TRPG General Chat

3:00 PM

@OrigamiRobot An element of FATE one of my players is really looking forward to is that your actions are actually more effective the higher over the target number you roll.

Tomorrow I shall consider ways to stat a gnome swarm.

OrigamiRobot

"Yes, I know it was an orphan asking for our help, but I haven't used my Turn to Jelly skill in like 3 sessions and I got antsy!"

Simon Gill

@BESW I'd say, a group of 5 gets to add +1 to all skills, and a group of 10 gets to add +2 to all skills while they act as a group.

BESW

@OrigamiRobot Urf. I had a group that would stab each other if we went a session without combat. Not a problem, just... something I as a GM had to learn very fast.

(After my previous group would happily go a month of sessions without drawing steel, it was an adjustment.)

OrigamiRobot

@BESW We just do out of game duels sometimes.

BESW

@OrigamiRobot That's a good solution.

I was once in a game where the party was given a supernatural holodeck where we could spar nonlethally.

Anyway. It is past 1am, and I must to bed.

Goodnight!

OrigamiRobot

3:06 PM

Usually we all take Sense of Duty(Friends and Companions) so simply stabbing each other for no reason would get us less points for the session.

Simon Gill

@BESW Goodnight :)

Rob

Adios @BESW

Novian

3:22 PM

1d20

Dice Service

6

Novian

...

Simon Gill

You had as much chance of rolling a 6 as rolling a 20.

OrigamiRobot

3d6

Dice Service

•

Novian

3:23 PM

not realistically. Logically yes

OrigamiRobot

I'll take a 9.

Novian

Only a perfect RNG can be equal

4d8

Dice Service

6

7

2

6

OrigamiRobot

1d1

Simon Gill

@Novian A psuedo-RNG is good enough.

OrigamiRobot

3:24 PM

Aww, fine.

Novian

hmm too bad this place doesnt have D3's

Simon Gill

@OrigamiRobot Standard polyhedrals, up to 9 dice only, I'm afraid.

Novian

Damn Special Order Dice

I cannot find a shop in my area that sells em

Simon Gill

@Novian What's wrong with halving a d6 and rounding?

Novian

and as a D&D player one rarely needs them.....Until the wizards starts casting low level spells.

@SimonGill D3's are cooler

Simon Gill

3:27 PM

@Novian THat's what's right about d3s. What's wrong with d6/2?

Novian

although Since I do not have a D3. We use 123=123 and 456=123

Simon Gill

@Novian That's one way to do it, I guess.

Novian

because 4 and 5 in that siruation are both 2 with rounding

that makes 3 2's on one dice

Simon Gill

What are you talking about? 2.5 rounds to 3.

Novian

Rounding down is traditional in D&D

Most things are rounded down.

that is my logic

Simon Gill

3:30 PM

@Novian So, 1 rounds to 0, and 3 rounds to 1... so the problem is you have a 0 and one 3, not 3 2s.

Novian

no 1,2,3 are still 123

4/2=2 5/2=2 6/2=3

Its a D3 why would you change 1 2 and 3

Simon Gill

...

OrigamiRobot

@Novian That's silly. You don't have to constrain yourself like that.

Novian

Which is why I do 123=123 and 456=123 equal on all sides

2 of each number

Simon Gill

d6/2 gives you 2 of each number too.

Novian

3:32 PM

1/2

I dont instinctively round up on anything. Ive been rounding down for so long.

Not just because of D&D

Rounding down is common in many things

Simon Gill

@Novian You're a computer science student, right? You have to know when to floor, when to ceiling and when to round. That will screw you up if you always floor without paying attention to the rounding strategy.

Novian

My DM needs to get off his ass. I wanna play D&D again.

OrigamiRobot

If you round everything down, I wouldn't even call that rounding. That's just truncating.

Novian

@SimonGill Internetworking Management.

although Im starting to think it isnt the degree for me.

Simon Gill

@Novian Does that mean handling the details of routing configurations and subnetting?

Novian

3:36 PM

sad part is im almost done with it.

