TRPG General Chat - 2016-05-11 (page 1 of 2)

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12:02 AM

@BESW cool, thanks! i find it funny the first english speaker is from Pittsburg PA, i live like 2 hours from there XD

12:16 AM

...seriously how hard is it to write answers that start by answering the question? The structure is a prominent Western rhetorical form that we see every day.

@Eidolon108 Hi!

@BESW ?

@BESW I wonder if that answerer is having a similar difficulty I sometimes have: when a question hits at a peeve of mine I tend to answer a little snippy =(

@Miniman Oh, I've been seeing a rash of answers that put frame challenge first.

@BESW Ah, right.

Querent: [innocently] when should I roll a check for-
Me: [jackass-ishly] DMs call for checks, not players!

(assuming you're talking about the same 20k+ answer we both just commented on)

12:19 AM

@nitsua60 Tbh I think answering questions that ask about rules with "rules are whatever the DM says" is just being deliberately unhelpful.

OTOH, posing the question in that particular way--"is there anything says the DM can do this?"--isn't the greatest formulation, either.

@nitsua60 Yes, but titles are not questions. We pound that into new users all that time.

"is this an explicit rule I'm missing, or was this a ruling being made?" would work. On the third hand, querents shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get a nice reception.

Re-ordered the answer, and upvoted.

@nitsua60 Also, it was tagged RAW.

Which still intimidates me, given the events of this winter... =(

12:23 AM

Focusing on the use of a single vague word in the face of a tag and sentences' worth of context to clarify it seems... insincere and pedantic.

@Miniman especially in the case of my question about the XP thing where i very clearly stated we wante to know what the book says

hey there @nitsua60?

hey there?

how're things going? (and yeah -- Korvin misses the point)

@nitsua60 The basic principle is, folks aren't going to listen to your answer (Rule 0) until after you've told them why their answer (an explicit rule) doesn't fly. It's just how we're wired: we need to clear the thing taking up space in our brain before we can devote attention to a different thing.

12:28 AM

@Shalvenay good, thanks. Except that my wife picked up some poison ivy yesterday =(

@MC_Hambone Yeah, I wasn't going to answer, but I felt the need to contest this before it gained too much momentum.

@nitsua60 ouch :/

The hardest questions to answer usefully are the ones where we don't know what the asker's mental roadblock is so we can help clear it away.

@nitsua60 took care of some minor franchise exercising today, so that's good

@Shalvenay I recognize all those words in isolation, but am not sure what they mean strung together like that: "minor franchise exercising?"

12:30 AM

(And the most frustrating answers are the ones where someone's assumed wrong and spends paragraphs clearing a roadblock we don't have. That often feels condescending.)

@nitsua60 as in -- a primary election

@nitsua60 He took an underage intellectual property for a jog.

ahh... exercising your franchise.

@BESW I was assuming "went to a small gym to work up a sweat--one of six owned by the same couple."

So you lent your efforts to a flash-mob/performance art piece put on collaboratively by two corporations masquerading as participatory democracy?
(Too political?)

Edge case?

@nitsua60 Maybe too conceptual...

12:33 AM

@nitsua60 hahaha xD -- the "minor" part was one unopposed incumbent, one literally meaningless vote since it was on the ballot despite already being caucused for, one local race, and one bond issue

[snerk] Whenever I hear "too conceptual," my brain goes "that's just, like, an idea, man."

Then I wouldn't say "minor" at all. It sounds like you cast a rare vote: one that matters!

@nitsua60 the local race and the bond issue do :) it's just the silliness of the other two ticket items that gets to me

Local races are important, man. Financing, too. I applaud your participation, then, and regret my earlier cynicism.

@BESW It's an idea that's too...idea-ish, I guess?

12:43 AM

A real danger up here https://t.co/ymuzeDEaAB

Tweeted by Malameux on May 9, 2016 at 10:36 PM

So next session my party intends to track those enemies who got away during their last combat encounter. I wonder how they'll react when they realize that after fleeing their enemies tracked them for the rest of the day =)

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@nitsua60 Well, their initial reaction will probably be something like "Wait, we're going in circles?"

=)

(more of a Reuleaux Triangle, really.)

@BESW things like this make me relieved we just have the internet and smartphones. All of... that is now unnecessary.

I'll be amused what the loggers and forest rangers would have to say though.

