Here's an interesting perceptual issue in terms of table top RPG's.

If you try and do diplomacy with someone in table top play, and the GM says you can't do a roll, is that him altering the mechanics of the game? Or do the mechanics say he gets to determine if a roll is involved?

Frankly from RPG texts I've always read the latter. But D7 says it's the former.

Roll to dodge writers block

I made up that draft of a browser mmorpg (written in game maker), but

A: It's not that attractive to look at and far more importantly

B: Trying to impliment it into what I know of browser coding right now would exceed the VITAL effort to reward ratio.


Basically the effort to reward ratio is where alot of burn out or writers block comes in. It basically means trying to put in more effort than you have a certain feeling you will be rewareded for it. Maybe you think all the coding will turn out awesome - but at a certain point during it you feel the effort building up and you haven't had any actual fun out of it yet. That makes the coding a chore or even downright repulsive and it burns you out.

I like my draft, but I'm going to instead take a simple random element and see if I can get that to show up in the code from the tutorial I followed. Then I'll see if I can get that random element to go to the database. Then I'm going to work in a cash in your chips won so far or keep gambling them for the chance of winning ten times as many chips, mechanism.

I could post the draft - it's ugly to look at, but fun to play (kind of when you bake a cake that looks ugly but is yummy to eat). Comment if you want to see it! But I doubt anyone will commnet... :( ...so I'll not doubt continue with my plan not to post it.

I was looking at this post on RPG net...

As I understand it, Insanity isn't actually balanced with the game's challenge model in mind - it simply cranks all the numbers way, way up in order to cater to the masochists, regardless of whether doing so breaks anything.

 The short, clipped responce RPG netters don't want to hear (so I'm posting it here)? If someone can finish the game, it's not broken. It's just that your not good enough to do it.

Caveat: If you have to load and save every five seconds, that makes it sucky gameplay IMO. But it's not broken.

Sirlin; who doesn't censor posts - he just enables others to do that

I was idling through Sirlins main page.

I would like to respond to the articles. It's funny - from what history I understood on his forums a guy under the handle 'final slayer' started making alot of heated posts.

Now Sirlin likes to talk about freedom of speach and letting him do that, even though he thought final slayer was driving off constructive forum posters.

So what does Sirlin institute on the forum? Post rankings - and get enough of a negative post, and by default people don't see it. And they see the rating people give it as a negative.

I'm not sure what idea of freedom of speach he has - as long as he's only enabling a mob to censor peoples words, he's fine with enabling them to do that? Perhaps he's got a 'It's the mob doing it, not me' mentality over it, even as he handed them the tools to do that.

Censorship by proxy is still censorship.

If you've read my posts and take me to be a somewhat productive poster, then he's driven me away. Getting past a bunch of people with their own personal agendas, none of which are required to have anything to do with freedom of speach, all able to evaporate my post. Why the f' would I bother thinking out, drafting then posting for that crap?

It's just forum vigilantism - Sirlin enabled that and as much as I found final slayer a dick head, I found I could avoid him. Sirlins new forum set up? Unavoidable.

But hey, I'm sure everyone who was driven away is just a completely non productive poster. All of them - there's no way you could be wrong in that. Hell, if anyone tried to argue you were, their post would evaporate.

Logged in - but as what? Free will or machine?

On mmocrunch, cmagoun posted this article, which quoted me.

It's a question on risk - cmagoun started using a different definition of risk. I'll use it in the sense of it meaning chance of danger.

Now, what happens if you think there's danger in say, crossing a section of eve space, or even crossing a zone in PVP world of warcraft? But even though you think there's danger, all the gankers are actually on bio break, or they are asleep, or their girlfriend got frisky (okay, I guess the GF part is pretty unrealistic...hehe).

Well, did you face a risk?

Perhaps in some sort of butterfly effect, chaos theory way you did? Because all the real world factors, including the players own will and deciding if they log in, that might determine whether they are on at the moment you cross that sector. And facing all that, that counts as risk, right?

I might actually agree with that, except for the human will part.

I mean, if you start treating a persons decision to log in (or not log in) not as a human choice, but simply as a statistical obstacle to overcome...well, is this how social connection between people works?

That's starting to treat someone like a vending machine - like calculating the odds of them vending a certain result then fist pumping the air if the 'logged out' result is vended.

I prefer to think of peoples free will as a sort of gentle mystery - and thus it's not at all facing risk to face whether they are logged on or not. That's simply human choice.

Now I grant, it's totally possible to treat people as a type of vending machine - there is nothing that says one has to always just paint peoples free will as a mystery. You can instead treat it as a biomechanical machine - just a pile of drifting, wet, carbon based mud. Sometimes you have to cut the crap and see the truth of 'humanity' underneath. BUT NOT FOR A GAME! Surely? For just a freaking risk thrill? Surely not?

Treating someones free will as just a set of statistical odds is treating that person as a machine (and oh, there's truth in that, but lets not get into that truth simply for a mmorpgs sake, surely?).

And if you don't treat their free will as a set of statistical odds, it's simply not risk taking to face off whether they are logged in or on bio break. No risk taking is happening.





For more on the idea of free will, see my other post.