TRPG General Chat - 2013-12-04 (page 1 of 2)

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12:51 AM

@MrJinPengyou You can also go the other way and just have "dwarves can see in the dark" as a basic assumption of the setting, so if you've got an aspect that says you're a dwarf, that's all you need.

As @DavidCEllis said, the major concern in making this kind of choice is how important it is to the story--Fate is designed so that the more important something is, the more mechanics it gets, and vice versa.

The amount of mechanics you dedicate to anything in a Fate game should be directly proportional to how important it is.

1:36 AM

I'm kinda liking IRCCloud. It makes IRC a lot like StackExchange chat. I have beta invites now if anyone cares.

@AlexP That seems... very nice.

Do you know if it would allow multiple simultaneous sign-ins?

Multiple accounts or multiple places?

Being signed in on two computers at once.

It's admittedly a strange requirement but I was wondering.

@AlexP Yo!

(Which is to say, yes please.)

Hmm... apparently the "stay logged on forever" thing is limited during the trial. I like the interface itself too, though.

@Metool @RedRiderX You don't have e-mails in your profiles. So send e-mail to my e-mail address in my profile if you don't want to expose your addresses to the site.

1:44 AM

Ah dang, right.

Er, which profile? I see like 7.

And I can't find the email send thing.

In fact, I do have an email for my RPG.SE account.

Yeah, I don't think your email is public unless you put in your profile excerpt.

@AlexP I don't see your's either, so you could try sending an email to me at "contactus{AT}redriderx{DOT}com"

Let me know on chat if that doesn't work for some reason.

@RedRiderX Sent

@Metool I guess those are actually only shown to you.

Ha! Old RPGnet DeadEarth thread is back. It's the game with, like, 10000 terrible "mutations" you roll on a big chart.

@AlexP Alright, well, icecappuchino (gmail.com)

@Metool ty

sent

Thanks much.

1:57 AM

@AlexP Received.

Thanks muchly.

2:14 AM

Hmm, only 2 networks for free accounts...

user61230

user61230

2:30 AM

I want to create something for a community ad, but there are no available images

@BESW Thanks! This makes a lot of sense.

@MrJinPengyou No problem.

It's a weird adjustment to make if you're used to systems that try to mimic things "realistically."

Fate replaces realism with narrative authenticity.

One of the best examples is that you can spend a Fate point to punch someone more effectively, and justify it because you remember that the guy starved a kitten.

You don't win because you're stronger, or better equipped, or have a better plan: you win because you have the strength of your story behind you.

For your darkvision thing, I'm guessing that it should just be an assumption of the setting, along with "gravity pulls down," "dragons are dangerous," and "elves are smug gits."

You don't need to invent a Gravity Extra because falling is a basic assumption, and you don't need a "Smug" skill for elves. The existing mechanics just fall into place around these assumptions; elves use their skills in insufferable ways, Athletics is used to reduce falling damage, and dwarves can take sight-based actions in the dark.

Otherwise at what point do you stop? Does everybody need an "opposable thumb" extra?

2:48 AM

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel I decided to open the Fate books I bought from the Bundle of Holding of FATE a couple of months ago. Legend of Anglerre seems to use a stunt for Darkvision. I'm not sure about that and like you I'd probably make an assumption out of it.

A lot of the older Fate games are still struggling with the proper level of inherent assumption vs explicit mechanic for their purposes.

You might try Fate Worlds, if you have them; they've got a variety of practical examples of how to implement a lot of different kinds of concepts in Core.

The way Fate works is really interesting. I'm still trying to work it out. I played a one shot set in Star Wars with my friends and I was caught by surprised with their choice of aspects and had no idea how to quickly handle Force powers so I just went with stunts for specific applications. Since one of the player had Master of mysterious Force powers he chose to be able to freeze with the Force and control his inertia (two seperate stunts).

That's a good quick-and-dirty way to handle specialties without inventing new skills or extras.

I've used it successfully myself. One of the benefits is that each character is totally customizable.

I do have the Fate Worlds actually.

In a superpower game, darkvision might be a unique power and thus worth making into a proper mechanic.

