Wen Histani

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Binge-watched this over a weekend cat-sitting (accidentally bought a bluray rather than DVD). Is anyone familiar with Mercedes Lackey's song "Medic" and does it seem tangentially applicable to Chappel and the security officer?


I am not from the USA and have no military background so forgive me if this is a silly question.

This year I have seen two TV series produced in the USA (one alternative universe and one complete fantasy) where military trainees have been grouped into small squads of three or four and rated as a group (to the extent in fantasy one where the squad member who didn't really want to be there screwed up to such an extent that he was dismissed from the service and his squad-mates were discharged with him).

My question is, is this just a figment of the screenwriters' imagination designed to provide a source of conflict and dramatic tension or do militaries (anywhere in the world, it's just that the USA is the source of these programmes) actually do this sort of thing? Perhaps a bit to encourage cooperation in the squad but it's been exaggerated?


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Rysky wrote:
You do realize you're responding to a 9 year old thread, right?

Which allowed me to find it and it was interesting, so thanks.


27. Take that dragon strings and sealing-wax and other fancy stuff.


26. Lay down your sword and shield down by the riverside.


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I think a lot of players develop a "shoot first and ask questions - perhaps" attitude because many monsters are evil and are written as "shoot first from ambush, fight to the death and never ask questions" and most DMs play them as written. The rules don't require this in any game but you may have to modify modules and manage player expectations before starting a game. The orc's greeting has to be "hello human, how are you today?" rather than "12+2=AC14, does that hit?" My last character (D&D 3.0, petered out 2 yrs ago) was Ari1/Ranger12/Wiz1 with total modifiers of Diplomacy 18 and Bluff 17. Between the reactions of the NPCs/Monsters and the other players she almost never got a chance to try to use them - by the time it was her turn the fight was already well under way.

Do be aware, though, that this is going to be harder work emotionally for everyone. Dealing with "people" is different to bashing unimportant pixels. That is precisely why some monsters are intrinsically and irredeemably evil. That enemies can be so easily categorised is perhaps the biggest "fantasy" of the "F" in "FRPG", the biggest difference to the real world.


Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Right, but what if it's something the character ostensibly took the class for?

Like, the Enlightenment capstone for the mystic makes you stop aging and keeps you from dying of old age. If I'm playing a living elebrian who wants to hack her own DNA so she avoids having to become undead like most people on Eox, her home planet, acheiving true living immortality seems like the ultimate middle finger to the Eoxian status quo.

But to GET there, you can't dip, so if I ALSO want her to be able to use a cool melee weapon, I'm going to have to dump a whole lot of precious feats for proficiencies like Advanced Melee Weapons and Heavy Armor, as well as Toughness and stuff, and if I were to ask for advice building such a character, people in the Advice forum are going to say "just take a level of Blitz Soldier, it'll give you everything you need and more." That isn't helpful!

This is one of the ways in which RPG characters can seem very strange. A real person who wanted to live forever would probably avoid hand-to-hand combat (or violence in general) like the plague.


540) Someone from England ordered a pint in the USA.
541) Someone from France ordered a pint in England.


Way back when 3.0 was new I had a wizard who play established as slightly more religious than the party cleric. Eventually I decided that being able to use healing items and an occasional Cure Light Wounds would be useful. A level of cleric did not, in my view, fit with the way the character was developing from a narrative point of view so I took a level of Adept instead which seemed to me to fit better with a lay person of faith who was favoured by Pelor (in this instance), especially since by that point we were in an extended wilderness adventure far from organised temples and our PCs rarely get extended downtime.

I can hear one or two people howling in anguish that that is a less powerful NPC class so not only was I sacrificing a level of Wizard, I was getting an underpowered level in its place. However, it fit the evolving character and frankly I'm not good enough with the rules to make optimal use of character abilities anyway. It was a home game and probably better for roleplaying than any since.

My most recent character (pre-pandemic we were still playing 3.0) had a first level as Aristocrat and all subsequent as Ranger due to being driven from home by marauding giants. That was purely background, not mechanical at all.


