Can anyone remind me: are we able to ping mods in chat when they're not in the room, or do I have that reversed? (I.e. they can ping us even if we're not in-room.)

@nitsua60 you have that reversed. Mods are pinged like anyone else, and only mods have the uber-ping.

tx

@BESW having read what I described to you (a couple of messages above that) I'm not sure what I meant by what I said either.

@nitsua60 However, anyone can invite anyone else to a room if the target has a chat account (ie, has ever been in any chat).

@BESW Thanks--I hadn't thought of that. I left a comment on the answer that has me scratching my head, so I'll just let that ping to the work of one of these =)

How've you been? Long time no chat.

Not bad. Very excited about Dog Eat Dog in university classrooms, and thinking about a game submission to the 200 Word RPG Challenge.

(I still do want to get into the bar--it's just that I'min the middle of a nineteen-day stretch working every day, so free time's a little scarce. But my wife and I are going to Chicago in June, and I'm thinking about putting the temple on our visit-list.)

@BESW Last I heard you'd run a session with some of the professors, is that right? Has it percolated to the classrooms?

@nitsua60 I ran a session with some of my friends last week, and two days ago I gave the lead professor a printed copy of the book. He's going off island, though, so I'm not sure what the next step is.

was it as uncomfortable as advertised?

Uncomfortable, yes. But not as terrifying as billed.

I think because everyone in the group had already talked about these sorts of things with each other before? I suspect that it's absolutely petrifying for folks who have avoided the topic.

I mean, we wrote Rules like Our culture is a commodity and Keep the Americans entertained. It wasn't exactly a light-hearted session. And I think everybody came away with a new understanding of the issues and problems with colonisation and assimilation.

But some Actual Plays I've read/heard had players getting anxiety, or worrying that they were going to lose friends over it. It wasn't that intense for us.

Remind me a little bit about the mechanics: what terms are used for the members of the group vs. the one individual?

(did I really just lump together all of the indigenous people into one unit, equated semantically with the sole colonist? Wow, nice job.)

The richest player at the table plays the Occupation--all of it, however many colonists and/or locals who work for them as the story requires.

Every other player at the table plays an individual Native.

Okay, so "occupier" and "native"

Yup.

Can you interpret the rule Our culture is a commodity for me? Is that the natives saying "what we value as culture will be consumed/transformed/destroyed by the occupier as suits his needs"?

What's the impact of having that as a rule?

Pretty much, yes.

It meant that we were expected to treat our culture as a fungible resource which can be traded and exchanged.

The rule came out of a scene wherein a Native wanted to give an Occupier some fruit to take and share with his friends. For the Native, this was a way to form bonds, show respect, and establish common ground.

For the Occupier, it was some guy forcing him to take fruit he didn't want.

All the nuance of the Native's attempt to forge ties and show respect was reduced to a very simple question of "Do I want this stuff?" for the Occupier

This was reinforced in the next scene, where an elderly Native was giving hand-made toys to children who listened to her tell local legends.

An Occupier's kid wanted the toys, and her parents tried to buy the toys instead of having the kid listen to the stories.

wow.

what was the result?

The Native convinced the parents to have the kid listen to her story instead of taking the money (and so lost a token for not treating her culture as a commodity). But she told a very ribald story and fed the kid a lot of sweets as a kind of passive-aggressive protest against the parents.

(Another Native distracted the parents while she was doing this.)

From that scene, we learned to Focus on their children because the adults were too set in their superiority but could be manipulated through their kids.

In terms of how it plays at the table, who manages when scenes begin/end? Is it emergent? Does colonist superiority bleed into the metagame, also?

Each scene is started by one player, whose character is the focus of the scene, and who also decides when the scene ends. Play goes clockwise with each player getting a scene in turn.

Okay, so it's not like the colonist sets every scene. But I assume they effectively barge in on a lot of them?

Any Native can enter a scene if the player whose turn it is gives permission. The Occupier doesn't need permission, but once they're in the scene Natives need permission from the Occupier to enter it.

If the Occupation is absent from a whole scene, they lose a token at the end of it.

wow. that's a nice kicker =\

At the end of each scene the Occupation was in, the Occupier judges how well the Natives followed the Rules and grants or takes away tokens accordingly.

Then the Natives decide what new Rule about interaction with the Occupiers they've learnt from that scene.

Do players-of-natives play the same native character each scene? I.e. if I'm the elderly storyteller in ^^ am I that character in every scene I enter?

Yes.

Players who aren't the Occupation play the individual Natives whose choices are going to determine the fate of their people.