12:51 AM

@doppelgreener Because instead of waiting for people profiting from treating outlandish rumour as fact to come to us, now we can just browse through clickbait sites whenever we want?

At least when you paid a dime to see a squishy thing in a dark mouldy tent, you got to see a squishy thing in a dark mouldy tent. It's like a one-room haunted house attraction!

Also, the Colour Zone in our campaign should totally have a region that's dominated by a hyper-intelligent Octopus paxarbolis with mind powers.

@BESW "hyper-intelligent octopus..." is there any other kind?

@nitsua60 It's a double intensifier.

ie, it's not just intelligent for an octopus, it's hyper-intelligent for an octopus.

redoubled? Octupled!?

@BESW And so the Octopocalypse begins.

6

Definitely octupled, then. Octupus (double our intelligence), intelligent for an octopus (redoubled), hyper-intelligent for an octopus (and it's eight!)

1:00 AM

@nitsua60 heheheh.

It's started experimenting with the stock market, and soon it will octopy Wall Street.

I had a PC once, Geoffrey the Octopious. "Have you heard about the Octopus God? He's totally real!"

@BESW Soon its tentacles will stretch to every corner of the world.

At the end of one encounter he tried to jab his thumbs in the eyes of the bugbear (just a bugbear!) bear-hugging him and fumbled the roll. Thumbs->mouth, CRUNCH, and suddenly Geoffrey the Octopious had a whole lot more street cred =)

@SirTechSpec btw, I don'thave anthing against Curse of Strahd specifically. I just know from experience that it's got enough challenging sections that it'd be easy for a party to wander into some real trouble before they knew what hit them.

@nitsua60 Looks like you can remove that comment from Starmast's answer.

1:12 AM

thanks

@BESW More that live and dead animals no longer get hauled across the country and get horror stories told about them (which go on to threaten those animals' lives) for profit. If I don't know what an octopus is, I look it up and discover what it looks like, and that it's an aquatic animal that would be pretty useless in a forest.

Glad to see that resolved without any lasting problems.

(No animals were harmed in the making of Wikipedia. [citation needed])

@doppelgreener I was going to say "Except the monkeys, obviously", but that reference has sadly disappeared from the Internet.

While I take your point about mistreating animals, I'm not really sure the rest of is directly r🐘 (the fact that it's a tree octopus is what makes it remarkable as a side show), and the Internet hasn't fundamentally reduced peoples' credulity.

1:22 AM

Neither have copious [citation needed] notations =)

Although "Bones" Hartzell claimed the octopus was alive, a behind-the-scenes account of the exhibit from a friend of his daughter says it was preserved in a tank of formaldehyde with air pumped in to make it move.

The account also says it used to be alive, so he probably still gets points for animal cruelty; the show had been on the road for 6 years by the time of the account.

yeah, I have read most octopi, at least of a certain very popular species, don't typically live much longer than 3 years in captivity even when they are being kept in a swanky aquarium with their own handlers and starfish buddies under the best care

starfish because they don't eat each other, apparently

Things with more than four limbs have to stick together.

some sort of fibonacci mutual-respect, or something?

though some of them live longer than that if they were caught really yound

1:30 AM

@nitsua60 [applause]

@nitsua60 I have no idea, but the starfish did end up trying to eat some of the eggs the female octopi laid

which didn't happen, it just tried to, but every time it did it got scared off

at least in a captive environment, they don't seem to have a predator prey relationship

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which is weird just because I was sure an octopus would eat just about anything smaller and less smart than it

@nitsua60 har har

that's my "swanky aquarium" pic-reference. I have no idea what you're laughing at.

=D

but I suppose they prefer fish, crabs, and snails, or at least that species of octopus

@nitsua60 that looks like the worst aquarium

1:34 AM

Starfish aren't crunchy enough?

maybe

@trogdor (you'll notice that none of those prey have Fibonacci limbs, except the totally lame gastropod/starting-term)

anyway, it was an interesting book

Actually, both creatures prefer to eat mollusks.

A quick Google finds a forum thread where someone's starfish kept pestering their octopus for food.

well, some sea snails are mollusks

@BESW as in trying to steal or trying to eat the octopus

?

