This grouping of topics is for the various experiments I am running at any given time.  Each Experiment will receive its own serial number, starting with 2001, which follows next.

01 May 2020:  I've been away from here for a while, but, looking back, I think it's time to index the experiments in this first post.  I hope to get this done sometime this weekend.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:22, Fri 01 May 2020.

UPDATE:  30 Dec 2017.  dice roll links modified to add the memo field.

As an extension of my explorations into the Help File for the Die Roller, I am now going to attempt to create some specialized dierolls for the game system The Petal Hack (which I use in one of my other games).  Specifically, I am using version 1.1 of this rule set as my reference (since that is what I'm using in my other game.)

DISCLAIMER:  Please note that The Petal Hack is published and made available free of charge.  That said, I will only quote enough of the rules here to suitably explain what I'm trying to accomplish.  It is my belief that such quotes fall under Fair Use protections afforded by the laws of the United States and other countries.

The Core Mechanic (given on page 1 of The Petal Hack) states:

"Everything a character might possibly attempt that could result in failure is resolved by testing attribute stats.  In order to successfully test a stat, a player must roll below it on a d20."

Further, almost directly across from this paragraph on the same page, are expressed the rules dealing with Advantage & Disadvantage:

"If a particular course of action or task has a higher or lower chance of success, the Referee may ask a player to roll an additional d20 when making a test - with Advantage the lower result is used and with Disadvantage, the higher."

These rules set the parameters for my experiment:  I am going to attempt to write dice roller links that, when clicked, fire up the dice roller and do a simple stat check, a stat check with Advantage, and a stat check with Disadvantage, all links to display appropriate texts.

Now the stat check is a simple single roll of d20, but if we want the link to it to say "Simple Stat Check", the code needs to look like:

[dice=1d20 memo="Simple Stat Check" text="Roll a Simple Stat Check"]  Roll a Simple Stat Check

Testing of this worked well enough.  On to more interesting dierolls.

In the case of rolling with Advantage, the lower of two d20 rolls is the result, the other being discarded.  Let's see what that might look like.

[dice=2d20 dok=kl drop=1 memo="Stat Check with Advantage" text="Roll a Stat Check with Advantage"]
Roll a Stat Check with Advantage

Well, that works fine, but it only displays the single result. If I wanted to test the roll, or see some debugging data, I might wish to have the die roller display both dice then also display the actual result.  That might look like:

[dice=2d20 record=yes dok=kl drop=1 memo="Stat Check with Advantage - debug."  text="Roll a Stat Check with Advantage, displaying both dice"]
Roll a Stat Check with Advantage, displaying both dice

Creating a roll with Disadvantage is now as simple as changing a couple of parameters in the roll with Advantage, to wit:

[dice=2d20 dok=kh drop=1 memo="Stat Check with Disadvantage" text="Roll a Stat Check with Disadvantage"]
Roll a Stat Check with Disdvantage

and the debug version:

[dice=2d20 record=yes dok=kh drop=1 memo="Stat Check with Disadvantage - debug." text="Roll a Stat Check with Disdvantage, displaying both dice"]
Roll a Stat Check with Disdvantage, displaying both dice

Well, this was fun.  Now to add some extra sauce to this, I'll try something not mentioned in the Help File:  I'll attempt to choose a dice color from the link code.  (Note:  this feature, if it does exist, is undocumented.)

[dice=2d20 color=red record=yes dok=kl drop=1 text="Roll a Stat Check with Advantage, displaying both dice"]
Roll a Stat Check with Advantage, displaying both dice

That didn't work.  Hmm... did the Help file mention flags for secret or private rolls?  No.

Observations:  Certain features that cannot be coded for in a link can still be selected just prior to rolling.  Also, the person rolling must still choose a Character before rolling to avoid throwing an error unless the link pre-configures the correct character ID number for them.
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:16, Sun 11 Feb 2018.

This experiment was prompted by a thread on RPoL Development at Dice Roller:  Deck of Fate

The subject was using dice rolls to simulate a draw from a deck of cards, specifically the Evil Hat Productions Deck of FATE.

I will not be covering how to do a Deck of Fate because I don't own one.  I will instead use a shorter example that is in Public Domain for illustrative purposes.

Some Background:

There are two scenarios for which a deck of cards may be used:  a single card may be drawn from the deck or two or more cards may be drawn on the same shuffle.

In the first case, only one result is needed, and the deck is re-shuffled before the next draw is made.  This is referred to in Statistics as sampling with replacement.

In the second case, all cards needed from the deck are drawn before the deck is re-shuffled.  That is, the deck is sampled multiple times without replacment.

Now dice rolls can be classed in two general types according to the distributions into which their results fall.

The Uniform Distribution:

The roll of a single die, or the roll of multiple dice interpreted as the "digits" of a result, produces a Uniform Distribution.  This is so called because each result has a uniform probability of occurence if the dice are fair (i.e., not misshapen, loaded, or irregularly spotted/numbered).

The Normal Distribution:

Any roll of two or more dice whose sum is taken as their result produces a Normal Distribution.  The roll of two six-sided dice used in many common board games is perhaps the most familiar example to non-gamers, and the roll of three six-sided dice is perhaps more familiar to those who play role-playing games.

In this type of distribution, there are one or two results which tend to occur more frequently because of the way the dice combine to produce those results.  These more frequent results are referred to as norms.

In a roll of two six-sided dice, for example, the norm is 7, and it can occur in the following ways (note that order of the two dice is significant):

1+6, 2+5, 3+4, 4+3, 5+2, 6+1

So a roll of 7 occurs six times out of the thirty-six possible permutations of 2d6.  A mathematician or statistician might reduce this 6:36 down to 1:6 and be numerically correct in stating these as the odds (or the probability) of a result of 7 on any one given roll of 2d6.

