TRPG General Chat

Miniman

12:22 AM

Wow, first time having a site privilege has been a bad thing.

Tritium21

@Miniman ????

Miniman

There's an edit I wanted to suggest but wasn't certain of, but my edits are applied instantly.

Tritium21

ahh

Joshua Aslan Smith

@besw its like new who is trying to court me or something with these capaldi images

3

@Miniman shop it here

or just do it

like the nike swoosh says

Miniman

@JoshuaAslanSmith Eh, I commented it

doppelgreener

12:32 AM

@Miniman was that the morals/mortals edit?

Miniman

@doppelgreener Yep, thanks for that

doppelgreener

FWIW I think leaving it as a comment was a good call, suggested edits would not have guaranteed the people who reviewed it knew any better.

I was just making another potentially risky edit, so I decided to make that one at the same time.

in other situations I'd do the same: leave a "did you mean to say that, or this?" comment

Adeptus

@JoshuaAslanSmith Yes, I've noticed a few more "classic Who" references this season

doppelgreener

@JoshuaAslanSmith due to circumstances I actually wound up not seeing the last two DW episodes... and... I think I'm gonna leave it that way. And maybe stop watching for now.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I havent watched it since the fezs' are cool episode

river song killed new who for me completely, her character emphasized everything I disliked

doppelgreener

12:45 AM

@JoshuaAslanSmith ....... there are a lot of people who wouldn't feel very differently

Joshua Aslan Smith

post chris E there were always issues I had, but yeah amy pond and river storylines yeah

doppelgreener

the writing cast's handling of her reached mediocre a couple of her stories in, and then started just getting bad and worse in ways.

Adeptus

I like River. Some of her character development has been a little... questionable... but generally she's an interesting character

doppelgreener

I kinda like her character in isolation, but the way she has been utilised in stories has been not great

it did not help that at the time, Moffat had not yet quite learned how to give women separate distinct personalities

(leading to that phenomenon BESW remarked on at the time: every time a Strong Female Character appeared in Doctor Who, there'd be someone on Scifi.SE asking "is this character River Song?")

Miniman

@doppelgreener Clara is River Song, right?

5

Adeptus

12:58 AM

@Miniman that would be Impossible

doppelgreener

cool thing I have learned about in Ruby: the ! symbol.

# given this statement
foo = "slartibartfast"

# these two lines are identical
foo = foo.capitalize
foo.capitalize!

@Miniman Every strong female character could reasonably be River Song

I thought the lady who ran the organisation that kidnapped her - the one with the eyepatch - was River Song.

Just a slightly older version of her.

Tritium21

@doppelgreener This is...kinda the reason Ruby makes me nervous

@doppelgreener Lots of sugar for implicitly mutating state.

doppelgreener

@Tritium21 Whyso? (background, I am experienced with programming but new enough to Ruby I have just covered most of my knowledge on it in one code snippet)

@Tritium21 That looks pretty explicit though!

Tritium21

@doppelgreener Its sugar coating a mutation of the foo object (a string, it looks in context... A mutable string...) Ruby has a design philosophy I do not like. Mutation in place makes me really nervous.

Adeptus

Does ! also have the same use as in C?
!true == false
true != false

@Tritium21 How do you feel about C#? foo += 1

Tritium21

1:13 AM

@Adeptus Its better than foo++ or the confusing ++foo. But at least spam += eggs is less greating

doppelgreener

@Adeptus probably, though I haven't gotten that far through the lessons

Tritium21

@Adeptus Its a style preference

doppelgreener

@Tritium21 ok; personally I don't mind it since the meaning is clear. (I am not yet clear however if foo.capitalize! - it is a string - reassigns to the foo variable, or changes the internals of the foo object, or if it depends on the object itself.)

Tritium21

@doppelgreener Its ruby, so it likely mutates the string object

doppelgreener

28

Q: Why did Matz choose to make Strings mutable by default in Ruby?

It's the reverse of this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/93091/why-cant-strings-be-mutable-in-java-and-net Was this choice made in Ruby only because operations (appends and such) are efficient on mutable strings, or was there some other reason? (If it's only efficiency, that would ...

