Thomas Markov

 TRPG General Chat

Main chat room for tabletop role-playing games. Anyone can ask...
Jul 12 19:21
New themes are hideous. I thought it was a troll post until I saw Philippe posted it.
Jul 12 19:19
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Q: Will you help build our new visual identity?

PhilippeToday we shared an overview of what we announced at the WeAreDevelopers conference in Berlin. Included in that was an overview of the work we’ve done developing. Most excitingly, we have also been working on a refreshed visual identity and I have an ask for you all - to vote on two options. But f...

 
Jul 9 19:25
@TheFallen0ne I directly referenced one of those metrics in my comment, so I’m not sure where the confusion is coming from.
Jul 9 19:25
@TheFallen0ne The “stack metric” is an essentially undefined notion of “quality”, so everyone should expect some amount of diversity and disagreement about what that means.
Jul 9 19:25
@TheFallen0ne It is acceptable stack policy to downvote for essentially any reason related to the content itself. Unacceptable reasons would be those related to the user who posted the content rather than the content itself. That said, I think I explained pretty clearly why I personally downvoted the question, and there seems to be some agreement from others based on the comment score. You, of course, don’t have to agree or do anything about the feedback. But another user asked about the downvotes, and I suspect my reasoning is at least part of why the question is downvoted.
Jul 9 19:25
@NobodytheHobgoblin questions of the form “Does this feature do this wildly broken thing that it obviously should not do?” are downvoted pretty consistently here. Which shouldn’t be surprising at all, players who make such arguments at the table of play are also generally frowned upon and are frequently the subject of [problem-players] questions here. The posture of the question is to rules-lawyer an obviously overpowered effect; to me, this falls under “lack of research”, as thinking about it even briefly yields numerous reasons why it’s wrong.
 
Jun 28 12:43
@Bryan The description of am field is much more broad than dispel: “No one can cast spells, take Magic actions, or create other magical effects inside the aura, and those things can’t target or otherwise affect anything inside it.” Dispel magic works only on spells because that’s the only thing it says it does. Antimagic field works on all magical effects, because it says it does. Different descriptions, different effects.
Jun 28 12:43
A simple case of the spell telling you what it does. I moved the emphasis to that part of the quote. Feel free to change it back, I just wasn’t sure why the previous sentence was emphasized, but emphasizing the actual effect of the spell made sense to me.
 
Jun 5 00:55
@TheFallen0ne And whatever you do, do not, under any circumstances, use the phrase “rules as interpreted”.
Jun 5 00:09
But for this particular case, given that we seem to be required to be really picky about the language, I’d only group features that used the same language.
Jun 5 00:09
We have had good questions before that read like “how do features that do X interact with Y?”, where X was an effect that several different features had.
Jun 5 00:08
@TheFallen0ne If all the smite spells use the same relevant language, you could reduce the question down to that relevant excerpt and note that the excerpt is shared across these spells.
Jun 5 00:06
We’re all just doing our best to interpret the ruleset we’ve been given. And people who tend to favor rulings that aim for less inference over more inference like to say their interpretation is “RAW”. And that’s fine. But we should be careful not to point to an interpretation and say things like “this is the RAW ruling” as though there is some universal standard of interpretation that anyone could apply and arrive at the same conclusion.
Jun 5 00:03
If “RAW is universal” was true, NobodytheHobgoblin and I would agree on everything. But we usually read the rules very differently, even though we’re reading the same exact text.
Jun 5 00:02
Because everyone who reads the rules texts reads it and applies it through the sum of their whole experiences playing RPGs. There’s a reason we have thousands of questions with divergent answers that all claim to be “RAW”.
Jun 5 00:01
“RAW is universal” In the sense that everyone is (usually) looking at the same literal text. But the rules-as-written method of interpretation and ruling is decisively not universal.
Jun 4 23:58
RAW is just a loose method of interpretation, and people don’t even agree on what constitutes the “rules as written” method of reading.
Jun 4 23:57
@TheFallen0ne Id point you toward a different way of thinking here. “RAW rules” isn’t a thing. People like to talk about “RAW” like it is some standard that everyone can point to and agree upon, but that’s a category error.
Jun 4 23:56
Yeah, theyre definitely different questions.
Jun 4 23:54
It’s also not unusual to see repeated variations of questions on the same theme accumulate downvotes they otherwise would’nt, as people seem to tire of seeing the same question asked about different features multiple days in a row.
Jun 4 23:52
But at some point, you might consider that you’re confident working this out yourself with your DM, and further questions are not necessary. Remember, it is okay to not ask a question. You don’t have to ask a question just because you can.
Jun 4 23:51
Anyway, as for volume, it’s generally a good idea to pace yourself. We once had a user post something like 12 homebrew reviews questions that all had the same substantial problems, and they promptly got about 50 downvotes. Then the users who downvoted were a bit peeved when the system flagged their votes as serial voting and reversed the legitimate downvotes.
Jun 4 23:51
Your Bard/Hexblade has access to a bunch exclusively Paladin/Cleric spells?
Jun 4 23:51
If you’re just looking for features that could potentially interact without actually having any chance of using them in game, then additional questions probably isn’t helping anyone. It’s generally better to wait and let someone who is actually encountering the problem in their real game to ask the question, rather than asking hypotheticals just because you thought of them.
 