Simulating a Deck of Cards:

In simulating a deck of cards, the structure of the deck is usually represented by a table (or, if you're programming such a simulation, an array or similar data structure).  We'll use a deck of Zener Cards to illustrate.  The original Zener Deck was used to test for Extrasensory Perception back in the 1960s and has a rather generic symbol set:  a Yellow Circle, a Red Cross, a set of Blue Wavy Lines, a Black Square, and a Green Five-Pointed Star.  Five of each symbol is included in the deck to make a total of 25 cards.  I chose this example as the symbols are suitably generic and the deck itself is small, but large enough for illustrative purposes.

Before we get into our example, the structure of the deck matters not one whit so long as all cards are represented.  Just to prove the point, I'm going to modify this Zener Deck such that each symbol is represented in each of the five colors.  This also makes it easier to see that each card is unique.

The First Step:  Building a Reference Table

So, for our Modified Zener Deck, the table might look something like


We could scramble these various cards around in any manner and not affect the validity of the outcomes one bit, but this is the arrangement I will use for my example.  In effect, we're arranging first by color (analogous to suit in a more traditional deck of cards), then by symbol (value).

Step Two:  Creating the Dice Roll for the RPoL Dice Roller.

Now that we have our table, we know what our die roll must look like:  a Uniform Distribution with results ranging from 1 to 25.  How do we know this?  Each of the cards is unique (no duplicates), and there are 25 cards.

So, whether we draw a single card or multiple cards from the deck, the same basic die roll template can suffice.  In the template below, N is the number of cards being drawn.

[dice=Nd25 record=yes unique=yes memo="Draw N cards from the Modified Zener Deck" text="Draw N cards from the Modified Zener Deck."]

For a single draw:

[dice=1d25 record=yes unique=yes memo="Draw 1 card from the Modified Zener Deck" text="Draw 1 card from the Modified Zener Deck."]

Try it out here:

Draw 1 card from the Modified Zener Deck.

To make four draws from the same deck before shuffling:

[dice=4d25 record=yes unique=yes memo="Draw 4 cards from the Modified Zener Deck" text="Draw 4 cards from the Modified Zener Deck."]

Try it out here:

Draw 4 cards from the Modified Zener Deck.

Using the Modified Zener Deck:

To use the deck, roll the die or dice needed (one for each player) and consult the table for the result shown on each die.

For example, if I draw four cards using the dice roller, I might get something like:

20:37, Today: Chief Tinker rolled 80 using 4d25, unique dice ((20,15,24,21)).

The "rolled 80" part is irrelevant.  Look at the results in the double parentheses:

20 = "A Black Five-Pointed Star"
15 = "A Blue Five-Pointed Star" (those who remember Galaxina feel free...)
24 = "A Green Square"
21 = "A Green Circle"

The numbers tell us immediately that all four results are unique, and our table results confirm it.  Once this roll is cast, any new roll will result in a draw or draws from a fresh Modified Zener Deck.

NOTES:

I have not yet figured out how to make a deck persist over multiple dice rolls.  That is, each time a roll is called, the "deck" will, in effect, have all its cards available.  It is, therefore, important for the GM using this method to draw all cards for a given event or place in the adventure at one go, i.e. if six cards are needed, draw all six and keep them aside until needed.

The dice roller will come up with all the settings shown configured already, but it is possible using the rc= option to specify a character name in the link.  Please don't forget to select a character to roll before attempting the roll, or it will fail with an error message.

Example:  Draw 1 Zener Card from the Modified Deck for Chief Tinker  [dice=1d25 rc=299435 text="Draw 1 Zener Card from the Modified Deck for Chief Tinker"]

{For more information about the rc= option, see section 1000 - Basic Stuff under message no. 8, titled 1002.24 - Character-Related Options.}

A roll of this type might have the following output in the dice roller log:

22:08, Today: Chief Tinker rolled 5 using 1d25.

which would be the equivalent of the card Yellow Star.

A color for the dice roll text can be selected prior to the roll.  I have not seen ways to add this feature to dice roll links as yet.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:05, Sat 04 Aug 2018.

This experiment was prompted by:  Private lines that aren't really private  The original post in that thread is quoted below.



This post gave rise to some answers worthy of experimental verification, so here goes.

Firstly, I will attempt to post a private line to everyone:


Next, a private line to no one:

[Private to: I expect this to throw an error.]

The only error it threw was being visible to everyone.  Let's try a non-existent user...


Huh.  Private to Nobody threw no errors, and sent a private line only the GM can see, presumably.  Let's see what Private to Everybody looks like...


As expected, so long as the character name is of a non-existent character, the message goes to the GM.

It would be helpful if I had some players here to help test things.

This addendum is prompted by an artifact I observed during the previous post:

Posting certain private lines spawned the generation of private messages and re-directed the posting of the previous message there.

I have since copied the content of that message, edited it a bit, and cannot seem to replicate this behavior.

For that reason, I'm repeating certain private lines from the previous post to check and see if I can get this artifact to occur again.

Private to Nobody:


Private to Everybody:


So far just previewing this post does not generate private messages...

Private to:

[Private to:  no recipient included.]

Now to post this thingy and see what pops up.

Curious:  so far no private messages were generated.


Hmm... that leaves private to Chief Tinker and Homunculus...


Huh.  Maybe I made a mistake creating the original post (2003), above?
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:22, Wed 30 May 2018.

This sub-experiment is at the request of new player BaxTheSlayer, stemming from a conversation we had in a private message in one of his games.

The purpose of this effort is to gain a better understanding of how private messages in game posts actually work.

To start off, I'll post a private message to my alternate character, Homunculus, here:


As a bonus to the experiment, I'll attempt to display using code tags what this private line looks like in the message editor window:

[Private to Homunculus: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. Don't forget to roll the r.  I'm making this line needlessly long because I want to post more than one line of text.  Right now it's too much effort for me to come up with something meaningful off the cuff.  Sorry.]

