TRPG General Chat

Thomas Markov

00:11

OH GOD NO ITS AWFUL

Thomas Markov

00:34

Guess I’ll stop using the watched tags feature then.

illustro

01:14

@ThomasMarkov the ignored tag is worse. Instead of the question being greyed out, it now has a giant "black" ignored tag beside it...just to extra highlight how ignored it is

Thomas Markov

Screen shot?

Nvm I found it

This is laughably bad.

illustro

@ThomasMarkov have one but adding a screenshot on mobile is hard now for some reason

But yes, it's awful

It's like someone heard about tags and said I know...we'll use them everywhere

Thomas Markov

02:08

Real talk, I prefer the ignored tag over the watched tag for the purposes of the questions I want to watch.

illustro

02:22

@ThomasMarkov between the two, the ignored tag is nicer, but it fails at its basic function, making it easy to ignore the questions tagged as such. On desktop, such questions take up additional vertical space when compared with unwatched/unignored questions. So not only does the tag make them more visible, you now have to move more of your screen to get past them.

BESW

03:13

John W. Sheldon wrote a twitter thread about "frustration with DnD's stranglehold on the ttrpg culture" as a designer and public playtester. The responses and quote-tweets have many more examples of people in the industry facing similar challenges.

Monkey's Paw Games wrote a twitter thread "to run through how the new Chalice solo journal play works, how the prompts create scaffolding for your knight's journey, and how an oracular journaling game works!"

Adventures in Enoch by R. Rook Studio. Adventures in Enoch for GMs of Enoch's Wake

BESW

03:35

@BESW I'm thinking about whether a d66 drift of Cybermetal's roll-under resolution would be a good fit for any of my projects.

Ben

05:02

[wave]

Good aussie afternoon all.

@ThomasMarkov That was my exact reaction

Hot RPG Questions

3

Q: Can a Silence Hallow be resisted?

Hallow allows me to bind a powerful effect to an area, such as Silence. Silence. No sound can emanate from within the area, and no sound can reach into it. However, effects on the area which affect creatures can be resisted with a successful save. Some of these effects apply to creatures in th...

bobble

@Ben good Pacific-time evening to you

Ben

I've also been pondering a few things as I farm villagers in Minecraft:
1. Why are lawyers so damn vague
2. When am i going to have the time and focus to get back to writing my book
3. Coming up with the concept of an Immortal PC that cannot die except for that "one event"; and they keep thinking "this is it", but that's entirely up to the GM

@bobble How is life?

bobble

My university apparently has a bookshop run by self-proclaimed anarchists working with self-proclaimed communists

I went exploring

Ben

@bobble Books for no-one and everyone

What is yours, is ours, and what is ours, is mine

(For a price)

bobble

05:18

They have books grouped on shelves vaguely by theme (though not organized within a shelf), and then a wall of used books with no organization at all

You know, like a proper anarchist-communist bookshop

Ben

The mystery is... are they mystery books?

bobble

but ARE THEY

Scheduling has basically completely fallen apart for half of our D&D group - them darn teenagers have work and school for some reason

Ben

Hang on... hang on... I have something for this...

Aug 24 '15 at 23:26, by Ben

Agh! Life! The bane of fun!

bobble

The college frosh, military recruit, grad student, and company man can figure it out, but some silly high school kid got it in their head to get a Sunday job

Ben

05:34

I think the only reason our groups have survived is cos I'm the odd one out. I'm the IT guy, the rest are from the military. So they all have the same schedge

bobble

oh, here's a comment I liked relevant to the bookshop:

@Braiam I'm afraid I don't follow what you mean by "good old anarchy", specifically the combination of "good" and "anarchy". — TylerH Sep 22 '17 at 20:24

Ben

I dunno, without a dash of chaos in our lives it wouldn't be all that fun :P

bobble

Need some Lawful as well, though

Ben

That age-old "light without dark/chaos without order" thing

bobble

I have this alternative. It's called Medium.

Ben

05:44

True Neutral

Phoenices

06:07

Except... what is TN really? A lot of players would play it as neutral evil or chaotic neutral. It's not really well defined.

Ben

Well, True Neutral would be no care for Chaos, or Law; and no concern for "good" or "evil". It's just truly whatever they choose. Whereas N/E or C/N are more self-inclined.

