TRPG General Chat

12:13 AM

I don't see anything in that article about lower-stakes gaming?

12:24 AM

> Aim for lower stakes and over the course of play, the relationship gains weight and import over time. Think more along the lines of a Telltale videogame (“So and so will remember that.”).

Ben

Morning all

Adeptus

Kobold Press are giving away Prepared 2 as part of their Stay At Home promo. It's a series of short adventures for D&D 5e.

A. B.

Oh, I see what you mean. So it's not even talking about the "rescue the villager" as opposed to "save the world" kind of low-stakes adventure, but even lower than that. Could work. Hello Ben.

Ben

What are we discussing today?

AncientSwordRage

@Ben gutenTAG

BESW

12:28 AM

One of my favorite scenes in an RPG happened while we were sneaking into a dragonlord's castle to steal her magical sword that would let us prevent two worlds from destroying each other, but the tension came from whether two characters could reach a healthier place in their relationship in the process.

Ben

@AncientSwordRage Has anyone actually developed that script yet? Lol

AncientSwordRage

@Ben 🤷🏻‍♂️

A. B.

Or rather (it's rather an abbreviated article, I was left with a feeling of "well, apparently he knows what he means"), perhaps it's more about having little things as the steps along the way in that adventure, rather than "here's a random person, rescue them", which can easily happen, it's true.

BESW

There's a lot of different ways it can go.

Some games, like Golden Sky Stories or Puppy Day, are very much about staying in the "peoples' feelings are the stakes" territory. I don't like calling them "low" stakes because... peoples' feelings are important.

MikeQ

The severity of the stakes are relative to the genre or context

In GSS there's no failure state where an evil lich destroys the multiverse, or something similarly contrived

A. B.

12:34 AM

That sounds an entirely good and to-be-encouraged plot, that castle scene.

Ben

@AncientSwordRage Lol. I just suggested it to my colleague who works with PHP, and it's probably up his alley haha

AncientSwordRage

@Ben oh no. Not... Gulp PHP. Shrieks in JavaScript dev

Ben

@AncientSwordRage How about we cut the difference and go with Notepad++

BESW

@MikeQ Kinda? But like. Son of Godzilla is a kaiju film, you'd think the stakes would be around "who will win the monster battle" or "how much collateral damage will happen before the kaiju can be stopped" or "will the method of defeating the kaiju come at too great a moral cost." But none of that is the stakes in Son of Godzilla, the thing you care about is whether they're gonna get along and be good to each other.

Adeptus

For whoever is able to maintain the pinned stars... the DMsGuild / DTRPG bundles have finished. (The Humble one finishes tomorrow.)

Ben

12:38 AM

@Adeptus [fire nation flashbacks]

I dunno why that seemed so appropriate - the pin was removed then that one showed up at the bottom of the starred list lol

AncientSwordRage

@Ben that's.. not.. a programming... Language...!

BESW

Or, Return of the Jedi. We follow Luke's emotional arc through the last act and it's got NOTHING to do with saving the galaxy, defeating the Empire, none of it. He trusts his friends to do all that while he does nothing but try to save one man's soul. Succeed or fail, live or die, Luke won't have any impact on the "high stakes" of saving the galaxy. But his goal is what carries that last act, the rest is pretty much just indulgent action setpieces.

A. B.

Ugh, now I'm trying to read the POCGamer thing. Twitter is a TERRIBLE medium for an extended essay. Some of what he's saying seems reasonable, like the argument about non-white areas getting less developer time but being expected to get as many players and then getting cut for unsurprisingly not managing it. But a lot of it just seems to be unsupported exclamations chucked out there.

Unless I'm reading it wrong, or something.

BESW

Yeah, reading a Twitter thread as an extended essay is bound to disappoint.

A. B.

Well, that's what it reads like it's trying to be.

BESW

12:44 AM

Especially since that one is a response to a call for "controversial TTRPG takes."

So for example he mentions the prevalence of space colonization in a Western attitude, and this discussion comes off of it.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW but that's all a hero's journey

BESW

@AncientSwordRage ? I'm talking about the idea that specific genres set "high" or "low" stakes.

A. B.

Ah, it's a little bit clearer in the not the mobile version. Didn't even spot the "controversial TTRPG takes" previous message in the mobile version.

MikeQ

Hm. Yes it's definitely possible to have multiple sets of stakes within the same story.

BESW

A genre might be able to set the highest possible stakes, but it doesn't require its stories to hit them. And I think there's a big difference between stakes and backdrops.

A story in which the galaxy is saved isn't always about saving the galaxy.

MikeQ

12:50 AM

Does "backdrop" refer to setting aspects that don't need to be resolved?

BESW

Not necessarily "don't need to be resolved" but... they provide flavour and movement to the story but their resolution isn't the resolution of the story being told.

