TRPG General Chat

00:21

@JonathanHobbs oh, there's a multitude of ways. Old Age, warping. Warping, warping...

@Lord_Gareth Well, no, you have to really try to kill your character. But when you're making a 90 year old wizard, nominally in the prime of his life... there are some... interesting possibilities.

@JonathanHobbs well, it also depends on what mode of chargen you're using. If you're simulating every season and taking stupid risks, the odds of dying approach 1 as you add years on, simply because it's possible to generate a character who has died of old age.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

01:11

To the regulars, if you know of other questions that have had hideous incidents of spam, edit the meta question on it?

BESW

01:24

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Which one?

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

1

Q: Can we auto-flag no-rep users posting answers with e-mail addresses?

We consistently get spam of the type: $HoityToityName has made my $verb better because he cast spell for me. E-mail [email protected] to have $noun [enlarged | made better]. ... Except it takes a paragraph of spam to say that. The most recent example is (deleted) here and is completely true to...

feature-request

BESW

So, you're asking for examples of spam.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BESW yes. For people with enough rep to see the deleted posts.

BESW

Added three links as a comment, including a relatively epic thread of them.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

cool

mmm, handbags seems to be a side pattern

BESW

01:34

I found them by doing a search of this chat for "spam."

C. Ross

@BESW do you have permissions to protect?

BESW

I need another 2066 rep for that.

trogdor

protect?

BESW

@trogdor rpg.stackexchange.com/privileges/protect-questions

trogdor

ah

doppelgreener

01:38

> E-mail [email protected] to have $noun [enlarged | made better]

trogdor

ok I see

doppelgreener

@Brian I cracked up at "enlarged". Thankyou.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@JonathanHobbs :)

BESW

@JonathanHobbs I always wanted my [rolls dice] ...fern enlarged.

George Spiceland

I'm thinking if someone has the ability to make something bigger, there are better uses than shrubbery.

The Oracle

02:02

3

Q: Can we auto-flag no-rep users posting answers with e-mail addresses?

We consistently get spam of the type: $HoityToityName has made my $verb better because he cast spell for me. E-mail [email protected] to have $noun [enlarged | made better]. ... Except it takes a paragraph of spam to say that. The most recent example is (deleted) here and is completely true to...

feature-request

doppelgreener

02:56

I've just learned something I do regarding Spam posts sometimes is bad.

12

A: Why is this not spam?

There are two issues here, and while others have written eloquently on the subject, I'll tell you why I did what I did, so you can have it from the horse's mouth, as it were. Even if an answer is outright spam, please do not edit the content out. That's vandalism, and is even worse than letting ...

In the past a few times I've edited the content right out of a spam answer so as to give it no attention.

(I guess even for my fellow users that's bad: they have to click on the edit history to check the previous version of the answer to verify it's spam before they flag it)

wax eagle

@JonathanHobbs yeah, flag as spam and paste the link in here (ping a mod as well if you plesae).

if no mods are around we can gang up and delete it

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

03:46

that would be nice.

Lord_Gareth

03:58

@BESW Just finished re-reading So You Want to Be a Wizard. Followed up immediately by starting up Neverwhere. This was a mistake >.>

BESW

Your poor, poor players.

Lord_Gareth

Oh yeah. If they thought The Great Tall Tailor Man was a disturbing and difficult fight...

One of them bit the bait on that one too - they took his sewing needle and his scissors.

That's going to bite them in the ass eventually.

How's life for the two of you tonight anyway, @BESW, @BrianBallsun-Stanton?

BESW

Just ran another session of the FAE game.

It got cut short, but there was a mounted knight defending a screaming princess and a blind oracle from a dragon! So that was good.

Lord_Gareth

Cool!

I managed to make my players feel heroically Norse while fighting a dapper Victorian gentleman out of a nursery rhyme

AFK

BESW

Of course, being one of my games it wasn't quite so straightforward.

The princess had been kidnapped by an apprentice assassin on behalf of the dragon, who wanted to use the princess to prove to the king of dragons that it was responsible enough to choose a gender.

The blind oracle didn't like that, and taunted the dragon until it decided to eat him.

And the princess had previously been manipulated by a wizard to trick the oracle into telling where another PC was that the wizard wants to take advantage of.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

04:08

@Lord_Gareth Arrrrrrrgghghhhhgh ::thud::

Lord_Gareth

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I hear they make a topical cream for that.

@BESW I've been doing too much Greek mythology lately; I had to re-read your description three times before I realized the dragon wasn't choosing the oracle's gender

BESW

Ah, yeah.

