Recent pictures from the New Horizons spacecraft, shown below, seem to indicate that, at Pluto's distance, we are entering a twilight zone, with a distinct lack of colors, although that could be due to the planet terrain itself or the camera used to take the picture.
EDIT See the Chris White co...
@Adeptus I was looking at that one earlier. It's kind of weird to think of space being bright enough to read a book by, I guess I tend to think of space as dark.
hey @Miniman -- Paladin build idea -- use Divine Might as the damage source for a finesse paladin -- it's a feat that gives CHA bonus damage for CHA rounds 3x/day, btw
@Shalvenay NWN includes a highly limited subset of the available feats, and 3.0 doesn't include the way I was thinking of to get Dex-to-damage, but I'm sure it has one somewhere.
@Shalvenay That works out well - a Swordsage dip will get you Wis to AC, which is nice for a Dex-based cleric.
I... feel out of my depth trying to build my PF skald. I really need to get it finished, but I'm realizing that I still just don't know what I want to do with it. Mrrrr.
@Shalvenay Yep. Str builds win out because the only thing they need is Str. Even if you somehow managed to pump Dex and Cha to the same extent as a Str-based fighter pumps Str, you'd still be losing out, because your ability to add Cha to damage is limited.
(And you probably have a damage penalty from your Str score, which is impossible to eliminate.)
@Tritium21 I saw Ptolus (PDF) in a Bundle of Holding for ~$20, and debated getting it. Decided not to in the end (or, was still debating when the Bundle finished)
@Miniman The character has an intense presence and can be absolutely terrifying in battle. They're also a hopeless romantic who probably worships Shelyn. It's for Kingmaker, and I would ideally like to use an Aldori dueling sword or longsword in battle since the Sword Scion trait fits my character pretty well. Other than that... honestly, I don't know, and that's the problem. If I knew skalds better, I could pick a flavor and run with it, but I don't.
I'm also trying to figure out what would be beneficial to my party, which is, uh... a samurai, a cavalier, a gunslinger, and an investigator. None of which I've ever played. xD
Oh, darn it. I really want to play a recorder bard now. It's completely unsuitable for my current purposes, but someday I will, darn it. And they will play one song and one song only.
I was imagining how funny it would be if you actually had to perform while using Versatile Performance, because initially I thought that was the case, and I was like, "D-do I really have to sing every time I need to lie?" And so recorder diplomacy popped into my head.
premise of the game: you are all bards, in a tavern, recounting a tale of your deeds... its PF except for the added mechanic of a bennie system in which you can call for rerolls with the phrase "thats not how I remember it"
Here's a problem I have in my current game, and likely to have in the future. I have a player who really enjoys interactions between characters. They give meaning and context to any further adventuring they may do together. Unfortunately, said player is also basically incapable of taking initiative and starting a scene of such interaction.
Therefore it falls to me to set up scenes with an impetus to roleplay. And I struggle to do that, as experience shows. Because it's not enough to just say "ok, talk to one another," I know that much.
I don't think there's some trick or definite method to it, so it's probably not a good fit for the main site. But maybe there's some advice someone could offer.
We've started a new game of tremulus, two sessions in with third in a few hours. The first game was meant to be all about introducing characters and the weird town they've moved to. It ended up falling flat on its face, boring and uneventful.
And once mysteries and events started ramping up in the second session, in direct response to how poorly the first session went, it turned out we'd missed out on character interaction building, which switched off that player.
Maybe something about having questions that need talking to get answers?
> “Build a mirror out of waterfowl” is not an art project. It’s something an evil wizard from a Russian fairy tale does three scenes before the nine-year-old-girl protagonist cuts his heart out with a hairbrush. (source)
Ok so there is five of us
One is a dwarven fighter, a human fighter, a wood elf barbarian, a high elf ranger and a human warlock!
And dm Has naturally fallen to me....... Not one of us has even played even one game....
And they Literally arent interested in anything!!!! Exept murdering everybody...
^This question... It seems half the groups who discover RPGs have to go through the phase of "holy crap, we can do whatever we want, lets kill everything".
And I don't think there's a solution to that other than letting them.
@Magician Hmm. I may have something to contribute, but I'll have to think on it a bit. Little fuzzy-brained right now. Are you looking for help on creating contexts in which character interaction is likely to happen?
Exercising the freedom afforded by a tabletop RPG is more important than actually roleplaying, telling a story or even "winning". There's a king? We stab him. Because in a CRPG we couldn't, and here we can.
@Pixie Might your fuzzy brain be able to give me a little bit of help with describing women's clothing? I've got some pictures that I want to combine into a PC description and I don't have the vocabulary to do so quickly and effectively. I probably know all the words, but I don't have them catalogued properly.
@Magician Cool. I will think on it some. Fostering interaction is a thing I've had to pay attention to a lot in some games past, but it's been a while.
@BESW Blazer, dress shirt, pencil skirt, pearl necklace/strand of pearls, heels (ankle strap heels specifically, I dunno if there's a better term for this).
If it helps: Amanda Parrish is this deliberately very frighteningly powerful person. We only see some of that power on-screen. It's part of the fun and impression of her that all the truly scary stuff goes unseen. Maybe just focus on bringing specific parts of that power on-screen for this, in case you're trying to bring the whole package to bear.
