TRPG General Chat - 2015-12-11

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12:01 AM

We choose to let conflicts end because they reach a point where it'd be more fun for it to end there than drawing it out further, or because of time constraints. Beating Sko'larr when we did was really good timing for when Ben had to leave about 20 minutes later, for instance.

12:27 AM

hey @nitsua60

hey @Shalvenay.

Not quite here yet--have to write up a quiz to administer during study hall

no worries

0

Q: Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? Review Notification

In the site review tab right next to the help tab, it sayd (3) and indicates there are 3 posts to review. I open it and all I get are zeroes indicating no questions to review. I go back, refresh the page, and the tab indicates 3 questions to review. I click on it and again it is zero. Where...

12:59 AM

@nitsua60 how goes the quizzing?

hey there btw @diego, welcome!

going well, thanks

in a couple minutes it should be calm...

1:23 AM

@nitsua60 I have to eat in a few here. what's the best way to send you the link to the game on roll20 btw?

hey--just got back

can you see my e-mail address through my profile?

(I know it used to show, but the new profiles....)

@nitsua60 no...

mmm-kay. it's lastnamefirstinitial@kent-school.edu; drop two digits from my username here and reverse its spelling, you'll have my last name; my first name rhymes with "Batthew" and "Patthew." I think I've defeated the robots.

For now....

@nitsua60 sent. I have to go eat here in two shakes

1:41 AM

@Escoce where on the shoreline? I grew up in Sachem's Head.

@nitsua60 I did an edit to your answer, take it as a suggestion again.

The author of Red Letter Media once said in his Star Wars reviews:

> A man by the name of William Shakesman once said: brevity is the soul of wit. This just means don't waste my time.

@doppelgreener I definitely think it looks better--thanks

\o/

and I do find myself more-convinced day-by-day that "weapon", not "contest", might be the preferable interpretation

(but, in the long run, I'm sure the difference is negligible)

leave both, let people pick :)

2:38 AM

quiet night

@doppelgreener First thing I would've compelled: Babbage is mostly metal and Sko-Larr is a metalbender.

3:12 AM

Good evening. I was recently remembering that there was one of those "$200+ of RPG books for a $20" donation charity events, maybe for Syria. Am I dreaming or was that a recent thing?

All I know about is the ever-present always-changing Bundle of Holding, which is currently donating to Doctors Without Borders and Reading Is Fundamental.

Maybe that is what I was remembering.

They switch out products and charities every few weeks.

If you do find some other RPG charity event, please share it with us and I'll add it to the Cool Stuff pin on the sidebar.

3

^_^ Will do.

(We use the sidebar pin to help people stay informed about time-sensitive events/offers/etc that we'd often otherwise miss out on.)

3:37 AM

@BESW Beautiful :D

2 hours later…

5:45 AM

An HO scale tour of Arkham City.

1 hour later…

6:56 AM

Okay, but what if there were dinosaurs that did the heron thing?

2 hours later…

8:55 AM

@doppelgreener Point of order: It's "Sko-Larr," not "Sko'larr." If it were the latter, we'd be pronouncing it differently.

@Pixie your attempts at going unnoticed are useless. Years of pokenav have trained my eyes and now I can pinpoint a single square of moving grass in a brink of a second ^_^

@Derpy VulPixie used Roar! :P [skitters away]

I popped in to link Mote, a virtual tabletop built on top of MapTool that has new features and a much friendlier-feeling interface. I could see myself actually using this.

Ooer.

But... my computer has just gotten itself up to nearly 100 degrees C and I gotta turn it off NOW. D: Later.

ttfn

9:14 AM

@Pixie It is weird. I don't know why, but you reminded me of the "You're going to love me" scene in FiM season one.

It's NOT TOO LATE for U-2 help #BringBackMST3K How great would it be 2 see @JoelGHodgson & crew in ALL NEW episodes? https://twitter.com/JoelGHodgson/status/675003311263625216

Tweeted by HamillHimself on December 10, 2015 at 6:49 PM

9:45 AM

On a different system. This one has its own problems, but no sudden temperature spikes... hopefully? [regards computer sternly] Don't pick up bad habits from your older sibling.

(The other one just started doing that again yesterday for as yet undetermined reasons. Yesterday it was ~90 degrees, today ~97. Both times, I realized when I smelled the burning.)

Noooot goooood.

Desktop or laptop?

Laptop. It likely needs to be cleaned again, but it's also literally falling apart, so there could be any number of causes.

Get the battery checked ASAP.

Overheating can do asplody things to them.