KRyan

1:19 AM

threw down a bit of a gauntlet re: D&D lies to you

doppelgreener

@Tritium21 oh hey, you're right

KRyan

2

A: How to reward players that come prepared for non-combat, non-RP situations? I.e., real life

My experience is that worrying about such things only detracts from the quality of the game Dungeons and Dragons is pretty much about dungeon-delving and dragon-slaying. It goes a little beyond that, but only a little. Unfortunately, it also lies to you and claims to do much more than that. Ever...

be interested in chat's reaction/feedback/criticism

Tritium21

My biggest issue with ruby, though, is the culture of monkeypatching the standard library

doppelgreener

@KRyan good work too; it is an excellent gauntlet to throw down and your answer was well written and expressed

@Tritium21 i can see how that might become problematic

@KRyan personally I am on a similar wavelength: the D&D manual does fill itself up with items that are effectively unsupported and have their existence unacknowledged, beyond the line that says how much they cost and the paragraph that describes them (if there is one)

KRyan

@doppelgreener exactly

and I feel (fairly strongly) that much of the "old-school" mindset, criticism of 4e, demand for the return of many of these unsupported things in 5e, comes solely from believing strongly in these lies and requiring that the lies be continued in order to “count” as D&D.

a great deal of 4e criticism seems to come down to "other editions of D&D lied to me and said they did these things; 4e owns up to the fact that it doesn't do these things and tells me to figure it out, and I don't like that even though that's what I've always been doing."

doppelgreener

1:27 AM

@KRyan when I started with 4e, coming from the point of view of someone who had only played a few sessions each of other editions (BD&D, AD&D 2e, D&D 3.5e) one of my criticisms was: "Crafting is missing! This sucks!" until BESW and I talked about it and I wound up actually content that crafting was gone.

KRyan

@doppelgreener yeah, the other thing about 4e is that it has some restraint about stuff like that

doppelgreener

Instead I asked my players for wishlists, got a bit of response, and started dropping stuff they wanted.

but yeah that was my gist: there were cool systems in 3.5e that I was looking forward to interacting with, and they were no longer in 4e, and I did not like that (for a while)

I remember that for a while I thought it was silly 4e allowed spears to attack adjacent enemies, and wanted to house-rule that they could not do that; thankfully a week or two later it began to click for me - again, thanks to conversations here - that that was silly.

(that 4e was a different, more gamey beast, where stuff like that was fine because it was fun and trying to worry about what a real spear could do was pointless)

@KRyan I think you might also be speaking across a paradigm barrier

There's the group of gamers who think it's fun and cool to refill their 2gp waterskin and drink from it and so on: it's perfectly supported, what do you mean D&D is being deceptive that it supports this?

(It is fun and cool too! I just wouldn't necessarily call those items, and that kind of play, very well supported)

BESW

@doppelgreener Mummy on the Orient Express was actually pretty good!

doppelgreener

1:43 AM

@BESW Was that the most recent one?

BESW

Yup.

doppelgreener

Ok, I'll watch that one. \o/

BESW

And I liked Kill the Moon overall, but it did have some Unfortunate Implications which may or may not have been Entirely Unintentional or just clumsy attempts at Saying Things.

KRyan

@doppelgreener my argument is that D&D is fundamentally lying to those players and that it's not supported

BESW

So I can see how it'd go totally sour for some people.

KRyan

1:45 AM

it just wants those players' money too much to admit that

BESW

I look at it this way: D&D generally presents itself as a crunch-heavy mechanics-first system, but it's got pockets of intense bookkeeping which have an unusually small functional impact on the mechanics compared to the rest of the system.

KRyan

@BESW except it doesn't, at least in this case

BESW

We can extrapolate intent all day, but the fact is that the bookkeeping-to-mechanical-effect ratio is much much higher the further away we get from "epic combat."

KRyan

there is nothing that says your rations run out

or how often you need to eat/drink

or anything like that

there's just an item, sitting there

"Ration"

doppelgreener

it also is a game that has large pockets of gameplay where you go extremely mechanics-light, i.e. virtually every situation where you are not fighting things. The fact there are not worthwhile rules for setting up camp and so on, and that social interaction is extremely thin on the ground, makes it feel not all that unusual when there's very little to tell you what difference a waterskin and bedroll make either.

BESW

1:48 AM

Right, so you've got bookkeeping (cost, weight, encumbrance, etc) without mechanic effect (starvation, energy, etc).

