Quote from: Engine;254706I'll happily join you in heresy. I find equations quite useful, in their place, and if we needed to discern the precise relation between two factors within the roleplaying game, I'd gladly go algebraic, but in instances like this thread, I think it's just confusing. Better to go with prose, to describe and question, than to artificially stuff pseudo-math into things. And that's not to denigrate Brian; I think it does help him, so I'll happily join him in pseudomath when he desires, but for my part, I prefer the precision of carefully-worded prose to the elemental compression of X = Y + Mx, which doesn't usefully - to me - describe the reality of roleplaying any better than, "Your result is your modifiers and your die roll."

It doesn't for anyone. It's just a misunderstanding of what math does and how. It'd be one thing if he was using symbolic logic (it'd be strange but mildly relevant), but he just makes this shit up wildly to provide an impression of pseudo-precision. Another example would be when he explicitly redefines what people have said to mean what he wants them to be saying.

This is directly relevant to roleplaying in that Gleichman also has his homebrew Age of Heroes game which is needlessly mechanically complex and which is so because he feels a compulsion to pretend at precision where little is possible.

We should take this as a warning, and follow Aristotle's advice to treat each topic or subject with the precision it deserves, no more or less.