Search results

And I'm pointing out that software is judged subjectively too, and the approach works pretty well there. There's no One True Way to write an operating system, a compiler, a shell, or a text editor. Just like there's no One True Game.

I think we fundamentally disagree here. Lots of people I have worked with on open source project did not do so as a means to any end other than satisfying their desire for software that does X. As I pointed out above, my job is to write open source software, and I'm only one of a large number...

This represents a total miscomprehension of how open source works. A lot of people around here seem to be of the impression that it's just "everyone adds their improvements to one big pool." But that's not how it works. There are distinct projects, with their own design goals. They usually...

I think you draw a false dichotomy here. Plenty of open source projects have exactly the problem you describe. The project I work on has strict review requirements before random people can add stuff to the codebase, to make sure it is consistent with the goals of OUR project. If you don't...

I don't think that's necessarily true. For example, I am paid full-time to write software that is given away for free. Not just for free, but under the least restrictive of open source licenses. The only requirement is that others using it have to give attribution (BSD license, for those in...

I think Paizo's relative success (i.e. lack of high-volume torrents) has a lot to do with how well they instill a sense of customer loyalty. Their subscription plans give people a feeling of getting an awesome deal, what with the free PDF and across-the-board discount. Overall, I think they're...

This is not true. Deep packet inspection can only detect stuff flowing through a particular router. It can't be done at the endpoints, but rather "in the middle" of the network. Unless WotC suddenly owns a large percentage of the internet infrastructure, they have no way of doing DPI on it.

I purchased Savage Worlds and Shaintar, which I've heard good things about as a lighter-but-still-tactical system for fantasy games. I'm also considering picking up True20. I'll also be getting the Dragons Revisited PDF once it's posted. Plus, my newest Paizo AP issue just arrived!

What really pisses me off are the "classic" products that are being pulled. I'm a big fan of a lot of the old 2e settings, and have been slowly accumulating PDF of them on Paizo's store. WotC doesn't sell these in hard copy, and hasn't in a very long time. The only options are "buy the PDF"...

Yes. Definitely.

To start, I don't accept you definition of random. What you're talking about is determinism vs. non-determinism. From an information theoretic perspective, a string of bits is random if the string is shorter than the shortest possible Turing machine that can produce those bits. In short, a...

A lot of the posts in this thread are only contrasting opposite extremes of hi-fi-worldbuilding vs. no-worldbuilding. In reality, I think there's a spectrum. I know that my own practice is what I would refer to as "light worldbuilding." I sketch the relevant political subdivisions of my...

It doesn't. Every die and throwing style has minute biases, though they're small enough to be practically unexploitable, just like the imperfections in algorithmic PRNGs. ;-)

*applauds*

I'm not sure one can define a "good system" in the abstract. A good system is one that supports the game I want to run/play, whatever that may be at the moment. Sometimes that means quirky, weird systems for quirky weird games. Sometimes that means rules lite systems for cinematic games...

No, I'm refuting the false claim you made about how supposedly bad algorithmic PRNGs are. You are, of course, correct that they're deterministic, but your above quote is gross misrepresentation of their quality. This is pretty much irrelevant. I'm not aware of any programming languages...

Speaking as a computer scientist and cryptographer, that's bogus. Pseudo-random number generators are MUCH more sophisticated than that, generally built out of mathematically-studied recurrence relations that have demonstrably extremely low correlations between subsequent terms, or out of...

My group runs the Pathfinder APs (3.5e) against Pathfinder-rules characters, and it pretty much Just Works(tm) without any conversion, except a few skill consolidations that are easy to do on the fly. The characters are slightly more powerful vs. the competition, but the APs are fairly tough to...

This is exactly how I always saw it. To me, fighting the good fight even when it's impossible to win (and the heroes KNOW they can't win) seems much more meaningful than another the-good-guys-save-the-day story.

Wow. Just... wow. Glad to know that you might come murder me out of the blue for something sister (or cousins, or great-grandfather, or ...) did. --------- I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but I can't sit here and not say it. This is the most morally repugnant, sickening, and...