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Wow. Dice notation. Never thought I'd see that on THIS site. Of course as a trading card game freak I understand d6s, it just caught me by surprise.
Uh, Z, if the source code is only understandable by you, what do we do when you become a member of the Q Continuum and feel that updates are beneath you? And if it's that incomprehensible, requiring a twelfth-level intellect (Go Brainiac 5!), then perhaps some Dilbert engineering is in order to tighten the code. Oh, and do they use British spellings in Canada? I'd say "randomize," but that's another thread... If you're going to start reposting old fivers in the News section, maybe we could include fivist commentary in the update, perhaps encourage the explanation of the more obscure references.
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mudshark: Nate's just being...Nate. Zeke: It comes nateurally to him. mudshark: I don't expect Nate to make sense, really -- it's just a bad idea. Sa'ar Chasm on the 5M.net forum: Sit back, relax, and revel in the insanity. Adam Savage: I reject your reality and substitute my own! Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Crow T. Robot: Oh, stop pretending there's a plot. Don't cheapen yourself further. |
#2
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I'm a fan of RPG dice too, as is the Pi Day girl. I recently helped her with an interesting little probability question: whether 1d8+1 beats 2d4+1 or not. There's a really neat way to look at it which gives the answer immediately; I'll post it here later. (I also shocked her with the information that if you hit the right comic store, you can get dice really cheap.)
Anyway, you've seen me use THAC0 in a fiver, so dice shouldn't shock you too much. We use some British spellings and some American spellings here. We put Us in words that don't really need them, for instance, but we prefer "ize" to "ise." There seems to be no guiding principle. As for the code, it's not impenetrable, it would just take time to figure out. If I were ever to hand the site over to someone else, I would help with that process first.
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FiveMinute.net: because stuff is long and life is short [03:17] FiveMinZeke: Galactica clearly needs the advanced technology of scissors, which get around the whole "yanking on your follicles" problem. [03:17] IJD: cylons can hack any blades working in conjunction |
#3
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Quote:
Now tell me where I'm wrong.
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The first run through of any experimental procedure is to identify any potential errors by making them. |
#4
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Well, on 1d8+1, you have a 12.5% chance for everything from 2 to 9. On 2d4+1, it's...
6.25% 3 12.5% 4 18.75% 5 25% 6 18.75% 7 12.5% 8 6.25% 9 ...so it's more bell-curved. That means your probability is skewed towards middle-of-the-road results, which means you get truly good and truly bad rolls less...but 2d4+1 also gives you a higher minimum result. Depending on whether getting the maximum roll allows you to activate a special ability (like, the die "explodes", to use Spycraft language), it may be a better deal, but I'm reasonably sure that the 2d4+1 option is better on average. Gatac
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Katy: Can I have the skill 'drive car off bridge and have parachute handy'? Justin: It's kind of a limited skill. Greg: Depends on how often you drive off bridges. - d02 Quotes |
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Wait a minute. 2d4 is two separate d4s? It's not "roll a d4 and double it"? Crap, that changes everything!
You're not. Averages (a.k.a. expected value) are exactly the way to answer a question like this. But I found a particularly nice way to get why it works (the way I thought originally), and that's what I'll be posting later.
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FiveMinute.net: because stuff is long and life is short [03:17] FiveMinZeke: Galactica clearly needs the advanced technology of scissors, which get around the whole "yanking on your follicles" problem. [03:17] IJD: cylons can hack any blades working in conjunction |
#6
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1d4 - roll 1 four-sided die.
2d4 - roll 2 four-sided dice. 2d4b1 - roll 2 four-sided dice, take best result. That way, for example, the "Roll 4 d6, drop lowest" method of generating an attribute can be rendered as 4d6b3. As far as I know, there's no standard notation to indicate that you should double a result. Gatac
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Katy: Can I have the skill 'drive car off bridge and have parachute handy'? Justin: It's kind of a limited skill. Greg: Depends on how often you drive off bridges. - d02 Quotes |
#7
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It seems a monster has been created. Now I don't wonder so much why I never got into D&D. My sister did, incidentally, at least for awhile. Why? Because she had a huge string of luck when they were rolling together her character's initial stats.
I was just thinking about the geek heirarchy http://www.brunching.com/images/geekchartbig.gif and how these "geek majors" are usually different. By the way, someone's gotta work the term "Kirk is an ocelot" into a fiver."