Ben

@AncientSwordRage This is true. I think I've been a member of a "Programming Jokes" page for too long. It's no longer a "jokes" page, more of a "this is better than that" page.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW ah sorry, avoiding the hero's journey was something the Twitter thread also mentioned

@Ben it's the same level as sending pictures via word docs....

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Oh gosh yes even for values of the hero's journey that aren't condescending colonial revisionist garbage, very few TRPGs should or even can conform to that structure.

Ben

So my programming humour has turned to being more of a middle ground. I.e. "Let's give it up for the best IDE - Notepad++"

AncientSwordRage

12:54 AM

@BESW agreed

Ben

I recently posted a joke "How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb - None, that's a hardware issue". Which was immediately met with clapback. Lol

AncientSwordRage

@Ben lol

BESW

(I think it's useful, in discussions of Lucas and the monomyth, to note that the monomyth isn't as chiastic as Star Wars.)

Oh, and chiasmus is a lot easier to weave into a TRPG than the monomyth.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW not following your use of chastic

Chiastic

BESW

Star Wars rhymes. Lucas actually calls it out specifically in BTS for Episode One as a rhyming across the trilogies and a lot of people recognize that the prequels rhyme with the original trilogy, but Empire Strikes Back is a self-reflection too.

AncientSwordRage

1:05 AM

@BESW do you mean repeating patterns in general or the normal a, b, b', a' pattern?

BESW

The latter.

AncientSwordRage

This is the best example I've ever seen of chiasmus

dejareviewer.com/2014/04/29/…

BESW

The same blogger does some entries on chiasmus in Star Wars.

nitsua60

I've got a nice book of chiasms titled Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You =)

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I'll have to look into it

In other news... I've been thinking about getting familiars to cast spells and whether it works well for magic stone, shillelagh and shocking grasp

BESW

1:08 AM

It's also worth noting that while Lucas was using inter-textual chiasmus deliberately by the time of the prequels, it was never the plan from the beginning; chiasmus was applied to the franchise mid-stream and then later abandoned.

AncientSwordRage

X was applied to the franchise mid-stream and then later abandoned.

Describes a lot of star wars

BESW

I bring that up because it tells us that we can use chiasmus in our campaigns by being attentive without needing to plan it out in prep.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW that's good advice

A. B.

How is the hero's journey colonial? Not seeing the connection. I may be thinking of the wrong thing, I often get mixed up about which quest structure is the one they really call the hero's journey.

BESW

Joseph Campbell backwards-engineered a universal structure by ignoring that the themes and rhythms of myths vary wildly between cultures and only cherry-picking the bits which fit his world view, then convincing himself and a large portion of Western media and academia that he'd solved storytelling.

It's not universal, it only makes sense by ignoring the lived experience of the people Campbell was studying, and replacing them with the assumption that Jung's armchair theorizing knows more about them than they do. So, colonial.

(The monomyth would have been a much more useful and less toxic concept if he'd been content to leave it as a story rather than making grand claims of having discovered the story.)

A. B.

1:25 AM

Ah, I see what you mean. Not the story itself that's colonialist, but the insistence that a lot of myths from around the world match it that probably don't.

BESW

Yeah. And from a practical perspective... in trying to justify that claim, it was then watered down into uselessness: it became a self-fulfilling prophecy by giving itself enough wiggle room that it can't be wrong. To be usefully or meaningfully applied to a work, an archetype must be specific enough that it actually provides structure. The "monomyth" is oozy and weaselly so that it can fit into any container you put it in.

A. B.

Thought you were objecting to the message of the plot itself.

To be honest, I'd forgotten, if I ever knew, that anyone ever did claim that it cropped up worldwide. I'd been thinking it was just supposed to be a theme of Celtic/Norse myths or something like that.

That would be believable. Descent into the underworld/otherworld and all that.

BESW

I mean, I've got problems with the plot of the monomyth too (especially how it codes heroism as masculine). But the monomyth is so mushy and wishy-washy that its specific content problems are almost beside the point for me as a storyteller because I can't use the dang thing.

A. B.

Haha, yes, one of those theories.

I believe I am mixing it up with something else. There's one that has about seven stages, isn't there, and one that has a lot more.

BESW

Campbell gave it seventeen stages but if he was shown a story which didn't have all of them he'd claim it was still a monomyth because whatever, he's right.

From the Wiki, "Not all monomyths necessarily contain all 17 stages explicitly; some myths may focus on only one of the stages, while others may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order."

Which kind of makes it.... not a template.

A. B.

1:34 AM

Haha.

BESW

If any story has even one of Campbell's seventeen very broad and vague stages, he gets to claim it as evidence of his template's universality. That doesn't pass the smell test.

This is one reason why I like game guides like Space is a Sea, which create settings that don't provide the kinds of worlds where the monomyth is an easy pattern to fall into.

Space is a Sea doesn't really have an unknown to venture into, which refuses the loop's central premise.