Ah, good point. Not using it anymore for the time being, either.

-6

Q: How to safely wash my computer with garden hose?

Theoretically, the only problem of water with electricity is with electricity. So, if I wash my motherboard, RAM, CPU and everything else, it should boot fine if I make sure that there are no traces of water, right? Any traces of water could make a short-circuit. I know I should be careful with:...

cleaning technology

@Pixie on a more serious side, at least consider using it without the battery plugged in.

9:53 AM

@Derpy But that is so annoying. I have another system I'd be using right now instead of this one, actually, except it has a dud battery. :P

This one is just very sluggish. I've been doing everything I can to diagnose it, but I fear it was a Windows update and haven't been able to figure out which one.

I really would love to add to the annoyment now with that old Twily VS Pc fan comic...

But I can't find it

On that note, this one's fan is now running pretty hard as well. Sigh. I live in a really, really high dust environment, so everything likely needs a good cleaning.

@Pixie I hear that.

@Pixie recalculating new Pixie identity based on new acquired data.

Grew up with long-haired dogs, and now that we don't have dogs for the first time in my life... for some reason my apartment produces very fine blue dust, as if our ventilation system were hooked up to the dryer vent of a neighbour who only wears denim.

9:58 AM

bzzzzzzzz

@BESW Huh. Interesting.

We have many cats and dogs. Two cats live in my room almost exclusively, so there are two litter boxes in here. That alone drives dust up sharply.

new probable identity match found: likes books, seem a plush and lives in dusty places.

user image

About right.

user image

(on a side-note - there was an actual plush sold at the time)

user image

10:03 AM

....that is less worm and more Grinch.

[takes notes] My campaign is still in Umdaar.

@BESW what can I say, probably Hasbro made it.

user image

Wait, we have just the thing for this.

user image

user image

Aaand I'm up to 80 degrees on this one, doing absolutely nothing but some light browsing. I give up on computers for the night. xD

Or... morning, as the case may be.

10:38 AM

@Polyducks [wave] Long time.

Hey! Yeah, I've been mad busy these past few weeks

Are you well? I'm flattered for being noticed.

I'm actually on a secret phone break from work right now. I've got one of those burning dnd questions I can't seem to answer.

BESW notices all, sees all, and calls all to account XD :P

@BESW truly a god amongst demi gods.

@Derpy oh good lord I should not have looked up

I'm doing okay. Thinking about what kind of dinosauroid minions to give tomorrow night's villain.

10:45 AM

@trogdor I could have done far worse.

@BESW this is true

I overworked my last one like that like a total idiot T.T

@Polyducks What question is that?

@trogdor What about this one?

@Derpy yes, but this was bad enough for me thank you

Is anyone familiar with OSRIC? It's a remix of first and second edition. In the rules for an imp, it states bonuses granted as a familiar based on closeness to its master. It ends with "If it is within 25 feet of its master, it grants an extra level. However, if the imp is slain, the master loses 4 levels of ability". I don't know if that's distance dependant or not.

10:46 AM

@Derpy I dare not oh dark one

ok I guess I do dare, curse my curiosity

yes, curse it indeed

@BESW that question ^ haha

And is "tomorrow nights villain" a series, or literally the villain for tomorrow night?

OSRIC isn't within my bailiwick, but based on what I do know about that era of D&D, I'd guess the penalty isn't distance-dependent.

@trogdor And, to add to the pain, consider that the current theories for season 6 claim that may be spoiler

@derpy why do I hate ponies so god damn much?

@Polyducks Literally the villain whose lair we'll be raiding in tomorrow night's RPG session. She's not a major story character (yet), she just happens to have something we want so we're going shopping.

10:50 AM

@Polyducks Is the next question going to be "Why should I know"?

@BESW yeah... I fear you might be right. Shame for the big bad.

It's always exciting to make a boss. Maybe pick a dinosaur which isn't vegetarian though?

Maybe for her minions.

@BESW although charge attacks can be vicious.

The current setting is inspired by laser fantasy: He-Man, Thundercats, that kind of thing.

Better go. My colleages might think I'm ill if I lock myself in the bathroom much longer...

10:52 AM

So I'm making this villain a TMNT reference, to their alien race the Triceratons.

ttfn

@BESW You said dinosaurs. I hoped your main theme was Barney the Purple One :P

Dude, wicked sick setting. Kung Fury +5

@Polyducks Umdaar is pretty awesome.

