Dark Sun returns

[Pinniped]

I think you are confused.

Let me try to explain this in terms of teh Maths:

...

This is the absolute maximum differential, and yet there is literally only a single day out of six in which the Fighter and Wizard have different levels of combat readiness.

You just demonstrated there are three out of six days during which the Fighter is more combat-ready than the Wizard, two of which because the Wizard is dead. The Fighter lives a full 50% longer.

But you do make a good point. It's hard to imagine a good game experience coming out of asking the wizard's player to sit out for two days while the fighter drags his corpse through the desert. (Not impossible, though -- make the days pass in some a matter of minutes, just a few decisions and skill checks. I'd let the wizard manifest as a ghost, too).

+0 and +4 for example: 3 days of identical, one day of cripple, both dead.

75% of the time they are identical.

Let me quibble for a little bit: Day 4 will be very different. I can post the math if you like, but the odds of them losing the same number of surges is roughly 2%. On the other hand, the difference between 0 and 4 endurance isn't that much, so it's not surprising the two would end up being mostly similar, just with one day where the more hearty adventurer gets to keep more of his surges.

But that's missing the point of the problems you've revealed, which I agree with:
(a) They're completely identical for the first three out of the four days in which they have to live. That's weird even before you consider them going from completely identical on day 3 to rather different on day 4.
(b) You should never be rolling a D20 to determine if you take a single point of damage, never mind rolling repeatedly. In that case, you may as well just take the expected average damage.

Thankfully, (b) fades away as character levels rise. The same wizard at level 10 would be rolling to determine if he's losing 1/6th of his HP per failure, not 1/25th. One solution (if you're willing to houserule just the specific numbers) would be to make the damage something like level+5.

(a) also fades as levels rise -- the problem with comparing level 1 characters is that the very first DC is formidable. If you looked at Endurance 15 vs 19 instead, you'd have three identical days, followed by four days of increasing difference, followed by death, and that's just a 4 point difference. Still, those are rather high Endurance levels. I guess the solution would be (again, using houseruling to tweak the numbers) to make the checks start sooner, make them start lower, and make them rise more slowly. Even just starting the checks on day 1 at DC 10 would help, and I'd also play with making the DC rise by 3 or 4 each day. The goal would be to create more days where the higher-endurance characters are okay, and the lower-endurance characters are weakened but still battle-capable.

I think the devs were trying to keep the rules simple and easy to remember (how often does thirst even come up in standard D&D games?), but in this case it leaves some problems with the model, especially at lower levels. Hopefully Dark Sun will have some more refined rules, to go along with the focus on survival.

[Username17]

Pinniped, there is still absolutely nothing that would lead us to believe that you ever make more than one check per day as there is no time frame for the additional checks to be made in save for the following day.

Titanium Dragon: Please shut up. For your own sake. The correct argument you should be making is that those sales were in the past and that something has happened now that Adventurer's Vault 2 and Divine Power are out that make sales as good or better than 3e sales. And/or that the recession depressed sales in a temporary fashion but not demand and thus that the sales will elastically catch up as people feel that they have more spending money.

Arguing that a low sales figure could actually be a high sales figure because it is listed as "at least" and could therefore be technically correct if it was orders of magnitude larger than it actually is counts as an embarrassing argument.

-Username17

[tzor]

But you do make a good point. It's hard to imagine a good game experience coming out of asking the wizard's player to sit out for two days while the fighter drags his corpse through the desert.

I don’t know about that, while I was playing a dwarf fighter at the time, I have a lot of fond memories of my character being dead and being dragged to the nearest temple to be raised again. Dead characters automatically gain both Pun and Kibitz as free actions.

[Voss]

I hate sex with children and I think its wrong. But a lot of people do find redeeming qualities about it.

*This is not a valid argument, ever*

How many people first have sex before they're 18 years old?

Lots. That doesn't make pedophilia OK, which is what you see to want to argue with that statement.

So for everyone's sake, stop talking.

[Pinniped]

But you do make a good point. It's hard to imagine a good game experience coming out of asking the wizard's player to sit out for two days while the fighter drags his corpse through the desert.

I don’t know about that, while I was playing a dwarf fighter at the time, I have a lot of fond memories of my character being dead and being dragged to the nearest temple to be raised again. Dead characters automatically gain both Pun and Kibitz as free actions.

That's awesome. There should definitely be a rising Endurance DC to deal with snarky ghosts.

[Draco_Argentum]

This thread is fucking funny, carry on.