Dragons don't choose a gender until they come of age, which is either at around 50 years old or when the head of their family says they can, whichever comes first.

So this young dragon is trying to convince the King of Dragons to give it an early exemption. Having a princess is... the young dragon's equivalent of a kid proving his maturity by taking care of a high-maintenance dog.

Lord_Gareth

Heh. Sounds like how a friend of mine explained the random dragon attacks in Skyrim. "You know how knights would go forth to slay dragons and prove their valor and bravery? All of those young dragons trying to whack you are the knights."

BESW

A Dragon's stats.

Lord_Gareth

Sadly that means almost nothing to me.

[Idly wonders what other Victorian-era myths he could mine as a sub-theme for this Scion game]

BESW

04:21

It's pretty narrative, so you can get the idea of its concept even if you can't evaluate its power.

(Hint: it's a dragon.)

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Damn, I was getting a 'frustrated, magically-empowered civil servant' vibe.

trogdor

it's power is "yes"

BESW

It's rolling raw +6s to attack, when a PC specializing in defense can eek out an unmodified +5.

The average PC has to spend resources every round it doesn't want to take stress.

trogdor

that's not an entirely fair assesment

it also has the same mod to overcoming obstacles

BESW

It overcomes physical obstacles at +7.

trogdor

04:25

ah

well

all the same

BESW

(I was nice, and didn't use its highest approach as it favored attack stat.)

trogdor

"nice"

sure

BESW

It makes sense: a dragon should probably be best at Forceful, but this dragon prefers to be Flashy.

trogdor

I see no problem with it

Lord_Gareth

@BESW I am reminded of a time I set a dragon fight in the Legend system inside extremely cramped quarters that limited the great wyrm's tactics; I represented it by the simple and brutal method of creating a lower-level dragon with less tactics available

trogdor

04:27

even a dragon has to have a personality that stands out

Lord_Gareth

When it ran out of HP it retreated to nurse its wounds

BESW

Also, Flashy attacks are cooler than Forceful ones.

Spinning around to hit the knight with his tail? Yes please.

Lord_Gareth

Oh hell. Now I just remembered the dude who wandered into the Legend chatroom screaming and raving about how we did dragons wrong because they weren't like D&D dragons.

trogdor

lol

yes

because that was the FIRST kind of dragon ever, right?

lol

Lord_Gareth

(To wit: any being that takes Dragon as its racial option is a dragon. Other two tracks - and thus theme-defining abilities - may and will vary)

BESW

04:32

Nah, Tolkien did dragons wrong: Smaug was killed by a random NPC.

trogdor

lol

my point being that even D&D did not, in fact, invent dragons

but yes, that dragon should not have died that way

Lord_Gareth

He really shouldn't have.

trogdor

he should at least have gotten to be killed by a PC

Lord_Gareth

[Tries to think of the last dragon that actually died in one of his games...]

Sweet freaking zombies, that was...eight years ago.

trogdor

if they died every game it wouldn't be epic anymore

Lord_Gareth

04:34

@Trogdor No, my players keep picking fights with this one very specific dragon that originally existed as a bit of setting background and has now become their white whale.

trogdor

lol

did it do anything to them first?

Lord_Gareth

Nope. It's a vampiric shadow dragon souldrinker whose crimes consist of preying on beholders, drow settlements and illithid colonies in the Underdark

trogdor

wow

Lord_Gareth

But its hoard is huge because its average meal is an entire small town

BESW

@Lord_Gareth That's pretty awful.

trogdor

04:35

even most of the PC's I have observed wouldn't have touched that

BESW

You really don't want anyone going around disturbing the careful power balance of the Underdark like that.

trogdor

well

remember

Lord_Gareth

The first time they tried to fight it the dragon didn't even fight back for the first three rounds; it patiently explained that it wasn't bothering anyone that wasn't already Evil and could they please just go away because it had to sort these magical items into their proper nooks and crannies.

BESW

Someone nasty is going to suddenly realize their local enemies are down, and they're free to run roughshod over the whole place.

trogdor

these are Illithids, Drow and beholders

they will kill it themselves eventually

Lord_Gareth

04:37

Round four it slaughtered eight PCs in a single attack routine and resumed its counting.

Since then it's racked up a total of eighty seven character deaths over eight years of play

trogdor

that's a big group

Lord_Gareth

Starting precisely none of the fights

trogdor

is it an evil party?

or is it just grudge holding at this point?

cause I CAN see PC's holding a grudge like that

BESW

Sounds like a player grudge to me.