Well... that almost worked.  The color for private messages is a unique one not available in the regular color palette that I can find, but orange is close.  Also note the opening and closing square brackets of the message are in the default text color (depending on which theme you have selected in User Preferences.)

BaxTheSlayer should not be able to see the actual private line above, or even tell if it's there without the context cues I've given.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:16, Sat 04 Aug 2018.

Observations:

The only indication I can see of the private lines is a single, extra, empty line after the 'statement' line.

From my side, all I see is this:



So, savvy players could construe that something is going on, but it could just as easily be an accidental extra line.

Knowing that private lines between GM characters works at all, I suggest posting the following, as a test to see the effects of organizing private lines in various ways:

Test 1 (Private Line Directly Below)
[Private to Homunculus: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. <i>Don't forget to roll the r.</i>  I'm making this line needlessly long because I want to post more than one line of text.  Right now it's too much effort for me to come up with something meaningful off the cuff.  Sorry.]
Test End Line

Test 2 (Private Line Attached)[Private to Homunculus: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. <i>Don't forget to roll the r.</i>  I'm making this line needlessly long because I want to post more than one line of text.  Right now it's too much effort for me to come up with something meaningful off the cuff.  Sorry.]
Test End Line

Test 3 (Private Line Running Into Text)
[Private to Homunculus: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. <i>Don't forget to roll the r.</i>  I'm making this line needlessly long because I want to post more than one line of text.  Right now it's too much effort for me to come up with something meaningful off the cuff.  Sorry.]Test End Line

Test 4 (Multiple Detached Private Lines)
[Private to Homunculus: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. <i>Don't forget to roll the r.</i>  I'm making this line needlessly long because I want to post more than one line of text.  Right now it's too much effort for me to come up with something meaningful off the cuff.  Sorry.]
[Private to Homunculus: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. <i>Don't forget to roll the r.</i>  I'm making this line needlessly long because I want to post more than one line of text.  Right now it's too much effort for me to come up with something meaningful off the cuff.  Sorry.]
Test End Line

Test 5 (Multiple Attached Private Lines)
[Private to Homunculus: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. <i>Don't forget to roll the r.</i>  I'm making this line needlessly long because I want to post more than one line of text.  Right now it's too much effort for me to come up with something meaningful off the cuff.  Sorry.][Private to Homunculus: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. <i>Don't forget to roll the r.</i>  I'm making this line needlessly long because I want to post more than one line of text.  Right now it's too much effort for me to come up with something meaningful off the cuff.  Sorry.]
Test End Line
This message was last edited by the player at 20:35, Fri 08 June 2018.

Your suggestions seem well thought out.  Here goes:


Test 1 (Private Line Directly Below)
Test End Line

Test 2 (Private Line Attached)
Test End Line

Test 3 (Private Line Running Into Text)
Test End Line

Test 4 (Multiple Detached Private Lines)
Test End Line

Test 5 (Multiple Attached Private Lines)

Test End Line

And here's what I see:



Though, interestingly, when I quoted it, this is the actual capture from the quote link:

My Conclusions:

It seems that everything between the brackets of a private line essentially doesn't exist to non-participating viewers.

As long as there were no extraneous returns between the surrounding text lines, there is no indication that there are private lines at all.  The only caveat, apparently, is that two private lines that run together generate an extraneous return for some reason.

I would guess multiple cascading private lines would continue to generate additional returns.  I would also surmise that one could put a private line in the middle of a sentence without breaking up the sentence (essentially, a private parenthetical note), but these would need to be confirmed.

Finally, it seems that the underlying system does see a single return somewhere in the mix for each private line - it added one in test 1, but not in test two or three which each attached to the test line and the end line, respectively, two in test 4 for each private line, and one in test five for both consecutive private lines.

Of course, these only show up when you quote or possibly if there was some other method to access the actual code of the post.

This is some good data.  Thank you for experimenting here.  I'll have to digest the data later, as I'm slow-witted after a busy birthday with the kids, and just chillin' for a bit.

Did you get all your questions answered?

This brought to my mind another short experiment:

[Private to Homunculus:  This message is missing its end bracket...

Yeah, I'm glad the private lines from NPCs seems to work the same way as from PCs, so that we could see it happen.

And, yeah, the missing end bracket prevents the private line from forming at all.

Thanks for tinkering with me.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:50, Sat 09 June 2018.

My pleasure.  Come back when you want to play some more, or if anything here is of use to you.

There's a thread on RPoL Development that spawned this experiment and other work (my Fate Character Sheet and Game Creation Worksheet) to which I must give due credit:  https://rpol.net/display.cgi?gi=36224&ti=23  link to a message in another game.

In that thread, Escribblings introduces a technique of "wrapping" a character sheet done in Easy Tables in HTML table tags.

I'm curious in this current experiment as to whether or not we can also use width=xxx style tags to constrain a larger image in a post.  For the purposes of this experiment, I'm using the following image (one of my own, which shows my wallpaper for my laptop at home):



This image has a native resolution of 800 X 500 pixels.  As a result, it fits neatly into my post (I am presently using a 1600 X 900 display panel).

Let's first see what enclosing this in table tags does:

{the code:}

<table width=400><tr><td>
<img src="http://mypics.findmoore.net/images/horusfalcon/precisionm4600traveller.jpg">
</td></tr></table>

{produces the table:}



Hmm... it looks like the image expanded the table to fit itself instead of constraining to fit the specified table width of 400 pixels.  I half-expected this would happen.

