Reason with me on my questions and statements. Please.

[Spoonist]

like some kind of roleplaying game where you can have a 12 sided dice or a 20 sided dice, but no one seems to own a sixteen-sider even though they should exist.

they are crap and fill almost no function.

But the real reason are the ancient greeks etc and platon in particular:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid

[Connor MacLeod]

Uh, I think Saxon was one of the 'Old Boys' and Mike actually helped with the calcs IIRC. I think Curtis even thanked him or acknowledged him in the book.

He was, given he was running SWTC at the time and many people tended to cite that as much as they did Mike. So did Wayne (until he grew to hate Star Wars) and Rob Brown (same), and Brian Young (til he moved onto B5 and then general sci fi stuff, although Mike still hosts Turbolaser commentaries.) Heck, I'm techincally one of the 'Old Boys' for that matter.

And Curtis thanked lots of people in his conspiracy listing acknolwedgements, and even more in the ROTS ICS (a number of people from the SDN forums actually got acknowledgements there.) I even got my name in them

Which of course just proves that the whole point of the ICS was the BIG NUMBERS. All about the vs debates and all that, you know.

[Connor MacLeod]

Sort of, sort of... not? I always got the feeling that membership in the Old Boys Club was rather fluid. Curtis Saxton is Mikes' friend, but I always got the feeling he wanted to dissociate himself from the VS debate and debaters because he had no interest in Star Trek.

Which is pretty much the case. Some of those people tied up in those debates assumed that since people USED Curtis' numbers in the SW vs ST debates that Curtis must be aware of/involved in the debates himself. Hilariously he even made a joke like that once at a book signing, as I recall, and it ended up on the web as 'proof' the ICS was meant to be a 'anti-Trek' tool. The level of obsession amongst some people in the debates in those days was unhealthy to say the least and I'm amazed I managed to come out of it as relatively unscathed as I was. It was insane.

Anyhoo, Curtis had absolutely no interest (or much idea) of what went on in the debates, except in some vague, roundabout way (what he heard from Mike or the others.) That's all. His numbers derived entirely from his 'perception' of how Star Wars is, and nothing else. Whether one agrees with his viewpoint or not is another matter.

However, the point was about the ICS itself, which only contains the numbers rather than the methodology. Without understanding the methodology, like how Mike always made sure his estimates were conservative even if the assumptions lead to things like perfectly spherical chickens made of iron, you can only know the ICS's are valid in the sense that the author(s) of them had the privileges of licensing and the all encompassing Lucasfilm canon system. Sorchus and I were talking about this, and we've both seen these numbers abused or misrepresented-- for example, the acceleration figure is almost certainly there for LINEAR (straight line) acceleration from its main engines, but he's seen people take it to mean an Acclamator or Star Destroyer could turn on a dime with its maneuvering thrusters. Or there is the more common mistake we've all seen of assuming that all capital ship turbolasers are 200Gt, even though we know there is a distinction between heavy turbolasers, light turbolasers, anti-fighter laser cannons, and so on plus different reactor outputs for different ships. But nope, everything gets 200GT's, like some kind of roleplaying game where you can have a 12 sided dice or a 20 sided dice, but no one seems to own a sixteen-sider even though they should exist.

Does the methodology matter? Any other author gets treated as if they're 'numbers' are valid without additional 'evidence', so why should the ICS be subjected to additional scrutiny just because of who wrote it? Not only is that going against what the 'canon' of Star Wars is, but it's elevating a book of imaginary numbers of an imaginary setting to a level of unimportance it does not warrant. Simply having numbers (or rather, numbers some people like and others hate) does nto make it special - it gets treated as any other non-movie source - given equal weight and consideration with the rest of the fluff.

Which is rather amusing, because if more people actually paid attnetion to what was in the ICSes, they'd realize alot of those 'numbers' were open to debate and do not neccesarily mean what was often 'assumed' (incorrectly, I have now come to believe) in the VS debates.

