TRPG General Chat

12:01 AM

It even had banners for PCs to use to define the "high ground." Plant a banner as a standard action and it become the center of an encounter-long zone with an effect like "allies heal 1 hp at the start of their turn" or "enemies are pushed 1 square away from the center of the effect."

Ben

Nice!

BESW

I once had a fight where the enemies started positioned by a stele that could cast chain lightning at targets of your choice if you spent your standard action next to it.

The win condition was basically "push the enemies away from that and stand next to it ourselves."

And sometimes I'd shake things up, like the time they used a narrow hallway to get the fighter-types between the big hulking enemy and the casters... and the enemy teleported to the other end of the hallway.

(Not something to do often, but fun in small doses.)

Ben

Uh oh haha

BESW

Oh, and big maps that had teleportation circles to allow fast movement between distant spaces.

There was one with a ritual circle that let you teleport to any spot within your move speed, ignoring difficult and blocked terrain. That was fun because it wasn't a spot to really defend, but it was a spot to keep coming back to

bobble

The last "combat" our 5e group had (though we never went into the standard combat rules) involved my character vaulting onto a water fountain (Acrobatics) and then shooting the water coming out the top at a fire elemental (gust) :D

BESW

12:07 AM

Oh, another thing about "they keep coming back" undead: if it's down but not out, have the corpse immobilize anybody who ends their turn adjacent to it.

It can't get up yet, but it can still grab at ya.

AncientSwordRage

1:20 AM

Somebody posted "Martials should have spell-like abilities like MMOs" on /r/DnDNext and all the replies are variations of "welcome to 4e" 😅

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: Can I rest while under the effects of the Meld into Stone spell?

Suppose my character is sneaking around an enemy encampment, and, just before being discovered by a patrol, spends their last spell-slot to cast Meld into Stone on a nearby boulder. In doing so, they effectively avoid detection, but they are now out of spell slots. Can my character take a rest wh...

Ben

Is anyone familiar with PHP?

Specifically the PHP environment?

Adeptus

@Ben I'm not sure about familiar, but... we've met

AncientSwordRage

@bobble that was spectacular 🥺

@Ben thankfully not, but that's not helpful I suppose

BESW

Ah yes, the Players' HandPad.

Ben

1:25 AM

My ex business partner created some PHP websites, hosted them on Linode, then buggered off. Now all we have is a backup copy of them and no access to the environment, and so now I have to recreate the environment on our own network, before I can even start to decipher the code.

And so far it's been "download these zip files from various outdated .net file storage sites and try and find the right one"

AncientSwordRage

@Ben yikes

I've done that to myself with old versions of python

Ben

I've reached the point that I don't think I'm doing it right anymore

AncientSwordRage

@Ben sad noises

Adeptus

@Ben so... environment basics... you need a web server (IIS or Apache or similar), and then an install of PHP that works with that server. And also the right version of PHP to be compatible with your code.

AncientSwordRage

This sounds all too frustrating

Ben

1:31 AM

@Adeptus WEll that's what I started with; to no success

w3schools.com/php/php_install.asp

but all I ended up with was a 404

We have an IIS server, so that was 1/3 of the job done. did the rest; 404. So I tried again on my desktop, to the same result

haven't even gotten around to loading the code yet

Adeptus

did you try a test page (eg, the examples on that w3schools page) or just your site?

Ben

tried the test page

http://localhost/php-info.php gave the 404, https obviously gave the "not secure" error

Adeptus

sounds like IIS & PHP aren't talking to each other... or IIS isn't set to the right directory? If you put a .html file in the same folder as php-info.php, can you get to that?

Ben

I'll give it a shot

nope - localhost/hmtlinfo.html also returns 404

Hot RPG Questions

1

Q: How can I increase a Shield's HP?

What ways are there to increase the HP of a shield? I found Shield Boss', and I know enhancement bonuses will help as well. Are there any other options like making the shield thicker? It needs to be HP, as I am pushing damage into my shield and it bypasses hardness. 3rd-party content is welcome.

pathfinder-1e hit-points shield

Hot RPG Questions

2:36 AM

2

Q: What is the difference between "Unconscious" and "Asleep"?

The Sleep spell explicitly causes targets to fall "unconscious" but includes many references to sleep, as well as the line: "Undead and creatures immune to being charmed aren’t affected by this spell." The Eyebite spell, on the other hand, states, as one of its options: "Asleep. The target fal...

dnd-5e spells conditions unconscious sleep

trogdor

2:49 AM

the difference between going to bed and hitting your head?