Just to confirm, <img src="imageURLhere"> tags are not supposed to accept the width= parameter (at least according to the Help file).  Here goes:

{the code}

<img width=400 src="http://mypics.findmoore.net/images/horusfalcon/precisionm4600traveller.jpg">

{produces:}

<img width=400 src="http://mypics.findmoore.net/images/horusfalcon/precisionm4600traveller.jpg">

So, yeah, it appears the image cannot be constrained here by what would be normal HTML methods or attributes.

As of right now, the best way forward for using images in posts is to constrain them to a reasonable width prior to inclusion.  Of course, what is "reasonable" will usually be what fits on the smallest display in a given play group.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:19, Mon 06 Aug 2018.

Hi, I'm here to check out the Character Details tab. I'm not really sure what the two options: 'fixed width, word wrap off' and 'variable width, word wrap on' mean, and I've found nothing in the Rpol FAQ to explain it.

I've noticed that different entries, even in the same game, can give different formats when using 'variable width, word wrap on'. Sometimes the character details show up in a window and sometimes they spread right across the screen. I want to find out why, and hopefully how to force the thing to display within a window every time.

Tinker has provided me with a RuBB script that will force it to a window, but I want to know how to make it do that for itself, so I don't have to add script. <I'll add the script here when I go and find it>

Tinker has set me up with a character sheet here, and it is currently displaying in a window. I intend to do things to it, and see if I can find some content that makes it expand to full screen width. If I can find such content, I intend to see if removing it is a reversible process and takes me back to a window view.

I assume the sheet is currently set up to 'variable width, word wrap on'.

The confusing thing is that, to me, a window is a 'fixed width', but obviously that's not what the term means to the Rpol developers. Maybe I can find out what they mean by the term.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:09, Fri 26 Oct 2018.

In reply to Dabbler (msg # 16):

The settings for the character sheet are Fixed Width and No Word Wrap.  (At least that's what I see.  Since the sheet is editable, you may be able to change this.)

Part of the difference may be in how the editor window behaves vs. the viewing window?

The editor window accepts plain text and markup (HTML, Easy Tables) as its input.

The viewing window renders variable width text in a different font than fixed width (non-proportional) text.

Let me know if I need to explain the difference between fixed and variable width fonts.  (I wouldn't think so...)

I take fixed vs. variable to mean the type of text used in rendering in the viewer.  So far my observations support this.  It also seems to be a default setting that can be overridden by markup.

Viewing the Traveller Plus character sheet I appended to your character earlier, I see where I actually created an accidental "mini table" at the top, which affected the font rendering for that section.

What word wrap might mean is anyone's guess, but I suspect it has to do with table cell behavior if the available text exceeds the cell's specified dimensions.

It appears a large width (800 px) graphic just extends the virtual viewing window, but experiments in this regard are preliminary at best.

The text ruler below is in Monospaced (a fixed width font) for reference.

         1         2         3         4         5         6         8
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890

UPDATE:  One thing I do notice after inserting the graphic:  centering of text is affected in the non-wrapped <i>Traveller Plus sheet, whereas the Fate character sheet, wrapped in its table tags, is not affected.  This argues strongly for use of this technique, with any accompanying graphics being placed outside the table tags, perhaps as header and footer banners?</i>

This is actually a new area of experimentation for me, because I usually produce PDF documents from my Open Document spreadsheets (which do the arithmetic for me), then link to the PDFs (stored on my Google drive) in the character sheet editor here on RPoL.  Spreadsheets are just so much easier to maintain.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:10, Fri 26 Oct 2018.

The setup (width/wrap) is not player editable, only the content is editable. Sheet setup can only be changed by the GM.

Using pre-generated character sheets and images goes way beyond where I want to experiment at present. I just want to input plain text for now, starting right at the beginning.

I’m aware of the difference between monospaced and proportional fonts, but I had no idea that that was what the setup referred to. That may be something else for me to look at.

Because of my lack of understanding of the terms used, I’ve always used ‘variable width, word wrap on’, because I wanted my words to wrap within the window. Can we start with a setup of ‘variable width, word wrap on’ and no pre-gen, so I can just type words as a player and see what happens to them?
This message was last updated by the GM at 16:12, Fri 26 Oct 2018.

In reply to Dabbler (msg # 18):

Sure.  Let me nip out and take care of that...

Done!  Boy, that makes the Traveller part look a lot differently when viewed.

(I really need to sit down and do a table-wrapped EasyTables version of this sheet, anyhow...)

I'll clean up the window so it's ready to go, too...

Done!  The edit window is presently blank, so edit away, please.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:13, Fri 26 Oct 2018.

I've made an entry and it is going the full width of my page. It wraps, but only at the edge of the page. Whatever setup this is, it's producing the layout I don't want.

Is this Variable Width, Word Wrap On?
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 16:14, Fri 26 Oct 2018.

In reply to Dabbler (msg # 20):

Yeah.  Variable width, word wrap on.  Let's see where it wraps.  I played with it a bit.  Wow.  Not what I would have expected, either.  Must sleep now - got home late.
This message was last updated by the GM at 16:15, Fri 26 Oct 2018.

Hi Horus, I've been chatting with Skald about a possible feature of the site, if we have at least two players and a GM willing, can we set up an experiment to test this here?

The chat:
link to a message in another game

Basically, you'd need to set up a secondary character, say Joe, for me and at least one other player, and see if everyone can post as Joe as well as our primary character, or whether there are differences between Joes, and what the limitations might be.

Cheers. :)
This message was last updated by the GM at 16:19, Fri 26 Oct 2018.

Hi, Dabbler,

I'm game if you are.  Note:  I did some reorganizing of subjects, including your last post.

If Bax The Slayer (my only other current player) is out there and reading, yeah, I like this idea, and would be grateful if you could play along.  I suppose I could rMail and invite Skald to play along (or at least read, since the interest is there...)

Let's get enough people involved and make it happen.