@SimonGill probably. Routing wasnt my strong suit. they never actually taught us how to do Routing Calculations.

Simon Gill

@Novian What's it supposed to teach you then?

Novian

they explained how it worked in great detail and repeated it.

Subnetting was never my strong suit.

probably because that teacher decided that would be a one day lesson and not very detailed at that.

If I had the patience to be a programmer I would indeed be sunk if I Rounded down without thinking.

Taking a Java Course this semester.

Hmm it seems I have gone off topic.

Simon Gill

@Novian Little bit. I'm still curious what this degree is supposed to teach you to do though.

Novian

No Idea.

To manage Internetworks.

wax eagle

@SimonGill and when to mod!

Novian

3:42 PM

Ill just have to brush up on Subnetting and things.

wax eagle

@SimonGill I just ran into this, was rounding some things I should have been ceiling and flooring... It's fixed now, but it was in the wild for years before someone actually noticed

Simon Gill

@waxeagle There's a pun in there somewhere. Yes, modding is also important.

wax eagle

(the ciel/floor issue was a severe edge case, but it did come up)

Novian

For some reason some Programming courses are Electives for my degree for which I must take 15 hours worth.

wax eagle

who knew someone would want to have .025% of their income put into their 401k every month

Novian

3:43 PM

15 Hours of electives

Simon Gill

@Novian Hmm, you really should know what you're trying to achieve when you take on debt that will follow you for your entire life.

Novian

@SimonGill No Loans

Simon Gill

@waxeagle Clearly not the programmers who first wrote the software.

Novian

My Parents were pretty adamant about the No Loan thing.

wax eagle

@SimonGill you're right, I'm a full match guy :)

Simon Gill

3:45 PM

@Novian Lucky man. Still, a degree is a lot of time that you're not using to do something else.

Novian

I Belive at the time I selected the degree I did know what it was for. it is just that I do not remember now.

wax eagle

but this came up in a different company (a child company of our that uses an outated version of our software) that I'm not sure gets a match...

Novian

My Memory is a little.....Unreliable.

Simon Gill

@waxeagle hmmm, that is weird.

wax eagle

@SimonGill not that the matching was the issue, just that I had no comprehension that anyone would be so ...something... as to want less than .5% of their income deducted......

Simon Gill

3:49 PM

@waxeagle Somebody listening to personal finance "experts" that say you must put something in your 401k, but also screwed up by debt and so on perhaps?

wax eagle

@SimonGill possible.

LitheOhm

7:28 PM

@SimonGill after reading "The Black Swan" I've got to giggle a bit after hearing of financial experts, more specifically ones who focus on statistics

Simon Gill

@LitheOhm Doesn't The Black Swan say that statistics are useful but always be prepared for surprises?

LitheOhm

8:54 PM

@SimonGill yep. Bell curves don't account for the impact of the outlying highly improbable events

wax eagle

@LitheOhm right, because they often explicity exclude outliers :). But any statistician worth his salt will tell you that he can't account for randomness

LitheOhm

@waxeagle :D. And that's so interesting to me!

probability is my god.

wax eagle

@LitheOhm probability is an interesting animal. We talked about it in physics. because given enough iterations, even one in a million and one in a billion things become likely to happen at least once :)

LitheOhm

@waxeagle love it. Read my physics fundamentals book this past Winter and I've got to agree. In fact, probability is the reason I believe in life on other planets

wax eagle

@LitheOhm given enough planets it would seem that even at the longest odds there is life somewhere else. that doesn't mean it's close or that we'll ever make contact. I'd agree that it's likely.

Simon Gill

9:02 PM

@waxeagle Isn't the biggest strike against the probability of making contact the time window problem? Ie. even if there are hundreds of civilisations in the galaxy, the chance of them happening at the same time is vanishingly small.

LitheOhm

@waxeagle yep. I just read a short story by Arthur C. Clarke called The Star and it touches on the concept. Loved it, especially that it was four pages

wax eagle

@SimonGill no idea, haven't really studied it. but that would make sense. If we accept that the universe is numerous billion years old then that's a pretty extreme time frame for simultaneity if we suppose that life is relatively rare.

