Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 5:41 pm

So, say you're making a dueling game where everyone already has a character and spells available from the start, and uses a tarot deck as the RNG.

So you have four runs of 1-13, and a run of 0-21. What does that RNG look like in play? What if you use the element symbolism of the minor arcana to say, for example, "Wands count double against dwarves and half against goblins" (ie, each suit is doubled against one element of creature and halved against another)?

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 6:00 pm

Prak wrote:So, say you're making a dueling game where everyone already has a character and spells available from the start, and uses a tarot deck as the RNG.

So you have four runs of 1-13, and a run of 0-21.

Minor note: Unless you are removing cards from play, the minor arcana give you four runs of 1-14, not 1-13. Unless you have one of those off-brand tarot decks that try to make the numbers more spooky by removing or adding cards.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 6:41 pm

Yeah, a Tarot deck has a Page and Knight instead of just a Jack. In any case, if you wanted to fuck around with giving different weights to different cards in a tarot deck, my suggestion would be to go on anydice and put in an arbitrary 78 sided die with the special values for all 78 cards you wanted them to have and look at the stats it spit out.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 7:04 pm

ah, right, I forgot about pages.

...I have no idea how to do that on anydie. The special values, I mean. a 78 sided die is easy.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 8:56 pm

Prak wrote:ah, right, I forgot about pages.

...I have no idea how to do that on anydie. The special values, I mean. a 78 sided die is easy.

Like this:
output d{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21}

With the half/doubling:

output d{0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21}

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 9:40 pm

Ok, cool, thank you.

...it's lonely being neither a computer nor math person on the den...

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 9:54 pm

Anydice does have rather shitty documentation. I mean, it's right there on the site, but reading it doesn't really help much.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:03 pm

Prak wrote:Ok, cool, thank you.

...it's lonely being neither a computer nor math person on the den...

I find being a Kaelik to be the primary source of my den loneliness.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:28 pm

Yeah, I couldn't figure out how to specify a special range like this from that documentation.

running that through...

So the numbers 1-14 each have a 6.41% chance of showing up, while 0 and 15-21 each have a 1.28% chance of showing up.

If I take 15-21 of the major arcana as a single "thing" there's just about a 9% chance of getting higher than 14.

So conceivably, I could treat The Fool (0) as a fumble, 15-21 as Crits, and then everything else as normal. A 9% crit chance is... well, it's like having a 19-20 crit range in D&D.

So, what I'm looking at is a duel game. Players have characters which have attack and defense values, and can use attack spells, minions or buff/debuff spells.

The idea is for the game to be something people can play at a con or in a line, so the RNG is a deck of cards. When I first typed up stream of thought notes years ago, I was thinking a standard poker deck, but last night I was looking at this again, and considered using tarot cards instead.

Either way, I like the idea of involving elements. The four minor arcana suits correspond to elements, and poker suits can too because they correspond to minor arcana suits:


wands	fire	clubs
swords	air	spades
coins	earth	diamonds
cups	water	hearts

So the idea would be that, say, the dwarf character would be Earth element, and if you drew a Coin/Diamond when attacking, it's value counts double for damage, and if your opponent drew one while attacking, it'd count half for damage against your character. And then maybe spells can have extra effects if you draw their element.

I can also give them major arcana cards that have special values. so.... if I did that, then basically each character would have a 19.2% chance of getting a special draw.

(just thinking "outloud" here)

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 2:16 am

How long should a stand-alone adventure be, word-count or page wise? What about a part of adventure path?

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 2:38 pm

What games, other than PF and 3.5, have an SRD or equivalent?

What would be involved in licensing a pdf such that you could legally put it on a tablet in your gaming store and let people borrow/rent that tablet for a few hours to play games in said store?

What requirements must you meet to be allowed to make a quick-start guide to a game to give people the basic info vs throwing them a book (or ten) and saying "Good Luck"?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 4:08 pm

Fate.

Post by **fbmf** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 7:17 pm

Meikle641 wrote:How long should a stand-alone adventure be, word-count or page wise? What about a part of adventure path?

I seem to remember, back in 2E, 64 pages being fairly standard for a stand alone adventure, with some weighing in at 96 pages. I don't know what was magical about those numbers.

Game On,
fbmf

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 7:21 pm

Multiples of 16. Books used to be printed in bound in blocks of 16 pages, because it was cheaper to do so or something.

64 is 16 x 4, and 96 is 16 x 6.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 7:32 pm

momothefiddler wrote:What games, other than PF and 3.5, have an SRD or equivalent?

Exalted out of all things, had a very detailed wiki, which got destroyed in the process of Onyx Path moving to a different website.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 10:42 pm

That wasn't an SRD though. It was useful as a lookup if you already had the books for detail reference, but it didn't actually include the rules.

But Mutants and Masterminds 3E has an IP-scrubbed SRD: http://www.d20herosrd.com/

So does FATE Core: http://fate-srd.com/
So does Spirit of the Century, a FATE variant: http://www.faterpg.com/dl/sotc-srd.html

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sat Nov 29, 2014 12:51 am

Why do we associate the medusa with archery? Medusa archers are in the SGT, and it's part of their 3e picture, and DotA 2 features an archer hero called "Medusa". Are they informed by something that came after the Greek stories, or did D&D inspire it?

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:18 am

Clash of the Titans (1981).

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Nov 29, 2014 3:41 am

Medusa's a beast on open terrain with a ranged weapon. You can't look at her without dying horribly and she won't get close enough for a blind attack to be effective.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:20 am

Medusa lived in a temple, not on open terrain.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Nov 29, 2014 9:52 am

Minotaurs with bows would be cool, their arrows would be the size of spears

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Nov 29, 2014 12:42 pm

Longes wrote:Medusa lived in a temple, not on open terrain.

Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. It totally plays to Persuses's strengths.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:23 pm

Longes wrote:Medusa lived in a temple, not on open terrain.

And that's why she's dead.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:42 pm

hyzmarca wrote:
Longes wrote:Medusa lived in a temple, not on open terrain.
Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. It totally plays to Persuses's strengths.

Ah, my bad. I read "Medusa is a beast ib ioeb terrain" as "Medusa lives on open terrain".

She lived in a temple because she was a priestess cursed by the gods.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:15 pm

Also because most people live inside.