TRPG General Chat

12:02 AM

3

Q: How do I determine the result of a Saving Throw?

I'm a pretty new player, and I'm building a bard in D&D 5e. I understand how saving throws work in general, but I am a little confused about one thing. Say I cast Blindness/Deafness on a humanoid. They must then make a Constitution saving throw. My question is: what value do they have to roll in ...

Is that ^^ really not a dupe? I'm not finding it, but it's hard to imagine it wasn't asked 2 years ago....

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 I take it that lowering the ambient above the surface will drive up the partial pressure of the evaporate, then? (I was wondering if that was at work in the center wing tank of TWA 800, driving up the fuel vapor pressure on that fatefully hot day...)

nitsua60

@Shalvenay Yes. (In general. I know nothing of the tank you mention.)

BESW

Today in What Do You Mean My Character Needs a Better Motive, multiple people with no particular qualifications have dropped their entire lives to travel halfway around the world and spend years looking for a probably-extinct pink-headed duck.

> Thorns, ...first learned about the pink-headed duck around 1997, from a library book on vanishing birds. At the time, he was working as a shop assistant. As he read about these stunning, rare birds, and the elephant grasses and lotus flowers that they lived among, he had a realization. “I didn’t want to be a shop assistant anymore,” he says. “I decided to look for the pink-headed duck. So I did, and I’ve been after it ever since.”

Shalvenay

@BESW to add to that: rapp.org/archives/2016/01/plane-spotters

Ben

@BESW I had a friend that had a motive for every single of his PCs, regardless of system or setting: To find his long lost Cast Iron Frypan

BESW

12:16 AM

@Ben ...was he a fan of Patricia C. Wrede?

Ben

No idea

Last known location:

BESW

Ah.

Different fantasy frypan joke.

Wrede wrote a short story in the Enchanted Forest setting in which a magician was trying to secure his place in history by using a special once-a-lifetime spell to enchant an awesome weapon of heroism... but his wife came into the room just as he was casting it and he tripped over the pet pig and his wife's best frying pan wound up turning into The Frying Pan of Doom.

Ben

@BESW Ahh yes. I remember tht one

BESW

It was still an awesome weapon of heroism, capable of great feats of battle as well as great feats of omelette, but it burned the hands of anyone who held it and no hero wanted to charge into battle wearing oven mitts and swinging a frying pan.

Ben

You know, it's possible that Glen Keane knows about that story, and added the frypan as a nod

BESW

12:25 AM

True.

I'm always surprised by who does and doesn't know about the Enchanted Forest.

Nobody in my FAE playtest knew about it beforehand, but a half-dozen RPG.SE users since then have gone "OMG there was an Enchanted Forest FAE game on this very Stack?"

Ben

Haha

trogdor

@BESW yeah I didn't know about it till you educated me on that one

Ben

12:53 AM

Why is all of Transformer heritage found on earth? So far all 3 of the movies have hinted that Transformers made up Cybertron just to make themselves sound cooler.

BESW

In some continuities, Cybertron is formed around the body of Primus, their creator-god, while Earth is formed around the body of his twin Unicron. Or maybe the goddess Gaea. Or is itself a Transformer.

Ben

@BESW Wasn't Unicron the world-eater?

BESW

Also there just seems to be a largely uncommented tendency for anything floating randomly through space to wind up on Earth.

Ben

@BESW Infinite space... and cos all we know about is Erath, and one other planet... there's no chance it won't en up at the other end of the universe

BESW

@Ben Yes. The Transformers continuity has almost 16 million "clusters" of parallel universes, each cluster containing all the universes which are closely similar to each other.

In at least one of those clusters, Unicron was defeated very early in Transformers history and his body gathered space debris to it until he became the core of a planet.

Ben

1:03 AM

Oh. So the word "continuity" is used very liberally there...

BESW

[shrug] I'm a Doctor Who fan. I point and laugh at continuity.

trogdor

I kinda like continuity

I mean, I can throw it out when I need to

but I lean towards it rather than away from it

BESW

[grin] Continuity is what happens when the writers remember something useful from a previous story line. Canon is what happens when the property owners tell the writers they can't do something useful because of a previous story line.

