• 0 Posts
  • 31 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 24th, 2023

help-circle
  • godot@lemmy.worldtoxkcd@lemmy.worldxkcd #3015: D&D Combinatorics
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    18 days ago

    The type of dice used can meaningfully impact this. The chance of a 2 or 12 rolling 2d6 is 1/36, the chance rolling 1d8+1d4 is 1/32. The chance of rolling 7 on 2d6, the most common result, is 1/6. The chance of rolling a 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 on a 1d8+1d4, all equally likely, is 1/8 each.

    Unlike you I can’t begin to remember the elegant way to find this. I also assume Randall would have it at least close to right.



  • I’m mostly looking at whether I would have made any medium sized purchases in the next two yearsl. I might buy some little things in bulk, too, but if there’s any one time purchase where the price is going to jump $200, $300, $500, it’s time to make a decision.

    For me that mostly means furniture. I already bought a pair of commodity IKEA bookshelves I’d been considering buying vs building. I might still build replacements, but I would still use what I just bought and domestic lumber won’t be directly subject to a tariff. I’m looking at buying a papasan chair and a mattress as well, probably in the next week or two.

    I’ve also considered electronics, but there’s nothing I would buy in the next two years short of some PC components that I’m sure I’ll want. I bought a Quest 3 a while back and it’s been a great purchase.

    I did go back through some of my online buying this year to see what I used. I’ll probably buy a few pairs of work shoes and some good soap.






  • Some B350m models did get Zen 3 compatibility. Not all, if I remember correctly, though I could be wrong. So whether it’s compatible I think is model dependent. Whether an old B350m has the VRMs for a chunkier CPU would also be a reasonable question.

    I mentioned the R5 3600 because the prices on them are great. A 5800X3D does perform better, but I see completed eBay listings at $225+. They also needs a cooler. I see one 3600 that went for about $50 and several that went for $60, which isn’t too much more than a 16gb kit of DDR4.

    I would definitely consider a Zen3 CPU for this upgrade, depending on budget.



  • Scratch patterns are in my experience a little overblown, particularly at high degrees of polish. The sharpener they linked you finishes on ceramic, which generally is fairly fine.

    Pull through sharpeners’ biggest problem is that they can’t practically get a clean, consistent apex that follows the sweep of the edge. To get close the housing of the sharpening material needs to be extremely rigid, the pressure used needs to be consistent and light, the angle of the knife in the sharpener needs to be consistent from pull to pull, and the sharpening material needs to be very clean. Otherwise the act of sharpening, while perhaps polishing the bevel, drives the apex into steel residue or abrasive or shifts its angle. That will round, grind down, or rip tiny chunks out of the apex. Still gets a pretty sharp edge.

    I don’t find pull throughs suffer much with regard to retention. They don’t get a knife as sharp initially, so they do start with a shorter clock. But from there retention is okay. They completely avoid wire edges, which is nice, so in inexperienced hands in a way they much improve retention.

    For most knife steels and uses, pull through sharpeners are okay when used with a light hand. What I’m calling a “clean, consistent apex” isn’t practically necessary in pocket knives. The Sharpmaker and several cheap jigs can produce edges like that, though, and those edges definitely feel better in use. At the reasonable additional cost that’s worth it to a lot of people.


  • It is possible to sharpen a recurve edge on a waterstone with a rounded corner, but having wasted my time learning how I prefer the Sharpmaker. It’s near enough to the same speed, more intuitive, and more difficult for a new sharpener to make a mistake.

    Some jigs have rounded stones specifically for recurves; I know there is a Lansky set. I haven’t used one, myself.

    I suspect almost all heavy use recurve blades, carpet knives come to mind, are sharpened using pull through sharpeners. There are shaped sharpening stones specifically for recurves historically used in trade work, but they’re going to kind of suck.

    Perhaps not a useful avenue for you right now, but my best results on recurves have by far been from paper wheels.

    I know you asked how, but if you end up with only a few recurves paying a pro to do it is a reasonable option. Sharpening recurves is a niche inside a niche. No method I’ve tried of doing it by hand feels elegant or “right”.



  • I’ve had an argument with a CEC about whether brown sauce or demi-glace is the mother sauce. Quote from Escoffier:

    “[Demi-glace] is the base of all the other smaller brown sauces.”

    He also says demi-glace is “Espagnole sauce having reached the limit of perfection.” It’s not crazy to say they’re the same sauce, just that one is actually done.

    Functionally it’s true, you just don’t use brown sauce as an ingredient for much if anything other than demi. Or more commonly just buy the demi to save space and time.




