TRPG General Chat

AncientSwordRage

00:33

@ThomasMarkov Interlocutor Of Borg?

BESW

00:45

@NautArch In 3.5, invisibility gave something like +20 to Hide checks, which meant that if you were trying to hide at all it was basically impossible you’d be found by anyone who wasn’t trained in Spot AND actively looking for you.

So you weren’t automagically hidden, but it was functionally the same thing.

BESW

01:02

Ah, here we go. Even better than I remembered:

> A creature can generally notice the presence of an active invisible creature within 30 feet with a DC 20 Spot check. The observer gains a hunch that “something’s there” but can’t see it or target it accurately with an attack. A creature who is holding still is very hard to notice (DC 30). An inanimate object, an unliving creature holding still, or a completely immobile creature is even harder to spot (DC 40).
It’s practically impossible (+20 DC) to pinpoint an invisible creature’s location with a Spot check, and even if a character succeeds on such a check, the invisible creature still be…

(I’ll give d20S credit where it’s due.)

Hot RPG Questions

01:37

6

Q: If you force creature into the Snare spell square does it activate?

Snare is a spell that activates when The trap triggers when a Small creature or larger moves into the area protected by the spell. Would forced movement via the Thornwhip cantrip snare the foe?

TheDragonOfFlame

01:58

D&D 5e has made invisibly much less over powered and it’s still one of the best spells in the game

Joshua

02:17

Just don't fight a purple worm.

facepalm 19 minutes later; For some reason timestamps weren't showing up.

Hot RPG Questions

02:28

4

Q: What does the Swarmkeeper mean by "horizontal"?

The Ranger Swarmkeeper Gathered Swarm has 2 ability's that can force horizontal movement. But how do they work? The attack's target must succeed on a Strength saving throw against your spell save DC or be moved by the swarm up to 15 feet horizontally in a direction of your choice Is this horizo...

dnd-5e ranger forced-movement

Hot RPG Questions

02:54

2

Q: What's considered "hot weather"?

The PHB/basic rules list the following water requirements for a character: A character needs one gallon of water per day, or two gallons per day if the weather is hot. However, this section does not provide a definition of "hot" weather. Is this defined in RAW in some other location?

dnd-5e weather

BESW

03:06

@HotRPGQuestions Hrm. They clearly cribbed a lot of their environmental text from 3.5, and then modified it to fit 5e. But 3.5 had a LOT more detailed information about exactly what different weather conditions entailed, so using it as a template for 5e left a lot of implied holes.

It's one thing to write low-detail rules text with "the GM will fill in the details" in mind. It's another thing to take details out of a rules text and expect the GM to fill them back in; the lack of detail will always feel like the GM is missing information, rather than being encouraged to add information, because that's exactly what's happening.

How often do our answerers show sympathy for askers who can sense that "the GM adds details" is not a complete reading of the text, and so "the GM adds details" is not a completely satisfying answer? Is there something we can do to improve that?

trogdor

03:40

I feel like there's only so much we can do about,... a rules system like D&D 5e

which sort of makes up a very large chunk of site traffic

that doesn't mean there isn't anything we can do though

although I think there are also problems with this site itself which can easily pose as barriers to fixing problems like this

Hot RPG Questions

8

Q: How should a player and GM handle an ability that necessitates a player seeing a GM's roll?

A Dual-Cursed Oracle gets the following Revelation at 1st level: Misfortune (Ex): At 1st level, as an immediate action, you can force a creature within 30 feet to reroll any one d20 roll that it has just made before the results of the roll are revealed. The creature must take the result of the r...

pathfinder-1e gm-techniques

BESW

05:01

J.R. Zambrano wrote a twitter thread about playing an antagonist PC and "one weird trick for playing a villain."

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: Does a Swarmkeeper lose their swarm if they die?

In Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, the Swarmkeeper Ranger's "Gathered Swarm" feature states the following (emphasis added): A swarm of intangible nature spirits has bonded itself to you and can assist you in battle. Until you die, the swarm remains in your space [...]. In a recent encounter, my...

dnd-5e class-feature ranger character-death

BESW

DUKK BÖRG by Gem Room Games. Life is like a hurricane, here in... this module intended to be used with MÖRK BORG.

Megadungeon Jam A game jam hosted by Diwata ng Manila. I've always wanted to make a megadungeon but had never even attempted to endeavour at how to do so. It seemed many others felt the same, so here's a year-long opportunity to try your hand!

2

Indie Game Mutual Aid Bundle: Rent and Roof Edition A bundle hosted by Sandy Pug Games. Up to 32 items starting at $10.00. Two of our favourite people, @hellotenbear and @VVVisection are in some dire straits. One of them had their roof cave in, destroying a huge part of their home and making their living situation unbearable, and the other needs rent money bad.