Right, accessories you must specify. xD But dress shirt/blazer/pencil skirt is an extremely common type of skirt suit. Power Blazer sounds pretty great!
@doppelgreener once, in my country, a cosplayer I "know" (== we usually meet at conventions, but really don't get much in touch outside that) had police almost bill him for "carrying a weapon in public". The weapon in question? The horns on the helmet of his cosplay armor.
> Historical Influence: In 197[X], Parrish was in the audience for [CLASSIFIED]'s last [CLASSIFIED]. During the [CODE NAME REVOKED], Parrish displayed remarkable [REDACTED], saving three dozen bystanders and apprehending [CLASSIFIED] before further Amaterasu agents could arrive. She was [REDACTED] on the spot. The performer, however, was never the same again.
What is it with violins & cellos in pop(ish) genres lately? I just found out about another group - Black Violin - that do classical/hiphop. Only listened to a couple of their songs, but so far they could be another win
Yea, my thoughts were, if he wants to swap a cantrip, allow him to change one for another when he levels. But being able to learn all of them and then swap at will is not good, far to abusable
@doppelgreener Most of the small harps I've seen are still kinda big. Like, you can carry them around fine, but they're not quite what I'd call portable.
@doppelgreener Oh, goodness. I know that feeling. I had a computer that got to the point that "1 hour left" meant "I am going to die immediately and just thought you should know the second before I do."
In Warehouse 13 mythos, items occasionally gain supernatural powers when associated with extreme human emotions or accomplishments.
Their abilities are usually thematically appropriate (a tuba played on the deck of the sinking Titanic makes people drown when they hear it), but not always logically so (Harriet Tubman's thimble lets its wearer take on the perfect image of another person).
I get that... And I guess for those who've passed, Jimmy Hendrix is suitable for a Guitar. I just personally feel Jimmy's style doesn't match Lightning Bolts lol.
I watched the first season, and quite enjoyed it. My fiance on the other hand wasn't impressed, so it's on my very long line of things to watch while she's asleep.
One of our players is actually running a PC named... Myka Lattimer.
And as you saw above, our superior is partly based on Mrs. Frederic. So... yeah.
(On the other hand, some of our other players haven't seen it at all, so I try to keep the references coherent without understanding the source material.)
Yes, precisely. I can imagine very well how what I want to draw should look like, down to small linework, I just need to figure out a way to visualise this.
I found that my inability is largely due to my poor motor skills. I tried doing some mountain ranges and the ones I did with a mouse were superior to ones done with a pencil.
I suck at proportions, even when I have guides, e.g. I know that the head should be 2x the size of a hand etc. I believe this is the case since I fail miserably at estimating size of stuff.
One of the big challenges to overcome is the brain's tendency to reduce input to symbols.
As an evolutionary tactic, symbology is vital to survival because it provides necessary shorthand to let us process large quantities of input quickly.
But it's not a very good tool for realistic art. An artist's training involves a LOT of exercises to train the brain to be able to turn off its symbol-translation process and just see shapes and colours and negative spaces as themselves.
Eventually you'll build up a mental catalogue of what looks right and how things fit together, and you can use that to draw from your imagination. But even James Gurney makes maquettes to see how the light will fall.
See, I don't want to learn how to draw. I have no desire to become an artist. What I wanted is to create a good-looking map using very simple techniques, that will be readable and useful by my players and have some fun in the process.
And stuff like Fantastic Mapping shore or gully drawing is exactly what I needed to start.
Some structures are naturally easy for me (buildings, for example) because I did some technical drawing and that taught me how to approach angular structures. My current limitation is mismatching the size of various smaller structures.
e.g. I would draw a castle courtyard and an outhouse near the main donjon - and realise the outhouse is almost as big as the fortress itself.
Well, first off, just being aware of it will help you with proportions and relationships. When you're making an illustration, negative space is just as real as positive space. It occupies territory on the page and describes relationships between other things.
As for "good" or "bad" negative space, that's harder. Aesthetics don't reduce to rules very easily.
But there are some guidelines.
One is that if two things are very close to each other but not quite touching, that calls attention to the space between them.
Another is... one moment, making another tracing.
When making a map, try to avoid negative space that looks like this unless you really intended it:
Narrow points of near-contact create tension, and in the context it feels deliberate--especially as there's not only wide areas between them, but a moderately narrow space on the far left.
Aside from looking like the kind of sketches I saw on the desks in high school, these spaces don't show a lot of variation. They've got two basic shapes: long and skinny with a bit of curve, and a big ovoid.
Fantastic Maps also has some good advice about keeping things roughly realistic because people have seen enough real maps that their guts shout "bull!" when they see something in blatant defiance of geology.
Good drawing lessons should talk about negative space.
Ha! That I agree with. Fantastic maps seems to have lots of time devoted to showing how a reasonable world map would look like. But I tend to hang out with geologist, so I could potentially get them to spot any blatant fantasy.
In Poland basic geology and hydrology is taught in junior high and high school, so I do have the basics. And my work already requires me to know how geology works, so taht's less of an issue.
Recent pictures from the New Horizons spacecraft, shown below, seem to indicate that, at Pluto's distance, we are entering a twilight zone, with a distinct lack of colors, although that could be due to the planet terrain itself or the camera used to take the picture.
EDIT See the Chris White co...