CrystalSeas wrote:
KJL wrote:
How does this work in practice? What one change would you like me to make to my D&D 3.0 home game as a first step?

There is a lot of information available on the internet that will help you learn to create games and game nights that are more friendly to people who are different from you. But the OP has included several explicit things that can change your game and change the gaming environment.

Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought that the suggestion was that game SYSTEMS should have elements DESIGNED INTO them to represent a wider range of people and make them more visible in the games and allow them to see themselves represented in the rules and backgrounds. However, all the suggestions seem to be about what the GM and other players should do welcome a player, with the rules systems being irrelevant. This rather chimes with my initial thoughts as I began reading the OP which were that what is a "non-viable" or "invalid" character does not generally depend on the rules of the game but on stories the GM and players are telling and how they approach them.


How does this work in practice? What one change would you like me to make to my D&D 3.0 home game as a first step?


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Marc Radle wrote:

Yes!!!!

Now to find a copy!

Thanks!!

It is on DriveThruRPG if you don't mind a pdf rather than a physical copy.


I use Word at work although not at home. We don't have the most up to date version but you should be able to edit the Tab positions so that you don't need to use Tables to align things. Each line can have different Tab positions as necessary.

For artwork you can insert a picture into a Frame and format it so that text flows above, below, to one, other or both sides and, I believe, even over the top of the frame (picture). You may also be able to do that without a Frame - not quite sure about that. You can anchor it to a paragraph so that it moves when you type extra text or direct to a location on the page so that the text moves around it.

You can also put text into Frames or Text Boxes that you can move around the page.

To some extent it will depend on the version of Word you have but really, if you don't need the sheet to calculate or auto-fill anything, it's just a case of scribbling down the approximate layout you want and then fiddling with the Tabs and Frames and point sizes until it looks a way you like. That will go for any word processing software.

You could go with page layout software like PagePlus but that probably isn't necessary for a character sheet. Word should probably do it quite well.

The only thing is, doing things like this takes time. Don't be surprised or distressed if you find it taking several hours to come up with something you like and find easy to use.

Not sure what is available ready-made.


How are you playing and for what purpose? If you have a group that is playing in living campaigns using standard modules that cannot be varied then I can see that you need a standard balanced party that can cope with a full range of standard encounters. If you are playing at home for fun with a single DM (or even your own several DMs) then the adventures can be modified to allow for the characters that the players want to play and the style of adventure they enjoy.

All fighters with no healing or magic? Fine, adjust the parameters accordingly. Remember that it is possible to do subdual damage, don't include any magic-using opponents or allies, allow time for natural healing, talk to people you meet rather than shooting first, use cover (that surprised my DM when I did it!), run away (I got XP for that!).

Finally, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If someone is copying your character concept you have clearly played it well and made it look fun.


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Dire Elf wrote:
But speaking of that, why do the NPCs always know about magic? I'm always disappointed to play a magic-user and every non-magic-user NPC seems to know not only that I'm casting a spell but what spell it is. I'd like to encounter some NPCs who are awed/frightened/intimidated by magic.

Sometimes I would like to play in a campaign more like the middle or dark ages where EVERYONE believes magic is real but virtually NO-ONE has ever actually seen anything that is indisputably magical. It need not prevent players having magic-using PCs but would just make them more special. Of course, the GM's job would be harder as there would be fewer magic-using opponents but on the other hand, when they do turn up, you absolutely plausibly need specialists to deal with them.


John Napier 698 wrote:
Fromper wrote:
"If you fall from grace, do you take 20d6 falling damage?"
And, would Grace take any damage, herself?

It depends on whether you land on her toes.


I'd have thought a simple paperclip (probably one each side) if you want them to stay firmly put, or a sprung clothes peg (gripping end facing up and holding the bottom of the card and just sat over the top of the screen) if you need to move them more and the screen is quite stable.


