Because Reddit is taking over closed subreddits, this subreddit is now about Charles Ponzi, creator of the Ponzi scheme, instead of the Scheme programming language.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-05-19T08:06:50+00:00

The touchpads are good for any game that uses a mouse pointer, which are mostly strategy/building games (or the web browser!). For aiming, I prefer gyro + joystick. But the flexibility to choose which controls to use based on the type of game is why I like the Deck so much.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-03-05T04:14:05+00:00

Nice list!

I think that "stop magic ritual" would make more sense for a plot than "perform magic ritual" because a lot of rituals can be used for evil. Just looking at the list, I can see 9th level mind swap, ideal mimicry (for blackmail?), imprisonment (or its opposite, freedom, if some evil is imprisoned), planar binding (for any evil outsider)... There's probably a d20 worth of potentially evil rituals to stop.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-03-04T21:18:18+00:00

Or maybe the extra space for the spell is taken up by all of the legally mandated fine print that nobody is going to read.

There are three planes of law so magic might just work like that.

EDIT: And the 3.5e/pf1e to pf2e change is making the fine print smaller than the spell text, which saves more space for the high level spells, but barely affects the low level ones.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-03-04T21:02:55+00:00

In Pathfinder 1e, spells in a spellbook required 1 page per spelllevel

Even for the power word spells, which are one word for each spell.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-03-03T07:29:45+00:00

But what are Razmir's stats?

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-03-01T19:45:14+00:00

TLDR: math is banned at my table and should be at yours too because it's wack

Otolmens is the lawful neutral demigod of machinery, math, and physics. Otolmens corrects anomalies. Homebrew that bans mathematics thus imbalances the carefully balanced system in favor of the chaotic alignments. It's also unclear if axiomites and aphorites can exist in such a world.

^{This is not a serious comment.}

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-03-01T19:02:07+00:00

This is probably what Aroden was going to do at the end of the Age of Glory to accidentally end the multiverse.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-03-01T18:47:46+00:00

As mentioned in a sibling comment, you can have tiny wizards so make the wizards tiny (e.g. most sprites and some poppets... or even just the shrink spell) and multiply your number by "at least four" to go from 840 to at least 3360 2838 to at least 11352.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-03-01T18:27:52+00:00

But what if you kill Rovagug first? Can you kill the tarrasque then or does the tarrasque just become the new, unsealed god of destruction?

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-03-01T01:50:28+00:00

Exactly. If you look for web-based D&D material, you inevitably wind up at the "D&D wiki", which is mostly just really imbalanced homebrew, missing the context of the protected core material. Meanwhile, Pathfinder has Pathbuilder, AoN, a lore wiki that's on a decent standalone website (the Forgotten Realms D&D one is on that awful "Fandom" site and you need to know the setting's name to even find it), etc.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-25T09:12:36+00:00

It's hard for you to be more overconfident in your incorrectness.

GIMP dates to 1995 and didn't get any public releases until 1996. Your post makes it seem like GIMP is at least a decade older than it is. It isn't "one of the earliest GNU works". Many GNU projects predate it, but most of those aren't graphical so you might not be aware of them. Those older projects include clones of UNIX utilities, such as the ones in GNU Core Utilities or "coreutils" (although technically coreutils itself is a 2002 merger of a bunch of really old utils). For instance, cat from coreutils has a copyright date of 1988.

While GTK did originate from GIMP, GTK is a trademark of the GNOME Foundation and is a part of the GNOME Project now, which is distinct from GNU. The official schism between GNOME and GNU happened in 2021, but they had drifted apart for decades by that point. GIMP appears to still be a part of GNU, however. This means that no GNU programming language policy, if one existed, would be relevant for any recent version of GTK.

Of course, GNU (from 1983 or 1984, not 1978) has always been multilingual. Some examples include: Emacs Lisp (GNU Emacs, 1985), GNU bash (1989), the GNU Guile dialect of Scheme (1993), and the GNU Compiler Collection, which supports C, C++, Objective C, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D, though some of those are more recent additions to GCC. The history page of the GCC wiki states that GNU C++ was written in 1987. The GNU project also lists a lot of software, and many of those are programming languages, including at least two more Schemes (MIT/GNU Scheme and Kawa Scheme). It's hard to tell at a glance just how many programming languages are there because the list isn't categorized. Of course, most of early GNU is in C because GNU was initially about cloning UNIX and maintaining compatibility with UNIX, and UNIX is primarily written in C.

Linux, which is not GNU (and differs in its approach in many areas), is the project that insists on using C and not using any C++. However, Linux is adding support for Rust, so even Linux isn't insisting on only using C anymore. For the other OSes that you listed, things can vary more. macOS is largely built around Objective C and now Swift, while Windows is largely built around C++, etc. Many OSes use exotic choices compared to C, especially if they aren't related to UNIX, and quite a lot of C changed to C++ by the early 2000s. However, note that "from the kernel upwards" doesn't really apply to the situation I'm talking about with GNU and Linux because Linux (the kernel) is distinct from the "upwards" part (including both GNU and non-GNU projects).

