Quote from: Manzanaro;895396Maarzan, I find it curious how so many of your conclusions echo the things that I have been saying earlier in the thread. I just don't feel you have entirely sorted out the implications yet, but you will get there.

You might note that I have never once advocated what you call Schrodinger's GMing by the way.

As far as Bren's position? Let me clue you in. He doesn't have one other than to oppose mine.

This dude argued with me for tens of pages about the definition of simulation and how there was no such thing as a partial simulation, only to completely abandon his own arguments when he realized they didn't actually allow him to claim that I don't operate under principles of simulation.

Not sure if this is some grudge from RPGnet that I forgot about, or he is just an asshole.

I at least give you credit for having a legitimate interest in the topic and actual opinions, and I can see you are actually THINKING about what is being said rather than just offering pure knee jerk responses.

Keep thinking, is my advice.

Are you planning to arrive at something or just discuss semantics and definitions? Because I can't take semantics and definitions to my gaming table and make something productive out of it, neither me nor my players are interested.

Quote from: Maarzan;895386Yes, that means, that when noone wanted to do a dialoque in char and noone bothered to check for events (most probably because those events seemed unlikely enough) the assumption is everything not mentioned in the Player Recognization Sphere (PRS )  didn´t happen and thus all dialogues that would probably have been happening where unspectacular same of old stuff with details below the treshhold of importance visible on this level of abstractions. That doesn´t mean there were no dialoques at all.  

These results are directly visible with everything that is in the spotlight perceived by the player characters. Parallel the GM has to move on his world to stay consistent and living, but what is not in PRS happens offstage with the GM in a sim game using the same methods internally, that would have been used at the desk for situations inside the PRS ( I had for example one evil guy blowing himself up, while preparing some risky, bad surprise to the chars) communaly. This is not directly visible and thus not influenceable to the characters, but may get known and/or influence them later.

Great. I thought I had understood what you were saying. Thanks for confirming.

QuoteSO even if it is not recognizabel at the start it is still a break of trust and will lead to bad blood once its cover blows.

I understand. If the game is not what was agreed, then you have a GM bait-and-switch which can easily lead to bad feelings. And such GM changes tend to be readily recognizable over a relatively short time frame, even when the GM attempts to conceal what they are doing. Some players don't mind a GM doing such things and thus will possibly never mention it, others find it a break in trust and will call it out in one way or another.

And in other non-news, Manzanaro woke up cranky after his nappy because he missed his ba-ba.

Quote from: Manzanaro;895396This dude argued with me for tens of pages about the definition of simulation and how there was no such thing as a partial simulation, only to completely abandon his own arguments when he realized they didn't actually allow him to claim that I don't operate under principles of simulation.

You are so full of shit the stuff drips out your ears and forms a deep stinky pool around your feet.

Quote from: Saurondor;895404Are you planning to arrive at something or just discuss semantics and definitions? Because I can't take semantics and definitions to my gaming table and make something productive out of it, neither me nor my players are interested.

It should be obvious despite his claims to the contrary. Just compare the hundreds of posts he's made in this thread about semantics against the 3 or 4 that talk about anything else of substance and draw your own conclusions.

Quote from: Bren;895423It should be obvious despite his claims to the contrary. Just compare the hundreds of posts he’s made in this thread about semantics against the 3 or 4 that talk about anything else of substance and draw your own conclusions.

Yup, that's exactly the reasoning behind the line of questions I made regarding blackboxing authoring and simulation. He closed that off my saying "unbelievable", and that only comes to show to me that he's got not clear goal in mind. The semantics being more important than any actually functional solution that might address the issue at hand.

Quote from: Saurondor;895433Yup, that's exactly the reasoning behind the line of questions I made regarding blackboxing authoring and simulation. He closed that off my saying "unbelievable", and that only comes to show to me that he's got not clear goal in mind. The semantics being more important than any actually functional solution that might address the issue at hand.

I'm sure he'll be back any moment now to swear at you and call you an idiot for not understanding him. So many posts made and yet so many people who just can't understand with any of them. :rolleyes: Oh the pain!

What do you two care if I arrive at anything of substance? You're both clearly obsessed with me. Sadly for me.