Dabbler, I'm going to let you take control of the experimental design since you're the one who wants to prove or disprove a hypothesis here.  Tell me what you want done and let's do it.  If you want to be on the GMs side of the screen for this one, let me know and I'll make you a co-GM for as long as needed.

So far, we need a character, Joe, assigned to all participants.  I'll go ahead and create your Joe and mine.

UPDATE:  I have created a character named Joe for Dabbler, baxtheslayer, and Chief Tinker (me).  Just for the sake of experimental documentation, I did this via the GM Menu --> Character Management --> Add (Existing) screen.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:47, Fri 26 Oct 2018.

(Dabbler)
Thanks Tinker. Testing my Joe now.
Yep, he works for me. Now we just need to see what happens when others post for Joe.

It would be useful if each of us starts their posts with their primary name, as I've done, so we know which Joe is posting. It might get confusing otherwise.

I don't need to see behind the screen just yet, thanks.

(Dabbler)
I've just updated my Joe with a portrait (mmb002) a bio line and a Cast List description - could the other Joes please make identical changes, so that we have Joes that are identical in every way? That way, we know that all players of Joe can share his details.

Maybe these details are already showing up on your Joe?

I've noticed that my Joe doesn't have a Character Sheet, does that need to be created by the GM?

If you can set up a character sheet for your Joe, Tinker, and put a few words in it, I'll see if I can see it in my Joe.

Thanks. :)

(Chief Tinker, aka Homunculus)

Other Joe here!  I'd better nip out and select a portrait... let's see what Joe Prime used?  (mmb002 under Male, Modern, Business).

Hmm... I note that my Joe shows up as an NPC?  Hmm... that's just how it's tagged.

The character sheet for my Joe contains the following non sequitur text:


This message was last edited by the player at 03:43, Sat 27 Oct 2018.

Just from initial observations, these Joes are not all the same Joe.  Dabbler's Joe has a different character sheet, is assigned to him, and and has different text in its character sheet that my Joe has, since mine is assigned to me.

This only makes sense.  Each of these characters, even though they have the same name, is a separate entity assigned to different players/GMs.

Let me nip out and add some more text to my character sheet, though, because I created it first.  Maybe it will now update both sheets, but I think not.  More on this theory later, and Jase will probably back me up on this if we ask him.

My additional text is now there on my character sheet, and the page has been updated.

Incidentally, when looking at your Joe's Character Details page, look to see the value of ci= in the URL in your browser.

Mine is ci=319072.  Dabbler's is ci=319071.  baxtheslayer's is ci=319073.

Ipso facto, these three Joes may be triplets, but they are not the same
database entity.

Let's step back for a moment, re-read the referenced thread, and see if the design of the experiment to this point needs to be revised to better test the hypothesis.  Perhaps I misunderstood?
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:45, Sat 27 Oct 2018.

(CT, aka H)

I selected one of the Joes not assigned to me for this post.

(CT, aka H)

And... now I'm sock-puppeting Dabbler.

(The real one)

No, I didn't expect that these would be the same database entity - I suspect that can't be allocated to different players, but I was just checking to make sure.

I've checked my Character sheet (which exists now, thanks), but it's empty, so that, and the fact that you didn't inherit my portrait, confirms that that data is not automatically transferred between Joes, and that they are, in fact, separate entities as far as the Rpol database is concerned.

What I want to do now, is to make the Joes functionally identical, so they all have the same portrait, bio line, Cast description and character sheet contents, and differ only in Rpol's ID number - to make sure that making them identical doesn't fruit up Rpol's ID system (I'm expecting it won't).

Then I want to see if everyone can post as Joe such that, apart from having our personal moniker in brackets, there's no way to tell who's posting for Joe on each occasion.

I suspect from what's happened so far that we can do this - which is exactly what I was trying to achieve. It means that the GM can set up several identical Joes, one for each player, and then any player can post as Joe, enabling the NPC to be carried by the team, rather than being in the hands of the GM all the time.

It's a bit long-winded, creating several examples of each redshirt, but if it works, it's do-able. :)

Please welcome Skald as a "player" here at Heru's Tinkertoy!  A Joe has been created, but is not yet fully identical.  I shall take care of that when I get home tomorrow after work.



I underestimated you.  I'm sorry.  I'll try not to do that again.



I think I did misunderstand.  You're trying to test a different set of conditions than I first thought.



Nor do I.  Each record in the database can hold the same data so long as they have unique key identifiers (those long numbers shown as ci=).



I don't see why that shouldn't work. A micro-game, perhaps?  Free-form with no rules whatsoever aside from those of civil conduct?  Could be fun!



The approach is a bit ham-handed, since it created as many copies of the NPC Joe as there are players. (That will make keeping all those Joes identical a chore...)

A GM or Co-GM can post as any character in a given game, and can assign any secondary character from one player to another, as I understand it.  Just some points to ponder there, but I digress...



I think we've already proven it's do-able.  Let's explore what ramifications doing it might have.  I think there are also other hypotheses which were put forward in the thread in Technical Discussions which are worth exploring if you are all game.

One last question:  Might it be useful to transfer further experimentation into its own topic?  This may go on at some length.  What say all of you?
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:05, Fri 09 Aug 2019.

Hi and Welcome, Skald. :)


No worries, it's better to underestimate than to overestimate. I quite often miss the boat! :)


What did you think I wanted - whatever it is might be worth exploring?


Suits me!


True, but the method you suggest there requires the GM to pre-empt each player wanting to post for Joe, and then allocating Joe to the right player. Taking time-zones into account, that could be even more of a PITA than copying and pasting occasional updates onto half a dozen character sheets.


Suits me. :)

If you do intend to set up a mini-scene, the original problem I was trying to solve was a situation where I had 3 or 4 players playing NCOs in a squad of mercenaries.