A. B.

Just looking at the Wikipedia page. I dunno, I think it's usable just as a basic plot structure, if, like me, you have an impression your plot ought to have an overarching structure but aren't good at it. Insert bad guy at this point and helpful but weird and difficult being at that point. I see what you mean about it assuming a male hero, it

has a lot of that masculine/feminine mystical symbolism as Campbell describes it - I was mainly just thinking of the cut-down version you see with about seven stages. I wouldn't bother with any of that stuff if I was trying to use it as a story template, unless any of it accidentally happened to suggest an idea to me.

I like "Refusing the call", I really can't see it as a universal element in mythology or even a particularly common one but it's a good plot manoeuvre with lots of possibilities, and not one you'd immediately think of.

BESW

One of Campbell's students reported that he said, "Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to."

Yeah, the individual elements he identifies are often useful to keep in mind as tools to apply to a story!

A. B.

And then leave, having seen the people and not thinking much of them.

:-D

BESW

I would rather study the elements through the eyes of a storyteller or academic who wasn't trying to water them down to fit his theories of universality.

A. B.

1:46 AM

It'd be interesting to see what kind of mythic structures do appear in myths with female heroes, in cultures where the roles of men and women are different enough for it to even matter.

BESW

yeah, I wish the Indigenous culture in my area had more surviving long-form stories.

A. B.

Of course, in most ancient societies women were less likely to be going out and having the kind of adventure that makes for that kind of story so people mostly would make the heroes male, but there clearly are some.

BESW

The short stories which survive are really interesting, as they tend to be about the importance of being thoughtful and careful about the power you have over others and using it uplift people.

A. B.

Where are you, then?

BESW

I'm from Guam. The CHamoru culture is matrilineal, and its old stories portray women as having supernatural authority in the family structure.

A. B.

1:51 AM

(Has "Native American" been deprecated, as the programmers say? Just recently I'm seeing "Indigenous" with a capital i all over the place.)

Ooh, yes, that would definitely be an interesting one. Bit of a rarity that.)

BESW

Indigenous is a general term which encompasses Aboriginal people across the world. If we want to refer to the Indigenous people in North America, "First Nations" is an increasingly common term but it's always best to refer to the specific regional group by their own name for themselves.

And Indigenous is capitalized to show respect for the groups as people, rather than lumping them in with lower-case-i indigenous plants and animals.

("Native American" is still okay with some First Nations people but others feel like calling them "Americans" is a bit... awkward, at best.)

Side note: a lot of cultures have strong women in their stories, who get sidelined or ignored by Western cataloguing and interpretation of those stories because the colonizers didn't value them.

A. B.

Yeah. It should be the un-native Americans it's awkward for, but there seems no way to make that stick :-D Indigenous with a capital i looks kind of odd to me because it looks like it's a proper noun for a race, as if people were calling indigenous peoples in general a race. But if they like it that way, then that's what counts.

If we say African-Americans and Asian-Americans, then I suppose logically it would be American-Americans and European-Americans!

BESW

It's currently the most popular praxis among intersectional activists and academics, but I'd hesitate to act like even a single Indigenous group was in consensus about these things, much less groups across the world.

A. B.

True.

I've just been wondering whether it's even popular among a majority of the actual "Indigenous" groups, or whether it was the intersectional activists (those who aren't them themselves) who decided they'd prefer it without asking them!

Weirder things have happened...

BESW

Oh, I'm very much takling about the Indigenous activists and scholars who are leading these conversations.

A. B.

2:04 AM

Glad to hear it.

Yeah, some very weird things happened when the first European visitors who didn't know their arse from their elbow tried to collect these stories, and we're often still working from the mangled results.

BESW

In particular I'm on the edges of Pasifika discourses.

A. B.

Often the ones they got wrong or left out as too weird are lost by now anyway, which is sad.

Pasifika, I'm SURE I've heard that one but it escapes me. goes to Wikipedia.

BESW

The very first CHamoru book of "legends" by CHamoru authors was published... last year, written in part by a friend who was very careful about her authority to tell the stories and the implications of transferring oral traditions into text.

Pasifika is pretty much what it says on the tin: the collective term for the Indigenous peoples of Pacific islands.

The cultures and experiences are very diverse but have a lot of shared elements and often work together toward common goals. Kinda like First Nations on the mainland. I often move in CHamoru academic/activist spaces so Pasifika discourse happens around me sometimes.

A. B.

Very wise. If you can't guarantee that you're getting it completely right, which for a start nobody can if they're transcribing a single version of a story that varies a bit depending who you ask, saying that you can't guarantee you're getting it completely right goes a long way.

BESW

Yeah, it was really cool. She opened the book with a story from her own family, told by her grandmother and grand-aunt, and how everyone in the family knew a slightly different version of it (only one person had an ending to the story at all!) and how that made it better.

It set the tone for all the other stories as validly her versions without giving her any authority to invalidate anyone else's versions.