1:38 AM

> I chose to remove him from OhToo's tank as he would pester OhToo for food and we felt it stressed the octopus. (source)

also, it may be a different species of starfish (I would have no idea) or a different species of octopus (Giant Pacific I think)

another thing, in the scenario I described, both animals got more food then they ever needed

from handlers and visitors

So, our hyper-intelligent Octopus paxarbolis with mind powers needs to have a henchechinoderm.

and the octopi in question all had at least two handlers who were constantly trying to find ways to reduce the stress they had, if the starfish there were bothering them they would have been moved,... that being said I won't discount it as a possibility, it just doesn't seemed like it was happening there

@BESW ah yeah see, even just reading the first sentence there, it seems like it was the particular starfish species that was the problem

also I would have thought an octopus would be more of a terror to a starfish than the other way around, but apparently that is not the case

@BESW I'm amused by this because (iirc) starfish don't have brains and thus have limited ability to understand they'd even be pestering. They probably just know "octopus smellwards is the direction of food, sooner or later!"

@trogdor Perhaps seeing a petrified & decapitated octopus missing three limbs really freaks out a "normal" octopus?

1:46 AM

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That's the kind of starfish in the forum thread.

@BESW and oh yeah, one set of issues has been replaced with another, but the matter of lives being directly affected or exploited is the important shift to me.

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@BESW that looks amazing and beautiful.

Octopuses be crazy, y'all

Starfish less so, but pretty

@BESW certainly looks nasty enough to mess with an octopus

1:48 AM

Five to ten inches, according to one source.

and no, not nasty in the sense it isn't still pretty, but it does have what look like barbs all over it

Another source says it matures at 18 inches.

apparently it can be pretty hard to keep an octopus for any length of time without it inking in the tank and poisoning itself

@trogdor :'(!!!!!!!

the water needs to be a specific temperature, it needs to be filtered really well, and of course feeding it

@doppelgreener if you put in the effort it doesn't generally happen

1:51 AM

I guess that's why they need big tanks too. Gotta be able to get away from their own ink.

@doppelgreener even in a pretty big tank, it still needs to be cleaned out pretty well, if it happens, remember that they evolved that response to stress in the huge gigantic tank called the Ocean

where they could then jet several dozen feet away

anyway my main point was that octopi are awesome, but it is no small feat to keep one as a pet in a tank

They are totally awesome

if you do it right they will live a few years, depending on species, and they won't be too stressed out, if you do it wrong one of the most common ways they die is inking in the tank due to stress

or escaping the tank and not being able to get back in

because they are smart as all hell,.. but not so much so that they realize what opening the tank and getting out of it might result in

Note to self, include a little octopus ladder, just in case

the main problem, at least for the Author of that particular book, was that she wanted to have a pet octopus, but she didn't have the time that would be needed to properly take care of it

and of course, having it stress out and die on her was not acceptable

2:04 AM

the escape of Inky the NZ octopus

2:18 AM

@nitsua60 I figured it wasn't a point against it per se so much as a warning to know what you're getting into. Piecing together your comment and a few others, it seems like part of the horror aspect is that it's only level-appropriate at each stage if you're lucky.

@SirTechSpec Ouch, that's painful.

I ran into some similar issues with some of the 4e adventures.

@SirTechSpec In some ways I think having taken a hiatus from playing for two decades and coming back to 5e from 2e has been an easier transition in some ways than some I see in my FLGS who were weaned on 3.x/4. Or maybe it nothing to do with editions; it was just the reality of older-brother-DMing that had the specter of character death looming over my head at all times... =\

yeah -- my 3.5e DMs weren't too keen on making sure encounters were perfectly balanced for the party either

I feel like that's in the category of things that need an announcement.

Weird sentence I came across: "you can buy nearly everything Vow of Poverty gets you." Out of context it just seems like a sentence that parses, but contains no meaning.

@SirTechSpec Definitely the sort of thing I discuss at session zero.

2:27 AM

interestingly, one of them struggled to get an encounter that was challenging enough for the party, and the other was very good at making us seem in over our head, but having convenient things happen to help us out

(And yet, party of 4 started campaign last night by charging into melee with eighteen hunters.)

@nitsua60 Speaking of session zeroes, I need to get better at session X.5ing newcomers to my group.

@BESW ooh... good topic

I also wanted to ask you if you had tips on more fruitful solicitation of end-of-session player feedback than just "what was good/bad?"

Well, my tongue-kind-of-in-cheek line is "Questions, comments, concerns, compliments, complaints."