LitheOhm

@SimonGill that would make sense

@waxeagle definitely. Especially if multiple big bang continuities were taken into consideration

wax eagle

@LitheOhm right, and we can (for the sake of argument) suppose we are at the midpoint of the timeline and that provides a similar extension of probability the other direction.

(or improbability)

Simon Gill

@waxeagle We might get lucky and find the ruins of previous civilisations somewhere else - assuming interstellar travel is actually possible.

LitheOhm

9:06 PM

@waxeagle definitely.

wax eagle

@SimonGill right, possible, and given that we've found dino bones dated several hundred million years I'd say its likely that the remains of some civilization exists (or ours will).

LitheOhm

uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/TheStar.pdf only four pages and so worth it

Simon Gill

@waxeagle Up to the 1990s or so, anyway. A large amount of our modern culture is impermanent... now imagine an alien civilisation or a post-human intelligent species finding the artifacts we've left behind so far. I dread to wonder how we would inspire them.

LitheOhm

@SimonGill we'd leave just the best, if given the chance

@waxeagle brings to mind, what would be left behind in a sudden apocalypse? Likely just stuff from the Cold War era that's still protected, some government and anarchist bunkers and that'd be it

even less if our sun took all that away

Simon Gill

@LitheOhm I'm not sure we're going to get a chance.

@LitheOhm Ancient stone monuments would end up reburied... It's our long past that is going to stick around.

LitheOhm

9:15 PM

@SimonGill yeah, that sounds reasonable

wax eagle

@LitheOhm it depends entirely on how said apocalypse takes place. If it's fire it will likely wipe out a lot, but we'll still have plenty of electronic type records. If it's sort of a modified EMP that wipes out electronics then we're probably left with our paper records. The way history tends to go things will just become obsoleted and then we won't have the tools to read them anymore.

if it's a nuclear holocaust then who knows what's left, probably country life mostly :)

LitheOhm

@waxeagle yep. Creative destruction is what my business book calls it. If I were given a laserdisc and told that it was the only way to save my dying heart, I'd be so screwed

Simon Gill

@waxeagle There's a commenter (Dave Winer, invented the first version of RSS) who is very worried about the fact that we can't keep content from 10 years ago accessible, let alone last week.

LitheOhm

@waxeagle until the supermutants come out. Then one would have to side with Tallahasee played by Woody Harrelson: "Thank God for rednecks"

wax eagle

@LitheOhm if the best armed populace will win in the coming apocalypse, don't bet against rednecks :)

LitheOhm

9:19 PM

@waxeagle haha. That's the exact reason I'm for no gun bans. It's so much easier to take over a country if they have a single isolated military force. So much harder if the force is one or several defending citizens per every acre

even the book All's Quiet on the Western Front had a main character who succumbed to randomness.

wax eagle

@LitheOhm a lot of people argue that this was the point of the amendment :). I'm for moderate regulation/background checks, but I favor an armed populace over an unarmed one.

Simon Gill

@LitheOhm That seems out of context.

LitheOhm

but, with the vigilance of "If I was at that theater/school/etc. with my Lucy" or whichever, I've really got to admit I wasn't a great shot back in the day.

@SimonGill he died from a stray gunshot. All was quiet where he was patrolling save for a few lone shots fired across no man's land, aimed in no particular fashion, and he got hit by one

Simon Gill

@waxeagle One thing I've been wondering, isn't the point of militias to be the defence force so that a standing army wasn't needed?

LitheOhm

@waxeagle yep. It's like a friend of mine said, vigilance inspires us to believe we can shoot like we're in the movies.