@Derpy I would if I had finished this season

but I have been quite busy of late

I will get around to it, to be sure

@trogdor That one spoiler just requires you to be up to the episode "The one where Pinkie Pie knows"

10:58 AM

ah

@BESW true enough, i do prefer sko-larr to sko-boing-larr.

My first instinct was to include the boing, but I decided against it.

@DaFluid [wave]

11:15 AM

@BESW I think that same instinct hit me just earlier.

("it's umdaar... there's a separator... must be an apostrophe")

@doppelgreener You meant Phoebe?

@BESW psssst, I'm supposed to be working :)

@Derpy I suspect there's an in-joke here that's lost on me

@doppelgreener here

@Derpy nothing related to that, Umdaar just has a lot of apostrophes in its names

they're often unpronounceable so we've employed the rule of fantasy apostrophe pronounciation as a necessity

11:23 AM

Which makes them all almost impossible to pronounce.

you cruel monsters :P

"T-boing-Gyan, the Starblade of Su-boing-ul."

it's more pronouncable than the original

And the Imperial Radch series has introduced me to a new level of unpronounceability.

Move aside, F'lar, we've got Anaander Mianaai.

I was fine with that one until you told me about the radio book pronunciation.

11:31 AM

Now try "Skaaiat."

And "Raughd Denche."

11:54 AM

you are both only proving my point

@BESW was this written in Celtic because it seems to be in a language that hates anyone who wants to pronounce it

@doppelgreener (sounds like English)

@nitsua60 you haven't seen celtic

true--I've just been trying to help my kids learn to spell =P

No, it's in Radchaai, a language in which "Radchaai" means both "citizen of the Radch" and "just generally a civilised person."

11:56 AM

"why don't you pronounce the 'w' in'two'?"

"Because I want you to get into a good college."

(Because "civilisation" and "the Radch" are dogmatically equivalent.)

(Also it is a language without genders, and "person" is an insult because it implies "not a citizen.")

@nitsua60 hahaha! i don't envy you

a couple of examples of Celtic: "Fionnachaidh", pronounced "fee-ahn-a-kith." And "Tuireadh," pronounced "teara."

"Sidhe" is "she".

I'm cherrypicking and a lot of it's okay and one of the Celtic gods, Macha, has her name pronounced "Mocha", and that's cute, but this stuff plays havoc with English speakers trying to work out how to pronounce what they see.

12:11 PM

@nitsua60 Have you looked into the stages of spelling? It worked well for me, but there's not a lot of research into it because just letting kids learn to spell naturally takes several years and most parents/schools aren't patient enough to let the stages progress at the kid's pace.

The basic idea is that it's okay for kids to spend time in, eg, phonetic levels of awareness where "to," "too," and "two" are all going to get spelled interchangeably (occasionally as "tu") while the kid gets the hang of phonemes before moving on to the stage where they distinguish between homophones and homonyms and then eventually get a subconscious sense of the "right" spelling for things.

It's concurrent with reading skills and the developing ability to recognise words by their shapes rather than their individual components.

[cough] Can you tell I was home-schooled by a (math and) reading education grad?

12:27 PM

@BESW not a lot, but my wife's certified both early-childhood and K-8 and 6-12 English, so I just follow her lead

we certainly aren't pushing things too much, and know that reading is what does a lot of the lifting

(i.e. seeing the words in context)

Indeed.

Luckily I was a voracious reader.

it's just that I'm deep in the throes of re-seeing the effects of the syncretic development of this language

(But I still spent several years in the phonetic stage. Also I wrote horribly slowly.)

my handwriting is still terrible, and will probably not ever improve to the point many other people can read it at XD

mine's kinda bad, and I will tend to skip a letter ahead (if I'm writing "buy some milk" I might instead write "bus".. .cross out... "buy sm" ... cross out.... "buy some milk")

but I find if I write slowly and steadily and carefully, my handwriting turns out beautiful and I don't skip letters.

1:02 PM

BTW, don't know if you already noticed this room

David's hat store

The Winter Bash 2015! We talk hats, period... and more hats. w...

not much yet, may be worth checking when the event starts.

1:14 PM

Good morning

@Aaron Morning

1:39 PM

@doppelgreener started putting something on the board, had a student ask me in class yesterday: "Mr. A, did you ever think about becoming a doctor?"

"I don't know, Drew, did you ever think about getting that passive-aggressive streak checked out?"

1:58 PM

@nitsua60 what grade do you teach?

2:15 PM

I don't get where the connection with the doctor thing is, too.

Was that supposed to say that you are just talking theory without practice? what was the point at all?

