Author Topic: A Study in the Logic of Gaming  (Read 141336 times)

Boyos

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #150 on: July 08, 2009, 12:15:04 AM »
i find most scary about this situation is the pc's have clearly encounterd something like it befor or there the most parinod pc's in the world.

my orignal cleric came face to face with an evil witch monster that was dipping a claw into some liquid. so i asked the dm is the liquid a water base posion? he said yeah. so i purified it causeing his great posion claw crasy woman to suck haha.

Setherick

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #151 on: August 23, 2009, 03:28:48 PM »
There is a perfect gamer logic situation going on in the online game I'm playing that Jon(Hook) is running on RPOL. The game is set in WW2 Germany and we are playing an American Special Forces infiltration team that must investigate a German occult ops camp. We came across two German soldiers fixing a tire on a supply truck and killed the two soldiers. Now a discussion has broken out about how to best use the truck and here is where the gamer logic kicks in. Standard gamer logic dictates that we must take the truck and pose as German soldiers to gain entrance to the camp. BUT given that we are American soldiers and very few of us speak fluent German, the odds of being able to do this are slim. AND YET given this simple fact a good number of the players want to do this plan anyway. My character has instead taken the position we use the truck to get to the camp faster and then abandon the truck and sneak the rest of the way in or use the truck to go in cowboy style guns blazing. Because, honestly, if we tried to sneak into the camp using the truck mass combat would ensue anyway.
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dragonshaos

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #152 on: August 23, 2009, 05:30:07 PM »
Ya but we were gonna pose as prisoners, so only one guy really had to do the talking.  Im not saying the plan is flawless, but it could be alot of fun  =P

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Setherick

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #153 on: August 23, 2009, 05:52:09 PM »
Ya but we were gonna pose as prisoners, so only one guy really had to do the talking.  Im not saying the plan is flawless, but it could be alot of fun  =P

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malyss

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #154 on: August 25, 2009, 08:00:45 AM »
Changing the subject, here's a nice commentary on the logic of a player as pertains to dice. It's written by the Irregular Webcomic guys as a commentary on this Darths and Droids strip.


"One possible superstition about dice, subscribed to by many gamers, is that if a die rolls badly (for some definition of "badly"), then it is obviously "tainted" and cannot be trusted when the chips are really down. There's also the idea that some dice are "hot" or "lucky" and will have a better chance than others of giving you the results you want. If you are lucky enough to possess such a hot die, you must be careful that nobody else ever uses or even touches it, as that will "rub the luck off". Gamers can have many quirks about how they treat their dice.

As pointed out so clearly in this essay on dice superstition, if dice are random, then it doesn't matter if you're superstitious about them. But if they're not... well, you better make sure you do the right thing and treat them properly. No use taking risks now, is there?

Pete, being the highly logical, calculating person he is, rejects all of that as superstitious nonsense. He instead applies the scientific approach. Over the years, he's collected somewhere around a thousand twenty-sided dice. Every so often, he gathers them all together. He sits down at a table and carefully and individually rolls each of the thousand dice, once. Of course, roughly a twentieth of them will roll a one. He takes those fifty-odd dice and rolls them a second time. After about an hour of concentrated dice rolling, he'll end up with around two or three dice that have rolled two ones in a row. He takes those primed dice and places them in special custom-made padded containers where they can't roll around, and carries them to all the games he plays.

Then, when in the most dire circumstances, where a roll of one would be absolutely disastrous, he pulls out the prepared dice. He now has in his hand a die that has rolled two ones in a row. Pete knows the odds of a d20 rolling three ones in a row is a puny one in 8,000. He has effectively pre-rolled the ones out of the die, and can make his crucial roll with confidence. Furthermore, being scientific about it means he knows that it doesn't matter who rolls the die for the third time, so he has no qualms about sharing his primed dice with other players, if that's what it takes to avoid disaster."


Genius. Sheer genius.

malyss

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #155 on: August 25, 2009, 08:31:25 AM »
New example of gamer logic from the game this week:

Possibly cursed weapon. Can't identify its abilities without actually using it. So, give a street kid a silver coin to swing it around a little.

Can anyone say "alignment shift"?

What if that is actually a step towards good for him...

"Well, Jim, normally you would have just slashed the kid yourself, but hey, you gave him a chance - good on you. You are now no longer make pit fiends look like sweet grandmothers."

malyss

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #156 on: August 25, 2009, 02:21:39 PM »
Why, is that what English majors do? I don't know any English majors. Well, I suppose I might and they just won't admit it...

They outrank English captains and don't have to admit shit.

Meh.

malyss

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #157 on: August 25, 2009, 02:34:46 PM »
Scotty always wants to take twenty instead of just rolling.

Chekhov's player is the group's roleplayer and think the accent is "being in character".


I'm enjoying this excerise. Perhaps I need to make a new thread for this sort of thing.

Oooh, Oooh! My turn!

