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For those of you who (wisely) don't feel like poking through the RPGnet thread that resulted in Zak S's permaban, it's a pretty good case study for the type of feminist he is. See, Monte Cook wrote this for Numenera Monte Cook posted:NIBOVIAN WIFE 3 (9) These biological constructs appear to be beautiful female humans. Their only function, however, is to seduce male humans so they can get pregnant. Pregnancy in a Nibovian wife opens a transdimensional rift inside its womb, giving an ultraterrestrial (such as an abykos, an erynth grask or any ultraterrestrial creature the GM wishes) access to this level of existence. The time required for “gestation,” which is actually the aligning of phase changes to create the rift, ranges from ten minutes to nine months. When the ultraterrestrial creature is “born,” the Nibovian wife nurtures it as if it were a child, even though it clearly is not. During this time, the construct defends the “child” fiercely, using incredible strength and resilience. The young creature develops quickly, and its first and only compulsion is to hunt down and kill its “father.” Once it does so, it is free to do as it pleases in the world. Nibovian wives are likely the cause of many ultraterrestrials currently in the Ninth World. Motive: Seduction for reproduction, defense of its “offspring” Environment: Anywhere Health: 9 Damage Inflicted: 5 points Armor: 2 Movement: Short Modifications: Resists mental effects as level 4. Combat: Nibovian wives attack with their fists, which pummel with a strength that betrays their inhuman nature. Their flesh is as resilient as armor. Interaction: As long as you give Nibovian wives what they want, they are kind and eager to please. They can never be convinced to abandon their imperative (reproducing and nurturing their terrible child), but on other issues, they can be perfectly reasonable. Use: A strange encounter with Nibovian wives can introduce the concept of otherdimensional beings in a horrific way. The ancients explored other dimensions and interacted with ultraterrestrials, but in the Ninth World, such beings are thought of as demons. Loot: The inner workings of a Nibovian wife can provide 1d6 cyphers to someone trained in scavenging them. Zak just could not let this poo poo go. Clearly we're all just prudes getting our knickers in a twist over the concept of people having sex in RPGs, and hey, all of my players are totally okay with this wink wink nudge nudge and if they are then you should be too.
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Jan 7, 2015 04:57
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LatwPIAT posted:No, you simply write "2-12" instead of "2d6". Zak thinks it superior for reasons I've not quite understood. He reasoned something along the lines of "if you're not good at math, it's easier to work with the lower and higher limits written out than the dice themselves" and used as an example of someone who benefited from this a mentally disabled player of his. (Some people gave him a lot of admitted unfair poo poo over that example.) The obvious issue I have with his reasoning is that if you're not good at math, how the gently caress are you supposed to figure out which dice to roll for "2-12"? Was it a mentally disabled person or one of his regular porn "star" players?
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Jan 7, 2015 05:00
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kingcom posted:Rolling a D6 is not that bizzarre. Its probably the most common dice and likely nearby. I'm aware of how common d6's are. But coins are even more common. In the end it's probably not a difference in ease between a coin flip or doing even/odd in a d6.
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Jan 7, 2015 05:17
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ManMythLegend posted:I'm aware of how common d6's are. But coins are even more common.
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Jan 7, 2015 05:51
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Xelkelvos posted:Was it a mentally disabled person or one of his regular porn "star" players? It was one of the porn girls also she didn't finish highschool.
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Jan 7, 2015 06:39
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I kind of like 2-12, but it only works if you keep it super simple. The moment you need to express rolls of over three dice or that include modifiers it all falls to poo poo, but if you're somehow working with a system where that'll never come up I think it works fine--it's harder to derive the dice (you need to divide the second number by the first to get the die size, but as long as the numbers are small it should almost immediately just be something you recognize) but shows the range of possible outcomes better. It's actually just a smidge better at showing the probability curve as 3d6 is--the bigger the first number the harder it curves to the center, but the center is noticeably easier to find with 3-18 notation. The Zak thing in particular was just about someone with a learning disability and what they found easier, though--if that person found things significantly easier that way and the other people in the group were cool with it then that makes it just straight up the better system to use for simple die rolls, like weapon stats or monster damage rolls in systems where monsters don't have ability scores. Xelkelvos posted:Was it a mentally disabled person or one of his regular porn "star" players? Let's not start getting all creepy with the sex worker derision. SA is usually pretty good about social justice stuff, and I'm really hoping we can keep it that way. Oof, I've been actively trying to avoid talking about Zak, since there's actually a fair chance we'll have conference overlap in the next year or so and I'd really prefer to try to discuss these things with him face to face before posting them online. In very brief, though, I think he shares a lot of personality traits with this subforum (nobody who posted in the older iteration of this thread, in particular, can really ever hope to take the moral high ground on toxicity), and I really don't think he's anti-trans or trying to be a gatekeeper or anything, but there are a few things he does that seem innocent enough by themselves that combine to end up actually being pretty harmful. I really like a lot of his ideas, and I actually am pretty into the ways he organizes his RPG-related thoughts (although Jesus Christ, I completely understand if it rubs other people the wrong way), so ultimately coming to this conclusion about him is painful.