A. B.

2:16 AM

Now I'd like to read that!

BESW

(Which is a very different approach to oral tradition compared to, say, many of the Australian Aboriginal storytelling practices where there is VERY MUCH a hierarchy of authority to telling and sharing stories.)

A. B.

I think that'd probably be the way to go for anyone writing a fantasy RPG drawing on legends other than the ubiquitous ones, for instance: "Disclaimer: The beings in this setting bear about as much resemblance to the creatures of West African legends [or whatever] as Dungeons and Dragons does to European ones!"

(touching momentarily on the actual topic of the channel... X-D )

Oh, that's interesting.

BESW

I'd be wary of that because there's a power dynamic in telling other peoples' stories which doesn't come to bare in her book of CHamoru stories.

@A.B. CHamoru Legends: A Gathering of Stories by Teresita Lourdes Perez.

A. B.

Always with the apocalyptic language. But that's true too. It's always awkward adapting something from the position of being an iggnerant Brit. But then that means European legends have the monopoly, unless authors from that background get around to writing them themselves, of course, which I have seen a few of.

It has a particularly odd result when you have an RPG set in America, an urban fantasy or whatever, because what are all these dwarves and pixies doing in America? Did their ancestors stow away on the Mayflower? :-D

BESW

Yeah, it's... messy. And there's degrees and contexts for the choices we can make.

Like, I'm a lot more comfortable messing around with different cultural inspirations in my private games than in a published document because the harm I could do is more contained.

And working with people from the culture on a project, especially on their projects rather than bringing them into my projects, is really rewarding AND helps situate the agency more appropriately.

A. B.

2:26 AM

That's true. You know exactly who you're showing it to and whether it would annoy them or not.

Of course, if you're lucky enough to live near them.

I've not seen Space is a Sea before. Will look it up.

BESW

3 hours ago, by BESW

It's very much in line with the ideas which became The Thousand Cousins and space is a sea.

A lot of TRPG teams are international now, we don't need physical proximity to hire writers and designers anymore.

I consulted on space is a sea and Revoluciones de Gallinas, and nobody else involved in those projects is less than two thousand miles from me.

I made Goblin Court with help from people in Canada, Australia, the Philippines, and New Jersey. And these are just the no-budget made-on-a-whim projects I've been lucky enough to be involved in; publishers like Evil Hat have professional resources at their disposal to these things properly (which is one reason I'm low-key annoyed that Evil Hat being content with diversity by contractor still grants them a high amount of relative distinction in the industry).

Adeptus

2:46 AM

@BESW We had a white politician here in Australia say that she was indigenous by the dictionary definition, since she was born here...

BESW

@Adeptus [stares into camera]

Adeptus

[nods sadly]

Shalvenay

@Adeptus sorry, that only qualifies you as local, not native

user15026

@BESW I need to pick this up sometime.

Shalvenay

(it's why I was careful to say that my Tabaxi in nits' campaign was Chultan-local, not Chultan-native, since Tabaxi-the-catfolk are not native to Chult to begin with)

A. B.

3:15 AM

What IS indigenous, then? Was puzzled by a Wikipedia mention that the Maoris are "originally Polynesian, but indigenous to New Zealand".

Hot RPG Questions

1

Q: Can my familiar cast Mending on a mummy?

I am a Warlock with an Imp familiar. Can I send my familiar to cast Mending on a mummy with the intent to have all or some of the torn wrappings be mended and therefore restrain, blind, or just distract it?

Hot RPG Questions

4:28 AM

1

Q: What people/deities and places fall under the SRD and how much wiggle room is there?

So I'm working on an original campaign setting but using 5E rules, and in the core and extended rule books it references things like "the Raven Queen" and the "Shadar Kai", "shadowfell" and "fey wilds". None of these are specifically listed on the SRD under the IP lists, but it does mention "spec...

dnd-5e dnd-3.5e ogl

Ben

@A.B. by definition, yes, the term does refer to the "original inhabitants" of an area. So, for example the First Nations in America are "indigenous" to America. By reference, when talking about specific regions, (as far as I am aware) the Aboriginal people in Australia are one of the few that are referred to as "the Indigenous people"

When talking about origins, using the Maori as the example, that is likely referring to where they came from originally, as reference to them migrating to a region after the tectonic shift and split of larger land masses. I.e. New Zealand was uninhabited by people until they migrated their, becoming the "indigenous people" of New Zealand, before being later colonized by other countries.

BESW

4:46 AM

I'm not even gonna touch the "are Māori people Polynesian" thing, it's usually associated with a lot of racist dogwhistles that I don't feel qualified to sort out, similar to "technically First Nations people are immigrants too" whataboutism.

Ben

I'm in the same bat there. I can't say I'm qualified to talk about it - I'm just going off what I know. Dictionary definition says one thing, but referencing specific people in different regions - IME the Australian Indigenous people are the only ones that are referred to as "The Indigenous people". Could not tell you why though. English is weird.