But in a game where it's not going to be a major part of the character's story, or influence events or motives, it's best to let players spend their stunt slots on stuff that'll be more interesting.

3:00 AM

I think if my player would come with a darkvision stunt instead of saying it's just part of his character, I would use that to make him shine in a situation

In a game version of the film Pitch Black, Riddick's darkvision and light sensitivity is a MAJOR element of his character. It makes him unique, gives him distinct and significant advantages and disadvantages, and helps to position him at the center of the narrative.

That's a great example

It's a stunt, if not a full-fledged Extra.

In the later Riddick films, however, his eyeball polish is much less significant.

I'd say an Extra because it gives him a flaw as well right?

Likely.

In the later films it's probably not even a stunt, just an aspect that states something about him--it might not even be its own aspect, just part of one.

3:03 AM

Even if anything can be compelled in Fate since "Everything can have aspects" is like the Bronze rule

So you can technically compel a stunt in exchange of a Fate point correct?

@MrJinPengyou Not really.

You need an aspect to compel.

Most stunts, however, are justified by aspects.

An Extra sometimes grants a specific extra aspect.

(Or requires that you use an aspect slot as a cost or permission.)

In Pitch Black I'd say Riddick probably has Eyeshine Job in Ursa Luna as an aspect.

Ok makes sense

That aspect gives him all the benefits and drawbacks of the eyeshine job, and also establishes his past as a convict.

In the later films his eyeshine is retconned as being a racial trait.

An aspect like The Last Furyan now suffices to justify his unusual vision.

It also speaks to his loneliness, his drive, and his animalistic tendencies.

I could rig it as a stunt or an extra in Pitch Black.

Off the top of my head...

**Extra: Eye Shine**
Permission: Must have had access to illegal surgical procedures.
Cost: One Refresh, one aspect must mention your Eyeshine.
Benefit: Sight-based checks of all kinds are rolled at +4 in darkness, but even the light of a flashlight negates this bonus, instead increasing the difficulty of sight-based checks by +4. You can reduce the difficulty increase to +2 by using Resources to Create an Advantage like ***Welder's Goggles*** and forgoing the free invoke on that aspect.

But looking at it, this seems like overcomplication.

I have a really hard time figuring out how much should an extra cost

yeah, that's an art.

Do you have the DFRPG manual?

For most extras, they cost one Refresh for every stunt's-worth of function they grant.

3:21 AM

Makes sense. I guess you can give extra for free as long as they are significant enough for the story. The example they have for that is the Kingdom

A stunt's-worth of function is roughly "what you could do with a Fate Point." If it's always on, it's in a very localized context (+2 when using X skill in Y setting). If it's a once-per-session thing, it should have a much broader application (break a particular rule one per session).

@MrJinPengyou Yeah, especially if every player gets roughly the same amount of function out of it.

If you run a Fate Game about hackers plugging into the Matrix, give them all an "I know it's not real" extra for free.

But if you run a Fate game about people who live in the Matrix, "I know it's not real" should be costly because it's not something every PC is assumed to have.

If everyone's got Force powers, that positions Force powers as less significant to any one PC.

As an example: Luke spends a lot of his screen time learning about the Force and how to wield it. His ability to use the Force is central to his character arc.

By contrast, Anakin spends very little screen time learning about the Force. His character arc is not related to his proficiency with the Force, despite one of his major character elements being that he's a Jedi student.

Luke would probably have to spend a lot more Refresh on that Force proficiency, because he's surrounded by non-Force-adepts and so it's what makes him special.

Anakin is surrounded by Force-users, so it's not what makes him stand out and Fate won't make him spend resources to do what everyone else can also do.

Fascinating. Is this actually in the rules, or the result of digesting them for a while?

3:37 AM

> By nature, extras tend to steal a lot of focus when they’re introduced—gamers have an inveterate attraction to whiz-bang cool options, so you should expect them to get a lot of attention by default. When you’re talking out options for extras, make sure you’re prepared for the elements you choose to become a major focus in your game.

