Are the notes any good

Also I'm not super sure if my changes are any good

@Gwideon Immediate first impression: as someone who knows next to nothing who Harpers may be (I think I've seen them mentioned in Baldur's Gate?), the first question I have is what sort of thing they stepped into the light with. As in, what are they known for now that they are mildly known.

@vicky_molokh They're basically a intelligence agency. They've come out of the shadows with their recent moves against the cult of tiamat

As someone else with generalised anxiety: can confirm it is quite freeing to catch myself where I might be saying "sorry" out of anxiety, and simply not do so, and see what happens

@NautArch and women in general, and anything to do with how men and women relate @_@

@doppelgreener Really, just "depictions of people".

lol yes

@kviiri making a platformer game where the character can simply run and jump onto platforms without falling through them, and collide with walls without clipping through anything, was surprisingly complex and alternately pretty frustrating and fun to figure out

@Gwideon So let's imagine someone knows only a short news of them. How can the knowledge be summarised in one sentence? Does the idea that they existed for centuries fit into that sentence, or is that a secret from most people?

@doppelgreener Some advice that had helped me with this - If someone overuses a certain word like "sorry" out of habit, it may seem less genuine when they really mean it

@vicky_molokh It's kinda been rumored for a long time that they existed but most people just know that they kinda just showed up one day and started sending soldiers to supposedly protect certain settlements. Atleast thats how it is in my setting. In forgotten realms they have connections to the masked lords of water deep but in my setting they're an independent organization.

@Gwideon So essentially they come off as either a sneaky army, or some conspiracy wealthy enough to hire lots of mercenaries with unclear actual motives.

yep

@vicky_molokh I think that will be an interesting way to create some tension within the council meetings. None of the other delegates fully trust the Harpers and um yeah.

Nothing else in the document seemed off to me on first glance.

okay

Oh, there's another Old Kingdom book?

And it's been out for three years?

Ugh, now I want to re-read the whole series.

Fun fact, when I first read this series, I started in the middle with Lirael instead of Sabriel. It was probably the first fantasy novel I read with a female protagonist.

suddenly remembering Steven Universe, where he started out with that awesome fantasy novel series ... by reading them in alphabetical order

@PierreCathé I'm completely with you on this one. To me saying "smooth wall (DC: 20)" out loud trusts my players to participate with me in the imagining of this world. If I say "smooth wall... [roll ensues] ... you can't make it up/you make it to the top" a hundred times, sure, the players will figure out what I mean by "smooth wall." Eventually. (As long as I'm consistent with my descriptions.)

Just to say, I'm a strong believer in trusting my players to use mechanical information to help them engage more-imaginatively in the shared fiction.

@nitsua60 Are you saying you'd include the DC or use your description of "smooth wall" as a standalone?

Because if it's unclimbable, why even allow a roll? Just saw "smooth" and if they say "I'd like to climb it" you can ask "how, there are no handholds. DO you have something that will let you do this?"

@doppelgreener wait, he did that? I either forgot or didn't notice XD

(Or something like that.)

ooooh XD

I think either I am starting to remember that or you have now placed a version of that scene in my head with the characters involved

either way works XD

okay there's this game called space engineers that looks really interesting to me. it's a video game not a irl game

@Gwideon I've tried it.

It has some neat construction mechanics, but as much as I love those, I found it on the easy-to-get-tedious side, like many similar games. I know other people seem to love it though.

Also, being alpha at the time may have influenced my impression.

okay

this is different than astroneer, yes?

yes

Different.

some of the stuff that i've seen on youtube is well kinda crazy

gotcha :)

Nomad Planet was another one I saw with also cool building, but . . . well, I guess I just easily get bored with the resource-gathering part and love the 'make whatever you want' part.

I have a game called terra tech on my switch which has the resource collection and building stuff so um yeah

@Gwideon Oh, that one also had fun vehicle-making!

@vicky_molokh oh man I am the exact opposite XD

But I ran into a fight that seemed to be geared against a better-equipped car.

And the game seemed to want me to gather more blocks, and I . . . didn't find that fun.

A bit sad. Survival-and-building games seem to be a technically marvellous genre.

I've been playin Factorio, and I love building belts and miners and trains to get iron and copper and stone funneled into my base

@vicky_molokh yeah it does require you gathering you more blocks. I love creative modes for that reason

I'm not as thrilled with having to build complicated busses to assemble all the parts for the stuff you can build in the game

I honestly hate super complitcated process for just building stuff to make the stuff you actually want to make

@Gwideon Oh, I didn't mean prerequisite chains. I meant the Sims-like building of spaceships (Engineers) or mobile bases (Nomads).

Or cars in T-Tech.

I really really like building the trains though

I love vehicle building

I find those challenges interesting. At the beginning of my current sci-fi campaign, I spent a lot of hours deciding on the deck plans of a ship the party was supposed to salvage and repair and use onward.

At first I wanted something with long proportions, but the need to place the listed systems in such a way that they would shield the crew compartments from radiations by the nature of bulk . . . well, it forced me to make it boxy.

But it was an interesting challenge.

do people know the Mantis from the new starwars game. I honestly really like that ship and I think it's so cool

@Gwideon Is it different from the Mantis from the Old Republic game?

I mean the train itself isn't the big thing by itself in factorio

I think so

starwars.fandom.com/wiki/D5-Mantis_Patrol_Craft

it's more building a train and the tracks, and the miners, and the system for getting the resource onto and off the train

@vicky_molokh yes it is

@Gwideon I think the BH ship has the inner layout I find the most cosy among the playable ships.

But it seems a bit hard to find open deck plans of it in the net.

Either that or my Google-fu is weak as usual.

starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Stinger_Mantis this is the mantis from the new game

nice

Similarly, that time when I got to play the Sci-Fi Bertie Wooster/Prince Soma kind of character in an Alpha Centaury mini-campaign, I spent some points on Wealth and most of the money on a rover, and then sat and made the floorplan of the rover that would match the sizes and locations of the the systems bought.

. . . damn, I think I lost the floorplan-with-comments file and only have the rough sector map, so it's not worth showing off, probably.

@Gwideon The whole rotating wing thing is kinda weird to me.

Why does it rotate?

@vicky_molokh I can sympathize, I'm not a huge fan of that style of play either. But then I'm not huge on either the "resource-gathering" part or the "make whatever you want" part :P

@Yuuki This is SW. Every machine is powered by the rule of cool, which is also the only reason for design decisions galaxywide.

@V2Blast lol