Either ~~I'm the world's greatest DM~~ my players are too polite or I'm somehow sending the vibe that I don't really want the feedback, 'cause all I ever get is "that was good, we had a fun time."

2:29 AM

Like, I'm in 2 games with a shared universe. One is all grown-ups, so it's sandbox and he specifically let us know that the world was full of things we might need to run away from. The other is mostly students so it's time constrained so more linear and he's paying more attention to CR.

Me: "questions, concerns, complaints, confusions?"

More specifically:

- What do you want to see more of?
- What don't you want to see again?
- What would you like to add?
- What would you like to change?

@SirTechSpec in the mostly-students game: that way because that's how players want it, or because some/many are new to TTRPGs and are being "led along" a little more gently?

@nitsua60 certainly easier for going to 5e at least

@SirTechSpec Also, are you one of my players? 'Cause I run a group for students where I do pay attention to CR and a group for adults where I don't even bother calculating it =)

2:34 AM

@nitsua60 Mostly to guarantee something interesting happens in 4 sessions without having to take time to roll up new chars.

@nitsua60 I'm sorting through new-players questions and none of them so far touch on my situation.

There are a TON that come close.

@BESW I want to see more horrendous failure and derailment. :D

@doppelgreener I've been trying to get you guys to fail catastrophically for years without resorting to pure fiat, but that "competent characters" thing in Fate keeps getting in the way!

I don't even want to play in the game and I want to see more "psychic energy infuses William Shatner, creating a feedback loop manifesting as the set of Enterprise becoming functional," or however you put it =)

Derailment, sure, that happens about every third session.

2:38 AM

@SirTechSpec whats so special about 4 sessions? The number you can fit in during a term?

On the feedback thing, it depends how far you want to push it. If you trust your players to tell you if things aren't fun, then you could leave well enough alone. But if you definitely want feedback, don't ask questions where "nope, it's fine" is a valid response. E.g. "If we had to drop one part of that adventure, what should it have been?"

@nitsua60 Gonna dump some links into the Spoil-Lair for future perusal.

@SirTechSpec that's good advice

@nitsua60 Having started as late as we did, yeah. More next time.

@SirTechSpec Are you a student? Teacher?

2:44 AM

IT staff

Though I did get paid a small fee to teach the RPG workshop that led to the student game, so that was pretty cool

Apropos of nothing: really glad I was playing Firefly and so missed the opportunity to be cranky for the 2 hours my question was closed XD

Hooray for being on the receiving end of small fees!

@SirTechSpec sorry to have obnoxiously left out "staff" as a possible role for "person who plays at a school." My co-GM is our sysadmin; I should know better. (Also, I should just know better.)

@SirTechSpec Yeah, the Stack can take a little while to stabilise its understanding of how a question fits within its frame, guidelines, and policies. Best not to ever feel like immediate action is needed.

I sometimes sit on comments for days before acting on them.

@SirTechSpec I do have a 3x5 card's scribbled notes on what my answer would be; we'll see if they congeal into something useful.

It could have been a larger fee if I had been more honest about the prep time, but that program has break even funding so there would have been a corresponding increase in participant fee

@nitsua60 Appreciated!

Sorry for the delayed responses, I'm on mobile because my computer automatically shuts down at bedtime

... Which, I suppose, strongly suggests what my next course of action should be XD

Night all!

2:54 AM

"Can you negate the Frightened condition by not looking at the source of your fear?"
Didn't work when I was a kid and my siblings showed me Friday the Thirteenth...

@SirTechSpec night!

@nitsua60 And it still doesn't work :)

ttfn

Man, I stopped to mock a simple 5e-mechanics question and @Miniman beat me to the answer. No wonder it's been a month since I gained rep =)

@nitsua60 There's a handful of Doctor Who stories about that.

@nitsua60 There's pretty obviously room for a better answer, though, since mine has a gap you could drive a Tarrasque through.

3:01 AM

sorry, it appears SSD's got the keys to the Tarrasque tonight =)

3

@SevenSidedDie Your timing is impeccable.

(Actually, I haven't really read the question or the condition closely; I'm pseudo-working tonight.)

@nitsua60 I mean, his has the same gap - we're both leaning heavily on "line of sight" without defining what that means.

@Miniman Does 5e not define "line of sight" mechanically?

(Something we have sadly in common with D&D 5e itself.)

3:02 AM

@nitsua60 I don't want to know what that key looks like!