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Jan 7, 2015 07:01
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I would expect in this day and age that someone would have written an app that could solve for all the dice notations that could produce any given number range.
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Jan 7, 2015 07:06
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Froghammer posted:Zak just could not let this poo poo go. Clearly we're all just prudes getting our knickers in a twist over the concept of people having sex in RPGs, and hey, all of my players are totally okay with this wink wink nudge nudge and if they are then you should be too. Wait, Zak got his dumb rear end permabanned defending that? Of all the hills I expected this guy to die on, a nonsensical monster who is literally as sex-negative as possible (sex robots that give birth to monsters that will explicitly kill the filthy sexhaver who "fathered" them)? Is this dude operating on a sixth-grade level where anything that even alludes to the concept of sex is automatically erotic?
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Jan 7, 2015 07:12
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OtspIII posted:I really don't think he's anti-trans It's been said before, but it merits repeating. If your actions are indistinguishable from those who are transphobic/homophobic/just lovely people then how are you actually different from those people even if you don't self identify as them? edit: Like, okay, maybe he doesn't feel hatred for someone because they're trans, but he's certainly not above attacking them for it. How is that better than being transphobic? Darwinism fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 07:15
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Antivehicular posted:Wait, Zak got his dumb rear end permabanned defending that? Of all the hills I expected this guy to die on, a nonsensical monster who is literally as sex-negative as possible (sex robots that give birth to monsters that will explicitly kill the filthy sexhaver who "fathered" them)? Is this dude operating on a sixth-grade level where anything that even alludes to the concept of sex is automatically erotic?
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Jan 7, 2015 07:26
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Darwinism posted:It's been said before, but it merits repeating. If your actions are indistinguishable from those who are transphobic/homophobic/just lovely people then how are you actually different from those people even if you don't self identify as them? It's not better, but those people are often in better positions to be educated, and you can sometimes actually talk to them about their behavior. At least, in my experience. I used to be one of those shitheads when I was in high school. If someone's approaching the entire thing from a position of smug superiority or w/e then it I doubt it'll make a difference one way or another, but it's worth trying.
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Jan 7, 2015 07:30
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S.J. posted:It's not better, but those people are often in better positions to be educated, and you can sometimes actually talk to them about their behavior. unfortunately, he is zak s
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Jan 7, 2015 07:32
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Tollymain posted:unfortunately, he is zak s Right, since he was speaking in generalities I was responding in kind. Hence, S.J. posted:If someone's approaching the entire thing from a position of smug superiority or w/e then it I doubt it'll make a difference one way or another, but it's worth trying. Zak S is devoted to being garbage, it's true. A lot of posters here actually did approach him initially without being disingenuous or rude or anything, but Zak is just too loving dense and illogical.
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Jan 7, 2015 07:39
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His attitude towards his trans and queer friends makes me think of Republicans and minorities. The Republican party loves them some black republicans. But only so long as they follow the strict party line. And they'll use dog whistle terms when confronting any blacks who aren't part of the party. Zak uses his trans and queer friends to shield himself from criticism, but he'll still react in a pretty toxic, trans-phobic way towards any transpeople who disagree with him, or encourage others to level slurs at them for him. He likes transpeople, but only so long as they know their place, and don't get too uppity.
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Jan 7, 2015 07:53
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Xelkelvos posted:Was it a mentally disabled person or one of his regular porn "star" players? It was a porn star and calling her mentally disabled is terrible and dumb.
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Jan 7, 2015 13:03
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BrainParasite posted:It was a porn star and calling her mentally disabled is terrible and dumb. Whoops. I checked the actual statements Zak made and he doesn't actually say that she's mentally disabled. That's my fault for reading things said by people who read into Zak's statements (see: the unfair poo poo they gave him), so I've edited my post to be more correct. All Zak S actually said was that he has a player who wasn't able to know which of 3d6 and 4d4 does more damage because she can't do the math. I apologise to whom it may concern for implying they or their their friend was mentally disabled.