  • Yeah, to be honest my point is there are many good games out there. That said…

    • Pathfinder: Fantasy in the classic D&D style, branched off after 3.5ed. Three action economy is gooooood once you’re used to it. Lots of dice.
    • Blades in the Dark: Steampunk horror fantasy. The most beautifully designed system I’ve played. Dice pool game that’s easy to pick up and master, flavor for days, fantastic narrative control for the players and GM, easy to run. Even people who will never play Blades need to read the book, it has several concepts that can change how any GM or DM runs their games.
    • Call of Cthulhu: d100 horror game about staring into the face of a cold, uncaring universe. The cashmere scarf of tabletop RPGs, just oozes luxury. The way the math on skills works is so perfectly suited to CoC’s style of horror it’s uncanny. Delta Green is a great variant if you want to an SCP or X-Files game.
    • Savage Worlds: Action Movie! The Game. Universal system, can be used for most any genre. When it was written it was considered pretty fast to play, now it’s about average. Swingy combat. I use it when I run a system not covered by other games, for me mostly 1920-1950s era detective stories. The surface level rules are intuitive, but the GM needs better system knowledge.
    • Fate: Very high concept storytelling game. Players and GMs both have the ability to influence the narrative of the scene. The game I had the hardest time learning, not because of the game itself is hard but because I had to change the way I think about TTRPGs.
    • Vampire: Vampires in the modern world. Dice pool system. I like the newest edition a lot, I think it’s pretty elegant. Can get weird.
    • GURPS: The ultimate multipurpose game. Build any character in any setting. ANY setting. Building characters is a horrible slog, but the rules are… surprisingly simple in practice, at the discretion of the GM. A lot of work in prep, but when it’s right, it’s very right. The Film Reroll podcast plays through movies using it, highly recommend listening to a movie run by Paulo (Home Alone, maybe) to get an idea of the system.
    • Shadow of the Demon Lord: Grimdark or horror fantasy. d20 system, very easy for D&D players to learn.
    • Dread: Extreme rules light horror game. Tasks are resolved with a Jenga tower. The GM creates a horror scenario. Anytime the GM wants to increase the tension or the players are in danger trying to do something, a player pulls a block (or two, or three). When the tower falls the player who knocked it over dies. Players can sacrifice their life to accomplish a heroic action by knocking over the tower intentionally. That’s all the rules.
    • Worlds Without Number: Fantasy. Sort of another branch off AD&D. A nicely designed mix of Old School Renaissance and some modern conveniences. Very, very good worldbuilding tools. Free, to some extent.
    • Mothership: d100 sci-fi horror system, more barebones than CoC. Very easy to pick up and build characters fast, which is good, 'cause they’re going to die.
    • Numenera: Weird sort of futuristic/fantasy setting. One of the easiest systems I’ve ever run, super easy to adjust on the fly. Maybe a little too complicated to explain in a few sentences.
    • Mork Borg: Old school, original D&D turned emo. Can be played straight or as satire.
    • Everyone is John: A comedy game, very rules light, where the players take turns controlling the same character, John. They try to accomplish hilarious tasks. Gets weird. My John flew the USS Enterprise-D into a sun once. Free.

    For people who want high fantasy but not D&D, I’d recommend Pathfinder 2e. For people who want something a little more dangerous and stripped down and are coming from D&D, Worlds Without Number. For anyone I recommend Call of Cthulhu and Dread. Everyone should read Blades in the Dark, even if they don’t want to play in the setting.

    Also, from the other comments below: Traveller: Space Adventures! The Game. The rumor is Firefly was based on Joss Whedon’s Traveller game, and that’s how Traveller plays. Amazing character creation system that lets players control some of their background, but mirrors real life in that not everything goes as planned. The setting is very, very deep. I admit I would probably play Scum and Villainy (Blades in the Dark in Space) or Stars Without Number (the predecessor to WWN) instead, but it’s up there. The One Ring Roleplaying Game: Very much a system to play stories not just in Middle Earth but in the style of LotR. I have not played this and have no intent to do so, but it’s clever in its own little hobbit hole way. I have read it. Cool dice.

    I haven’t read Shadowdark or Pugmire. Shadowdark looks, for my purposes, similar to Worlds Without Number or Shadow of the Demon Lord. As for Pugmire I use Mouseguard for my Redwall adjacent stuff, but I would sit in a few sessions for sure.


  • The variations are usually just named after whoever wrote a book about the move back in the 1850s or whatever. So in a way, yes, random name generator, often done a long time ago. The names were more useful back in Ye Olden Times when people didn’t consistently use the same sorts of chess notation. Now chess notation is standardized world wide.

    The funny thing is this opening is actually very organic. Someone with even basic understanding of opening theory would very possibly play it if they learned the three moves required for the Ruy Lopez.




  • godot@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlOur best days are behind us:
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    Millennia!

    And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise.

    John 2:15-16