Adeptus

@BESW Encumbrance does have an effect on combat and some skills. But most tables I've played at have mostly ignored it (unless someone's trying to carry ridiculous amounts)

BESW

@Adeptus Aye, but rarely a significant impact and really a tangential one: the object's existence imposes the same mechanical effect as a rock.

When your food's mechanical effect on gameplay can be likened to carrying a rock...

4

Adeptus

There are starvation rules

Not very realistic maybe... no mechanical effect until 1.5-2 days without water, or 3 days without food

BESW

@Adeptus The question in question is tagged 5e, though. I'm taking KRyan's word that it doesn't have starvation rules (yet; maybe the DMG?), but even in 3.5 the bare-bones nature of the starvation rules demonstrates that they aren't functional as a focus for gameplay.

doppelgreener

@Adeptus it's pretty realistic, unless you count someone as just having an off day

the idea of needing food and water every single day to remain 100% is very much a modern idea and a western idea (not exclusively, though)

other cultures or individuals have done fine skipping meals for a day or two occasionally, and these are heroic fantasy heroes

(mind you, doing that on a regular basis is gonna suck)

Adeptus

2:04 AM

I don't know about anyone else, but I experience what could be called "mechanical effects" of hunger in less than half a day. Penalties to concentration, (arguably) penalties to INT/WIS. Of course, I'm not an adventuring hero...

Speaking of which... lunchtime. BRB.

BESW

As someone who spends nineteen days a year going without food or drink for 12 hours each day, I can attest that it's rough if you're used to more frequent intake--but also that your body acclimates to the new paradigm relatively quickly.

doppelgreener

my brother had a diet for a while where he fasted every second day, and dealt with it pretty well and enjoyed it.

(not a weight loss diet, quite the opposite - it was a diet to aid in bulking up weight and muscle, and he had a workout schedule that coincided with various periods of it)

trogdor

2:20 AM

I have gone a day or a half a day without eating

generally it didn't have any physical effects on me, but it did mess with my concentration

I have also gone longer without eating while I was sick and had no appetite

generally around 3 days or so

and I didn't feel any different till my immune system had killed off whatever it was

even then, I technically felt better overall

so I can say from some amount of experience that it does seem to have something to do with how often you are used to eating.

Miniman

3:08 AM

@doppelgreener I liked that comment, but Faust disapproves.

Tritium21

The longest I have gone without food is 3 days, however, I was drinking high calorie fluids, so I don't think that counts

Ya know, The wizard Clarence Birdseye being in your setting solves most of the adventurer starvation problems

Adeptus

3:27 AM

@Tritium21 He's good with cold-based spells

Tritium21

Indeed

Tritium21

6:00 AM

Timestamps on every message, can we get that? srsly

Metool

@Tritium21 Yes, you can!

Tritium21

@Metool that is a preference somehere?

somewhere*

Metool

Gimme a moment to find the name of the script...

45

Q: SE Chat Modifications -- Keyboard navigation and commands for chat

Screenshot Use /command shortcuts to perform common chat tasks: See message history inline: Easily preview replied-to messages: And much, much more... About Legends tell of a prolific Meta Stack Overflow chatter who despised using their mouse above all things. In an effort to keep t...

script chat

Tritium21

Much better...

thank you

BESW

Courtesy of Netflix subtitles, an absolutely unterrifying monster: the lichenthrope!

Metool

6:13 AM

@BESW [note to self: lichanthrope]

Adeptus

6:33 AM

@BESW Saw some funny subtitles on Tron: Uprising...

> SOUND OF LASERS... PEW PEW

> SOUND OF HELICOPTER... FLAC FLAC

BESW

Well, sound effects are fun.

The TARDIS goes VWORP.

Wolverine goes SNIKT!.

Metool

6:50 AM

Is it bad that I guessed the answer to this riddle from the opening line, "I am the third from a sparkle bright"?

BESW

@Metool ...that'd be Rarity.

Metool

I don't think she's had thousands of millions of years to think, nor is she deep in the path of a cow's white drink.

doppelgreener

7:15 AM

@Metool ... goddamn that last clue XD

I know what it is

but that is a funny way to say it

>! do spoilers work in chat?

no they don't.