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Jan 7, 2015 15:21
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LatwPIAT posted:wasn't able to know which of 3d6 and 4d4 does more damage because she can't do the math. How is this a thing. Don't you learn that poo poo in first grade or something?
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Jan 7, 2015 16:03
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ravenkult posted:How is this a thing. Don't you learn that poo poo in first grade or something? Math can be surprisingly hard for some people, even what seems super simple. It's really not mockable like a bad opinion.
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Jan 7, 2015 16:20
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ravenkult posted:How is this a thing. Don't you learn that poo poo in first grade or something? For all that he said it in the shittiest way possible, and drew the wrong conclusions from it*, it's actually pretty lovely to mock people who aren't as good at math or didn't have the same kinds of opportunities to learn it while growing up. It's just as bad to go from there to, "... and you have no place playing dumb elf games." Seriously, folks should stop getting lovely about this. * As for the wrong conclusions... Dice ranges are worse for people who are bad at math because they aren't functional. It's more useful to know what dice you need to roll, than what value the range tops out at, IMO.
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Jan 7, 2015 17:01
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ravenkult posted:How is this a thing. Don't you learn that poo poo in first grade or something? Depends. Learning multiplication was a third-grade subject in the school I went to, and the rote learning of low-number multiplication was something we practiced in fourth grade, and I remember it as extremely hard to do the rote learning, even though I'd been doing multiplication since grade 1.
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Jan 7, 2015 17:19
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Are those really old Gygax charts in existence because they were written at a time where he could reasonably expect his readers wouldn't be able to find a bag of poyhedrals and may have to make due with sheep teeth or dropping wax into tea?
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Jan 7, 2015 17:25
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I remember the very first time I encountered the xdy notation was playing Might and Magic 6 and I didn't know what the hell it meant. I ended up having to ask Computer Gaming World in an email to their RPG reviewer
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Jan 7, 2015 17:45
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I first ran into it when I bought AD&D: Pool of Radiance for the NES. And "larger than man-sized damage?" Good grief.
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Jan 7, 2015 17:51
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theironjef posted:Are those really old Gygax charts in existence because they were written at a time where he could reasonably expect his readers wouldn't be able to find a bag of poyhedrals and may have to make due with sheep teeth or dropping wax into tea? That seems equally possible as being just one of his idiosyncrasies.
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Jan 7, 2015 18:12
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Plague of Hats posted:Math can be surprisingly hard for some people, even what seems super simple. It's really not mockable like a bad opinion. There's a thing called dyscalculia which is like the math version of dyslexia. I have a netfriend who has it; she's great at geometry and topology, but incredibly bad at all other forms of math. It's a legitimate thing. And even without that, there's plenty of people out there who if you asked them "what's the lowest and highest possible rolls you could get when rolling three six-sided dice" would go "uhhh" or give a wrong answer, even if they graduated from high school. I feel like people would not be making so much fun of this lady's trouble with math were she in a different occupation (and also not friends with a grade A shithead).
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Jan 7, 2015 18:12
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theironjef posted:Are those really old Gygax charts in existence because they were written at a time where he could reasonably expect his readers wouldn't be able to find a bag of poyhedrals and may have to make due with sheep teeth or dropping wax into tea? This is almost definitely the reason. Holmes Basic came with chits instead of dice in some printings due to a dice shortage. https://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/basic.html
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Jan 7, 2015 18:16
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I can tot up the damage from a fireball, and subtract from hit points, but for whatever reason I get flustered as gently caress trying to sort out my to-hit math on the fly. 
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Jan 7, 2015 18:24
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Plague of Hats posted:That seems equally possible as being just one of his idiosyncrasies. Isn't the real answer that nobody had thought of the XdY notation when the early 1st ed stuff was developed? It's not hyper obvious to come up with, even though it's ubiquitous today. That's why it was added in alter books like MM2, where you had that infamous conversion chart. People want to use it because they a) want to connect with 1st ed, and b) are dumb as hell. Especially with things like 12-48, where a reasonable answer would be 12d4, not the 4d10+8 shown in MM2.
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Jan 7, 2015 18:24
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Polyhedral dice weren't readily available until well into the 1980s, and d10s weren't even available until 1982 or so, I believe. Japanese editions of early D&D used a lot of conversion tables so you could do everything with d6s, and most Japanese games today still use d6s primarily or exclusively.