3

The First Knight - Superhero Cinematic Universe TTRPG by W.H. Arthur. Play the story of the first superhero in an ancient battle between good and evil.

Monkey's Paw Games wrote a twitter thread about brevity and purpose in game design.

@Mithical [wave]

BESW

05:22

"Itchfunding Projects" a crd.co page for TTRPGs that are crowdfunding using itch.io. Maintained by Keganexe.

Kienna S. wrote a twitter thread about applying the Mythbusters principle "You're never gonna be able to make something safe - [but] you can increase the margin of safety" to TTRPGs.

Glazius

@BESW You want to know the hilarious thing? 3.5 has a temperature range specified for what counts as hot weather, but it just says "In very hot climates, characters need two or three times as much water to avoid dehydration."

BESW

Yup. 5e's choices would baffle me if I had any expectation of coherent purpose in the design.

Mithical

@BESW *waves back*

Glazius

Well, yeah. You're not supposed to know the rules of D&D, you're just supposed to win rules arguments.

BESW

@Mithical What's new?

Mithical

05:35

...not much, unfortunately. Overtired and on a bus, like most mornings :P Hoping my D&D session won't get pushed off again this week...

How're things over there?

BESW

Haven't had much time or brain for TRPGs lately, really want to work on some designs but haven't been able to do much design work since September.

Been reading a lot though. A Desolation Called Peace and Crossing the Line were really good, and I'm looking forward to The Properties of Perpetual Light.

Mithical

Ooh, those sound interesting!

BESW

There's a few books called Crossing the Line, I just read the 2019 autobiography by Richard Abercrombie.

Mithical

ah

in The Reading Room, 2 days ago, by Mithical

Currently reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin.

BESW

Ooh.

I never got into Le Guin, but I haven't tried for a while.

Mithical

05:50

The writing so far is a bit... heavy, I suppose, but I'm finding it interesting.

BESW

Might have something to do with my exposure to her was getting a lavish gift of her books from someone who really shouldn't have been giving me anything.

A. B.

I've read The Other Wind and A Wizard of Earthsea (in that order - I tend to read what the libraries or second-hand bookshops happen to have). I liked them.

Oh, and I heard some but not all of the one with the planet called Winter on the radio.

Mithical

That'd be The Left Hand of Darkness, then, unless she wrote several books with a planet named that ;)

A. B.

Now I think about it, is that The Left Hand of Darkness? The one where the aliens changed sex every now and again.

Oh, crossed in the post.

That was a strange one.

Mithical

Earthsea has been on my to-read list for a while, but it hasn't yet shown up on the local swap shelf.

BESW

05:56

A Desolation Called Peace is Arkady Martine's sequel to her debut novel A Memory Called Empire, and they're just astonishing speculative fiction, right up there alongside Anne Leckie's Raadch trilogy and NK Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy.

A. B.

Neither of which I have read :-D

I get embarrassed about books like that, to be honest.

Mithical

Oh? Why?

BESW

Award-winning bestsellers?

A. B.

Morally superior award-winning bestsellers with themes and issues and all that. Everyone talks about how look at them handling themes of this, that and the other, and if I were writing I would not have a clue how to write about it, and furthermore, if I were reading I probably would not register it.

BESW

I don't think any of them is "morally superior."

A. B.

06:02

I suppose I'm probably not good at abstract.

Oh? Fair enough. I mean I thought you said.

BESW

The authors talk about things that are important to them.

A. B.

(I'm actually speaking only about Broken Earth because I've forgotten which one Raadch is.)

(Looked it up. Oh, of course, those.)

BESW

If you think portraying empire as Not Good Actually is somehow an inherently morally superior stance to empire being Good Actually, well. Yes, probably? But it doesn't mean it's lecturing or condescending.

It's navigating complexity.

A. B.

What puts me off is being given the impression that that's the point of the book.

Because said point will whistle over my head.

Mithical

I don't think the "point" of a book has to be the same for everyone.

The point of the book is whatever you personally took away from it... which, sometimes, is just an enjoyable read.

A. B.

06:07

Actually, thinking about it, I wonder - no offence - whether a lot of it isn't because lately it's generally you I hear about books like that from. Because the two of us happen to speak such totally different languages.

I mean, the things you describe about a book sound dismal and incomprehensible to me, and that's what you understand, and if I read the exact same book I'd probably notice entirely different things about it. Right, @Mithical , exactly.

Actually, I did read one thing of NK Jemisin's, now I remember, the short story on her website. That's a good one.

