Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Random Movement

I have a little problem. (Emphasize: little!) I tried to reproduce what happened with all the Zombies. They suddenly seem a lot closer than before, which makes them look bigger, uglier and more dangerous. (And the smell, the SMELL!)

Anyways, when I traced the steps Yoda took when he shambled them the second time, I realized that he used DICE3 in the GNDT to determine the direction of the Infestors random movement. Which is ok, because the infestor was in the rightmost column. But I could not find anything that told me how he mapped the result of the DICE3 to a given direction. He obviously did use the scheme that 1 points upwards and then going around the clock, as would I have, but not writing it down makes this a little arbitrary. And open to schemes.

I do not believe that Yoda did do any scheme, mind you, but I was wondering about the possibility. I would suggest an amendment to the rules gouverning this (“Numbers and Variables”, second to last item), but I feel I would make a mistake in formulating the Proposal and thus would fail utterly. :-) Any comments, ideas?

posted by mideg at 21 Jun 2011 08:07:45 UTC Comments (7)

Comments

mideg:

21-06-2011 08:25:51 UTC

Ping for emailnotification.

Yoda:

21-06-2011 15:02:58 UTC

Sorry for the confusion.  Yes, I used 1 for up, 2 for left, and 3 for down.  I’m pretty sure that we’ve just always used the honor system when dealing with directional rolls, but if we need to include a definition or something in the appendix, I don’t see anything wrong with it.  The only problem would be that it’s hard to come up with something that’s generic enough but still useful.

mideg:

21-06-2011 15:32:44 UTC

I would propose something like “If a number or other game variable is selected ‘at random’ or ‘randomly’ from a range of possible values, its value shall always be taken from a uniform probability distribution over the entire range of possible values, unless otherwise specified. The value has to be selected using the DICE-mechanism of the GNDT while explaining how the DICE’s result is to be interpreted.”

scshunt:

21-06-2011 21:47:39 UTC

The bit about uniform probability distribution should be dropped if we also specify using DICE; especially if GNDT is not truly uniform.

Yoda:

21-06-2011 23:21:34 UTC

coppro: The uniformly distributed part is to prevent someone saying something to the effect of “1-20 is up, 21 is down, 22 is left”.

aguydude:

22-06-2011 00:19:55 UTC

That still leaves the question of what direction means what.  E.g., should positions be left to right, top to bottom? Should they be clockwise?

mideg:

22-06-2011 08:31:11 UTC

It is only necessary that the person using the DICE-command specifies his mapping of the DICE’s result to explicit outcome before seeing the result, e.g. “Infestor movement, 1 is up, clockwise, DICE4”.