TRPG General Chat

BESW

11:05 AM

Game concept: Transformers, but they're zombies.

dopp3Lgr33n3r

zombies instead of robots, or robots but also zombies?

illustro

My word the new stack 90s theme is distracting...brings back so many horrible memories of bad web design from my youth

vicky_molokh

Hmm. Zombie robots . . . Necrons! Except they also transform.

Hot RPG Questions

11:28 AM

4

Q: Can an offspring between a demon and a celestial be possible? If so what is it called and is it in a book somewhere?

I have a friend trying to make a hybrid between a celestial and a demon in 5e. I know the Aasimar exists (human/celestial) and I know the Tiefling exists (Human/demon) but what if you cut out the human middle-man. What would this creation be called? Is it RAW? It seems like an incredible being,...

BESW

11:39 AM

@dopp3Lgr33n3r Zombie robots, obviously.

dopp3Lgr33n3r

Naturally. i see.

BESW

Updated the guidelines on writing about folklore from another culture. Please let me know what you think. #FolkloreJam https://itch.io/jam/folklorejam

Tweeted by Aryl_Ether on April 1, 2019 at 9:51 AM

trogdor

there even were some of those in that one episode of that Transformers show

BESW

Transformers has a lot of zombies.

dopp3Lgr33n3r

Do they shamble about consuming cars and scrap dumps for parts?

BESW

11:45 AM

I assume it's a crossover with Minivan Helsing.

Perhaps Transformers are bitten by Cadillacula?

Derpy

for some odd reason, you made me think about those old "Steampunk Transformers" pictures that keep resurfacing ever now and then

Hot RPG Questions

12:07 PM

7

Q: Can a Ranger uncanny dodge a blizzard?

A while ago, I DM'd a battle royale one shot for my players. I gave my players level 20 characters and let them fight each other till there was one person standing. Near the end of this game a situation occurred between me and one of my players. I wasn't sure what the appropriate ruling was in th...

dnd-5e ranger wish

BESW

12:25 PM

goodguy5

12:42 PM

sigh

"happy" april fools day

BESW

goodguy5

essentially

user15026

1:07 PM

@BESW this is gonna be me all day I think

BESW

@Ash But you have reasons to actually burst with joy today, too!

user15026

@BESW you have a point! But right now I am just thinking about the dentist appointment and internet lying to me bits because the joy bits are also a little too big.

BESW

Snow and fire!

user15026

Ooooh yes.

user15026

Very much that today.

goodguy5

1:11 PM

re: "what's your favorite tank"

Should I downvote that?

Yesyesyes, I can downvote anything I want. Idea generation or opinions are off topic, but arre they bad questions?

BESW

Top Five Tanks - Lindybeige | The Tank Museum

►

@goodguy5 Is it useful and clear?

Does it show effort?

kviiri

@goodguy5 It was already changed wasn't it?

Sdjz

When should I vote down?

Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect. from https://rpg.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down

2

apparently I don't know how to format inline links in chat anymore

BESW

Sticky returns break (most) markdown.

Sdjz

@BESW Sticky returns?

BESW

1:19 PM

Shift-Enter. line breaks within a single entry.

Sdjz

@BESW ooh, because I copied the title too, makes sense, thank you

BESW

You're welcome! Stack markdown is kinda hard to keep track of because it follows slightly different rules between posts, comments, and chat.

vicky_molokh

Ah, so like the rules a real language! ^_^

Sir Cinnamon

1:49 PM

Something is different on stackoverflow...

Oh it's here tooooo

GcL

2:15 PM

@vicky_molokh Not that bad. At least parsers are deterministic.

vicky_molokh

Heh.

GcL

@Sdjz So disagreeing isn't a good reason to downvote?

vicky_molokh

@GcL Downvote-to-disagree sounds like a rule for the meta section of a site.

Sdjz

@GcL Disagreeing with an answer, sure, it means you think it is incorrect.

GcL

So if I disagree with a question, it's incorrect? or is that just for answers?

goodguy5

2:19 PM

it's at least for answers.

What does "disagreeing with a question" look like?

Yuuki

@goodguy5 Does a dog have Buddha nature?

goodguy5

yea, downvote those shorts

GcL

Okay. So disagree still gets a downvote. I thought I might have been using it wrong the whole time.

@goodguy5 The questions that have a conspicuous amount of thought and effort invested into the interactions between reproductive systems of fantasy creatures/species/magic items.

Glazius

@Ben Well, if you're faking it with a collection of magic hydra food it's just "a" Tiamat; thankfully she doesn't come in six-packs. But we all know computer RPGs just love painting a thin veneer of mythology mixed with D&D, so there's probably some game out there where she does.

GcL

@Glazius I heard that godess has like a 128 pack. Totally ripped.

Sir Cinnamon

2:28 PM

I heard she's shredded

Xirema

I usually only downvote questions if I think the questions are likely to bring a distasteful element to the site, a'la that Banishment/Pregnancy question from several months ago. Stuff where the OP is clearly operating in bad faith.

