The Gaming Den

Frank is correct. This article may help illustrate the concept. echo No, dammit, he's not, and that article has nothing to do with anything we're talking about. That article is about how long it takes to (1) generate a shitload of passwords through a combination of brute-force and exploiting common...

As usual, quantum computers are the answer. They exist, and they can break any crypto that isn't a one-time pad. However, quantum computers are probabilistic; instead of outputting "the key is this", they output "this is the best key I found and it has probability .01 of being a bett...

Sorry, I meant "like this" to be restrictive, but on a reread that's spectacularly unclear. Discrete processes like this approach a normal distribution. Discrete processes unlike this may not.

You can calculate standard deviations for anything, but they're only meaningful for normal distributions. Heads up on that. But the Central Limit Theorem says that discrete processes like this approach a normal distribution in the limit. So with enough dice this is basically a normal distribution. ...

Keeping in mind that stats isn't really my field... The formula for the standard deviation of a discrete random variable is basically the square root of the sum over all possible values of (the probability of getting that value)(the difference between that value and the mean)^2. For the coin flip, t...

Honestly, writing down equations for binomial distributions doesn't tend to be terribly enlightening, since they use a bunch of notation to say "add up all the possibilities," which is what you'd do even if you didn't have an explicit equation. And multinomial stuff, which is what we have ...

That's my guess about what's going on. The expected number of results per die is .5, and that's true however you slice it. But that doesn't mean it's the same thing as a coin flip, and with small numbers of dice the difference is big.

That's fair. And obviously the easiest way to answer it is for Frank to come tell us.

Now, when I started saying this I thought I was coming up with the same answer--I thought my argument required powers-of-two, and I'm still not convinced I'm not just fucking it up.

I think your intuition is basically right, actually, although you're phrasing it a bit confusedly. Which I suppose is why you're asking a question. First of all, just to confirm: Scion system is one success for a 7, 8, 9 and two for a 10? Then the expected number of successes per die is .5. And in l...

Oh, I wasn't thinking about adding a roll, just thinking that you could use a holy physical attack or a holy mental attack, and the modifiers on the dice would be different. But I'm also not actually advocating this system in real life. I'm not sure what adding stats past the fourth gets you. Still,...

Yeah, this is definitely different from Frank's position. I think it's accurate. But I'm totally prepared to be convinced I'm wrong, since I'm currently too tired to think straight. But yes, I think the key properties are "binary choices" and "every attack uses half your stats." ...

It's obvious why a 4 stat system is balanced from construction, but Frank makes the stronger claim that all 2^x stat systems are balanced (or at least balanceable). Is there a constructive proof of this? More relevantly, how does a 2^3 (8) stat system not fall prey to the same balance issues as a 6...

It's obvious why a 4 stat system is balanced from construction, but Frank makes the stronger claim that all 2^x stat systems are balanced (or at least balanceable). Is there a constructive proof of this? More relevantly, how does a 2^3 (8) stat system not fall prey to the same balance issues as a 6...

I think you are taking the system we're talking about backwards. A tiger is a Skirmisher. Specifically a Level 4 Animal Skirmisher with Stealth and multiple melee attacks. That's literally all the information you need to know everything about the Tiger's stats, you derive everything else from that....

I remember that. "innovating on the frontier of punctuation science." I go back and reread that rant (Orion's rant with that phrase) about once every two or three weeks. Sometimes out loud to a friend who doesn't read this forum. It might be my favorite three paragraphs I've read in the p...

and that works for "drop one functions?" If you follow his first link, yeah, it does. The format seems to be "output (1..x) ndk" where you want to roll ndk and take the best x of them. In general, calculating the kind of things you're asking for with a formula is actually pretty...

I have to say, Mat is incredibly fun to read but would suck to play, because one of his major superpowers is "The DM will railroad him into being exactly where he needs to be." And, I mean, as a person that's simultaneously really annoying and really awesome. Because on the one hand, where...

As for video games being nerdy, apparently wasn't so entirely, according to interview with Ice-T: What people don’t understand is that the video game industry broke right alongside the hip-hop industry. It's nerdy for white people, it's OK for anyone else. Possibly the single most disconcerting thi...

Clerics in Athas were weird. First of all, they were better than you. Everyone in Dark Sun gets boned one way or another (Fighters can't find metal equipment, Wizards have to do the whole Defiling/Preserving thing), except Clerics. Clerics have to choose an Elemental patron, but that patron is an a...

Regardless of the debate over the merits and usability of lasers--which is fascinating, so please don't stop--it is the case, canonically, that Star Wars weapons don't actually use them. Because it's canonically the case that what's going on actually looks like the movies, and real lasers don't look...

Bigness actually does matter in one case. Because if you can make big things and accelerate them enough, your enemy can't have planets. At all. Take your 7-mile long battleship, point it at the enemy planet--well, where the planet is going to be--and start accelerating. They can blow your ship up al...

I must actually go on the record as saying I don't really understand what the appeal is for various Lovecraftian games, whether this, or Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green or whatever. It's a fundamentally nihilistic universe, so by definition you can not help but lose. If your enemy is an impossibly o...

PhoneLobster: I read your rules when you posted them a while ago, and enjoyed them. And your social combat rules really do work for the things you want them to do, at least as long as you have some sort of non-social-combat-system framework to keep the players from using their swords to negotiate a ...

Foxwarrior: this is just spitballing, but I think there are ways to help out with that. In the bartender example, presumably the bartender is just a random bartender and the MC hasn't put a lot of effort into characterizing him before the reaction roll. But after the 1 comes up, the MC gets to spin ...

I think y'all are conflating two parts of the problem here. Well, I don't think Frank is in his head, but I think he is in what he's actually writing. And I could be wrong about what's in Frank's head. Sometimes you'll encounter creatures or people who don't have an opinion of you. They seriously do...