Cool. I might just have to play this with my high school kids.

We run 5e every-other week; this would be quite a system-shock! But we have a little bit of experience having tough conversations, sometimes about privilege, so I think they would handle it.

Unfortunately, Dog Eat Dog is very difficult to get one's hands on.

I heard you mention your solution, and figured I'd ask if I might prevail upon you when the time came.

(Understanding that 'no' would be a perfectly reasonable answer for you to give me, a stranger.)

How about the 200-word contest? Do you have an idea in mind? Or are you just intrigued by the challenge?

I've already submitted a modification of the Philosoraptor Twins for the "supplement" category, and I'm thinking about minisystems.

I've got a lot of game ideas I've been toying with for a long time, but none that obviously fit into a 200-word limit.

200 is tight. I think that's probably the length of an average e-mail of mine =\

I need something narrow and un-pretentious.

like Jim McMahon's headbands?

lol

I don't get the reference, but it seems clever so hah!

80's football....

(American Football, that is, not that strange no-hands thing so many of you call 'football'.)

(and Jim McMahon was well-known for being anything but un-pretentious. He famously showed up to his first day of employment in the NFL, striding in sipping from a can of Budweiser.)

Ahah.

It's one of those sportball things.

Yeah, our autumn-into-winter weekly cosplay events.

Speaking of cosplay, I went running at the park yesterday and saw three folks in some kind of anime-ish gear just hanging around chatting under a tree.

There was a woman in shoulder-length white hair and a red robe, and a guy who looked like a Ninja-Turtle-themed Black Power Ranger.

Speaking of speaking of cosplay, I'm going to Adelaide OzComicCon tomorrow. Wife is going steampunk, daughter is going Homestuck. Still don't know what I'll wear.

I couldn't make out the third costume very well, looked mostly like brown robes over dark green.

(Honestly not very enthused about this one. Don't know why particularly.)

@BESW Heh. Now I'm curious if they were anything specific.

Speaking of cosplay, at a curriculum meeting yesterday an English teacher asked if she might get funds to rent Elizabethan costumes and if she might get permission to force her students to dress up whenever they're having class discussions.

(I voted 'yea' to both.)

Nice.

@Pixie There's a growingly visible anime community on island, but I'm only barely attached to the fringes of it in a "geeks in a place this big probably notice each other" sort of way.

I was mostly startled because there didn't seem to be any catalyst for the cosplay.

So far as I could tell it was just "Let's hang out by the jungle gym in our costumes!"

@BESW What's Guam's population like? (Number-wise--not asking you to succinctly characterize the people.)

People do that occasionally, but I can't say I've ever seen it.

They also might have been doing a photo shoot.

@BESW I am amused

@nitsua60 it's around 137,000 people,.. I think?

there certainly aren't any cons here to show off at XD

@trogdor tx

to be fair, there are probably more people than that by now

Btw, hi @Adeptus, @trogdor, @Pixie =)

but it's a rough estimate

hi

long time no see

hi

@trogdor Yeah, busy/rough few weeks. All good, though.

good to hear that it's all good

@nitsua60 Hey.

@waxeagle -- no game tonight?

ugh. I had a "may cause drowsiness" antihistamine last night (about 11-12 hours ago) and I'm still feeling it. Struggling to stay awake, let alone focus on work.

@Adeptus what's your work?

@Shalvenay no

had a thing tonight

and my web is still pretty flaky

@waxeagle ah

@nitsua60 programmer

@Adeptus Steamstuck.

@doppelgreener Homepunk?

@Adeptus Steamstuck sounds more respectable, less like an awful musical genre.

(He also asked if his "cake" can just be three pizzas, slapped on top of each other. Perhaps he's today's victor, after all....)

@nitsua60 Only if the pizza can be three cakes.

@Pixie Each made of three pizzas, each made of three cakes, ad infinitum? I think that sort of cosmology would have caught on much quicker with "it's cakes all the way down" as a tagline, rather than "it's turtles all the way down."

I'll join the infinite cake spiritual tradition immediately, thank you.

[Aside] "You're gonna need a bigger fork."

(warning, YT link)

Classical art combined with album covers

hullo hullo

@nitsua60 161k+ as of 2015 estimate, probably more like 165k+ now.

@Asteria Hi! Long time no see!

How did things turn out with the group you were thinking of joining?

@Miniman went as expected, ended up joining the DM's other group ^_^ we're playing tomorrow, very excited

@Asteria V. cool!

FOSS Office Suites: Proposed Q&A site for users of Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and other free/open source "office suites"

....that was a bad copypaste if ever I saw one.

