Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Cladogram and Notes

I embark upon a new project and shortly thereafter abandon it to the winds, and collect up some random notes I've taken.

An RPG Cladogram

Someone on G+ made the comparison between the proliferation of retroclones and the many distributions of Linux. Inspired by the GNU/Linux Distribution Timeline, I started one for gaming:
It has a couple of problems: one, it's horribly incomplete, and two, it doesn't handle child nodes born after the parent's death very well at all. I think it's a solid idea, and if anyone wants the sources I can send those along (it's just a csv file), but I think I'll let it go until I can work out the child nodes thing.
There is some precedent for this:

Notes

  • An impromptu mechanic I was proud of: you have a keyring. Each round, you try a key. Roll 1d12 on a 1, it fits. Next round, on a 1-2 it fits. The round after on a 1-3, and so on.
  • A pop-o-matic should be a very fair way of rolling dice. If it isn't though, it might be modelled best as a Markov process.
  • I've been playing Bang! with some people. Our group tends to be small though, so that any weapon will do just as good as another. To fix this, I propose that people can only fire in one direction, like an M. C. Escher staircase.
  • Mr. Sivaranjan comments that it's about a 50% probability to roll under a random ability score. I had thought it would be exactly 50% to roll under an ability score (inclusive), but AnyDice says 52.5%. I'll have to figure that one out when I've got more time. Unsurprisingly, the distribution of wild talents follows an inverse normal curve, shown below.