I liked it. It's a Han Solo origin story and you would expect pretty much what you get. Just enjoy it. They managed to explain why the Kessel Run was described in terms of distance rather than time - I loved that (despite not buying the physics for a moment), it's bugged me ever since the first film. I think the thing I liked the most was

Spoiler:
in approaching a narrowing gap Han is confident he can get the Falcon through and asks Qi'ra whether she remembers the speeder chase and the alley on Corellia and she replies (approximately) "Yes! It didn't work!!!"


If the point of the curse was to encourage him to improve, not just to punish, removing talents that would assist that would be counterproductive.

One of the differences in the films is that the new village has a library of the size you would expect (the priest's one bookshelf rather than an entire bookshop). Belle may be the bookworm but it is entirely possible that the Beast's education included a lot more Shakespere (a foreign playwright) than hers.


Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Hoo boy. This movie sounds like a train wreck, from what I've heard. The changes lead me to believe the creators really don't understand storytelling, and most of it sounds like a strict downgrade. I hate to bandy around the term "fanfic" too freely or derisively, but...

The film evidently contains: The Beast getting to, as one Tweeter put it, "beastsplain" Shakespeare to Belle, the Beast already being able to read,

Why do you dislike the idea of the Beast being able to read? Why wouldn't he?


Kobold Cleaver wrote:

I'm actually drawing from multiple critics, though I do only quote one here, and you'll notice most of my statements are of fact, not of opinion (the editing comment is the main exception).

I'm not interested in hopping onto the Bandwagon Fallacy here. I don't care if a "larger proportion" like it. These are critics I trust, and I have yet to hear of a change in the movie that doesn't sound like total garbage to me.

I'll just leave you guys with a tweet and a gif about Disney's very good totally not terrible idea to feature some positive representation, Gay Lefou, everyone's favorite Quasimodo-Dressed-As-A-Goblin-Shark-For-Halloween.

^Haha! That's what I've heard. Disney took one of their most unlikable characters and reworked him into their "first gay character", and as I pretty much always predicted, they didn't even make it that noticeable. Subtext! It stands in for actual diversity now!

Well, I was nervous going into this film because I really love the original. How can a real man possibly live up to an eight-foot cartoon Gaston? Can Emma Watson really pull off Belle? The review I saw cast doubt on that. However, I really enjoyed it. There are changes but mostly they work pretty well, in my opinion (and it's only my opinion). I don't know what you want from a film of Beauty and the Beast or even whether you enjoyed (or saw) the Disney original so I don't know whether or not to suggest that you go to see it despite your favourite critics. I would probably rate the original slightly higher but this one is (again only my opinion) very good too. I'm very glad that I went.


Been to see it today and liked it a lot. New songs in addition to the old ones. Suffers a little from the 3D lack of depth of field in some scenes, even in 2D as I saw it, but all 3D films have that limitation. The singing is well done. Well worth seeing.

I want the floor plans for that chateau (and the roof plans too ;-) ).


There were a few minor physics glitches

Spoiler:
The ship appeared to produce gravity by a combination of rotation and acceleration. When the power to the drive cut out gravity should have reduced and changed direction but the rotation component should still have been there.

The globing of the water was good (assuming total gravity loss) but Aurora should still have been able to swim through the water normally when she was submerged and so get her head clear.

Aurora being sucked into the room in vacuum was correct and a high wind speed in the almost closed doorway around Jim was fine but the wind through the room shouldn't have been affecting Aurora the way it did once she was in the room away from the door and the hole. It was a small hole.

However, these aren't things that would be noticed by most people. Probably acceptable dramatic licence. I really enjoyed the film. Rich people who are going to be on the ship for two months are going to want to be comfortable although it's a big investment to be used once in 200 years rather than stay in orbit to support the colony (and if it isn't coming back

Spoiler:
someone sold Aurora her return ticket under false pretences)
. Aurora's plan is no more foolish than that of the colonists
Spoiler:
- they are going to a new world physically and she is going to a new time (where she will be a valuable living history resource - imagine how we would love to be able to talk to someone from the 1850s)
. It's a one-way trip for both.


