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JMBosch posted:I'm no layout expert, or even particularly good in that area, but if you're just wanting opinions: Thanks for the feedback! I've talked it over with some other folks on Discord and I think I'm going to go with the 2-column tables for the book, but then separately lay out printable condensed playsets using the smaller tables. It's a bit more work, but it's sort of the best-of-both-worlds. And no, I haven't done final copyediting yet - I was still messing with the text up until a few days ago. I think I've already got someone for that, but if that doesn't work out I'll get in touch with you. Thanks for the offer!
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# ? Oct 22, 2021 16:30 |
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# ? May 21, 2024 14:10 |
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Just released my first OSR adventure! Roseate Growth is a mildly anti-capitalist adventure that sees the PCs try to track down what happened to some striking miners, leading them to a gruesome sight on the doorstep of a small, mysterious monastery harboring a piece of a forgotten god. Here's the official pitch: quote:A labor dispute at a valuable mine reveals the horrors that preceded it. The fossils of a little-understood ancient plant, glowing the color of a dragon's fruit, are crushed to a fine powder and diluted into a rare, luxurious, and intoxicating spice with unknown consequences. A monastery of a small but influential religious order harbors a dark secret. A hapless group of adventurers will face the potentially far-reaching implications of these intersecting arcs and decide what will remain hidden and the shape of the conflict to come. It's 35 pages with a map frankenstein'd together from three Dyson Logos maps, and I tried to make it a bit different by codifying adventure outcomes/repercussions that can impact the larger game world if you wish. If that interests you, check it out here: https://atypicalfaux.itch.io/roseate-growth-an-osr-adventure JMBosch fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Dec 17, 2021 |
# ? Dec 17, 2021 03:26 |
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I make content for DriveThruRPG's community content program for Unknown Armies, owned by Atlas Games. Am I allowed to promote here? I know that's kind of a grey area between 'indie dev' and 'corporate product.'
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# ? Mar 1, 2022 01:54 |
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Go ahead, just no spamming. But feel free to make a post, and to respond to anyone who asks questions about it!
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# ? Mar 1, 2022 02:17 |
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Well in that case... I just published a supplement for UA3 called Three Miles of Bad Road. It's Unknown Armies magicks related to roads and travel. I even got some help polishing it up from some goons. New schools, archetypes, and identities, plus a smattering of rituals, artifacts, GMCs, and other stuff for any road-based campaign.
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# ? Mar 1, 2022 04:31 |
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Since this thread says 'shameless self-promotion is good' I figured I should post here as well as the writing workshop thread: I now have something published on itch! It's a little game for playing Dark Souls the only way I have, by reading item descriptions and listening to NPC dialogue compilations. It's called Exiles.
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# ? Mar 1, 2022 23:57 |
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Hey everyone, as I try to wrap up Ariadne and Bob and turn my full attention to the other projects I've got in the pipeline, I am getting into the final layout, playing around with using free art. I need opinions on a couple of options for the textboxes for the layout: Layout Test I need to know a) which of the first two spreads is better? and b) are they better than the basic no-background layout I currently have?
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# ? May 13, 2022 18:53 |
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I think between the first two maybe the first is better, since it groups together info that's connected together. As for whether it's better than no art, that probably comes down more to your taste. One small thing I'm guessing is gonna be fixed anyway: the tiny margin on the left of the left column in the first spread makes it look crowded. Another thing: the gap between the "Fantasy Babble"/"Power Sources" headings and the text above is kinda narrow and makes it a little harder to distinguish the headings as separate from that text (made worse by "Babble" having a capital and 3 ascenders). The basic layout has better spacing there but you could also maybe pull the tables and headings down slightly towards the example box instead.
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# ? May 14, 2022 20:03 |
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UnCO3 posted:I think between the first two maybe the first is better, since it groups together info that's connected together. As for whether it's better than no art, that probably comes down more to your taste. Yeah, that was just me playing around with different ideas. I bet the columns are different widths and it's not symmetrical because I was just eyeballing it. I'm going to redo all the widths properly on master pages in a new file once I have the design and colors worked out. So the margins will all be worked out then. The gaps between the headings and text will take some manual fixing because each playset has a different fancy heading font in all kinds of sizes that I'll need to standardize. Thanks for the feedback!
