What About That EGASYS RPG I Talked About?

    Work Proceeds; Much Revision, Editing, Adjustment

    But in the meantime, here's a .png of the *current state of the combat manoeuvres Table of Contents for the martial arts supplement to re-assure you I'm making progress.

    Standard Litany of Complaints: d20 System (Part One)

    It's probably past time for another one of these

When reading forums and other material on the internet, there are complaints that are levied against this or that RPG. Upon reflection, it seems that many of these complaints can be compiled into standardized lists, and addressed generally. This is an attempt to do so for some of the complaints levied against the d20 System; by no means do I expect the advice to suit everyone (or even most) or to be without flaws.

    The Speed of an Unladen Barbarian

    In the d20 System

    The Barbarian class in the d20 System gains a 10-foot bonus to speed. But how fast does this make them? In this, I will do a quick examination of some aspects of speed in the d20 System, and show that, on average and in general, the speed of d20 System Humans is on-par with the speed of real-world Humans, allowing for reasonably small variances in physical fitness.

Standard Litany of Complaints, GURPS

When reading forums and other material on the internet, there are complaints that are levied against this or that RPG. Upon reflection, it seems that many of these complaints can be compiled into standardized lists, and addressed generally. This is an amateur attempt to do so for some of the complaints levied against GURPS; said attempt will likely fail horribly in at least a few ways, and likely more.

    1982: Commodore 64, $595 USD

    1982: Median US Income: $14,531 USD

    Musings and observations...

    The Commodore 64 is, arguably, the best-selling computer system. Not of any particular decade, but of any computer system since the Abacus. And by Abacus, I mean one of these: Wikipedia: Abacus
    Sales of the Commodore 64 may have reached close to 30 million units, for a total of nearly $18 billion in gross profit. In 1982 money. For its time, it had high-quality graphics, sound, floppy disk and cartridge support; multiple types of input, including keyboard, joystick, and even mouse support. it came with a built-in programming language; later additions included a hard drive, and modern efforts have managed to connect it to the internet through its cartridge port.
    In short, it was one of the very best home computers you could buy, and all for $595. In short, it was cheap, and high-quality.
    But that's $595 in 1982 money.
    In 2014, the median US income was $53,657 USD. Today, a high-end gaming machine will cost around $1,500 USD.
    With inflation, that $595 in 1982 USD is now $1,485 USD.
    In 1982, a high-end gaming computer was 4% of US yearly median income. Today, a high-end gaming computer is around 2.8% of US yearly median income.
    Funny how the $595 seems smaller...

    Tabletop Roleplaying Games as Food

The following arose from a discussion with my brother, as well as with friends and other discussions.

• Hero System is a set of ingredients. You make your own tabletop RPG out of the tools provided.
• Everything you make in the system is constructed out of basic items that you put together, then label. One beam attack with a rate of fire of 3 and 32 uses might be an AK-47 and the other might be a Wand of Ray of Fire, but the difference at the end of the day is that you've named one "AK-47" and the other "Wand of Ray of Fire". Or in food terms, different spices.
• GURPS is a menu at a classy diner. You might want a burger; but then again, you might want a 6 oz. Porterhouse centre-cut steak with a side of potatoes with gravy.

    Yaay, bandwagon! or;

    Not impossible. Just very, very hard; or,

    Ow my brain!!!, or; "there are...twelve dots!"

Now my head hurts. A lot.

    Refactoring

    Or; "Time to throw out all that hard work and rewrite it"

    This narrative is a work of fiction, mostly based on true stories.

    Let's say you want to make a top-down roguelike. So you have some character and monster sprites, some item bitmaps, and some spell sprites. You even have animations.

    So, you wire up some code. Move the player's character left when the player presses '4' on the numpad, up and left on '7' on the numpad, generate some random numbers influenced by stats and items when the PC hits a monster (and vice-versa), reduce health and make dead as appropriate, and wands cast spells. You websearch dungeon generation, and presto, our little dude is running around killing monsters. It's all good, and you're exhausted.

    Then you hand it to some friends to playtest it, with an eager sense of anticipation.

    Spherical Programmers of Uniform Density...

    ...Programming requires one to be very knurd...

...If # of bugs grows with volume of code...

...And volume of code grows with increase in distance from starting first line...

...And the parts of the code users interact with are the surface of said code...

...And the surface of the code itself contributes to the amount of work to do...


...And more efficient programmers make fewer bugs, thereby resulting in less need to visit the volume...

r = how much utility you have added since the first line.
e = how inefficient a programmer you are, range [0, 1], where 0 is fully efficient; you only add new code.