Ben

@trogdor One is voluntary, the other is involuntary. The method of attaining either can be voluntary, however.

trogdor

I hope most people aren't voluntarily knocking themselves out too often

Ben

"Most" and "themselves" are the key words.

I did actually have one game where the wizard asked the barbarian to knock them out so they could do some kind of astral projection, and couldn't deal enough damage to knock themselves out

Needless to say things got very tense all of a sudden XD

Phoenices

3:06 AM

Except in interesting circumstances (including most magic), sleep is fixable by axe, while unconsciousness may or may not be?

Ben

How to test for "unconscious": hit with axe. If they don't wake up, it's not sleep

4

Phoenices

I always wonder if it's worth it to prepare Magic Missile just so you can shoot 3 allies for very little damage, waking them up from sleep/giving them extra saving throws against mind control/etc

Bardic Wizard

3:50 AM

@trogdor hey, don’t knock it till you try it

(Sorry-not-sorry for the terribleness of that pun.)

trogdor

lol

Andrew Micallef

5:07 AM

@BESW those were some cool ideas, sorry i had to run off before I could dive into elaborating on what I was thinking about

I am kinda new to this, this game will be my first GM experience, (my partner has become obsessed with Critical Role, so I thought I would try have a go at this thing)
Basically the idea I am brewing is that the adventurers are undead (they just don't know it yet)

Actually scratch that, the important part is there is the potential for an early encounter with skellies that can't easily be killed and I want to think of ways that they might overcome them without killing them

The thoughts I had involved using the environment to trap them in their tombs

or using found materials to ensare or otherwise retard the skellies without straight up combat

I want them to be able to come back with McGuffined weapons later

BESW

Hmrmm.

A few things, in no particular order: first, that you may not need to justify bringing enemies back--if it's dramatically satisfying, that's justification enough.

Andrew Micallef

:P

BESW

(I had a recurring enemy who died every time they fought him, and he came back as a vampire, and then as a ghost. It was unquestioned because he was fun and satisfying to fight, he was stubborn enough that it makes character sense he won't stay dead, and each time he had the same theme: alive, he used mind control to "make friends;" as a vampire he "made friends" by raising the dead; and as a ghost he "made friends" by possessing the PCs.)

Second, I'm massively in favor of TRPGs that offer non-lethal (and non-violent!) solutions to problems, but D&D's default mode is "murder solves problems" and pushing against effectively that tends to take some work.

Andrew Micallef

Ahh cool, actually the world I am working on is littered with various forms of immortals, because a sneaky demon who derives power from consuming souls has been 'investing' but said demon has long since been banished, so a bunch of methusalan contracts are roaming the world in various states of decay (the skellies are just the most ancient of these)

BESW

Just be aware that you'll need to know your group well in order to sell "pointy end first" problem-solving as a secondary option.

Andrew Micallef

5:20 AM

I figure it would be best to demonstrate a solution by maybe having an NPC take the lead in a situation and attempting to subdue in a way that is sub-optimal but promising...

Ie when the players enter an NPC has already corralled the skellies into a sarcophagous, but is struggling to lock it shut say

BESW

Third, I strongly advise against springing a surprise like "you were dead all along" on the players. On the characters yes, that's great fun, but it's even more fun if the players are in on it from the start and can conspire with you to reveal it to their PCs at the most dramatic moment--and in the meantime everyone gets to enjoy the dramatic ironies and close calls.

Andrew Micallef

Yeah that last bit is the part I am least attached to

BESW

All that aside, it sounds like you're going to have a recurring struggle with this "immortality" thing. D&D is basically set up so that everything is killable if you're powerful enough or lucky enough, and if you're not then it'll kill you unless you run away. If you're offering a setting where "sealed badguy in a can" is a consistently available option, that's gonna be hard because the system isn't going to have much support for it.

Andrew Micallef

@BESW I may change this on the fly; It was what I had in mind for the prompt i sent my players, but I also left the prompt sufficiently ambiguos about 'how' they got to where they are that i have plenty of wiggle room based on how they respond to it

BESW

I'm not saying don't do it, just be aware that you're giving yourself additional work by choosing to add that premise to that franchise instead of either using a different TRPG system or a different campaign premise.

