Doing okay. Had a rough day yesterday, as we thought our dog Deedee had nose cancer. But my mom took Deedee to the vet today and it doesn't seem to be nose cancer. The vet did find a large cut on the inside of her nose which the vet thinks was caused by either Deedee scratching her nose or she ran into a stick and the stick cut her nose. Either way she's okay! Still have to keep an eye on her though. But still it's good that it isn't nose cancer.
She's not yappy, but she is a bit senile so she goes on the carpet a good bit, but just have to put up with it. Also, she's half-blind and almost deaf. She's of course 17 years old.
I guess it depends on the size of the dragon. Dragons that would be the size of an elephant....actually it wouldn't matter. It would still be considered powered armor.
And what do you mean by thrust/weight constraints?
(if you're a dragon, you're like a KC-135A, loaded to max gross, on a 120degF/100%humidity day in Honolulu, having to take off dry because even though you loaded a full load of water, your water injection went unserviceable
in other words, you aren't generating a lot of thrust for your weight
Well, during the Verrisirs' world war, the dragons (who are actually intelligent and have their own culture although they tend to mix with the Verrisirs' culture a good bit at times) were a bit disturbed by the weapons technologies of the Verrisirs: tanks, aerofighters, etc. They really didn't like the fact that the various Verrisiran nations were organizing air forces as the dragon nations tended to work as mercenaries serving as air support for the various Verrisiran nations
Although the dragon nations were sometimes within a Verrisiran nation, so the laws tended to get a bit complicated.
Indeed. Mechs were also developed during the Great World War, and the dragons tried to adapt Verrisiran military technology to their own. The dragons were pretty much living in a Steam tech-feudal society while the Verrisirs lived in various nation-states and were at a WWII tech level (except for airplanes and tanks until the Great World War).
So you can understand the dragons' fear. After the Great World War, the dragons made one of the peace conditions that everyone had to agree to was that the dragons would inspect, regulate, and restrict the various Verrisiran nations' air forces. The Verrisirs, in return, made the condition that if a Dragon Queen (the dragons had a matriarchal society) died without a heir, a Verrisiran representative would act as regent until a new Queen could be crowned.
Also, everyone agreed that nuclear weapons would be heavily restricted and that any nation that used nukes against another nation (or their own citizens) would feel the wrath of the rest of the world.
In fact, it was the demonstration of the destructive power of nuclear weapons that ended the war because everyone had developed them (well, one nation invented them, and everyone else just stole the blueprints).
Even the dragons had nukes! The scientist who invented the first nuclear weapons miscalculated their destructiveness and originally believed that the nukes would merely destroy a small area like a large bunker buster. But when he realized that the nuke's blast radius was expanding beyond what it was supposed to, he realized that he had seriously miscalculated.
So it was a Doh! moment that ended the Verrisirs' first and pretty much only world war.
The use of nuclear weapons against civilian populations is still to this day strictly prohibited. In fact, when Earth uses nukes against a rebellious colony near the Stellar Confederacy (the Verrisir's interstellar empire) and the United Terran Federation border, the Verrisirs declared war, even though they weren't attacked!
In a way, the Verrisirs are like chivalrous space knights. :)
But yeah, if I was a dragon, I would be extremely annoyed at fighter jets in the skies!
In the beginning (or is beginning even defined ?) in this vast (incomprehensible) it is (incomprehensible)
Lurking (incomprehensible) this (incomprehensible), there is what we later known as purpose and change
Over the many eternities (for the sake of making this comprehensible to the minds of human beings) these slowly coalesces into 'string' like entities. Each is its own existence (or nonexistence for that matter)
They are what stories made of, at the grandest scale, and they are the carriers of change itself.
Over the past (incompehensibly big) number of eons, these storychains (incomprenehsible) about
And eventually (does that even make sense?) a 'bundle' of them 'came together'. The first of the Verse, Reality is born
(skipped boring cosmology historical stuff before the emergence of humanity)
For eons, humanity with its creative potential have became architects and creators of universes. Over the last millions of years, new storychains were forged every single moment as they each formed self containing existence and the other Verses
These includes famous movies, games, books, artworks, installations, ideas, traditions, culture and the list goes on
Occasionally the Verses will interact, forming transient states of crossovers, fanfictions, derived works, adaptations and so on...