And nationalism/history is a whole other ball game

BESW

The Aboriginal people I know use Aboriginal (adjective; NEVER Aborigine as a noun) or their own mobs.

But yeah, trying to describe the vast category of Indigenous peoples using a colonial definition framework is... not only an impossible task, it probably shouldn't be attempted just on principle. It's okay for words to be fuzzy and to let the people affected by them guide us in their useage.

Ben

Yes. It may only because I was taught about the Aboriginal people as part of the Australian schooling system, but they have always been referred to as either the "Aboriginal people" or the "Indigenous tribes". It could simply be localization. Other countries may do they same about the Indigenous people of their own regions too.

BESW

Because in practice the instant a colonial government nails down a definition of "Indigenous," settlers start looking for loopholes and technicalities to take power away from the Indigenous people it was meant to protect.

The Oracle

1

Q: Can/should we include the system tag requirement in our tour?

I may be missing something, but right now, other than by reading this meta, newcomers won't know they should be tagging their system. We have some suggestions on how to address it (Can our tag-prompt nudge toward including system? - which was sadly deferred because it seems changing it is hard du...

discussion feature-request

Ben

5:00 AM

It might be that the only reason that is, is because Australia and America are the only countries where Indigenous people existed, before being colonized, and include rather significant history; and that both Indigenous peoples simply identify themselves differently?

I.e. the First Nations identify themselves as a more diverse culture, having definite diverse groups, following different beliefs and traditions, whereas the Australians, while split into different tribes, would all follow a similar cultural structure, thereby as a whole, are more willing to be identified as a whole?

Honestly just spitballing here haha

BESW

That doesn't really mesh with my conversations, but I've never talked with my friends about that specific subject, so.

Ben

Haha yeah - I was kinda on my own train of thought there.

I find that my skill with words is to actually avoid their meaning somehow. And that's a problem in more ways than one, because not only do I convince people that I know what I'm talking about, I also do it without noticing that I'm doing it. "The Salesman" if you will.

Which I despise haha.

But anyway... how goes you @BESW? And how have things been going here? I have been otherwise occupied with my extremely stressful work life of late, So I've been missing out on the stuff going on here and on SE

BESW

Umm, I joined a TRPG book club on Discord. We just finished studying Troika, which taught me the difference between trusting your audience to fill in the gaps, and not being careful about the gaps you're entrusting to your audience.

Ben

5:16 AM

Ohh that is an important one.

I've had games which went the complete opposite route too. No gaps, and not trusting the audience to deal with anything outside of that.

BESW

yeah, I can't in good faith recommend Troika to anybody. I understand it may get a second edition that tries to fix a lot of its problems, but the current version is... unsafe.

We might be reading Alone Among the Stars next week and I'm looking forward to that!

Ben

That does sound really cool. The bookclub thing

I would definitely listen to some podcasts haha.

Adeptus

6:17 AM

@BESW The way it's written is... odd. Like, it's obviously written with a certain setting in mind, but all the setting info is just implied through the character backgrounds, monster descriptions, and (to some extent) spell descriptions. Also, the implied setting is rather weird science-fantasy.

(and I don't like the art style)

BESW

6:58 AM

@Adeptus I think a core design principle is encoded in the introduction:

> What you encounter on those spheres and in those liminal places is anybody’s guess — I wouldn’t presume to tell you, though inside this book you will find people and artefacts from these worlds which will suggest the shape of things. The adventure and wonder is in the gaps; your game will be defined by the ways in which you fill them.

The setting is about establishing themes and aesthetics through phrasing and implication. It's very OSR and the particular aesthetics it's after are, well, a lot of people in the book club used the word 'gonzo.' So it's not for everybody but I can appreciate the design choice... I just think they implemented it very very carelessly.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, link at end of answer (146): Can a DM permanently kill a player in DnD 5e? by ratuqq7 on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

Adeptus

@BESW Gonzo. Yes. Good word.

BESW

For one thing, "infinite universes means I can do whatever and not care about narrative consistency or thematic coherence," is not an authorial choice I agree with.

I'm okay with the book's art, I actually kinda appreciate it, but the layout is often atrocious and actively obscures information and meaning which isn't intended to be gapped. And then there's all the... icky stuff it sprinkles around, the bioessentialism and racism and casually non-consensual spells and so on. Those bits make it cross the line in my mind from "quirkily random" to "actively not safe."

AncientSwordRage

7:38 AM

Why am I arguing about RAW vs. RAI?

@gszavae but that 'core rule' about a DMs decision is not something written down. It's not RAW. Not everything we take for granted in the game is written down. — Pureferret 1 min ago

Is that the crow?

Lol

I'm guessing this is a woosh for me

trogdor

I don't know who the crow is

That isn't the crow though

I'm blanking on who it is but they are not the crow XD

BESW

7:44 AM

It's Diamanda Hagan.