@BESW ... sounds like someone having an accident whilst trying to weaponise one of Doctor Light's technologies (@trogdor)

Metool

@doppelgreener Try hovering over this.

doppelgreener

@Metool [hmm](that doesn't work if the URL isn't valid) but i could leave a sneaky answer like this

Metool

Ah, right.

doppelgreener

i'm going to not leave a sneaky answer just yet :)

Metool

7:33 AM

@Metool "I thrive in both the day and night."

doppelgreener

What's the full riddle?

(Is there a link to it? Is it on Puzzling.SE?)

Metool

> I am the third from a sparkle bright,
I thrive throughout the day and night,
Deep in the path of a cows white drink,
I've had thousands of millions of years to think.
But one of my creatures is killing me,
And so the question I ask to thee,
Is who. Am. I?

(It's on The Thieves Guild.)

doppelgreener

7:57 AM

@Metool \o/ I got it right.

Metool

<Taveena> It was [third].
<Arkhlime> You mean [four].
<Arkhlime> [three] is fourth :P

doppelgreener

Some of these riddles are terrible.

398 has two statements which make no sense, 400 is... awful

395 is wrong (I pick a jar, especially on a cold day)

some of these seem ok

Metool

My personal favourite is 10.

> [Humans'] attitudes toward other races are thus a curious mix of exoticism and even fetishism, though usually with a very superficial level of understanding and appreciation of those cultures, alongside a deeply rooted arrogance that means most humans have a hard time regarding themselves as anything other than the default standard of society.

My my, Pathfinder.

doppelgreener

8:52 AM

@Metool Well, this is in a game where humans are smack-bang in the arena of "default" and "average", they're not wrong :D

all the half-species I know (i.e. not highly obscure ones) is half-human, and most humanoid races are slightly exceptional compared to humans in some way (rather than, say, humans being thoroughly exceptional, or outright terrifying)

"They're like humans but they're tall and pointy-eared and love nature." "They're like humans but they're short and love iron." "They're like humans but they have horns." "They're like humans but they're also dragons." "They're like humans but they're super tiny and like mechanics and trickery." "They're like humans except with black skin and they're evil." "They're like muscular humans except green and angry."

But personally I dislike the half-species thing. C'mon! Humans get the hots for other races, but they're not the only ones: members of other races get the hots for humans too, and it's kind of silly to think that if they might get interested in other races, humans are the only race to think they'd be interested in.

Metool

@doppelgreener "They're like humans except they're tall and pointy-eared and have black skin and they're evil," no?

doppelgreener

@Metool Yes that

BESW

Bankuei has some essays and links to more essays which explore the idea that in multi-humanoid fantasy "human" is usually a stand-in for "European expansionist colonial culture," with the other humanoids standing in for other cultures/groups.

Metool

@doppelgreener I think Bloodforge, and its predecessor Bastards and Bloodlines, play with that.

BESW

In that context, "half-species" becomes both more logical and more horrifying: historically the colonial culture doesn't care if you've got African and South American ancestry, it cares whether you've got Caucasian ancestry.

doppelgreener

9:00 AM

@Metool Oh good, at least there's something diving in there. \o/

@BESW That's true.

Meaning in terms of half-species; half-elf half-orcs have not really been important. Who cares about them! They've got nothing to do with us and it doesn't matter. But make it a half-elf half-human, or a half-orc half-human, then we're talking.

BESW

Right. Humans are the dominant culture in the setting, and therefore the important culture in the mechanics.

doppelgreener

(Speaking of, if I pick up an Orc mode for Fate H&S, it'll probably just be Orc rather than Half-Orc for those reasons. ^ Or I'll poke people in the mode's description: "What's the other half? Dwarf? Elf?")

BESW

True.

I figure it's really easy to run mixed-parent characters in our Modal system, though.

doppelgreener

D&D has Half-Orcs because Orcs are the evil monsters you kill.

I'll let the groups who use Fate H&S decide whether they want to pick up the same notion, and if they have an Orc in the party... I'll let them work out how they want to deal with that. :)

BESW

(a) Pick one race mode. You're of mixed ancestry, but due to your unique genetic makeup and cultural background only one of them is prominent in your behaviour and attitudes.

(b) Pick two or three race modes. Your mixed ancestry is an important part of your identity and strongly informs your behaviour and attitudes.

(c) Pick no race modes. You're of mixed ancestry, but it doesn't impact your day-to-day life much.