Not that that changes much, it still seem to come out rude, but I don't even get what the intended attack was meant to be.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@nitsua60 what ages do you teach?

@Derpy I assume he was saying his handwriting was bad. Doctors are notorious for having really impossible to read signatures.

Joshua Aslan Smith

Growing up people used to say "you should be a doctor" based on my handwriting

@Aaron right, the "unreadable doctor calligraphy" thing, I had forgot the "bad hand writing" original theme.

2:34 PM

@JoshuaAslanSmith Do you think it's a self-fulfilling prophesy?

Joshua Aslan Smith

nah

I always heard the reason most doctors do that is so they can deny it was their signature

Joshua Aslan Smith

plenty of people in plenty of professions have bad handwriting

@JoshuaAslanSmith @Aaron that was a high-school senior, and yes, it was in the 'bad handwriting' theme

(sorry for non sequiter)

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah, but when a major part of your profession is to convey information in verbal + written forms, bad handwriting can be a bit of a bummer....

Joshua Aslan Smith

teaching on a black board, yes haha

3:08 PM

@JoshuaAslanSmith (actually, I project what I'm writing on my tablet as I walk around, but same difference...)

Joshua Aslan Smith

ah

(except I miss the simple ability to draw dotted lines on a chalkboard: if you hold the chalk right you can make it skip across the surface, generating a dotted line. And a loud enough RAT-A-TAT to raise the dead. Or a HS student.)

Joshua Aslan Smith

you just reminded me of those chalk holders for drawing multiple lines for musical notation

loved those as a kid

I had a physics professor once who could draw a perfect dotted circle on a chalkboard. He might have worked on Nobel-winning research, but that circle was the most impressive thing I ever saw.

user image

Yay!

3:17 PM

@Miniman on the nose--impressive

(and congrats)

@nitsua60 Thanks!

anyone have a preferred tool for producing quick-and-dirty Gantt charts?

looking for something a level up from coloring in cells in a spreadsheet, but not too much more effort =)

@nitsua60 Delegation.

ganttproject.biz?

(never used it myself)

Joshua Aslan Smith

3:46 PM

@Miniman very nice

4 hours later…

7:20 PM

@Miniman Miniman your avatar is so cool, what's it from?

7:48 PM

Abyssal Whale Fall would be a great name for a band.

user61230

8:26 PM

Bump of Chicken is a real Japanese band.

9:26 PM

Hmm... anyone alive in here?

9:52 PM

[raises leg once]

Depends on your definition of "alive." [shifty eyes]

Well, something that's been bugging me and is entirely opinion based I believe...

I was wondering what the frick Cold Iron looks like. As in the D&D version that's special from normal iron, not the poetic version.

10:10 PM

@Dorian I wasn't certain it existed IRL, but here's a Scientific American article talking about working with it. Unfortunately, it's paid only. The Wikipedia article for wrought iron has some information about cold-worked tools under Properties. No pictures, though, and not much info. So, hmm. Not a lot from IRL to go on.

Technically cold iron was a poetic term to begin with. Though I have read a lot on the aspects of cold-worked iron.

Yeah, the D&D interpretation went in a different direction. "Cold iron" folklorically is just iron.

As far as I can tell, "cold iron" is literally just "iron", but in D&D it's given special properties aside from Iron and a bit of lore hence wondering what people imagine it looking like

Yeah. My first thought was to look for real cold-worked iron, buuut that looks to be a thing that nobody actually does since normally they'd be using steel. You can find plenty of examples of cold-worked steel.

Here's one, and it's more or less what I was imagining. Since you're not using heat and forming the blade by striking it repeatedly, there'd probably be some tool impressions visible.

If we're talking more "magical logic" aesthetics, cold = blue.

10:24 PM

Ahh, wait. I found the description for it in the SRD again. It's forged at a lower temperature, not without heat, so it wouldn't necessarily look any different than a normal iron tool. It also mentions "delicate properties," but not precisely magical. If magic is what you imagine, certainly, blue works.

10:35 PM

The first thing I thought of myself was a rougher-looking blade, since the material will be less malleable without/with less heat used, so tool strikes seem more likely to leave marks. I didn't go through that many steps of logic until after I imagined it, though.

But this is also D&D, and magic is a thing, and Weird Mundane Techniques That We Don't Have.

If we go into the real-world lore behind iron vs fey, we get very different visuals.

I think it's also a different logic that it's operating on.

Iron is worked metal, man's will applied to natural earth. It's basically a symbol of civilisation vs nature, technology vs magic.

so it was not actually a different technique than normal?