In particular, consider these points:
- Does the extra influence the story, and if so, how?
- Does the extra let you do things that no other skill lets you do?
- Does the extra make your existing skills more useful or powerful?
- How would you describe the use of the extra?
This is an important step because it may reveal that the proposed extra doesn’t actually contribute as much as you thought, which allows you to either add more stuff or remove it from consideration.

@Magician So yeah, pretty much right there in the rules.

I'm not seeing where it says the cost of using extra depends on the context of the game, though.

One moment.

Force would qualify for that list for both Luke and Anakin.

Hmm. I'm having trouble tracking that specific bit down.

Okay, I may be extrapolating from the repeatedly-mentioned idea that "if you don’t want players to choose between having extras and having the normal stuff available to a starting character, feel free to raise the number of slots all PCs get at character creation to accommodate extras."

Also in the Superpowers section it says "give every PC a number of additional refresh to buy powers with."

Oh, I like what you're saying about incorporating context of the game into character capabilities, I'm just curious.

3:45 AM

I feel like I've seen this written somewhere, but it may be my interpretation that if everybody's got the same extras, just handing them out for free makes sense.

And again, this is about PCs. We don't give two figs about what NPCs can do.

Right, because that's no longer a personal plot point.

It doesn't matter if your party is composed of the only people in the world who can use telekinesis; what matters is if everyone in your party can.

afk ~10m

@Magician It's a weird thing to think about in relation to D&D.

If you reverse-engineer character capability in D&D in order to discover the game's context, you get a very different game than the one on the package.

@BESW Unpack that statement a bit, please.

@AlexP Start with the Fate-like assumption that the cost and complexity of a character's capabilities are proportional to how much they make him unique and influence his story, and apply that to D&D character classes.

You get very strange results.

Compare the cost/complexity of a druid, a wizard, and a cleric.

4:01 AM

Well, to start with D&D characters don't have personal story. They have party story of shit happening to them, typically.

I dunno. Spells are a huge part of the book and any character that uses them. And they are basically the biggest thing in play.

@Magician In a D&D context, "influence the story" is roughly equivalent to "beat things up."

That's not quite "unique" but it does tend to be 1-2 characters in a party.

But, for example, look at the druid.

The wizard has the most rules text. And is the most important. Where's the disconnect? :D

4:03 AM

@AlexP I think there's much less disconnect between the game as played and the analysis as I propose it.

But I think we all know that 3.5 has done its damndest to insist the wizard isn't the most important.

Which is why I said "you get a very different game than the one on the package."

But back to the druid and consider story/flavor.

Oh, the back of any mainstream game book is lies.

Sometimes in the weirdest random ways.

@AlexP And the interviews, and the essays, and the magazines, and the flavor, and the novels, and the adventures...

The druid's got a lot of flavor features: nature sense, woodland stride, trackless step, resist nature's lure.

These have nothing to do with 3.5's primary goals as achieved through analysis: influence the story by beating things up.

They have a lot to do with non-combat story influence.

The woodland classes tend to have the most non-combat stuff.

Now compare that with the ranger, who has almost the exact same flavor as the druid: spellcasting wilderness expert friend to the animals.

I think it's because their combat stuff isn't obviously woodland.

4:08 AM

The ranger's story, as deduced by looking at his cost/complexity, is vastly different from the druid's.

And now look at the poor fighter, whose cost is vast and whose complexity is on par with the sorcerer's.

"Cost is vast?"

@AlexP The fighter's given up a lot for those every-even-level feats.

He's given up skill points and class skills, a good save progression, spellcasting, and a handful of other features.

Most classes have more than the fighter does, so what does he value so highly that he'll sacrifice those things?

In terms of "resources" that the class gives you, the fighter's spent a lot of resources for very little in return.

So have the paladin and the ranger.

Right. Fighter has no utility. He only beats people up. But everyone beats people up.

And the monk, really.

4:14 AM

But everyone beats people up better than he does. [glances around for KRyan]

Shhhh

Basically his bonus feats are worth about as much as the other non-caster core classes' special abilities that are kinda like feats.