I literally can't drive Bren off, though he swore he was done here.

And is Bren even arguing in good faith? Fuck no. For clear evidence just look at how he responds to Maarzan's discussion of 'Schrodinger GMing' when he had nothing but mockery for my taking the same position a page or so prior.

The guy's entire rhetorical platform is, "Don't agree with Manzanaro no matter what. But don't express disagreement with other people even if they are saying the same things I disagreed with Manzanaro about."

Quote from: Manzanaro;895483What do you two care if I arrive at anything of substance? You're both clearly obsessed with me. Sadly for me.

I literally can't drive Bren off, though he swore he was done here.

Obsessed with you? Hardly so. The topic is interesting and there's been quite some exchange of ideas with members here, just not usually you. I though we had begun to move forward when you presented some concrete examples, but then it all fell back to semantics with you yet not so with others.

Of course you have no exchange of ideas with me Saurondor. Guess why? Because you don't even understand when I have answered your questions. You just repostulate them in some even more incoherent form and ask them again.

"I know you said passing authoring off as the results of simulation is illusionism, but what if nobody can tell the difference? Than it's not, right?"

Two hours and 30 minutes is longer than I expected for Manzanaro's predicted response. He must have been napping, nursing, or working on his aria.

Quote from: Saurondor;895486Obsessed with you? Hardly so. The topic is interesting and there's been quite some exchange of ideas with members here, just not usually you. I though we had begun to move forward when you presented some concrete examples, but then it all fell back to semantics with you yet not so with others.

He's an accomplished troll alright. When controversy involving him dies down, he throws out something that has some interest, like the circus idea. But respond to it and he's back to arguing semantics, shitting, and bitching. After the site went down for the upgrade I forgot to ignore him. Mea culpa! Since I clearly need a reminder, I'll now quote myself.

Quote from: Bren;891750Manzanaro, I'm now done responding to your childish rantings. I've given you way more benefit of the doubt than you deserve but it has become painfully clear that you are exactly the sort of person about whom Heinlein said:

QuoteNever try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.

Anyone who has a greater tolerance for annoyance than I have may continue your singing lessons.

Of course since Manzanaro is a self absorbed maroon, he thinks that not responding to his childish rantings requires not responding to anything anyone else posts in the thread. :rolleyes: What a maroon!

Quote from: Bren;895511Of course since Manzanaro is a self absorbed maroon, he thinks that not responding to his childish rantings requires not responding to anything anyone else posts in the thread. :rolleyes: What a maroon!

Transparent bullshit = transparent bullshit. Everything you say in this thread is a response to me, even when you lack the nerve to respond directly, such as in this post which you pretend is a response to someone else. Keep lying to yourself big guy; do it enough and maybe it will magically come true.

By the way Bren? Those interesting things I occasionally say? They are founded in the premises which you are so quick to submerge in your inconsistent semantic attacks. If you would stop fucking trying to muster up semantic challenges at every fucking turn, I am sure you could start to understand this.

Quote from: Manzanaro;895483The guy's entire rhetorical platform is, "Don't agree with Manzanaro no matter what. But don't express disagreement with other people even if they are saying the same things I disagreed with Manzanaro about."

He doesn't need to agree with you for you to learn and gain insight as to what he has to say. That he has to say it in a way that you agree with is purely your issue to deal with ( preferably in an internal an silent manner).

Quote from: Saurondor;895587He doesn't need to agree with you for you to learn and gain insight as to what he has to say. That he has to say it in a way that you agree with is purely your issue to deal with ( preferably in an internal an silent manner).

And here I thought I was the only one in the thread with a sense of humour.

Quote from: Saurondor;894986You've explained many things regarding the example, but you haven't addressed the player authoring point which is the essence of the question. That has not been addressed by you. Please answer.

I'm pretty sure I've blasted the use of the term "authoring" as it loads in together stuff we might not want players to do with stuff that players necessarily do. It makes the question meaningless. Maybe rephrase it in a way that means something because I have no clue what you're actually asking about.

Regarding the circus idea, DramaScape is having a sale and I happened to see they have Big Top (48 x 30 inch map). Just the thing the PCs will need for their circus. The map also includes Cirque de Tromper, a Savage Worlds Adventure for a modern, pulp, or Horror-themed game.