If you are curious about Saxton's 'methodology' you just have to read some of SWTC. Stuff like the 'power technologies' page and the 'shields' page will give you an idea of how and why Curtis derived the numbers he did, but it can be summed up in 'Curtis believed in an Epic scale of Star Wars in pretty much all things, whether that was warranted/supported explicitly in the material or not.' Call that biggaton loving if you must

[Captain Seafort]

If you are curious about Saxton's 'methodology' you just have to read some of SWTC. Stuff like the 'power technologies' page and the 'shields' page will give you an idea of how and why Curtis derived the numbers he did, but it can be summed up in 'Curtis believed in an Epic scale of Star Wars in pretty much all things, whether that was warranted/supported explicitly in the material or not.' Call that biggaton loving if you must

Speaking of SWTC, does anyone know if it's still an active project, or just archival now? I assume the latter, given how long it's been since it was last updated.

[Formless]

Does the methodology matter? Any other author gets treated as if they're 'numbers' are valid without additional 'evidence', so why should the ICS be subjected to additional scrutiny just because of who wrote it? Not only is that going against what the 'canon' of Star Wars is, but it's elevating a book of imaginary numbers of an imaginary setting to a level of unimportance it does not warrant. Simply having numbers (or rather, numbers some people like and others hate) does nto make it special - it gets treated as any other non-movie source - given equal weight and consideration with the rest of the fluff.

Connor, don't be a hyper-defensive tool. Nowhere have I said that the book deserves extraordinary scrutiny, nor have I argued that Saxton is somehow different from other authors that get canon privileges like, say, Timothy Zhan. I am not a fucking trektard, so don't give me this generic, cliched line of crap.

I'm saying its intellectually lazy for people to constantly go to one book like its biblical canon rather than thinking for themselves. And if you get out of practice thinking for yourself, then you lose that capacity. Methodology is important to analysis, because most of the time you do not have a manual conveniently there for you to cite; and when you are arguing with other people, showing the methodology you used to get there is simply showing your work. If you show no work, no one will believe you, nor should they in most cases. People behave as if canonicity of something gives them an excuse for simply shoving it in people's faces without any higher thought than matching cliche for cliche. It doesn't; like you say yourself, there is still a need for analysis to show that your interpretation of canon makes sense.

The ICS not showing its methodology may not be bad from a marketing or branding perspective, because it has a canon status to fall back on. However, it is inferior as a go-to source of arguments than Mike's main website, because Mike shows how he did it and how others can do it themselves. And simply citing Mikes website is inferior to simply doing it yourself, because that shows you understand the math and the physics it represents, and just as importantly the simple fact that you are thinking. The ICS does not encourage thinking. Its simply one man's vision of how Star wars technology feels and functions.

If you are curious about Saxton's 'methodology' you just have to read some of SWTC. Stuff like the 'power technologies' page and the 'shields' page will give you an idea of how and why Curtis derived the numbers he did, but it can be summed up in 'Curtis believed in an Epic scale of Star Wars in pretty much all things, whether that was warranted/supported explicitly in the material or not.' Call that biggaton loving if you must

I did, actually, although its got nothing to do with the ICS where he had privilege to simply dictate his vision. Thing I find amusing, though, is that the power generation page talks about Mike's method of generating firepower by looking at asteroid explosions, but doesn't ever actually calculate the energy needed to blow up an asteroid. Which is an interesting oversight considering he does calculate the energy from the ship's engines on the same page, and hte energy needed to blow up Alderaan on his Death Star page. Maybe he was satisfied with simply letting people know this alternative method, but felt that two websites with the calculations on them (the other being the Turbolaser Commentaries hosted by Mike) was more than the internet needed. Who knows.

[Formless]

like some kind of roleplaying game where you can have a 12 sided dice or a 20 sided dice, but no one seems to own a sixteen-sider even though they should exist.