The red shirt is the person who just wants to "try" the system out. Since they don't get the nuances of version 6.9 of the system, they die quickly and never want to play again.

malyss

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #158 on: August 25, 2009, 02:35:41 PM »
Oh, hey, spot the guy who just read this forum for the first time and has a pocket full of pennies with which to provide 2 cents all day long...

ArtfulShrapnel

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #159 on: August 25, 2009, 02:56:08 PM »
I strongly encourage a game where we get really drunk before hand. I have never played a game whilst drunk, and I really want to just once.

I have been playing with rules for FATE to turn it into a drinking game. (Take a box of stress, take a shot) I am however having a hard time coming up with an appropriate setting that wouldn't deteriorate to horribly as people get drunker. DnD is too complex and requires too much in-game thinking, CoC is too serious, etc. I was considering Don't Rest Your Head...

Setherick

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #160 on: August 25, 2009, 05:44:37 PM »
I strongly encourage a game where we get really drunk before hand. I have never played a game whilst drunk, and I really want to just once.

Then again, I had a player that was drunk once it was really annoying.

Lastly, I still think we should hire a prostitute and play D&D with her.

Considering half of your group does not drink, it could be difficult to arrange that. Hell, Ross didn't even drink the champagne during the toasts at our wedding. Jason (and my friend Jessica) drank four bottles though.
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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #161 on: August 28, 2009, 04:16:31 AM »
   The GM for my weekly Shadowrun game has made a unique spin on the campaign and taken a frightening dive into a survival horror scenario.
 
   Unfortunately, I win the "Gamer Logic Fail" prize this week.

 Our party is exploring a high school in a wasteland city. The thing is that this school exists on the physical and astral planes at the same time. Not a soul is in sight and we have no access to augmented reality or the wireless world. In the first classroom we explored words began to appear on a chalkboard: "The sins of the innocent are washed by the blood of the lamb, the sins of the damned washed in fire"

  Later on we enter a room to find the center of the floor suck into the ground creating a bowl-like shape. At the same time it begins to rapidly fill with blood. My companions quickly hurry through to the next room. I decided to dive into the blood pool. I figured that I was going to wash my sins away (assuming that it was obviously a literal note and that this blood was in fact lamb's blood)
 
  Neither was true and I spent the remainder of the session coated with cold pig's blood... hooray me!
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ArtfulShrapnel

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #162 on: September 16, 2009, 03:02:56 PM »
... Pete, being the highly logical, calculating person he is, rejects all of that as superstitious nonsense. He instead applies the scientific approach. Over the years, he's collected somewhere around a thousand twenty-sided dice. Every so often, he gathers them all together. He sits down at a table and carefully and individually rolls each of the thousand dice, once. Of course, roughly a twentieth of them will roll a one. He takes those fifty-odd dice and rolls them a second time. After about an hour of concentrated dice rolling, he'll end up with around two or three dice that have rolled two ones in a row. He takes those primed dice and places them in special custom-made padded containers where they can't roll around, and carries them to all the games he plays.

Then, when in the most dire circumstances, where a roll of one would be absolutely disastrous, he pulls out the prepared dice. He now has in his hand a die that has rolled two ones in a row. Pete knows the odds of a d20 rolling three ones in a row is a puny one in 8,000. He has effectively pre-rolled the ones out of the die, and can make his crucial roll with confidence. Furthermore, being scientific about it means he knows that it doesn't matter who rolls the die for the third time, so he has no qualms about sharing his primed dice with other players, if that's what it takes to avoid disaster."


Genius. Sheer genius.

Except that to get ready for that roll, he has already made thousands of dice rolls. He has been pulling out those dice that rolled two 1's, which means he has not rolled 3 1's in a row yet. It may be a 1:8000 chance, but if he's just rolled 7,999 dice without getting that result.... what's bound to happen?

Add to that the fact that no single dice is truly random. A single extra µl of plastic on one side could weight it slightly towards a certain result. So by gathering the dice that roll 1's more often, he is in fact biasing his rolls TOWARDS 1.


I'll take my animistic-inspired tactics of intimidation and destruction of dice that roll poorly. "Okay frosted white d20. You've rolled 4 1's this session, and nothing above a 4. You need to get your shit together, or I'm going to throw you out onto the highway in front of the shop. Let's give you one more try..."

... It may be completely stupid and illogical, but at least it's a neutral bias at worst, and a selective destruction of poorly weighted dice at best. :)

Also it confuses the townies, who find a decent number of d20s in the drains nearby, ever since other people started "301"ing their sucky dice.

Boyos

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #163 on: September 17, 2009, 12:36:33 AM »
Dice dont scare me.

Marsupials do.

Cause there fast!

xHero

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Re: A Study in the Logic of Gaming
« Reply #164 on: September 17, 2009, 08:38:42 AM »
An unlikely band of adventurers...

We've all heard it before, but why?

I can't find a damned reason for these bastards to care about each other and neither can they. Even when one's head is on the executioners block.

What are some good methods of intriguing these players to group together?
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