The difference is there is no reason to do anything, as in:
Them: "why did you do that?"
TN PC: [shrug]

BESW

"An Empirical Study of the Characteristics of Popular Game Jams and Their High-ranking Submissions on itch.io" by Quang N. Vu and Cor-Paul Bezemer for International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) 2020. DOI:10.1145/3402942.3402981

Bardic Wizard

06:28

What do you wonderful people here like to read when you’ve had a really bad day and just need it to get better before you can sleep?

BESW

I've got some prayers that help me.

Bardic Wizard

Especially in a hypothetical world in which you’ve been mocked, somewhat harassed, and then managed to choke on milk in the same day

BESW

Frog and Toad, Winnie the Pooh, Hamster Princess?

Ben

The subtle art of not giving a F***

Phoenices

@Ben My brother is TN whenever he does something annoying! But I'm not sure I agree with that explanation. I think TN has as much potential for "only I matter" as NE, if not more.

Bardic Wizard

06:39

@BESW I should read those books again. They’re on the shelves my brother can reach, but I do know where they are…

I think my back up plan is a hot shower and ibuprofen and no binder tomorrow

Phoenices

There are two ways to read that: BW as a little 7-year-old who needs to ask "Brother, will you get down the Frog and Toad books?" and BW's. brother as a little 7-year-old who can reach the low-down Frog and Toad books.

Ben

The Big Little Sibling and the Little Big Sibling

@BardicWizard I'm happy to announce that I remembered your pronoun preference there :D

Bardic Wizard

@Phoenices it’s the second one. He’s actually 8 now but already reaches my shoulder

@Ben I appreciate people remembering!

GcL

07:04

@BardicWizard Robert Frost. The work is brief glimpses into natural and pastoral scenes with no worry nor suspense. Also an excellent decompression prior to biochem or engineering exams.

The Oracle

09:20

0

Q: What does the "Watched" mark mean?

Here are two questions. One is marked as "Watched" for me: I did read both questions and follow none of them, so it's not about reading or following. What exactly does the "Watched" mark mean?

support

illustro

10:48

@BardicWizard I have four poems pinned to be the first four tabs of my browser when it is opened, two of which are "HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN" by WB Yeats and "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. Both are short, but make me think of better things and how change can happen to make things better.

Akixkisu

11:43

How do they manage to produce so many terrible UI overhauls in a row?

illustro

Because their approach to UI redesigns is roll it out to everyone and see what happens

They tested this design with only 170 users, on a page noone uses, for a site that gets millions of page views per day

For a site like stackoverflow, that is not an appropriate approach to sweeping design changes, let alone the rest of the stackexchange network

AS someone who did webdevelopment for hire many moons ago, the approach they are taking with just that aspect of the rollout (let alone the design) makes me sad and disheartened

Akixkisu

It is baffling me because they used to be decent at doing this.

illustro

12:23

0

A: New post summary designs on site home pages and greatest hits now; everywhere else eventually

discussion Why was such a major change to the interface of the main page of both stackoverflow and the stackexchange network rolled out so quickly and with so little feedback gathered? There is a reason why sites on the internet contemplating sweeping changes to their primary view offer users: S...

My thoughts on their rollout strategy

Thomas Markov

13:37

Legacy Questions - Bringing back the old questions design

2

illustro

@ThomasMarkov Interesting! I won't be able to use this in work, but will be investigating at home

The Oracle

0

Q: Legacy Questions: a script to restore functionality to the questions list

Legacy Questions - Bringing back the old questions design Stack Exchange recently changed the UI of the main questions page, and it was poorly received because it is terrible. My request to change it back seems to be doing well, maybe SE will listen. In the mean time, a user named Spectric has pu...

support user-interface

doppelgreener

14:13

good grief

AncientSwordRage

14:34

@doppelgreener mmmhmm

Hot RPG Questions

14:51

13

Q: How to roleplay a vulgar character without using profanity?