{Snip}they are crap and fill almost no function.

But the real reason are the ancient greeks etc and platon in particular:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid

First, its Plato, not Platon. Also, I may be a d20 veteran, but I've tried other systems before. One time we tried to do a system where each stat is given a dice rather than a number, with the d4 being the smallest and the d20 being the largest. The lack of d14's, 16's, and 18's in our collection (because they are, you know, really rare) is a real killer. It was a great fun system, but it just didn't work the way we had hoped because of that gap. I almost wonder if we shouldn't have made it work out so that a better stat used a smaller die rather than a larger one...

[Stark]

You know its 'Platon' in Greek, right?

Since this obvious troll probably won't come back (well, beyond 'can I get these guys posting on new years instead of doing things with actual people') is there really a point to debating which irrelevant flamewar authority is best for the vs crusade that hasn't existed for years? Why do people even think rationale or 'methodology' matter when you're dealing with people of the erstwhile zero_exe's level?

[Batman]

I didn't even know they made D16s.

[Stark]

Most normal human beings don't. The big joke about his hilarious story ('we designed something that required a bunch of things we didn't have, and it didn't work! duhhhhhh') is that a free smartphone app would have provided all the RNG he needed (and for a dollar probably a sophisticated enough calcuator to do actual abstract RNG instead of LOL PICK NUMBER BETWEEN X AND Y).

[Formless]

Why do people even think rationale or 'methodology' matter when you're dealing with people of the erstwhile zero_exe's level?

Because I'm hoping against hope that we might someday start attracting people who aren't obvious trolls. Maybe changing the way we argue can help with that? And not just VS debating, either, of course; VS debates are kinda dumb from the outset, especially if there is no real reason for a crossover to end in a fight. The most fun VS stuff I've seen in a while is Screwattack's Death Battle (which is as dumb as it sounds), because they don't pretend to be taken seriously.

I didn't even know they made D16s.

They also make d30s and d24's. Good luck finding the latter, and good luck finding games that use the former even though d30's are awesome.

Most normal human beings don't. The big joke about his hilarious story ('we designed something that required a bunch of things we didn't have, and it didn't work! duhhhhhh') is that a free smartphone app would have provided all the RNG he needed (and for a dollar probably a sophisticated enough calcuator to do actual abstract RNG instead of LOL PICK NUMBER BETWEEN X AND Y).

Heh, we were younger then and I make no claims we weren't stupider. It was a friend's idea, and for a while it seemed the twelve sider was king right up until the GM started throwing d20's like a jackass. It was a fun experiment despite our predictable failure.

Good times.

[Batman]

Seems to me this place has managed to attract a good many people who aren't trolls over the years. I bet nobody dragged you here at gunpoint, for example, and most of the regulars (at least the ones I interact with on something approaching a regular basis) are pretty decent people (myself naturally excluded).

[Formless]

Yeah, but those who aren't obvious trolls are all too often just repeating the same stuff all the time, and I swear they would be indistinguishable if they didn't have user names attached to their posts.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm saying its intellectually lazy for people to constantly go to one book like its biblical canon rather than thinking for themselves. And if you get out of practice thinking for yourself, then you lose that capacity. Methodology is important to analysis, because most of the time you do not have a manual conveniently there for you to cite; and when you are arguing with other people, showing the methodology you used to get there is simply showing your work. If you show no work, no one will believe you, nor should they in most cases. People behave as if canonicity of something gives them an excuse for simply shoving it in people's faces without any higher thought than matching cliche for cliche. It doesn't; like you say yourself, there is still a need for analysis to show that your interpretation of canon makes sense.