Productivity = 1 / ( ((4 / 3) * pi * r^3)^e + (4 * pi * r^2))

Thus we see that a fully efficient programmer, having increased the utility of the code 10 times over, has a productivity for the next integer increase of utility of:

Productivity = 1 / ( ((4 / 3) * π * 10^3)^0 + (4 * π * 10^2)) = 0.000795142

Or in short, 1,258 more lines to increase the utility to 11 times the initial start. With perfect efficiency.

Of course, this is almost certainly reasonable-sounding nonsense, if one that tracks with experience. Writing a simple falling blocks game takes X lines of code; adding levels and a level editor will probably at least triple your lines of code.

But this was mathed simply for the nerdery fun. :)

    Interesting facts...

    Should Aragorn Be In Mordor

• He is in Mordor.
• He has inside him blood of kings.
• He has no rifle.
• It's kinda hard to be the equal of the King of Gondor, never mind his other personal qualities.
• He did, in fact, help pave the way for Middle Earth to have a future.

 Now if you'll excuse me, I have to be somewhere else when the angry mob of fans comes rampaging through. :D

    Stupid memes aside...

    And, generally, you shouldn't spin-kick...

Chuck Norris is still a black belt in an internationally-recognized martial art.

    Because you're probably not a black-belt, and may have no real clue what you're doing or what moves to use when...

    (I'm not a black belt, either)

    (I took half a year of karate, once)

...Does anyone even that worn-out meme anymore?

    (Game) Breaking Abilities,

     Or; No Special Snowflakes,

    Or; Wizards (Shouldn't) Break The Game

    You can probably skip this intro if you're not new to tabletop RPGs. This review is in reference to the d20 System.
    Over on the d20 SRD, there's a Wizard character class that can cast spells out of "spell slots". The wizard has a limited number of spell slots, and each spell slot can only be used once per day, and only up to a certain "power level" of spell. The Fighter character class, OTOH, pretty much is good at hitting things, and can do that "all day" (barring long-term fatigue rules).
    All well and good. Except the wizard has breaking abilities, and the fighter doesn't.

    D&D 3.X - You're How Tough?

    Or No You Aren't

    Or No; A 1st-Level Barbarian Is Slower Than Usain Bolt

 

    "The Orc hits you with a Falchion", the GM says.
    "No problem", the player says. "I'm a 1st-level Human Warrior with 12 Hit Points. He can't kill me."
    "Wait...You can't be killed by a direct blow by a weapon which, historically, has been known to sever limbs...while going through the armour?" the GM wonders.
    "Well, no," the player says. "Hit points aren't actual damage. Besides, those were direct blows that hit full-on."
    "But I just rolled damage", the GM asserts. "Besides, the d20 SRD states that: 'Your hit points measure how hard you are to kill. No matter how many hit points you lose, your character isn’t hindered in any way until your hit points drop to 0 or lower.'"
    "It would be more accurate to say that hit points mostly aren't actual damage."

    Socratic dialogue aside, a character isn't meaningfully impaired until their hit points hit zero or lower. At zero, they're disabled. At zero to negative nine, they're dying. And at negative 10, they're dead. So...Only the last ten hit points matter?
    Yes...And no.
    In the d20 SRD, the following quote is used to describe hit points: "Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one."
     Hit points mean two things, and those two things are clearly specified. Hit points are your physical toughness, and your ability to reduce the effects of blows. At this point; hit points are both damage, and yet not damage...However, the Player's Handbook has something to add, in a paragraph which specifies that, until you hit zero hit points, all damage is "cosmetic". Dents and scratches on armour, a line of blood on your tunic from shallow cuts whose sting the hero (or villain) can easily shake off; and scars (presumably dramatic).

     In short, unless the orc rolls the full 12 damage, the human fighter has a new dent in his armour and/or dramatic face, arm, or chest scar to show off. In other words, hit points are mostly not actual damage. Perhaps the falchion scrapes across his chest, breaking scales in his armour as it is barely turned aside as the human fighter desperately lurches backwards...
    His armour weaker in that area (his hit points *lowered), the human fighter raises his longsword to strike...

    Of course, a player's character is a cut above. Player characters get full hit points at first level, where others must roll; they start with an average close to +2 over the average normal character in all ability scores (actually one and two thirds over); and, of course, they are some of the few characters who have primary classes, not secondary classes. A 1st-level fighter alone is an oddity; fully a full step above the average non-player character. With maximum hit points at first level, PCs are another half-step up, able to turn lethal blows into narrow escapes.
    Just as expected of a heroic fantasy protagonist.
    But not superhuman. Yet. The Alexandrian blog explains that as sixth level, and provides some sound-seeming evidence.

