[unofficial weekender] alternative timelines

[sundancer 43674xp 0]

We called it an “upsi” and from now on we try to use it correctly

[limburger 22063xp 0]

but if the spell causes damage … that surely can’t be a failed spell ?

and I’d say there probably is a way to cheese spellcasting if all you need is to cause some kind of damage with your spell failures.

[sundancer 43674xp 0]

So the way it works in Frostgrave is such:

A spell has a value you need to meet or exceed with a D20. Let’s say the spell requires you to roll a 10. If you roll a 10 or more you get 10XP and the spell is successful. If you roll 9 – 6 the spell fails but nothing else happens.  But if you fail the spell by more than 5 points (in this example you roll 5 or less) the caster has failed to bad that he takes a wound. And only then you get 5XP for a failed spell. You can modify your dice results and many other things can happen but that’s the basics.

[limburger 22063xp 0]

must suck to be a low skill caster with little health … 😀

///

[insert string of curse words]

Google’s Gemini is both cool (no hard limits on sessions) and incredibly frustrating to work with.
It constantly manages to warp the layout for the floorplan that it once got perfectly acceptable.
And they appear to be using LaTeX somewhere in their pipeline as the automagically created ‘interactive webpage’ has almost constant errors or odd texts as a result of some kind of LaTeX expression not getting parsed correctly.

And then there’s the times when it completely ignores things said in conversation and it goes of on a tangent that is only related to the thing you just wrote because the word is in it.

Anyways … It has helped me brainstorm ideas for my hobby room that should allow me to finish it and make it look cool, so there’s that. I’m not sure if I want to have to do this again tomorrow as I review the documents …

Damn … good thing I checked again, because it did manage to delete documents yet again.

[sundancer 43674xp 0]

Monday morning!

It’s the 13th.

‘nough said. XD

[pagan8th 13126xp 0]

With regard to ai @limburger… I find Chatgpt better for conversation than Gemini. Copilot seems to be very abrupt.

But none of them are great conversationalists and it frustrates me no end how they end every stream of text with a question so you will talk to them some more. It reminds me of the newsfeeds in Starship Troopers.

[grantinvanman 5718xp 1]

It’s Canadian Thanksgiving today. Turkey, canned cranberries (ring from can must be visible in service), stuffing, potatoes.

[limburger 22063xp 1]

@pagan8th

I’ve got to try chat-gpt to see how it compares.
The follow up questions were great for the brainstorming session.
It’s how it managed to completely forget context near the end of the conversation.

Has to be some kind of invisible limit that Google pretends doesn’t exist whereas Antropic just stops you, which can be annoying if it is the ‘final answer’ part of a conversation.

Definitely not spending a dime on this stuff, as the monthly subscription is a bit too steep. I have no doubt that these companies will find ways to nerf the free version to the point that you have to pay to make it practical for daily use.

Which is kind of why I’d want to run one of these things on my own system using Ollama. However even that one has managed to add a subscription model to its service …

It surely is interesting tech, but the relentlessly commercializing of these things is annoying the heck out of me. Never mind how pushy these companies are by shoving these ‘AI’ features into things that never needed them. Bloody Whatsapp is infected and I can’t shut that part off

/rant

I kind of wished I had spent time on my 1:1 scale terrain project instead of the brainstorming session for my hobby room. It wasn’t a complete wast, but that darned clock is ticking and I need to finish stuff.

[blinky465 17175xp 0]

Not sure if we’re getting a new thread this week, but here’s this weeks’ music for you.
Saw these guys – The Last Dinner Party – on Jools Holland last night and immediately went out to buy their CD (ok, clicked a web-link). I love this tune! Share what you love, right?

In other news, I read an article yesterday that said if you put any query into Google, you get AI -slop generated nonsense as the primary response. Try “what is AI?” and see what comes up.
But if you litter your request with profanity, the AI-generated answer is by-passed (ok, so you only get the highest paying adverts instead of the actual results you’d find useful, but it’s small steps against “enshittification” as this point).
So asking Google “what the f*@k is AI?” gives you a response minus the AI-drivel.

Suddenly my Google-fu has increased about x100 -fold.
Because I’m now able to ask for stuff in my natural voice!

 

[blinky465 17175xp 1]

@grantinvanman – enjoy your feast. Sounds amazing.

[sundancer 43674xp 2]

Not sure if we’re getting a new thread this week

no, too busy painting 😉 @blinky465

[bvandewalker 2081xp 0]

Well, with alternate timelines most people don’t think about the evolution of technology and all the little (or major) details. For example if  D&D style magic was available to both sides of the Greeko Persian war, the  Persian Empire would likely have curbed stomped the Greek cities into submission since the real reason the Persians lost IRL was bad weather wreaking havoc their logistics (teleport, etc. would end that).

As to medieval societies with magic, they would likely go industrial fairly quickly barring “rule” issues with the magic, and honestly the “best guess” depictions I have seen tend to be in Japanese anime and even there it does seem to be limited by the author’s vision (for example I am pretty sure combustion engines or magical steam equivalent would become a common place thing in most settings after awhile).

[sundancer 43674xp 1]

Adding magic to hystorics isn’t just an alternate timeline. It’s an alternate universe. In your example the alternate timeline would have been: perfect weather for a war.

[limburger 22063xp 1]

so instead of naming is magic … just call it really advanced science 😉

the greeks were really good at making stupendously good clockworks/calculators for tracking the position of heavenly bodies.

What if they were a bit less superstitious and actually understood what they were doing and embraced that ?

even the steam engine wasn’t a ‘new’ concept.

Move the invention of a bit of tech a few decades/centuries earlier and the entire world changes.

There were mechanical calculators and the theory of computing before we had the technology to make it practical.

To say nothing of how various wars have helped accellerate technology.

Da Vinci had some pretty good ideas … Imagine if some his ideas had taken hold and become just that bit more practical to execute?

//

I’ve decided to stop argueing with my machines and gave them one last chance at making stuff work.
As a result I think I got enough of an idea to make my 1:1 scale work. If all goes according to plan I will be using less material than initially planned, which cool. I am going to need a lot of paint though.

 

[sundancer 43674xp 0]

Yes but that still is an alternative universe and not just a small change in the timeline.

Some of the results from last night:

Still thinking about a wash over the walls but… unsure.

[Author]

Posts