Now, (incomprehensibly big number) years since the Beginning (or something like that) All of these Verses which resides in VERSE still laid separate from the prime Verse, reality itself
And it is up to all existence and nonexistence itself to reunite them once more just as back in the Beginning...
I DM a DnD session over the Slack platform, it's been going on for about a year and a half now (or 2? can't quite remember), but we recently had 2 players drop out, leaving our party count down to 3 from 5. So i'm looking for at least 1 player to bring the party count up a bit.
@Aify hrm. what's your schedule like, and how wedded are you folks to Slack? (I used to be on Slack, but I'm not currently on it, and my Slack account is tangled with some other bits and bobs)
For us, we decided to play over slack because it allows us to check in a couple times a day or whenever we're not busy (since we all live in different time zones), which allows us to play whenever we can. We use the #story channel to do official story stuff, #random for discussion, and pms with me for everything else. The combat system is also slightly modified since it's over Slack but its mostly the same, the rules we implemented made everything work so far. Combat in particular is different, as what I usually do is make everyone send me their turns actions in a PM - you can't decide wha…
We play basically fully through text, and any important artifacts or runes and stuff I usually will draw out and upload to the slack.
I have another homebrew system for firearms specifically because only the gnomes (and some dwarves) have them
Basically, you roll to hit (but the weapon carries a negative to-hit modifier based on range) (assuming a musket-ish rifle, machineguns are similar), and then after you "hit" the target, we roll again to see which part of the creature you hit
Depending on where you hit, you might instakill, you might cause damage to a leg and apply a slow effect, or the bullet goes through an arm and they have a negative modifier while attacking with that arm
@FerretCivilization I have a friend who has magitek firearms in his D&D setting, and he basically gives them similar damage dice to a crossbow, but ignoring piercing resistance
I'm used to having to scrutinize maps for fine, fine details from parts of my schooling and line of work, which makes it a lot harder to deal with artistically drawn maps which aren't interested in that level of precision, detail, and accuracy
Feel like when you say that you keep track of all the stuff like Bandits I think of Morrowind from TES with them all being named and stuff instead of just the respawning nameless mooks of today's stuff, and past stuff as well...
yeah, what I'd like to do for campaign mapping is set up a GIS system with a realistic terrain and hydrology loaded into it, get a general idea of biomes from terrain+hydrology+basic climatology, and then work from there to add civilization to the world (trails/roads, towns/cities)
@Shalvenay With regard to asyncronous combat, I think it lends a good feel to the game
For example, in the last combat one of the party wantd to bribe a bandit to stop attacking
But in the before his action (due to initiative and reaction condition) of producing 2 gold coins and yelling "stop attacking" to the bandit, the bandit had already attacked another party member. Thus I asked said party member in a dm, if he wanted to stop attacking since his friend was yelling "don't attack" to the bandit
Party member B (the one that got attacked) said "hell no, he hit first" and killed the bandit
This meant I had to go back to party member A who was holdin gup 2 gold coins
I asked him, "what if he dies before you complete your action"
and he sent me a secondary post with some cut off dialogue
It was pretty funny
Here's the snippet for that turns actions
The bandit in combat with Grigor slashes again, but his blow is deflected by Grigor's bow. Mara runs back down the hill aiming another ray of frost at the bandit, but it once again misses and hits the hillside.
Dale runs North, back towards the hill they came down. Shouting towards the bandit in combat with Grigor, he exclaims, "Stop attacking! I'd like a calm, non-violent conversation with you! You don't have to lose your life here!" As he says this, he pulls out two gold coins and holds them up in the air.
