Category Archives: Games!

What does it mean to ‘Roll the Dice’ on COVID?

2020, COVID, Games!, Science!, Thoughts on Thoughts, Uncategorized

A few days ago, I posted about some chilling COVID statistics[1], and said that each time you get COVID, you and your children ‘roll the dice’ (referring to the relatively high probability of death and/or organ damage/disability).

A friend of mine commented that this was ‘loaded language and emotional rhetoric’, and it came ‘across as an attempt at manipulation or a genuine reflection of fear felt by the author’.

Setting aside the obvious ‘loaded dice’ pun[2], I’d like to interrogate the meaning of ‘rolling the dice’ (and also the use of such rhetorical flourishes in a Health and Safety context).

“Rolling the dice” is generally[2] defined as “…something could have either a good result or a bad result”, or “to take a risk in the hopes of a fortunate result or gain“[3].

Colloquially, I’ve always thought of it in the second sense given by Miriam-Webster: “It’s a roll of the dice whether we succeed or fail.”, meaning that we are not in control of the outcome, and you should be prepared for the high chance of negative outcome.

Of course, ‘high chance’ is defined differently by different people, and in different situations, people having different risk thresholds than each other, and at different times. For example, a 1 in 10 chance of the bottom of your sock becoming wet[4] is very different than a 1 in 10 chance of being hit by a car.

For the sake of argument, let’s compare the above usage of ‘rolling the dice’ with the most popular[5] dice betting[5a] game ‘Craps‘. In Craps, the two most well known[6] sets of odds are ‘Pass’, or ‘will you win this set of rolls’, and winning on the first roll.

‘Pass’ has a win rate very close to 50%[7], perhaps the origin of the term ‘crapshoot’.

Winning on the first roll in Craps requires rolling either a ‘7’ or an ’11′[8], for a total probability of 8/36, or about 22%. Many might think that rolling a 7 is the way to win in Craps (it’s also one way to lose, if your first roll was 4,5,6,8,9,10). Rolling a 7 has a probability of 6/36, or about 17%.

17-22% is within the range of values found in the literature for the prevalence of Long COVID (currently listed as 5-50% by Wikipedia), and is not dissimilar to the 1 in 7.7 (about 13%) deaths in Canada in 2022 attributed to COVID.

One could also argue that ‘a roll of the dice’ is rolling one six-sided die[9], but that just gives us the 1 in 6 or ~17% chance above again. Higher (or lower) order polyhedral dice[10] (or larger numbers of dice) can give us arbitrarily different odds, but let’s stop here.

Today, Statscan reported on the prevalence and ‘Experiences of Canadians with long-term symptoms following COVID-19’.

"As seen in Chart 2, Canadians reporting two known or suspected COVID-19 infections (25.4%) were 1.7 times more likely to report prolonged symptoms than those reporting only one known or suspected infection (14.6%), and those with 3 or more infections (37.9%) 2.6 times more likely. " https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm
“As seen in Chart 2, Canadians reporting two known or suspected COVID-19 infections (25.4%) were 1.7 times more likely to report prolonged symptoms than those reporting only one known or suspected infection (14.6%), and those with 3 or more infections (37.9%) 2.6 times more likely. ” https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm
# of inf. 	% LTS 	95% Confidence Interval (lower, upper)

1+ infections 	19.0 	17.3 	20.9
1 infection 	14.6 	12.8 	16.7
2 infections 	25.4 	21.5 	29.7
3+ infections 	37.9 	29.5 	47.0

Source: Statistics Canada, Canadian COVID-19 Antibody and Health Survey - Follow-up Questionnaire, 2023.

This shows that about 14.6% reported long-term symptoms after one infection (about 1 in 7), then of the remaining 85.4%, about one in 8 developed long-term symptoms after a second infection, then of the remaining 74.6%, about one in 6 developed long-term symptoms.[11]

Each of these is pretty close to ‘a roll of the dice’, as we defined above.

Perhaps more disturbing is that more than half of those who reported long-term symptoms reported no improvement in those symptoms over time:

"Almost half of Canadians who reported that they continue to experience long-term symptoms also reported no improvement over time" "Many Canadians with long-term symptoms experience a protracted symptom duration. As of June 2023, 58.2% of infected Canadians who ever reported long-term symptoms continue to experience them. Among Canadian adults who continued to experience long-term symptoms, 79.3% had been experiencing symptoms for 6 months or more, including 42.2% with symptoms for one year or more (Figure 1)." https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm
“Almost half of Canadians who reported that they continue to experience long-term symptoms also reported no improvement over time” “Many Canadians with long-term symptoms experience a protracted symptom duration. As of June 2023, 58.2% of infected Canadians who ever reported long-term symptoms continue to experience them. Among Canadian adults who continued to experience long-term symptoms, 79.3% had been experiencing symptoms for 6 months or more, including 42.2% with symptoms for one year or more (Figure 1).” https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm

Also, more than 1 in 5 of those with persistent symptoms (600,000 Canadians) missed days of work or school, missing an average of 24 days each.