@SimonGill It might have been to supplement the standing army.

there's also the right to assemble, etc.

between the two, I'd rather no standing army and all militia

we'd be more formidable that way. Especially since training would necessarily be a part of so many more people's lives

Simon Gill

9:24 PM

@LitheOhm It'd drop the federal defense budget for sure. And increase the sense of responsibility around gun ownership.

wax eagle

@SimonGill no, I believe there was a provision for a standing army in the constitution as well (but don't quote me on that). the founders recognized the need for both IIRC

LitheOhm

@SimonGill definitely all for both.

@waxeagle my hazy memory from American History class in high school corroborates this

what does IIRC stand for?

wax eagle

@SimonGill A lack of standing army would make us isolationist by default and I personally prefer a more proactive approach to international relations....

@LitheOhm If I recall correctly

BESW

@LitheOhm If I Recall Correctly.

LitheOhm

thank you lol. That'll probably become my new favorite - I'm a ditz.

@waxeagle the default for a lack of proactive is reactive. I've been reading many things that strongly suggest pro-action instead of re-action

Taoist philosophy, the Alexander Technique, etc.

it strikes me as very reasonable

wax eagle

9:27 PM

@LitheOhm interestingly pro-active rhetoric in the US predates actual pro-active foreign policy (with exceptions like Tripoli)

LitheOhm

plus, our military wouldn't be a corporation. It'd be a public ownership deal, as textbook as it gets

@waxeagle how do you mean?

wax eagle

we had things like T. Roosevelt police man of the world, and the Monroe Doctrine that were both pro-active, but we had rather isolationist foreign policies in the early 1900s that kept out of both world wars for quite some time

LitheOhm

@waxeagle right, k

Simon Gill

@waxeagle Does proactive foreign policy mean military action? The US is an economic and cultural powerhouse. Would that not be as helpful in dealing with the police action that is needed to deal with terrorism?

wax eagle

@SimonGill yes, it's not only military action/presence it's all facets.

BESW

9:31 PM

The Second Amendment needs to be understood in the context of the British right to bear arms which had recently been undermined and then reinstated during some issues with James II vs Parliament and the whole Catholic/Protestant thing.

It is also important to remember that the colonists' access to guns was being restricted by Britain again in the New World for reasons that should be fairly obvious.

LitheOhm

note how we've handled terrorism in the past, though: Read Church Committee, Cointelpro, actions against the BPP, etc. Nowadays, the tools/toys for dealing with such are more complex on both sides, and we've got less rights than we did then, thanks to 9-11 and public panic

@BESW revolt?

wax eagle

@BESW sure, understanding it in historical context is important, and that adds nicely to the discussion. Modern jurisprudence is important as well (the Supreme court has upheld the right to individual gun ownership)

Simon Gill

@LitheOhm yeah.... scare tactics for increased government power aren't helpful. On the other hand, look at Northern Ireland. It wasn't a perfect response, but the troubles did end eventually.

LitheOhm

@SimonGill what happened there?

BESW

@waxeagle Yeah. I just find it awkward when people (not that I see it happening in this conversation yet, much) ascribe clear and modern motives to something like the Second Amendment, when even the briefest glance at history reveals it was a murky and deliberately vague compromise rising out of a preference to get everyone at the table.

LitheOhm

9:35 PM

it's like 3.5 has it - you can use the intimidate skill to temporarily increase someone's attitude to friendly or helpful for a time, but afterward it drops to worse than it was

wax eagle

@BESW people do this with a lot of the constitution.

LitheOhm

@BESW I hadn't considered the historical context. You are correct, that's absolutely pertinent

@waxeagle any historical text, I'd argue. Even philosophical ones.

wax eagle

heck the entire bill of rights was a compromise that was promised to be added at a later time so they could get the basic document out the door and signed.

BESW

@waxeagle Exactly.

The phrasing is so vague and open because anything more specific would've seen half the states walking out.

wax eagle

should really go back and re-read the federalist papers

Simon Gill

9:38 PM

@LitheOhm It's a mess. Northern Ireland is still part of Britain, but there are lots of people who want to be part of the Republic of Ireland. There's a Catholic vs. Protestant conflict in there as well as resent against Oliver Cromwell back in the 17th century.

wax eagle

@BESW it should make us all realize that politics now isn't so different from politics then.