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# ? May 14, 2022 22:29 |
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Jimbozig posted:Hey everyone, as I try to wrap up Ariadne and Bob and turn my full attention to the other projects I've got in the pipeline, I am getting into the final layout, playing around with using free art. The background without the picture is better, because it's a complex picture that draws the attention, except that you can't actually see it. It doesn't really add anything to your layout, so the plain one is the superior option. I would also look into finding a different heading font; the extremely fancy one you're using is a bad match for Minion as your body text (and in my opinion is generally unattractive). Other advice: be more consistent about the amount of margin and padding you give to your text boxes and the secondary paragraphs of bulleted lists. Also, don't indent the first paragraph of a text box because doing so will cause you to go to a bad place when you die. Consider making the "fantasy babble" and "power source helper table" boxes the same size and stretching the "example" text box to go underneath both of them, for a pleasing symmetry.
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# ? May 18, 2022 19:17 |
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Thanks for the tips! The overall idea with the background images is to have a splash page with the image and just a title so you see the full thing, then it sits in the background for the rest of the section (1 to 3 more spreads). Which means I narrowed the area where text could go to make a bit more of it visible (not much point even having a bg image if it's only visible in the gutter for the printed version). More of it might be visible on other spreads as well---that spread is pretty full. I'm looking at other sources for the art, but because my remaining budget is essentially $0, it's tough to find images of sufficient quality to be a full spread that are landscape orientation and match up with the various genres I have playsets for. (Time Loop in particular is giving me a hard time.)
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# ? May 19, 2022 01:21 |
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Hey everyone, I have a bit of a broad question, if anyone would be able to help me: What are the current average rates people charge when writing for role-playing games? I suspect the answers are a bit all over the place, and too low in general, but if anyone had any first-hand experience, links, or anecdotal evidence about what indie projects or companies like Evil Hat tend to pay their writers I'd love to hear them. To be transparent, I'm coming at this from the perspective of a writer myself. I'm trying to get a sense for what is considered 'reasonable' when I'm asked what my rate is, and what to evaluate as a good deal when pitched by someone else (in relation to industry 'standards', for what that's worth in a disparate field like tabletop rpgs).
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# ? Oct 7, 2022 14:48 |
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Melusine posted:Hey everyone, I have a bit of a broad question, if anyone would be able to help me: What are the current average rates people charge when writing for role-playing games? A not insignificant number of indie publishers will abide by the $0.10/word minimum, but certainly not all, and some will occasionally pay better. But most of the big publishers will ignore you for asking even for that low of a rate, though a few are occasionally better. (I've heard Modiphius paying anywhere from $0.03 to $0.13 a word.) Smaller publishers definitely tend to pay better on average. If you're an established writer of some other kind, trying to break into TTRPG writing, I'd go hard for $0.10/word to start. If you don't really have much/any writing experience or struggle to get any work after several months of trying, maybe consider $0.06-$0.09/word just to get your foot in the door, then leverage what you get to work on to bump up to $0.10/word as soon as you can. I wouldn't support any nonsense paying you $0.05/word or less.
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# ? Oct 7, 2022 15:31 |
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Sandy Pug Games pays at least 12.5/word and usually shoots for 15, along with most of the folks I interact with on twitter. I'm aware that plenty of folks are happy to undercut that but as much as possible we're pushing for that 15c to be the new standard these days. Most indies I interact with shoot for a 10-15c rate where possible, and a lot of folks are more open to profit sharing and skill sharing arrangements to supplement that these days. Last week one of the Big Dramas on TTRPG Twitter was over a 1c/word rate that made everyone very upset and a lot of folks were posting their rates, probably worth checking out the QRTs and replies for some publishers and creatives thoughts on it if you can track it down/if someone else in thread has a link?
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# ? Oct 7, 2022 17:50 |
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Are there still a bunch of Pathfinder TPPs producing shovelware for less than 1c/word? That was always the premier "love of the game self-sabotage" to me.
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# ? Oct 7, 2022 19:12 |
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Glad to see the pressure is shifting toward $0.15/word, despite all the naysayers who screamed endlessly that freelancers trying to unify around even $0.10/word would somehow be the death knell of the industry.
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# ? Oct 7, 2022 22:33 |
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I paid my writers .20 for Red Rook Revolt
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# ? Oct 8, 2022 21:55 |
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In the spirit of the thread title, I'll mention that I'm testing the waters with my first RPG playtest rules! VERSE is an adventuring and exploration game where players are bizarre characters from across the multiverse that get merged together into peculiar combinations. They form a motley crew that levels up by blending the identities of new creatures from differing realities into theirs, gaining new classes instead of new levels. I used games like Cairn, Knave, and Trophy as the starting point for crafting the rules systems. It's a first shot, so it's definitely rough in places. But I’m always open to feedback if you take a look.