@BESW Beat me to it.

@Miniman Oh, but that's a defined term--if you're using grids and minis you've got the whole center-to-center line. If not, you just wing it. (Or am I misremembering?)

@BESW more compels for horrible results or side effects to well intentioned actions 8)

More bite and escalation in them, like the "you punched the wall, now the building's going to collapse on all of you" compel.

@nitsua60 That's a definition I can get behind, but I don't recall reading it in the rules. I think the game just sort of assumes everyone knows (and agrees!) what line of sight actually means.

@Miniman cf. DMG 251

3:04 AM

@doppelgreener We've talked elsewhere about how and why I've been having trouble staying on top of that kind of mid-session creativity.

@nitsua60 Ah, I'll have to look that up in 4 hours.

@BESW oh right. I'll look out for such opportunities myself :)

Actually, though, DMG has it at any corner->any part of space.

But I might not always propose the compel myself - I'll suggest we take one or they take one to you, sometimes, like I did last session when you said something bad happened and I said "can we take that as a group compel?".

@SevenSidedDie I think it's this guy's right arm, up to the shoulder. VV

3:06 AM

@nitsua60 Anyway, sounds like you have the keys to the Tarrasque after all :P

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@Miniman I still shy away from the Tarrasque after my week-one "how drastic is too drastic" series of missteps.

@nitsua60 I was suggesting writing your own, superior answer.

@nitsua60 Sado in his later years.

(Very cool looking.)

(It was a good reminder that "having the book on your shelf" != "expert".)

@Miniman I feel like explaining line of sight would be going off on a tangent in those answers. Its meaning doesn't appear to be part of the confusion, at least, just overlooked.

3:10 AM

@SevenSidedDie I guess it depends whether anyone objects to them on those grounds.

@Miniman That's a point. So… doesn't yet appear to be part of the confusion. :)

@SevenSidedDie It's worrying that my instinct is to expect objections.

@Miniman There's definitely some grounds in the community for expecting that, so I don't think worrying reflects on you, really. For minor parts of answers that are contradictions of other things it might be reasonable for someone to object, but when it's a tangent and there's nothing from the OP to indicate it's a relevant point to clarify, objections from others are probably ignorable. :)

@doppelgreener Incidentally, it saddens me how consistently he's been swept under the rug.

@Miniman I've watched up to partway through the Hueco Mundo arc and yeah I was disappointed by that too.

3:22 AM

Does [chat] work?

Magic links only work in comments, alas

@nitsua60 It can't be all that bad.

@doppelgreener [example.se] works here, though!

speaking of that -- how do you blockquote in chat?

> You mean like this?

Behold, a link to the line history.

@doppelgreener Ah, yeah, I was wondering about [chat] specifically, though. In any case I tested it just now and it does indeed work.

> The space is seemingly insignificant but actually crucial.

3:27 AM

> testing

there!

7

Q: Could we have a [tour] short link in comments?

In comments, [help] expands to the text help center (with a link), [chat] expands to the text Role-playing Games Chat (with a link), [edit] becomes a link to edit the current question, and [tour] does nothing at all.

feature-request status-completed comments

hmm... TIL [edit] is a thing =)

@nitsua60 I need to test it on answers.

@nitsua60 YIL this thing.

Yup, it hits answers too.

3:30 AM

@Miniman I believe that link brings one circling back far enough to see every current starboard message in its natural habitat. Curiouser and curiouser....

@nitsua60 Not counting Civil War, of course.

Right--pins don't count (in my reckoning).

@nitsua60 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... @BESW pin this to destroy nitsua's reckoning!

@nitsua60 Re: edit: aw. I was busy wondering if it was called Nitseyworld.

(In case it needs saying: Don't actually pin that.)

3:33 AM

I always try to pin responsibly.

@BESW Yeah, and it kinda broke my line, too :(

Does a temporary suspension on the main site suspend a user from chat as well?

@Miniman It only prevents chatting in rooms associated with the site from which the suspension originated.

4

Q: Can you still chat if you change your parent site and you have been suspended there?

I have never been suspended from an SE site so I don't know, but let's say that I was suspended from AskUbuntu.SE (the site I hang around the most), and that was the parent site for my chat profile, on my chat profile it would then say This user is suspended on the parent site and cannot chat for...

discussion support chat profile-page account-suspension

@BESW Thanks, my MSE-search-fu wasn't helping me.