Ben

@BESW I'm sorry, did someone mention "The rules??"

nitsua60

@BESW My best friend isn't the world's most organized/strict person. And was nominally in charge of continuity at Marvel Comics for a while. You may have noticed: they had three parallel Marvel Universes going there for a while because he never wanted to tell a writer they couldn't run with a good idea =)

BESW

1:08 AM

Anyway, universe clusters are just a way to have your cake and eat it too, by allowing all variants of the Transformers franchise to be equally true.

I like it.

trogdor

I am fine with all that myself, but it doesn't entirely appeal to me when used as an excuse for doing things "only a little bit differently"

it's basically the same problem I have with most DC and Marvel comics

nitsua60

@trogdor (watch it...)

=D

trogdor

@nitsua60 watch yourself bub

XD

nitsua60

SCHNICK SCHNICK!

Ben

@BESW I can see this developing into a variation of The One

nitsua60

1:11 AM

(note to Stack Overlords: I did not just threaten a site user with my adamantium claws)

Ben

@nitsua60 What are you talking about. You are a Stack Overlord, aren't you?

nitsua60

@Ben No, I'm just a collaborator =)

trogdor

@nitsua60 I think you misunderstand which of us has those

Ben

Torgdor has an adamantium skeleton? Is there no end to the awesome?

trogdor

@Ben a whole skeleton? sheesh no just the claws

they are on the mantle XD

Ben

1:15 AM

Oh ok. Tone down on the awesome

BESW

→ 5 messages moved to Not a bar, but plays one on TV

Ben

I'm obviously missing something then. I just thought the meme was getting a little out of hand

trogdor

it started from a Tweet from a political figure

Ben

1:39 AM

@trogdor Fair enough

There are now "Smart Batteries" for your Smoke Alarms. Instead of screaming at you when there is a fire, it can quietly alert you by sending a notification to your phone, so you can "deal with it later".

https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Battery-Carbon-Monoxide-Alarms/dp/B00ZWQHVP4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl1&tag=usatsyndication-20&linkId=49a3f47c6eb4dd53d3795c15070bb181&th=1

You can also train your dog to bark, by using a remote system to feed them treats whenever they start barking

http://amzn.to/2qomfCv

trogdor

@Ben wait what?

fires are kinda important to deal with pretty quickly

Ben

@trogdor The idea is that the battery sends a notification whenever power is being used (not a bad idea), so instead of waking up the kids when you burn your popcorn for your late night movie, it'll just alert you.

trogdor

ah

Ben

But I can see it being used the same way as fire alarms are usually handled: Unplugged when cooking

Or in this specific case: like all the alerts in my girlfriends phone (234 at my last count) - ignored

trogdor

my father burned a turkey for Thanksgiving once and his disapointement was very punctuated by the fire alarm

Ben

1:48 AM

What they need is a pre-warning smoke alarm. "Your food is very close to burning. Might want to deal with that soon."

trogdor

that would be a very useful invention

Ben

As opposed to "OMG! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! I SMELL SMOKE! YOU BOILED THAT WATER WAY TOO LONG!"

BESW

I would set that off every. night.

"Almost but not quite burned" is my goal for a lot of my cooking.

4

trogdor

I usually check anything new I cook very frequently

Ben

@BESW "Extra crispy"

trogdor

1:50 AM

then when I have made it enough times I set a timer

(which I am lucky enough to have on the oven itself, but which I could also technically use my watch for)

on the stove I usually just stick to babysitting it the whole time

Shalvenay

@Ben some of us would rather a house that actually yanno -- fought the fire that started while you were on vacation on some far-off island, rather than just pinged you on your phone?

Adeptus

I started reading the last ~16 hours of chat log, then went... ugh TL;DR

BESW

@Shalvenay ...so long as the house isn't connected to the Internet to do that either. I don't want my sprinkler system launching DDoS attacks.

