What are y'all up to these days?

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I should post a bit of an update on my RuneQuest Thieves Guild campaign.

The session before last night, the PCs accomplished their robbery of Heligor's Jewelry Shop, making off with several valuable pieces, of which the dwarf Thelose pocketed a gold ring with a ruby setting before handing over the rest of the loot. The take not being enough to buy everyone entry into the Thieves Guild, last night they headed down for the docks, an area Vile Traveler's Lucretia is familiar with. Bunch's Grak made friends with a fellow goblin who works on the Dark of the Moon, apparently helping the captain move cargo in the dead of the night. Lucretia made friends with an elf who works on an elf crewed ship. Grak is seeking employment on the Dark of the Moon, hoping to scope out the cargo procedures and figure out a way to make off with some of the cargo.
 
Ahhh the day I will get to game again keeps getting pushed..."new" job and all that; but it does inspire me to feverously create after hours...when not with GF or the kids. :smile: Currently re-polishing up planetary classifications for my sci if game, polishing up aliens as getting Starmaster and re-reading some James White has inspired me (that and working with some organo-metallic chemistry again), and the whole World Anvil thing where can put this all up for player review.
 
In my latest experience of “Yet another TPK reminding me 5E is a POS” I played:


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So I made a party of five, consisting of three casters, a rouge, and a fighter. Since I had minimal casters on previous occasions, I thought making them the majority might help.



I saw problems with the scenario as I looked through it, but never thought the first encounter would be a TPK.



The characters triggered the first trap, a poison dart trap that inflicted the poisoned condition, but the darts didn’t do damage. Weird to me, but whatever, as the characters hit by it made their saves, and were fine.



Oh, the NPC the PCs are pursuing has truesight (is it one word in 5E? Weird), and according to the text that allows it to ignore traps. Big ol’ WTF, but whatever.



When they got to the first encounter they hit the first problem of the module. The titular Beast gets to toss a hunk of stone at the PCs, automatically having initiative on them. I rolled a straight attack roll, and as I type this I realize I forgot the Beast’s Dex bonus, so really just about everyone should have been hit, and gone down. Instead only one was hit, even using the dodge option the encounter allowed, and took enough damage to go down into the water, and one point less than needed for instant death.



So down to 4 PCs.vs 5 Brigands. The party order meant the rogue and fighter managed to bottleneck the brigands, who had no missile weapons. The one caster tried to dodge the stone, so she was out of the first round, and every attempt to cast in combat the brigands made their saves 100% of the time. The other caster had some success with ranged attacks, but then the rouge and fighter went down, the ineffective caster went down to an instant death hit due to damage caused, and the last caster fell.
 
Math help needed. If I roll 3d6, two white and one black, what are the chances that the black die is highest (ties for high doesn't count). My intuition tells me it's still close to 1 in 3 but I dont really know how to account for the chances of being tied for highest.

I'm working on a push for advantage stress mechanic for a 2d6 total rolling system.
 
Math help needed. If I roll 3d6, two white and one black, what are the chances that the black die is highest (ties for high doesn't count). My intuition tells me it's still close to 1 in 3 but I dont really know how to account for the chances of being tied for highest.

I'm working on a push for advantage stress mechanic for a 2d6 total rolling system.
Ugh, don't ask me math questions like that! When I read things like this I find myself unconsciously humming. I'll notice later that it's Nazareth's "Love Hurts" but I've replaced the word "love" with "math". ;p

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So, some dude sent me a Discord PM out-of-the-blue and asked me to run his Star Wars game(s) for him and his group. Seems like a very, very green crowd but they're just excited to play and open to playing a completely non-canonical Star Wars universe-- so I'm down. Basic setup is that it's the third decade of the Clone Wars, the Chancellor is trying to consolidate power-- and basically every crackpot is coming out of the woodwork to try to take his place.

We haven't done the worldbuilding yet, so the only points I'm sticking on for certain are: no midichlorians, no "gray" Jedi/Sith, no Yuuzhan Vong. Jedi can be corrupted, but corrupted Jedi fall sooner or later. Sith can be heroic, but they either die like heroes or they live long enough to see themselves become the villains; Sith cannot sustain a life of peace and order without falling.