For in combat, we use the roll20 site to borrow a gridded map that I update before each encounter
I also give a lot of trust and free reign with regards to the updating of character sheets, i basically just trust the players to manage their own characters without cheating. So I'm looking for someone pretty mature to play with us. IIRC, all of us that are currently playing are pretty.. old. They're all older than me, and I'm in my 20s.
speaking of D&D games @Aify -- do you have time to join one for that matter? if sphennings isn't able to make it, I might loop you into what I was planning with Vylix instead
I only ask because I probably would have some impedance mismatches with your game style (the async combat could be a bit troublesome, and I'm also not sure where you stand on race/class/alignment interlocking considering the amount of homebrewing you've been doing -- I have no qualms about things like multiclassing Paladin/Warlock, but some folks would consider that heresy)
What do u mean with regard to race/class/alignment
For the record, the players and I, unless we have come to a previous homebrew agreement (or i have declared otherwise) use the handbook as the final say
so we're actually sticking pretty close to regular rules for that matter
there isn't too much i've changed persay
Also, this is online thing is my first DM experience lol so I try not to impose on the players. I ask a lot in the chat what people want before deciding what to actually do
The async ombat also isn't as async as you think it is
think of it as "turn based" but everyone makes their "turn" at the same time
and then we play out that "turn", afterwhich we see what happens and decide on new turns
Usually if something happens that affects the decisions you made (eg: you wanted to shoot at bandit b but after doing rolls and calculations (before posting into #story), i know that he's going to die berfore u shoot), i'll tell you and let you remake the decision
so in the example given, you could theoretically change targets as i'd inform you that your target will dissapear
It's also a very slow paced, long term game
I ask my players to check in a couple times a day just to keep things frequent, but even then sometimes a single combat turn can take a couple days to resolve, simply b/c of busy schedules or timezone issues, or i'm waiting for a roll or something. But that's the power of DnD over slack though, it's that we aren't in any rush. We're not going anywhere.
And if you have something to say but can't make the post right away, I let th eplayers post an "on hold" message into #story so that everyone knows to wait for their next post
IMO it's overall more orderly than a regular session.
Ofc, if we did do this, we would have to work out your backstory first, set a goal or something for you chara, and then I'd give you whatever information you needed to start XD
World builders often have startling capacities for imagination. Yes, you need to think hard to, say, design realistic geography for a planet, or create a new language, but even so, we have biases arising from our own experiences. In some ways — small ones, perhaps — we remained bound by what we observe around us on Earth. Coming up with new life-forms, whether carbon-based or not, requires a bi…
We've got a Bard halfling, a human rogue (but he's in the midst of making a new character and changing classes, we both agreed his character is kinda not a good fit and a bit of a mess, and we're swapping it out for something easier to manage), and a halforc barbarian
We just lost our Dragonborn paladin, and our human mage.
@FerretCivilization How can you not have rep to talk in that chat? Stack Exchange cumulates rep across all Stacks Exchanges when factoring rep for privileges in any Stack Exchange chat room. It's only between Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow that rep doesn't transfer for chat privileges.
@Aify Absolutely! We'll even pin it to the top of the star bar for a while, if it's succint.
Does it, I have not noticed that for the other SE sub question places that I am in. I have my 160 here, and 1 everywhere else from what I have seen. Though ah, good to know, been holding myself back looking at that, need 25 in this SE to talk in chat.
I'm pretty sure it's 20+ rep cumulative across all Stack Exchanges, to talk in any Stack Exchange chat. You'll notice, for example, that my icon on this chat reads 64.2k rep; only 43k of that is from one site, and that's RPG.SE.
@DaaaahWhoosh With magic-as-patronage, a person can use magic through their direct, personal relationship with a god, spirit, or other personified power.
[worldbuilding] I use magic through my direct personal relationship with myself, lol
I asked a question (link-deleted question so only visible to 10k rep users) about an hour ago. It was downvoted to -3 so I deleted it.
I explained how energy is generated in my fictional world and ask "what physics will be affected". Is this kind of question considered as bad question in this SE?...
So long as it satisfies Sanderson's first law of magic: "An author's ability to solve conflict satisfactorily with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic" (there are 2 other, but this is the most important)
hmmm... I wonder if there exists fictional works that had pulled off maintaining its narrative with a largely unexplained plot element...
@Secret I have recently read the first book of a series called "Nevernight" (obviously spoilers are following) - the protagonist can control shadows. How does she do that? Well, a shadow manifested as a cute, little, sarcastic cat when she was threatened and now she can talk to shadows. Does the shadow know how that works? No. It just works. And that thing is eating her fear. Part of the book is about her trying to get infos about herself, but she can't find anything.