May 23 20:27
R.I.P. RPG SE 2011-2025 “The rules are just the way it is. Why would you want anything else?”
May 23 17:59
If we become the site of “well I could provide some really useful guidance here, but technically you didn’t ask for it, so I won’t”, then we need to shut the whole thing down.
May 23 17:58
@Eddymage “if you wanted to have more insights, you should have asked…” But we are experts here. I can think of twenty people, including every person who has said something in this chat room who is well equipped to come up with some really good guidance on the implications of ruling one way or another.
May 23 13:05
@Eddymage I was just looking for some thoughtful discussion beyond just outlining what the RAW ruling is, like any practical reasons for or against using the RAW ruling here.
May 23 13:05
And I’m not sure I’ve ever disagreed with one of your analyses more than I disagree with basically everything you wrote in your discussion of opportunity attacks.
May 23 13:05
Unless you’re saying “the rules say” is the only reason every worth entertaining for making a particular ruling.
May 23 13:05
My point is that opportunity attacks exist to disincentivize a certain unbalancing behavior in combat. Reading the rules to me does not help me, as a DM, determine if Bigby’s hand creates a situation where that undesirable, unbalancing behavior can now be abused in combat.
May 23 13:05
You can read the rules, which is sometimes helpful, but I’m really looking for something more helpful than outlining a by-the-book ruling here. Sure, the rules say this, but should I rule that way? Do the reasons for the existence of opportunity attacks show up as concerns with Bigby’s hand? Do you have experience with one ruling or another? This is really a case where something more than parsing rules is necessary for a good answer. For my upvote, give me a reason to rule one way or another that isn’t “well the book says…”.
 
May 23 08:16
Digging through my answers to find one you can copy and paste my comment onto is insane behavior.
May 23 08:16
@NobodytheHobgoblin No thanks, not interested.
May 17 20:32
20
Q: When discussing the “don’t guess the system” policy, let’s make a special effort to assume everyone is acting in good faith

Thomas MarkovCommunity discussions about our “don’t guess the system” policy happen from time to time, and it has been my observation that these discussions can often get...what’s a good word for it...intense? I have often seen these discussions either begin as, or devolve into, adversarial confrontations - o...

May 17 20:32
As in, things were getting so bad in 2021 that it seemed good and necessary to make this post:
May 17 20:29
But things really came to a head in 2021 with the Revisit III thread.
May 17 20:29
There are three revisit threads after this one, and each has its own secondary discussions that went along with it.
May 17 20:25
There are some really valuable perspectives on both sides of it, many from users who are still around.
May 17 20:24
Maybe start here and follow it forward through time.
May 17 20:23
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Q: What to do when an edit guesses the system being used rather than waiting for the querent to clarify?

WibbsNote: As of September 3rd, 2021, this policy has been removed Following the results of Revisit III: Don’t Guess the System policy this policy is no longer in effect. New guidance pending. When the question does not specify a system, but an educated guess can be made, other users often edit the t...

May 17 20:22
I wrote the “policy” we have now and the guidance to go along with it.
May 17 20:21
Once upon a time, if there was any ambiguity at all about what game system a question referred to, it was to be immediately closed as a matter of policy.
May 17 20:20
There’s a really interesting and dramatic history there.
May 17 20:20
I think the downfall of “don’t guess the system” was before your time too.
May 17 20:19
@NobodytheHobgoblin We’ve walked back several of the more visible policies from that era.
May 17 20:17
I’d have made a terrible mod thinking the way I thought about meta and policy back then.
May 17 20:16
I hid behind the word “policy” and used it as a stick to hit people with.
May 17 18:40
I wouldn’t have done the self-reflection that the pain of losing invoked.
May 17 18:34
And now, several years out from it, it was definitely the better outcome.