I wanted each of the NCOs to be able to post for any or all of the Redshirt Privates, so that they could carry their squad forward, and I could concentrate on handling the opposition.

I didn't want to hand 3 redshirts to player A, 3 redshirts to player B, etc, I wanted more flexibility than that.

Smiles and waves !  ;>

I do enjoy 'pressing buttons to see what happens' (ah, in a literal sense, not trying to annoy people !) so jumped at the chance to contribute to the sum knowledge of the RPoL world when our illustrious Chief Tinker asked.

To the subject at hand ...

Yes, as we discussed in technical, the system allows for all players to have their own Joe so there's no trap on identical names, but as you've proven here, they all have their own Character ID, so they're actually separate characters.

That would definitely have been a deliberate decision by jase - the prime concern is that we (GM/Mods/Admin) can work out who posted what, just in case inappropriate content crept in - so each player can be uniquely identified by the character attached to them by that Character ID, if it comes to pointing fingers and assigning blame.

But I don't think that necessarily has to make for too much extra work to maintain - you'd need to set up everyone with their Joe or NCO1, NCO2, NCO3 in the first instance, but once you've got the portrait, bio and description in place for all of 'em that should be it ... the trick would be NOT to populate the character sheet for each, but instead to have a separate thread where the character sheet sits - put it inside a "Private to Joe" tag or use a particular group if you want to hide it from any players who don't have a Joe.  The GM would have to edit that post to update the character sheet, but just the once, not for every character sheet attached to an instance of Joe.

Also note that you can see which Joe posted by hovering the mouse over the player name in the info block to the right of the post as the Character ID ("ci=") forms part of the string that's visible in the status bar (assuming you have that turned on in your browser).

{Waves back} Hi!



Yup, that's the whole point of this little discussion board.  Glad you could join us.



That only makes sense.  It's more or less inherent in the defaults of most SQL-based databases.  I think it's possible to require a secondary field (other than the key ID) to be unique, but it's not generally done by default, and doing it here would have been an unfortunate choice for us as players and GMs, so I'm glad Jase didn't do that.

Moderator duties aside, from what I've seen of the design here the philosophy seems one of elegance:  no unnecessary restrictions, and no features that aren't truly useful, either from the view of a player, a GM, or a Moderator.



This makes eminent good sense.  I especially like the bit about common character sheets in subtopics residing in private groups.  That makes managing player access a significantly more simple matter, especially when multiple NPCs of this type are needed in a game.  The only drawback I see to this approach is that one could rapidly run out of private groups if multiple NPCs were needed in groups accessible by differing groups of players.

If this were to take place on a large scale, and I was tasked with designing the game, I'd probably make as few groups of this type as possible, and tend to assign as many of these NPCs as possible to the same private group to reduce the confusion.



Please see subtopic 2600 - Micro-Game for Experiment Six, everyone.  This present topic will remain open for future experiments, but let's move further discussion to the micro-game topic (until if spills out to other subtopics, of course).

It's back to bed for me.  Re-adjusting to nights after working days yesterday.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:31, Sun 28 Oct 2018.

The experiments I am about to perform will be based on the General RPoL thread:

Multiple Rolls with Manual Die Roller?

The basic issue discussed in the linked thread was that making multiple rolls "manually" in the dice roller resulted in some strange errors if the first roll in the set was one preceded by a constant from which the first dice roll was subtracted.

The example string of dice rolls was:



This led to further experimentation by the original poster, chiefly moving the 14-3d6 roll to the end of the queue.

An assertion (which appears to be correct if the individual results are considered separately) was made by a respondent that the subtraction (or negation) that occurs in 14-3d6 was also applied to the subsequent dice rolls in the set.

Well, the short answer so far is that symbols of inclusion (such as parentheses, square brackets, or braces) all throw syntax errors.

Additionally, enclosing each expression in its own set of quotes (as the dice roller examples below the field indicate) also throws an error.  The expression list must not be bounded by quotes at all, since the dice roller adds them automagically around the entire list.

It's beginning to look like the intended syntax for each comma-separated expression is XdY plus or minus DM value (where DM = Dice Modifier) with the sign and DM value optional and omissible.

In some cases, an X value of 1 may be omitted, and dice strings for the rolling of one die with Y sides may be expressed simply as dY.  Note that for certain forms of dice roll strings (notably reversed strings involving subtraction) this "implied 1" format does not work correctly.

Hmm...

Using the string 3d6+7,2d6-4,d20+8,d16-7 yielded:

01:40, Today: Homunculus rolled 12,2,12,-5 using 3d6+7,2d6-4,d20+8,d16-7 ((2,1,2,1,5,4,2)).

Let's see now:

2+1+2+7 = 12
1+5-4 = 2
4+8 = 12
2-7 = -5

It would appear that so long as the dice come first in each string, the operations remain properly correct and separate from each others' influence sign-wise.

Hmm...  the string 20-d20,12-d12,6-d6 throws an error stating that - is an invalid number of dice.

Replacing this with 20-1d20,12-1d12,6-1d6 yielded more interesting results:

01:48, Today: Homunculus rolled 2,5,3 using 20-1d20,12-1d12,6-1d6 ((18,7,3)).

20-18 = 2
12-7 = 5
6-3 = 3

So far, so good.  It's worth noting that in a reversed (Constant - dice roll) expression, so long as all dice rolls are of this type and all dice are preceded by a number (even if it is a 1), their results were correct.  Omitting preceding numbers in dice strings (the "implied 1" form) tends to lead to errors in reversed form strings.  That is:

20-1d20,12-1d12,6-1d6 is acceptable for reversed format entries, but...

20-d20,12-d12,6-d6 is NOT acceptable for entries of this type.

 Let's see what happen if the sign changes for the middle roll in this set:

20-d20,12+d12,6-d6 yields:

01:57, Today: Homunculus rolled 3,0,4 using 20-1d20,12+1d12,6-1d6 ((17,12;2)).