Mithical

As an example, I can take, uh, Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. You could take the "point" as warning against climate change or colonialism; you could also just enjoy the story about a post-apocalyptic world where the gods walk on Earth. Or both. You don't need to analyze stuff if you don't want to, but the undertones are still there for those who pick up on them.

A. B.

Looked it up again, it's called Stone Hunger. All the descriptive detail. And that is a fascinating, and well-thought-out (and scary) superpower.

Ooh, I've not heard of that one.

A. B.

06:37

Unrelatedly, that Twitter thread about Mythbusters and TTRPGs makes a good point, considering things BESW's said in here before about things they've seen other people do.

Things like X-Cards, as far as I understand it, are not supposed to be a guarantee that nothing will go off the rails. They're to provide some kind of start at knowing what to do if it does.

BESW

@Mithical I once read a speculative fantasy trilogy in which a group of heroes from different ethnostates have to put aside their personal agendas to help an asexual homoromantic couple use the values of small joys they learned from their sustainable-agrarian homeland to stop a techno-industrial evil and reinstate a divinely ordained king.

Mithical

Ah yes, The Lord of the Rings. :D

BESW

Dingdingding.

None of the books I recommend are good only because of their themes. Otherwise I'd recommend Dune to everyone as an antifascist manifesto about the dangers of colonial religious propaganda, instead of warning people that it's a pompous condescending piece of well-intentioned exoticism that takes so long to get to its point that for most readers it winds up making a more coherent argument for colonial fascism.

I highly recommend A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace to... just about anybody? It's a political thriller, AND a sapphic semi-tragedy, AND an exploration of the relationship between cultural and personal identity, AND a love-letter to poetics, AND a triumph of original worldbuilding, AND it's full of interesting nuanced characters, AND it's written with such a careful craft that sometimes I have to put it down and love a perfect phrase for a while...

Any of those things would make it worth reading for somebody, regardless of whether they notice or care about another of the things.

Oh, and it has a joke about picking a name for yourself in your foreign language class that absolutely kills me.

@Mithical I keep trying to start Storm of Locusts but I'm not in an emotional space for what I know it's going to do to me.

Mithical

07:11

My problem is just getting ahold of it. :(

BESW

Aww.

I already read T Kingfisher's Paladin's Strength, the latest in her epic fantasy romance series about traumatized paladins. It was, as her books almost always are, sweet and sexy and funny and terrifying.

BESW

07:49

*also, not 'already'

BESW

08:29

Kickstarter: The RPG Printing Spree hosted by David Schirduan but the books are by several different creators. Fund a print run of several tabletop RPG books.

SmokeDetector

09:37

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (35): What is the purpose of a spell attack modifier? by jozi mac on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of answer, blacklisted user (105): What is the purpose of a spell attack modifier? by jozi mac on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of answer, potentially bad keyword in answer, blacklisted user (106): What is the purpose of a spell attack modifier? by jozi mac on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

AncientSwordRage

10:31

oh we're doing book recommendations? ::scrolls up furiously::

BESW

The next PC Grant novel comes out later this week!

The next Murderbot novella is coming in May, as does PD Clark's next Fatma el-Sha’arawi novel.

...De Bodard's Seven of Infinities is still on my to-read list for some reason.

AncientSwordRage

@HotRPGQuestions @ThomasMarkov the Mid 80s was 40 years ago

AncientSwordRage

10:46

@BESW I might just get Wizard of Earthsea on Audible... hmm

BESW

11:16

@AncientSwordRage I've got a lot of respect for what I've read about it, but I just couldn't get past the first couple pages.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I've found that with books, but not so much with audio books

BESW

Interesting.

'course, I don't do audiobooks much at all most of the time.

AncientSwordRage

I used to do so a) when commuting, and b) before I discovered podcasts

BESW

I've recently started listening to audiobooks while exercising or doing dishes or laundry, but mostly I'm listening to things I've already read.

Hot RPG Questions

11:51

2

Q: Can I make an unarmed strike while holding a two handed weapon?

My barbarian Gus uses a Greataxe, a two handed weapon. While raging in combat against harpies, a round passed without Gus taking damage. On his turn, all harpies were out of his melee range, and he had used all his javelins. To maintain his rage, he slapped the fighter with an unarmed strike. ...

dnd-5e attack unarmed-combat

RevenantBacon

12:29

Don't you love when someone who's not your boss assigns a task to you without checking to see if you know how to do it?

KorvinStarmast

@Mithical golf clap I agree, (but IME there were some English teachers and professors who sometimes want to steer us in a particular direction, whereas others who were interested in what we synthesized from them ...)