Of course its intellectually lazy. That's been a cornerstone of most vs debating for years or more. Its hard to actually do research to construct an argument just for a single post, especially when its 90% likely that anyone responding to it is just going to ignore the effort you put into it for whatever reason. People clustered around websites like SWTC or SDN or the ICS because it was basically a convenient way to debate, and you defend those numbers because those are what form the foundation of the argument. Its kind of tribal in that way. Canon is just another way to either bolster or knock down those numbers. In that sense its just a form of 'score keeping'. This is why certain people got elevated to become figureheads.
I've been on both sides (worshipper and worshipped) and its not fun on EITHER side. Fuck, its not enjoyable knowing there are weirdos out there who obsess over what you do on other forums because your name was in a fucking book man.

In an ideal world you're right, you go for methodology and analysis and handle it on a case by case basis. But that's the 'hard' way, and vs debating doesn't really encourage doing things the 'hard' way. That's why its always easier to attack than it is to defend, for example.

Of course, back then its not exactly like there was ANY easy way to debate. It basically came down to 'who could throw out the most verbiage for the longest time, whilst sounding the smartest'. Not exactly the epitome of structured, refined debate.

Also, I'm sorry if I come off strong on this, but I have reasons for it and not good ones. Its something of a sore point for me. I apologize if I misrepresented you.

The ICS not showing its methodology may not be bad from a marketing or branding perspective, because it has a canon status to fall back on. However, it is inferior as a go-to source of arguments than Mike's main website, because Mike shows how he did it and how others can do it themselves. And simply citing Mikes website is inferior to simply doing it yourself, because that shows you understand the math and the physics it represents, and just as importantly the simple fact that you are thinking. The ICS does not encourage thinking. Its simply one man's vision of how Star wars technology feels and functions.

I did my share of using Mike or Curtis as a source. They didn't always show their work to quite as much extent to make it 'definitive' either. BDZ being equated to certain events (EG scavenger hunt, or 'molten slag' shit) and the timeframes were never quite hammered out fully, and they remained weak points in the arguments (wasted lots of time trying to get around that, with only limited success.) Same with other shit like the Slave Ship quote.

I also disagree that citing Mike (or Curtis') site shows you understand the methodology, or even that you can do it yourself. I've known lots of people who can do the math right yet still fuck it up because they make the most ludicrous of assumptions (or fail to account for certain things.) Hell, its something I've done myself on multiple occasions. And I've also known people (and probably been one of them) who would quote shit from Mike or Curtis' site (or whatever site suited me) without knowing it or being able to explain it. Hell, I've had people do that with ym 40K shit, and that's hardly the most intellectual or exhaustive of analysis either. It's less a function of the book, and more a function of the nature of the debate.

One example I'm reminded of was Mike's page before he redid the 'shield technology' bit, to account for the momentum bit. Back then noone really paid attention to force and momentum when it came to things like the TESB impact. it wsa all about the KE. But Mike as I recall never actually explained how/why momentum is important either, and noone I recall picked up on it until he DID point it out. I imagine he never bothered to comment on it because he overestimated our education or something (he probably figured it was obvious to him, it should be obvious to others.)

And I also agree that the ICS should be just treated as 'one guy's view on Star Wars' ideally. The problem again is, the nature of the debate.' Who Curtis is and what he did MATTERED, and so it elevated the book to a level it did not warrant or deserve. Again because of 'vs' debating.

I did, actually, although its got nothing to do with the ICS where he had privilege to simply dictate his vision. Thing I find amusing, though, is that the power generation page talks about Mike's method of generating firepower by looking at asteroid explosions, but doesn't ever actually calculate the energy needed to blow up an asteroid. Which is an interesting oversight considering he does calculate the energy from the ship's engines on the same page, and the energy needed to blow up Alderaan on his Death Star page. Maybe he was satisfied with simply letting people know this alternative method, but felt that two websites with the calculations on them (the other being the Turbolaser Commentaries hosted by Mike) was more than the internet needed. Who knows.

Curtis has some NDA he's still subject to so its not exactly something he is free to talk about, is it? As I understood things there was lots of things he couldn't reveal tied to the ICS simply because of that fact.