AncientSwordRage

🤷🏻‍♂️

BESW

She's a YouTube personality who specializes in reviewing objectionable (exploitative, explicit, astonishingly low-budget, morally dubious, etc) films in the persona of a tyrannical god-empress who takes villainy notes from the antagonists in the films she's watching.

AncientSwordRage

Uh-huh

trogdor

There we go

BESW

"Because of the reason" is a running gag for whenever a film says something like "You can't come with, I have to do this alone" without any justification at all and everyone nods like that's obviously a reasonable thing to say.

trogdor

7:49 AM

Lol

Yeah

Those things you say in movies because,... It's a thing sometimes said in movies

Not because it's reasonable to say it

BESW

She also does voice-over series out of character, talking about TV series like Adam Adamant or Bonekickers, or doing in-depth explorations of historical events of interest to her like Englishmen trying to reach the North Pole and failing miserably.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW gotcha

AncientSwordRage

8:30 AM

I do get hung up on these things though

BESW

1:53 PM

Moving Out, Moving On sale by Chloe Montgomery. Includes a "goblins outside belonging" game!

BESW

2:06 PM

Jonaya Kemper wrote "a short thread about barding and racism" and how "being a Bard does not mean 'Ren Faire Ballads Only.'"

Kickstarter: Byte Roleplaying Game is a 400+ pages tabletop RPG rulebook with a new d8-based system and 20 mix-and-match thematic modules to tailor your game to any setting, from a Brazilian-led international team of designers. Quickstart Rules Beta Version available for download on the KS page.

Hot RPG Questions

2:46 PM

1

Q: Using a hot chain as an improvised weapon

Given the mathematics discussed in this physics.stackexchange question , how would a DM handle a PC placing 5ft of a 10ft chain (the kind used by goblins to shackle a wolf) in a campfire, then grabbing a hold of the end not in the fire and whipping the chain at an enemy NPC in an Indiana Jones fa...

dnd-5e improvised-weaponry

3

Q: Can a DM permanently kill a player character?

Currently my character is at 0 HP and doing death saves. The DM however, has said an Ogre is holding my character upside down by the legs and is going to potentially rip my character in half in the next session. Since I'm not playing Deadpool, I would assume this would permanently kill my charact...

dnd-5e character-death

KorvinStarmast

3:09 PM

@BESW That is a big book. I am trying out the voice to text and it does not appear to work in the chat box for this room. 🤔

The Oracle

4:04 PM

2

Q: How do I make voice to text work in RPG.SE chat?

As I recover from a hand injury, I attempted to use voice-to-text in RPG.SE chat. It did not work. It did work in the title to this question, but it did not work in the body of the question. It also does work in the comments under the questions and answers. The feature I am using is windows key +...

support chat accessibility

KorvinStarmast

I posted a question at Meta.SE. may just be a toggle that needs switching

Someone_Evil

If it's inconsistent between sites and title and body, it might be something weird in CSS or in microsofts software

Medix2

It's working for me... intersting

@KorvinStarmast do you also have speech recognition turned on?

KorvinStarmast

4:22 PM

@Medix2 It did work in the title to the question, but it did not work in the body of the question. It also does work in the comments under the questions and answers. see meta q

Medix2

@KorvinStarmast Yeah it's working everywhere for me, how peculiar

KorvinStarmast

@Medix2 worked in c.se chat also

@Someone_Evil which is why I asked on meta SE. OK now it's working in this room. Huh?

Maybe somebody hit the toggle

Someone_Evil

The more I interact with computers, the more I'm convinced they run on eldritch magic

MikeQ

As a programmer I can confirm that computers run on eldritch magic

7

Medix2

@MikeQ Does that make you an eldritch mage?

KorvinStarmast

4:28 PM

@MikeQ if it runs on Eldridge magic then you must be a warlock 😮

MikeQ

Yes, and my patron is the great old one x'Lxxxvi

KorvinStarmast

@MikeQ I am still pretty sure we need to delay to the 6th because of voice to text being still odd and interrupting discord discourse

MikeQ

That's ok! Life comes before tabletop gaming.

KorvinStarmast

@MikeQ I have been informed that having one hand inoperable does not preclude me from picking up dog poop in the backyard. such is life 😣

Hot RPG Questions

5:57 PM

8

Q: Are there any monsters that can target more than one target/creature?

I noticed that the attacks in Statblocks mention one target (and sometimes one creature). This made me curious. I have been pouring over the MM and VGtM, but have not found any monster that can make a melee/ranged attack against more than one target / one creature. Do we know of any example with...

dnd-5e monsters targeting

Himitsu_no_Yami

6:23 PM

I just realized Satyrs have Magic Resistance... That's more useful than I expected

Thomas Markov

Creature type Fey too. No charm person or hold person need apply.

