Thalfon

joined 2 years ago
[–] Thalfon 2 points 1 day ago

It dependshow they did it. If they did the entire roll twice (crowd all rolls, pick most common, crowd all rolls again, pick most common again) and picked the best result out of those two, it would not be different than rolling normally with advantage (since it would effectively just be a very fancy and complicated way of rolling a d20 twice and taking the better result). This is almost certainly what happened (if not for the below reasons, then because it would be much less complicated technically to perform than anything else).

But suppose they just gave each individual person advantage, and then picked the most popular roll out of all those advantage'd rolls. (That is, if I rolled an 8 and a 15 on my phone, only the 15 would get compared with everyone else's advantaged roll.)

Out of 400 ordered pairs of 2d20 rolls, the number of combinations which occur for each roll are 2n-1. For example, to roll a 15 with advantage there are 2(15)-1 = 29 possible ways to do so: a 15 on the first die, and anything from 1-15 on the second, or a 15 on the second die and anything from 1-15 on the first for what seems like 30 combinations, but we've double counted the case where we rolled 15 on both tries, so we subtract one to get 29.

Notice that the sum of (2n-1) for n=1..20 (that is 1 + 3 + 5 + ... + 37 + 39) is exactly 400, the total number of combinations we expect.

So the probability of a nat 20 with advantage is 39/400. So what we're actually asking is when 20,000 people roll with advantage, what are the odds that any of the other numbers, like 19 which has a 37/400 chance each time, still somehow get rolled more often than a nat 20?

I do not know how to actually compute that - it's complicated beyond my skill - but the law of large numbers suggests that as the crowd gets bigger that number should get very, very small indeed, and in fact the probability of not rolling a nat 20 would converge to 0 as crowd size went to infinity.

I tried tossing together some python to experiment: out of 10,000 attempts using this method, and presuming a crowd of 20,000 who all rolled. Out of 10,000 trials, a nat 20 was rolled 9454 times, a 19 was rolled 545 times, and an 18 was rolled 1 time. It never rolled below 18 using this method in 10k attempts. So, I'm guessing that's not what they went with.

[–] Thalfon 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Gastronauts has done a casting call for season 2 already, and I think the loss of PIBE had less to do with other shows taking its spot, and is more just on its own merits. It either wasn't successful enough on Dropout (where so much of the marketing is things like insta/yt shorts/etc.), or Zach and Jess are prioritizing other things, or some combination of both. I don't think anyone official has really said. (I'm not even sure we officially know there won't eventually be a season 3.)

I definitely miss PIBE personally. I thought season 1 was pretty decent even though it got pretty badly panned in general, and season 2 was incredible. For what it's worth Zach and Jess did a 300 episode podcast called "Off Book" which is similar vibes.

[–] Thalfon 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I don't go in person to the library super often any more, but when I did I got in the habit of grabbing one book semi at random off the shelf. I say "semi at random" because it's probably from a section I enjoy (likely fantasy) and I'll quickly vet it as something I would at least possibly enjoy. But otherwise, just grab a random thing.

Pair that with a willingness to stop reading a book if you're not really into it, and sometimes you find gold where you'd normally not have thought to go looking. (A willingness to not be stuck with a book can go a long way toward making it easier to start one, in my experience.)

[–] Thalfon 25 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Pierre Poilievre, leader of the conservative party and our version of a Trump wannabe.

[–] Thalfon 16 points 2 months ago

Last time I bought audiobooks I got them from Downpour which included DRM-free downloads as either MP3 or M4B files, in addition to listening through the website or app. I believe Libro.fm may also offer this. Most of my ebooks are through Kobo and are DRM free as well.

Does depend in some cases on the publisher.

[–] Thalfon 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It varies within the genre. Some games try hard to take steps to minimize the ability to sit around and grind, such as by a food clock or lack of respawns. Sil, which is a *band game that tries to be closer to the original style has an XP system that grants XP for seeing an enemy the first time, and the same for killing it, and then 1/n times that XP the nth time you see that same kind of enemy thereafter. Sixth orc you see is worth 1/6 the XP, so it's not worth farming an area hard, and still rewards exploring a lot. It also eventually just forces you deeper as the desire for a silmaril becomes more irresistible as you become stronger. Seeing 6 orcs and killing 2 is worth 3.95x an orc's stated XP, seeing 30 and killing them all gets up to almost 8x the stated XP.

Others like most Angband variants or Tales of Maj'eyal made the decision to just let the player grind. Many of the games in that style have more open-ended progression and aren't necessarily trying to force the player into constantly dangerous situations. The very popular Caves of Qud would fit this category.

[–] Thalfon 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It's not quite what you were asking for, but libro.fm -- which is American -- does give part of its profit from sales to a bookstore of your choosing, and you can select Canadian bookstores to receive that benefit. Not sure what the cut looks like exactly though.

[–] Thalfon 2 points 3 months ago

Currently in a sci fi "Consider Phlebas" by Iain Banks, after seeing a recommendation for his books involving an optimism for the future. This was the one book available at my local library. Not far enough in to make a judgment on it, but enjoying it so far.

I have Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez also out from the library as a next up.

Recently read Rewitched by Lucy Jane Wood, which was a fun cozy urban fantasy. I think if I were to recommend such a book, I'd recommend The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches above it, or recommend Legends & Lattes or The Spellshop for cozy high fantasy choices, but if you've read all the popular ones and are looking for more it's a great choice.

[–] Thalfon 5 points 4 months ago

The judge's other main role in a trial with jury is to actually run the proceedings of the trial. Order of operations, keeping the two counsels in line, scheduling, etc.

[–] Thalfon 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Really fun roguelike game where you and enemies have to move to the beat of that floor's song. I think part of the reason I still play it a lot is that it's amenable to very short sessions. I've played enough that runs go fast and I either clear or die within 10 minutes.

Over 1200 hours now almost a decade after release, and a huge chunk of that is probably sessions of under 30 mins in length.

[–] Thalfon 1 points 6 months ago

I only played the original one. I had a fair amount of fun with it for what it was. It can feel a bit empty and wide, but the gameplay was quite fun, even if the combat is kinda painfully easy most of the time. You can build basically however you want and become pretty OP.

Is the remake worth looking at for those who played the original? I was kinda ignoring it because I'd played through it once already. Wasn't super sold on a second go-through.

[–] Thalfon 2 points 6 months ago

...I really did not expect to see Christy Clark on that list, even if at only 4%. If I'd seen her running as a Con, that would not have surprised me so much. Responsible in BC for legislating striking teachers back to work with the argument that they could not legally bargain on topics like class size, something that much later finally got thrown out by the supreme court. She was a member of the BC Liberals, which were really the right-wing party in BC at the time.

I'd wager both left- and right-leaning people in BC have some bad memories of that one for differing reasons. I certainly have to imagine she'd be a quick way to lose the existing liberal voters here.

 

If you do not own the deluxe upgrades for HoT and/or PoF and were thinking about getting extra character slots anyway, you can get the slot plus other bonuses for 40 gems less than just the discounted character slot alone right now.

The PoF one also has a lounge pass (Lily of the Elon, near Amnoon), which is very nice if you don't already own one. They both have a few cosmetics.

It doesn't show a time in-game when the deal will end unfortunately (instead just shows the "1 available at this price" message) and I couldn't find that info elsewhere.

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