Shalvenay

@BESW haha. we've had the tech to do that for 100 years, and seriously been refining it over the past 30?

BESW

@Shalvenay Yeah, but tell me honestly you don't think a modern implementation won't have somebody hooking it up to the wifi.

Ben

1:54 AM

trogdor

@Adeptus this is me all the time when I have been off long enough for it to happen

XD

Shalvenay

@BESW there's no electronics needed for it to go to begin with xD

BESW

@Shalvenay Has that ever stopped the Internet of Things yet?

Ben

@Adeptus Roleplaying lets you get away with racism; Album covers make great settings for rp stuff; Gene Seed chemistry; Smart-Dumb devices

Shalvenay

@BESW also, I thinkUL and FM would look rather askew at a sprinkler that needed some electronic gadget to work

@Ben apparently some folks seem to forget that we inherited xenophobia from our chimp ancestors way back when.

BESW

1:59 AM

Also mapmaking is easier if you use noodles or just steal someone else's map, and there are better ways to deal with difficult encounter design than undermining a pillar of the system you're using.

Ben

@Adeptus Oh, and pasta is a great way to make maps

Yeah. What BESW said

trogdor

sssssssteeeeeaaaaallll maaaaaaaaaaps

you heard it here first, steal maps

see a tourist? take that map away (please don't actually do this)

Ben

@trogdor (StackExchange is not in any way related to; or endorsing the stealing of tourist maps)

Miniman

@Ben Still, there's an Area 51 proposal in that. mapstealing.stackexchange.com, someone set that bad boy up!

Ben

@Miniman "I need a map for [...], in a [..] setting, which can allow for [...]"

Not a bad idea

Adeptus

2:17 AM

BESW

I love my Dictionary of Imaginary Places. The maps have clean, clear lines.

Ben

@Adeptus You'd be surprised how many people think it's just one city called "Ankh Morpork"

Not including those that have no idea about discworld, or those that scoff at the idea with a city named "Ain't More Pork"

Shalvenay

@Ben I'm kind of surprised that metropolis hasn't earned its own abbreviation yet :P

kind of like DFW

nitsua60

Or Budapest?

trogdor

@Ben lol

Ben

2:37 AM

Crud.

I need to fill in my timesheet, which I haven't done all week.

trogdor

ooh jeez

Ben

I know what I did on Monday, and today

trogdor

we started using those

and I don't even want to let it go for a day

Ben

Monday: Absent. Today: Sweet FA

Aha! Emails. They'll tell me what I was doing

Damn. Nothing for Tuesday.

Phone calls?

I called the office 3 times... While at the office?

Hmm... [Roll to investigate]

d20

Dice Service

2

Ben

2:44 AM

Blast

trogdor

lol

I cannot imagine why you would call into your own office from inside it

Magician

The second Bestiary for 13th Age just became available for preorder (and pre-layout pdf is included). I already love this book:

trogdor

though to be fair, maybe your office is bigger than mine (not a hard thing to accomplish right now)

@Magician oooh nice

Magician

> The thing no one mentions about owlbears are their haunting calls. Or maybe that’s not the right word. Owls are haunting. Whooooo they cry, lonely in the night. Owlbears cry WHHHHOOOOOOOO and as it echoes off the canopy and the mountains you huddle by your bedroll and think, “Not me, not us, not tonight, please just find your mate or whatever and let us get to sleep.”

> A few minutes later you’re negotiating with the wizard again to see if she can jerry-rig an unconventional casting of the sleep spell for you while she’s on watch. WHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Ben

@trogdor All from my mobile too... My desk handset has no history for Tuesday. (I have a forward on my handset to my mobile, but it still logs calls missed)

@trogdor We have 4 desks

trogdor

2:52 AM

ooook yours is somehow smaller than mine

take that out of context at your own risk

4

nitsua60

Time zones. I'd blame time zones. That's where Tuesday went.

Ben

@nitsua60 Yes. Excellent

nitsua60

(Come to think of it, I'm not sure what I did on Tuesday. IT'S CONTAGIOUS!!!)