An invocation of one of the deity's attributes is always a crowd-pleaser.

"Bless us, O Clement One," etc.

Really depends on the deity and the sect, though.

Pelor. I'm basically a walking health potion....Joining a premade group and they wanted a healer :P

Any particular element of the worship of Pelor your character is focused on?

Sorry, what do you mean?

Like, why did he choose that vocation? What about it gives meaning to his life?

Is he all about the visiting of holy wrath on the forces of corruption and darkness?

Does he find courage in Pelor's promise that faith and hope bring the strength to do what is right in even the darkest of times?

Is he more focused on the compassion and charity elements of Pelor's faith, finding meaning in improving others' lives?

You can also tie elements of the character's heritage, background, and personality into the casting. They might speak it in a native language or deliver it in a certain way. A showoff or artistically-inclined character might make a showy display; someone who is stalwart, tough, and unashamed of their faith might speak in a booming voice.

Is he inspired by the independence of Pelor's champions, or the collectivist ideals of Pelor-worshipping communities?

(These are not necessarily things you have to do, but things you can convey to your group.)

Ah right. My cleric follows Pelor due to him being the god of Light and Sun. The blight contaminating the land drove her to seek out the light and hope within the darkness, and using his teachings she hopes to spread that to others.

Then something like "Pelor, shine upon us!" might work.

So her casting of bless might feature a pithy homily about courage and hope.

I like that @Pixie ^_^ she's definitely someone thats a bit loud and 'rough' around the edges.

(If she was more of the smitey type, it'd probably be more about being infused with the implacable heat of the sun.)

so a booming kinda feel is pretty cool

Thanks ^_^ that gives me a couple ideas of where I should be heading :D

Hi all!

Glad the chat could help!

Hey, @RollingFeles.

Hey @RollingFeles ^_^

Happy roleplayers all over the place :)

@BESW I'm going to head off and write some ideas done. I'll try to start checking in on chat again regularly though. Thanks again!

@Asteria Seeya! Happy writing.

@nitsua60 Congrats! It's no doubt that you've won :) I'm still far from having any simillar experience, but I think this is great.

@Asteria ttfn

Weird moment: I noticed a while back that almost exactly 10% of my flags were rejected or disputed. About 100 flags later, it's still almost exactly 10%.

@Asteria wish you great inspiration :)

@Miniman I've got about the same percentage, within a half percent or so.

My badger ratios, however, have finally given up.

@BESW Yeah, my badgers occasionally teeter on the edge of being interesting, but they've never quite taken the jump.

[imagines actual badgers doing a unicycle tightrope act] Thank goodness they haven't taken the jump.

@Pixie Not to mention the dichotomous confusion - hairy quadruped mammal that jumps off things en masse used to be unambiguous.

@Miniman You're trading your badgers for lemmings?

Seems like a bit of a downgrade.

Are you kidding? Lemmimgs are incredibly diligent, obedient workers. I've seen a lemming tunnel through 1000 pixels of stone without a break.

But badgers loop infinitely!

... though they get a little out of sync after a while.

@Pixie You say that like infinite loops are a good thing.

[resists urge to post lemmings.gif]

@Adeptus Is lemmings.gif a specific gif?

@Miniman There's a few I was considering

@Adeptus Fair. :P

@Adeptus Is it bad that I recognise the level the second one comes from?

@Miniman If you remember the name, you've got a better memory than me!

Did you ever play 2-player? That was fun!

@doppelgreener If you're still taking suggestions for the space volume... here's one.

@Adeptus Not the name, just what the whole level looked like.

@Adeptus No, I only had the MS-DOS version.

@BESW is that the one where we venture out into outer space?

@doppelgreener Yeah.

Interplanetary shenanigans.

I should do a note file. I actually haven't had any suggestions for it - I was imagining a thing in Pluto that might take a small arc.

And I believe there was a lot of Moon Hijinks.

I vaguely recall some potential moon things. What do you remember?

morning

@doppelgreener Let us adjourn to the Spoil-Lair.

@Sejanus [looks at clock] No it isn't!

Here's a good name for a band and a decent campaign hook: "Dimension-hopping Conquistadores."

A Congressional resolution "recognizing magic as a rare and valuable art form and national treasure." There's a very strange RPG campaign behind that.

I was really amused for a moment but then I realized they have illusionists in mind

I agree with the resolution 100% :)

I don't disagree with it,... but there seriously has to be something better they can do with their time

I think culture is important enough

@Sejanus @BESW what does this mean? Is this a bill they passed or one that was rejected?