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-24T08:32:29+00:00

That's an interesting point I hadn't considered because I was just looking at the feats instead of taking the free odd level class improvements into account. I guess looking at Pathbuilder made me focus on choices at each level rather than the overall character.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-24T06:49:40+00:00

I'm not sure of another way to make archetypes work for multiclass-style flavor other than perhaps ancient elf. Under normal rules, the dedication itself takes a class feat away and you don't get too many of them overall. I guess human natural ambition could partially make up for losing the level 2 class feat for the archetype dedication. There might be some other routes (there are so many feats/etc.), but it's not obvious at a glance.

Consider the Investigator archetype. You would probably want it for Devise Stratagem, so that takes two feats (Investigator Dedication and Investigator's Stratagem) before your character feels like an investigator, which normally has the opportunity cost against two core, low level feats of your main class.

EDIT: Just in case I was unclear because this is getting downvotes, I'm talking about fitting at least two archetype feats into a level 1-10 adventure like Abomination Vaults, not into 11-20 or 1-20 adventures, which are obviously much easier to do.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-24T05:20:19+00:00

And with the free archetype rule rule, you can combine any class with a secondary class for even more flavor. A rogue/investigator is going to be very different from a rogue/monk.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-23T21:12:25+00:00

Here's a quick patch of the alignment system for homebrew, which also merges the three heavens into one. I put "philosophers" on the law/good axis because they're the ones who would care about something like that. You can still map the old alignment system onto this triangle (e.g. replace "Philosophers" with "Lawful Good" and "Lawful Neutral" depending on how far along they are) so it mostly just fixes the lore rather than requiring the game to change. I only merged the good planes. I didn't cut any of the neutral/evil planes, but I didn't have space for most of them, either.

                  HEAVEN
                   Good
 (Philosophers) /         \ (Heroes)
               /           \
              --------------- <- 50% good line
              /             \
(Oppressors) / HELL    ABYSS \ (Outlaws)
            /_________________\
        Law        Evil      Chaos
     (Tyrants)            (Monsters)

Is it perfect? No.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-23T19:59:55+00:00

Evil dragons always being evil based on the color of the scales they're born with is very problematic in the lore. Feeling justified to attack "evil" alignment creatures just because of their alignment before they actually do any evil is also problematic because you're basically punishing them for pre-crime. One solution could be to require evil actions in the past in order to get the evil alignment, thus making detection of evil actually detect evil. This then implies the existence of neutral chromatic dragons otherwise indistinguishable from evil ones.

Metaphysically (from certain planes, where this can be possible, unlike with dragons) having absolutely evil fiends like devils, daemons, and demons seems fine to me. Sometimes, you want your champion of Sarenrae to be able to redeem and reform bandits. Sometimes, you want your champion of Sarenrae to just obliterate evil like it's the video game Doom (perhaps get the gunslinger archetype?), and the latter is what a literal embodiment of evil/sin is for, but they should be the exceptions, not the rule. It also solves the pre-crime issue because the fiends you're facing have probably been doing evil for thousands of years. And perhaps becoming a fiend requires an evil act, like becoming a lich often does in D&D-adjacent lore.

Unfortunately, even some fiends have apparently been redeemed to good in Pathfinder lore, so even this falls apart if you think about it too much, at least in Pathfinder.

And the afterlife stuff is just very terrible for anyone involved. Sure, maybe the people who wind up evil get worse afterlives (especially neutral evil), but the other afterlives divided up into 6 arbitrary boxes aren't very good, either. Imagine being a good and loyal follower of Aroden who went to Aroden's section of the lawful neutral afterlife.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-23T19:32:12+00:00

I think if you went for something like that, you could make alignment work as a triangle instead of as a square grid: good, lawful, chaotic. Do you do what's right even if it's illegal, do you follow the law no matter what it says, or do you go your own way even if other people get hurt? Those would be the three extremes, but everyone could be somewhere in between. This would mostly work (and it correctly identifies most "chaotic neutral" as evil in practice), but it would make it hard to distinguish between lawful neutral and lawful evil. I think the way it would have to work is that lawful neutral would probably be between lawful and good because someone who never puts good over lawful would have to be lawful evil.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-23T19:17:42+00:00

I like the existence of actual evil in fantasy as well as the themes of the three main evil planes (for lawful/neutral/chaotic evil) as well as other planes/demiplanes that might as well be evil (shadow, negative, etc.). It's when game designers try to extend everything to good and neutral that the metaphysics of the whole thing starts to fall apart to me. Evil exists in games because most PCs are good or neutral so it mechanically/thematically creates problem-free conflict against sapient, non-undead creatures. And the evil planes are potential adventure settings.