(Although I did find some interesting reading material.)

3:51 AM

There's something inherently suspicious to me about questions that start with "I have never and have no plans to X, but if I did..."

@heathenJesus Example?

Not that getting suspended is something one tends to seek out, but still

Whew. Finally got through yesterday's task list with 8 minutes left in today. (In my time zone, at least.)

@Miniman "Now, I've never broken into a bank, and I don't plan to, but IF I DID... what sorts of things could I expect?"

🤔🤔🤔

@heathenJesus I'd be extremely surprised if anyone actually contemplating robbing a bank was dumb enough to ask a question like that.

3:55 AM

An extreme example, maybe. But you might be surprised at how dumb people can be.

Mostly was commenting on that chat/suspension question. Just makes me wonder "what exactly are you planning that might get you suspended?"

@heathenJesus My evil plan is so cunning that even I don't understand it, so there's no way I'll be able to explain it to you.

"Oh? Something tells it can't be so cunning that you can't at least monologue about it!"

@heathenJesus Heh. I actually have no cunning plan and was asking because of something I noticed and wondered about.

And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

Old Man Withers?!

Was your plan sheer elegance in its simplicity?

4:01 AM

@heathenJesus better to leave behind the powerpoint for the minions ;P

4:15 AM

You mean leave the powerpoint presentation for the minions laying around? — ratchet freak Nov 24 '14 at 10:53

Yeah, I routinely leave highly sensitive information explained as simply as possible playing on every display surface I can find.

@heathenJesus :P more like sitting in some autosave file on some minion's desktop

I liked Aeon Wave's strategy.

As the PCs cyberpunk their way into the secure facility, they keep running across fragments of half-decrypted reports and memos about the facility's big secret at the heart of the plot.

So every time the players roll to hack something, the GM can hand them a bit of out-of-context plot info.

@Shalvenay Actually, I really like that

@BESW also that!

I also once ran an adventure where every miniboss and high-level minions the PCs defeated had a letter or instructions from the big boss wadded up in their pocket.

Each letter chastised the minion for doing something, saying they should stop or it'd draw attention to their plan, and told them to destroy the letter after reading it.

Naturally, they hadn't stopped doing the thing (which is how the PCs found them) and the letter was still in their pocket.

4:28 AM

@BESW I remember this XD

Trogdor once ran an adventure where my PC had a time gun, which she used to peek back at what people had been doing in the secret lab over the last several months.

yep, I was not expecting it, and yet I am pleased with the results it had

4:58 AM

[developing ideas for disastrous effects of time gun.]

Now we just need someone to have a portal gun, and someone to get the bright idea to use both at once.

Given what we've established about portals... a) they will be insanely unreliable, and b) Brother Adrian probably already has a prototype.

[developing so much disaster]

(For those not in our campaign: portals through time and space are quite possible, but they require the exact right combination of electromagnetic frequency and crystalline vibration in conjunction with a ley line.)

@trogdor If a portal or time gun of some sort appears in an adventure you run, I may propose compels which are going to be absolutely awful for everybody (in game).

But fun for us.

mm

5:05 AM

... I'll try not to destroy the adventure as a whole but be prepared for disaster.

wait, is something guaranteed to happen because of it even if no one uses a time gun anymore?

The moment someone pulls out a portal gun, I for one will be gunning for a complete and total derailment of the campaign into an alternate era/timeline/reality.

well, guaranteed is a strong word, likely is better

Not unlike the Atomic Robo volume where he winds up in the Old West.

Oh, no, I just mean, say Jessie proposes rewinding a spot to 1960 to see what happened. I will compel: "that happens! She had the range dial set wrong. We're now in this same spot, in 1960."

5:07 AM

@trogdor An attempt to portabilise something that mucks around with planetary ley lines? Heck yes it's going to go catastrophic.

@BESW [starts thinking of character with portal gun]

@BESW uh, I meant specifically the time gun thing

Speaking of! @BESW I have a comment on a compel from our last session. Will poke in Fate chat.

@doppelgreener [starts sketching up plans for a campaign detour into Sails Full of Stars and/or Morts]

Oooh, Morts crossover. I like it

5:18 AM

@doppelgreener Seriously though, it'd be almost trivial to just have someone stumble over one of Adrian's prototypes and we get called in.

@BESW we arrive to find [something terrible]. "What happened?" "Someone used it."