(Remember, in Fate your character only needs mechanics for things which are related to why he's a main character. You can have all sorts of background narrative without mechanics!)

doppelgreener

9:09 AM

aye aye

Sandwich

( Good evening )

doppelgreener

(d) Make a mixed-race mode. Pick half the skills and modes of either race and smoosh them together.

@Sandwich Evening!

BESW

@Sandwich [wave]

doppelgreener

Exercise time for me, back in a while!

Sandwich

( So people play Pathfinder / 3.5 / Other RPGs in these chats? )

BESW

9:11 AM

Occasionally. Long games run into scheduling challenges which quickly become insurmountable.

doppelgreener

@Sandwich We've had a few Roll for Shoes games and Fate Accelerated games, and I think we've had a Pathfinder game go for a while?

BESW

We've had more success with short games (one or two shortish sessions) in systems better designed for pick-up play.

doppelgreener

or maybe someone was just using a room here to plan it.

BESW

You'll find a lot of recorded play in the Fate room's conversation tab, for example.

Sandwich

I see. I'm new I guess, if it isn't already apparent.

Mourdos

9:13 AM

The pathfinder game is our chat room for campaign discussion :-)

Which happens over skype as well as in there. So its a bit scattered

BESW

@Sandwich No worries. Did you have something in particular in mind?

Mourdos

@Sandwich Welcome, and all that jazz :-)

Sandwich

Not really, just popped in to say Hello

Most of all that I know is Pathfinder and 3.5 so that's where I spend most of my time

My favorite class is Psion

And Vanilla coke is the best soda in the world

BESW

Hi. My history is detailed in my profile, but I started in 3.5, stayed in 3.5 and 4e for about seven years, and I've been focusing on a variety of narrative-first games for the last two years or so.

Tritium21

rpg.stackexchange.com/a/49470/12408 I am having a hard time deciphering a straight forward thesis from this...

Metool

9:22 AM

@Sandwich Vanilla comes in a close second to cherry, if I recall correctly.

Of course, it's been way too long since I've had either of them, so I could be misremembering.

@Sandwich Psion?

Right, it actually hurts to be awake right now, so I'mma pass out.

Tritium21

It hurts for me to sleep. So I envy you

Metool

@Tritium21 I'll put in a couple extra hours for you, then. :D

Sandwich

Yeah Psion is great

Tritium21

@Metool Thanks, just send those extra hours of rest this way when you are done

Metool

@Sandwich would you say you're primarily a psionicist, then?

Sandwich

9:28 AM

Yeah

Metool

so you're a psionic Sandwich? [shot]

Sandwich

A chaotic neutral half-undead half-crab psionic sandwich

Brb, bathroom.

Metool

Mmmm, crab sandwich with sliced ghoul flesh.

BESW

@Sandwich I believe he's referencing an amusing rule artefact.

Jan 9 '13 at 21:23, by Lord_Gareth

And the sandwich rises into the air crackling with energy and booms out, "Now you will all suffer!"

Sandwich

Nothing more dangerous than a sandwich

BESW

9:41 AM

Perhaps a lichenthropic sandwich. At the full moon it gets extra mouldy.

Sandwich

The unseen sandwich is the deadliest

3

doppelgreener

@BESW And your body, meanwhile, is assuredly alive and well where you left it, because it now has the mind of a sandwich so it isn't going anywhere.

(Unless someone ambushes your sandwich-lair and stabs your body.)

BESW

@doppelgreener Unless it was a sandwich you took to work and left in the little fridge in the employee kitchen, because those things walk off at the smallest opportunity.

[leaves a note taped to his body: I licked this.]

doppelgreener

@BESW ha i get it

TIE YOURSELF DOWN

I like that I can pick either of two reasons why your original body is alive and well, even though it has the mind of a sandwich:
(a) D&D has no concept of "subconscious vital bodily processes", so there are no rules that say whether they stop happening or whether they were even really happening in the first place.
(b) If it _does_ exist, when you _True Mind Switch_, the part in charge of those processes should absolutely remain in its body and not come along for the ride. Otherwise, if a Fey switches minds with a Giant, they will both assuredly die very quickly due to cardiovascular damage.

2

BESW

I think it's actually (c) Shut up because magic.

4

This seems more in line with D&D's approach to such things.

doppelgreener

9:55 AM

THINK NOT OF IT, LOYAL CITIZEN, AND REPORT ALL WHO ASSERT THE EXISTENCE OF A CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM TO THE THOUGHT POLICE.