Lord_Gareth

@Trogdor No group is too big when your attack routine goes bite/claw/claw/wing buffet/tail slap/free action grapple/2d6 permanent con drain and if the blood drain hits it gets to start the routine over again

And it's player grudge

trogdor

04:38

nah

I wasn't sayingI was impressed by it's ability

Lord_Gareth

Thus far the highest-level attempt to take him down (his stats have not changed or improved) was a level 22 party. That's when they found out he casts spells.

trogdor

no group I was in has ever been higher than 5 in one session

Lord_Gareth

Though really they should have guessed.

Given, you know, D&D dragon

trogdor

yeah

spells for free

as a sorcerer

Lord_Gareth

Oh so much worse than spells for free, my friend.

trogdor

04:39

just saying

they do get those

Lord_Gareth

Thanks to its vampiric template and Souldrinker levels each one of those hits inflicted multiple negative levels and gave it spells back for each one inflicted

In addition to shooting out soul lasers

trogdor

lol

the funny thing is that a PC group will always hold a grudge like this

BESW

@trogdor Remember the minotaur souldrinker I told you guys about? Same PrC.

trogdor

because they are metagaming it

Lord_Gareth

A skilled group of adventurers can probably take this dragon down but my players are knuckle-dragging drool monkeys and I'm perfectly happy to let them kill themselves on it over and over.

BESW

04:41

But leveraged at a much higher level and with more synergy.

trogdor

@BESW I figured something like that

BESW

The minotaur's main drawback at his level was that he lacked the Int to get Whirlwind.

Lord_Gareth

Whereas dragon does not need whirlwind

trogdor

if you thought of it logically, there would be no reason for an entirely new set of people to keep attacking it

but these are PC's

Lord_Gareth

@trogdor Well, aside from its increasingly large hoard

BESW

04:42

Yeah, minotaur only had 3 natural attacks; he could be outnumbered pretty easily.

trogdor

so logical thought isn't in there

Lord_Gareth

Growing fatter and fatter with each PC slain

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Lord_Gareth Eighty. Seven. Is it gaining XP from the players, at least?

right

Lord_Gareth

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Deliberately not. I didn't want to increase the challenge.

trogdor

and each character is acting on the fact that it's creator is ticked off at this dragon

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

04:43

cause ... yeah...

But my players rather respect my dragons :)

defined as "oh shit no not another dragon run!" being their dragon encounter mantra.

trogdor

lol

well

something is obviously wrong here

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

And these are magi

trogdor

cause ass kicking keeps happening

and they keep attacking it

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

... of course, they will, fairly quickly, pass a power threshold. And the it will be "was that a dragon? I didn't notice."

Lord_Gareth

I had a Scion character for awhile that would bluff like he could turn into a dragon. He'd use the Illusion purview to alter his appearance/sound/scent/texture, then knock shit around with Epic Strength and threaten with mighty roars and gouts of "frost breath" (Frost Purview)

Avoided a lot of difficult fights that way by looking like a God when I was just a Demigod

@trogdor What's wrong is that my players are drooling brutes and I hate them >.>

trogdor

04:45

lol

that is pretty wrong.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Lord_Gareth so... stop playing with a bad group?

life's too short for shitty games.

Lord_Gareth

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I'm getting a familiar feeling like we've had this conversation before.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Lord_Gareth yeaaap

Lord_Gareth

Though I'm going to very shortly be experimenting with a new group for Legend.

As soon as I figure out how I want to model a character getting hit by a speeding steam train.

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Yup.

trogdor

04:50

lol

BESW

@Lord_Gareth I suggest a watermelon and a fourth-story balcony.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW I don't wanna do it as a "no save just die" deal, since one side of this fight or another may think to Grapple and/or Drag the other in front of the train. I was considering modeling it as a high-level Trap...

BESW

@Lord_Gareth I'm fond of "Success, or Success With Consequences."

Instead of "Success or Failure."

Lord_Gareth

Playing in a rules-heavy and legalistic system, @BESW. Trap rules will probably serve me well.

BESW

Consequences could include debilitation, being carried off on the front of the train, getting stuck on the wrong side of the tracks...

@Lord_Gareth You don't need freeform systems to avoid S/F dichotomies.

I regularly worked within the 4e paradigm to "rig" events.

Lord_Gareth

04:55

Either way, this final throwdown will be every kind of awesome. Magic and blurring blades as the train bears down and the PCs have to keep the villain distracted long enough to stop him from derailing it.