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# ? Nov 26, 2022 16:52 |
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I have looked! I love the concept, first of all. I think 'gain new classes instead of levels' is a great twist. That said, I struggle to read the rules. There doesn't seem to be any order to where different bits are located, and there's so little whitespace my eyes just slide off the text, which combine to make reading it really hard work. If I was going to re-lay it I'd allow myself two double-sided sheets, one for 'slow rules' like exploration and character gen, and one for 'fast rules' like combat, with the idea that you only ever need to be focusing on one of them at a time.
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# ? Nov 26, 2022 19:59 |
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Solid feedback, thanks! The rules are split up into the Player Sheet and GM Sheet, so theoretically each side only needs to look at one reference sheet each to run the game (besides NPCs, spell/loot tables, etc.). But trying to lay out the sheets was a bit of a nightmare, as you can probably tell from how dense they are, and the final arrangement mostly fell down to where stuff could fit. So I can definitely understand them being confusing to learn the game from. Like the Tomb of the Serpent Kings adaptation, it was also a bit of an experiment as to how complex I could make the system without needing to add more pages. When I lay it out in more of a zine format for readability/teaching, I'll see if I can retool the reference sheets too. It will also help that I'll then be able to move the full explanation of procedures to the booklet, letting me cut down the word count on the reference sheets so they can just be, ya know, references.
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# ? Nov 27, 2022 05:08 |
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potatocubed posted:I have looked! So if the concept interested you but the dense reference sheets hurt your eyes, you'd be rewarded by taking another look and downloading the new files.
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# ? Dec 16, 2022 03:11 |
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I've had a very hard time standardizing rates for mapping. Because it might be a simple map that takes me a few hours, or it might be a two page spread of Mosul circa 2016 that I have to dig map data out of UN reports on the wayback machine for. So if anyone has advice on that route, let me know. I guess it should be closer to 'art' rates but who knows.
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# ? Dec 16, 2022 03:37 |
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Elendil004 posted:I've had a very hard time standardizing rates for mapping. Because it might be a simple map that takes me a few hours, or it might be a two page spread of Mosul circa 2016 that I have to dig map data out of UN reports on the wayback machine for. So if anyone has advice on that route, let me know. I guess it should be closer to 'art' rates but who knows. Hours spent is a good starting point. Some people won't get it no matter how much you explain it; some people might decide to reduce their costs by finding certain map data for you. A lot of art is priced at the intersection of Hourly Rate Street and Regulating Demand Via Price Avenue.
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# ? Dec 16, 2022 04:09 |
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homullus posted:Hours spent is a good starting point. Some people won't get it no matter how much you explain it; some people might decide to reduce their costs by finding certain map data for you. A lot of art is priced at the intersection of Hourly Rate Street and Regulating Demand Via Price Avenue. That can be tough to tell too but that's not a bad idea. Sometimes I think I should charge for excess revisions but usually it results in a better map so.
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# ? Dec 16, 2022 04:21 |
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Actually since shameless self promotion is part of the thread, here's the centerpiece 2-page spread of Mosul. The gutter works pretty well in print, not perfect though. Here's a map of intelligence agencies and groups the players can take advantage of. It was...interesting, trying to come up with an accurate Kurdistan. The astute among you might notice that I shifted Jerusalem slightly west because on another map it needed room to breathe. Surely not a contentious decision.
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# ? Dec 16, 2022 04:34 |
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Do you have stats for PissPig?
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# ? Dec 16, 2022 04:44 |
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Performing thread necromancy to post my new one-page game about antifa undead: Skeleton Justice Warriors It's a hack of Lasers & Feelings. My one regret is being too restrained in channeling da share z0ne.