Mourdos

The computer wants you to be happy. Thinking may cause unhappiness. Please report to room 434B for mandatory fun.

BESW

....Netflix doesn't know the word wallaby.

Tritium21

D&D concerns itself with other minutia, combat tactics. Now that i think about it, should it not concern itself with simple matters of biology, if just to make killing things for their boots more realistic?

BESW

That assumes realism is one of its goals, which it sometimes claims but rarely supports with demonstrable effort.

Tritium21

True

I only know of one system that really models the outcome of combat realistically... and it is not even a published one.

BESW

10:02 AM

All game systems must abstract their simulation at some point, or they become a bunch of rocks. The question is what they're trying to simulate, and where they move from simulation to abstraction.

Tritium21

I would really like to play, if just a one shot, a system that abstracts combat pretty heavily, and simulates wounds

BESW

And because all non-trivial abstractions are leaky, it's literally impossible to achieve truly realistic mechanics.

We can just get mechanics which use more and less granular abstractions according to the gameplay elements we want to focus on.

@Tritium21 You've seen Fate, right?

Tritium21

Yes, have actually played in a Strands of Fate campaign... where we never actually took any damage

never got to see health work in that

BESW

Fate has neither damage nor health.

It has stress, which represents your ability to remain in combat without lasting trauma; and consequences, which represent your ability to remain in combat with lasting trauma.

Consequences can be physical (IE, damage) or otherwise (social or mental trauma).

If you take stress which you can't (or choose not to) somehow absorb through checking off boxes on your stress track or taking consequences, you lose the conflict.

So you can give up with only superficial trauma, or take a sullied reputation or broken arm to stay in the fight.

doppelgreener

My half-troll got gored in the leg, and is going to stay that way until it heals, and he's going to enjoy it making a lot of things more difficult for him.

Tritium21

10:09 AM

this sounds, without having seen it in action, no more of a simulation of injury than.. white wolf's health system.

BESW

Then you have to define simulation.

Because it's totally a model of injury.

Tritium21

for example, you are in combat in a modern setting. You get shot. There is no question about continuing the fight, you lost. One bullet. Now the question is, do you loose the limb that was shot, or do you get medical attention in time?

BESW

Ah. That's a very very specific kind of simulation--and not actually a necessarily "realistic" one, given the number of people who get medals for doing brave things while shot.

Key thing to note: simulation isn't the same as realism.

trogdor

@doppelgreener it even sounds like a lame name for it though

doppelgreener

@trogdor Probably the name someone comes up with before Doctor Light comments on how terrible a name it is.

trogdor

10:15 AM

lol

doppelgreener

@BESW Also, whilst being shot at least twice.

Sandwich

Back

Tritium21

@BESW That actually is a wonderful point, they were awarded medals for their extraordinary actions post GSW. I think that actually fits the simulation I described quite a bit.

BESW

@Tritium21 Nope. You said there is no possibility of continuing the conflict once shot.

It's a fine thing to model (though frankly I'd probably not want to play that game), but it's neither realistic nor the only model for simulation.

The RPG "Toon," for example, simulates a totally different kind of wound resolution: you're in a slapstick cartoon, so you can walk off anything. It's no less a simulation, it's just modelling a different kind of scenario.

In Fate, you'll recover from most consequences with time and proper attention, but there are high-level consequence types which change your character permanently. And even for the lower level ones, most versions of Fate don't let you recover from them automagically.

Tritium21

I am just extremely tired of the abstraction of health/damage where... the first 99 arrows do nothing, but the 100th... your dead. The first two shotgun blasts to the chest don't slow you down... VtM being the worst where - bullets do a single bashing level of damage to a vampire... and bashing damage for vampires is halved and rounded down...

BESW

10:22 AM

@Tritium21 Yup, and that's why I mentioned Fate.

Sandwich

That's what variants are for

BESW

It has no HP. It has ability to avoid lasting harm, and lasting harm.

In fact, the HP model doesn't exist at all in any of the nearly dozen systems I've played recently.

Cthulhu Dark has an incrementing Insanity score with tangible effects as it climbs, and nothing else: if you fight the monsters, you just die.

Tritium21

I think I am being a little ranty right now

BESW

Lady Blackbird has a set of conditions which can be acquired and removed, including "injured" and "dead," according purely to the narrative.