As I recall matters WRT Curtis' calcs, alot of it was collaborative. The people in the credits of the ICSes (esp the first one) were people he was personally acquainted with and did much discussion with in a sort of group effort. That included Rob Brown, Mike, Wayne, Brian and a few others I only got to meet much later on (I came late to the party before things died out.) There were people I knew who predated my joining who contributed as well.

[Connor MacLeod]

Speaking of SWTC, does anyone know if it's still an active project, or just archival now? I assume the latter, given how long it's been since it was last updated.

Curtis has been too busy with RL stuff (work, etc.) to devote to SWTC for the forseeable future. AFAIK he intends to go back to it at some point, but there's no real idea when.

[Batman]

And why shouldn't we? At least in a Vs, it isn't about how did you get these numbers, it's about 'which side's numbers are bigger'. When you have a canon source saying 'Mine are', why bother finding out how that came to happen? You're welcome to try of course, and to dispute the numbers, but since it is considerably lower than anything you'd get by simply linearly scaling down from the DS1 and having read the SWTC, I trust the guy's methodology, I see no need for me to redo the math, especially not for something as irrelevant as on online Vs debate.
Some of us just do this for personal entertainment, not to hone our critical thinking skills or something you know.

[Connor MacLeod]

And why shouldn't we? At least in a Vs, it isn't about how did you get these numbers, it's about 'which side's numbers are bigger'. When you have a canon source saying 'Mine are', why bother finding out how that came to happen? You're welcome to try of course, and to dispute the numbers, but since it is considerably lower than anything you'd get by simply linearly scaling down from the DS1 and having read the SWTC, I trust the guy's methodology, I see no need for me to redo the math, especially not for something as irrelevant as on online Vs debate.
Some of us just do this for personal entertainment, not to hone our critical thinking skills or something you know.

You know I used to think that way too, but.. I don't now. What's fun in saying 'ha ha your universe sucks, its weaker than ours cuz of GIGATONS?' All I remember is that it made people on the other side angry (and here I'm thinking of folk like stofsk or ADR.) Because it limits the conversation and the avenues it can take? What about some sort of conflict outside of 'Deadliest WArrior' style matchups? All we really had for variety is 'various iterations of whats the smallest craft that might blow up a Federation ship' and that got boring after awhile. To be blunt, yelling at people isn't fun.

It's always ben a form of mental exercise - speculative 'what if' type crap and that does mean using your brain at least on some level. But if you make it about 'winning' then it stifles the creative and critical thinking elements that might result from the discussion.

And personally, the vast majority of vs debates I got into WEREN'T fun, which is one reason why I have grown to dislike them and the mindset they promote. They were stressful, because alot of the 'tactics' and 'methods' used in those debates were not really promoting any actual discussion, and the only reason I kept up with that was that back then I was far too stupid to realize how pointless it was doing it as I did (which was the way everyone else did it.)

And it becomes even less fun when you have ready made answers (the ICS, Mike's websites, whatever.) and you don't do your own thinking.

[Batman]

People gleefully gloat about their favourite sports team winning all the time, why would it be any different in SciFi Vs debates? People love to see their side win.
And frankly this particular Vs debate should have died 15 years ago. I'm not redoing math that has been shown again, and again, and again just because some die-hard Trek fans can't let go.

[Formless]

Sorry for coming down on you like a ton of bricks, Connor, its just that for a second there it seemed like you were beginning down the same knee-jerk path of "burn the heretic" that was spurring me on.

And why shouldn't we? At least in a Vs, it isn't about how did you get these numbers, it's about 'which side's numbers are bigger'. When you have a canon source saying 'Mine are', why bother finding out how that came to happen? You're welcome to try of course, and to dispute the numbers, but since it is considerably lower than anything you'd get by simply linearly scaling down from the DS1 and having read the SWTC, I trust the guy's methodology, I see no need for me to redo the math, especially not for something as irrelevant as on online Vs debate.
Some of us just do this for personal entertainment, not to hone our critical thinking skills or something you know.

