Who are you? - part XII

[padawan]

Thank you!

[Niemz]

Welcome kanlor!

[Niemz]

Welcome randy1944!

[Niemz]

Welcome northwest!

[The Vampire Muffin Man]

I've been away from the game for many years and my interest has been rekindled a bit by a foray into programming. I decided that as a project for teaching myself, I would put together a character creator. Of course now I'm a few weeks into the project and it has taken over a good portion of my free time.
I do have a finished ability roller that I like, though I need to work on the randomness of the dice. It seems to like to roll in waves. For example, 4 or 5 characters in a row with only one or two scores under 11, then 4 or 5 characters with only one or two scores above 11...
Anyway, I was searching around to see if there might be any interest lingering for the 2nd edition game (which is what I'm basing my programs on) so that I could figure out what to do with them when I'm finished. I wasn't expecting to find much, but was surprised and thought I'd spend some time here, checking things out.

My first experience with D&D was in the early-mid '80s and I played through most of the '90s. Then, between moves and relationships, it wasn't really possible to maintain a game. I have no experience with much beyond the 2nd ed. rules. When I was still playing, I had a pretty full set of house rules, so I never really got into skills and powers or kits.
Anyway, that's enough for now, I think. 10

[Niemz]

Welcome Vampire Muffin Man! If your looking for 2nd Edition people, you have found the right place!

[tllith]

Aug 4, 2010 3:07:01 GMT -6 The Vampire Muffin Man said:

I've been away from the game for many years and my interest has been rekindled a bit by a foray into programming. I decided that as a project for teaching myself, I would put together a character creator. Of course now I'm a few weeks into the project and it has taken over a good portion of my free time.
I do have a finished ability roller that I like, though I need to work on the randomness of the dice. It seems to like to roll in waves. For example, 4 or 5 characters in a row with only one or two scores under 11, then 4 or 5 characters with only one or two scores above 11...

Hmm. Did you write your own random number generator? That's a tricky business -- which is to say, I've got graduate degrees in math and computer science, and I'd be intimidated by trying to write a good one from first principles. (Most things that you try to do to make them more random, actually make them less random.)

Fortunately there's no need to write one from first principles; some very clever people have written good ones.

Apologies if that's not the problem.

-- Tllith's player.

[Niemz]

Welcome kikage!

[The Vampire Muffin Man]

Aug 6, 2010 17:35:04 GMT -6 tllith said:

Hmm. Did you write your own random number generator? That's a tricky business -- which is to say, I've got graduate degrees in math and computer science, and I'd be intimidated by trying to write a good one from first principles. (Most things that you try to do to make them more random, actually make them less random.)

Fortunately there's no need to write one from first principles; some very clever people have written good ones.

Apologies if that's not the problem.

-- Tllith's player.

Yes, I made a dice roller that does just ability generation.
www.myspace.com/vampiremuffinman/photos/27523544
My solution for that was to roll all the dice, then assign them to each ability at random. So you roll 24 dice (I actually have it set up so you can use all the methods in the 2nd ed DMG) and if using method 1, 18 of the rolls, selected randomly, are assigned to each of the three dice for each ability, again, randomly. That prevented the plethora of 18s and 3s that I was getting with just standard 3d6 placement.
I hope that made sense... I'm happy with it as is, but I'm thinking of modifying it a bit still. My main problem at the moment is trying to generate a good random initiative, to-hit or damage roll.
I'm also making a full on game which is far more difficult to manage with the simple random number generating method. During combat (only have single combat between characters at the moment and even that's bare-bones testing routine that will be discarded later) I see a disproportionate number of high rolls here and there. For instance, a PC and a 'computer' character are closely matched, but the enemy will hit 5/7 times (needing a 15 to hit) and the PC will miss every time without a roll over 10 and a couple of 1's. Then I will start over and the enemy will hit 4/6 times and the PC will have one roll over 10 and that will be a 20, and two 1's. The damage dice also seem to favor 1's and 4's or 6's (respective to dice).
Main reason that I'm trying to work it out on my own is that I'm only about six weeks into learning VB '08 and this is how I'm going about it.

[Niemz]

Welcome troll69!

[Niemz]

Welcome psyche!

[halfmoon]

HI!

I'm new to the board.

I've not been playing for a while now , over 10 years but i still love the game. I've never DM'd

im strictly 2nd edition the best 1
i like this time of year to start up new games soooo...
i decided to join this board.

[Niemz]

Welcome halfmoon!

[Niemz]

Welcome broton!

[broton]

Thanks Niemz, nice to be here