It's been proposed but not yet decided on.

OH. Not actual magic. I realised there's a tl;dr of the bill under the header

> The Society of American Magicians has [...] been lobbying Congress for decades to recognize magic as an art form. (source)

Like, magic shows

yup

I think they are most definitely a form of art and an important part of culture

Riiight. Thought this was some deep south thing.

yeah for a moment i was really amused too

I'm totally making it happen in our campaign, and it's about real magic. Which has just been made undeniably public throughout the world.

@BESW that sounds awesome. I noted this on my todo-list too.

The whole "everyone now knows magic is real" thing is already part of the campaign.

New York is lit by fairy lights, North and South Korea have been united as a single empire under a vampire dynasty, the Hip-Hop Pharaoh is establishing a new kingdom on the Nile, and thirteen Elvises are fighting a lethal battle of the bands for control over Graceland.

that sounds... weirdly cool. I don't know yet. I usually prefer less humorous stuff xD

Well, it's not all elves and paladins. The Pacific Northwest is a no-fly zone as it's turned a nameless colour which drives men mad. Godzilla has established a Kingdom of Monsters in the South China Sea. London was overrun by robotic yetis who fed the minds of its population to an intangible creature of pure thought.

And that battle of the bands is so violent that a fifty-mile radius has been evacuated.

ooooh 'a nameless colour'!

The PCs are part of an organisation whose goal is to use supernatural powers to keep supernatural powers from hurting people.

@BESW Magicians worldwide are furious that the cat's out of the bag that they were doing real magic all along. Half the amazement of magic tricks is that it isn't really magic! Now if magicians can just arbitrarily do anything, there's no mystique to it! The only Magicians not furious about that are the ones who were really doing sleight of hand, and they're furious nobody told them.

@doppelgreener Share that with Raycia, and suggest that she help us make a non-magical magician villain for the campaign.

Ha!

Alright

Morning all.

[wave]

Ello!

Are there any canonical questions about combat being stopped by RP/chat. e.g. One PC start a fight, other PCs convince him to lay off, PCs talk to enemies (with or without checks) and stop the combat "mid-fight". 5e in particular.

Or is it obvious how to handle that in the source books.

I couldn't find anything, but didn't want to duplicate questions and make sure it's a decent question worth answering

Hmm.

I know I've got a question about that for Fate. But that's not very helpful to you, I'm thinking.

[goes digging]

Nope, can't find anything directly about that.

jolly good, I shall write a meaningful question at lunch

Hello @StuperUser :)

A belated good morning to you too!

@BESW heck yes XD

There are so many canon differences between I, Strahd and Curse of Strahd. If I pick up I6 am I going to have to reconcile/forget more?

or does I, Strahd build on I6, and then Curse of Strahd have a bunch of retcons to tell the best story possible?

Morning @Polyducks :)

Is really the Strahd plotline so much trouble?

It doesn't affect how to run and how to play it, but those are fundamentals of the story, which I know my players are keen to find out about

Combat de-escalation question: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/78387/…, does that need any editing to get it properly on topic?

It's good you mention PF/DnD, but why is RAW there?

Are you actually looking for PF/DnD rulebook text explicitly describing conflict de-escalation rules?

Or are you interested in the interpretation of rules and/or the realm of table manners and good GMing?

I'm interested in the interpretation of rules and/or the realm of table manners and good GMing?

Then rules-as-written is probably going to confuse people.

the rules are what I should use for playing the best game for my players, so I'm happy to bend/ignore them (with the trust of my table that I'm doing it for the greater good of the reason we all agreed to play)

(OMG, I just realised the top-scored question in RAW is mine.)

but I mention RAW since if there's explicit detail in RAW for a system I can't adapt to 5e/PF, it'll be weird

congrats :)

cool, will take out the RAW aspect

OK, rules as written is (you may have noticed) a topic of debate here. It's an idea to play the game as explicitly written, with no interpretation at all.

Good RAW questions are often logical puzzles.

If it's not RAW, I think it may be too broad.

I've asked general questions without details of which system I play, so the real problem that I asked to be solved can't be answered, so I put details into this question.

There are lots of ways to play the game and the answers are likely to boil down to "if it fits your game, you can do it"

yeah

@StuperUser system tag is a good idea usually

I just want to know whether I can e.g. just drop everyone out of initiative and start talking again

or if there's something in the 5e DMG I've forgotten since I read it

Sure you can!

As long as it makes sense to you.

As I understand 5e, there's a fairly strong sense of "If it makes sense, the GM can have it happen."