Ben

> 29/05/17. Start: 0800. Finish: 1700. Work Description: Lost due to Timezones and 24hr clock conundrums

trogdor

@nitsua60 I know what I did on Tuesday,..... because I have to do it again today XD

Ben

2:55 AM

@Magician I'm imagining a guy sitting at the top of the tree just screaming "WHOOOO"

Normally I'd just say I was working on my Plugin (more likely than not, I was...) but I know it didn't just work on my plugin

Shalvenay

btw @Ben how's the plugin coming?

Ben

"When people ask for a source, they're not calling you a liar. They want to know how you know what you know. Taking everything at everyone's word gets us in trouble. Trust, but verify"

@Shalvenay In a word: It's not

@Shalvenay The plugin itself is sound, but I can't load it because the program uses a .apd, which I cannot for the life of me figure out, even with the examples they provided. (which, I cannot get from them either)

They have told me that I can load their examples, yet I just can't

Magician

@Ben Don't we all.

Ben

@Magician Once finished with his taunts, he climbs down the tree, and is promptly mauled, and eaten by an Owlbear. The noise did not attract the Owlbear because it recognised the call; Owlbears don't normally have a call. It just heard some idiot in a tree, and came to eat them.

Gotta love the ads that work off your browsing trends. Since I'm Australian, and have many female friends, most of whom have recently become mothers/given birth to another child, all of my recommended sites include the AA, and Vaginal Health

Shalvenay

3:22 AM

hey there @CaptainBohemian

Captain Bohemian

@Shalvenay hey

Shalvenay

what's up?

nitsua60

3:34 AM

[help]

(I don't really need help. Just testing magic links.)

[tour]

hmm.... not in chat, I guess.

How to Ask

Ben

I like the names they came up with for H0D. A lot of the creatures resemble creatures from Earth's past: Horses, Deer, Crocodiles, etc. However, everything from Earth's History was lost, no record of what these creatures may/may not have resembled, so they came up with their own names. Like the Snapmaw, or the Sawtooth

nitsua60

Role-playing Games Meta

Ben

@nitsua60 "Help" vs. "Halp. Pls."

Papayaman1000

So I've been ironing out my ideas for the "improv" chat event proposal. Here's a GDoc.

Captain Bohemian

haven't played a computer for long.

Papayaman1000

3:38 AM

...should I give Comment access? I'm giving Comment access.

Ben

@Papayaman1000 I'm interested

Papayaman1000

Comment access should be given. Try reloading if you aren't seeing it.

nitsua60

Just out of curiosity, did any of you see me pop into that document a moment ago? I'm wondering if my RL name and personal e-mail just went out, or if I showed up as an anonymous wombat?

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 You were just anon animal

I kinda made a mistake in using the wrong account

BESW

It might change if you edit the doc; sometimes it'll let you be an anonymous observer but not an anonymous editor.

Papayaman1000

3:47 AM

@BESW Yeah, comments make you log in.

BESW

That's one of many reasons I have my EMF account.

nitsua60

@BESW EMF seriously confused me for a while.

Papayaman1000

@nitsua60 this

nitsua60

(I of course mean BESW's pseudonym, the band, and the physical notion, all at once.)

BESW

@nitsua60 It's just this side of plausible, eh.

Ben

3:52 AM

@Papayaman1000 In regards to this whole thing - yes Improv is an important skill to have, but working purely off Improv (as I have - a 1 player PbP game) is way more effort than it's worth

nitsua60

@BESW certainly beats "Arthur Dent," which is about as creative a pseudonym as I'd come up with =)

Joel Harmon

@SevenSidedDie there's actually a handy website to verify whether your problem is caching or not: shouldiblamecaching.com

nitsua60

@JoelHarmon [crosses fingers] please tell me that's a link to a site <html><body>YES</body></html> oh please oh please

[clicks] WOO-HOO!!!

Magician

@nitsua60 WHOOOOOOO

nitsua60

@Magician GOOOOOOOEEESSSS

Magician

4:05 AM

This is the strangest set up to a knock-knock joke I've seen.