Sissyl wrote:

A selection of various, sincere strategies:

92. Fireball centered on one of the party members.

Look, in her defence, one had been beheaded, the second had just been hit with a large weapon by a minotaur and collapsed to the floor (admittedly *I* knew he wasn't dead yet because he was my other character but she was standing some way away due to being a squishy mage - she couldn't tell that) and the third character was invisible and she didn't have the foggiest idea where he was. She had no way of knowing the minotaur was down to one hit point and her last Magic Missile would have done the trick!


I had Star Wars pilot called Roger William Colin Outremer but no-one got the joke.

Spoiler:
Roger, WilCo, Out (message received, will comply, end message)


My group still runs 3.0. My friends assumed 3.5 was a cynical ploy to get them to buy the rule books again and were having none of it. Having said that they love experimenting with new classes and feats so I'm certain they are using quite a lot of 3.5 material. Personally I like to keep things simpler and concentrate on core classes (with an odd NPC level occasionally, such as my wizard who was more devout than the party clerics and took a single level in adept, or my ranger who started with a single level in aristocrat). But they put in quite a lot of house rules too so it's a bit of a mash-up. However, the core books are 3.0.


Are Amberle's polyhedral dice in the book? Speaking as a gamer, that's cool whether they are or not :-)


45 Do not accept a passenger wearing night clothes or slippers (someone is probably chasing them).


Aubrey the Malformed wrote:
But yeah, I haven't seen it yet but I'm glad Clara is dead. A really irritating character.

Clara may be dead but the Impossible Girl is scattered all over the Doctor's timeline. While Jenna Coleman is alive, she can reappear! :-)


Yet at the end when she knows that the Doctor can't save her, Me can't save her and she can't save herself, when there is nothing that she can do except face her executioner, she walks out and does it. She's clearly afraid, but she accepts the consequences of the decisions that she took to save Rigsy. She won't let the Doctor go bad because of it. It is a very brave death.

The Impossible Girl is scattered throughout the Doctor's timeline. They don't need to undo Clara's death to have more of the Impossible Girl and much as I love her I hope they don't. It was a good death and heroic in the way of ordinary people's heroism, facing what has to be faced.


I don't recall old Who generally having series-long arcs except for the Key of Time. It did, however, tend to have 4-6 episode long stories.

American shows tend to have an overarching story which is told over a whole season or several seasons, with little side-trips to explore the development of the character of recurring characters (there's probably a more elegant way to put that). They are very much about the development of the continuing characters and a single story. Dr Who isn't like that. It is a series of individual stories that are tied together by being about or involving one character, the Doctor. Frequently, in fact usually, it is that he stumbles into someone else's story. There are gaps and we don't know what happens to him in them. We just see the interesting bits. It's as if he is a storyteller and he is telling us the stories he has become involved in. In some ways it isn't really about the Doctor at all, it is about a new cast and a new story each time. It's just that the Doctor and (usually) his companion(s) witness these stories and tell us about them. In contrast, something like Stargate is primarily about the main continuing cast and the weekly temporary characters are very much less important.

YMMV, of course.


Clara / Missy combo:

Spoiler:
Missy: "How deep is it?"
Clara: "I can't see, it's too dark. Could we drop a stone down or something? Eek!"
Thud
Missy: "Twenty feet."


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Otherwise, ranged weapons from long range with use of cover, good separation between people, and disappearing up alleys, through houses, dropping things from roofs, and remembering that part of the plan is to spend every other round moving while your fellows cover you (and that movement can be AWAY). Having someone hiding to hit him over the head from behind as he goes past chasing you while you run away (ready an action).

Or invite him for a drink and make it a Micky Finn.


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Or, if he's been really bad, tell St Trinian's third form that he has a bottle of gin? (This probably isn't permitted in a Lawful jurisdiction and certainly not in a Good one).

This is probably not PFS legal either.


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A megaphone, cover (eg just head sticking around a corner), as much range as you can manage, and threaten to revoke his research grant if he doesn't behave?


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GreyWolfLord wrote:


** spoiler omitted **

What did the sister get?