The "fallout" mechanic of Dogs in the Vineyard/The Princes' Kingdom is... bizarre, but nothing like a health bar.

doppelgreener

@Tritium21 You are being a little ranty (not badly so) about the fact that HP is a really freakin' weird mechanic, especially in games where there's loads of things to circumvent HP and deal lasting damage immediately. But there's lots of games which don't have HP, and pick something else entirely which isn't weird like that.

BESW's listing a few. They either know HP is weird and so deliberately pick something different, or they don't care about HP and choose to come at it from a different direction entirely. And some of them don't care in the sense that physical harm is not something the designers are even interested in modelling (e.g. Cthulhu Dark).

BESW

10:27 AM

Aye. And most mechanics which are simply variants to HP (like the wounds/vitality option in the d20 System engine) can be interesting, but often fail miserably to accomplish their stated goals.

(Wounds/vitality wants to be "cinematic," but it's really really not.)

Tritium21

Ya know, I would not mind a real cinematic health system... And by that I mean, the more damage you take the more bonuses you get, double so for the bad guy, until you reach the threshold of being thrown from nakatomi tower.

If you are going to go for cinematic, just go for die hard

BESW

@Tritium21 Again, take a look at Fate, where drama and obstacles give you game currency to spend later in being awesome.

I consider Die Hard an excellent example of a PC taking compel after compel to build up a fistful of Fate points he can throw at the bad guys later.

The cycle of crisis and victory (so crucial to most dramatic storytelling conventions) is baked into the Fate point economy.

Tritium21

@BESW So FATE can model john mclane. I know what I am running at the next con...

doppelgreener

@Tritium21 Practice beforehand. Fate's a very different system to get your head around, especially if you come at it from a D&D background.

Tritium21

@doppelgreener I come from a Minds Eye Theatre background. All tabletop games feel a little... weird.

doppelgreener

10:35 AM

Aha alright. :)

Tritium21

Minds Eye Theatre, where your character sheet is a list of adjectives, and you declare your actions by building a sentence including an appropriate adjective. Fate's whatchamacallits remind me of this

doppelgreener

Aspects and stunts?

Sandwich

Hah, rule of cool

Tritium21

Aspects is what I was going for

Sandwich

Didn't think I'd see that here

Tritium21

10:41 AM

"I am wiry enough to punch him" "I am lithe enough to dodge" Rock-paper-scisors, defender wins, he dodges, and the attacker can no longer use "wiry" in a challenge that night. Brilliant system, IMO

ok, question. I feel an answer to my question is uninformed and poorly worded... but the person answering only has one rep here, and a total of 8 rep on all of SE... I really don't want to down vote them, as that would just be discouraging. should I just leave it alone, or leave a comment?

BESW

If it can be improved without making it a different answer, leave a comment about how to improve it or make the edit yourself.

Tritium21

Sadly, I cant decipher the persons point...

BESW

Then welcome them to the site, invite them to look at the [tour] and the [help], and say you can't figure out what they're saying! Ask them to try editing it to be more clear.

Tritium21

Thanks, I did that

doppelgreener

10:59 AM

The author was using a few more dashes than necessary. Maybe that edit will make it clearer?

BESW

From the worldbuilding chat, a Lovecraftian horror: the Weeping Angle.

Mourdos

Just because I habitually confuse celestial beings and geometry.

doppelgreener

Also a challenge segment of a poetry night where people adapt stories to a sad or tragic tone.

Tritium21

@doppelgreener Sorry, was correcting a boneheaded gaff i made in an answer on SO. As for the edit you made to the answer in question, it defiantly made the answer more legible, but I am still unclear on the thesis of the answer

BESW

11:20 AM

Dear Netflix: I know this movie has poor audio quality and the actors mumble, but your subtitles just changed a guy's name in the middle of a scene.

(Also: you can spell naaldlooshii but not wallaby. What.)

Tritium21

Netflix gets it closed captioning and subtitles from the studio who released the film. As someone who watched a lot of DVDs with subtitles, and watches netflix with subtitles, i blame the studios

BESW

The actors can't pronounce naaldlooshii!

Tritium21

Its a word that a subtitler will have to ask or look up how to spell. Wallaby is a word they thought they knew

BESW

11:35 AM

It's Ada Lovelace Day!