So remember, we're looking at this in terms of spending resources to make you unique and able to influence the story.

So, fighter vs. paladin, for instance.

The paladin gets a horse that isn't useless.

The fighter's resources don't grant him anything that makes him unique, and they don't make him able to influence the story in any way that others couldn't do as well if not better.

4:15 AM

The fighter gets the ability to both Great Cleave and Whirlwind Attack, hwereas the paladin or barbarian have to choose one or hte other, basically

In which case I think your definition of influencing the story in D&D is not very useful. "Beat people up in a unique fashion or solve problems in other ways".

I'd say overall being able to stack up a bunch of combat feats in interesting ways is abut as unique as most of the other non-casters.

@Magician It's a problem. D&D wants to tell stories but only hands out non-violent storytelling tools erratically.

What is a monk or a paladin or a ranger if not a pre-customized "bunch of feats guy," really?

Damnit, I just flagged a question erroneously.

Hit the wrong button.

4:18 AM

@AlexP So each of them can beat people up (to some extent). If they couldn't, they would not be viable at all. But that doesn't make them unique or interesting. Monks, in addition to their flavor of beating people up, get to jump around and not age. Paladins get to heal people and be moralistic.

@BESW I hate the one-click things in web. I've favorited or even starred quite a few things on accident.

@Magician Counterclaim: none of those aspects make the characters especially interesting. And they certainly don't make them unique.

@AlexP Ok, monk is a strange case, lets leave him for a moment. But paladin certainly stands out in a party of non-paladins.

Which, btw, is barely supported by mechanics - another interesting quirk.

Paladins mostly stand out because of a rule that says you have to play them in a way that you really can't play any other class without getting the group to tell you to stop it. :D

Which is not even a rule! But people still do it.

Paladin doesn't care for a mount. Paladin rides in on his own plot, and sneers at people from his moral plot high ground.

Procedures and advice in the game text are just as powerful as hard-and-fast rules statements.

Both pale in comparison to "how you're supposed to do it" oral tradition cobbled together from a few magazine articles, a bad fantasy novel or two, and playing once with your older sibling five years ago.

4:26 AM

This talk made me realize something. Fighters are the humans of fantasy.

Well, that's kinda the original design of the fighting-man.

@AlexP You've just described D&D mythos, yes :)

@Magician Well, in the fantasy genres where humans aren't Special Snowflakes or Rampaging Savages.

He is the basic fighty guy.

He is very much the default character.

Right. Elves and dwarves have personalities and even plots basically in-built. You pick a human if you want to play something else.

4:27 AM

IIRC, all your Chainmail units who don't have special rules are fighting-mans.

To a lesser extent it goes for classes, too. Paladins, duh. Wizards have a master who taught them, and spell books they want, and familiar they care about. Rogues are cleptomaniacs. Bards sing in taverns. Fighters... Do whatever.

@Magician Elves and dwarves and hobbits as classes make sense in the Fate-like pattern BESW was applying previously.

If your class is your One Big Thing, of course being an immortal pointy-eared dude is a class.

(note that this isn't a design I endorse or care for)

That's an interesting point.

In both 3.5 and 4e, who you are is pretty significant at early levels because you don't have much else going for you. But as you level up, what you do quickly overshadows who you are.

@BESW That's kind of appealing.

I think there's some kind of free-will metaphor going on there.

4:32 AM

As a message.

Hmmmm. Worth pondering.

(Less appealing: the way level is also associated with wealth.)

Heck, 3.5 even has the PrC equivalent of race-change surgery.

user61230

@AlexP That can appeal to a certain type of player.

user61230

I don't think it would actually be uncommon for that to appeal to people. It's, in effect, saying that your work leads to wealth.

4:34 AM

@Emracool "Randian philosophy and economics in D&D" thesis. Someone get on that.

@BESW Probably been done 100 times?

Well, high-level people are objectively better, hence their high level.

But, ugh, no.

That's how you get to the king being level 16, because it feels wrong for him to be level 5.

A PC chooses, an NPC obeys!

user61230

(I'm going to try playing devil's advocate for 3.5e for a while. I'll probably be torn to shreds for it.)