:

Commercial advantage. They are supplying a refined natural product and they are in competition with each other. As I understand it, elder brother is richest, sister is no. 2 and little brother is no. 3. Mother's inheritance comes from big brother's estate. It will seriously reduce his wealth and power. It is greater in value than little brother's entire estate (which is why he wants it and why big brother doesn't want to lose it). By protecting Jupiter and helping her towards her inheritance (through the nice cheap and easy expedient of just handing her over with a smile to the police when they turn up) she reduces the power of her biggest competitor, prevents the strengthening of the competitor below her, and increases the value of her own assets by putting a large resource out of production (because even if Jupiter does decide to go into the family business, which is highly unlikely, she won't be in a position to be a major competitor for a long time). No need to get into a messy fight with her siblings or the law enforcement authorities. Don't worry about grabbing other people's assets, sit back and watch the value of what you already have increase as they destroy each others'.


You know the GM is out to get your Dalek when a blue box with a flashing light materialises.


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290. Someone says Clara is better than Rose.


The most harrowing episode since The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe.

Also, incidental detail;

Spoiler:
"Don't cremate me" will give people nightmares!


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... that Impossible Girl!


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The Indescribable wrote:
Fliks wrote:
We are now both falling into the ravine. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. The bridge is over a "bottomless" ravine. I roll a few more good dice, and I push myself of one of the falling rock, towards the dragon. Then, of course, I grapple it again. We both fall to our deaths in a writhing, screaming, roaring and glorious ball of death.
While awesomely epic, you realize you can't fall to your death in a bottomless ravine right?

Eventually you will die of dehydration or starvation.


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... a horse-shoe nail.


Wrath wrote:
Drejk wrote:
Wrath wrote:

15 million would employ far more than 100 people when you consider most folks in the industry aren't making big money. We're not talking triple figure incomes here I'm guessing.

Cheers

As far as I understand it 15 million is sales at shops and other channels. Subtract what shop gets, subtract printing and shipment costs, taxes, and what is left is probably much lower number.

How much shops get? 10-15%? Transport? 10-15%? Taxes?

That drops it to 10 million. Are we suggesting people are getting paid $100 000 us per year in the roleplay market (100 people for combined salary of 10 mill).

However, the exact figure is irrelevant. I think Scott was trying to point out that the rpg industry is tiny in terms of people who work in it as developers. I just got all pedantic is all. Naughty of me really. Sorry all.

Cheers

You appear to be forgetting production costs?


In the UK we had a repeat last week of the last (regeneration) episode from last series so that helped in setting up this one which is very much a "dealing with grief and dementia" story. I liked it.

I also liked the reminder from "The Girl in the Fireplace" that the Doctor doesn't always work out why the things that he is involved in are happening - he isn't as omniscient as he is sometimes painted.

Oh, and the broom analogy reminded me of Granny Weatherwax!


Horrible thought.

Spoiler:
The Omega dying before it is killed is inconsistent with the rest of the film. Admittedly the Omega is different but if the death of the Omega allows it to throw its own consciousness back in time in the same way that the Alphas and Cage and Rita did (which would be consistent), then it would know how it died. The obvious requirement is then to prevent the events that led to its death. So Cage must not go onto that beach tomorrow morning. Or at least not go to Paris in the middle of the night. So the Omega relocates itself and ceases effective resistance while marshalling sufficient of its forces to defend or attack elsewhere. Cage isn't shanghied and he, Rita and J squad don't go to the Louvre. The Omega isn't killed. The Russians and Chinese push forward in the East, the USA, UK and Canada land in France unopposed, push forward carelessly thinking their enemy is finished, and then run into a massive ambush later and are wiped out?

This is consistent with what is shown in the film, allows for endless sequels if it does well, and has only taken me one showing and 2 1/2 days to think of so I'm sure someone else has thought of it before me.


Skeld wrote:
KJL wrote:
Why do spaceships in movies always have landing skids/pads instead of wheels? It would make them a right pain in the neck to move around on the ground or in a hangar.
Most of the movie spaceships I remember seeing could levitate and maneuver around like that.

