I find large swaths of the RPG.SE community to be passive-aggressive, judgmental, and ill-informed about the topics on which they hold forth. It makes dealing peaceably with them difficult.
@Phil The feeling-accurate way of putting it involves profane curses in languages not uttered since the dark days before Man, when gods and demons contended with each other over the fates of worlds and the shadow of evil stretched long and dark over the loom of fate.
@Phil See, it goes beyond that. There's also the, "You're playing it wrong," and "real roleplayers don't do X" that I encounter constantly. There's a lot of people here perfectly willing to dump on someone for, say, caring about the rules or providing a RAW answer to a mechanics question.
Which is stupidity in the highest degree. The answer is perfectly freakin' valid. I asked a question that still hasn't really been answered to my satisfaction because 2/3 of the answerers chose to give me shit about caring instead of actually addressing the question.
Myx in particular should've known better. The question was tagged RAW. He spent the entire answer being passive-aggressive and condescending about wanting a RAW answer.
But I don't have the time or energy to go through the report process on a mod on this site. I've got a life, I've got my own problems, I can't clean up the Stack's mess.
@Phil I didn't start an argument. I asked a question about the rules
They both tend to be strongly anti-communicative. The archetype of the Good GM is that they just know what's best for "their" game and all the players.
Also, it reminds me of the descriptions on my DVR that are clearly written by someone who doesn't know what the shows are about. Sometimes it'll name one-off characters in the description like they're part of the main cast. Sometimes it'll be like, "Buffy and Gile [sic] investigate a vampire problem in Sunnyvale [sic]."
@BESW Exactly. I think the main reason I want to avoid that, beyond just how it limits who you can play with (I don't mind that necessarily -- you could call it "intimacy") is the way it makes it hard to change what you're doing. Which is important if you don't always want to play the same thing the same way.
Somewhat relatedly... We're staring up a new Eclipse Phase campaign. New system, new setting, new tone (hopefully), mostly old players. And it's a delight, to have a group of mature roleplayers. It's also great that we're friends, and talk about the game throughout the week.
So despite being very used to my group and their preferences, I still discuss things with them. In fact, more so than I would have before.
I'm also trying to give them some narrative control by letting them answer plot-related questions. We've had a single intro game so far, and with a single such answer they've created the first major story arc. It's amazing.
The game was simple: they're on a nomadic spaceship fleet (called scum swarm), and an unknown object collides with their ship. Impact, hull ruptures, fires, etc. A bit of action to get things going. The question was: what was the missile?
I had a few possibilities in mind: a kinetic strike launched against Luna that they've accidentally intercepted; an inter-ship rivalry; a subverted ship attacking the swarm. Nope. It was, apparently, an escape pod. With a dead Factor inside. Factors being the only alien species humanity had encountered, their ship hidden somewhere in the outer Solar system.
A human escape pod with a dead Factor. And the wheels start spinning.
It's likely escaped from a black research facility. Everyone wants its body. Everyone wants to know where it came from. But no one wants Factors to find out.
And how did they even get this body in the first place? And etc. and etc.
@Lord_Gareth And that is why I'm letting players have their say :)
So now the scum fleet is auctioning off the Factor's body to hypercorps, rationalizing that there's no way they could keep it secret, and using semi-transparency as defence. And PCs are given the black box from the escape pod. Maybe. Unless it's a decoy. They are to deliver it to a contact that'll decipher it. If they choose to trust them. If they choose not to decipher the encryption themselves.
And of course people will figure out they have it. And of course hypercorps won't play fair. And of course the original owners of the body would come knocking. And half the Solar system is about to have a very quiet war over this thing.
All because of a single question I asked my players.
How does one conceal a CE personality within a LG or at least LN character? As in -- all divinations find Hyde but fail to properly link the actions (and proper person) to Jekyll
Yes, as it currently seems it would all be done by fiat and that just seems... messy. I like to skirt mechanics barely but remain within them as much as possible.
@LitheOhm Handwavy in-fiction thing: well, divination operates on auras, souls, all kinds of intangibles like that, right?
Is the J/H character something like two souls in one body?
I wouldn't focus on hiding Hyde perfectly. Just enough to make the normal pattern of detection not work. "You have to know what to look for" kind of thing.