Yuuki

@Xirema I'm going to make an educated guess and conclude that I don't want to know about this.

GcL

@Xirema distasteful to you, but maybe entirely relevant and fascinating to them.

I find non ISO8601 dates incredibly distasteful and a plague on recording information accurately, yet much of the world doesn't even care about how blasphemous they are!

@Yuuki Wise.

@Xirema I down voted it because I didn't like it.

Xirema

@GcL Ehhhhh.... I was there when the question was in an Edit war and had to get protected by the mods. I was willing to extend benefit of doubt at first, but the only reason the question was allowed to stay up was because we were able to salvage it into a (theoretically) respectful question—and even then I'm not totally convinced it got there.

GcL

@Xirema My down vote still stands.

Sdjz

2:40 PM

@GcL This also seems perfectly fair to me. You can't exactly be held accountable for your downvotes anyway (barring revenge/serial downvoting or similar xenaningans) There are guidelines on how to vote but it is ultimately up to your conscience.

GcL

@Sdjz Oh man?! I've got to dig out my conscience... I don't even remember where I saw it last let alone where I put it. /S

Yuuki

@Sdjz Conscience. It's the study of trickery.

GcL

Probably left it in the same drawer with my caring face. Always gotta stuff those in a drawer before looking at the internet.

Hot RPG Questions

1

Q: How exploitable/balanced is this homebrew spell: Spell Permenancy?

I would like to give my players the option of learning a way to make a spell or magical effect permanent. To this end I've created a homebrew spell, Spell Permanency (quoted below). Before implementing this spell in game I would like to be aware of the potential ways in which this spell could be...

dnd-5e spells homebrew permanency

Yuuki

I don't know what it says about me that whenever I see "conscience", I initially read it as "con-science".

Sdjz

2:44 PM

Also a nice read from the help center: Why is voting important

GcL

@Yuuki You're a punny person, and we're all enriched on account of it.

vicky_molokh

Whether the practice follows the theory is an interesting question, but one of the notes from the downvote privilege says:

> The up-vote privilege comes first because that's what you should focus on: pushing great content to the top. Down-voting should be reserved for extreme cases.

GcL

I find the assertion "...good content rises to the top" misleading as it's not the only kind of content that rises to the top as a result of voting. E.g. @Yuuki's Hot Single Network Questions in Your Area Now

vicky_molokh

Of course that's just a small excerpt, and the whole article should be re-read.

Rubiksmoose

Though it's worth reiterating that the are just guidelines. You don't need a reason to downvote for policy reasons. You can do so freely and for whatever reason your heart desires. But obviously we'd prefer voting be informed and thoughtful.

Glazius

2:48 PM

Hmm. Okay. I noticed some edits on Burning Wheel questions; it looks like when they decided to reopen the forums they just picked and chose what they displayed from the archive. Archive.org never crawled the page, and some of my old cites just don't exist anymore.

Fortunately I quoted them; more fortunately, they weren't really about anything burning wheel

19

A: Why would the "Burning Wheel" unique item confer a bonus to swimming?

It's one in-joke among many. You may also have noticed the Fiasco Codex, the Violation Glaive, the Carcosan Spire, and the Sartar Duck. Dungeon World's magic item section is half credits page, and the Burning Wheel is no different. In the Burning Wheel RPG, despite it having an intricate skill ...

but in that case, what's practice? Or should I ask meta?

GcL

@vicky_molokh Yeah. Somebody should tell the internet, because they're doing it wrong. /S

@Glazius How to handle busted links in old answers? That's an interesting question. I would definitely like to see that on meta.

Xirema

@Glazius I recently edited one of my answers that had a dead link to a Sage Advice article. If the link is bad, you should update it to a working link; or find a way to replace the link with valid information. In my case, it was replacing the Sage Advice link (which TBH was making a RAW ruling from RAI, which was wrong anyways) with an assertion of how a ruling would be made under those conditions.

GreySage

@Rubiksmoose Like democracy, we assume the majority of votes will be cast intelligently. Also like democracy, this doesn't always happen.

GcL

3:04 PM

@Rubiksmoose I'm neither informed nor thoughtful, but like others that you stick a vote button in front of, I click it.

GreySage

Gaah! That 90's site layout assaulted my eyes.

Xirema

@GreySage It's nostalgic. Reminds me of when I was a kid. XD

vicky_molokh

@Xirema Tipod. Geocities!

GcL

Needs more marquee text

vicky_molokh

And blink tags.

Or maybe it could be made 3D!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_chat

Derpy

3:12 PM

@GreySage there was a not-too-long discussion about the layout in the other room, you may have a look if you want.

Rubiksmoose

@GcL hahaha

@GreySage well said

Hot RPG Questions

6

Q: Can I cast Thunderwave and be at the center of its bottom face, but not be affected by it?