[Kobajagrande]

May it last for hundreds of thousands of years!

[Doom]

But not for a million years, since that would be too short!

[Emerald]

Unless you directly compare that million years to the hundreds of thousands of years, in which case....

[Kobajagrande]

But not for a million years, since that would be too short!

Aye, it should be hundreds of thousands, because that number sounds much more!

[Avoraciopoctules]

I certainly hope it doesn't take me hundreds of thousands of years to make a better 4E Defiler. That's the sort of thing that should be taken care of in a couple of days of desultory effort.

[Titanium Dragon]

People get far more upset over a politician paying $10,000 for something extravagant than him wasting $10 million for some pork barrel project, because $10,000 is something they can relate to whereas $10 million isn't.

You insist that "context matters", and yet here you are again trying to CHANGE the context mid-argument in yet another sleazy attempt to cover up your inability to admit you're wrong.

The CONTEXT of this argument is that the figure cited by WoTC is "hundreds of thousands". Not "millions". Not "over a million". Of all the figures they could have chosen, they chose "hundreds of thousands", in a court of law.

Therefore this is entirely an issue around semantics and legalese. And you do NOT use "hundreds of thousands" when you can say "millions" or "over a million" especially when this litigation involves damages - because you want to maximize the extent of the said damages and thus gain maximum reparations for them.

The outrage over corruption is entirely OUTSIDE of this issue. Trying to shift it over there is yet another sleazy attempt to CHANGE the context of the argument mid-stream.

No, I'm not I'm afraid. You simply do not understand. Or, more likely, you don't want to. You are unwilling and unable to accept that your delusions are wrong.

WotC does not know exactly how many books piracy of the PHB 2 has caused them not to sell. That's not really a knowable number.

Ergo, their goal in citing a number is not to establish exactly how many books they've sold. Their purpose is to establish emotional impact - they sell a LOT of books. That's the purpose of this statement. No more, no less.

If they wanted to establish the number of books they'd sold for the purpose of calculating damages, it would have been a specific number. It would have been as specific as they could have made it. But "hundreds of thousands" is not specific at all, and had this been for the purpose of calculating damages, the judge would have asked for something which isn't so vague.

What about that is so difficult to understand? None of it. It is obvious. This is meant to create an emotional background for the case. It is meant to influence, not to calculate.

EDIT: Okay, so here's a question: Can anyone actually find the source for the "hundreds of thousands" number? The post in question was made in April, before the cases actually went to court (they filed the lawsuit then), so obviously it isn't from a courtroom transcript. I can find this interview which uses the phrase, but it says hundreds of thousands of people, and seems to be talking about digital distribution of content (presumably via D&D Insider, as they cited the novels as being "recently launched" in those digital formats). It also mentions that they've done four printings of the PHB and had gone back to reprint the PHB 2 in April, a month after its release.

EDIT 2:

17. After years of additional development, and again inspired in part by player feedback, Wizards released a 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 2008. The 4th edition provided for more streamlined game play, plus new options for character creation and interaction. Again, the rules were detailed in the three core 4th edition rulebooks. Release of the rulebooks was highly anticipated, and Wizards sponsored a Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day and coordinated release of the 4th edition with D&D events held around the globe, The core 4th edition rulebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and are now in their third printing.

[Username17]

If they wanted to establish the number of books they'd sold for the purpose of calculating damages, it would have been a specific number. It would have been as specific as they could have made it.

TD, who do you think you are fooling? They would have to be retarded to quote a specific number in a court of law, because the numbers of books sold increase on a daily basis. To be legally accurate they pretty much have to say "over X" rather than "specifically X" because by the time they got any specific number back from accounting it would less than the real number.

Since it is a product that is continuously being sold, they have to either give a specific number with an open ended date ("As of May 5th, we had sold XXX copies") or a vague number situated in the immediate present ("Over XXX copies"). To do otherwise would be lying in court, something a corporation of Hasbro's standing has no desire to do.

But seriously, at this point the thread is just people making fun of you. You've chosen to be so comically unreasonable that we aren't even really having a back and forth. People opposed to you could stake pretty much any claim they want and still win the argument against you. You're arguing that 1 is bigger than ten. You automatically lose that argument even if your opponent is claiming that we have to kill all the Jews. So stop doing it.

It's actually embarrassing to even attempt to carry on an argument when the opposition is trying to claim that there is wiggle room in a frickin Less Than Sign.