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Jan 7, 2015 18:39
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ravenkult posted:How is this a thing. Don't you learn that poo poo in first grade or something? Well they could get that 3d6 has a higher max damage at 18, but get confused about 4d4 having a higher minimum damage and a different spread. Like, the sum of two 6-sided dice will give you a lot more mid-range values than rolling a fair d12 would. It's not immediately obvious which one is "better".
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Jan 7, 2015 19:26
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Seeing "3-18" and "4-16" written out would honestly be a lot easier for me than 3d6 and 4d4 if I were doing things like calculating damage. Takes me a minute or two to work the former out in my head unless I'm already familiar with the probabilities for that particular dice combination. As long as we're also being clear on what kind of dice are being rolled to arrive at those ranges, I don't see an issue. Most games don't seem terribly interested in even briefly breaking down how the dice math works for people, either. It's just generally not a great idea to assume everyone is as numbers-literate as you are, in the same way as you don't assume that everyone you meet can read and write as well or as fast as you do.
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Jan 7, 2015 19:27
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Adding averages just seems like a good idea. 3d6 (avg 10/11) or 2d8 (avg 9) or whatever.
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Jan 7, 2015 19:34
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S.J. posted:Adding averages just seems like a good idea. 3d6 (avg 10/11) or 2d8 (avg 9) or whatever. Or doing the spread notation with the average included. Ex: 2-7-12 for 2d6, 3-15/16-30 for 3d10, 3-6/7-10 for 1d8+2 Edit: was gonna add 1d8+1d4, but the average is the same as 2d6 though the curve is different. Xelkelvos fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 20:05
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Effectronica posted:Polyhedral dice weren't readily available until well into the 1980s, and d10s weren't even available until 1982 or so, I believe. Japanese editions of early D&D used a lot of conversion tables so you could do everything with d6s, and most Japanese games today still use d6s primarily or exclusively. I remember David Wesley (they Braunstein guy) apparently said that he had tried to talk Gygax & co. out of using polyhedral dice for D&D. They had been able to get them for their wargames basically because they had a rich friend who could afford to mail order a bunch from an educational supply company for like $4 (in early 1970s dollars) per set. Having the single most important game components be very difficult to get at the time did not deter them apparently.
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Jan 7, 2015 20:29
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Xelkelvos posted:Or doing the spread notation with the average included. Ex: 2-7-12 for 2d6, 3-15/16-30 for 3d10, 3-6/7-10 for 1d8+2 1d8+1d4 is more like a plateau than a curve but yeah  5-9 all have the same chances, so it's really not the same, although your X+ or X- values are very similar.
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Jan 7, 2015 20:32
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Especially when you start getting in to higher ranges (for example, high-level D&D), using the xdy notation is way better than saying, "your sneak attack does 6-36 or, with a feat, 6-48 (instead of 6d6, 6d8)" or "your empowered fireball does 15-90. This is also a really weird thing to take too seriously. As an aside, this is absolutely not the place to make fun of or disparage people who struggle with math.
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Jan 7, 2015 21:05
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Bendigeidfran posted:Well they could get that 3d6 has a higher max damage at 18, but get confused about 4d4 having a higher minimum damage and a different spread. Like, the sum of two 6-sided dice will give you a lot more mid-range values than rolling a fair d12 would. It's not immediately obvious which one is "better". I have a friend I've been playing D&D with since high school (we're in ours 30's now) who still thinks that only difference between 2d6 and a 1d12 is that the 2d6 has a higher minimum roll. I tried to explain to him that it will gravitate towards the middle far more often and then he said something about averages and I could feel my desire to keep talking about it fading away. We got pizza instead. What I'm saying is that there are people for whom dice are a mystery, whether it be their range, probability, or whatever.
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Jan 7, 2015 21:22
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Mendrian posted:I have a friend I've been playing D&D with since high school (we're in ours 30's now) who still thinks that only difference between 2d6 and a 1d12 is that the 2d6 has a higher minimum roll. I tried to explain to him that it will gravitate towards the middle far more often and then he said something about averages and I could feel my desire to keep talking about it fading away. We got pizza instead. We still have people ask to open up dice sets so they can roll the d20 a half a dozen times to see whether it's 'good' or not.
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Jan 7, 2015 21:25
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S.J. posted:We still have people ask to open up dice sets so they can roll the d20 a half a dozen times to see whether it's 'good' or not. Well there's your problem. You're rolling out all the 20s, you've got to get the 1s out first so the dice will do better later.
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Jan 7, 2015 21:53
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Making any in-character decisions based on dice probability is a prime example of meta-gaming. It should be avoided.
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Jan 7, 2015 21:57
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