4:36 AM

And nearly everyone in a position of power and authority is a badass on a personal level.

Pope sneaks out of the Vatican to fight crime with two-fisted fury, &c.

user61230

I think this goes back to @BESW's point about who you are vs. what you do; the king is level 3 because the king doesn't do much.

@Emracool RP XP is deliberately hard-capped in 3.5.

The king can be level 3, if he has a level 15 bodyguard

The level 3 king is ineffectual and undeserving.

@Magician Which highlights that the real reason the king has to be level 15 is to keep the PCs from killing him.

4:37 AM

Absolutely :D

More importantly, it's yet another clash of setting and system. System produces not a faux-medieval magic land, but antique world where king is a great hero.

user61230

Assuming one's king is a hero for their deeds in war.

@Emracool No, not really.

user61230

How so?

I think I'm gonna bow out of this conversation. Dissecting D&D this much hurts my head. I'd rather just kill the tropes with fire and get better ones from the corner store.

A king in that kind of society is always a hero because he must be. If he is not great in battle, he is a great spiritual leader, a great diplomat, or at least a great administrator.

Kings have the blessing of the gods, and there must be a reason for that.

user61230

4:40 AM

That reason doesn't necessarily have to mean the king is high-leveled.

Not saying that.

@BESW Ooh, going down that path... Actually justifies the Evil is Ugly trope.

@Magician D&D has a lot of amusingly disturbing extrapolations, doesn't it?

user61230

Again, though, a king does not necessarily have to be high level to have these qualities.

@Emracool Depends on the system. "A great diplomat" in D&D terms is a combination of high Charisma, skill focus, and lots of skill ranks. Skill ranks are tied to level. Ergo...

4:44 AM

In order for anyone to be objectively "heroic" at anything, they must be high level, which means they likely have a lot of blood on their hands.

@BESW It's a thought I've toyed with for a while. It's not that ugly people are evil, it's that their evil nature makes them ugly.

@Magician I think Hickman (or maybe Weiss?) did that rather didactically once.

(which is fine in a world where magic transforms people, not at all when you look at it from our world's perspective)

user61230

Burning Wheel's Corruption plays directly off this trope.

@BESW Time to dust off that quote of Laura Hickman making super-awkward jokes about gully dwarves?

4:46 AM

Then again, murder and robbery are the name of the game in D&D. So applying modern sensitivities to it is entirely counter-productive.

Aaanyway. Circling back to elves and dwarves. They have their own default culture, behavior patterns, etc. A new setting might think to change them. "We have sea-faring dwarves, woo". But humans are frequently left to their own bland devices.

@Magician At the same time, humans are often the only ones who don't have monoculture.

@Magician I always felt that dwarves would the first to develop submarine technology.

This line of thought is also feeding off various conversations on racism (speciesism) in fantasy. How culture is the important part here, not race.

@Magician I disagree with this part. D&D as I've encountered it is very modern. The characters aren't restricted by modern society, but they tend to have modern sensibilities. And really the stories are much more reminiscent of pulps or Westerns than medieval societies.

@AlexP Yeah, because dwarves are defined by their dwarfiness, whereas humans get to be different.

Picking a human is often a choice of "I don't want to deal with your setting or your pre-defined plots, I have this idea for a character that has nothing to do with your stuff."

4:53 AM

@Magician Well, by that same token, picking a dwarf is often "Screw it, I just want to drink and be Fake Scottish."

So, vague idea. Screw racial mono-cultures, screw human non-cultures. Both are cheap outs.

@AlexP I've had that player. Twice.

Neither is an interesting character choice. A setting should have cultures that force you to be a part of it. These have little to do with race.

It's one reason all my dwarves are now Russian (with Imperial and Soviet factions).

@Magician D&D would argue with that, using strange and convoluted self-contradicting discussions about how the long life of elves defines their culture.

@Magician Well, okay, what is the point of different character stocks (I'm going to avoid race because, well, "race" is a big real-world term) in a setting?

4:58 AM

@AlexP D&D is a mess. It is anachronistic medieval world blended with conventional murderhoboing as an accepted lifestyle.