Andrew Micallef

5:31 AM

haha, yeah, maybe...though I have been having a grand old time orld building

BESW

@AndrewMicallef Oh, some of my favorite games come from my giving the group a starting premise and we play to discover together what its implications are.

Andrew Micallef

One possibility that I see is that they have been brought here to develop their characters in order to resolve X in their 'real' world (the prompt asked that thir character be in the middle of something when they are teleported into my world)

(the alternative being the thing they were doing killed em and this is hell...)

(or some other thing I havent thought of yet)

@BESW I don't think it's going to be soo bad. Everything that is 'immortal' in my system isn't really unkillable, they just need to know the specific weakness. And besides I think even immortals can be exhausted by combat, so HP still makes sense. In martial sports people don't die, but they do tap out

well sometimes people die

but mostly tapping, or getting knocked out

BESW

Oh, it's workable.

Just, there are systems other than D&D which already do that.

Adeptus

@Ben ok so you need to check your IIS configuration - is it running, is it hosting the right folder, etc

Andrew Micallef

Don't tell me that :P I already bought all these books!

BESW

5:44 AM

Yeah, D&D's marketing and pop culture presence makes it the first TRPG a lot of people get, but it's also one of the most expensive and convoluted--and has a lot invested in telling its players that it can do "anything" and then instead of supporting 'anything' it tells the GM to make stuff up.

Andrew Micallef

maybe, but I haven't really dived into the systems to know too much here, but I think our experience is going to be very homebrew...although I know at least one player is already a rules stickler...

BESW

I played mostly D&D for about six years (3e and 4e) and did a lot of very cool innovative stuff with it, but after trying other (easier to learn, cheaper, sometimes entirely free) systems I never looked back because the other games did what I wanted to do more effectively.

Andrew Micallef

free is good

BESW

One of my group's favorite systems is Fate, which has a free core ruleset that includes all the guidance needed to make your own settings, but also has both free and paid setting materials from a lot of different creators.

It's good for the kind of story where PCs are proactive and competent but have a lot of dramatic things happen to them and sometimes make bad decisions that make their lives even harder; the core pacing mechanic is a point currency that you spend to be better at things or have things go your way, and which you earn when things go dramatically wrong for you.

Its "HP" equivalent is a generic measure of your ability to keep influencing the scene, whether you're being worn down by physical attacks or social embarrassment.
Losing a conflict never has to mean death, even in physical confrontations, because death is usually the most boring outcome--much more interesting to be kidnapped, or to lose something important, or just to not get what you wanted out of the confrontation... because in Fate you don't have a conflict unless there's something important at stake, and "kill the enemy" is just one way a person might be trying to achieve that stake.

Mithical

@BESW I pirated the rulebook and monster manual, but yeah it is complex. Spent a whole hour-and-a-half session just helping my players level up to level 4 in D&D.

BESW

5:58 AM

I remember that. These days if I've spent an hour and a half doing character creation, I hope I've got something like Bubblegumshoe's relationship map out of it and not just a list of competencies.

(Blue is teens, red is adults, dark blue is PCs. Orange is hate, green is like, purple is love. Squares are rich, ovals are poor.)

(I'm rapidly becoming nigh radical about my aversion to systems where characters are defined by competency lists--lists of skills, lists of spells, lists of features...)

Andrew Micallef

haha...I feel ya. But doesn't the definition of a character come out through how the player plays them?

BESW

@AndrewMicallef Sure. But lots of systems offer ways to mechanize that so it's reinforced and rewarded.

Mithical

@BESW Poor Jonathan, everyone hates him except his grandmother.

Andrew Micallef

I do like the general idea presented; But I also want to have tactical combat!

BESW

@Mithical He's in the process of burning some bridges, we hoped he might be convinced to pull back.

@AndrewMicallef What does tactical mean to you?

Andrew Micallef

6:04 AM

Why does everyone shun Jono?

I guess I'm thinking a real sense of constraint

BESW

Physical positioning on a grid? Timing actions to synergize for best effect? Being prepared with the right equipment and knowledge going into the encounter?

Andrew Micallef

positioning, timing anf equipement are all instances of the general idea of being constrained by the rules of the world, yeah

BESW

(I stopped using static initiative in D&D 4e and replaced it with popcorn initiative because it was more "tactical." At the end of one person's turn, they chose who would go next from the list of everyone who hadn't yet gone that round. So far as I know 5e still uses static initiative.)

