended with it: one said "the rule is like this to limit X to Y" the other said "this rule says that when doing X, Y is the very minimum of Y"

like, there *was no common ground what they saw as "RAI"

2 hours later…

AncientSwordRage

16:53

@Exempt-Medic puzzling.se has a close reason for 'attracting speculative answers', but over there that's more of a 'lacks detail' issue.

bobble

17:27

Q: Why are questions off-topic if they invite answers which are not demonstrably correct, or are otherwise speculative?

My question was closed with the following reason: This question may invite speculative answers, as the question is not fully defined. The validity of some answers may be based upon opinion. Good questions for this site have a limited number of objectively correct answers. The reasoning provided...

support close-reasons closed-questions faq-proposed

2 hours later…

AncientSwordRage

19:08

@bobble yeah that

3 hours later…

Akixkisu

22:31

@nitsua60 So, what was the fallout after the cav arrived? ;)

nitsua60

@Akixkisu Well, the cavalry are plodding on weekends =D But so far there are three of us squinting at it and thinking "eh, wow, that's pretty borderline. I'm leaning [one way or another], I think?"

Akixkisu

@Exempt-Medic That seems to be the current mods teams consensus.

@nitsua60 So it is still feasting time? I hope you will fill your bellies :)

1 hour later…

Hot RPG Questions

23:58

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