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mudshark: Nate's just being...Nate. Zeke: It comes nateurally to him. mudshark: I don't expect Nate to make sense, really -- it's just a bad idea. Sa'ar Chasm on the 5M.net forum: Sit back, relax, and revel in the insanity. Adam Savage: I reject your reality and substitute my own! Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Crow T. Robot: Oh, stop pretending there's a plot. Don't cheapen yourself further. |
#8
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Quote:
What I think you should do is print out every single fiver, pin them to a wall, and then throw a dart while blindfolded to determine which one you link to. Of course, to make it totally random you need to get someone to shuffle them all around each time just before you throw the dart, and to reduce any possible bias even further you should alternate rooms in a randomly determined pattern. In fact, you should probably alternate buildings to be on the safe side.
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Mason: Luckily we at the Agency use use a high-tech piece of software that will let us spot him instantly via high-res satellite images. Sergeant: You can? That's amazing! Mason: Yes. We call it 'Google Earth'. - Five Minute 24 S1 (it lives, honest!) "Everybody loves pie!" - Spongebob Squarepants |
#9
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How about typing up all the material, cutting out each name, and drawing 'em out of a hat/bowl/emptied skull?
A new "random" fiver every week? Twice a week? Twice a soon?
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YOU READ IT... ...YOU CAN\'T UNREAD IT! |
#10
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Methinks Ted Sturgeon was too kind. 'Yes, but I think some people should be offended.' -- John Cleese (on whether he thought some might be offended by Monty Python) |
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Sounds like a good name for a rock band. "Now, live in concert: Twice a Soon!"
Well, if you're going to consolidate all of the fivers, I would think that a downloadable archive of just the fiver pages with a random option would be easier.
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mudshark: Nate's just being...Nate. Zeke: It comes nateurally to him. mudshark: I don't expect Nate to make sense, really -- it's just a bad idea. Sa'ar Chasm on the 5M.net forum: Sit back, relax, and revel in the insanity. Adam Savage: I reject your reality and substitute my own! Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Crow T. Robot: Oh, stop pretending there's a plot. Don't cheapen yourself further. |
#12
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You didn't know you have to roll two separate d4s? For shame! ...Okay, ignore the tabletop gamer freak. *cough*
I would actually recommend percentage dice for this particular task. That way, you get a hundred shots out of each outcome. (00 = 100) Count up your choices when done that method and do a d20 or something out of 'em. ...Or just pick one yourself. That works too.
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Sig v8.2.2 No, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm going to go and do it anyway. *pokes avatar* Made by a good LJ friend. Thanks Ani! Dark Blues: I'm going to kill you! Enzan: Not if I kill me first! Dark Blues: You...are aware my goal is accomplished either way, right? Enzan: ...Yeah... |
#13
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Quote:
Hence the gibberish about "time into Ottawa is Zeke, webmaster"...
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O to be wafted away From this black aceldama of sorrow; Where the dust of an earthy today Is the earth of a dusty tomorrow! |
#14
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Is there a reason why you guys haven't started a "Probability of RPG Dice" thread yet?
Eeeeeeeekkkkk!
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mudshark: Nate's just being...Nate. Zeke: It comes nateurally to him. mudshark: I don't expect Nate to make sense, really -- it's just a bad idea. Sa'ar Chasm on the 5M.net forum: Sit back, relax, and revel in the insanity. Adam Savage: I reject your reality and substitute my own! Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Crow T. Robot: Oh, stop pretending there's a plot. Don't cheapen yourself further. |
#15
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Of course there's a reason: to annoy you.
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FiveMinute.net: because stuff is long and life is short [03:17] FiveMinZeke: Galactica clearly needs the advanced technology of scissors, which get around the whole "yanking on your follicles" problem. [03:17] IJD: cylons can hack any blades working in conjunction |
#16
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Always a good reason.
Although, for the record, my brain hurts.
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Way in the future on the Starship Enterprise, everybody was sleeping because of Jigglypuff. |
#17
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You ain't alone, dude.
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mudshark: Nate's just being...Nate. Zeke: It comes nateurally to him. mudshark: I don't expect Nate to make sense, really -- it's just a bad idea. Sa'ar Chasm on the 5M.net forum: Sit back, relax, and revel in the insanity. Adam Savage: I reject your reality and substitute my own! Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Crow T. Robot: Oh, stop pretending there's a plot. Don't cheapen yourself further. |
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