@RevenantBacon Yeah, that's so much fun.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@RevenantBacon Happens pretty often. Just . . . redirect it to the most fitting candidate you know, preferably with a comment explaining your reasoning and admitting that you can't be sure of the best fit, but that you hope that the receiver at least knows the best fit?

trogdor

I mean, I would hate it even more if my boss did that?

XD

RevenantBacon

All I can say is, she sure is gonna be surprised when Friday rolls around and I haven't done it, because I already have my own work to do that's been assigned to me by my actual boss.

And since neither her nor my boss checked with me to see if it was something I knew how to do...

Then it's on them when it doesn't get done

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@RevenantBacon Why surprised? Is there no feedback channel?

NautArch

12:47

@RevenantBacon I highly recommend talking to your boss.

RevenantBacon

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Well, they decided they could assign to me a task that I don't know how to do without any prior communication to me or checking to see if I knew how to operate the required machinery to do it, so I'm deciding that I'm not doing it without any prior communication to them.

It'll be a learning experience for them

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@RevenantBacon I don't know the full context, but be careful about accidentally making the situation worse for both of you down the line.

NautArch

Opting to one-up the lack of communication isn't a great idea.

If you want to improve communication, you communicate!

RevenantBacon

I'm not one-upping, I'm matching

Lessons need to be learned

trogdor

it could possibly be learned by not maybe getting you both in some kind of trouble though

NautArch

12:51

You seem pretty intent on this, but I'm telling you as a manager that this is the wrong tack.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

I imagine the boss eventually asking (possibly): 'So you had a non-doable but important task on your hands, why did you not tell anyone about the situation?'

trogdor

if I was assigned something at my job that I didn't have the first idea of how to do/was straight unqualified for I would talk to my boss or one of the supervisors or something

as long as that was in any way possible

RevenantBacon

I mean, it's something being assigned to me by someone who's not my boss, for a task that doesn't belong to my department, I'm not sure why she thinks she can assign it to me to begin with.

NautArch

Are you 100% certain that person didn't clear it with your boss?

RevenantBacon

Like, Naut, you say you're a manager. Would you just go and assign one of your departments duties to someone outside said department without both checking with their department head on if that was acceptable and also checking with said person on if they can do the task?

NautArch

12:58

@RevenantBacon Most likelynot, but I sure would want to know if a manager assigned something to someone under me.

RevenantBacon

Well, they sent an email out to a handful of people in their department and conveniently left my boss out of the email, and my boss hasn't said anything to me about it or checked with me if it's something I can do

KorvinStarmast

@RevenantBacon I have been on both sides of this equation; first thing you need to do is contact your boss and ask if the assignment you got from someone who is not your boss was coordinated with them. Then, ask your boss about priority of tasks. This does three things ositive: a. they can talk to the other about tasking their person b. you know what to work on first c. the person who dumped this on you maybe assigns it to somoene who knows how to do it.

NautArch

Passive aggressive solutions in the workplace are very unlikely going to be received well. It isn't a big deal to talk t your boss, but it may be a big deal if you don't. I'm not sure why you're so set on "i'm gonna teach 'em a lesson!".

THat lesson can be taught from your manager and be done in a much better way

KorvinStarmast

If instead you go all passive aggressive about this, it is a lose lose lose situation that could have been prevented by simply telling your boss the truth. There's some old advice: and the truth shall set you free. 😎

NautArch

Get out of my head @KorvinStarmast!

KorvinStarmast

13:01

When I have or had people working for me, and someone else tasked them, I as a leader and manager would act promptly to find out "WTF are you doing tasking my people without coordinating with me? " and figure out what's going on. But that's my experience.

@RevenantBacon There's another way to look at this. Bad news does not improve with age. The bad news that 1) you haven't the capability to do that and 2) were tasked by someone not your boss needs to be shared now, not later. If you sit on this, and whatever does not get done, and you explain after the fact, at least two people will ask you with frowny faces "why didn't you say something" and your answer is ...?????

RevenantBacon

@KorvinStarmast My answer is "It's not my job, and I've already got my own work to do"

NautArch

howdy @Mithical

KorvinStarmast

@RevenantBacon If you tell that to your boss now, rather than after the mess up occurs, you are good guy. If you wait, you are the now part of the problem. That's real life, amigo

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@RevenantBacon It doesn't take special job qualifications to pass information along.

doppelgreener

Past consultant training tells me: yes, escalate to my boss ASAP

KorvinStarmast

13:08

Cool Hand Luke - Failure to Communicate

►

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast mmmmm, eggs

KorvinStarmast

@doppelgreener Also, people skills 101

@NautArch My dog Luke can eat 50 eggs (actually, I think he can but then he'd be sick all over the carpet)

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Not only will you significantly complicate the work of other people (and not just the one who misassigned the task) at the low low cost of one-two paragraphs in an email, but it's possible you will be not-patted-on-the-head for it later.