Otherwise, we're subject to the same general rules that players can whitelist or blacklist nearly anything they want.
 
Math help needed. If I roll 3d6, two white and one black, what are the chances that the black die is highest (ties for high doesn't count). My intuition tells me it's still close to 1 in 3 but I dont really know how to account for the chances of being tied for highest.

I'm working on a push for advantage stress mechanic for a 2d6 total rolling system.
Out of 216 possible rolls of 3d6, six are triples, and 45 are tied for high. That leaves 165 outcomes that consist of either three distinct numbers or a tie for low. A third of those have the black die high, which is 55. The probability of the black die coming out high is 55/216.
 
Out of 216 possible rolls of 3d6, six are triples, and 45 are tied for high. That leaves 165 outcomes that consist of either three distinct numbers or a tie for low. A third of those have the black die high, which is 55. The probability of the black die coming out high is 55/216.
Ho ho! RPGpub comes through on the maths. That's essentially a 1 in 4 chance, interesting. Thanks ever so much.
 
Hmm. Let me ask a related question. We're talking about a push for advantage system here, one where advantage has to be balanced against the potential risks. So, how bad does that 1 in 4 need to be to keep people honest? Not that I won't be doing my own pondering there, but I'm curious what other people think. The system in question is broadly PbtA and does not contain a particularly detailed system for damage while at the same time being somewhat lethal.
 
Out of 216 possible rolls of 3d6, six are triples, and 45 are tied for high. That leaves 165 outcomes that consist of either three distinct numbers or a tie for low. A third of those have the black die high, which is 55. The probability of the black die coming out high is 55/216.
Ah! There is a simpler way. If the black die comes down n, there (n-1) ways for each white die to come down less than n, and so there are (n-1)² ways for the two white dice to come down both less than n. The sum of the squares from 0² to 5² is 55. So P = 55/216.
 
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"I'm just getting started."

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Fenris-77 Fenris-77 loves to make up systems that don't lend themselves to easy statistical analysis. This one's about par for him.

 
So, some dude sent me a Discord PM out-of-the-blue and asked me to run his Star Wars game(s) for him and his group. Seems like a very, very green crowd but they're just excited to play and open to playing a completely non-canonical Star Wars universe-- so I'm down. Basic setup is that it's the third decade of the Clone Wars, the Chancellor is trying to consolidate power-- and basically every crackpot is coming out of the woodwork to try to take his place.

We haven't done the worldbuilding yet, so the only points I'm sticking on for certain are: no midichlorians, no "gray" Jedi/Sith, no Yuuzhan Vong. Jedi can be corrupted, but corrupted Jedi fall sooner or later. Sith can be heroic, but they either die like heroes or they live long enough to see themselves become the villains; Sith cannot sustain a life of peace and order without falling.

Otherwise, we're subject to the same general rules that players can whitelist or blacklist nearly anything they want.

So, who would have guessed that the guy cold-calling people at random to run their group Star Wars games-- but really wanted a lot of one-on-one time playing the faithful lackey of the real villain-- would have turned out to be a creep? Not this fucking guy!

Anyone else wanna watch me ruin a perfectly good Star War? I've got ideas now.
 
So, who would have guessed that the guy cold-calling people at random to run their group Star Wars games-- but really wanted a lot of one-on-one time playing the faithful lackey of the real villain-- would have turned out to be a creep? Not this fucking guy!

Anyone else wanna watch me ruin a perfectly good Star War? I've got ideas now.
Let me quickly fill a sock full of dead ewoks....
 
An Ewok Sentinel/Berserker. Gonna take Dark Side Marauder as my Berserker archetype. He's a bounty hunter and a shaman and he developed a taste for stormtrooper meat during the War. Clones are going extinct... he's starting to wonder if Mandos have that same flavor.
 
An Ewok Sentinel/Berserker. Gonna take Dark Side Marauder as my Berserker archetype. He's a bounty hunter and a shaman and he developed a taste for stormtrooper meat during the War. Clones are going extinct... he's starting to wonder if Mandos have that same flavor.
Good lord. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to let you loose on the canon? :grin:
 
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