20-17 = 3
12+12 <> 0 (!) {it appears that first "subtraction also negates the + in this expression.}
6-2 = 4, so the negation did not carry over to negate the subtraction.

CONCLUSIONS:

So long as a number greater than zero is always specified in the dice string in the X position of XdY (not considering any preceding sign), the dice roll strings will be parsed correctly so long as none of them is expressed in "reversed subtractive" (Constant - Dice Roll) format.

If a reversed format roll is needed, it is best to express it singly, more especially so if it involves subtraction as opposed to addition, however, if multiple reversed rolls involving subtraction are needed, so long as they are not mixed with those requiring addition, their results will be parsed correctly.

(This has some possibly interesting implications for those of us using The Black Hack, The Petal Hack, or systems which use a similar "Stat Check" mechanic where success is achieved by rolling below a given value.)

We theorize from the foregoing that reversed subtractive format rolls were not anticipated in the design of the dice roller, and that the rules of their parsing are an unintended consequence rather than by intentional design.

{Please note this is not intended as a criticism of the Dice Roller.  It is, rather, an observation on the tendency of users to find exploits, loopholes, and other hidden flaws in a coder's designs.  This sort of thing amounts to a hack of the Dice Roller to get it to perform in some ways beyond its original specifications.}

As such, while there are special cases where reversed format dice rolls are parsed correctly, namely "all additive" or "all subtractive", care should be exercised in using any other cases, and results should be verified to be in line with those expected.

The result of this experiment has been moved to 3203 - Star Wars Saga Edition Character Record Sheet in new Section 3200.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:27, Mon 24 June 2019.

It's been bugging me for a while:  what are the operative differences between private lines and secret lines in in-game messages?

Just to see if I can illustrate:



I'd greatly appreciate it if anyone who sees this would tell me what they see.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:33, Sun 18 Aug 2019.

I see this:


It's been bugging me for a while:  what are the operative differences between private lines and secret lines in in-game messages?

Just to see if I can illustrate:
Nothing to see here - just testing.


I'd greatly appreciate it if anyone who sees this would tell me what they see.

In reply to Dabbler (msg # 38):

Thank you!

Aha!  So secret lines don't have anything to distinguish them from regular text when viewed by the Recipient!  That could have interesting uses for the enterprising GM.

(The phrase, "Nothing to see here - just testing." was sent to you as a secret line.)

You did not see the private line I sent to Homunculus, my NPC assistant character.  Just for funsies, I've re-addressed it to you:
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:42, Mon 19 Aug 2019.

Did the Secret Line generate a blank line for unincluded players, so that they suspect something was written there? For me, you'll notice there was a blank line following the message directed to me. This could just be your spacing but, obviously, if the hidden message is a paragraph rather than a line, any space it occupies will be more evident.

I'm not sure whether 'suspicious spaces' are a function of Private Lines, Secret Lines, both, or neither. Maybe we can check that?

I'm under the impression that a Secret Line can be written mid-paragraph without alerting other readers that anything is going on.

Well... from my point of view as GM here I can't really tell...



The private message to Homunculus did, indeed occupy a one-line paragraph between the secret message to you and what followed.  If I just ran it together at the end of one or the beginning of another paragraph, none should have been the wiser.



Send Homunculus a secret line such as you describe (it's one of the reasons I keep the little guy around -- well, that and he's a master of tea ceremony!) ;^)

Yes, I think this is just a matter of checking the formatting of what we write, to see whether any of these private or Secret messages leave tell-tale clues.
The problem is, even if I send Homunculus a Secret Line, [Sect to Homunculus: like this one]you will still be able to read it as the GM, so you won't be able to figure out what it's doing - as you've already figured when you asked for a players-eye view of your own post.
Now if I were to send a Secret Line to Homunculus [Sect to Homunculus: like this new one] putting a space before and after the message, I'm guessing that a double space will give the game away to the other players. Although a double space could just be a typo.

Anyway, here's a selection of Private and Secret messages covering a few words, a line, and a paragraph, to see if we can see what's what. :)

Edit: Ah. Another problem. When I tried to post this, I got an error message that only GMs can post secret messages. So I've mis-spelled 'Secret' in the messages to force it to send. If you respell them before sending it back to me, we should be able to continue the experiment as intended.

I had to enter Homunculus by hand here - not available from the Secret to: menu.  Let's see if it works.

Now if I were to send a Secret Line to Homunculus  putting a space before and after the message, I'm guessing that a double space will give the game away to the other players. Although a double space could just be a typo.

It would figure.  Let's see what happens.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:19, Thu 22 Aug 2019.

Now you've placed quotes into your copy-back, so it's not showing up exactly as I wrote it, and I can't see what happened with the private paragraph:

---

Dabbler:
Yes, I think this is just a matter of checking the formatting of what we write, to see whether any of these private or Secret messages leave tell-tale clues.

The problem is, even if I send Homunculus a Secret Line, you will still be able to read it as the GM, so you won't be able to figure out what it's doing - as you've already figured when you asked for a players-eye view of your own post.


I had to enter Homunculus by hand here - not available from the Secret to: menu.  Let's see if it works.

quote:
Now if I were to send a Secret Line to Homunculus  putting a space before and after the message, I'm guessing that a double space will give the game away to the other players. Although a double space could just be a typo.


It would figure.  Let's see what happens.

---

However, we can see that the private line does leave a blank line for other readers, the secret line is completely secret provided you put a space before or after the brackets but not both and not neither. Otherwise you do indeed get a telltale double space or a lack of space.

If you just copy my above message as it displays, rather than using the quote function (just highlight and copy from the screen) it may show us what a Private Paragraph does. I suspect it will leave multiple blank lines.