Questions like this and this show that you cast Thunderwave as a cube, and you (the point of origin) stand at one of the cube's faces. From the PHB: You select a cube's point of origin, which lies anywhere on a face of the cubic effect. A cube's point of origin is not included in the cube's a...

dnd-5e spells area-of-effect

Sir Cinnamon

3:36 PM

Cube shaped spells are.... kind of silly

David Coffron

@SirCinnamon I agree

Sir Cinnamon

there are a handful that actually make sense (you trace a square on the ground for a spell IIRC)

Someone_Evil

Yes, but often way more friendly for playing on a grid

Sir Cinnamon

but something like thunderwave... should be a cone or a sphere

but only if you play in the way of spell aoes are locked to gridlines, which isnt actually in the rules

Someone_Evil

It presented as option isn't it?

Sir Cinnamon

3:38 PM

so you can theoretically case a square spell from it's corner at an angle and basically have the hypotenuse as the range, it's... weird

Not really because it's only even useful for square spells, you cant lock a cone or circle to the grid

( i put a lot of thought into the topic while making this spelltemplates.com)

3

(shameless plug)

Someone_Evil

Neat tool

Sir Cinnamon

Thanks!

it works on mobile too, and has actually come in handy at the table a couple times

(enough times that it was worth the dozens of hours of work? who's to say)

Someone_Evil

Did you enjoy the work? If so, it was worth it.

Sir Cinnamon

I did actually, I learned a lot

It was also very math-y which is sometimes enjoyable I find

Glazius

4:17 PM

@Xirema In this case I'm linking to old posts from the creator about his reasons for doing things, that don't seem to be available anymore. I don't 100% know if they're behind a paywall or were just removed from the internet.

And it's not a serious answer, it's an "explain the injoke" answer.

I suppose I should just find different documentation instead of looking for where the old stuff went.

Sdjz

@Glazius You have the quotes so I think it is fine to keep them

GcL

4:59 PM

@SirCinnamon I was hoping it was a single page that just had monospaced "T E M P L A T E S" centered on the page.

Sir Cinnamon

@GcL This reminds me of the short time when I owned an Amazon Alexa device

onto which I had installed a D&D 5e spellbook, which I always forgot the command to activate

I think it was "open spellbook <name of spell>" or something, but i would frequently say "Spellbook Thunderwave"

and alexa would reply B-O-O-K

GreySage

@SirCinnamon I guess that's why you only owned it for a short time, eh?

Sir Cinnamon

@GreySage Yeah the language parsing didnt feel as good as google's, and I have a lot of google devices that integrated better

David Coffron

5:33 PM

@SirCinnamon This is a super cool tool. Only thing I would do is have the tokens change color when you click on them a second time (so you try to find a cone that doesn't hit your allies)

Sir Cinnamon

@DavidCoffron I know the UI doesnt convey it in a great way, but you can accomplish basically the same thing but clicking the "Unit" button multiple times

(changes the shape instead of the colour though)

David Coffron

Ooooh. Super neat

kviiri

quick poll for the DnD GMs: How many of you have ever played in a DnD game where a Tarrasque was fought by the PCs? (And were you players or GMs?)

David Coffron

@kviiri I ran a group that fought a "young Tarrasque" in a one shot.

Sdjz

@kviiri Never seen one

kviiri

5:42 PM

Context: in another RPG chatroom on the IRC, it was mentioned that the tarrasque seems to be a fairly theoretical DnD subject --- often discussed, but seldom played.

goodguy5

I should just start taking April Fool's day off and avoiding the internet

David Coffron

Basically I toned down all of the features of the creature to bring it into a CR that a level 16 group could handle, and they were sent on a quest to locate a mad scientist who had been attempting to clone Tarrasques. It had been unsuccessful so far because the customized clone spell couldn't replicate such a massive creature (a few fight scenes against the scientists minions on failed tarrasque clones were kind of cool). Then the scientist replicated a young Tarrasque and the adventurers

were called in

(read scientist as wizard)

KorvinStarmast

@trogdor we make home made hummus. yummy. But we tend to get the peas out of a can.

@Ben wirt's a con artist and fence; Griswold's weapons shop is a front for a drug lord.

David Coffron

@kviiri It's just that making a fight on that scale interesting is difficult

In order for WoTC to include a creature of comparable power, they had to have a bunch of ways that the creature was weakened before the fight (Rise of Tiamat)

kviiri

@DavidCoffron Oh yeah I agree, although I guess it's somewhat a matter of taste. I personally find it really hard to be interested in things that cosmic.

David Coffron

5:53 PM

Not that WoTC is the best example of interesting fights, but that power level is not usually replicable by a party or reasonable size

GreySage

@kviiri Not by me. I think it runs afoul of "most PCs are low level", since games tend to fall apart WAY before hitting max level.

KorvinStarmast

@Ben and then there is the problem of Cain and his pixips ...

goodguy5

if anyone follows the D&D channel on YouTube, there's a cute/funny video where this guy runs a game for his mom and her friends.

Midwest Moms Play Dungeons & Dragons

►

kviiri

And Tarrasque also has the problem (also a matter of taste) that it's essentially a beast comparable to wild animals in mental acuity. I don't want to have an epic level fight against something that doesn't have the brain capacity to be a proper villain.

