TRPG General Chat

Groody the Hobgoblin

04:20

I looked at the stats for portal-related questions: of the 201 that we have, only 16 are tagged with teleportation, about 8%.

Of these 16, one is asking about both portals and teleportation, and 7 are about the spell "teleportation circle" that has the term portal in its spell description. So only 8 or about 4% use teleportation as a tag for portals in general.

(One more refers to a 4e Teleportation Circle spell)

It seems likely that people are not associating the term "teleportation" naturally with portals. I would only pick it as an ill-fitting alternative if there were no portal tag, and I wanted to have something, or if it happende to be about an actual teleportation portal.

There is also this wonderful answer from Dale rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/198226/…, with lots of portal examples that would be a stretch to consider teleportation.

In many cases, portals lead to other dimensions, worlds, realities. While teleportation just moves you around in the same world. Practically none of the teleportation spells in the D&D 5e game allows you to enter another plane, for example.

All that is not to say that there are no teleportation portals. There clearly are -- Teleportation Circle creates such a portal, as does Arcane Gate. But these are just a small subset of the different possible portals.

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Groody the Hobgoblin

Here is an interesting writeup on the history of th term teleportation bigthink.com/hard-science/history-of-teleportation - it seems to be only have been coined in 1931.

So, in summary, there is no siginificant overlap in the use of teleportation for portal related questions, and I think the meaning is talking about different things. Is it OK if I continue, or should I pose a formal question on Meta?

Or maybe I should ask, are there objections to me using the portals tag on appropriate questions in a non-disruptive manner :)?

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AncientSwordRage

08:34

@GroodytheHobgoblin I think because it's a very generic term, it probably needs a meta discussion

This search I think is showing a fair set of questions that mention portal rpg.stackexchange.com/…

I've excluded a bunch of questions that would overlap (some rightly, some wrongly)

Would you want to include portals from chronicles of darkness games? What if a portal RPG was made (it probably has been based on my searches)?

Matthieu

Been looking around, but couldn't find an answer, so I'll ask here quickly : I know of tag synonyms, but is there no way to edit a tag's name itself?

I was looking at the tag [shapeshifter] and was thinking that the name of the tag didn't really reflect the intent and the tag's description.

(haven't found out how to link a tag either, although that should be an easier question to answer)

I was thinking that a post on meta was probably the way to discuss this kind of possible change, if there wasn't a proper "edit suggestion" method as for other things on the website.

Groody the Hobgoblin

08:54

@AncientSwordRage If there was a portal-rpg, it likely should get its own speparte tag, something like portal-rpg or portal-1.0 or such.

Someone_Evil

@Matthieu Mods can do it (technically mergeing into a new tag, but it works)

Groody the Hobgoblin

Maybe I misunderstand how tags work but I thought the idea is that they should be generic terms that not only match one game system, and you can combine them, e.g. if you have a spell trap, use spells traps (66 overlap out of 186 for traps, about 30%), so you likewise could use portals teleportation if your question were about that kind of portal, or portals planes if it is about planar portals.

Matthieu

@Someone_Evil Oh I see, so would that process go through voting about whether a modification is a good idea on a meta post, like I mentioned?

Someone_Evil

If it's a significant rename we'd want it discussed, yes

As for linking, [tag:tag-name] should work most places (doesn't look pretty in comments though)

Matthieu

I was mostly thinking that "shapeshifter" was a term usually refering to a creature, or the recipient of the act of shapeshifting. Since the tag is about the act of shapeshifting itself, rather than creatures capable of that feat (which is part of that, of course, but only a specific aspect of it), I thought that it would make sense for the tag to be called something like "shapeshifting" or simply "shapeshift".

Groody the Hobgoblin

09:01

@AncientSwordRage Yes, this would include portals from all kinds of games, like spells can be from all kinds of games. My understanding is that this is the preferred way for tags.

Matthieu

shapeshifter like so?

oh perfect

But yeah, just a thought when I was browsing looking for that tag, and when I saw the name thought "well that's not exactly what I'm looking for" then realized it was in fact, after reading the description

Meaning it could benefit from a more accurate naming.

Someone_Evil

Uhm... yeah, since it's (or at least the majority of its questions) are about the act more than the creature set, I think it'd better be in line with how our other tags are named. I'll do that, I can't really imagine anyone has any objections to it (though if you do, do please raise them)

Matthieu

Alright thanks

AncientSwordRage

09:27

@GroodytheHobgoblin I think that's the consensus

Jul 15 at 15:30, by AncientSwordRage

> I recognise that the Council has made a decision...

I just don't like how we tag stuff

Matthieu

To be fair there's been a few times where I wished we could have more tag slots than 5, because some questions would have been more accurately tagged with 6 or 7 tags.

I do like the more "generic" tag system (as long as they're actually not too generic, the "falling" one still seems a bit odd to me) since you can combine them to target a question's topic more accurately and more dynamically.

The issue I've had with other forums and such that used more specific tags, back in the days, was that some tags were often too precise and we had to use thousands of tags that were barely ever used, just to target correctly a question.

And most often than not, people would simply create a new tag because of that issue, which would make searching by tag irrelevant.

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SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer (87): Does a spell caster need to hold onto their arcane focus when concentrating on a spell?‭ by ajayi emmanuel‭ on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose @ThomasMarkov @linksassin)

NautArch

12:40

@HotRPGQuestions I VTC'd as opinion-based, which I still think it is. But it's also a duplicate of this already closed question. Can someone dupe it?

Thomas Markov

13:30

@NautArch I dont think it can be duped to that since it's closed and has no answers.

Thomas Markov

14:20

This question should be reopened.

(Ive also found the answer)

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov Ah, well I guess closure works, too.

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KorvinStarmast

19:03

I did something like "rocks fall and ~~everybody dies~~ everybody takes 8d8 bludgeoning damage last night" It was a refreshing change.

The party were talking to a cloud giant ghost, who had told them "My spirit/soul is bound to this ancestral keep/castle" and they surprised me about 2/3 of the way through the conversation (they were getting close to a couple of revelations) when they lost patience and attacked it. Focus fire, no more HP for the cloud giant ghost (it rolled lousy initiative and unable to turn incorporeal and float through the wall) ... and it was the ghost of the patriarch of the clan from centuries ago.

So I had the ceiling collapse as it screamed its last ghostly scream. 8d8 dex save DC 14 for 1/2 damage, the bard was far enough away that the ceiling near him didn't collapse. (Level 10 PCs) It startled them, but in our after action quick debrief all thought that the effect fit perfectly to the adventure so far.

I was waiting for my nephew to give me the old "Rocks fall, everyone dies - really?" (or similar) zinger (he'd good with the zingers) but it never arrived.

order

20:18

What free text/image organization tools are available to the prospective writer of a lorebook and/or adventure module?

Am I just looking at "boring" bookmaking software at that point?

@KorvinStarmast As the old saying goes - spare the 8d8 bludgeoning damage, spoil the nephew.

The Oracle

20:41

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Q: How did the same user review this question for reopening twice?

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KorvinStarmast

21:31

@order grin

@ThomasMarkov How that happened was simplicity in itself. I came back to the site after the first one (first visit today was check reviews, complete, and then back to RL. Second visit was a little while later when I had a free moment). There was an alert to check the review queue, I checked it, looked at the same question again, and cast the same vote. That's how.

Ben

23:07

Does anyone know a track/road map generator?

AncientSwordRage

23:21

@Ben watabou.itch.io might work?

Ben

Looks promising!

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