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# ? Jul 22, 2023 22:29 |
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I will singlehandedly keep this thread alive if I have to! I'll be doing my first RPG crowdfunding campaign through February to fund a print run of The Stone-Flesh Gift, a new living ship module for the sci-fi horror RPG Mothership. The campaign is part of both Zine Month 2024 and Crowdfundr's Tabletop Nonstop spotlight. The players will wade through the innards of a living, alien ship called the Gift as they work to avoid its dangers, discover its secrets, and plug their brains directly into its organs to feel their thoughts. You can subscribe now (at the top of the page) to be notified when it goes live! A silhouette blocks the starlight, darker than the space it drifts through. You would never have noticed it without a local density scan. When dappled in light from the closest sun, the remnants of indiscernible petroglyphs can be seen carved across its hull, hewn from a single black stone harder than steel. The ship has no comms, no transponder, just a pulsating thump reverberating within a membrane that runs through the stone like a vein of ore. A pinkish docking umbilical gently dances as it’s pulled behind the vessel, stretching toward anything that approaches, looking to touch, to connect. The book is already done, save for a few tweaks to make after reviewing the printed proof copies, so the turnaround time to get your copy in your hands should be really quick! The book contains:
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# ? Jan 2, 2024 17:57 |
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Seeing as it's officially Zine Month, The Stone-Flesh Gift's crowdfunding campaign is now live: https://crowdfundr.com/stonefleshgift?ref=cr_2D6T5a
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# ? Feb 1, 2024 15:40 |
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I've been working on several designs since Heckin Hounds is finally available for sale, the furthest along of which is "Oops, All Bangers!" It's a mixtape making game where you request songs from your friends to help fill your mixtape. Think apples to apples with a gamey card drafting twist. It's playtesting really really well, and I'm nailing down the rules and balancing the final scoring mechanisms. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZYK3zJTQGeFTKyMUP09XNWXMNCOosSHNZ30vhXjAx44/edit#heading=h.pz8v3b624gs3
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# ? Feb 7, 2024 20:30 |
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Absolute newbie question, but where should I go to program a dice roller (5d6 v 5d6 out of pools of 10-20d6, counting 5s and 6s and removing 1s from either pool, until either pool reaches 5 or below) to playtest the base mechanics of a game? I'm pretty solid on that base rolling system, and have caveats for characters beyond the base, but rolling both sides 1000 times and documenting the results seems like the kind of thing AI was designed to do.
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# ? Feb 8, 2024 19:24 |
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I do online dice rolling using orokos.com but I don't know if you can do specifically your setup. It's pretty flexible, but the main feature is that dice rolls are logged and you don't need the logging I assume. If you knew python it'd be a fairly easy thing to write. You could do it in excel or google sheets, if you're willing to learn how to use cell functions to get the filtered results you want but leaving that aside, what is that rather complicated dice mechanic supposed to actually accomplish? It seems likely to me at first glance that there's a simpler way to get the same probability curve. Roll 10 to 20 d6, then remove all the 1s then each player takes turns counting fives and sixes (why did you remove the ones?) until... yeah I've lost what you're trying to say to do here if you elaborate a bit I could probably set it up in a google sheet for you to look at e. here's Orokos' dice roller help which is a popup so I can't link to it, the syntax is pretty straightforward and it has a lot of options: quote:Dice Roller Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Feb 8, 2024 |
# ? Feb 8, 2024 19:49 |
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Inkspot posted:Absolute newbie question, but where should I go to program a dice roller (5d6 v 5d6 out of pools of 10-20d6, counting 5s and 6s and removing 1s from either pool, until either pool reaches 5 or below) to playtest the base mechanics of a game? I'm pretty solid on that base rolling system, and have caveats for characters beyond the base, but rolling both sides 1000 times and documenting the results seems like the kind of thing AI was designed to do. Anydice will show you a probability distribution. I think there’s a way to get it to produce ‘Monte Carlo’ results but I’ve never done it, you’d have to look at the documentation
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# ? Feb 8, 2024 20:47 |
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Unfortunately, I don't know Python, but that was the first thing that popped up when I searched for modifying dice rolls. As I'm not a programmer, I came here. --- Each player (of 2) chooses a character. Each player rolls 5d6 v 5d6. Any modularity beyond that (which is where choosing specific characters comes in) is gravy. Each character starts with 10-20d6 (depending on desired length of game), rolling 5d6 at a time (with some characters rolling 4d6 or 6d6), until either player gets down to a pool of 5d6 or fewer. There is a Withdraw/Posture aspect that I want to include but I'm focusing on baby steps at the moment. Each 1 (or 2 depending on the character) subtracts a die from the players' initial pool of 10-20. Each 5 or 6 a player rolls that can't be matched with a 5 or 6 rolled by an opponent, is assigned as a mark against their opponent. --- Each character has a slightly different set of rules. One hits on a 4-5-6, or takes damage from 6's only, or is able to turn 3-4's into rerolls. Things that could theoretically be tested by playtesting, but potentially accomplished faster by "playtesting" via AI.