I could see it as some sort of "evil cultists try to awaken cataclysmic force" -scenario, but even then i'd probably want to have the cult leader as the final boss.

KorvinStarmast

@Ben Cain is addicted to pixips. (I think you can still look that up ...)

V2Blast

5:57 PM

@KorvinStarmast ...what did I just read?

KorvinStarmast

@V2Blast Diablo I funnies. There was an entire sub genre of funny stories about that game. Someone did a set of comics on it using game images from the image files on the disc.

V2Blast

I see

KorvinStarmast

6:08 PM

@V2Blast There was a jpg file of a bunch of rogues doing the kick action like it was an aerobics class. Let me see if I can find it. I suspect that a lot of this stuff has been lost to history, and the old HD I had this stuff on died when a power supply in my PC ate everything ... about a decade ago.

V2Blast

I've never played Diablo. I think someone gave me Diablo II for my 13th or 15th birthday or something, but my dad returned it because it was rated M

nitsua60

I had an (5e) AL gm throw the Tarrasque at a party trying to take a long rest in a dungeon as a random encounter. The paladin with a +27 to hit did a pretty good job of taking him down while the wizard who was immune to lightning damage kept nailing him with chain lightning, not caring about the reflections.
When you get your skull-pieces put back together, *don't* ask me on which planet that was AL.

Sir Cinnamon

@V2Blast It certainly had an amount of gore that warrants some level of.. parental care, though personally I think at 14 or 15 a kid could handle it... Although that's today, not the 90s, the internet has changed things

KorvinStarmast

@V2Blast here it was, on a geocities web site so it may not be easy to open

encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/…

@V2Blast I let my son play starcraft in junior high: that had some gore in it.

kviiri

@nitsua60 Wow

KorvinStarmast

6:15 PM

Diablo I was a really fun dungeon crawl.

Sir Cinnamon

@kviiri I would say this applies to levels above... 15 or so also

KorvinStarmast

For its time, it was really good.

kviiri

@SirCinnamon snrk :)

but probably true

@V2Blast A friend of mine showed me Diablo 2 a few months back. It seemed like a game that could've glued me to my chair if I had discovered when it was new and I was young and impressionable

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri yeah, it was pretty good. (I had a bunch of friends who I'd play with in once per week games. I liked it better as a team game than solo)

kviiri

But I think it'd be too grindy or something for me today

KorvinStarmast

6:19 PM

@kviiri Yeah, it could get grindy. Yes it could.

What I liked about Diablo II was waypoints. We could make "get to way point X" as an evening's goal, and that was sort of like a save point. We then pick up the following week.

It re-playability was (IMO) impressive. So may ways to mix and match the skills the different classes.

Xirema

@nitsua60 Yeah, there's.... There's a lot going on in that story.

KorvinStarmast

On the other hand, Diablo III allows you to do a complete respec anytime you want to, where II tended to require you to build a new Char if you wanted a different theme/build.

@nitsua60 the casual tarrasque encounter, sure why not?

Xirema

To be fair, the 5e Terrasque is kind of a joke.

It's weird to me that they'd apply the concept of Bounded Accuracy to a creature whose Raison D'etre is being an encounter so ludicrously difficult that it shouldn't be winnable unless the PCs basically find a way to perform ACE in their game. Hence why the original Terrasque couldn't be destroyed without a Wish spell.

Yuuki

6:37 PM

The real tarrasque was the friends we made along the way.

3

Xirema

@Yuuki Painfully accurate.

Somewhat related to the subject of the Terrasque: what would be the CR of a humanoid creature with the ability to, at will, cast any spell of 5th level or lower as many times as they wanted in a day, each spell cast as though they were a fifth level spell? Give them 300 HP and an AC of 18 just for the novelty.

David Coffron

@Xirema That's not too hard to calculate. CR only really accounts for damage output with some trait factoring. You just count all the traits that can be replicated by spells up and find the average damage output of 5th level spells.

Where does the AC 18 come from? Because mage armor is a thing. Do they have a ludicrously high Dexterity or is that natural armor or plate armor?

Xirema

6:53 PM

@DavidCoffron I kind of just arbitrarily picked it, but 18 for Mage Armor on a Dexterity of 20 is probably fair play.

GreySage

@Xirema Fireball spam, all day every day

Xirema

@GreySage Ffft, Destructive Wave spam. Same number of D6's, but in a 30 foot radius.

David Coffron

@GreySage I think cone of cold is a bit better

Xirema

@GreySage Also, Destructive Wave lets you selectively ignore friendly targets, Fireball needs an Evocation Wizard.

David Coffron

But vitriolic sphere has the most damage of 5th level spells (upcast)

GreySage

7:00 PM

@DavidCoffron 1 more expected damage, but only short range.

Xirema

Infinite Polymorph, and possibly more abuseable than Moon Druid's Wildshape spam.