Having shown that this is a reasonable use of the phrase ‘roll of the dice’, I also wanted to address the idea of using emotional appeals in public education about health and safety.

Here is an example of the phrase being used in a brochure by the Australian National Electrical and Communications Association

A number of years I had the privilege of attending safety training run by Minerva Canada, where a talk was being given by a representative from a car manufacturing company that you’ve heard of. He was talking about their ‘getting to zero’ workplace accidents project, and he mentioned that at some point, after you’ve tried asking people nicely enough times, you have to get the ‘300 lb gorilla to go tell the guy to wear his @#$%ing safety harness’.

That was my sixth and this will be my seventh post talking about the dangers of COVID. At some point, using stronger (but still accurate) language to educate people about the dangers they and their children face due to action or inaction becomes necessary if we actually want to solve the problem.

Thank you for reading, and stay safe out there.

“Get boosted, mask (with an N95 respirator) when you’re indoors with others. Get COVID as few times as you can, and if you get it, rest up longer than you think you need to. Push for better (HEPA) air filtering and ventilation (more air interchanges per hour).”

[1] “tl;dr: About 1 in 8 deaths in 2022 in Canada were caused by COVID-19. Organ damage caused by COVID seems to be persistent. Each time you get COVID, you and your children roll the dice again as to whether you die or get Long COVID. Get boosted, mask (with an N95 respirator) when you’re indoors with others. Get COVID as few times as you can, and if you get it, rest up longer than you think you need to. Push for better (HEPA) air filtering and ventilation (more air interchanges per hour).” link to post

[2] In this case, specifically by Miriam-Webster
[3] Idioms Online

[4] Captain Minor Annoyance (abbreviated MI’) is the creation of Ryan George, one of my favourite Youtubers

[5] In North America. Apparently, Craps, and its predecessor ‘Hazard’ are nowhere near as popular in the rest of the world.

[5a] I mention the ‘most popular dice betting game’ partially because most people will have a passing familiarity, I know some of the odds, and those odds are easy to explain. Compare with the games on the ‘top 10 all-time best-seller list‘: Monopoly (3), Clue (5) (uses one six-sided die for movement, but the deduction and knowing your opponents is far more important for gameplay), and Backgammon (8)

[6] I admit, most well known to me, based on learning about Craps during a probability module in high school. There are a large number of ‘standard’ betting options in Craps, but I suspect most people will not have heard of most of them.

[7] Wikipedia says the Craps ‘Pass’ house edge is less than 2%, similar to that of Blackjack, also well-known for have a very slim house edge.

[8] TIL that ’11’ is often called ‘Yo-leven’, to prevent confusion with ‘seven’.

[9] You’d be wrong, as I define ‘die’ as one die, and ‘dice’ as two or more, but many people disagree.

[10] Most common are 4 (tetrahedron, don’t step on these!), 6 (the familiar cube), 8 (octahedron), 10 (not a platonic solid, but a ‘Pentagonal Trapezohedron‘ #til), 12 (dodecahedron), 20 (icosahedron)

[11] Here, I’m assuming that each time a person catches COVID, they either progress into Long COVID, or stay ‘long-term unaffected’. This allows modeling of each subsequent infection independently. With the numbers above, 1st infection has a ~14.6% chance of leading to Long Covid (1 in 6.85), of the remaining 85.4 people, 25.4-14.6=10.8 of them or 10.8/85.4 = 12.6% or 1 in 7.9, then of the remaining 74.6 people, 37.9-25.4=12.5 of them or 12.5/74.6 = 16.8% or one in 5.97. Note that the last number includes those with more than three infections, so one would expect the number for 3 infections to be less than that. Also note that biology is often not linear, and a linear model such as this one may be simplistic, and should only be used for illustrative purposes, no matter how well it fits the curve.

What is an Encounter? What is a Quest?

Analysis, Games!, Uncategorized

[Note that this post may include mild spoilers for the Gold Box games ‘Pool of Radiance’ and ‘Curse of the Azure Bonds’, as well as ‘TES IV: Oblivion’.]

How ‘large’ is a game? How many ‘encounters’ does it have? How many ‘quests’? (And how does the type of encounters & quests affect how large the game feels?)