If you need something thorough, I suggest that the curse carries with it an automatic nondetection spell which affects whichever personality is not dominant.
Otherwise, simply treating Jekyll and Hyde as separate personalities with separate names and separate faces should work--only divination which specifically targets the physical body would work, and then it would probably seem to have backfired.
Or, to be really weird, Jekyll is always dominant in divination because he's the "real" personality and Hyde isn't actually a person.
That would justify attempts to divine Hyde as a person would get results of "We're sorry, the person you're attempting to divine does not exist."
You could potentially justify some really wigged-out contradictions.
Did Jekyll do this? -No. Who did this? -Hyde. Who is Hyde? -No one. No one did this? -No.
But I've gotta say, hanging the continuation of your mystery on a group of players failing a game of 20 Questions is a good way to get your campaign blown early.
ahh, there's even one of those in Elder Evils as a "sign" if I'm not mistaken. The Hulks of Zoretha have the blood moon sign but it could just as easily be switched
In Elder Evils, when the end is nearer there's a sign all around the world (eventually) which shows that something's not quite right. Conjuration spells malfunction, people wake up in a rage barbarian style, creatures heal unnaturally and harmfully quick, etc.
Refluff however you like, of course, but it could either be an omen or the cult could have deliberately timed their ritual to coincide with the rain so that there's less potential for interference.
Not fail, that'd be the realm of pure fiat. I'd rather make it difficult. Ideally, at some point down the road, they would have more information and the divinations could be useful (ie. "is Jekyll a murderer" or whatever)
I saw something strange in the show the doctor had gotten river songs regenerations we don't know if she had a full set of regenerations since she's only part time lord but if she did there's eight regenarations that have just magically disipeared yeah he might not be able to use regenarations go...
The more I study Old Who and the extent to which they introduced each cool new idea in the vaguest, most open-to-interpretation way possible, the more I admire their commitment to not committing anything to canon.
[reads a line or two of post. already has trouble following. hits ctrl+f, enters only a single period in search box, enables 'highlight all', finds no highlights in the entire post. gives up]
Ok, so the player who doesn't like to play 4e suddenly had fun yesterday. Might be because I rolled all the d20s for his attacks, might be because he single-handedly killed (or at least dealt the final blow to) all the enemies in one encounter with a staff-enlarged 7x7 area of "everybody, stay out of this for one turn". Wizards. I hate 'em.
so, 3.pf question. is there any feat/ability to reduce the load time of a sling, RAW? Rapid Reload (PF) mentions firearms as well as crossbows, but not specifically slings.
@waxeagle I've used a trackball before that was pretty comfy. Nowadays I use mice, though. And lots of keyboard shortcuts. (Not very useful as a statement about RSI, I realize.)
H.P Lovecraft wrote extensively about what we now call 'cosmic horror', a mix of elder beings, forgotten gods, and alien beings. All these beings have one thing in common : their chaotic nature.
It seems curious do me that a writer like Lovecraft would refer to these 'chaotic' beings as 'cos...
Yes, but firing the GM because he couldn't read your mind and figure out how much of the system's overemphasis on math you wanted him to ignore for you?
I'm guessing there isn't enough information about the session
Did they wait for someone to finish calculating the damage from an exploding star via physical estimates and translate that into D&D terms, or was it typical "Roll to hit, roll damage"?
@RedRiderX On the one hand, that's very cool. On the other hand, I generally prefer Doctors whose actors didn't care about the show before they got the part.
I used to have a mental list, but I can't find that file drawer right now.
[starts Googling]
Ah, yes, Davison was a fan.
> I was probably the first Doctor who grew up watching Doctor Who. [...] I grew up watching it and it’s very weird to be offered a part that you’ve been watching as a fan. I felt young, the original Doctors were quite old and in my head that was a fixed thing, so I thought 'am I too young?'
He also shares a bit about watching the very first episode and being drawn in by its mystery.
Colin Baker had been on the show previously, but doesn't seem to have been a fan: he was given tapes of previous Doctors in order to familiarise himself with the character.
H.P Lovecraft wrote extensively about what we now call 'cosmic horror', a mix of elder beings, forgotten gods, and alien beings. All these beings have one thing in common : their chaotic nature.
It seems curious do me that a writer like Lovecraft would refer to these 'chaotic' beings as 'cos...