David Coffron

Basics: OCR of 15-16 at my estimate (3 targets with either fireball, vitriolic sphere, or cone of cold). DCR of 16 squarely. Defensive spells probably boost the DCR to 17 (traits say consider AC for calculation +2) and DPR goes up from things like hellish rebuke. OCR is probably more like 18-19. Overall I'd say CR 18

But that doesn't sound right at all, considering the Drow Favored Consort is CR 18.

I doubt that 1 6th level spell slot compensates for all the 5th level spells. And the war magic barely increases DPR

Xirema

The big thing, in my mind, is that the DPR of a creature is used in the Dungeon Master's Guide to help recommend a creature's CR, but it's also clear that they use different criterion when actually designing creatures.

GreySage

Infinite Fly, Misty Step, various other defensive spells

Xirema

Which is sort of a round-about way of saying that the sheer versatility of this kind of creature would break a lot of normal design constraints.

@GreySage ^

GreySage

7:11 PM

@Xirema Death Ward, Fire Shield, Dimension Door, Greater Invisibility...

Xirema

@GreySage My first thought was "okay, bring an Open Hand Monk, have them work their level 17 mojo on them", but Death Ward counters that feature pretty directly.

Level 5 Counterspell and Dispel Magic.

Good luck keeping your buff spells active against them.

GreySage

And of course everything around them is manipulated with Wall of Stone/Transmute Stone/Seeming

Xirema

Oh, also: any spell that doesn't require Concentration can be stacked.

David Coffron

I think the CR is 1/4, because any party can defeat it by realizing the GM is using a dumb monster and leaving the table /S

goodguy5

7:28 PM

@DavidCoffron CR 6.5/10

(that joke might not make sense to anyone on this stack)

David Coffron

Heroes of the Storm reference I think? One of my friends made a joke about it before...

goodguy5

Heroes of the Storm reference, indeed.

Yuuki

Would referencing Heroes of the Storm be considered necroposting?

🤔

goodguy5

ouch. shots fired

Xirema

Can anyone see that character? It's just a box in my browser.

kviiri

7:40 PM

Looks like a pensive visage emoji

goodguy5

why does kryan have 1rep?

vicky_molokh

@goodguy5 Tempbanned during the RAW definition question answering.

goodguy5

D:

oh snap

I missed me some drama boiz

vicky_molokh

I think the aftermath is still linked in the meta-ads.

Yuuki

@goodguy5 It's a shame. I didn't really play HotS a lot but I was definitely interested in the concepts they were bringing to the MOBA genre.

goodguy5

7:49 PM

It's still playable. in Americas, anyway.

and EU, I believe

Yuuki

It's still playable but a MOBA going to legacy support mode is definitely a death knell.

The fact of the matter is that most MOBAs are in some way tied to the life of their competitive scene.

goodguy5

I think MOBAs are on their way out as a whole.

Yuuki

If the competitive scene dies, it speaks of bad things to come.

@goodguy5 In the sense of diversity in the field, yes.

In the sense of popularity of the genre, I would disagree.

goodguy5

I give them less than 5 years before it's like 2010

vicky_molokh

@goodguy5 Are they losing fans?

Because last I heard, LoL is the most played 'serious' game.

goodguy5

7:52 PM

@vicky_molokh I think MOBAs are losing active players, not fans.

Yuuki

They're losing games but I would argue that they are not losing fans.

Nor are they losing active players in any serious trend.

vicky_molokh

statista.com/statistics/317099/…

Unless there's been a sharp turn downward in recent years, loss of players seems unlikely.

kviiri

A little note, while I don't think we have it written down anywhere, it's generally considered counterproductive to discuss suspended users (or why they were suspended) in chat

Just for future reference

goodguy5

nah, I'd have been pretty annoying about it if no one explained it

it was better this way

vicky_molokh

^

Lack of transparency can be frustrating for users and cause a loss of trust.

goodguy5

7:56 PM

^

I'd never seen a zeroed out (oned out?) rep before.

Yuuki

Well, "why does <user> have 1 rep?" -> "this is how bans work" is fine. But there's not really a need to talk about why the user was banned. The banned user knows why they were banned and really they're the only person who needs to know why they were banned.

goodguy5

also, work's done. zugzug

Yuuki

If you think you need to know why so you can avoid being banned yourself, that's what the Help Center is for.

kviiri

@vicky_molokh Having no right to be forgotten can also be frustrating

David Coffron

^

kviiri

7:59 PM

        clauselist.append([i, -(i+1), j, -(j+1)])

Whoops. Faulty paste.

Have fun imagining what that's for.

vicky_molokh

Right to be forgotten has always been such a . . . two-sided thing. On one hand, it's nice to have. On the other, it can reduce transparency and freedom of information's flow.

kviiri

Oct 4 '18 at 10:11, by doppelspooker

It's so that people can reintegrate after they've cooled off and improved their ways (if they've done so) without trouble or stigma.

Yuuki

@vicky_molokh What transparency and information do you want from knowing why someone was banned?

Freedom of information is good and all but when you're dealing with real people, it's important to ask why do you want someone else's information.