In an attempt to quantify my feelings, I’m working on ways to measure the ‘size’ of games, and it’s become clear that we need some standard definitions.

Most Computer Role-Playing Games (CRPGs) have the concept of ‘encounters’ and ‘quests’.

‘Encounters’ are generally defined ‘this is who you meet/this is what happens when you go to this place’.

‘Quests’ are generally defined as ‘Someone asks you to go somewhere and do something’.

Encounters are simpler, so we’ll investigate them first.

Many aspects of these definitions are cribbed from the pen and paper language around RPGs, where there will be a map with a numbered encounter key, describing what happens in each location. This visual language has persisted in ‘clue books’ and online hint/walkthroughs, such as this one, from the clue book of one of my favourite CRPGs, ‘Pool of Radiance’:

Map from the clue book for the CRPG Pool of Radiance showing 'Kuto's Well'. Note the well featured prominently in the center, and the multiple locations possible for some of the encounters.
Map from the clue book for the CRPG Pool of Radiance showing ‘Kuto’s Well’. Note the well featured prominently in the center, and the multiple locations possible for some of the encounters.

In the picture above, you can see 5 numbered encounters, with some of them happening or being able to happen in multiple locations.

In this particular instance, encounter ‘1’ is an encounter with some Kobolds who are trying to sneak away from you, with a chance of occurring each time you enter one of those squares. Encounter ‘2’ is a large multi-wave battle that starts whenever you enter one of those locations (triggering an ambush).

Other similar encounter keys might have a ‘each time you enter one of these locations for the first time, ‘.

So, how do you count the number of ‘encounters’?

Let’s break down the definition of ‘encounter’:
– You go to a place[1]
– You see something/meet someone/meet something

Encounter ‘1’ above triggers when you enter the first place out of a logical set of places that you enter, that probably feels like one encounter for these purposes, as it’s happening in a logical place.

Encounter ‘2’ is similar.

At the opposite end are ‘random encounters’, which are generally used to use up player resources, or to create a sense of urgency, so that players don’t dawdle[2]. These I will generally count, but count separately from ‘placed’ encounters. (Edit: S mentions that random encounters, for example in Pokemon games are often used by the player to ‘grind’ or ‘farm’ XP, to level up their characters outside of the more story-based game content. Interestingly, one could measure how much a game is in the ‘survival horror’ genre by how difficult and resource-consuming random encounters are (cf. System Shock).)

Somewhere are in the middle are random encounters which have a sequence of some sort, but are not tied to any one particular location, such as those in the ‘random’ dungeons in Curse of the Azure bonds:

Map from the clue book for the CRPG Curse of the Azure Bonds, showing the first level of the 'Shadowdale Dungeon'. Note that 'All encounters are random'
Map from the clue book for the CRPG Curse of the Azure Bonds, showing the first level of the ‘Shadowdale Dungeon’. Note that ‘All encounters are random’

(if you’re interested in the details, please consult Stephen S. Lee’s excellent walkthrough here.)

Game locations designed in this way have the same ‘number’ of encounters, and even though they occur in a defined order, telling a story, the fact that they happen entirely at random, without regard for the location or geography, breaks immersion terribly (at least for me). They tend to feel emptier than other encounters, and (to me), only contribute a fractional amount.

What if a place is different when you go back? Is that a second encounter? I don’t know yet. I’ll have to assess that when I get to examples.

What if you have the same encounter 10 times, with each in an identical but seemingly logical place(such as guard posts)? Is that really 10 encounters? Not really…but it also doesn’t really feel like only one. I posit that it’s somewhere between. I’ve been using a log function internally, probably with base e, as base 10 feels too large and base 2 feels too small, but I could easily see it be something else, where the first few seem ‘real’, but after that they run together much more.

Now, let’s move on to ‘quests’

We can break ‘quests’ down into:
– Someone asks you to do something
– You go somewhere
– You do a thing

Pretty simple, right? This includes all ‘fedex’ fetch quests, escort quests, and even most of the ‘escape from this location’ quests.

The trick is when one of the above is missing, such as when you accidentally find the object of a quest before someone tells you to go looking for it (VLDL has a humorous portrayal of this here). This is generally still defined as the same ‘quest’ in the game notes, as well as in strategy guides, but some (such as S) believe that the ask is required (and without the ask, this is simply ‘world-building’).

