Posts Tagged by Probability
| June 19, 2012 | Posted by Matthew J. Neagley |
The other day, Martin posed a question to me. To paraphrase: “How do I set up a die roll to determine how many encounters I have per day and when those encounters occur?” After some discussion, I suggested the below system, which is based on the Exponential distribution. Since we’ve gotten requests for info on this distribution before and the result turned out pretty neat, I wanted to share. The exponential distribution isn’t a concept that exists in a vacuum. Instead it’s a function of…
| May 31, 2012 | Posted by Matthew J. Neagley |
Outside of the comment stream, I had a surprising amount of people tell me they found my Overland Encounter Article useful (Three: which is three higher than usual). Universally however, the part of it they mentioned was the final paragraph and illustration: A brief note on die choice: With a single die, all outcomes are equally likely. The more dice you use, the greater central tendency of your roll, and the rarer the high and low values. Using dice of unequal size on the same…
| December 17, 2010 | Posted by Matthew J. Neagley |
In the first half of this article, I touched on why I thought understanding probability was integral to playing, running, and especially designing role playing games and then presented the underpinnings of basic probability and counting methods. This article takes up where that one left off and dives straight into the math of probability. Last time we looked at how to build base probabilities from the simple sample space. This time we’re taking a look at the properties of the resultant probabilities and how they…
| November 8, 2010 | Posted by Matthew J. Neagley |
Probability is so pervasive in the RPG hobby that it’s important to have a basic understanding of how it works regardless of where in the hobby you are, designer, GM, or player. Yet in my experience, far too few people regardless of their role, have a grasp on the probabilities at work at the gaming table. I won’t name names, but I’ve seen systems where characters with what’s labeled as a “normal human level of competency” with a skill has a 0% chance to succeed…