How do you quantify something like tactics and strategy? What number do you put on the stupidity it takes to turn the lights down when fighting an enemy that is light sensitive, or a designer that honestly thought elephant walkers and the TIE crawler were good ideas? How do you rate the effectiveness of a civilization's exploratory or scouting techniques, as they map out the galaxy they intend to exploit? What unit of measurement do you apply to diplomacy? How do you measure the cultural values of a society that preaches against war and materialism but also against intervening in the affairs of others for any reason whatsoever-- even humanitarian aid? How do you measure the sociopathy of a civilization which blows up its own planets just to scare people into submission? How do you account for mystical phenomena that actually exist in the universes of their origin?

There is far more going on in a Franchise Crossover Vs that simply saying "they have bombs this powerful" does not address. You want a Death Battle, but whereas those guys were willing to admit that Spider Man's spider sense defeats Batman only because the terms of the duel preclude Batman from planning out how he will take down his foe like he usually does, you are satisfied knowing that one of them has super strength and the other doesn't. But that's boring, and eliminates so many important variables that are as worthy of discussion as any other aspect of the encounter.

And by the way, if its about personal entertainment, I might as well just say it-- you are a very boring person, and I can't believe you find repeating the same things over endless threads to be "fun" or "engaging", or any other word that describes joy. Its just soulless repetition. repetition. repetition.

People gleefully gloat about their favourite sports team winning all the time, why would it be any different in SciFi Vs debates? People love to see their side win.

LOL. So you actually think that there can be "victory" for a "team" that doesn't actually exist.

You are one funny man, Mr. I-Never-Stop-Roleplaying-A-Comic-Book-Character.

[Batman]

You in the same post admit I insist I'm a comic book character and ask why I would think a team that doesn't actually exist would win. Umm...
And yes, there's far more to a Vs than 'our bombs are bigger'. Guess which aspect Vses tend to concentrate on? Whose bombs are bigger (in no small part, I suspect, because that is the easiest aspect to quantify). I'm not ignoring that an MTL is more than 200 times more powerful than a Type X just because there's plenty of situations where that would be completely irrelevant.

[Spoonist]

Sorry about that huge ass die pic, it was smaller on the page I copied it from.

like some kind of roleplaying game where you can have a 12 sided dice or a 20 sided dice, but no one seems to own a sixteen-sider even though they should exist.

{Snip}they are crap and fill almost no function.

But the real reason are the ancient greeks etc and platon in particular:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid

First, its Plato, not Platon.

I'm pretty sure it's Platon, check out the pronounciation for the greek letters, there is supposed to be some sort of approximation at the end.

Also, I may be a d20 veteran, but I've tried other systems before. One time we tried to do a system where each stat is given a dice rather than a number, with the d4 being the smallest and the d20 being the largest. The lack of d14's, 16's, and 18's in our collection (because they are, you know, really rare) is a real killer. It was a great fun system, but it just didn't work the way we had hoped because of that gap. I almost wonder if we shouldn't have made it work out so that a better stat used a smaller die rather than a larger one...

Back in the day I designed plenty of such systems for figurine battles since rolling multiple dice is tediuos. However the solutions to such problems as you put forth was rather simplistic. First you started at lower dice, ie d2, then to "fill the gap" you just use +2, +4 etc for a while. The distribution would still be OK, even though you had to add the ruling that when you reached d20/d30 etc you could chose between rolling a lower die with + or the higher die, thus the dragons or giants or whatnots could easily take out simple targets, while adjusting versus bigger targets.

I didn't even know they made D16s.

They can make almost any polyhedron these days, however lots of the irregular ones like d13 is kinda crap since they are not balanced enough.