Sometimes, no one asks you to do something, but there is still a reward when you do it (such as this quest from Oblivion[3]), or they are happy that you’ve done it (such as the dungeon below Kuto’s Well above, where you get a quest reward for defeating the bandit horde of the notorious Norris the Gray). I would still call those ‘quests’, though. Perhaps there’s a difference between ‘Quests’, which require all three, and ‘quests’, which are ‘whatever the game designer says’. 😀

What if you don’t need to go somewhere? This might just be an encounter, or if it’s particularly involved, it could be an all talking interpersonal drama gaming session (or even a game within a game….)

What if the ‘thing you need to do’ is just getting to the destination? I feel like this one can go either way. Most of the quests in the Oblivion Assassins’ guild have a ‘pre-quest’ which involves getting the assignment. I’m not sure why they did it this way, but it kind of makes sense that an assassins’ guild would want it to be difficult enough to figure out what they were doing, that it might be a quest just to get to the dead drop to find the assignment. However, about half of the locations in Curse of the Azure Bonds are just places that the party has to traverse to get somewhere in order to do something important. To me, this doesn’t really feel like a separate quest (sometimes not even like a separate location), and in a lot of ways makes the game feel smaller.

What do you think? How would you define an ‘encounter’ or a ‘quest’? Do you disagree with any of my definitions above? Let me know in the comments below!

[1] There are variants where encounters can come to you, but that’s usually a different type of story/measurement and is out of scope. This method would probably treat these as one encounter, or you could get really fine-grained and treat that as an entire adventure with ‘locations’ represented by the state of affairs at each step.

[2] There’s also a theory that random encounters are useful because they allow for a differential in stakes between different encounters by having lower-stakes encounters.

[3] I can’t begin to describe how frustrating this quest was, and how difficult it was to do, even with the walkthrough page open beside me. Probably the most ‘realistic’ of the ‘finding something hidden’ quests out there, though.

Whimsy

Administrivia, Games!, Nostalgia, Thoughts on Thoughts, Words!

Whimsy.
noun: “playfully quaint or fanciful behavior or humor.” (OED)

To me, it speaks of playfulness, perhaps some randomness, a willingness to play along and see where things go. Perhaps somewhere between the Pkunk and Dirk Gently.

If you played the old M:tG ‘Shandalar’ computer game[1], you may remember this card.

But I’m speaking of whimsy today because I had recently noticed that I had been feeling much less of it my life, due to some stressful circumstances that (I think) have now dissipated. You may have been following my writing for a while, and this is a large part of why I have not written in months, with the few sporadic mostly-picture posts being the most that I could put together.

I’ve been working with my life coach for some time now, on a number of things. One of the largest ones was finding space to create. I had spent a lot of time focusing on making physical and temporal space for creation, but had forgotten about creating the mental space, to be able to deal with distractions.

I almost said ‘push away’ distractions, but similar to the discussion of Saidin and Saidar, pushing away distractions is okay as a crutch, but being able to relax into the flow is much more powerful.

Either way, I’m excited to be feeling creative again, and have some ideas[2] about how to keep this going, even through the next set of distractions that will inevitably crop up.

It’s going to be an interesting year, thanks for being here with me.

-Nayrb 😀

[1]Still one of my favourite games of all time, and I think, even with all its faults, the best M:tG computer game.

[2]Interestingly, a bunch of these are around meditation, which I feel I only discovered very recently.

How do you Make Computer Games Challenging?

Analysis, Games!

So, you’re designing a computer game. You want some sort of challenge for your player(s) to face. How do you design that challenge? We’ll assume some sort of single player game for now, but most of the things we’ll talk about should easily translate to multiplayer.

Almost[1] all games have a goal[2]. Most of the time, this goal is imposed by the game creators, some of the time this goal is invented or imposed by the player themselves.

For example, in Candy Crush, the goal is to match enough candies in a specified time period to gain points to pass a threshold (‘obtaining one star’). In Skyrim, the quest (at least at the start of the game) is to escape an area and survive.

As you attempt to reach these objectives, the game designers have provided you with various positive and negative obstacles.

Terrain:

Terrain is an excellent example of an obstacle that can be positive or negative. In Skyrim, you can hide around corners, or you can fall down a mountain. In Candy Crush, the shape of the board can make certain portions easier or much more difficult to match.

Offensive Items:

Special Candies can be classified as offensive items, compare them to a sword which allows you to do more damage with a single blow.

Defensive Items:

In Candy Crush, the candies can be encased in ‘jelly’, which acts as a shield that must be overcome. In Skyrim, you have various types of armour which you and your adversaries can wear. (Sometimes, only they can wear it.) There are also magical defenses.

Miscellaneous Items and Magic:

In Candy Crush, you can obtain a ‘Lollipop Hammer‘, which helps you by removing or triggering single candies.