25

A: What is Cold Iron actually?

“Cold iron” historically is just a poetic way of saying “iron.” Worked iron (including steel) is traditionally something that the fairy folk shy away from, and many fantasy works have embraced this—but each does it their own way. The Dresden Files universe is a very practical and down-to-earth p...

10:40 PM

@trogdor Nope.

hmm

ok then

Whereas D&D's cold iron could be thought of as minimally worked, an attempt not to get too far away from cold iron's "natural" properties, whatever they may be.

The unnaturalness is the point of folkloric iron.

I just thought that that real world forging technique was what people meant when saying cold iron

ironically, the very first time I heard the phrase I took it very literally

Cold-forging iron isn't ideal, IRL.

like any iron not straight out of the forge, or artificially heated by anything at the moment, would do for the requirement

10:43 PM

@BESW I did see that question on here, and verified much of the information from other places.

@Dorian I know; you upvoted it.

:P

Was just pointing Troggy toward it.

Aah

yeah I did ask that

10:45 PM

That's what the message-links are for.

yeah

Yeah, this is why over much of what I've seen there is no real-world example of legit "cold iron" like D&D describes it, and D&D doesn't give a color or what a "cold iron" blade or tool would look like compared to a normal iron blade or tool. I'd have asked a question on here but it's off-topic because it's almost entirely opinion based.

Yeah, unless there's some description somewhere buried in lore, it's all opinion.

D&D doesn't seem to usually be very interested in materiel visuals.

Even if you were to look at say artistic renditions of weapons and armor supposed to be cold iron, unless they were all done by the same artist (which is highly unlikely considering how the WotC goes through artists) it's still really opinion.

Heck, even if you went by that it's still opinion, just the opinion of an official artist lol

10:48 PM

I prefer that take, and then I don't. My character's stuff can look like whatever I want! ... but I like reading detailed descriptions of fantasy items.

yeah it is a strange thing

Oh, and I've noticed that the WotC doesn't really seem to care whether their artists stick to what's supposed to happen...

I mean, conjecture and conspiracies aside, many of their pictures are very wrong for the descriptions...

Anyone remember rat-kobolds?

/me shivers

@Pixie I like having pictures to go off of, but then again, if I put a lot of time into prepping that kind of thing I would probably prefer to read something as inspiration

I completely forgot how to action in here, and dont' really care to figure it out lol

Without a script installed, you can't. I just use brackets. [uses brackets]

10:50 PM

however, I do easily get my fill of that, I tried reading the Illiad and the Odessy, and I couldn't get past it partly because,... I think it was a shield or something that just took too long to describe

@trogdor I love written descriptions. But yes, there is a point of over-saturation. xD

there were other reasons I couldn't get myself to read further, but that one is the one relevant to this discussion XD

and I really thought I would like to read it because I sort of know some of the cliffnotes of that story/double story and I like them

but it turns out it isn't written in a way I like XD

11:29 PM

@Golokopitenko Golden Sun. And thanks!

@Dorian The real-world equivalent of "cold iron" is basically just regular iron. There's a whole lot of speculation as to where the myth originated, but iron was believed to be able to repel certain supernatural elements and I imagine it's somewhat game-breaking to have basic weapons just naturally deal bonus damage to the supernatural, so they probably just made cold iron its own thing.

Alternately, you could make it a pitch-black color? Or is that already adamantine?

Last chance to back the Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival Kickstarter - now with Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day... kickstarter.com/projects/mst3k/bringbackmst3k

So the big group that I've been playing with seems to have tapered down, activity-wise.

It's weird, the people are there but it seems like none of the GMs in chat actually want to run anything.

It's getting to the point where I want to try DMing just so I can get my TRPG fix, but I have no clue how to do it.

11:47 PM

Having no clue how to GM is how most GMs start, in my experience.

4

Well, I also have no clue how to start.

@Yuuki best way to start GMing is to start GMing, and tell your players that you're starting and are happy for all the feedback and advice they want to offer. GMing is like teaching: no amount of theory, reading, preparation, can beat the experience of your first day actually doing it.

(in my opinion)

When I started playing tabletop RPGs, I was given the three core D&D 3.5 books and about a month to read and prep before I started GMing. No experience as a player beforehand.

Well, the group that I would ostensibly be GMing for seems to require some sort of short audition run, so I'd probably need a few pointers on how to craft a scenario.

Pick up a free or pay-what-you-want pre-made one-shot adventure for your system of choice?

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Dec '1511

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