NautArch

Doubling down on a problem is rarely going to be the correct solution. If ever.

doppelgreener

I have a clear line of accountability, and that accountability is to my boss. Other people don't get to coordinate me. If someone who outranks my boss tells me "do this immediately", at the very least I tell my boss I have been assigned to do the thing by that person, and I tell my boss immediately before I begin the work. Otherwise, they have no authority to assign me work, and I tell my boss "someone's instructing me to do this work, what do I do?"

KorvinStarmast

13:10

@doppelgreener 100% this. I've never been in an organization where this doesn't work ...

RevenantBacon

I think you guys are forgetting, I'm like super-duper petty.

NautArch

There is a non-zero chance you may end up super-duper petty and super-duper unemployed.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@RevenantBacon On the contrary, we keep it in mind when we're writing these suggestions.

In the hopes you'd become less so in this case.

KorvinStarmast

@RevenantBacon If you take My Guy Syndrome into real life, it rarely ends well. Pick your spots to be petty ~ sometimes, it is needed ~ no need to do that all of the time.

RevenantBacon

@KorvinStarmast Wouldn't MGS in real life just be me being myself?

KorvinStarmast

13:13

I am Proud to be Petty only works if you are the leader of a band called The Heartbreakers and your first name is Tom 😎, or if you are a famous race car driver named Richard.

@RevenantBacon No, it would not. Narrowly defining who you are by a minor personality trait is in the same family of anti social behavior.

RevenantBacon

@KorvinStarmast What about his son and grandson?

KorvinStarmast

@RevenantBacon yes, I suppose so.

RevenantBacon

I didn't say it was my only trait

doppelgreener

@KorvinStarmast I've been in an organisation with a flat management structure where I had multiple different people with equal authority to give me work. At one time, I had (effectively) five different managers. I eventually got thrown under a bus by one of them. I quit and when I interviewed for my current job I told them I want a clear line of accountability, and I got it.

RevenantBacon

It is, however, the most relevant one.

KorvinStarmast

13:14

@RevenantBacon which is why I typed a minor personality trait

RevenantBacon

What constitutes a major personality trait?

KorvinStarmast

@doppelgreener No one can serve two masters and all that.

doppelgreener

Yeah

I got thrown under a bus because I was being given conflicting instructions. The manager who had been overwritten got me written up.

KorvinStarmast

@RevenantBacon Hair splitting won't help you, and I can't help you further if that's the attitude you choose to adopt. Up to you how you'll interact with people in the workspace. We even have a WorkplaceSE where you can discuss this! 😃

doppelgreener

In hindsight I could have stayed so that if they fired me I could sue for wrongful dismissal; they were jerking me around and I took their fall for them.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

13:16

Oh well, I guess the cost of two lessons is a few other people getting to witness how not to misassign and how not to noncommunicate.

KorvinStarmast

@doppelgreener Yikes, that's a toxic organization. Arrgh. "How not to do things right as an organization 101"

doppelgreener

yeah absolutely

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

I gave my suggestion, it didn't get through, I'm not a diplomancer so there's not much point for me to keep hitting my cephalothorax on the metaphorical wall.

KorvinStarmast

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica I love it when a fancy word is used correctly in a sentence! Cephalothorax for the win!

RevenantBacon

@KorvinStarmast No, I'm not being fascetious or sarcastic or anything, like what constitutes a non-minor personality trait?

doppelgreener

13:18

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica i wasn't, i was just writing what i'd do :P

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@KorvinStarmast /me proudly folds its pedipalps.

doppelgreener

i don't know @RevenantBacon's professional dispositions well enough to bear them in mind

KorvinStarmast

@RevenantBacon It's one of your rolled stats, obviously

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Oh well, I considered the demonstrated attitude a sign of significant
pettiness (not sure if general or specific though), but maybe that was too quick a conclusion.

RevenantBacon

Alright, tell you what folks, Just this once I'll try out this "communicating with other people" thing.

doppelgreener

13:22

it works wonders!

KorvinStarmast

@RevenantBacon I wish you the best, hope it works out

NautArch

Do they roll persuasion?