Ben

Knock knock
WHOOOOOOOOOOOO?
Nope.jpg

nitsua60

@Magician Try this one. (It's not a knock-knock joke, but it's an awesome setup. Worth the three minutes.)

Ben

@nitsua60 Yup

Joel Harmon

@nitsua60 I'm also a fan of the site isitchristmas.com , and on an unrelated note I get grumpier every year around ~~mid november~~ er, ~~early november~~, er, before Halloween? Seriously?

also, grumpy from Dec. 26 through Jan. 6

nitsua60

@JoelHarmon I love living in a world where someone's decided it's worth money to them to have that available to the whole world.

Alright. Night, all!

Ben

4:13 AM

They had one for Xur (Destiny weekend trader)

No longer, unfortunately

isxuratthetower.com

Adeptus

4:24 AM

@nitsua60 I would have thought Ford Prefect would be a more inconspicuous name...

Ben

I have a habit of explaining how I fix IT issues to people. Mainly because I like to explain the way things work (it interests me). The problem with that though is that it makes me sound less like a Mysterious and All Powerful Guru

The upside though is that no one really pays attention to me anyway

Adeptus

@Ben Did you know that the Amiga's equivalent to the "blue screen of death" was "Guru Meditation Error"?

Ben

But then, that also removes the "Mysterious and All Powerful Guru" ideology and just replaces it with "The guy that fixes things."

@Adeptus I have not heard that one before.

BESW

@Ben It's all in how you explain things. [grin]

Ben

@BESW Oh I've done it many ways. They just don't listen anyway.

Adeptus

4:32 AM

Guru Meditation

The Guru Meditation is an error notice displayed by early versions of the Commodore Amiga computer when they crashed. It is analogous to the "Blue Screen of Death" in Microsoft Windows operating systems, or a kernel panic in Unix. It has later been used as a message for unrecoverable errors in software such as Varnish and VirtualBox. == Description == When a Guru Meditation is displayed, the options are to reboot by pressing the left mouse button, or to invoke ROMWack by pressing the right mouse button. (ROMWack is a minimalist debugger built into the operating system which is accessible ...

Miniman

@Ben "I Googled it and did what Google told me to."

BESW

I freelance teaching classes on how to use the software I use for my primary profession. This tends to result in people going "Gosh, I know how to use the program now but I couldn't possibly do what he does with it."

Ben

@BESW Trouble is that now you get people asking you to do their job for them, cos "you can do it better".

Adeptus

In related news, I'm suddenly nostalgic for the Amiga...

BESW

2

Ben

4:37 AM

^ this

Adeptus

Ben

^ not this

Much like artists, people asking to fix/do something on their PCs are often seen as "favours"

BESW

@Adeptus I have a wonderful client whose computers I troubleshoot, despite that totally not being something I do. He has exactly this attitude, because I can do what he wants without making him feel stupid and he's got the money to pay for that.

Ben

Those types of clients are the best.
"Fix it please."
"Did you fix it? awesome. How much do I owe you?"

BESW

yeah, and this is often stuff like "Sometimes my mouse stops working," and the answer is "That USB port is dying, plug it into a different port."

...though sometimes it's "Troubleshoot the Intermittent Defect in my wireless printer."

That was a few hours off my life.

Thought I think my favourite "you've got to be kidding me" moment in tech was trying to get a wireless printer setup interface to be accessible for a blind client.

Adeptus

4:55 AM

@BESW Accessibility is still often an afterthought (or a not-at-all-thought) in IT

BESW

I just gave up on that one.

Ben

We had one to do with our firewall hardware. We have SOPHOS, which uses RED (Remote Ethernet Devices) to create VPNs to different sites, so that we can all access the network in different locations. For some reason, when setting it up in one of these locations after testing it first in our office, it wouldn't work. For some reason, even though it was picking up the Ethernet connection, it couldn't resolve the VPN. Took 3 days to figure it out.

Turns out, just power cycle it

@BESW wow

BESW

(We're still trying to find a POS service that's accessible for the workers as well as the customers.)