True, but you have to power them up to do that. Helicopters can levitate but most of them have wheels because powering them up every time you want to move them is a bit inconvenient. Now, I grant you that anti-gravity usually doesn't have the downwash and fast-moving parts problems, but it would still be inconvenient, especially if you were doing maintenance on the drive. Battlestar Galactica often had rolling landings in combat but still had skids. So is it just that skids are cheaper and easier to model or is there some other reason?


Why do spaceships in movies always have landing skids/pads instead of wheels? It would make them a right pain in the neck to move around on the ground or in a hangar.


Given line of sight (the link in the second post gives the horizon distance for a given height) the optical limit of what you can resolve (based on a wavelength of 550nm and a pupil diameter of 5mm) would be about 0.13mm at 1m and would scale proportionately. This is the theoretical limit of optical resolution - in reality the object would probably need to be a bit bigger than that.

So, if a human is about 400mm wide under good conditions you could theoretically be able to resolve them at about 3,000,000 mm or 3km (2 miles). However, as a real life practical example, I can just about make out people silhouetted against the sky on a hilltop at 1.5km (about 1 mile). So, for heroes with brilliant eyesight, maybe 1.5 miles would be the limit to see a medium sized creature/object with sufficient contrast. How far you can make out hills, lakes, woods etc will depend on how big they are.


I'm British and as far as I'm concerned the revolution was a very long time ago (even by our standards :-) ). I'm enjoying the series a lot. I like having a British hero in an American show (even if he was a defector fighting the rest of us - we are usually on approximately the same side again these days) but one of the things particularly tickling me is that not once as far as I can recall has anyone corrected his pronunciation of "lieutenant". I suppose it's a minor irritation while a headless horseman is chopping people up but it's often the little things that rile people and it's nice to see Sleepy Hollow Sherrif's Dept. so tolerant of people's peculiarities.

I also liked the way he threw the pistol down after one shot. :-)


I saw the film last weekend, not having read the book, and enjoyed it a lot. I thought that the young actors were very good indeed, as were the special effects. Some have commented that that the actors are not as young as the characters but for those who have not read the book they are more than young enough to provoke moral disquiet over their use as soldiers and younger actors would be unlikely to have produced such nuanced performances.

This is clearly a film with moral messages but they are dealt with in a way that I found to mesh well with the story and was not jarring. Those that I took from it were:

Movie plot spoiler:

People behave differently towards enemies they perceive as people and those they perceive as unreal: In the final battle, Ender believes that he is fighting a simulation programmed by Mazer. Consequently, he ignores the non-hostile behaviour of the Formics, which he would clearly have paused to analyse and understand in "real life" because this is a tactical training scenario and the purpose of it is for him to defeat the enemy in battle, not to hold a peace conference.

People will tolerate losses in a game to achieve the "victory condition" that they would not tolerate in real life. When Alai protests that his dreadnoughts are being destroyed because Ender withdraws all the drones to shield the main weapon Ender replies "I don't care about the dreadnoughts!" but he does care when there are real lives at stake. This is skillfully built up throughout the film. This is, of course, precisely why Graff and the rest of the command tell Ender and his team that this is their final selection exercise. They want the battle fought in a specific way, resulting in the annihilation of the Formics. Ender and his team are happy to do that in a simulation but Ender, at least, would have tried to avoid that in real life. Also, to them, the entire fleet is expendable provided that victory condition is achieved. Ender will happily expend pixels but he would not have expended real people in that way.

The point at which I realised that the final exercise was actually real was only when Graff ordered the visual feed restored. The dawning horror on the faces of Ender and his team as they realised that what they had done had actually happened in reality and that they had just destroyed their own fleet, a planet and an entire species was an absolutely superb piece of acting.

The ending was quite good but frankly, given that Graff was willing (I was going to write "happy" but I don't think that is quite fair) to sacrifice both his fleet and the sanity of his command team to exterminate the Formics I can't see him letting Ender wander off into space with a Formic egg to start up the species all over again. I think he would have been more likely to grind it under his heel.

I would say this is well worth seeing. This is proving a good year for films that make you think.

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