David Coffron

@vicky_molokh There is no information being hidden from you. A ban occurs when a person violates site policy all of which can be found in the Help Center. Why an individual specifically is banned is unimportant and only reveals their wrongs. That stigmatization is not good for anyone, and only serves to ostracize someone.

Yuuki

As they say, your freedom to wave your hands ends at the tip of my nose.

vicky_molokh

8:03 PM

@Yuuki In general, or in this specific case? (In this specific case I don't have much in the way of new questions.)

Yuuki

@vicky_molokh Since you answered the latter, let's go with why would you in general want to know why someone was banned.

vicky_molokh

In the general case, I don't quite like the policy of erasing the histories that resulted in bans. That seems contrary to the idea of informationally open communities and/or communities that advertise themselves as . . . how do I put it? . . 'regular-user-facing'? like SE.

Now, there are upsides and downsides both to open and to closed proceedings of such decisions, of course.

David Coffron

@vicky_molokh I can kind of see where you are coming from (conviction records are a matter of public record for instance), but I'm not sure it is important for something like a forum to have the same level of transparency about individuals.

Yuuki

Not to mention public conviction records are in and of themselves a thorny issue.

For much of the same reasons.

vicky_molokh

@DavidCoffron Yeah, that's a good analogy. It's easier to trust a court if it lets journalists in. It's hard to trust a court that won't publish even the reason which caused it to close its doors. (Speaking of a general abstract case, not related to the current incident.)

But the matter of trust applies even in informal communities.

kviiri

8:13 PM

@vicky_molokh History is not being erased. Normal users with 10k+ reputation can still find the questions and answers deleted for being offensive.

The point is that we don't want to create publicity around them.

Yuuki

I personally don't see a use case for public ban reasons. It's not even an issue of trust, in my opinion. Enough of the site is public that any sort of ban proceedings are visible in one way or another. Chat itself is Google-indexed. The only way you can "hide" things on SE is in comments and deleting them.

vicky_molokh

10k is not 'normal', it's quite exceptional. It's a rank that effectively grants junior mod powers.

Finishing my prior paragraph: It's a two-sided coin, though it can be resolved if a user gets an opportunity to say 'nah, it's not a thorny issue for me, I opt to publish my case'.

kviiri

@vicky_molokh I don't see how that substantially changes anything.

I mean, I'd understand if the barrier was set awfully high, but we have well over a hundred 10k+ users.

That's already a lot of eyeballs to vet deleted content deemed offensive, on a site this slow.

Yuuki

I can't see a concrete reason for knowing why someone else was banned. I'm interested to find out, but otherwise I see it as a service to an ideal that ignores a lot of very real potential fallout.

vicky_molokh

@kviiri Out of 38k users. That's like 0.2% or something like that. I'd say that is a very high bar.

kviiri

8:18 PM

@vicky_molokh It's not, really. Total user count is effectively meaningless.

What does it matter if there's 38k users, or 380k users, or whatever, if there's only about two dozen posts a day?

vicky_molokh

@Yuuki I suppose that's at least a 50% accurate characterisation, or more. Looking up to an ideal, accepting that this doesn't always come lightly.

David Coffron

@vicky_molokh The best measurement (one I'm not sure can be answered) is how many regular users (daily or at least semiweekly) reach that value

kviiri

Really, the issue I have with our rep system is that you effectively have to know your way around DnD 5e, 3.5e or Pathfinder to get those demimod goggles.

David Coffron

^

kviiri

Otherwise you're in for a loooong, long wait.

vicky_molokh

8:22 PM

@kviiri Oh yes, as a non-AD&D player, I too am annoyed by that.

David Coffron

Certain topics get a lot more notice

vicky_molokh

In a perfect world, I'd want a 'federalisation' of RPGSE.

kviiri

Sure, DnD/PF has a lot more questions, but I'd argue the value of experts per question diminishes over time.

vicky_molokh

As in, splitting 'jurisdictions' so that it's easier to get mod powers within an area outside D&D (e.g. GURPS, FATE etc.).

Xirema

Speaking as someone who loves gossip, snooping in people's personal business, and generally cannot be trusted with any kind of sensitive information unless it's legally sensitive, having access to stuff like "why was this user banned" is something I crave—which makes me a perfect case-study for why that kind of information shouldn't be freely given.

vicky_molokh

8:25 PM

Conversely, I'm not quite comfortable that someone who has high rep reaped from D&D now has closing powers over questions of other systems without necessarily having the knowledge related to what questions are coherent and what questions aren't.

Xirema

(My comment is less sarcastic than you think it is)

Yuuki

@vicky_molokh On the one hand, someone might argue that someone could game that system by learning about less-popular systems. On the other hand, XKCD #810.

Oh yeah, language warning, my bad.

vicky_molokh

@Yuuki Do you know the numbers by heart or did you just look up and then post the number without a link (initially)?

Yuuki

@vicky_molokh 810's actually one of the ones I reference fairly often.

But otherwise, I haven't memorized all the strip numbers.

Just the ones that I reference often.

