Zero Buzz on 5E...Is It Dead Out The Gate?

[Previn]

Even if it is somehow possible to write an actually good set of social rules, I certainly don't trust anyone on the 5E design team to actually achieve that. The best thing they can do with social skills is go back to the old 2nd edition way of doing things, because any actual hard and fast rule they write will be so full of holes that it ruins games as opposed to helps them. Remember, these are guys who can't even get combat math right.

Well, given how they've written most things in 5e, I suspect that even if they did do some social rules, it would be effectively the same as 2e magic tea party.

So, wish granted I guess?

[shadzar]

Second, again, if all you're going to give me is guidelines and tell me to make shit up, I don't need you to tell me this.

Gary said this in the early 80s, yet people are still waiting for the new shiny to come out from WotC for some reason.

You want people like Mearls and Wyatt to stop writing RPGs, then stop buying RPGs and make up your own.

What real qualifications do they have that anyone else doesn't have? nothing more than the IP and a right to (ab)use it.

[CapnTthePirateG]

What real qualifications do they have that anyone else doesn't have? nothing more than the IP and a right to (ab)use it.

Legitimacy. I can find random people to play D&D, I can't find people willing to try "RPG I made up myself."

[shadzar]

What real qualifications do they have that anyone else doesn't have? nothing more than the IP and a right to (ab)use it.

Legitimacy. I can find random people to play D&D, I can't find people willing to try "RPG I made up myself."

so you have never DM'd and always had the luxury of being a player?

every game with a DM, you are playing the game that is "RPG I made up myself." by that DM.

[Cyberzombie]

What real qualifications do they have that anyone else doesn't have? nothing more than the IP and a right to (ab)use it.

Legitimacy. I can find random people to play D&D, I can't find people willing to try "RPG I made up myself."

It's really difficult to get people to try an entirely homebrew system, which surprises me how often people pull the "Just make your own RPG system" card. It's hard enough getting people to try a game like Mutants and Masterminds or Shadowrun.

RPG fans tend to be fanatically brand loyal. The only reason people play Pathfinder is because it's so close to 3E D&D and D&D 3E is no longer in print.

[fectin]

Well, also most people's homebrew is essentially Calvinball. The ZS social system which caused so much angst here is at worst an above average example, and was significantly better documented than most such systems.

My impression is that a typical homebrew is much more like AnusWorld, where you roll dice, and then the MC makes things up based on his feelings.

[TiaC]

The activity of the animal beings has become acutely active everywhere on this earth. Bodies do not get time to booty a blow for a while. With the accretion use of altered gadgets of Gps Jammer, the possibilities of accepting the aboriginal of blow accept absolutely finished. The adaptable phones or the corpuscle phones are some of these accessories that accumulate the bodies consistently in blow with the alfresco world. The adaptable building are additionally accessible about everywhere these canicule and due to this the accessibility of the cell phone jammers has become alike added quick and authentic. Today, you cannot break out of ability of these adaptable building as their signals can bolt your about anywhere. The bearings of bodies who accord to altered business professions has become actual analytical of wifi jammer as their authorities bolt them anywhere any moment.

Anyone know what he's talking about? Sounds like paranoid ramblings about signal jamming. No links, so probably not a bot.

[Username17]

One thing that bots have started doing is posting random shit with no links, and then editing in links afterward when they've avoided first pass monitoring. This is almost certainly a bot poster.

-Username17

[Tumbling Down]

Well, either a bot or shadzars cousin.

[Chamomile]

It's the new game that's sweeping the internet: Is that post a bot, or a late-stage paranoid schizophrenic?

[Previn]

words

Anyone know what he's talking about? Sounds like paranoid ramblings about signal jamming. No links, so probably not a bot.

It's a really bad translation from Chinese for a sale pitch to buy a cell phone jammer, with a link that would be added in later as Frank said.

I'm mildly amused that we got that as opposed to the more readable pitches the bot makes.

I'm really amused that we're more interested in this bot than 5e.

[nockermensch]

words

Anyone know what he's talking about? Sounds like paranoid ramblings about signal jamming. No links, so probably not a bot.

It's a really bad translation from Chinese for a sale pitch to buy a cell phone jammer, with a link that would be added in later as Frank said.

I'm mildly amused that we got that as opposed to the more readable pitches the bot makes.

I'm really amused that we're more interested in this bot than 5e.

