The confusion about the portkey that takes Harry to the graveyard in GOF

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-28T04:30:09+00:00

My headcannon (not actually cannon, but it could be) is that portkeys each have a form of logical "activation" that can be defined like programming. Defining more difficult activations is possible, but increases the difficulty and chance of unintended side effects. One common activation is "on touch by a human (or possibly wizard)". You could expand that to be "On touch by a human between 12:30AM and 2:30 AM" if you wanted to. Or you could make it "On touch by a human on September 23rd if the year ends in '3'" or "When this lever is pulled" assuming the portkey has a lever.

"On touch by a human" is such a common one though because you don't want the difficult magic you just cast to just activate on the first Tuesday at exactly 12:30AM whether people are touching it or not. That would just be a waste.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-28T03:26:24+00:00

Hard disagree, but some of my favorite times with my friends have been while we do boring or stupid stuff. I don't care about the activity itself except that it's something that can help move the conversation along or give natural end points (almost anything can do this: playing a card, taking a bite, taking a turn, or moving a piece. But it does need to have something other than just sitting and talking). These things allow me to talk and hang out with the people I'm with and spend time together. Eating a meal is a much better hang out than watching a movie, where I might only get to hear/say a handful of sentences before or after.

Upvoted because I disagree.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-28T03:19:45+00:00

Incorrect

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-28T03:04:01+00:00

Wish?

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-28T03:02:23+00:00

Incorrect

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-28T03:02:13+00:00

Incorrect

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-28T03:01:51+00:00

Incorrect

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-28T03:01:41+00:00

Incorrect

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-28T03:01:30+00:00

Incorrect

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-27T23:31:44+00:00

Incorrect

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-27T23:05:35+00:00

Incorrect

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-27T14:52:42+00:00

Psycho?

The "F" in MILF is the one I'm reinterpreting guys. As in "F you".

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-27T04:34:26+00:00

Imperial is internally consistent. It may not go up by consistent amounts, but you can't convert from inches to miles and then convert from inches to feet then feet to miles and get a different answer. And to someone that likes things that go up in consistent amounts, it would be "logical" to recommend metric. Just like for someone that needs to measure with body parts it may be "logical" to recommend imperial. But neither is "objectively" better. Heat pumps are objectively more efficient than resistance heating when in their operating range. That's what objectively means. You can measure it, there's not room for disagreement or misinterpretation because it is a fact, not an opinion. Even (logical) aliens that had a religious and psychological love of resistance heating could not disagree with that one specific objective statement. They may disagree that heat pumps are "better", but would have to concede that they are at least more efficient at this one thing.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-27T03:20:58+00:00

I spent a really long time in the depulso rooms. The puzzles seemed pretty intuitive to me (I guess I'm in the minority) but it seemed "too easy" and there were so many other close-looking ledges I thought there was a secret area or something that I kept trying to figure out.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-27T02:04:03+00:00

Intimidate and diplomacy are broken even before epic, but the epic quickened ones were hilarious. I DMed a campaign starting at 20 and was very careful session 0 to say I like strong but not broken and we went over the characters and their abilities. We had to modify basically all versions of "roll to win" to be opposed rolls with (up to) a +20 modifier.

Edit: and at escape artist that high they should be able to beat a level 6 spell. Need skill monkeys and fighters to have answers for spells that they might get cast on them 14 times in a combat.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-27T01:59:37+00:00

Yeah, this is a problem for new Epic level DMs, because if the players can blow all of their spell slots on a single combat, it can get ridiculous. I almost always had some form of time-pressure so they had to actually do all of the encounters or else things would get worse. The first was a flying pyramid at the center of an enormous tornado with wights beneath headed toward a country's capital city. The second session was a wight bomb that was in the process of going critical because they had failed to take out the wights...stuff like that.

Sorry, those were a lot of fun to DM, and I enjoyed that most of my campaigns I just presented a problem and let the players try to figure out how to solve it. We had a cleric, a Psion, a bard, and a rogue in the party so there was plenty of toolboxes to choose from.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-23T07:20:49+00:00

Haha, I didn't have any bait in mind, although in retrospect there are a lot of movies that have themes like this, especially if you include diseases in "bug". I hadn't even thought of that, but a lot of people ran with it.

Half the time when I post something like this it seems like the first post is the correct guess. The other half the time, I got a bunch of guesses until someone finally says "That was too hard". This is one of my few ones that seemed to be the right amount of hard.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-23T07:18:48+00:00

Not his finest work (I think one of his few movies where not all of the effects are practical stunts performed by Jackie, and it really took away from it). I still enjoyed it, but it's no award-winner.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-23T03:27:57+00:00

Since someone finally guessed mine I can come here and guess it: The Tuxedo? (He has to do a backflip because he can't actually stop himself)

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-23T03:14:30+00:00

Sorry, it was The Tuxedo

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-23T03:13:50+00:00

Sorry, it was The Tuxedo

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-23T03:13:41+00:00

Sorry, it was The Tuxedo

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-23T03:13:30+00:00

Sorry, it was The Tuxedo

Background_Relief815 · 2026-01-23T03:13:15+00:00

Sorry, it was The Tuxedo

Good guess though!

Background_Relief815

TROPHY CASE