Heck, maybe it's already been used. In Colma.

(Dun dun dunnnn.)

Gaaaaasp!!!

This is now my headcanon unless/until we establish otherwise.

Atomic Robo has its vampire dimensions, we have a zombie dimension.

Sounds like an impending brainstorm to perform after we've gotten close to the important bits.

5:24 AM

Maybe.

Not everything is brainstorm material. Sometimes it's fine to just say "This is what is."

I didn't have us brainstorm to find out what Shatner's plan was, or why the ship was melting.

Oh, yeah, that's true. Especially since we're not really running Atomic Robo anymore, so much as Amaterasu's [CLASSIFIED] version of Fate.

Even within ARRPG, brainstorms are for when you don't already have something you want to be true.

You have to be okay with whatever the brainstorm turns up, and you have to not try to guide it toward a preconceived goal.

This is why I have to develop discipline as a GM to not develop certain parts of the upcoming adventure too much: so that there's still room for brainstorms and similar open-ended discovery.

But the high concept of the adventure? That's not something even the Mission Briefing mechanic leaves up to improv.

5:42 AM

Oh! Fair enough then.

At that point you're starting to move into actual no-prep play, which Fate doesn't actually do very well.

... Yes! Yes it does not

@doppelgreener "Yes it does not" is a valid but confusing sentence. Isn't English a wonderful language(!)

6:09 AM

@Sebkha Hi!

6:25 AM

@BESW Didn't know I was visible while I was on this page. O_O

If you want to read a room without being seen, you'll need to look at the transcript. But it's not dynamically refreshed.

That's okay. I'm not THAT shy. ;)

You're welcome to join our other lurkers here, and speak up if/when you like.

👍

There was a pointer towards here in a D&D 5e question someone was asking about how to wizard against opponents with anti-wizard features.

-4

Q: How can a spell caster defend themselves or even fight against monsters or npc that are specifically made to fight wizards

So if a wizard, sorcerer, etc were to fight against a mage slayer such as a high level monk or anything creature that has advantage against saving throws against magical effects, how could they fight against them. For example a wizard is causing turmoil and a monk who has many attributes to figh...

Ah, yeah. Sometimes someone feels that it'd be good to work something out in a more free-form environment.

6:31 AM

This doesn't seem to be TOO hard to give a satisfying answer for.

(1) When you're Paper, accept that Scissors will win. Hang around with your buddy Rock for protection.

Stack doesn't do satisfying answers. It does verifiable, rateable answers.

7

The question as stated is way too broad. There is no way to encompass all the possible builds of wizards and wizard-slayers, not to mention the amount of guesswork it would require to even hazard what constitutes a wizard-slayer.

An answerable question, from RPG.SE's point of view, would be something like "I have this character //insert build here// and about to face this character //insert build here// under such and such conditions. What spell selection and tactics can I bring to bear to maximize my chances of winning? Still somewhat subjective, but at least getting there.

So, would the question "What monsters or NPC features are specifically made to fight wizards" followed by "How does a wizard defend himself against [previous answer]" pass muster?

First, how would we define whether a monster is created to fight a wizard?

@Sebkha The first question is very opinion-based as well.

Most monsters don't come with that sort of information, so it'd have to be inferred.

6:37 AM

Welcome to the wonderful world of asking answerable questions. We swear we're not this way on purpose. Well, we are, but not to spite you.

Actually, that's not too hard. "Wizard" is well-defined, so require features specific to wizards. "Mage Slayer" being the particularly obvious one.

I think I have to lurk the meta SE to get a better feel for the criteria.

At the end of the day, it might be better to figure out what the "real" question is: identify the real-life situation which is prompting this line of questioning and ask about that.

Often a question like this is spurred by some particular event, or anticipated event, in the querent's game.

@Sebkha The thing is, obvious doesn't mean correct. Mage Slayer is pretty awful. A true Mage Slayer is, in fact, another wizard.

@Sebkha Is wizard well-defined, though? Can't you build two wizards that play very differently? Not being familiar with 5e myself, I'd still guess it's possible.

We're a lot better at providing solutions to specific problems, than at providing lists and resources for hypotheticals.

6:40 AM

@Miniman A grappler with antimagic field generator of some description around their neck.

@Magician ...I made that in 3.5. Well, it was an epic-level vow of poverty tattooed monk, but same smell.