I don't think it's a bad translation. That looks like Markov Chain text generation, selected from source texts that talk about what the bot wants to sell. Example.

You are now aware that there are complete software solutions for flooding forums with spam like this. You decide what you want to sell, build one site, configure the spam software with keywords and it'll run alone, creating blogs and posting on forums to direct links to your site.

[Previn]

Anyone know what he's talking about? Sounds like paranoid ramblings about signal jamming. No links, so probably not a bot.

It's a really bad translation from Chinese for a sale pitch to buy a cell phone jammer, with a link that would be added in later as Frank said.

I'm mildly amused that we got that as opposed to the more readable pitches the bot makes.

I'm really amused that we're more interested in this bot than 5e.

I don't think it's a bad translation. That looks like Markov Chain text generation, selected from source texts that talk about what the bot wants to sell. Example.

You are now aware that there are complete software solutions for flooding forums with spam like this. You decide what you want to sell, build one site, configure the spam software with keywords and it'll run alone, creating blogs and posting on forums to direct links to your site.

Markov generated response generally doesn't substitute words for other words with similar meaning, it uses words from sources to piece together sentences based on those texts. In fact this bot has I think 8 variations of it's message, 5 of which are well translated. It is totally possible that someone is doing substitutions as part of a Markov chain, but if they got to the point where they're using something like canicule by having the machine choose that, they're going to be making a lot more money on that tech than they'll ever rake in with a spam bot.

I'd guess that someone decided to write their own to add in, translated it and threw it into the database for use. Corpuscle phone for cell phone, accretion for growth, and the fact that the sentences make sense if you understand why the screwed up the words just screams bad translation.

[nockermensch]

It's a really bad translation from Chinese for a sale pitch to buy a cell phone jammer, with a link that would be added in later as Frank said.

I'm mildly amused that we got that as opposed to the more readable pitches the bot makes.

I'm really amused that we're more interested in this bot than 5e.

I don't think it's a bad translation. That looks like Markov Chain text generation, selected from source texts that talk about what the bot wants to sell. Example.

You are now aware that there are complete software solutions for flooding forums with spam like this. You decide what you want to sell, build one site, configure the spam software with keywords and it'll run alone, creating blogs and posting on forums to direct links to your site.

Markov generated response generally doesn't substitute words for other words with similar meaning, it uses words from sources to piece together sentences based on those texts. In fact this bot has I think 8 variations of it's message, 5 of which are well translated. It is totally possible that someone is doing substitutions as part of a Markov chain, but if they got to the point where they're using something like canicule by having the machine choose that, they're going to be making a lot more money on that tech than they'll ever rake in with a spam bot.

I'd guess that someone decided to write their own to add in, translated it and threw it into the database for use. Corpuscle phone for cell phone, accretion for growth, and the fact that the sentences make sense if you understand why the screwed up the words just screams bad translation.

Gaze upon these dark works, mortal, and despair: http://uawpro.com

EDIT: Incidentally, these also explain shadzar.

[DSMatticus]

That definitely wasn't generated by a markov chain. A markov sentence generator takes as input a bunch of source text, and uses that source text to build a frequency table of how often each word follows a particular key (which is usually a string of words of size 1 or 2). To suggest that the spambot's text was markov generated is to suggest that the spambot's source text actually includes the phrases "corpuscle phone" and "alfresco world" - or else the frequency of phone given corpuscle would be zero and the generator would never select phone to follow corpuscle.

It looks much more like something that has been gibberized by terrible automated translation. Consider (brackets indicate non-English text with meaning equivalent to the English phrase contained therein):
[tiny cell] -> corpuscle
[phone] -> phone
[tiny cell phone] -> corpuscle phone

[shadzar]

THAC0... does it help again?

[nockermensch]

DSM, this is why I linked to article spinning on my last reply. The lowest level of article spinning (word spinning) involves using a thesaurus to swap words by synonyms and when badly done produces exactly this kind of stupid result. (the program can't infer the context of composed terms like cell-phone and decided that cell is the word it'll look for)

I'll grant that it can also be a translation failure.

[Koumei]

[quote="Previn]I'm really amused that we're more interested in this bot than 5e.[/quote]

It's nice that there is at least something interesting to discuss in this thread, yes.

[Previn]

DSM, this is why I linked to article spinning on my last reply. The lowest level of article spinning (word spinning) involves using a thesaurus to swap words by synonyms and when badly done produces exactly this kind of stupid result. (the program can't infer the context of composed terms like cell-phone and decided that cell is the word it'll look for)

I'll grant that it can also be a translation failure.