-Username17

[Titanium Dragon]

But seriously, at this point the thread is just people making fun of you. You've chosen to be so comically unreasonable that we aren't even really having a back and forth. People opposed to you could stake pretty much any claim they want and still win the argument against you. You're arguing that 1 is bigger than ten. You automatically lose that argument even if your opponent is claiming that we have to kill all the Jews. So stop doing it.

And you've proven to be willing to swallow anything which reinforces your own beliefs.

If you look at the sentence from the original source, it states:

The core 4th edition rulebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and are now in their third printing.

Read the sentence. Notice the ordering. They haven't said "Hundreds of thousands of copies of the 4th edition rulebooks have been sold", but rather the opposite, that the core 4th edition rulebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. This indicates that they're saying that each of their core rulebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

For reference, the website I found this on is at Stirges Suck, but seems to be taken from a filing.

And before you say "nuh uh, they're just throwing out the largest numbers possible", remember that the PHB was in its fourth printing by April 2009, when the lawsuit was filed.

[RandomCasualty2]

TD: When companies give out stats based on their sales, they always word them in the way that makes the number of sales sound the largest. Saying that they twisted around the wording in some kind of elaborate code to make their sales smaller just insults our intelligence.

[Username17]

Read the sentence. Notice the ordering. They haven't said "Hundreds of thousands of copies of the 4th edition rulebooks have been sold", but rather the opposite, that the core 4th edition rulebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. This indicates that they're saying that each of their core rulebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

No it doesn't.

Release of the rulebooks was highly anticipated, and Wizards sponsored a Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day and coordinated release of the 4th edition with D&D events held around the globe, The core 4th edition rulebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and are now in their third printing.

What the hell dude? It straight up says that they've sold hundreds of thousands of copies of the core books. The "core books" are (as of April, 2009):

• Adventurer's Vault
• Arcane Power
• D&D Roleplaying Starter Set
• PHB (And Deluxe Edition)
• Monster Manual (And Deluxe Edition)
• DMG (And Deluxe Edition)
• Draconomicon I: Chromatic Dragons
• Dungeon Delve
• Manual of the Planes
• Martial Power
• Open Grave
• Player's Handbook Official Power Card Sets
• Player's Handbook 2
• Wizard's Presents: Races and Classes
• Wizard's Presents: Worlds and Monsters

Yeah, Not even kidding. That world's and monsters preview book is a 4th edition core book.

So really, when they say that "the core 4th edition rulebooks" have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, they are making a very specific and legally verifiable claim. And that claim includes them admitting that they have not sold a million books between February of 2008 and April of 2009. Now again, if you want to come off as anything other than a pathetic laughingstock, you're welcome to make an argument that perhaps those numbers didn't include PHB2 or Arcane Power sales, and certainly didn't include Divine Power or Monster Manual 2 sales. You're also welcome to argue that they weren't including the official PHB Power Cards or the Wizards Presents books on the grounds that neither are exactly speaking a rulebook despite being on Wizard's own site in that capacity.

Heck, you could seriously be out there arguing that a sales bundle of somewhat less than a million copies is perfectly respectable for what is essentially the 9 month period between June of 2008 and April of 2009. We could be having a real debate along those lines. But we're not. Because you're a jackass who is seriously arguing that numbers are orders of magnitude bigger than they are rather than challenging my setting of goalposts. That makes you a loser in this discussion.

The numbers just exist. I have set goalposts that involve those numbers being less than sufficient. If you wanted to argue, you should have tried sifting goalposts such that the numbers were fine. You chose to argue with the numbers, but they are Wizards of the Coast's actual fucking numbers! You lose. Ha ha.

-Username17

[Titanium Dragon]

So really, when they say that "the core 4th edition rulebooks" have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, they are making a very specific and legally verifiable claim. And that claim includes them admitting that they have not sold a million books between February of 2008 and April of 2009. Now again, if you want to come off as anything other than a pathetic laughingstock, you're welcome to make an argument that perhaps those numbers didn't include PHB2 or Arcane Power sales, and certainly didn't include Divine Power or Monster Manual 2 sales. You're also welcome to argue that they weren't including the official PHB Power Cards or the Wizards Presents books on the grounds that neither are exactly speaking a rulebook despite being on Wizard's own site in that capacity.

Let's take the phrase "Harry Potter books sell millions of copies." Does that mean that all Harry Potter books put together have sold millions of copies, or that any given Harry Potter book will sell millions of copies? The latter is a perfectly reasonable reading of the sentence.