Andrew Micallef

I like that idea of initiative, might have to purloin that one

Mithical

@BESW (Yep.)

Andrew Micallef

6:08 AM

I must say I think turn based actions are always a struggle. In real manouveres everyone is trying to do everything all at once and it cluster fucks

BESW

[shrug] "Constrained by the rules of the world" doesn't, technically, need any game rules at all. The table can define the world and hold it consistent. I think you're looking for something more than "You get hurt if you touch fire" and instead want rules that give you numbers that mean "how much hurt" in relation to other numbers that mean "how much you can be hurt."

Quantifying reality into abstract interlocking pieces.

Andrew Micallef

@BESW I'm not sure I am, I'm not tied to the idea of "health" as a quantifiable object. I'm not sure how to reconcile the numbers needed in a game with the more qualitative approach I have to roleplaying

BESW

In Fate, there'd be an aspect like On fire and you'd take, oh, one or two points of stress each round while you're on fire, and if it's not dealt with you'd run out of stress track and have to either be taken out of the conflict --or if you want to stay active, you take a lasting consequence like Badly burned or No more hair.

And that consequence would last until it's resolved and while you have it, it would be narratively true with all the story implications and also people could spend points to get specific advantages against you because it's true.

Andrew Micallef

and so each character has a pool of points for stress, and I presume other 'vitals'?

BESW

Some versions of Fate just have "stress" as a generic measure of being able to still influence the scene. Others divide it up into mental stress, physical stress, reputation stress, financial stress, whatever's important to the story being told.

Your stress track measures how much you can endure before you either stop being important to the scene OR choose to take lasting consequences in order to stay.

Andrew Micallef

6:16 AM

it's an interesting concept. Do you recoup your stess level after taking consequences, or is that up to GM?

(can characters still be killed?)

BESW

Stress usually clears between scenes, while consequences last until they're resolved by narrative.

Andrew Micallef

gtg

BESW

If you're "taken out" (you get dealt stress and you don't have a way to soak it with your stress track and you can't or won't take a lasting consequence), then you stop being able to influence the scene.
The person who dealt you that stress narrates what that looks like: blackout drunk, fell off a cliff, ran crying to the bathroom, stabbed through the heart... so long as it's in line with the narrative and the stakes involved (like, the table decides ahead of time if death is a reasonable outcome for that scene.)

If you don't want that, you can leave the scene at any time before you've taken that last bit of stress: you stop being able to influence the scene as if you were taken out, but you get to narrate what that looks like. It's a loss, but a loss on your terms.

Then there's games like Lady Blackbird or Pasión de las Pasiones where PCs almost never die, they're "presumed dead" and the player takes up another character sheet until it's time for their first PC to make a Dramatic Re-Entry.

Those games don't have "hit points" or "stress," they just key effects like injury, loss, exhaustion, etc, off of the narrative logic that action resolution provides.

Roll really badly piloting The Owl, and you may become low on fuel and have to stop somewhere unsavory.

BESW

7:11 AM

If you're interested in more radically narrative approaches to TRPGs, there are diceless and even randomless games. For example, the "No Dice No Masters" school of game design, which includes games like Balikbayan, Wanderhome, and BE SEEING YOU, use a token-only resolution system where character actions are categorized as "you can always do this," "spend a token to do this," and "get a token when you do this," with some variations like "give someone else a token when you do this."
And a lot of indie designers offer playable previews or text-only-no-art documents for free, and/or use some fo…

trogdor

@BESW honestly I love it when I see you bring this out every time XD

it reminds me of how good that whole set of sessions was

BESW

8:05 AM

Y'all were great

AncientSwordRage

11:09 AM

@Adeptus I wonder if we need a separate chat room for this kind of discussion? We already have the Elemental Plane of Math... perhaps a Plane of Horrible Programming (PHP)?

My main motivation is so that these comments don't get lost in the on-topic topics

@BESW I'm leaning towards some blend of lists and 'tags'

the rules might list magic/arcane as your 'skill' and you can do some 'mundane' stuff with it, but you need to some how acquire the 'fire' tag to know fire magic

@BESW oooh that sounds good

Akixkisu

11:27 AM

I'm seriously considering to write a one line answer for the community check in.

AncientSwordRage

11:48 AM

@Akixkisu that should be short enough to share here first then...

Akixkisu

@AncientSwordRage We have unresolved issues surrounding the deletion of answers.