@BESW Actually, some of the talk about dwarfishness as culture comes from their early discussions of Next.

Yeah, but that's D&D.

You don't have to carry that forward or even riff on it.

@Magician It simultaneously ignores the deep cultural influence of a universally devout populace while cramming the trappings of religion into every nook and cranny.

You can do the all-the-fantasy-"races"-mix-together thing, but that's really more of a reaction to D&D than its own thing.

But then you'll also see authors like Meiville playing up the way physiology shapes mindset and culture.

@AlexP A character stock, in addition to the way they look and whatnot) might provide them with a modifier to their stats, but that's about it, methinks. In terms of D&D, feats and paragon paths and the rest would be cultural.

(all of these are malformed thoughts rather than finished ideas)

@Magician Isn't that just the 4e status quo?

5:03 AM

@AlexP Nope. There are plenty of race-specific things, and nothing to do with culture.

4e is special in this regard. Your race and class, combined, determine a bunch of feats you can take that modify your abilities based on this combination. So out of thousands of feats you actually have access to much fewer.

@AlexP Which book would that be?

@Magician The City & the City, certainly.

Though I think the queen of interesting explorations of biological determinism is James Tiptree Jr. Mostly for "Love is the Plan The Plan is Death"

Bottom line. Things I don't like: a fantasy race character often doesn't have a personality beyond "fantasy race". A human character is a safe choice. Both are boring.

@AlexP I'll have to check it out. I've only read his Kraken.

@Magician It's vampires and mosquito people and such.

@Magician I am reminded of SG-1's approach to "race."

The vast majority of PCs are expected to be human, so instead of "race" you get "speciality." You get stat mods based on whether you're a marine, a soldier, or a contract scientist.

However (and this goes back to the "fantasy race" problem) the instant you roll a non-human PC you're back to "defined by race and class."

You don't get "scientist aliens" and "scientist humans," you get "aliens with a science-specialty class" and "scientist humans with a science-specialty class."

Species is, effectively, treated as another professional-training background.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

5:49 AM

I remember the first time I played *A*D&D. The concept of playing a dwarf cleric or halfling wizard was astounding.

@Magician I remember reading a fantasy RPG, about 15 years ago, whose back-cover pitch was "No elves!", but I thought that the more radical choice made there was "no humans".

Lots of slightly-tweaked fantasy races and tropes, but the closest thing to plain humans were green skinned. The goal was, explicitly, to force you to view things outside of their tropes.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan That's exactly my point, yeah.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

I don't think I can take even another grumpy dwarf character, even if in a subverted and self-aware manner.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

6:10 AM

As part of our attempts to stop glossing over various Ars Magica rules just because we can't remember them, our current SG made this. scribd.com/doc/189038054/Ars-Magica-Folio-Formularum

We're going to print it out on A3 and laminate it.

eeek, my eyes

Is this 5e?

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Yes.

The colors are cartoonish, yes.

Cool. This may come in handy, thank you!

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

My pleasure. We'll start using it soon too.

Eeek, gotta go, not to miss the bus.

Bye!

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

6:26 AM

Once they started having wifi on some buses, the concept of a wifi-less bus suddenly became so depressing.

1 hour later…

user61230

7:53 AM

Does anyone want/need maps made for a campaign? I'm learning how to create maps and would be happy to do so.

user61230

With that said, these may not be the best of maps, but they will hopefully still help. If they're just total crap, though, don't feel obligated to use them.

Ooh, tempting.

user61230

8:18 AM

(The offer extends to anyone people know who might want maps)

user61230

(Offer limited by availability of my sanity)

user61230

Disclaimer: Offer valid while sanity lasts.

Heheh.

I don't have any need for maps (my campaigns are currently on hold anyway), but if what you really want is practice making maps from text-based ideas I could give you some.

Are you talking about encounter maps, town/city maps, nation maps, region maps, world maps?

user61230

All except the first.

user61230

I mean, I can make maps? But it is helpful to have maps from games that are actually played, as those give experience in not just what is cool but what is needed.