@StuperUser How do you normally end combat? Is there a rule saying "combat ends when X happens"?

when one set of belligerents is down

none of my players has tried anything else yet, and the combat has always been between already hostile characters

So, if everyone stops being belligerent...

I can't find it in PHB though.

It may be like 4e's "Dead" condition.

I've edited it to avoid the RAW vs system issue. Probably made it vaguer and broader too (!) rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/78387/…

OK, around my table we had combat end because: enemies died, enemies ran away, we ran away, enemies were all asleep, enemies stopped caring about us.

no TPKs? your DM is too nice

We also had players drop out of Initiative in the middle of combat (rogue in pursuit of a fleeing goblin) and dropping back in (the same rogue stopped observing from atop a tree and joined)

No, the DM is one that understands TPKs are boring :)

fact

I can imagine that once combat starts it might be mighty hard to stop until someone surrenders due to general hostility and being in the heat of the moment.

But if everyone stops, the combat stops.

There's really little to discuss if your question is "can it be done". Sure it can.

Maybe instead you should ask HOW it could be done by-the-book in a specific situation, this might be less broad.

done

@StuperUser to me, this is a sign that the DM isn't really thinking about the encounter thoroughly. Combat should only continue as long as both sides actively see it as a way to achieve their objective with acceptable risk. When it's become six-on-one, what objective is the 'one' hoping to achieve by continuing combat?

@nitsua60 i.e. martyrdom?

or death over perceived dishonor of surrender

or maybe he's super strong xD

and thinks he can win.

arrogance :)

that too

Though in general, I agree with @nitsua60

@nitsua60 my thinking is a single trigger-happy PC kicks off a fight with someone the rest of the party wants to talk with, if the party come to agreement to chill out, I've never seen combat stopped and wanted to know how I could do it as a PC and run it as a GM

@StuperUser That depends a lot on your players, on the system, o the way they like to play and so on. I can tell you what I'd do but I am not sure it would necessarily fit your game

first, preemptive measures (no trigger happy PCs if they ruin the game). If the PC didn't look like a trigger happy but it's Player is, I'd ask player to explain themselves, why they play such trigger happy, especially when the rest of the party wants to talk? Are they actively working against the rest of the party? Are they just dumb? Are there any reasons for such behavior that I happened to miss?

I mean just stop the game right after they declare their action and start to talk

if it turns out there were good reasons, I'd just try to deal with it. Let the NPC die or run away and later come up with a different method of exposition or whatever was the role of that NPC. It would also provide good opportunities for player vs player talking and changes in group dynamics, I am talking characters, not players this time. That would also give me some insight into the character in question and the way it's player roleplays things, so I can prepare better next time

if on the other hand player was doing it just for shits and giggles, I'd ask them to start roleplaying. I'd ask them in a very serious, no joke tone. Because if it wouldn't help, the next step is I'd ask the player to leave, because clearly their idea of roleplaying does not match the rest of the group's and it's better for everyone to play separately, the way they want to.

but that may not work for every GM every group. It's just what I'd do

the thing that triggered the questions wasn't anyone doing stuff for the lols, if anything, it was more my guy syndrome and "oh, it's a baddie, better kill it" attitude

well then you can talk to him/her about how one does not need to roleplay in such a literal and kind of unrealistic way

unless they roleplay a fanatic of some sort

How to make a group roll: i.imgur.com/G7GpKAU.png

@RollingFeles ^ ^ I wonder what they were rolling for...

Yo

@Golokopitenko @AlexMitan I'm just about to start writing the adventure, I've been thinking I'd use Scalar, but it seems like overkill for something that I'll be running for 12 weeks. I'll stick to old ways of Google Docs with hyperlinks in them.

Maybe it is a good answer for the main site as well? I don't really like character building as a question type.

@eimyr delicious

what are you going to do?

@Golokopitenko Him or me?

@Golokopitenko it's a MAge: the Ascension game - World of Darkness, modern day setting with magic in a crapsack world. I'm making an adventure about trying to save one of the relics of magical past (a magical creature) while there are various hostilities in the city. I want the players to choose between staying neutral and committing to one of the sides, then see what happens.

Generall,y to do their main uest (if they are interested in it at all) they would need to gain resources by dealing with various magical factions in the city - and sometimes even opposing them.

@StuperUser back on chat. I hope my answers helped a little, and am around if you want to chat more. (Sorry I wasn't around before--busy day at work and I saw your mainsite questions so answered, but it was only an hour later during a five minute break that I saw you 'd been here in chat, too.