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Nah, he's right. The math corresponds to his sentence: "The average roll of an exploding die N is equal to the average roll of a regular N-1 die, N-1/N of the time, plus (N plus the average roll of an exploding die N), 1/N of the time." The underlined, expanded, is the whole sentence again...

It was my mistake; I jumped into conclusion that his beef was with the sample size, and not with ENWorld <-> general D&D gamer link. It's just that I had calculated some confidence limits for simple binomial stuff in work, and I guess I was eager to jump in. You know the feeling when once in a...

Still, the poll means that as far as ENWorld goes, majority likely had more than one DM at the table in 1E. Even if that did diddly squat for the population at large, it makes the argument that "1 DM + N completely clueless players about the DMG" was the norm much weaker in this crowd. ENWorld...

I hope they find a way to compromise between play styles. Most of my players are content with just bigger monsters, better abilities, more loot as the levels go past. In essence, they adventure to become better adventures. Reminds me of the Seinfeld joke how people really exercise at the gym to...

Are you aware how sample size affects confidence limits? Sample size of 100 with 75% having two or more DMs means that it's quite improbable that the fraction of groups having 2 or more DMs was small.

For a single dice it's avg(exploding dice) = average(dX)/(1-P(max)) where average(dX) is the average result of the dice used, non-exploding, and P(max) is the probability of throwing the maximum. So, for d6 it's 3,5/(5/6) = 4,2, d8 = 4,5/(7/8) = 5,1428 etc..

Once I had a short running cop campaign in CP2020 (I don't know if it's even possible to have a long CP2020 cop campaign). Anyway, the PC cops storm a suspected drugdealers apartment in chinatown. One of the suspects escapes, slides down fire escape ladder on the outside of the building, and...

Yeah. Another one: The player of the autoshotgun PC in the previous example had (once again) got his PC killed. So rest of the PCs start to recruit for a new member to their black ops team, and arrange a meeting at a bar. The player has made a fresh character, equipped and all, ready to join the...

Hehee :D Once my player had landed into a planet with totalitarian regime in Traveller: The New Era. They also needed some uniforms, so they put a decoy on a road, and waited for a patrol to stop by. Once this happened, one PC jumps up from his hiding place, submachineguns in each hand, and...

One was the designated AD&D DM, another had DMed AD&D before, and nearly all had DMed basic D&D. Post #4k, yay for me! :cool:

In my area nobody took the "DMG is only for DMs" rule seriously. This has a specific reason: most (if not all) people came into D&D with the Red Box, which included both the players' and DMs' guides. Once you had bought the box as a player, what were you going to do? Not read the DMs part? Once...

Dice aren't about getting random numbers; they're about getting high numbers (unless, of course, low is good) :cool:

I was reading Spell Compendium and noticed a nice 9th level spell called Programmed Amnesia. You can basically reprogram a persons outlook on life (alignment, etc..), erase / insert memories. The whole thing. That spell could fix tyrant problems just like that. Saruman is now Lawful Good and...

Still, only a fool would get into the game with "cold" dice. You have to warm them up. My warm-up routine is to roll until you get a couple of good rolls (16-20), or a series of really bad (1-4) (because then the next one will surely be good). Rolling a '20' in warm-up is a risk, and might...

Didn't you write in an old Dragon article that if you modified AD&D rules at all, you were no longer playing AD&D? :confused:

I agree with Storm Raven. The sense of wonder and excitement in playing D&D comes from the encounters and interactions you have within the fantasy world. The stuff that a DM makes up: interesting plots, locales, enemies, friends, traps, treasures, combats etc.. If the exciting thing is "What...

Apology accepted.

18) Elitist grognards

1) Incoherent rules 2) Monster stats 3) Artificial limits/restrictions (my group flat out refused to try 3E until I convinced them that this had been changed) 4) XP tables 5) Unbalanced player options (or, the whole ruleset was unbalanced) 6) Adversial tone 7) XP from treasure 8) Level limits 9)...

That was excellent RBism. Brings a warm smile to any DMs face. I once did a variation of this. The PCs were investigating a series of disappearances in a remote stretch of land with only one village of settlers (they were the ones disappearing). A sneaky Barghest was lairing nearby, and he...