The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

[payn]

I shall sincerely endeavor to be a better person.

So...So...So tempting...

 

[Umbran]

I shall sincerely endeavor to be a better person.

And, of course, it isn't you, in particular. It is a general you - posters broadly shouldn't be using it to mock folks. We have on an occasion or two marked a habit and had to have a discussion with the poster about it.

 

[J.Quondam]

I wonder how many One True Ways there are.

 

[Cadence]

Couldn't help myself.

 

[Umbran]

I wonder how many One True Ways there are.

One million.

The one million and first is Badwrongfun.

 

[payn]

I wonder how many One True Ways there are.

Just one. Mine.

 

[J.Quondam]

Strange. I was certain it was closer to 4,112.

 

[Gradine]

Clearly it's 1337

 

[darjr]

Zero!

even mine is crap!

 

[CleverNickName]

I wonder how many One True Ways there are.

Let's find out.

1. Raw Mathematical Analysis

Well, there are 212,919 words in the 5E Player's Handbook. (This is down from 335,041 words in 3.5E PHB, and slightly more than 202,695 words in the 4E PHB.)[1] Since about 40% of these words are polysemic (having multiple definitions, meanings, or interpretations),[2] with the average number of definitions being approximated at 7.8 senses per noun and 12.0 per verb[3], the number of One True Ways can be approximated as follows:

40% of 212,919 = 85,168
Average(7.8, 12.0) = 9.9 (since not all words are going to be nouns or verbs, we take the average)
Total interpretations possible = (212,919)+(85,168)^9.9
Total One True Ways = 6,452,631,195,230,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

It's a large number indeed, but it's still nowhere near infinite (since infinity doesn't exist).

2. Practical Limit (Considering Boundary Conditions)

The raw mathematical analysis ignores certain boundary conditions...particularly, the number of players and the amount of time required to play.

There are currently 7.9 billion people on Earth at this very minute[4]. Each person is capable of playing the game differently from the next person, since the raw mathematical analysis (above) indicates there is plenty of "room" for this to happen.

Most gaming sessions are between 2 and 5 hours long; let's assume the lowest value since it will return the highest result. D&D 5E was released on August 19, 2014...or 2,785 days ago (counting today).

With 2-hour gaming sessions, each day has the potential of having up to 12 gaming sessions per person on earth:

(number of games per day)(number of days)(population of earth) = (12)(2,785)(7,900,000,000) = 264,018,000,000,000.

So even if everyone on earth played 5E D&D, and had played it constantly for every day since its release, and nobody never played the same way twice, there would be "only" 264 trillion versions to date.

CONCLUSION:
While there are more than 6.4E48 One True Ways to play 5E D&D, fewer than 264 trillion One True Ways have ever been tried. (That's a half a drop of water out of the entire Pacific Ocean.)