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# ? Feb 8, 2024 21:30 |
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OK so I'm just gonna clarify slightly more, and then see what I can put together because doing this is more interesting than working lol Each player A and B has a starting number of dice. Let's call this DA and DB. It doesn't actually matter that it's dice, it's just a counter. Each "round" both players will roll Xd6. Player A rolls XAd6 and Player B rolls XBd6. We need these values before we run the program. Each resulting die that is value Y or lower, reduces D by 1. Y is usually 1 or 2. Players can have different Y values from each other, so we also store this as YA and YB before we run the program. Each resulting die that is Z or higher is accumulated (that is, added to) by a variable, RA for player A and RB for player B. Z is usually 5 or 6, and can be different values for each player, so we store this as ZA and ZB and set those values before we run the program. Subtract RA from RB. If the result is nonzero: if the result is a negative number, subtract the absolute value of the result from DB, if the result is a positive number, subtract the value from DA. If the result is zero, do nothing. Now check both player's D values. If either or both of D is less than or equal to 5, the match is over. If it is not, begin a new round. (At the beginning of each round, reset RA and RB to zero.) Starting values of DA, DB, XA, XB, YA, YB, ZA, ZB can all be changed independently as starting conditions. The above is like 90% of the way to a python script, or a script in any other scripting language you care to get. You need to add a randomizer function, store values and return them, display those values, etc. and then build an output that stores results, and then let it run for a few tens of thousands of iterations which will probably take a modern computer like... five seconds, and then dump the results into some charting software. I am not totally sure I can do this in excel but I may take a stab at it. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Feb 8, 2024 |
# ? Feb 8, 2024 21:56 |
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Any Dice is pretty good for doing probability estimations. https://anydice.com/
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# ? Feb 8, 2024 22:11 |
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ok I used an AI to get started and then modified the code to fix all the bugs and misunderstandings. I don't actually know python, but I've edited enough of other people's random code to figure it out. This works. I don't know how to get the output into a file, but it works to get the result of individual matches. code:
Here's an example output with the above values: code:
My intuition is that you can get very similar curves with much less complexity but the complexity gives you many different places to tweak numbers and that's where I guess the "game" lies. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Feb 8, 2024 |
# ? Feb 8, 2024 22:17 |
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OK so it occurs to me that I can just wrap the middle part of the script in another While statement, with another variable of "matches" - tell it to run a thousand times, output only the match results (which numbers do you care about? Just win/loss, or by how much, or how many rounds it took to get to a result, etc?) and then print that out at the end. Dump those numbers into a spreadsheet to get a chart if you want a chart.
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# ? Feb 8, 2024 22:29 |
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Yup ok. Change the value of M to decide how many matches to run. I commented out the verbose messages but you can remove the # to keep them. You need to edit the value of DA and DB in two places now, both at the bottom and on lines 10/11, because I don't know how to write python lol. code:
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# ? Feb 8, 2024 23:00 |
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# ? May 21, 2024 14:10 |
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Ha ha! That is way more effort than I expected anyone to go to and I appreciate the crap out it! Might as well give you more information... It's a monster wrestling game I'm tentatively calling Wrestlevania. Each player starts with 20 dice. They roll 5d6 at each other simultaneously. 1s are removed, reducing each players' pools. 5s and 6s count as hits, but only if they are unmatched by the other player. So if Player A starts with 20 and rolls 1-1-3-5-6 and Player B rolls 2-3-4-4-6, Player A is down to 18 dice and Player B is still at 20 but takes one hit. That part is fairly simple. Just rolling dice at each other is way more fun that it probably should be. Then it gets a bit more complicated. Different monsters have different abilities. Frankenstein('s Monster) rolls 6d6 and deals damage on 4-5-6 but only takes damage on 6s. He's a big dude and can take more damage but he burns through his stamina quicker. El Chupacabros roll 4d6, dealing damage on 5-6, but taking damage on 4-5-6. Smaller dudes, and there's two of them, so they can theoretically last longer even if it's easier to hit one of them. Lots of similar mechanics for different monsters. Invisible Man's harder to dodge, The Mummy curses you to reroll, Jekyll/Hyde are reversed so they lose 6s and hit with 1s, etc, etc. I haven't completely figured out the final round yet. Once one or both players take a certain number of hits (Probably 5-7) or get down to or below a certain number of dice (Probably 5). This might involve a whole separate phase of its own, or just be a complete free-for-all where everyone rolls the die they have left once one or both of the qualifications are met. Still not sure. This is my first time even attempting something like this and I think it's going well but it was suggested I plug numbers into a roller and get results for a ton of games faster than I can sit and roll them myself. And that's before I start adding weirdo monster rules and the ability to catch your breath and remove hits while your opponent plays to the crowd and earns rerolls. It's technically PVP but you're still trying to put on a good show. The whole thing is only supposed to take 10-15 minutes to play best of three (unless you really get into narrating werewolves leaping from the turnbuckles) and I'm hoping to fit all the components including rulebook and a minicomic inside a VHS clamshell to help sell the vintage feel. Maybe it even doubles as the ring you roll in. Trying not to let the superfluous aesthetic ideas interfere with the development of the game itself. Inkspot fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Feb 9, 2024 |
# ? Feb 9, 2024 01:29 |