8:29 AM

What about maps I wish I'd had for previous campaigns? [grin]

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

@Emracool I refuse to use any maps made by sane people.

They always tend to be so linear and euclidean and sane.

user61230

@Avner Oh, I'll still be making maps once the offer expires. They just might not be the maps you expect...

user61230

@BESW That is a possibility, indeed!

@Emracool You know, it'd be really cool to have an actual map of the continent from my last college campaign.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

@Emracool They might not be the maps I need, but they'll be the maps I deserve.

8:34 AM

@Emracool Perfect for post-Elder-God-apocalypse games!

user61230

The map will look like tentacles of horrific terror and destruction, decorated with the occasional spruce. I may even include a small hamlet, overlooking the ocean, waiting for sunset when they will be stripped of their souls and fed to the demon-lord Benziaten.

user61230

@BESW On a more sane (snort) note, that would be interesting. We shall see tomorrow; works?

@Emracool A quick Google reveals that the Apocalypse is ruled by the iron fist of Seattle-based media companies.

@Emracool Hooray!

user61230

> BESW: Hooray, feeding souls to the demon-lord!

On a different subject, I can't figure out if this or this is the better gif.

user61230

8:42 AM

I want stars in mobile chat.

@CapDroid Hi!

@BESW hey

What brings you to this peculiar corner of SE?

@BESW The first is delightful. The second is creepifying. I lean towards creepifying, myself.

@BESW just seen general chat and my hand can't control to click :P

8:47 AM

@CapDroid Glad to have you. Are you familiar with tabletop RPGs, like D&D?

That's ostensibly our topic, though as you can see we go off-topic quite happily.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

@BESW It's not that we go off-topic. as much as our topic tends to expand, willy-nilly, to swallow - nay, devour - new issues, then returns to its regular torpor.

@BESW little bit familiar ... :(

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan You mean, we're the Smooze?

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

@BESW The room is the Smooze. Each of us is just one of those creepy purple faces that make up the flow.

4

Ahah.

I think this would be a great RFS campaign setting:

user image

9:31 AM

Hello there !

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

Hey-ho.

9:47 AM

Hey.

What's new?

10:24 AM

Tweets to Campaign By thinks the World of Fiction is leaking.

2

A ring has been found on the Circle line. Gold, with a strange runic inscription. Do not try and claim it. We're keeping it. We wants it...

Tweeted by TlfTravelAlerts on December 4, 2013 at 8:54 AM

1 hour later…

11:33 AM

Ah, a nice gimme question I can answer even though I've never played the system.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

And I got a Civic Duty badger for upvoting you.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan The Beneficent Badger smiles upon you.

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I added a comment to my answer about the monk case specifically.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

11:56 AM

I'm sure that KRyan will gladly expound on how the monk is so underpowered and broken to begin with that a multi-hour Mage Armor isn't enough to save it.

I have no interest in that argument.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

I'm with you. I've given up on reading many of his answers because they all refer to some abstract mathematical balance between classes that are very easy to adjust to in actual play. They apply only to spherical monks in a vacuum.

Indeed. He's absolutely right about monks as they exist on paper. His numbers are accurate, his models check out.

The problem comes in when he tries to insist that this paper monk reflects some "common experience" and that any anecdotal evidence on conflict with his numbers is an aberration.

There is no lowest common denominator for D&D, no "common experience," and insisting that there is will only ever result in telling people they're "playing it wrong."

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

On a vaguely related tangent: The Israeli Roleplaying Society, of which I was a founding member way back in the day but haven't been active in for years, has decided that in order to futher their agenda of raising awareness of RPGs and increasing their mainstream adoption, they have to "standardize" around a single system, so as to present a united front .

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan ....

I am so, so sorry.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

12:11 PM

I dislike that notion and disagree with it, even though I understand where they're coming from.

Of course, in their infinite wisdom, they've chosen D&D5 as that system of choice - because only D&D has enough marketshare and brand recognition, and D&D4 will soon be unsupported.

Once the original premise is accepted, that's a reasonable conclusion.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

The problem is that WotC's terms of use forbid using D&D5 yet, without an official WotC representative present.