AncientSwordRage

@Akixkisu go on...

BESW

12:11 PM

@AncientSwordRage What captures your fancy?

Hot RPG Questions

2

Q: Can Locate Object find the orb of a Scrying sensor?

The Scrying spell states (emphasis mine): On a failed save, the spell creates an invisible sensor within 10 feet of the target. You can see and hear through the sensor as if you were there. The sensor moves with the target, remaining within 10 feet of it for the duration. A creature that can see...

dnd-5e spells targeting

Someone_Evil

@Akixkisu While I can appreciate the performative aspect of what you're going for, that doesn't actually tell me (in text or by context) whether you think we don't delete enough, too much, or it's something else. That would rather limit its usefulness.

Akixkisu

@Someone_Evil Is that so? I'm not sure whether we delete too little, too much, the right or wrong things, but they way one user talks about it and consistently breaks tos is an issue - so framing that is rather difficult.

And those actions are clearly tied to that cluster.

In general, it a more untangible than tangible conflict with lots of little nuances.

Someone_Evil

Uhm... to my point above, that's nowhere near what I would've gotten from the one-liner. I'm not wholly sure it's a community issue and not just a flag/moderator issue, but I'm also not wholly sure which events you're referring to as relating to answer deletion.

Actually, give me a moment

Hot RPG Questions

2:46 PM

4

Q: Can possession by a ghost be broken with magic circle?

The magic circle spell has the following effect in its description: The creature can't willingly enter the cylinder by nonmagical means. So the theory is that if someone possessed by a ghost is restrained, then they can be forceably pushed into a magic circle. The ghost possessing the person ca...

dnd-5e spells possession

nitsua60

4:47 PM

Any chat experts know if there's a way to get a sense of chat stats like /analytics provides for posts and views? There's the little chart in the [info] box, but I'm interested in a longer window than just this week/last week.

AncientSwordRage

4:59 PM

@BESW passing tokens around

@nitsua60 I thought that was an aggregation?

But I don't think there is a way, as the page is whats returned not data to make a page out of

if that makes sense?

KorvinStarmast

6:39 PM

@nitsua60 o/

Hot RPG Questions

10:22 PM

4

Q: How many people can be poisoned with ingested poison in Pathfinder 2e?

It's pretty clear with contact and injury poisons - how they work. One dose is enough to poison weapon for one strike and the first who'd be hit with it - gets poisoned. Inhaled poison is said to fill a 10-ft area for one minute and every creature, who enters it suffers. But are there any officia...

pathfinder-2e poison

Adeptus

11:16 PM

@AncientSwordRage well, there's a whole Stack for programming... (there's one for maths as well, I guess). I don't expect it to become a major thing here. We can move it to the Not A Bar if/when it's disrupting the main conversation.

Ben

@Adeptus Morning! I think that is a likely cause of the problem - our IIS server was configured to host a web app

or... it could be this

nitsua60

@AncientSwordRage I think so.

Ben

> The server is configured to use pass-through authentication with a built-in account to access the specified physical path. However, IIS Manager cannot verify whether the built-in account has access. Make sure that the application pool identity has Read access to the physical path. If this server is joined to a domain, and the application pool identity is NetworkService or LocalSystem, verify that <domain>\<computer_name>$ has Read access to the physical path. Then test these settings again.

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast Hello, old friend. How're things down your way?

Kinda sad to share this:

0

A: How is the community doing? [2022]

Activity is dwindling. Users with the 25K privilege Access to Site Analytics can see for themselves: over the last five years (pulling a number out of my wool in order to ensure we're not overwhelmed by any signal unique to spring/summer of 2020) posts are down to about 1/3 of their previous volu...

AncientSwordRage

11:31 PM

@Adeptus oh not at all! I just wanted to make sure you and Ben had space to sort out your code

Ben

@AncientSwordRage Thanks! That's a fair offer; I don't want to distract.

@nitsua60 [gasp] that makes me sad!

Would it be worthwhile investigating the potential of a discord? I mean, this site and any kind of open "discussion" platform don't meld well, but maybe it could be something we could look into. Maybe any discussion(s) that result in an answer can be posted here?

AncientSwordRage

@Ben quite the opposite

I mean that I don't want your messages to get lost between all the noise of RPG topics 😉

Ben

11:47 PM

@Adeptus chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/136205/php-discussion-for-ben-hall

Transcript for