{"id":1488,"date":"2008-01-12T09:06:48","date_gmt":"2008-01-12T14:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1488"},"modified":"2008-01-12T09:06:49","modified_gmt":"2008-01-12T14:06:49","slug":"screw-the-bell-curve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1488","title":{"rendered":"Screw the Bell Curve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While talking about rolling up characters in D&#038;D, Daemian_Lucifer has this to say in the comments <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1486#comment-86508\">here<\/a>:<\/p>\n<div class=\"quote\">As for transfering the characters,after seeing my brother roll 18,18,18,17,18,18 in a D&#038;D game ones using 4 dice,I am ready to believe almost any roll.<\/div>\n<p>I just want to point out that this is the most improbable gaming story I&#8217;ve ever heard.  How improbable? <a href=\"?p=377\">I wrote a program that rolled up one hundred million characters<\/a>, and it never rolled a character that high.  In a hundred million attempts, the best it rolled was a character with 17, 18, 17, 17, 18, 18.  <\/p>\n<p>If a player came to me claiming to have rolled that, I wouldn&#8217;t believe it unless I&#8217;d seen it myself.  The odds are long, long, long.  Longer than winning the state lottery.<\/p>\n<p>And even if I <b>did<\/b> see it, I&#8217;d have to think long and hard about what to do about it if I was the GM.  Keeping in mind that the goal of the game is to have fun, I&#8217;d have to make sure the other players wouldn&#8217;t be irritated by having such a superhuman in their group.  If it&#8217;s a roleplaying-heavy group it might be okay, but in a combat heavy, stats-focused game, that character is going to outshine everyone.  It&#8217;s going to be a party of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seanbaby.com\/superfriends\/aquaman.htm\">Aquaman<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seanbaby.com\/superfriends\/hawkman.htm\">Hawkman<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seanbaby.com\/superfriends\/greenlb.htm\">Kairo<\/a> following <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seanbaby.com\/superfriends\/superman.htm\">Superman<\/a> around and trying to find ways to be useful. Superman might have fun, but the other three are going to have to be really good sports about it.  <\/p>\n<p>Creating challenges for that sort of group will be a pain as well. Anything that can pose a challenge to Superguy is probably too dangerous for the others to handle.  Anything that is a decent challenge for the others is going to be a doormat for Superguy.  <\/p>\n<p>Still, amazing roll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While talking about rolling up characters in D&#038;D, Daemian_Lucifer has this to say in the comments here: As for transfering the characters,after seeing my brother roll 18,18,18,17,18,18 in a D&#038;D game ones using 4 dice,I am ready to believe almost any roll. I just want to point out that this is the most improbable gaming [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tabletop-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}