Like 1053.

David Coffron

@vicky_molokh They have voting power, but not authoritative power. A gold badge in a specific tag is required to singe-handedly close a question (and even then, only in certain situations. Duplicate-closings largely)

vicky_molokh

8:28 PM

@DavidCoffron I did mean voting. I didn't know non-diamonds can singlehandedly do a closure at all.

Yuuki

It takes a lot of effort to get a gold tag badge.

David Coffron

@vicky_molokh Yeah. I have a 5e gold badge, so I can duplicate close questions on my own.

But usually I'll drop in here and ask before voting to dupe (or leave a comment mentioning the questions as a possible dupe) and let the votes bear it out if I'm unsure

Yuuki

At one point, I had answered somewhere around 85% of all pokemon-xy questions at the time and I have one of four bronze badges in that tag.

David Coffron

@Yuuki It is very dependent on the tag too. 5e is a popular tag, so there are a number of gold badges for it. Others may never have gold badges as a possiblity.

Yuuki

Which is fine because an authoritative voice is not necessary, especially in tags where there is low activity.

David Coffron

8:31 PM

Compare 19 in 5e to 4 in pathfinder (the second most popular system tag)

Yuuki

There are 5 gold tag badges in Gaming.SE. One for league-of-legends, one for the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim, and three for minecraft (great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls).

But the users were, all of them, deceived.

David Coffron

@Yuuki I wish I could use Gaming.SE, but the activity isn't high enough for me. I'd rather just test things myself

Yuuki

Some things are just really hard to test on your lonesome.

Or depending on your skill-set, easy to test if only you knew how.

David Coffron

@Yuuki cc: @Xirema

@Yuuki True, and then I'm stuck wiki/forum surfing. Maybe I'll do some Gaming.SE posts in the coming future (mostly for Civilization VI)

Yuuki

Yeah, it doesn't hurt to just throw a question up to get some more eyes on it.

If you manage to solve it before anyone answers, whoo now you can get some rep through self-answering.

Xirema

8:43 PM

> Homebrew: Variant Land Druid. Your Circle Spells feature is now based on the terrain you are currently in, instead of where you first became a Druid.

GreySage

@Xirema Nah, too useful and reasonable

BESW

"Land Druid" sounds like your wild shape can only be used to turn into aquatic creatures but they have legs and can breathe air.

Xirema

@BESW Delet this

Rubiksmoose

@vicky_molokh it is a bit disconcerting at first when you get it, and even annoying at times

vicky_molokh

@Rubiksmoose The ability to close duplicates is annoying?

David Coffron

8:49 PM

@vicky_molokh Yeah, because sometimes I just want to vote to let the community decide

Rubiksmoose

@vicky_molokh at times yes. Because the bar is higher for that click then if you can just see if x other people agree with you.

David Coffron

I had the same hesitance to when I got the ability to edit unilaterally. I wished (at the time) that I could still use the Suggest Edit function. (Now I just put together a comment if I have a suggestion)

Rubiksmoose

Fortunately, gold badgers can also unclose dupes with one click as well, making it relatively painless to revert mistakes.

Yuuki

@Rubiksmoose A gold badger would be an interesting wild shape for a Land Druid.

Rubiksmoose

But still, you it makes things a bit more stressful and require more thought.

Xirema

8:50 PM

@DavidCoffron Speaking as someone who is getting very close to getting the privileges to Dupe-close singlehandedly, I hadn't considered that before.

Rubiksmoose

@Yuuki hah!

David Coffron

Apr 21 '18 at 15:13, by David Coffron

@nitsua60 Is there a way to suggest edit like I used to do with less reputation without actually editing a post?

Rubiksmoose

You can always create a sockpuppet account to do it.

David Coffron

@Rubiksmoose Not according to you:

Sep 14 '18 at 20:53, by Rubiksmoose

(that can get you in real trouble for sockpuppeting). It does violate the ToS.

Rubiksmoose

@Xirema Yeah. And prepared to be surprised when you go to close something and forget you have it. lol

Yuuki

8:52 PM

@DavidCoffron Offer 37k rep in various bounties.

Sir Cinnamon

@DavidCoffron Trust nobody, not even yourself

Rubiksmoose

@DavidCoffron yeah I was incorrect. I'm not sure if it was that particular time, but one of the diamonds told me that it was not, in fact, against ToS as long as you don't use the alternate account to do things you couldn't do with one account.

Sep 14 '18 at 21:16, by BESW

By the way, multiple accounts are not a violation of the ToS and will not be punished. It's what you do with multiple accounts that can get you banned, but there are legit reasons to have more than one account and the Stack's cool with that. (cc @Rubiksmoose, @DavidCoffron)

Yeah a few messages down

David Coffron

@Rubiksmoose I missed that I guess

Oh wait. I remember now. Nitsua (I think it was) also said he uses a second account to help read through posts to help with moderating or something. I don't fully remember

Rubiksmoose

Yeah I was really surprised by that. Generally it is because whenever we talk about sockpuppeting it is when we are talking about illicit uses of it.