    *Why, you might ask, does Cure Light Wounds also restore this cosmetic armour damage? The Doylist answer is "because cosmetic armour damage is hit point damage." The Watsonian answer is "Because Cure Light Wounds is not a spell formula; it is literally a D&D cleric channelling a D&D deity's divine power to command 'Be Whole'."

    Of course, all answers are my (hopefully reasoned) opinion. Any resemblance to actual truth is hopefully more than a coincidence.

    What was that about a Barbarian? Well, that's a topic for a future column...

    The Legal Necessities: As far as I know, my blog is not endorsed by either Wizards of the Coast or The Alexandrian, and no special relationship is implied or stated.

    Biologically Plausible Non-Human Sapients

    For Fantasy Settings

    Dwarves

    Common factors for Dwarves in fantasy settings include:

    * Broad, flat teeth.
    * Stout, short, and broad-shouldered, with a resistance to blunt trauma.
    * Enthusiasm with regards to hard work, family history, and alcohol.
    * Trail food that is hard to chew, keeps for a long time, and is very filling.
        * Most of this trail food is described as some type of bread.
    * A tendency towards organization and group effort.
        * Increased aggressiveness when their king is dead or in danger.
    * Aggressive and combative when provoked.
        * Dwarves go to war to protect Dwarven lives, the lives of those Dwarves call friend or ally, and Dwarven possessions.
    * Dwarves live underground, and trade for much of what they have.
    * Dwarves are clannish, and very interested in family ties.

    Sets of common factors and conclusions:

    * Broad, flat teeth, and trail food that is some type of hard to chew, long-lasting bread. Dwarves are herbivores, or largely herbivorous.
        * Dwarves tend towards organized, group efforts, and are aggressive and combative when provoked. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Dwarves are defensive and combative when provoked. Dwarves defend their own; other Dwarves, Dwarven friends and allies, and Dwarven possessions. Or in short, the Dwarven herd and range. Instincts don't control sapience, but they do inform it.
            * So what role does a Dwarven leader provide? Here we look to Dwarven herd instincts: The leader of a herd is the frontmost; the one leading the way. Dwarven leaders are known to fight in the forefront of battle, and Dwarves become more aggressive when their leader is slain. In addition, groups of attacking Dwarves are described as if they are metaphorically trampling their enemies underfoot.
                * In short, a Dwarven leader falling is an instinctual signal that something is challenging the life and safety of the herd, and that thing needs to be trampled into the dirt. Dwarven groups do not depend on the existence of a leader, but on the existence of "herd ties".
    * Dwarves are typically described as being capable of long, sustained effort; as not being very fast, but rarely slowing down. Combined with skin "like leather", strong bones, and thick muscle, Dwarves invented food that would provide constant energy over long periods of time. Dwarves like sustained hard work in part because it is much less of a strain for them.
        * However, Dwarves cannot sustain short bursts of intense activity the way humans do. Dwarves march into battle at a rolling pace that eats up ground because they can maintain it over long distances. Even a Dwarven charge is relatively slow (but seemingly unstoppable). Dwarven farmers bring in harvests by literally working the entire day.
    * Even if there are extensive underground tunnels, danger is significant, and collapses would happen with depressing frequency. Dwarves would not be encouraged to wander, or experiment overmuch. Any disaster would need sustained, organized, group efforts to resolve.
        * Dwarves, living underground in close proximity, and with little movement between cities, would need detailed family records to refrain from inbreeding.
            * Even with this effort, however, Dwarves of the same city and culture would, over time, grow to resemble each other.
                * With a staid, slowly-moving culture, and one encouraged to group effort, Dwarven culture would be more uniform. And more clearly delineated.
        * With dark-adapted eyes, sunlight would be irritating at best; with a thriving mining industry, Dwarves would generally prefer to trade for items that would normally be grown or produced on the surface.
        * Practically speaking, there'd be little difference between the mining industry and the housing industry, save (perhaps) the outcome.
        * Dwarven bread is probably often made with, or partly with, some type of fungus.
    * You've got a bunch of hard workers in close quarters with little entertainment, and the ability to not really feel a casual punch. Alcohol, and the attendant tendency towards "bar brawls", would be more accepted in Dwarven culture simply because there'd be fewer significant injuries.