Ben

WereOwlDropBear. Oh dear

Magician

:D

BESW

5:03 AM

ThereOwlDropBear.

Ben

@BESW Well... you never see it.

Magician

I'm always gonna star people linking to my blog, you can't stop me :P

Ben

WhereBear? Dead

BESW

"I don't know, you had him last."

Ben

@BESW ~~Mr.~~ Sir Bearington: [Shrugs]

BESW

5:12 AM

What's the wereowldropbear equivalent of a wurwilf?

Ben

A WurBoofer?

Ben

5:44 AM

Sit down at the bus stop, eating my chips from the deli. Punch a spider. Check my phone. Punch the spider again. Continue eating chips

trogdor

7:58 AM

@Ben lol

Ben

8:15 AM

Straya

It's OK, he got the message. He left after that.

trogdor

9:52 AM

so two punches didn't hurt him too much then

I am conflicted about spiders

they eat other bugs, so good

but some are poisonous, and almost all of them are creepy

and webs are stupid

eimyr

10:03 AM

@trogdor So am I. I am very arachnophobic. I also used to have a spider.

Well, "have". When I moved in to a new place, a small garden-variety orb-weaver was already squatting on the windowsill. I left him alone, he didn't bother me, I cleaned up after him and gave him access to water, he took care of flies for me.

Perfect symbiosis. He died of old age, sadly.

("He", because he didn't lay any eggs, luckily.)

Anne Aunyme

wasn't your arachnophoby a problem in your relationship?

eimyr

not really

he was tiny and one of the acceptably-thinly-legged ones

sure, it was a bit uncomfortable at times, but he never had any interest in me, never tried to approach me or anything

also, did I mention he was tiny?

about the size of a fingernail

doppelgreener

10:19 AM

@Ben I HEARD MY NAME

of my home country

eimyr

@doppelgreener O'Straya?

Now I'm wondering why it isn't more Irish.

doppelgreener

@BESW My few favorite fantasy creatures still include the Demon Cat with Approximate Knowledge of Most Things from Adventure Time, and the why-wolves:

Why Wolves? - Adventure Time

►

eimyr

@doppelgreener that cat is my spirit animal

Ben

10:39 AM

@doppelgreener yes. The why wolves

@trogdor yeah. I mean, they're not too bad. Just... you know. Clingy

eimyr

Could someone who played and knows Fiasco explain Fiasco's mechanics to me? Pretty please?

trogdor

10:55 AM

@Ben I just don't like em too much, though I am fine with them keeping the other tiny-too-many-leg-things down

@eimyr I am mildly to moderately so myself

I know someone who doesn't even want them in our games

which is futher even than I go, and why I would say I am only mildly to moderately so myself

eimyr

well, I might have exaggerated my own one then

I get freaked out by drawings, photos or video game depictions

trogdor

@eimyr I actually had three of those in succession once

eimyr

but one in a tabletop game?

I wouldn't mind, unless you had a mini for it

trogdor

@eimyr I do not

except maybe some of the photos

ones in video games and drawings of em are not quite so bad for me

eimyr

when I was young and sensitive (you kinda shed some of the freakouts as you age, I guess, if I'm to be an example) I loved Evil Islands video game to bits. One of my favourites.

But I couldn't get past 2nd act, because in 3rd act the first enemies you face are large hairy spiders. I just couldn't cope with that.

trogdor

10:59 AM

yeah I killed plenty of spiders in video games

it never bothered me

eimyr

Nowadays I probably wouldn't mind, but EI no longer has its appeal

@techurbana Hi there!

trogdor

I have to mow the lawn a lot (grass and weeds actually do grow faster here than non-tropical places) and that is the main time I have a problem

eimyr

You're in a place with lots of spiders though.

trogdor

if an orb weaver has a web in the way I have to freak out for a few minutes before I can get a broom to break it's web

eimyr

I moved from a country with no dangerous or big spiders to one with large, but not dangerous ones

trogdor

11:01 AM

thankfully non of the,..... other,.... kind of spider usually bothers me

@eimyr we have large but not dangerous ones here too

techurbana

hi, eimyr!

trogdor

@eimyr this is true, not necessarily a lot of different species, probably 4 as far as I know

and two species of them hardly even bother me

but we have a lot of the ones we,... have

eimyr

that's the thing, to me "large" is " larger than a lime slice

techurbana

*Oh, my god, I just entered an you are talking of spiders yet !!