BESW

Heck, "Pursuit of happiness" was originally supposed to be "pursuit of property."

LitheOhm

@SimonGill was aware only of the Catholic vs. Protestant conflict.

the government stepped in with scare tactics?

BESW

@LitheOhm I have a tongue-in-cheek theory that the British were so good at colonising the rest of the world because they had a lot of practice at home.

LitheOhm

@BESW heh

Simon Gill

9:41 PM

@LitheOhm No, sorry, it was an example of doing anti-terrorism right. The British government started by sending in army units, but rather than treating it as a military occupation, we used civil and police methods instead.

BESW

@SimonGill ding

LitheOhm

@SimonGill k

civil and police methods, nothing like mobbing I hope?

Simon Gill

It's worked. Mostly. Both sides are sitting around the table and talking, with only the occasional protest/riot for about 13 years now.

LitheOhm

@SimonGill that's good

Simon Gill

@LitheOhm Not as far as I know (but there were some bad times, especially at the beginning. Bloody Sunday is one example.)

LitheOhm

9:44 PM

k

I've read that mobbing is illegal now in Britain.

Simon Gill

@LitheOhm What do you mean by mobbing? I'm reading it as rioting.

LitheOhm

@SimonGill many people ganging up on one or few, targeted and widespread bullying. Bully is to one on one as mobbing is to many on one. Terrible worldwide in industries such as nursing

harassment, verbal abuse, sometimes escalating to violence

and the person seems crazy because it happens so often.

with so many different people.

Mobbing

Mobbing in the context of human beings means bullying of an individual by a group in any context, such as a family, school, workplace, neighborhood, or community. When it occurs as emotional abuse in the workplace, such as "ganging up" by co-workers, subordinates or superiors, to force someone out of the workplace through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, humiliation, discrediting, and isolation, it is also referred to as malicious, nonsexual, nonracial, general harassment. Etymology Though the English word denotes a crowd, often in a destructive or hostile mood, German, Spanish, Polish,...

Simon Gill

@LitheOhm Actually, I don't know about that. Violent assault is certainly a criminal act.

LitheOhm

@SimonGill yeah

it's bad stuff :/ that was a really hard report to do research for. Not for lack of articles but, to quote Maynard, "beat my compassion black and blue"

Simon Gill

@LitheOhm I can imagine.

LitheOhm

9:51 PM

@SimonGill I've toyed with putting it into a DnD campaign or two, as a DM. I end up just feeling bad for my PCs

Simon Gill

Looking at it though, there would probably be a civil case against the employer for allowing that behaviour to happen.

LitheOhm

@SimonGill if one person can prove that twenty plus people were all out to get them. Sounds crazy.

Simon Gill

@LitheOhm E-mails, notes of conversations, minuted meetings with bosses, independent witnesses. All these things can be used as evidence.

LitheOhm

it's a main reason I don't doubt the existence of things like gangstalking. Even though people in the US aren't widely aware of this, many countries including Scotland and Australia have taken action against this

@SimonGill say I work in a hospital and it's going on. The tactics would be less detectable, ie. words said near from one colleague to another. Not being informed of meetings, sure that would be provable, but the 'game' is to pass by, undetected

I've really come to dislike 'social vigilance' in general as a result

BESW

@LitheOhm +1 for Maynard.

LitheOhm

9:56 PM

@BESW :D

Simon Gill

@LitheOhm If it's overheard comments - then the employee would make notes of what they've heard. The minuted meetings would be where they address their concerns to their boss. There are ways to track what is happening over time.

BESW

@LitheOhm It is the duty of authority to be just, and the duty of the individual to be merciful.

3

LitheOhm

it bears to mind what Socrates believed, "to know the good is to do the good." Align people's benevolent and vigilant nature by hook or by crook and you've got their best foot forward on your side. There was a news report on who would be willing to take a baby from a stranger

BESW

bbl

LitheOhm

@SimonGill I believe that's how it has been brought to justice in the past.

@BESW nice

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