Their claim is that their core rulebooks sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

And of course, in this light, the line makes perfect sense. They are establishing how many copies their core rulebooks sell and using this as ammunition against the people who pirated the books, as they are saying "Look how well a core rulebook sells! These people are hurting us!"

In any event, in this case they're only referring to the PHB, DMG, and MM anyway, given that they refer to the three core rulebooks.

[Zinegata]

TD->

Standard modus operandi again: Call the opposition and idiot for not understanding you, when you were the fucking idiot who made the asinine argument in the first place.

We all saw through the outright IDIOCY of your claim that they chose "hundred of thousands" over "over a million" for "emotional impact". That's a dead and done argument. Restating it in a different form is not going to bring the argument back to that context. It's a stupid argument. The example you used (Congress) was doubly stupid because it was comparing apples and oranges. And now it's triply stupid because you chose to repeat this argument and then called other people stupid for comprehending what you said and having the gall to call you a deluded moron.

A million is ALWAYS the stronger figure - factually and emotionally.

Secondly, you've introduced a new angle, but again this is blatant context-switching towards an unrelated field. Yes, nobody knows how many PHB2s were pirated. But the baseline for damages is calculated via ACTUAL sales. Otherwise, any Joe Schmoe can go to court, claim they've lost "millions" due to piracy, for say a music video that sold only 3 copies in retail.

Thus, this is an IRRELEVANT tangent. Another attempt to switch the context to dead space just so you can avoid admitting that you're wrong.

In other words, your position remains asinine, your debating tactics remain sleazy, so don't act fucking surprised that people aren't gonna back you up like in the WoTC boards where you had frothing-at-the mouth fan boys who'd jump and support any argument longer than five sentences in support of 4E regardless of its actual intellectual merit.

[Doom]

Gee whiz, I thought literally everything was core.

Can you tell me when/where it was announced that three particular books was Core-dly Core? Considering how much was messed up in these allegedly Core-dly Core books, that's kinda bizarre to assume nobody would look into the non-Coredly, but still Core, books to learn about fixes to minions, skill challenges, and other things.

Edit: guess that quote does kinda indicate three core rulebooks. I'd have to see the exact phrasing in the legal documents to see if WoTC is specifically referring to these 'coredly core' books after all, although it doens't seem like it from what I've seen so far.

Still doesn't change the fact that, no, we don't have evidence of over a million copies sold.

[Zinegata]

Let's take the phrase "Harry Potter books sell millions of copies." Does that mean that all Harry Potter books put together have sold millions of copies, or that any given Harry Potter book will sell millions of copies? The latter is a perfectly reasonable reading of the sentence.

Completely fucking irrelevant

From WoTC

The core 4th edition rulebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and are now in their third printing.

They did not say "sell". They said "have sold". Meaning that this was something they already accomplished. It's not a claim. It's stating an ACTUAL accomplishment

Bad context switching again. You lose.

[PhoneLobster]

Some made up Harry Potter fantasy.

So if you make up and entirely different phrase (with poor grammatical structure at that) and examine it it means something that somehow is relevant to how you want to interpret some other specific thing someone actually said.

Look. Pretending that your incredibly stupid interpretation was valid.

That would mean that WOTC had in fact sold "100s of thousands" of each or at least most, of that long list of books.

And you know, if they had done that those numbers can be added together under what you yourself call the "alternate" (and lets face it actual in any sane universe) interpretation of the "How many of these we have sold" statement.

Which means if they HAD sold that many they could instead have said "Nearly 5 Million", or even "Over 3 Million". Because ~300,000x~15 is just that fucking much.

What sort of drooling dip shit are you to think they prefer to make the both incredibly conservative AND technically completely incorrect statement. In a court of law. Where they can be charged with providing false information (which is double stupid because it is also not in their interests to do that).

[Titanium Dragon]

And you know, if they had done that those numbers can be added together under what you yourself call the "alternate" (and lets face it actual in any sane universe) interpretation of the "How many of these we have sold" statement.

Except, of course, that when I posed the same question to other people over IM to see if I'm crazy (phrased as Harry Potter and millions instead) they read it the same way I did. What are you going to do, claim cognitive bias?

Oh wait.

Seriously, its a perfectly valid reading of the sentence. Moreover, in context, it makes more sense.

Now, you are claiming that they will want to exaggerate as much as possible. However, under cross examination, they will have to acknowledge how many books they sell per run. Now, which sounds better, do you think? Having to say "Well, we only sell hundreds of thousands per line?" or instead responding with "Actually, that's the low end, on the high end we sell millions?" In the former case, it looks like you're retreating from your claims, which looks bad - your claims look shakier because it looked like you're overreaching. In the latter case, it looks like your claims are conservative, implying that your claims are even stronger, which looks good - it looks like the other lawyer is grasping at straws and has an even more tenuous case.