In my new campaign a have an NPC who I would like to have the personality trait of being extremely and unexpectedly vulgar. However I also a few players who prefer not to use to hear profanity on a regular basis. How can I portray a vulgar or crass personality while refraining from actually using...

gm-techniques roleplaying

Akixkisu

16:07

@TheOracle In the next iteration it is just one big box on the left side, at top last answered by user x, x hours ago. /s

Carcer

@AncientSwordRage I felt compelled to write bash scripts at the wordle wordlist until I had more numbers for my answer

AncientSwordRage

@Carcer oh, where did that lead you?

in The Sphinx's Lair, yesterday, by AncientSwordRage

Smooshed 199 array elements to size 110
Took 51 minutes 29 seconds to calculate the 1,897,280,473 permutations of scowl with utils
Took 44 minutes 37 seconds to calculate the 1,897,280,473 permutations of scowl with itertools

I've been trying to tackle another problem in JavaScript....

in The Sphinx's Lair, yesterday, by AncientSwordRage

I might need some compute time...

Carcer

16:28

@AncientSwordRage I have edited my answer accordingly

but the cliff notes are that you better get used to finding Stinky Artefacts of Ecstasy

AncientSwordRage

16:46

@Carcer already found one of those, so that checks out

Wait no it was Stinky Ink of Ecstasy I think?

Akixkisu

If you have tips or suggestions about how to navigate the new home page sites do @ me meta.stackexchange.com/questions/375566/…

doppelgreener

@Akixkisu "wail in despair and close the tab" is my current method

Akixkisu

@doppelgreener same

or use the review queue

I can do

that

AncientSwordRage

I use the /questions page mostly?

doppelgreener

there's changes i've found questionable but this one i'm just astonished by. they launched an update to their front page that's unfit for purpose, and with minimal user testing before launch.

AncientSwordRage

16:57

Also I could have sworn wail or wall of despair was an MTG card

doppelgreener

it should be

one day it will be

Akixkisu

I can't read the page - it makes no sense to me. I feel like sitting on a chair at my optometrist, who shows me increasingly smaller letters that I have no idea what they are, but I can sometimes guess them.

doppelgreener

17:10

I just open the page, stare at the [ignored] questions because they're now the most noticeable things on the page, realise this is what it is, then close again.

Phoenices

I open it, close it, use my search bar to go to a question I know about, and browse random questions from the past on the (now more functional than main-page) right sidebar of related questions!

doppelgreener

if Stack Exchange wants to ship a broken feature I'm happy to not use it.

if that feature is the entrance for their site I'm happy to not enter it.

illustro

@doppelgreener @ThomasMarkov has an interesting solution to this. Put all of your watched tags instead into the ignore tags view, and remove them from the watched tags entirely. You lose some functionality (ie not being able to completely remove certain tags from your view), but it makes at least the home page a bit more plesant and avoids the problem of ignored things now being amazingly prominent

doppelgreener

it's horrifying that that's a viable workaround

illustro

I agree, but you can see the result on the mobile view here: meta.stackexchange.com/a/375506/388810

doppelgreener

17:18

i'm not going to try to work around it though, i'm gonna let the front page just be what it is and if I can't use the site that's more stack exchange's problem than mine

If they want the site usable, that's more something they should be doing from the outset.

illustro

I'm just a bit flabbergasted that people who are meant to be doing this thing for their professional job on a major site can make such a large misstep in UI/UX (whether that be the individual designers or the management pushing for it)

The first and most basic rule of UI/UX shoulod be it is usable for the people using it, but the mindset with this release seems to have been make it easier for the people developing it to develop it. While a laudible goal, it shouldn't be achieved by making the whole site objectively worse for the users

Thomas Markov

I've replaced my profile text with a quote from Shog9: Good lord, what a flaming train wreck.

doppelgreener

It's openly known that loads of Stack Exchange staff do not use, or want to use, Stack Exchange. Several comments are already calling out that it feels like the change was made and QA'd by specifically lots of people who don't use it.

Thomas Markov

Why do I feel like the people behind designing this update have never used the site before… — Thomas Markov 17 hours ago

doppelgreener

Oh, there's one of them, wonder who posted that lol

@ThomasMarkov Oh goodness gracious, "we can't see something's closed" is not a good thing to have to report.

2

illustro

17:26

Thomas Markov

@illustro Peepee labels

illustro

Before and after using the ignored tag workaround (with an example ignored tag in the first one just to provide context)

@ThomasMarkov I am confused? You mean I should blank out the labels?