(That is, in conventions, and so forth)

@Tynam Greetings.

Hi there.

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@Tynam Hi!

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

12:15 PM

I got thrown into this tangent because of the "There is no D&D" argument.

@BESW I starred it because it's extra funny without context.

Never a helpful argument. I feel your standardisation woes.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan It is one of the funniest gifs I have ever seen.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

@Tynam It doesn't affect me in any way. I haven't run a game at a con for years, and even if I'll feel like it, there will be non-D&D games in cons.

I would certainly hope so, yes.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

It's just that I feel it pigeonholes the hobby. I've spent my life telling people I play RPGs, and have them respond with "Ah, you mean D&D".

12:19 PM

I agree; it doesn't help for the whole hobby to be so publicly represented by one brand. Especially when it's a not-particularly-representative brand.

(Come to think of it, I sometimes have the same problem explaining Judaism...)

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan I will always treasure with fond flabbergastedness the time I told someone "Fate is a very different system from D&D" and she responded "You mean like Pathfinder!"

6

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

I wouldn't say it's not-particularly-representative. Like it or not, it's the most recognizable RPG by a very wide margin, and underlies a large chunk of the hobby, either as inspiration or something to not be.

@BESW You can tell Pathfinder is entirely different from D&D by the fact that it doesn't have the letters D and D in its name.

Two thousand mice dropped on Guam by parachute — to kill snakes

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

@RedRiderX Two thousand dead, poisoned mice.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Yes.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

12:22 PM

Is that NBC News or the Book of Exodus?

I wouldn't think they would be very good at killing snakes otherwise.

Oh, sure, I didn't mean that it's especially unrepresentative either. But D&D comes with its own subcultural tropes and design theories that almost everything else has left behind, so in some ways it's a worst-possible-example, despite it's fundamental influence.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

BESW, were you recently ravaged by a rain of rodents?

PC planning rule number 327: Killing snakes by poisoning mice never works.

Heh.

12:24 PM

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan It was only on the military base.

I'm just hoping it kills some of the cats, too.

Feral cats are a much bigger problem than brown tree snakes these days.

I bet. More aggressive, for a start.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

@BESW It's like you're trying to get us to believe Guam is a benighted jungle far from civilization.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Hey, we don't have raccoons pawing through the garbage.

Cities are just as infested as benighted jungles.

...We have pigs going through the garbage.

Or at least, we did where I grew up down south, which actually was pretty jungley. Now that I'm in Toto there aren't wild boars, or stray cows, or land crabs trying to get to the ocean to spawn and getting caught in the carport instead...

Somebody please welcome this guy and ask him to split that into two questions? I'm busy editing in an armor-bonus-stacking example on my answer to that other question.

On it.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

I think the dnd4e and dungeons-and-dragons tags should be removed. This isn't a system question at all.

12:36 PM

True.

And can someone please double-check my math and logic on the example here?

I thought that the enhancement bonus was considered part of the armor bonus.

"Since enhancement bonuses to armor or natural armor effectively increase the armor or natural armor's bonus to AC, they don't apply against touch attacks," says the SRD.

(Probably mistaken, though.)

So did I!

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

@Metool I did, too, but the quotes seem rather persuasive.

But I always double-check this stuff when I'm talking Pathfinder.

Avner Shahar-Kashtan

12:49 PM

@BESW Is this from the PFSRD? You should link to it, probably.

Oh, Pathfinder?

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Adding them now.

Nevermindme.

d20srd has the exact same paragraph verbatim.

As what I posted?

12:53 PM

As the paragraph I've got quoted in my answer.

Ah, righto.

Your quote says "effectively," not "actually," and is really more of a lame attempt to give a balance-based mechanic an air of simulation-y justification, rather than an actual mechanical statement.

(Yes, I am a little judgey.)

It's a good mechanic, designed to give casters a leg up in the AC/attack arms race.

But making flavor-based declarations to make it seem like a simulation-based choice, which are in blatant contradiction with other rational balance-based mechanics? Not so good.

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