They want to make claims which look strong on their face (which this does; hundreds of thousands is a large number) and which will be even stronger in court, not have to retreat from anything.

[Zinegata]

And you know, if they had done that those numbers can be added together under what you yourself call the "alternate" (and lets face it actual in any sane universe) interpretation of the "How many of these we have sold" statement.

Except, of course, that when I posed the same question to other people over IM to see if I'm crazy (phrased as Harry Potter and millions instead) they read it the same way I did. What are you going to do, claim cognitive bias?

Oh wait.

Seriously, its a perfectly valid reading of the sentence. Moreover, in context, it makes more sense.

Now, you are claiming that they will want to exaggerate as much as possible. However, under cross examination, they will have to acknowledge how many books they sell per run. Now, which sounds better, do you think? Having to say "Well, we only sell hundreds of thousands per line?" or instead responding with "Actually, that's the low end, on the high end we sell millions?" In the former case, it looks like you're retreating from your claims, which looks bad - your claims look shakier because it looked like you're overreaching. In the latter case, it looks like your claims are conservative, implying that your claims are even stronger, which looks good - it looks like the other lawyer is grasping at straws and has an even more tenuous case.

They want to make claims which look strong on their face (which this does; hundreds of thousands is a large number) and which will be even stronger in court, not have to retreat from anything.

Your Harry Potter statement used "sells". Not "have sold". Huge difference that any English-speaker would gladly tell you.

(Of course, you can claim that you said "have sold", but you're not posting any IM logs of the conversation where people "agree" with you, have you? Afraid that it'll turn out the people you talked to were the same frothing-at-the-mouth 4E fanboys who keep terrorizing the WoTC boards?)

Telling us your IM friends support you because you used the wrong statement on them is both sad and asinine.

[PhoneLobster]

Now, you are claiming that they will want to exaggerate as much as possible.

You complete moron! That has been the claim made since Frank brought it up. [Edit: lets rephrase that to "you dishonest little shit", because you changed the word to exaggerate rather than to legitimately state actual figures in court. Again you try desperately to redefine everything. Meanwhile YOU exaggerate figures in the most incredibly astoundingly shameless ways]

They were giving a number in a court that would directly influence the size of a potential pay out they would receive.

OF COURSE they give the biggest number they have. This really is a choice between the "100s of Thousands" cash suit case and the "Over 3 Million" cash suit case. Because if they win then at the end of the court case they get a cash suit case and it's size is influenced by the choice they make on the numbers they state.

In the former case, it looks like you're retreating from your claims, which looks bad

Sort of like I don't know. First claiming that 100s of thousands looks bigger than over a million.

Then presenting several different entirely hilarious arguments of how it looks bigger compared to nothing and then in turn compared to over a million.

THEN settling for making an incredibly complex argument that relies on the 100s of thousands looking smaller and then building up to over 3 million which looks larger in a crazy paranoid fantasy of fan wankery.

YOU are retreating from your claims. You have so far argued that...

1) 100s of thousands was used because it looks bigger than millions.

2) That it doesn't look bigger than millions but looks bigger than nothing than millions does.

3) That it actually literally means millions because it actually gets multiplied by the total number of products the total sales was given in relation to (for no reason).

4) And now that it in fact looks smaller than millions (which it really is) and that is a good thing because on "clarification" it will be revealed that the earlier number was intentionally misleadingly low and it really is millions, because...?

They want to make claims which look strong on their face (which this does; hundreds of thousands is a large number) and which will be even stronger in court, not have to retreat from anything.

And now your exciting final argument.

"100s of thousands is big. And when challenged it will turn out to be 100s of thousands. Dhurrr..... Why is you laughing at me!"

[Zinegata]

Guys, try not to analyze TD's arguments too much. You don't need to analyze in detail how wrong the basic argument is. It's better for your overall mental health.

His tactics boil down to repeating already discredited statements (and pretending they aren't), shifting context to unrelated areas (i.e. small but crucial differences like "sells" vs "have sold"), and trying to get a mob to support him (i.e. claiming he got support from unknown sources in IM).

Also, he likes nit-picking other people's statements to again try to shift the debate away from the central point where he's already discredited.

So keep your answers short and concise. Better for your sanity that way .