:D

trogdor

@eimyr ours are,.... definitely bigger than that when full grown

eimyr

11:03 AM

@techurbana Yeah, we can move elsewhere. I took a peek at your SO profile and BOI do we have things to talk about

@trogdor Yeah, that's the point of perspective.

trogdor

sorry, I didn't even want to make this a prolonged spider convo XD

@eimyr I mean, the one species is, all the others are definitely smaller than that

eimyr

@techurbana I haven't seen you a lot here, is that a coincidence or are you new-ish around here?

trogdor

I have not either, so my guess is maybe either infrequent visitor or new

not that there is any problem with either

doppelgreener

@eimyr The Italian and Greek settlers got there first. (And brought coffee with them. Glorious coffee.)

eimyr

@trogdor no, not at all, but perhaps introductions and words of welcome are due and we're just talking about spiders

techurbana

11:07 AM

I am really new in using the chat, really (I even don't remember if I used it before).

trogdor

@eimyr yeah XD

@techurbana welp, you are welcome here whenever you feel like it

I hope you will find the chat as cool as most of us usually do,... when not talking about creepy arachnids

techurbana

@trogdor. Lots of thanks :D

remember, guys: spiders are not nice.

trogdor

@doppelgreener "such is the course of nature" XD

eimyr

yeah. Also, word of introduction, we treat Be Nice very seriously here, so you won't find any of the protracted arguments that haunt many chat places here.

Also, there are permanent records of the conversations that never get removed.

@techurbana Do you mind if I quote you? "I'm one of those crazy people who think it's possible to play D&D without having to kill things."

My comment to that is "yes, but why would you?"

techurbana

Of course!. It will be fine!

umm ... roleplaying?

eimyr

11:13 AM

I meant: Why would you choose D&D as your system if you want to roleplay a non-violent, low-combat, story-heavy campaign?

techurbana

weeell, that's a very good question.

Lots of times, people has "sell" me Fate.

eimyr

aaand that's how indies were made

techurbana

But I find all that pointy-point merchandise disgusting.

eimyr

@techurbana Have they succeeded?

techurbana

Noooooooo

eimyr

11:16 AM

wait, what do you mean by pointy-point merchandise?

I'm having trouble getting what exactly you mean by that

techurbana

ehh, all thar fate points, I don't know very well.

eimyr

well, by "merchandise" I'm thinking of the shirts, the hats, the metal tokens, fancy dice etc. that are available if you want them

techurbana

umm, yeah, sorry, my english is nasty.

eimyr

but I'd be surprised that's a deterrent, given that you can just ignore them

techurbana

trade

eimyr

11:18 AM

oh, right

why do you think Fate point trading is wrong?

techurbana

Not wrong, only that i didn't get the point of that.

eimyr

I see.

a Fate Point is a narrative resource. It measures your ( player's not character's) contribution to the story.

So by spending a Fate Point you're essentially saying "I'm changing the story in this direction, and to pay for this, I give someone else this Fate Point. Now this other person can change the story using it too"

Usually spending a Fate Point is to boost your character's abilities - which is fine, it's saying "I'm making my character more awesome in this moment in the story, but I won't have that opportunity later"

techurbana

yeah, I remember sommething like that.

eimyr

well, Fate isn't the only non-D&D game out there

techurbana

Umm, I really didn't taste much of them.

eimyr

11:25 AM

That can be remedied :D

techurbana

Yeah, anyway, my group plays d&d 5. Before, it was Pathfinder !!!!

Ben

@trogdor @eimyr I had a female huntsman as a pet (actually kept it in a jar and fed it) and it turned out to be female. I decided at that point (I.e. the point where she laid the egg sac in the jar) to let her go.