Xirema

Most [frequently discussed] uses of Sockpuppet accounts are for illegal things or legal things with questionable ethical practices. But there are a lot of legitimate, wholesome reasons to use a sockpuppet account.

Rubiksmoose

8:58 PM

@DavidCoffron That's what you get for listening to me!

Yuuki

@Rubiksmoose Oh yeah, I know plenty of diamonds that have sock puppets because the diamond radically changes UX.

So sometimes they use a low-rep sock puppet to make sure things are working properly.

Rubiksmoose

Yeah that totally makes sense

GreySage

9:13 PM

@Rubiksmoose As I understand it as long as you aren't serial voting with your puppet account, you're fine. So no upvoting all of your own posts, or downvoting someone else's.

David Coffron

@GreySage What if my puppet just silently puts all the links to my questions and answers in a "Cool Guy's Posts" folder on my desktop?

BESW

Starry Expanse has released a demo of their 2.5D Riven rebuild.

GreySage

9:29 PM

@DavidCoffron That's between you and your puppet

Rubiksmoose

9:42 PM

FWIW: I think this is the official official word on the matter:

49

A: What's the policy about having multiple user accounts?

It is not a problem to have multiple accounts, as long as they aren't voting for each other and doing other sockpuppet-y things. Though it is generally discouraged, as what legitimate reason would you need for multiple accounts? Idle hands are the devil's playground, etc etc. That said, for thi...

Yuuki

> 4) You think logging in is a hassle, so you make a new account every time your cookies clear.

14/10 best reason, would dry grapes again

trogdor

9:55 PM

@BESW oooh that's pretty cool

BESW

my home county has some fun legends that i'm rediscovering thanks to the #folklorejam including a witch that lives in a cave and a blue dragon that wants to be left alone, but is pursued by the devil. i'm biased towards dragons so lets see where that goes 🤔

Tweeted by bitter_fiction on April 1, 2019 at 10:46 AM

Yuuki

@BESW I choose to interpret the "and" differently. It's a single myth about a witch that lives in a cave and has a vacation timeshare inside of a dragon.

BESW

> exit, pursued by the devil

Glazius

10:21 PM

@vicky_molokh So did that help sort out aspect permissions for you, then? Sorry it took so much, I don't usually read that part of the corebook, usually I'm either hitting the more basic rules or the extras from my current World of choice.

vicky_molokh

@Glazius Well, to some degree.

I'm not comfortable with them as a solid thing yet, but I'm open to experimenting.

BESW

I think it's especially difficult because they aren't a solid thing? That is, they aren't supposed to be used a specific way and no other way; they're a tool to be applied to a number of situations as it works for your group.

vicky_molokh

Discussed some with my players and will try to switching to a more Aspect-oriented way of handling some of those, but with the fallback option of either asking for an Invocation or getting the Robo-style reserve increase in cases when such a permission turns out to be a Really Big Deal.

BESW

There are broad guidelines and some "if this works everyone will be surprised," but aspects get a lot of different kinds of use across the community.

vicky_molokh

(As a reminder, THF starts out with a very opaque Morphs-have-permissions-but-also-may-cost-Refresh, with no explanation of how the two correlate. I'm scaling back down from that, after a moderate/mediocre success with attempting to transparentify and rationalify those.)

BESW

10:25 PM

My group tends to adjust on the fly a lot: to my mind, aspects are just reminders of narrative things we find important. If a new thing is important, it gets an aspect. If an aspect doesn't help us remember an important thing, it gets changed or dropped.

vicky_molokh

No-Invocations-Required Aspect Permissions have always been a hard thing for me.

This also applies to transient Aspects.

Glazius

As weird as it sounds, my permissions vs invoke line is just "does that surprise me?"

2

BESW

@Glazius [yoinks]

vicky_molokh

That does look weird.

BESW

I'm totally gonna try that out.

Glazius

10:30 PM

Though if you invert that it comes out to "don't write a scene for a character and charge them a Fate Point to get in", which is more reasonable.

BESW

It makes a lot of sense.

vicky_molokh

On one hand yeah, charging for basic participation is bad.

On the other, there are instances in which a FP and/or Refresh reduction can be representative of some things that are logical within the narrative.

BESW

Because aspect permissions are always on and invokes are occasional, and generally speaking always-on effects won't be surprising.

@vicky_molokh Nobody said logical.

Invocations always need to make sense; that's why they tag aspects, to justify themselves.

But lots of things which are reasonable, are also unexpected.

vicky_molokh

To elaborate (and I'll be terse because I should be switching off soon and can't talk long):
The previous scenario involved the party needing to resleeve into morphs optimised for deep underwater operations. Which means they had to make trade-offs in terms of which upgrades to install (because the design already had to prioritise ability to withstand pressure etc. instead of other permissions they'd like to install).

Of course an increased difficulty of a situation/limitations and drawbacks/etc. can also be represented by adjusting the other side of the equation. But to me that doesn't look right.

I'm off. Good luck everyone.

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