(Bonus points: hold him to one side or another long enough for the train to fire broadsides on its way past)

BESW

@Lord_Gareth That... is basically what Trogdor did to the first 4e dragon I had his group fight.

The setting had an Indiana Jones boulder running around a circular track. So they held the dragon down and let it get squished.

Lord_Gareth

Replacing boulders in this case with a heavily armed war train

(Drow in Shatterholm: they put guns on everything. Everything.)

This is the culture that built mechanical horses so they could install guns in them.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

I'm wearing a GPS collar!

well, thingy on my collar, but it sounds worse the other way.

Now I'ma going to go on a field trip!

BESW

Does it asplode your head?

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

I... may also be overly stressed out and caffenated.

Lord_Gareth

05:04

Mind you, this is also a culture where the most common cause of death is KIA, the second-most common is suicide and the third most is friendly fire.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BESW eventually..

Lord_Gareth

Drow: Live fast, die young, leave a horribly mangled corpse and a touching letter to the orphans. Drow children that grow up with both parents (or parents at all) are pretty outnumbered.

A cultural trait they share with elves, though elven settlements have this depressing tendency to be claimed by catastrophe without survivors so there's a slightly higher ratio of elves with whole families by percentage. Less elves overall, though.

Magician

05:51

Everything @BrianBallsun-Stanton tells you about our group is lies, slander and provocation. We are a respectable group of magi who by no means run away, towards or in any relation to dragons. Any activities of said dragons in relation to mundanes, such as but not limited to devouring, tearing, burning, enslaving and bedding, in no way reflect our stance towards either dragons or mundanes.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Magician Djinn, on the other hand, you have no comment about? :)

Magician

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I'm the king of the djinn and your argument is invalid. Also, have I shown you my extensive collection of mind control spells?

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Magician okay, me giggling at work is not a good thing.

trogdor

06:30

@BESW yeah

that is exactly what I did

with a horrible bug man no less

good times those

trogdor

06:43

@Lord_Gareth that might be because at least some of the friendly fire deaths are made to look like KIA's

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

07:03

so, apropos of nothing, chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vulcan/… disables the hideous emoji in hangouts

Magician

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I am not nothing. I am a person. Also, the king of the djinn.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Magician [Are You Sure?]

cause there's a really really horrible mangling of JC superstar just waiting if you say Yes.

Magician

hahahahahha

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

lets see...

Magician

"Feed my household with this pineapple?"

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

07:06

Leo, I am overjoyed
To meet you face to face
You've been getting quite a name
All around the place
Nuking kinglets
Marrying the queen
Now I understand you're Magic
At least that's what you've said...

And it just gets worse from here...

Magician

MarrYing

not marring. that's.. not. what.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

Are you collecting messianic characters in my game?

cause uh...

Magician

I'd star this, but it makes no sense to anyone other than us.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Magician no, not at all.

Magician

Also, yes, no, we're not doing another messianic character.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

07:09

@Magician good, good...

::rubs hands::

Magician

...Is Alan one? I suspect he is, now.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Magician alan... which one was he?

the monk?

Magician

Ahem. The Swamp Thing.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

oooh, right, the swamp thing. Yeah, sure, he can be a messiah of the vines.

leading them to a golden land... of.. um... good soil with high moisture content?

Magician

Well. The actual Swamp Thing is an elemental guarding The Green/Gaia.

Sort of, far as I remember :)

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

07:12

@Magician yep

So shall we call you saint Leo of valentine? :)

Magician

...that is a terrible idea.

Also, oops, I messed up with dates. Remember the sprit of Ramon Llull I summon? He's only born in 1232. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull. I blame Octavian's future time travel.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Magician yep

you will have had summoned his spirit from the future?

Magician

@BrianBallsun-Stanton The best solution would be to rename the spirit, cause ow.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Magician Yes.

Magician

And just re-reading the page on wiki, the guy was a magus. No two ways about it.

BESW

09:07

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I haven't been paying much attention to the contest, but maybe I should've.

> Three users will receive site swag items (t-shirts, stickers, etc), and two users will RPG books or PDFs based on their most active tags.

wax eagle

12:42

@BrianBallsun-Stanton dude, use it to play Ingress!

@BESW meh, as of last count you're tied with a bunch of people for 2nd best chance to win

BESW

@waxeagle I'm looking at the typo.

wax eagle

@BESW ah

right, so we're going to become RPG books/pdfs? yikes

BESW

13:27

[face/palm] The BBC just called an excerpt from Blink a "classic clip."

Novian

morning....

BESW

Hey.