The big joke about his hilarious story ...

three points
1) Most such stories about back in the good old days would normally be before smartphones.
2) It doesn't feel the same at all, shaking an iPhone to picking and rolling a bunch of dice.
3) Even back when the C64 etc became staplewhare among geeks, RNG's never caught on as a replacement to dice. I've seen Rolemaster players automate all the random tables, but still roll the dice and then input that into the computer device of choice (normally programmable pocket calculators back then).

[Stark]

Why would you shake a phone when you can press a button? Beyond skeumorphism and learning difficulties. Yes, I know nerds are actually quite limited. After all, I just had to correct someone about Plato's name. We should talk about how the inability for the market to let go of their now-irrelevant dice fixation has arguably crippled innovation in the pnp rpg market!

[Batman]

D4s essentially don't roll period. Doesn't seem to have stopped RPG systems using them.

[Spoonist]

Why would you shake a phone when you can press a button? Beyond skeumorphism and learning difficulties. Yes, I know nerds are actually quite limited. After all, I just had to correct someone about Plato's name. We should talk about how the inability for the market to let go of their now-irrelevant dice fixation has arguably crippled innovation in the pnp rpg market!

The shake function is the one common for all the top rated RNG's out there. People simply prefer it. They also prefer the sound of dice as they shake the phone. That shouldn't come as a suprise, should it?

I have great difficulty thinking that any casino would replace the craps dice with pressing a button, the case is similar. The fondling of the dice gives you a misplaced feeling of control or influence. It doesn't really have the same feel to kiss the app for good luck for instance.

Lots of game systems relies on the feeling of having multiple dice and adding more dice to feel a visceral effect of "arming up". Warhammer being the most obvious one. But there are hundreds of others. You trying to dismiss that very real effect is kinda strange.

What we do however see as a market trend is for boardgames to replace their cards with apps. Like what FFG are doing:
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_ ... ?eidn=1911
That makes much better sense than your rant about RNG's. Hence my example with the Rolemaster players.

Such random stuff generators can easily add much more flavor to a boardgame or a pnp then the replacement of the RNG element of the game. I mean its not like you can make a unique number system that couldn't be handled with a percent or permille dice, (ie numerations of d10s) just as easily.

D4s essentially don't roll period. Doesn't seem to have stopped RPG systems using them.

There are roundish d4 that rolls better than the old pyramids.
Also note that the first d4 didn't have the numbers in triangles that they do nowadays. Instead on the first ones you'd have to deduce the number from which one wasn't visible. So those RPG systems added them before they were fully developed either.

[Batman]

I'll freely admit the D4s I'm used to are the essentially useless three-sided pyramid ones.

[Stark]

The shake function is the one common for all the top rated RNG's out there. People simply prefer it. They also prefer the sound of dice as they shake the phone. That shouldn't come as a suprise, should it?

Its difficult to be surprised by people struggling with change.

I have great difficulty thinking that any casino would replace the craps dice with pressing a button, the case is similar. The fondling of the dice gives you a misplaced feeling of control or influence. It doesn't really have the same feel to kiss the app for good luck for instance.

You're actually quite right; the hugely overpriced physical dice market (and indeed the creation of mechanics that require specific dice for basically no reason) is exactly like the gambling industry - it preys on suckers.

Lots of game systems relies on the feeling of having multiple dice and adding more dice to feel a visceral effect of "arming up".

Does it get any more painfully honest than this?

That makes much better sense than your rant about RNG's. Hence my example with the Rolemaster players.

You mean those guys who replaced a dice game with a ... dice app? Oh sorry I didn't see you flaming there! All that matters from a game perspective is the selection of a result. When this is completely obscured (as in video games), nobody cares. When it massively speeds play, eliminates cheating, and allows privacy, nobody cares. When it removes the ability to fondle dice and feel tough... well.

I'm just going to say that if you or anyone you know has a die rolling soft that makes noises, I will pretty much never stop laughing at you. CLICKCLICKCLICK CLICK CLICK ... CLICK. More visceral?