Thomas Markov

No I just mean the watched labels are peepee colored

illustro

Oh, yeah, that

Carcer

you need to drink more

doppelgreener

17:30

illustro

Step 1: throw your desktop computer out of the window and start using a mobile device (apparently, designing a layout that only works for mobile phones is more welcoming and more inclusive nowadays ¯_(ツ)_/¯). Step 2: turn your mobile phone screen into grayscale mode so you don't get blinded by all the yellow labels. Mission accomplished.

doppelgreener

Sorted by votes, this announcement is now on the bottom of the second-last page of worst-scored Meta SE questions ever.

illustro

Source: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/375566/…

That comment almost made me spit my drink on my laptop

doppelgreener

I expect it to be the second-worst or third-worst scored Meta SE question by this time tomorrow.

Thomas Markov

Top one is a watched tag and an ignored tag on the same question

illustro

17:34

Oh, thats fun

Thomas Markov

THERE'S AN ENTIRE QUESTION WORTH OF WHITESPACE UNDER IT

illustro

Now it just needs to be bountied to maximise the whitespace it wastes

Thomas Markov

HMMMMMMMMMMMMM

I call that piece of art "Stacks on Stacks on Stacks"

Carcer

@illustro the thing is if you are picking between a layout that only works for mobiles and a layout that only works for desktops, they probably have the stats that show they have a lot more users on mobile than on desktop

so there's a perspective in which it's better to break your desktop design to accommodate mobiles than vice versa.

Thomas Markov

@Carcer My mobile layout worked just fine yesterday.

Carcer

17:39

@ThomasMarkov I don't mean to argue it didn't, just that it doesn't surprise me how many sites now are going mobile first design and seem to not really give a damn about the desktop experience

illustro

@Carcer My problem is, they didn't really seem to design this for mobiles either. They designed it for ease of their development (as best I can tell) and they just happened to be lucky that it's marginally better on mobiles than desktops

Right now, my mobile view looks like a clown vomited on the page and forgot to clean up

My desktop view looks like the same clown decided it would be better to space out their vomit at irregular intervals

doppelgreener

The thing is, "mobile first" comes with "desktop second". As in, you launch a site that first bears mobile in mind and then, on devices with greater screen estate, you take advantage of that with layout adjustments that improve the experience for those devices.

4

The idea is simply to start at the simpler state.

illustro

@doppelgreener This, so much this

doppelgreener

If you start desktop first, you build something big for desktop then have to cram it into something tiny, which doesn't work. If you start at mobile, you start with something simple and compact and can develop it further as the display is more able to accommodate more detail or more usage of space.

Thomas Markov

18:09

> Daily comment vote limit reached; vote again in 5 hours.

Just got this message on meta

Thomas Markov

18:43

The UI changes question is currently the 8th most downvoted question of all time on meta.se

doppelgreener

19:22

^ if that link doesn't work, use this one: meta.stackexchange.com/…

AncientSwordRage

@ThomasMarkov masterful

doppelgreener

Watched/Ignored displays have updated. Votes are now first in order.

illustro

20:14

Much better

Still too much whitespace but significantly better now

KorvinStarmast

20:28

@nitsua60 I remember talking to you about a Cleric/Fighter mix that you used as a stand in for Paladin. Was it cleric 1/Fighter X or Fighter 1/Cleric X?

Thomas Markov

At least they got rid of the peepee tags.

AncientSwordRage

@ThomasMarkov I guess?

Still not great

nitsua60

22:53

@KorvinStarmast IIRC Fighter 1/Cleric X. It was light domain, and a while later I took a second level of fighter.

Or maybe I went cleric 1->fighter 1-> cleric X? It's been six or seven years.

Worked really well, though: the students didn't realize 'e wasn't a paladin until we were actually fighting Strahd.

bobble

23:14

@ThomasMarkov limit is 30/day meta.stackexchange.com/a/164900/1017231

Hot RPG Questions

23:43

6

Q: Can you determine the order of "at the end of a short rest" effects?

Example when being able to determine that order matters: periapt of wound closure, an attunement item that benefits spending hit dice. Picture the following scenario: The party is beat-up after a few fights and decide to take a short rest. There is a brief argument as to who needs healing most, a...

dnd-5e rests hit-dice attunement simultaneous-effects

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