Tritium21

Good night!

doppelgreener

Night!

@BESW I very much like the fact that an industry presently dominated by men was effectively generated by a woman.

Because, y'know, women are awesome, and screw stereotypes.

STT LCU

11:52 AM

i second "women are awesome"

Aaron

12:02 PM

Mornin

trogdor

good morning

Aaron

1:00 PM

In Pathfinder if I want to use a sword and shield do I need to take two weapon fighting?

STT LCU

i don't have the book on hand, but this sounds wrong to me.

Aaron

I didn't think I did but wanted to see if anyone else might know.

Joshua Aslan Smith

are you trying to attack w/said shield

Aaron

Nope.

It's a tower shield

Joshua Aslan Smith

should just take up the arm slot, that is all

Aaron

1:07 PM

Cool.

I am building a tank.

Full plate armor, tower shield. Feats that let him apply a lot of his bonuses to allies as free or immediate actions.

@JoshuaAslanSmith I assume if I were to use shield bash it would count as two weapon fighting then?

Mourdos

@Aaron No

Unless your shield is spiked and you want to attack with it.

Aaron

What about the normal shield bash? You don't have to have spikes to use that attack

Joshua Aslan Smith

spikes dont change it from being a normal shield bash, they just augment the damage

Aaron

Right. That is what I meant

Joshua Aslan Smith

you cannot shield spikes or shield bash w/ a tower shield

Aaron

1:14 PM

Oh.

Ok.

So with 3 feats and using my entire action except move I can add +12 AC to an adjacent ally.

Mourdos

Sorry, my overeagerness.

What feats and class abilities are you using?

STT LCU

I really hope you're gonna have fun with your tank... i just feel they get boring really easy and really soon

BESW

1:32 PM

I put together a John McClane stat block using Atomic Robo's version of Fate character generation.

Aaron

@STTLCU I'm playing a warlord. They have many stances and such I can switch to. He is also an offensive character.

STT LCU

Sure. It's just personal preferences, I personally prefer ranger-type charachters

Aaron

I normally play a magic user and I tend to accidentally increase my optimization well above everyone else. So this time I am playing more of a support roll so that doesn't happen as much. Even if I over optimize I can just buff everyone so they match me.

STT LCU

fair point

Aaron

@STTLCU I have played a cleric, gunslinger, wizard/magus and this will be my first melee class.

Joshua Aslan Smith

1:35 PM

@BESW lolz

Mourdos

@Aaron Sneakthulu :-) Accidental overoptimisation, or rather, a failure of considering the impact.

Aaron

@Mourdos Exactly. But I play in a game where one person is new to the system and the other doesn't have much time to work on his character design.

Metool

You had better have a falcon shield.

Not a rules thing.

Aaron

oh

What is it?

Metool

Design has a falcon on it.

Aaron

1:48 PM

Ah. No this tower shield is specially crafted for that Archon race.

STT LCU

why can't you craft a falcon shield for the archon race, anyway?

Aaron

He holds the shield with his tails. It is also designed to split in half so he can move it where it needs to be quickly. I have started working with blender and I hope to get a design put on it I make.

@STTLCU They are wolflike having a falcon design wouldn't make much sense.

STT LCU

i don't even know if the falcon shield has actual different rules, or it's just a style thing. Anyway, you can rename it as wulfen shield ^^

Aaron

@STTLCU With a wolf's head on it. It's just a style thing nothing unique about it aside from looks.

STT LCU

ok then

Aaron

1:53 PM

At least that I could find.

Metool

4:20 PM

@Aaron Hey, fire off any questions you have about Pathfinder at me, and I'll see what I can dig up, eh?

Joshua Aslan Smith

4:30 PM

SO BORED

Tritium21

8:27 PM

Note to self: dont rate answers before coffee...

Metool

8:37 PM

Good advice.

Tritium21

You will never guess why

The Oracle

10:48 PM

1

Q: Be nice . . . to games?

I’m concerned about some potentially inflammatory language in a recent answer, regarding the limitations of a popular role-playing game (emphasis in original): It goes a little beyond that, but only a little. Unfortunately, it also lies to you and claims to do much more than that. Every attem...

discussion

Tritium21

10:59 PM

/me fires a tumble weed through the channel at sub-luminal but relativistic speed.

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