Himitsu_no_Yami

Oooh you're right

doppelgreener

6:53 PM

@ThomasMarkov you mean satyrs aren't people? :'(

Trish

7:20 PM

@Someone_Evil pointing out what is very visible in his graph already does not constitute an answer in any level. His graphs are barely distinguishable till about 200 (1st x separation). That most campaigns not even reach so many kills is not an answer, but more a sidenote.

Thomas Markov

"most campaigns do not even reach so many kills"

It seems this statement speaks directly to the question in the OP, "Would a mechanic like this work or would it be a bad idea?".

Someone_Evil

@Trish Whether the effect becomes relevant inside a campaign is an important part of an answer as far as I can see. Also, system is not known (I haven't even got a substantiated guess) so assuming kills per campaign isn't directly useful yet.

Oh, and for anyone else: context

GcL

@Someone_Evil At least then they'd be cool.

Trish

7:42 PM

@Someone_Evil The 700 racked up kills needed pair of trebuchets, Napalm and area of effect spells for some 50-100 kills per orc group storming at the town. The best the archer managed per such was two quivers (~40) usually more around one, while melee engagements were comparatively rare. Note that this was a campaign with a positive abundance of enemies (800-2000 at pretty much all times) and a site situation spanning 14 months.

Thomas Markov

I feel like im missing some context here.

Trish

I don't see a lot campaigns where you even have that many monsters that could be killed. Only in a campaign where there are literal armies to kill it is even feasible to kill more than 100 monsters per hero.

GcL

7:57 PM

I thought there were better rule sets for large scale engagements. I think the 4th edition Eberron book had some decent suggestions for a battlefield or siege as the backdrop for an adventure.

Trish

@GcL I used large scale engagement rules, which actually does explain the high number of kills.

because the trebuchet killed whole units.

(where "kill" is anything from a disabling wound to pulped)

GcL

@Trish Are those the yahtzee rules where you roll a lot of dice over and over?

@Trish Generally "casualty" is a nicer sounding blanket term for removed from combat in that sense.

Trish

@GcL no, it's "roll the normal damage for that catapult... () damage... that's the whole unit as casualty from damage (each orc is considered about 5 HP in that scale)...

anyway, just grabbed Tyrany of Dragons, DDEN1, Chapter 1 has, assuming a group of 6, at absolutely worst a possible of 123 enemies. Assuming equal distribution that'd be 20.5 kills per character, if the players go out and kill every single enemy and none flee.

GcL

Does your group usually make it a point to attempt murder of everything?

That one starts with Hoard of the Dragon Queen? correct? I recall there's an unwinnable fight at the start of that. So at least -1 NPC that has to be killed.

A. B.

-1?

Trish

8:05 PM

the dragon. You can drive it only away.

depends, but I do statistis here. the OP had asked if his item could be a problem, and as I see it, the players would need to go out of their way to actually get any measurable benefit - kill everything, and make sure that that one player gets the kills to even get a measurable effect, no matter how small.

A. B.

Oh, I see, one less than the 123.

GcL

No, the dragonborn champion paladin thing you fight when you're like level 1

Well, one character from the party fights them.

Trish

oh, that too, so 121 killable ones.

Chapter 2 start vague terms... so could we assume about 20 enemies per caput per chapter of a random campaign?

or we assume a group of 4 for about 30 per caput?

anyway, with 20-30 enemies per head and chapter - that means that in the whole 3 chapters in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the thing will at best proc once, and that's pretty much a whole short campaign on its own. You'd need to play something the length of Kingmaker (4 books) to make the thing proc more than once.

MikeQ

Unless the character spends their downtime with a bag of rats. Given the opportunity for an exploit, there is a player out there who will try their darndest to use it.

Trish

8:26 PM

Ohhh god, you gives me backlashes on some older D&D! Commoner, the 'chicken' feat, then become bage. Fill a cave system with chickens, seal the entry airtight and wait because the thousands of chickens breath away the air from the tunnels... or uses them to fuel a huge fireball to wipe out a city with some blood magic...

A. B.

Oh, they've put the system in, it was D&D 5th edition.

Bage?

Trish

/me points to Dragon Magazine 330, Page 87 and the Chicken Infested thingy

A. B.

I mean what is this word bage?

Trish

*mage

@A.B. no, it was some other user... DON'T GUESS THE SYSTEM!

A. B.

:-)

Oh, I see, I did look to see if it was them or not but I must have read it wrong.

I assume the "chicken feat" is something that allows you to conjure unlimited free chickens?

Someone_Evil

8:29 PM

@Trish Isn't revision 2 OP adding it to the body?

Trish

oh, overread that...

just saw the last edit...

@Someone_Evil rllback my rollback...

Someone_Evil

No worries, easy mistake to make

A. B.

Yeah, they did put it in, just forgot to tag it.