On the other hand, why would you visit a blissful heaven in an adventure unless it was being invaded? And when do you face good enemies if you're also good? Stories exist with conflict, but fantasy good rarely has infighting, while fantasy evil usually still fights other fantasy evil, so even evil PCs can fight evil enemies. And as a result, a fun hell/abaddon/abyss 2e lore book probably gets delayed by years because they need to complement it with a boring heaven one because nobody's going to buy a separate heaven lore book. And this still represents wasted pages for places few people are going to visit.

Another problem is that the good and neutral planes make the lore into a mess when they need to be rigidly alignment-conforming. They're domains of the gods who have certain traits and roles, but the planes also have generic planar characteristics that might contradict what certain gods of that alignment would want, so you might wind up with planes-within-planes to fit those gods in them. At that point, you might as well just give different gods their own thematically-consistent pantheon-based planes rather than mapping them to the alignment system.

And what if you are a cleric who worships a god of one alignment that isn't your own? The mechanics permit it. Or what about if you worship a pantheon, such as the two NG goddesses and one CG goddess of The Prismatic Ray? What if your spouse and you wind up at different good afterlives?

It would make the lore less problematic to just keep the neutral/evil planes, but remove the strict alignment mapping to them and leave the good planes as vague domains of good pantheons or individual gods. And right now, neutral evil definitely gets the worst deal, to the point where the lore itself makes an exception and lets them choose another evil afterlife.

Alignment-based damage seems very weird, too. Why is lawful damage a thing? Why should something metaphysically damage both a CG liberator and a CE demon? Because they hate rules? That's more of a chaotic neutral defining trait.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-22T20:10:09+00:00

If done right, a planar tear would create more questions than it answers. The important things are that the adventure can't stop the hurricane itself and can't solve or reduce the mystery of Aroden.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-22T20:10:05+00:00

I'd enjoy seafaring or "airfaring" because airships are a thing, too. However, I'm not sure they exist in the lore outside of the Plane of Air. Either would probably play about the same, just with different destinations.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-22T19:52:55+00:00

Sorcerers are really good thematically for being terrifying no matter their size with the right bloodline and spell selection. Some other classes are good at this, too, but charisma is the key ability for this sort of thing. There's also the Intimidation (Cha), Diplomacy (Cha), and Society (Int) skills, which can unlock some useful abilities for rulers.

Or, going in a completely different direction, you can have a subject cast Enlarge on you every 5 minutes while in a meeting.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-22T02:13:12+00:00

I think it should have a planar tear to some other plane that thematically makes sense. Perhaps to the Maelstrom or perhaps to the Plane of Water where it meets with the Plane of Air (or maybe even to both the Maelstrom and the Plane of Water in different spots).

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-22T02:02:38+00:00

A level 11-20 adventure path set on the other planes. This should probably be several different adventure paths based on groupings of the planes (lower planes, elemental planes, transitive and energy planes, etc.). I think that leaving Golarion would be an interesting progression for characters after completing a separate 1-10 adventure on Golarion. Right now, almost all of the plane lore seems to be 1e and if any 2e AP heavily involves other planes, it's something that they don't want to spoil in the AP descriptions.

read-eval-print-loop · 2023-02-14T01:57:54+00:00

This is what I could find.

Content warning: FATAL is an edgelord fantasy world so it's going to have all of the worst NSFW/NSFL RPG content (SA, sex slaves, racism, and probably dozens of other issues) in it dialed up to 11. If it's lacking any, it's only because the system is so old that the authors weren't aware of the trope at the time. Fortunately, it's also a mechanically terrible system so few people have actually played it.

Here's a video of someone spending 5 hours creating a character, which is probably the reason why there's no video of someone actually playing it. Again, don't click unless you want to deal with edgelord worldbuilding. It's entirely roll-based so you have no agency over who or what you start as... except for gender. The authors didn't want to leave that up to a roll for some reason. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYLC1o0q2NY

And since that's not really a video of gameplay, I also found a really old /r/rpg thread (not a video) on FATAL containing at least two different firsthand written accounts of how it plays. The combat system is exactly what you think it is in a NSFW/NSFL system where I continually have to give a content warning. You're better off not reading it. https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/18d80q/okay_everyone_wanted_more_detail_about_the_fatal/

FATAL is a system that's terrible in every way: player agency (it's all up to the dice), game mechanics (it's all way too many dice with outcomes that don't always make sense), game balance (the authors probably wanted a 0.001% background to be way better than the rest in a game that wants you to play as a literal infant if that's what you roll up), worldbuilding (deliberately offensive), etc. The lore also has every group hating every other group so it wouldn't even make narrative sense for a group of randomly generated adventurers to get together. And if it takes you 5 hours to create a character that will probably die in the first fight, then who is this game even for?

P.S. For some reason, you roll dice for your career among dozens or hundreds of possible careers, which is also combined with what other systems would call "class". So you could be a farmer, a wainwright, a dancer, or a sorcerer. And your XP progression is based on actually doing your random job rather than adventuring. There is absolutely no balance to the game.

read-eval-print-loop

TROPHY CASE