Not in any way fascinated by spiders. Big and close up make me uncomfortable (like in Skyrim or Aragog from HP), but otherwise I'm OK

She also bit me several times. Probably cos I named her Frank

eimyr

@techurbana Nothing to be ashamed of. I played 5e briefly too, though I always wanted to try a total munchkin 3.5 or Pathfinder campaign

Shalvenay

@techurbana yeah -- Fate's mechanization-of-narrative can be hard to grasp at first

Joel Harmon

@Magician I think you have a typo in that entry; see "cubes". Also, "a wereowlbear" vs. "an wereowlbear"

techurbana

11:38 AM

yeah, I suppose it's that (or maybe I'm to talky and impacient to deal constantly with the points).

eimyr

the points are there to make the talkiness work. Not every in-game statement has to initiate point trade, just ones that affect the mechanics or influence the story if you're a player

Anne Aunyme

For now FATE seems to me the easiest system to get wrong

and when you get it wrong it's not good

techurbana

Yeah, I suppose.

Zachiel

> In the end, [D&D 4e] has a very different flavor like D&D. Imagine expecting pizza and getting Chinese food. Even if the Chinese is good, you might feel inclined to describe it as the Worst. Pizza. Ever.

Shalvenay

@AnneAunyme it's not terrible when gotten completely wrong, though -- just rather meh

Zachiel

11:45 AM

@eimyr I can

eimyr

@Zachiel Go!

Anne Aunyme

@Shalvenay I've never felt as constrained by a system as I was That One Time

basically there was a boss

Zachiel

@eimyr heh. My main problem with playing 3.x again, apart from how hard it is to DM it, is that I don't know where to limit player options before it becomes too munchkin-y

@eimyr Do you want the mechanics or a general description of procedures without much detail?

Anne Aunyme

it was very hard to hit her, and it was basically impossible without activating aspects

Shalvenay

@Zachiel let go embrace your inner munchkin

Anne Aunyme

11:48 AM

and each time we spent a point to hit her she used it back to defend herself

Zachiel

@Shalvenay basically if I were to play an "all manuals allowed" campaign nowadays I'd expect to see someone pulling out pun-pun by level 13 or so.

Anne Aunyme

that was the most ridiculous rpg fight I ever been in

eimyr

@Zachiel I'd say we go to NAB

Zachiel

@eimyr or to skype maybe.

I've already been discussing Fiasco in this chat but I get the feeling that the less I rewrite the manual here, the better XD

eimyr

Do I have you on Skype?

Zachiel

11:50 AM

You do

ACuriousMind

@AnneAunyme Well...but you need not spend points to activate aspects. You can also create them and get one use for free. Also, remember that the activation of a fate point/aspect needs some sort of narrative support - I have trouble believing that an NPC has the right aspects to defend against any possible avenue of attack inventive players may try.

eimyr

OK then, it's fine with me

Anne Aunyme

@ACuriousMind indeed, but the GM didn't explain this. And basically the boss has aspects like "I will succeed in my task of doom"

ACuriousMind

But yeah, it's easy to get fate combat wrong by falling into the "I hit it with my sword. Then I hit it with my sword again. Then I hit it again." rhythm other games have

@AnneAunyme Ah, yes. Fate needs everyone on the table to understand the mechanics. And making a boss like that seems to me to be a classic GM vs. players attitude (i.e. that "boss" is designed to win, not to be an interesting character), which doesn't really fare well.

eimyr

@AnneAunyme Ew. How on Earth did the table agree to- Right, the GM probably didn't read that part of the rulebook.

Anne Aunyme

11:57 AM

I honestly believe the GM wasn't aware that it was a problem when he designed the boss, and I don't think either the aspects itselves were unfair

the problem was the way they were used

eimyr

Also, Fate requires treating character failure as just another narrative element, one that is just as good and interesting as success

Anne Aunyme

basically we were spending a point, looking for something special happening, and the only special thing was that our bonus was perfectly canceled by an equivalent bonus to the opponent's defense

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