Except that those words are not synonyms. Cell is not synonymous with corpuscle. Accretion might be synonymous with growth, but I don't see that after a quick look through 3 online thesauruses and my handy paper back.

'Bodies do not get time to booty a blow for a while.'
People do not get time to sit and get a signal for a while.

'With the accretion use of altered gadgets of Gps Jammer, the possibilities of accepting the aboriginal of blow accept absolutely finished.'
With the growing use of modified devices for GPS jamming, the possibility of acquiring a normal signal is ending.

This is just a botched translation. You are putting way too much effort into trying to make it something it is not. Word replacement from a thesaurus doesn't give you things like corpuscle.That's from a translation program trying to find the most likely concept to go with something that doesn't translate directly.

I'll add on that it would have posted a link to a Chinese site selling cell phone jammers that has bad (though better than our example) translation.

[Mord]

alfresco world

From the makers of Apocalypse World.

[nockermensch]

This is just a botched translation. You are putting way too much effort into trying to make it something it is not. Word replacement from a thesaurus doesn't give you things like corpuscle.That's from a translation program trying to find the most likely concept to go with something that doesn't translate directly.

I'll add on that it would have posted a link to a Chinese site selling cell phone jammers that has bad (though better than our example) translation.

You know, I'm convinced. The side by side comparison you posted actually looks like bad translation.

[Krusk]

I think its because we don't have proof what the bot is selling is a bad idea. So we can speculate and discuss.

5e gives us things like this newly released fighters character sheet. http://ow.ly/i/5X4Jr

Things of Note -
Modifiers are bigger than scores, thats kind of nice, as I'm for going away from 3-18 and moving to -5 to 4.

Saving throws are for each stat now. No idea how a charisma save differs from a wisdom save, or a strength save differs from a con save.

Languages - Dwarven is now dwarvish. Thats annoying and stupid.

Proficient in playing cards. (Fuck that shit if someone gets "not die in dungeons" and I get "playing cards" I will be pissed every time)

spots on the sheet for gold in cp, sp, ep, gp, and pp as if anyone will ever care and not just write gp for everything like the generally do now. (past level 3)

This character does not have playing cards.

background seems to be a bigger deal/. This could be good, but knowing the team it will be bad.

personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws seem like a weird thing to devote that much space to. Hopefully this isn't something that is "Pick from a list" but is "Come up with whatever you want" but we all know its going to be a list.

Position of privilege lets you secure audience with a local noble. Can other adventurers not do this by virtue of being adventurers?

They list a bunch of cultures. Are those FR cultures I don't care about, or did they make a new core setting I won't care about?

Alignment - Apparently LN fights CE now or something? Whatever, this never made sense.

1st level in fighter gives +1 defense. Which seems really really really shitty.

[TOZ]

Saving throws are for each stat now. No idea how a charisma save differs from a wisdom save, or a strength save differs from a con save.

One of the things that came up in houseruling Pathfinder to Kirthfinder was splitting Will between Cha and Wis, with Wis adding to an Intuition save. Things that tried to control or harm you (charm, psychic damage) were resisted by Will saves, and things that tried to trick you (illusions) required Intuition saves.

I could see Strength adding to saves to overcome an outside force and Con adding to saves against inner threats (poison, disease). Fuck if I know how to differentiate those things. All this shit is based on flimsy opinions anyway.

[Miryafa]

Modifiers are bigger than scores, thats kind of nice, as I'm for going away from 3-18 and moving to -5 to 4.

Are we looking at the same sheet? Because I see 16 Str and a +3 mod (+5 after class/whatever bonus). After your sentence I was hoping to see 8 Str and +16 mod or something, which would be nice because that would mean average rolls for stats result in an actual effect on the RNG.

The sheet doesn't impress me, because it looks like fighters are still linear (and small) advancements, whereas I expect wizards to again get spell levels. But if not then at least the classes would be more balanced, even if no one would play it because every other edition is more interesting.

[schpeelah]

I could see Strength adding to saves to overcome an outside force and Con adding to saves against inner threats (poison, disease). Fuck if I know how to differentiate those things. All this shit is based on flimsy opinions anyway.

I could see the defender's roll when resisting bull rush or grapple being called "Strength saves".

What the hell would an Int save do I have no idea.