It's a great book and I highly recommend it (story is cool and worldbuilding is fascinating) - the main plot element is never really explored but instead left as a mystery, which makes it far better than it would have been if the author explained everything in detail.
yeah, relativity does makes talking about time manipulation much harder
as for the bubble with part of the body sticking out. Assuming that the mechanism of time stopping is like those old cartoons where things just literally paused in place, then there is still a deadly effect due to the interface:
I just wish there were self-driving cars and other automation stuff so that I had more time to spend reading. Because reading is a hobby and I love to spend time on it. Just downloading a book into my mind or something like that would be boring.
outside the bubble, the body parts are in stasis and thus nothing is moving and hence nothing in changing, but inside the bubble there is normal metabolism
The problem is that at the interface, there is some amount of blood in the body part inside the bubble still flowing, but its source is outside, thus eventually when the person is pulled completely into the bubble, the two regions are out of sync, so even if there is no tissue death due to stopped time, the out of sync is more than enough to upset the circulatory system
Anything in the handbook (With approval of DM), except for Dwarves and Gnomes which are explictly not allowed. Playing a dragonborn also puts certain restrictions on your backstory.
That was actually the second question I ty ped into my FAQ XD I am doing the right thing.
I wouldn't actually say a dragonborn puts restrictions so much as it gives you a portion of backstory that you msut work with
Agh can I bug people for ideas on how different groups visibly showed allegiance to one another without having to resort to flags or crests? My mind keeps going back to using mons (which are sort of crests but my really) but those still strike me as too Japanese for this setting. I’m thinking like cords or tassels, but I want to see what real world cultures used this or any other system but I’m not sure how to search for a cultural trait this specific.
@James I always forget kilts are even a thing. While that won’t work too well for what I’m doing, I’m definitely tying that into a different culture I’m working on.
@James I only ask because I have a lot of random things fleshed out but not everything is completely smoothed out at this time. Anyway, a quick rundown is that we’re dealing with magic-wielding reptile humanoids living in a fantasy-version of the Sonoran Desert. One of the big things their culture pushes is reliance on groups and the importance of belonging to a group.
“Families” are really more loose-to-close alliances with trusted members or friends, all of whom are usually working towards a shared goal (often getting food or paying taxes and stuff like that). I’m gonna stop myself here for now though because I know I could write more but I don’t want an entire essay in the chat logs.
And one final thing: Personal preference, but I prefer a "party premise," something we know about the party that gives characters understanding how they fit in, and also lets them build characters. A genocidal vampire set to burn the world and a lawful good communist cleric don't make a very good team, much less when the point of their party is to support a merchant tycoon in his business.
Something like "You've been recruited by ____ to ____. You will be paid once you ____ by ____." or "The town of ____ is facing ____ and is seeking help," or "Rumor has it that _____. _____ is forming a team to investigate the ruins."
@NexTerren There's one on Orcpub one of my players moved but i think it has some extra stuff that i dont use/include.
Actions are in private in PM to me mostly during combat, otherwise most actions go right into #story channel. This is because for combat, I hide the stats of each player from eachother on purpose, as well as the initiatives and stuff
With regards to that party premise... there really isn't one, I think one of the main points is that each party heads towards their own goals. I did rule that I wont allow "evil" characters though, just to avoid the vampire situation you broug…
Well actually there was a follow up question, since I lack handbook. I've been wanting to do a certain character since about 5 years ago when I stopped 4e. It was legal then, but I don't know about 5e. It was a Shadar-kai, chieftain daughter, interesting personality because of the culture clash between Shdar-kai (tribal, in her case) and "general D&D fantasy." In 4e they were from the Shadowfell, which is why I was asking, but it's not actually a requirement for me.
This is all the information it says in the 5e players handbook: `The Shadowfell, also called the Plane of Shadow, is a darkly lighted dimension, a world of black and white where color has been leached from everything. It is a place of toxic darkness that hates the light, where the sky is a black vault with neither sun nor stars.`
And by all, I mean that is literally all the information they give about it in all 319 pages.
The magic system I homebrewed and added to my campaign works as an existential system over everything else, so its not an issue for me to add stuff like this (I made sure to be able to cover almost everything).
The Factory Floor
The Factory Floor