RevenantBacon

@KorvinStarmast Me too. I'm heading into uncharted territory here

KorvinStarmast

A key point is "I have run into conflicting priorities, can you help me do the right thing ..." or something along those lines.

doppelgreener

this is a matter of negotiating and establishing expectations, basically

AncientSwordRage

13:28

Rule 0 of employment: Make a paper trail

3

doppelgreener

also this ^

AncientSwordRage

Then no one can say "You did/didn't tell me this"

doppelgreener

if i have a verbal conversation with my boss about what i'm supposed to do, i send them an email afterwards saying "thanks for the conversation just now, I'm confirming you've assigned me to do these things:" etc

AncientSwordRage

@doppelgreener boom exactly!

NautArch

That's star-worthy.

AncientSwordRage

13:30

I've got some processing difficulties, so I've definitely ended verbal conversations saying "Can you send through a summary of this? Just so I don't forget anything"

@RevenantBacon you can still be petty if you must while keeping a paper trail.

doppelgreener

There's contexts I can do that, and contexts I'll get a response to the effect of "I just told you the thing just now, could you just do it please". I got into some habits:
• getting better at remembering stuff (yeah, "git gud") which in part involved just getting better at trusting my memory
• bringing a journal and pen to meetings always, including if i'm summoned to someone's desk for something that might be involved
• asking for a post-it to write down what they're telling me, if it's become involved but i didn't bring my journal

(sorry for the edit pings)

AncientSwordRage

@doppelgreener no problem

KorvinStarmast

13:50

@Glazius was it you who posted the 'how to do a different roll for stats' scheme that used 25 or 27 as a base?

Someone_Evil

@KorvinStarmast Is it this you're thinking of?

KorvinStarmast

@Someone_Evil Yes! Thanks! Have a friend over at GiTP and I wanted to link to your post. Appreciate it!

@Someone_Evil oops, sorry, why did I think that you were Glazius? Coffee ... did someone put the decaf in the pot? 😑

Someone_Evil

I choose to take being mistaken for Glazius as a compliment :)

KorvinStarmast

14:16

@Someone_Evil And why not? I enjoyed the game he ran for us (Fellowship, a Dungeon World variant) and wish that I'd picked up on the system a bit quicker. It took me a while to get with the flow. Glaz is a good GM.

SmokeDetector

14:33

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of body, pattern-matching product name in body, potentially bad keyword in body (142): Aukland City News - sticky Fullrank by Haji Khan on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

Glazius

Well, I'm glad it was so easy to find.

Thomas Markov

@SmokeDetector flag spam

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast little early for pot, no?

Thomas Markov

flag spam here

There's a bunch of dupes sitting in the undelete queue if anyone wants to go through and undelete vote the ones that are okay.

Also the delete vote queue is very long.

RevenantBacon

14:57

Undelete queue?

Someone_Evil

I assume it's referring to a tab in the 10k tools which includes recent undelete votes

Thomas Markov

@RevenantBacon rpg.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=delete&daterange=last30days

NautArch

Some of these are wrong, not deletable.

RevenantBacon

@Someone_Evil I'm like 800 points away

NautArch

I had a though about some of the friction that happens on the site. Not sure if this is the place to talk about it, but I don't want to make a meta.

Thomas Markov

15:01

Do we need a meta.chat :P

NautArch

ohgodno

Someone_Evil

I think it's possible for sites to be hosted on specific metas. Not something that gets used much as it doesn't really achieve much

Mithical

15:17

@NautArch Hi! Sorry, didn't notice the ping earlier.

KorvinStarmast

@Glazius and it was well recieved by its intended recipient, so Teamwork for the Win!

@NautArch It's never too early for a pot of coffee ... 😎 (yeah, I go the joke)

Thomas Markov

@NautArch right, it is still unclear to me if looking for old content that should be deleted or closed is a mortal or venial sin.

KorvinStarmast

@ThomasMarkov Venial, but the presumption that "old site was bad, new site good" is very Animal Farm - ish

NautArch

Both are reasonable ways to curate a site.

KorvinStarmast

Book burning is not curating a library. 😎

NautArch

15:24

@KorvinStarmast Libraries constantly go through books and remove/change things. Burning is different.

I get the joke, but I don't think that's a valid comparison.

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch Indeed, but I was only party joking. I disagree with the vendetta against old Q&A that had useful answer and plenty of up votes that helped people solve problems.

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast And your disagreement is 100% valid. But agreement on it is also 100% valid.

KorvinStarmast

Culling bad answer, which is noise, is still a good idea, though. Goal of SE remains "favorable signal to noise ration"

Truly low quality input is easy to recognize. That's the first place for the dust mop.

NautArch

Sorry, but I'm really not talking about specific issues or practices.