Thomas Markov

makes for a confusing edit history haha

Trish

still... not a good question. If we knew MORE we could help... using the number of typical enemies per campaign... what would be a typical campaign in D&D5? In the whole dragonlance Campaign or the Kingmaker Pathfinder campaign I could count you some hundreds of enemies, but what campaign is typical for D&D5? Curse of Strahd?

Someone_Evil

8:35 PM

Might be some analysis here which could be used as a starting point

MikeQ

What do you mean "typical"? Are you asking which campaign has been run the most, start to finish?

Someone_Evil

I'd guess "representative campaign" is the idea aimed for

Trish

@MikeQ no, an average campaign in length and enemy count. Representative so to say

Mark Wells

@Trish That seems irrelevant. They're not running an average campaign, they're running a specific campaign and we don't know what.

A. B.

What strikes me is how is a 1% increase supposed to translate into XdY? More dice? Bigger dice? A flat bonus?

MikeQ

8:40 PM

Is that only counting published modules? Or every campaign ever?

Trish

@MarkWells true, but we could use an average, representative to look how often the item would proc

Thomas Markov

1.01d6.06+3.03 damage.

Trish

@MikeQ an official published D&D5 would be most easy to calculate with.

Someone_Evil

@A.B. That's something else for an answer to address, mesa thinks

Mark Wells

@Trish We could, or we could just make something up and that's exactly as relevant.

Someone_Evil

8:41 PM

@ThomasMarkov Ahhrg, my EYES!

A. B.

Well, it's locked at the moment. Really, an answer at the moment would just be a series of questions.

Someone_Evil

@A.B. Nitpick on terminology, it's closed not locked. Locking is a mod action which stops interactions like comments, edits, votes, etc. depending on the type of lock

A. B.

You could make it an answer, though, by putting it in terms of "If so and so then it would do such and such". (That would make it more generally applicable, too, rather than being only of interest to OP).

Right, yeah.

Mark Wells

@A.B. The goal is to answer their question, and the answer to their question is "No." I can almost think of an artistic reason to use a homebrew weapon like this (it would be an origin story for the villain, "the Butcher of Wherever", who massacred whole towns full of people to feed his magic sword) but that doesn't depend on having any specific mechanics worked out.

Someone_Evil

@A.B. That usage of "barding" makes this question even weirder.

Trish

9:04 PM

@A.B. oh, I loved the one Bard that came to a LARP once. H brought a guitar... and then he started to sing... on a language we didn't quite get. Til he told us it was a song by Tyr on Faroer, which again is from the Edda and tells of Regin the smith. Regin Smiður

also, that faroerean ballad is in original 124 verses long...

@A.B. though, you do know, barding is what The Bard (note: some NSFW images) does...

BESW

Can we get a content warning on that link, please?

Someone_Evil

The last one?

MikeQ

9:22 PM

Yes. Probably for the best to include a warning.

Someone_Evil

Ahh.. didn't scroll down previously.

Trish

Well... possibly? It's Andersson. Teh one that made Pawn..

@Someone_Evil an you edit a "Careful at work"?

Someone_Evil

@Trish Does that work for everyone?

Trish

@Someone_Evil I think. Though it's less nudity than in some monster manuals...

Someone_Evil

@Trish That feels more like a comment on those manuals

Trish

9:26 PM

it was a side slash at them, yes :P

BESW

10:14 PM

Verbing is a long proud tradition. I'll eye people suspiciously, even if we're skyping or messaging, when authoring a new word impacts their respect for me. If I were chairing a meeting about language, I would table that idea indefinitely.

(I cheated for effect up there: "impact" was never verbed, it was nouned. there's a great deal of ink spilled about the tragedy of the noun "impact" becoming a verb, but the verb form pre-dates the noun form by more than 250 years.)

Himitsu_no_Yami

So I was rolling for the encounter for my party and I initially decided I'm gonna have to reroll it but I then had the idea of let's see just how bad it actually is. Gave the player the chance to actually play out the encounter. Told him if he survives he gets the XP and if not it never happened (since it's wildly unfair anyway). It's 4 level 3's against 9 ghouls and a ghast

MikeQ

If you added any more undead, you'd have the Thriller music video.

Himitsu_no_Yami

lmao

user15026

10:30 PM

@BESW Yeah, people do this all the time

user15026

Like heck, look at "adulting" as a word

BESW

It's really cool to see the history of words! And Twitter is a great place to word-watch because communicating in a small character limit breeds so much creative play.

user15026

11:22 PM

Yes! I love that sort of linguistics

Hot RPG Questions

14

Q: How can I check if a new group is OK with a plotline from an ethical standpoint without spoiling the plot?

TL;DR: I am unsure if the plotline I planned is "too dark" for a new group, and would like to discuss the level of grit with them without spoiling the plotline. How can I do this? I am planning a campaign where an evil dryad witch has kidnapped a bunch of children and is planning to turn them int...

dnd-5e gm-techniques adventure-writing social-contract

Transcript for