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Cake day: January 14th, 2022

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  • wordman@lemmy.mltoRPG@lemmy.mlNovice researching RPG rulesets
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    1 year ago

    You might actually want to look for RPG systems that are a particular kind of bad.

    Some systems with decent math behind them fail because they are too fiddly. They might have tons of modifiers to track, cumbersome rolling, lots of traits based on averages of other traits, and so on. Those types of systems can often be great for things like MUDs, because the computer can hide most of it from the player. And, maybe a roll takes 10 times as long, but that just means the software can do it in 10ms instead of 1ms, so who will care?

    If Earthdawn was open licensed, I’d suggest it as being “the right kind of bad”. It’s weird exploding pool step system is interesting because the dice for each step are set up such that the average roll of the pool is approximately the step number.



  • Something that crocodiles do has made them one of the longest lasting species on Earth, specifically by allowing populations to explode after massive disasters.

    The way it works is: about 90% of baby crocodiles are eaten by… adult crocodiles. So, when a natural disaster (say) wipes out huge quantities of adults at once, baby crocks find themselves in world mostly without predators that eat them, this living long enough to become adults. These adults go back to eating new babies, preventing the population from running amok.

    If you imagine the “evil humanoid species™”—kobolds or whatever—does this, you can imagine why the “good guys” are always surprised at how the “hordes” replenish so quickly after being “culled”. You can also imagine the “culling” of adults erodes and annihilates any culture that might have existed in an endless downward spiral.

    But, oh, “that’s OK because they’re cannibals”.








  • One thing I notice whenever one of these shootings happen: no one ever seems to ask questions about what prescription drugs the shooter had ever used. Maybe in most cases the answer is none, but we’ll never know, because no one digs into it. However, since some drugs are known to cause mental side effects (either when you take them, or when you stop taking them), seems like it might be a relevant data point to consider. (I note that this study doesn’t look into this, either.)