KorvinStarmast

It is the deletion of Qs and highly votes As that I equate to book burning, which is, yes, a bit of hyperbole

Thomas Markov

15:28

@KorvinStarmast existing guidance doesn’t account for this, which is my issue.

KorvinStarmast

(And in the case of Dale M's answer that Thomas raised, that answer was useful to me for fleshing out some framework for Fiend patrons)

NautArch

Okay, Nevermind. Y'all are focusing when I was hoping to generalize.

KorvinStarmast

@ThomasMarkov Let sleeping dogs lie is good advice

@NautArch sorry

NautArch

No worries - but debating specific issues wasn't something I wanted to do in here about this.

KorvinStarmast

@ThomasMarkov My gut response is "do we need a new rule" and the answer is 'no' - but I guess your gut is "I'd like one?"

NautArch

15:29

I really think that the site design contributes to these issues.

Maybe not for coding, but for softer things like us.

Thomas Markov

@KorvinStarmast Yeah, that’s about right.

I like rules.

Someone_Evil

@NautArch I've felt that too, but not in every case. I wonder what exactly steers a specific discussion to go well and what makes them run afoul. That's probably a whole subfield of a science to be fair

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch I am comfortable with a Three Sigma curve, and I think there's a push toward four or five? But that's an impression, and an imprecise one.

@ThomasMarkov In this particular venue, I prefer guidelines. (Rubiksmoose and I have had quite a few discussions on this in the past).

But maybe that's my inner pirate talking

Someone_Evil

@ThomasMarkov Ask. Start the discussion going for new guidance. That's the tool for that. I think there might be some old discussions somewhere, but not well organized (one of problems from noise)

NautArch

@Someone_Evil Do we really need two guidelines depending on when something happened? That is confusing to me (but i'm a literal dude.) It seems like we all understand the guideline, we just don't want to apply it in certain cases.

Which, again, is 100% valid in this system.

Thomas Markov

15:34

@Someone_Evil I think the votes on my meta pretty well establish that the back it up guidance gets looser as the score gets higher.

Someone_Evil

@NautArch For this case (which is back into specific), how to handle something when it's old becomes a different issue (demonstrated by the reaction from the rest of the community)

NautArch

@Someone_Evil I really really don't want to talk about this specific issue, darnit.

Thomas Markov

@NautArch my bad hahah

NautArch

But I guess we can use it as an example, but not to solve.

RevenantBacon

If I can weigh in here: I only advocate the deleting of Q's or A's if their quality is exceptionally poor (single line post, a few sentences with a link to an actual answer, etc), or it's bot spam.

NautArch

15:35

Okay, I'm taking the larger issue into Dragons to separate.

RevenantBacon

As far as I'm concerned, everything else is salvagable

Someone_Evil

@ThomasMarkov I think that's a bit of a simplification, which makes it dangerous to work with

KorvinStarmast

Yikes, a bit of meat space tasking later ...

NautArch

→ 35 messages moved to Here There Be Dragons

@Someone_Evil If an answer is bad per our guidelines, it's bad. Just because it won a popularity vote doesn't make the answer better.

Someone_Evil

Changing perspective slightly, where mods have stepped in and closed/deleted/etc has been when the curation process breaks down. When disparate and blatantly unsupported answers get upvoted. Going specifically to requesting and looking for Experience citation comes in when experts disagree (though there's obviously a lot more to that)

Thomas Markov

15:43

@Someone_Evil which describes the answer from my meta exactly.

RevenantBacon

When unsupported answers get accepted, it usually means that the asker was asking in bad faith to find an answer that supports their already-held notion of how something works, and they really just wanted someone to confirm it for them, rather than actually finding out if it works that way.

Which like super Grinds my Gears

(tm)

Someone_Evil

@ThomasMarkov Can you walk me through the fullness of that thought?

Thomas Markov

Dale’s answer makes a totally unsupported assertion that got upvoted to the moon.

And KRyan’s answer quite plainly says that votes override divergence from meta guidance (policy?)

KRyan’s answer says that you should not have stepped in for those times when the mods have stepped in to remove unsupported but high scoring answers

Someone_Evil

It opens with a quote from the class description (while it fails to cite it, I've already commented to that end)

Mark Wells

@ThomasMarkov If that happens, I invite you to consider that the people upvoting it might find it to be sufficently supported. "Support" does not have to mean "a wall of blockquoted rules citations".

Someone_Evil

15:54

There is a lot of different factors for any specific case

Thomas Markov

@MarkWells Right, support is rather clearly defined in our meta guidance, and that particular answer does not meet any definition or description of supported that we have. So there must be a mysterious category of support that we haven’t fleshed out on meta yet.