Yup, the double space shows up, and I don't see the message (or did you simulate that, being what you saw - that would make more sense...).

So, basically, secret messages are a bit more sly than private lines?

<quote Dabbler>
Now you've placed quotes into your copy-back, so it's not showing up exactly as I wrote it, and I can't see what happened with the private paragraph:

---

Sorry.  Fixed this in  the post to which you are referring.  (Quotes removed).

Can you copy the whole of my msg 42 and send it back, so I can see the overall layout? Thanks. :)

In reply to Dabbler (msg # 47):

Message copied without quote markup; hopefully this will help.

Um... did you also need for me to fix spelling errors in "Secret" lines?

COPIED MESSAGE FOLLOWS:

Yes, I think this is just a matter of checking the formatting of what we write, to see whether any of these private or Secret messages leave tell-tale clues.

The problem is, even if I send Homunculus a Secret Line, [Sect to Homunculus: like this one]you will still be able to read it as the GM, so you won't be able to figure out what it's doing - as you've already figured when you asked for a players-eye view of your own post.

Now if I were to send a Secret Line to Homunculus [Sect to Homunculus: like this new one] putting a space before and after the message, I'm guessing that a double space will give the game away to the other players. Although a double space could just be a typo.

Anyway, here's a selection of Private and Secret messages covering a few words, a line, and a paragraph, to see if we can see what's what. :)

Edit: Ah. Another problem. When I tried to post this, I got an error message that only GMs can post secret messages. So I've mis-spelled 'Secret' in the messages to force it to send. If you respell them before sending it back to me, we should be able to continue the experiment as intended.

END COPIED MESSAGE

Thanks. No, we've already checked what the Secret Lines do. They're fine.

I wanted to see whether the Private lines left blank lines, or multiple blank lines, but it seems they don't. The blank line after "tell-tale clues" is just a normal paragraph break, and there is anther normal paragraph break after "of your own post", rather than a three or four line break.

We can assume that they would leave a clue (paragraph break?) if used in the middle of a paragraph, hence the need for the Secret Line.

I've noticed in games that sometimes there is a large blank space at the end of a post, and I wondered if that indicated the insertion of a Private Line, but it seems not, it must just be a spacing issue of Rpol.

Useful experiment. Thanks. :)

I've been dabbling with language groups in one of my games, but since I set it up, nobody has 'spoken' in a foreign language, so I haven't figured how they work yet.

You're welcome!  If you like, we can set up a couple of language groups here and give it a go.  I had like 12 language groups in my Firefly game, but no one ever used them, either.  Go figure.

Sure, we can give it a try.

Dabbler seems to be keeping me busy these days by coming up with interesting experiments. Thank you, Dabbler!

I'm going to set up two language groups, let's call them Francais and Nihongo (two languages with which I have some facility in reality).  If you want others let me know.  (Yes, I know the c in Francais needs a cedille, but thought that might break the Private Line Group Editor...)

I get:

Dabbler seems to be keeping me busy these days by coming up with interesting experiments. Thank you, Dabbler!

I'm going to set up two language groups, let's call them Francais and Nihongo (two languages with which I have some facility in reality).  If you want others let me know.  (Yes, I know the c in Francais needs a cedille, but thought that might break the Private Line Group Editor...)

Kore tegami wa himitsu desu!  (This message is a secret!)

Edit: Actually, there is a slight difference. In your message, the French, and its bracketed translation, is in italics, which are lost on my returned message, but that's probably a factor of the copy and paste.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:43, Sat 24 Aug 2019.

In reply to Dabbler (msg # 53):

And the reason that the secret message is not italicized is that the secret line editor specifies untagged message text.  (Yes... ironic, isn't it?)

On 11 Sep 2019, new options for dropping ones were added to the dice roller for the responsive site.  This took place as a result of discussion in this RPoL Development thread:  Adding adv/disadv and rerolls to the manual/embed die roller

The dice roller option to reroll ones now has three options, one of which may be selected on any given roll.  These options, as stated in the dice roller, are :  No, All or First.

The link syntax for these has not been given yet (undocumented feature?).

Trying:

12d6, re-rolling all ones on the first or subsequent cast
[dice=12d6 ones=all text="12d6, re-rolling all ones on the first or subsequent cast"]
12d6, re-rolling no ones
[dice=12d6 ones=no text="12d6, re-rolling no ones"]
12d6, re-rolling ones on the first cast only
[dice=12d6 ones=first text="12d6, re-rolling ones on the first cast only"]

has no effect on this selection.

I will post more as my experiments bear fruit or I receive more information about these new features.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:59, Fri 20 Dec 2019.

Testing, testing ...

Roll 12d6
[dice=12d6 ones=yes memo="12d6, re-rolling all ones on the first or subsequent cast"]
Roll 12d6
[dice=12d6 memo="12d6, re-rolling no ones"]
Roll 12d6
[dice=12d6 ones=once memo="12d6, re-rolling ones on the first cast only"]


EDIT: And the winner is ...

I think we might have cracked the code, if someone can confirm that the re-roll ones option is selecting correctly for you too !  :>

I viewed Page Source on the die roller which had the following code which gave the '' (ie blank, so I just omitted that argument), yes and once values.  And it seems case is important - yes and once work, Yes and Once don't.

Re-roll <select name='ones' class='sm'>
<option value=''>No</option>
<option value="yes">All</option><option value="once">First</option> </select> Ones


NB: Responsive site only - the new re-roll ones options not available on the old site.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:59, Sat 21 Dec 2019.

In reply to Skald (msg # 56):

Thank you!  Every now and then it helps to have an inside track! ;-)

As requested, this is my in-game post to see which post (this one, or the PM that will come in a few minutes) has the timestamp that wins for Last Post.

just posting to  get a time stamp

Testing, just to be sure the dropdown menu isn't lying to me.