Quote"Ladies and gentlemen please, this way to the show."

Big Top shows the interior of a giant traveling circus tent with a center ring viewed from front row and bleacher seating. The exterior of the tent shows the ropes attached to tent pegs outside that hold up the big top.

Quote from: Saurondor;895309Yes I agree with you that the individual rolls are providing information and it feels like you get more. Just like keeping track of weapon, shield and armor damage "adds more information", at least on the character sheet. But if the sword is as sharp, the shield as strong and the armor as effective when they are at 100% of their structural capacity as when they're at 1% then it really doesn't affect play until it reaches 0%. Sure, it might affect your projection of the game, but at that point in time it does not affect the game itself (your or your opponents effectiveness), and if you have repair magic as you have healing magic then it only becomes a "projection issue" if it exceeds a certain point in which your magic runs out and that might only trigger an early return to town.

Am I understanding you correctly? Are you really hand-waving away player choice as though you can simply adjust your calculation to new assumptions, but somehow attacks that include change-in-capacity effects can't also be calculated just the same, boiled down to an MTTD?

First, this seems backwards. It's not valid to calculate choice the way you are. Bren says, "What if this?" and your response is, "That's not a problem, we'll just adjust the parameters of the calculation..." except that the calculation cannot be done unless first the choices are known, and the choices may be unknowable until they occur--long after the opportunity to perform your calculation has passed.

Second, what's the big deal with damage to armor and shields not changing game effect until they reach 0%? If my guy has 12 points of damage reduction, 6 from armor, 6 from shield, then you go and do a shit-ton of damage to the shield, which does not diminish in capacity at all until at long last it is finally destroyed, at that point my guy's damage reduction drops from 12 to 6. And again, when you finally damage the armor to the point of destruction, it drops from 6 to zero. How is this fundamentally different--not just a matter of graininess--than losing an armor point every X points of damage?

Third, I have to wonder what you're even trying to argue. Which RPG that touched you in a bad place doesn't have some means of diminishing an opponent's capacity without killing them? What if my cleric begins the fight by casting Hold Person. There's a chance it may not work--you might make your save. If it does, it has a finite duration. We can calculate the MTTD using Hold Person has on the caster. Can't we assume this to be the baseline case and allow failure to do so to be modeled as a reduction in MTTD?

Fourth, how valid is this MTTD in terms of Bren's objections? For example, can you imagine one guy who has substantially lower hit prob and substantially higher damage and another guy who's more towards the middle on both, each having the same MTTD? Let's say one guy has a 90% chance of doing 10 damage, the other guy has a 10% change of doing 90 damage, or whatever the numbers need to be to work out to equal MTTDs for the particular situation. If I'm fighting the 90%/10 guy, I can much more quickly formulate what to expect than I can with the 10%/90 guy. Because the second guy hits less frequently, on average it takes me longer to learn how much damage he does. And once I do find out, after 10 rounds, the first guy is typically going to be a lot closer to having dealt the 90 damage I expected than the second guy is. So when we're trying to learn on the fly and adjust our choices, you can't just boil the whole thing down to MTTD. You're losing information that way. Your calculation may come out tidy and neat and may convince you that you are correct and have an important point here, but it's only because the very basis upon which the calculation is made is voiding out valuable information that would invalidate what you're saying here.

Quote from: Lunamancer;895691How is this fundamentally different--not just a matter of graininess--than losing an armor point every X points of damage?

Runequest included the intermediate steps. Weapons and shields had armor points (AP). The amount of damage that a weapon could block was equal to its AP. A typical medium shield (your basic round shield or heater shield) had 12 AP. So it could parry up to 12 points of damage. If the attacker did more than 12 points of damage, extra damage would reduce the AP of the item. (I forget whether it was 1-for-1 or if there was some formula).

Regarding the opponent with the 10% chance to do 90 points of damage. The first four or five rounds remind me of the "So far, so good" joke.

Quote"An optimist who fell off the roof of the Railway Exchange Building was heard to remark, as he passed the seventh floor on his way down, "So far, so good."