Novian

god I feel like someone hit me in the back with a shovel.

Oh well staying up later than usual was worth it for JtCR.

Nearly died in a shallow hole and I thanked the DM for the opportunity.

Hell I was bleeding out in a shallow hole. but being a dwarf I am too awesome to die.

but enough bout dwarves how has people been.

ah my new Anima question just hit the feed.

BESW

Hobbs and I are researching tree people for his FAE character.

wax eagle

@BESW wow, how does something that young become "classic"??

BESW

13:40

Granted, it's a great episode.

wax eagle

@BESW definitely

BESW

And the definition of "classic" is certainly not standardized by any means.

But...

wax eagle

also true

I don't think late auties qualifies

(or whatever the heck we're calling that nameless decade)

BESW

The noughties?

wax eagle

@BESW I'd spring for the nils

BESW

13:44

I generally go for "the oh-ohs."

wax eagle

anyways, I think classic starts in the 80s, early 90s maybe. But get 20 years on yah before you go classic (also I don't really approve of the airing network branding something as classic either)

BESW

At its most basic, something "classic" needs to have the time and exposure necessary for it to gain recognized, established value.

wax eagle

@BESW I think for sci-fi it also has to genre bust a bit as well. Have some cache outside of the core audience.

BESW

Quite likely.

wax eagle

Weeping Angels/Don't blink has great cache with whovians, but if I said "don't blink" to a random man on the street, I'm still gonna get wtf looks

BESW

13:56

Even in Britain, Doctor Who is pretty niche; many are likely to recognize Baker, Tennant, or the TARDIS, but not likely all three.

I'm not sure that something needs to have acquired meme status to be "classic," though.

wax eagle

@BESW perhaps that's just a way to remove the age qualifier?

accelerate into classic status by developing a wide (but still cultish) audience?

BESW

Maybe.

wax eagle

I dunno, classic is so loose anyways, know it when you see it an all that

BESW

But then, I think that any attempt to define "classic" needs to acknowledge that it's ultimately a tool of privilege.

wax eagle

20:32

someone check this edit: rpg.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/3822

BESW

21:49

Fred Hicks talks about the phenomenon of players using only their highest-bonus approaches in FAE.

2

@wootcat Hi!

@Heather Hi!

@Heather You just need one more upvote to get the 20+ rep needed to talk in chat! I hope it's soon.

Zachiel

22:17

I'll attempt a definition of classic. It's that thing your friends need you to see because come on! Everybody else in the world knows what it is!

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@waxeagle is random draw

@BESW I don't see the typo?

Zachiel

my google fu fails me. There's a D&D 3.5 monster called Tren wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20040613a&page=4 I can't find if it's been published on a manual and which one if so

does anybody know?

BESW

22:56

@BrianBallsun-Stanton "two users will RPG books or PDFs"

Samuel Russell

@waxeagle I prefer auties to aughties for certain reasons.

BESW

@SamuelRussell My brain keeps reading it as "aunties."

Samuel Russell

@BrianBallsun-Stanton emoji disabler for hangouts? =^.^=

trogdor

heh

I thought Aunties was what it was too

Samuel Russell

Auntie, in the context of broadcasting, brings up horrible images. BBC/ABC[.au]/Sydney Morning Herald spinster slash.

BESW

23:12

Perhaps I should propose "The Decade Which Could Not Be Named."

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@SamuelRussell I like naughties.

@SamuelRussell yeah, is nice.

BESW

So, we've got a Doctor Who – Adventures in Time and Space: The Roleplaying Game question.

There are no Doctor Who tags, and I'd like to make one, but I want to canvass suggestions for a concise way to differentiate ATS from The Doctor Who Role Playing Game.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BESW adventures-in-time-space?

BESW

(And Time Lord.)

Sounds good.

...too long.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

ugh

ask on meta

no

ew

BESW

23:22

Ewwwww.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

completely different

trogdor

you mean, ask on meta something other than a meta question?

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

dr-who-adventures

no, I mean that a question about a tag is absolutely appropriate for meta

wax eagle

@BrianBallsun-Stanton weighted random is it not?

trogdor

oh

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

23:24

@waxeagle er, random by function of ticket.

so weighted random by function of user.

BESW

0

Q: Adventures in Time and Space tag

So, we have a question about Doctor Who – Adventures in Time and Space: The Roleplaying Game. So far as I can tell, it's our first. I gleefully ran to tag it, hoping to use something like "adventures-in-time-and-space" to differentiate this from The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (and to a lesser ...

discussion tags

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