I’d like to figure out what that is.

Either everyone who thinks the answer is supported are wrong, or that understanding of support needs to be fleshed out and added to existing guidance.

NautArch

@Someone_Evil I really think in this case that answer is a comment. It was made to be a joke, the entire thing is for the punch line. Compare against my snakes falling prone answer. I put a joke in, but it's the cherry, not the meat.

And that quote isn't clear, either. It doesn't say one way or another and could easily be interepreted ina nother way that doesn't line up for a joke.

Thomas Markov

My understanding of our guidance on backing up answers is that there are two methods: citing rules/source material/other relevant material, and subjective experience. It seems rather plain to me that the answer has neither. So if someone thinks that answer is sufficiently supported, I think it would be really helpful for their understanding of support to be codified on meta-.

Thomas Markov

16:14

Off topic, but would it be wrong to go give glorfindel enough bounties to have 3k rep so he can just make edits without having to suggest them?

Someone_Evil

Edit is a 2k privilege FWIW. I'm not sure how I feel about the idea though

doppelgreener

16:32

@ThomasMarkov i think that would be a wrong use of the bounty system, yes

glorfindel does tons of edits all over the place, but it's fine that he still has to suggest them

the +2's from edits will give him 1000 rep overall eventually, so he'll get there in time

if he happens to actually have things worth bountying such that you'd give them the bounty regardles of any particular reputation hurdles, that much would be fine, but bounties aren't made for just bulk transfer of rep, it's still supposed to be earned

KorvinStarmast

17:15

@Glazius here's what he said. Thanks! I really like the motivating principle from that post: "Don't roll for effectiveness. Roll for distribution 😎

RevenantBacon

@ThomasMarkov I feel like it's probably unnecessary

RevenantBacon

18:12

700 more rep and I'll be at 9,999

NautArch

19:56

It appears that changing NPC spells can change the CR

Thomas Markov

@NautArch Seems legit. Replacing noncombat spells with combat spells would have that effect.

CR is based on theoretical damage output isnt it?

partially at least.

So increasing that by changing spells should increase CR.

NautArch

Although I'd have thought levels of spells should be balanced against each other.

Swapping a 7 for a 7 on the same list should be fine.

Thomas Markov

@NautArch IDK, it seems obvious to me that swapping sending for fireball would affect CR.

NautArch

You're not wrong. But I don't think there is guidance in the DMG on how to determine swell swap changes? I don't know

But what about swapping out an offensive spell for another offensive spell? or if you never use one offensive spell and opt for another one that you pick up that had a defensive spell that you were never going to use.

Thomas Markov

@NautArch Probably wont make a big difference.

> However, once you change the creature’s offensive or defensive ability, such as its hit points or damage, its challenge rating might need to change, as shown later.

NautArch

20:06

So it's less about what spells are on their list and more about what spells are they actively using that you might be swapping.

and in the case of the animate objects question, it really is more about what spell would you not be casting and how does that compare?

Thomas Markov

@NautArch Sounds right.

Hot RPG Questions

21:13

7

Q: How does cooking work in D&D?

So, I haven't played in forever, but a few friends and I have been talking about playing 5e again. I've been the DM, and they've been requesting a cook off since the beginning. How does cooking work in D&D? I have no idea what to do about it.

dnd-5e food-and-drink

NautArch

21:32

@HotRPGQuestions With food, generally.

KorvinStarmast

23:19

@NautArch Did a one shot back in about 2016 where I changed the CR 12 Arch Mage ninth level spell to wish. And as the adventure was leading up to the encounter with him, I realized that I could have him cast any spell from any class of level 8 or lower. It wasn't until that moment that I appreciated "that might change the CR of this encounter" Just for giggles and grins, I had him cast earthquake as the party approached his lair ...

... and it wasn't until later that I realized I could have had him summon many pixies with an upcasted summon woodland beings and driven the party nuts with their shennanigans ...

The party was the sort who would complain "he turned me into a newt" and gotten a lot of kicks out of that. 9th level.

Hot RPG Questions

8

Q: How can the agent of a devil "capture" a soul in D&D?

Devils always want more souls for the Blood War. Mostly, they get those from lawful evil mortals. But as various lore - and this question What groups of souls go to the Nine Hells according to lore? - make clear, pacts with devils and even magical accidents can also cause a soul to go to the hell...

dnd-5e warlock lore soul

KorvinStarmast

@ThomasMarkov Interesting observation, but it treads close to telling people how they ought to vote, or oughtn't to vote. The vote is the user's to use or not. And since it involves humans, it is imperfect, and That's OK. something something wisdom of the crowds something something

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