(The goal was not to defeat the target on his own, but to move them into the auto-lose square in the room.)

It's not as rigorous as 4th edition, but it's still prescriptive, Vancian D&D. You get a list of mechanics and a schedule for when you get new ones as you level. Just taking the mechanics that are specific to wizards and saying anything that works against those counts as well-defined in my opinion.

> You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. -- Help - What types of questions should I avoid asking?

@Sebkha It's not. Which mechanics are "specific to wizards"? Mage Slayer isn't. The only mechanic unique to wizards is the spellbook.

And even that isn't strictly unique with Ritual Caster and the Pact of the Tome.

Once we have an actual problem, that someone is facing in reality, and that problem is described, we have something that can actually start making a solid question. In absence of any real problem, we get super broad unspecific questions that can't be more specific because there's not any actual real scenario coming up.

6:44 AM

There are hundreds of ways to build a character or monster specifically to kill wizards, and it's impossible to come up with strategies that work against all of them.

Those questions looked like they were motivated more by curiosity than facing an actual problem. Curiosity and inquisitiveness are excellent, but won't on their own give you an answerable question the stack can handle.

Really, I just want an excuse to use an old GURP anecdote. ;) We had a pair of mages PvPing. They both raised shields and traded fireballs. The shields were stronger than either of their attacks. So it was a stalement until one of then teleported over and shanked the other guy with that decorative dagger wizards always seem to carry. MORAL: If something is spell-proof, don't use spells.

Lord Gareth's Tale of the Martini Wizard

Mar 11 '14 at 12:32, 20 minutes total – 45 messages, 6 users, 15 stars

Bookmarked Sep 22 '14 at 6:20 by doppelgreener

@Sebkha The recreated version of the question, while a clear attempt to bypass the Stack's functioning, was actually pretty good. It named a specific mechanic and asked how to fight against that specific mechanic.

It got pretty good answers, too, which is a shame, because the user has learnt nothing about how to use the site, and has learned a bit about how to abuse it.

Gamers gaming a rule-based system? ...I'm shocked. Shocked!

2

6:47 AM

My favourite version of a wizard duel is the type where both walk into a coffee shop, sit down at a table together, go through their spells, describe what they'd do, until one decides fairly the other would best them, then they shake hands and leave. (And maybe arrange a new coffee shop meeting to discuss that kind of spell they were both particularly interested in during their duel.)

3

An epic level wizard duel is both of them sitting down at a cafe and sipping lemonades while reading each others' list of prepared spells, then agreeing who'd win and the loser pays the bill.

@Sebkha Heh. It's inevitable, but we still don't like people gaming the site.

They're both men of ~~science~~ magic and will probably understand that much like a knife fight, nobody wins a wizard duel.

@doppelgreener ...great minds think alike; fools' thoughts differ little.

@BESW Yes this one.

@BESW it was you and LG who introduced me to this type of duel. :)

7:03 AM

@BESW loser ~~pays the bill~~ lets the winner copy one of his spells

@Adeptus Spsh. They're epic level wizards.

At that point, the spells one wizard has that another doesn't can't be bought for love or money.

If it's an alternative to a duel to the death, I think a pick of their unique spells would be a reasonable wager. "Make it interesting" as gamblers say.

I figure epic wizards are like ancient vampires: they're all disgustingly boring, horribly paranoid, and never take any risks at all. The flashy, the careless, and the impetuous never last that long.

XD

Most epic wizards are allergic to anything more "interesting" than tea in a bezoar cup and the latest issue of the God's Domain academic journal.

Epic sorcerers, on the other hand...

Well, not all flashy low-level wizards manage to blow up by themselves.

7:19 AM

hehehe

sorcerers every time

team "I don't need to prepare spells" all the way

Oh, the epic wizards would mop the floor with 'em. If they wanted to.

the epic ones would, but they don't want to

anyway, my point is that I had way more FUN playing a sorc than any spell caster who needed to prepare spells

it's just too bad they couldn't bother to balance any of it XD

8:21 AM

What is this Morts thing that keeps popping up in teh chat recently?

My GoogleFu check is botchin hard to find anything Ic an relate back to what I've read here.

8:35 AM

@Ahriman Morts is a World of Adventure for Fate Core.

That is, it's a post-zombie-apocalypse setting with supporting mechanical hacks in a pay-what-you-want pdf published by Evil Hat.

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