In Skyrim, there is a wide variety of special purpose items and magic. The line between these is often blurry.

AI Adversaries:

I don’t think there are many AI adversaries in Candy Crush, unless they decide to tinker with the random candy generation algorithm, or if you count level design. Skyrim is populated with hundreds, if not thousands of NPCs who will interact with you in various ways.

Repetition:

An uninteresting way to make a game more challenging is to make it more repetitive[2.5]. You could make your player battle the same enemy 35 times, or solve minor variations on the same puzzle 50 times, or make them walk through an endless samey forest.

Ideally, you want to give a feeling of exploration and small but noticeable differences along the way.

Next time, we’ll compare two more games which are even more distinct. Suggestions in the comments below!

[1]I say almost, even though I can’t think of any games which don’t have a goal, and/or can’t have one created by the player. Inventing one sounds like a fun challenge. I don’t mean a game with an impossible challenge which always seems almost possible, I’m talking about a game which aggressively has no goal, and cannot, to the greatest extent possible.

[2]Or goals plural. Multiple interlocking[3] or interrelated goals are out of scope.

[2.5]Than usual…Most of these games are quite repetitive.

[3]Sometimes I think I write just because I enjoy using words such as ‘interlocking[4]’.

[4]Not to be confused with Interlochen[5].

[5]S: “Or Interleukins.”

Treenuts.

Character Classes, Fiction, Games!

They thought she was crazy. She would hide in trees, then wait for the correct moment, then leap down, drop acorns and nuts on unsuspecting passers-by, then run away giggling.

But somehow, they could never find her. There would always be some obstacle in the path, perhaps a horse-drawn carriage, perhaps one of the Central Park dog walkers, perhaps a squirrel that would chitter at you, distracting you just long enough for her to get away.

Sometimes she would sit outside and just watch the rainbow, the rainbow of brightly coloured birds and people’s clothing. Sometimes the rainbow of fruit flavours. Rainbows were tricky like that. Variegated by definition. The fruit of rainbow flavours sounded like it would also be delicious, but no one ever talked about that. Why was that?

Oh! More unsuspecting passers-by! Time to go!

Analysis: Ascension CotG Card Drawing Cards

Analysis, Games!

…Or is that ‘Cards Drawing Cards’?

Anyways, in a recent installment, we talked about 1- and 2-rune cards, but forestalled the conversation about cards drawing cards. Here is the list:

Void:
Spike Vixen (2 runes/1 honour, gain 1 power & draw one card)
Arbiter of the precipice (4 runes/1 honour, draw two cards and banish one of them)

Enlightened:
Arha Initiate (1 rune/1 honour, draw one card)
Temple Librarian (2 runes/1 honour, discard one card, draw two)
Ascetic of the Lidless Eye (5 runes/2 honour, draw two cards)
Master Dhartha (7 runes/3 honour, draw three cards)

Mechana:
Kor the Ferromancer (3 runes/2 honour, two power, draw one card if you control two constructs)

Lifebound:
Wolf Shaman (3 runes/1 honour, draw one card, gain one rune)
Flytrap Witch (5 runes/2 honour, draw one card, gain 2 honour)

There are a number of things you can see from this list. First, enlightened really likes drawing cards, it’s kind of its thing. Let’s reorder the cards to show some other patterns. I’m going to put them in ascending rune cost order, secondary sort by descending honour order, with the idea that a 3rune/1honour card is considered more powerful than a 3rune/2honour card, and you are being compensated at the end of the game with the extra honour point:

Arha Initiate (1 rune/1 honour, draw one card)
Spike Vixen (2 runes/1 honour, gain 1 power & draw one card)
Temple Librarian (2 runes/1 honour, discard one card, draw two)
Kor the Ferromancer (3 runes/2 honour, two power, draw one card if you control two constructs)
Wolf Shaman (3 runes/1 honour, draw one card, gain one rune)
Arbiter of the precipice (4 runes/1 honour, draw two cards and banish one of them)
Ascetic of the Lidless Eye (5 runes/2 honour, draw two cards)
Flytrap Witch (5 runes/2 honour, draw one card, gain 2 honour)
Master Dhartha (7 runes/3 honour, draw three cards)

Starting with the Arha Initiate, it costs 1 rune to add ‘one free honour’ to your deck. Interestingly, Spike Vixen (+1P,+1C) and Wolf Shaman (+1R,+1C) are parallel to and similar to Heavy Infantry (+2P) and Mystic (+2R). One would expect them to be strictly more powerful, due to their relative rarity (as you can always purchase a Heavy Infantry or Mystic). Also, the next card you draw is at minimum an apprentice or militia, so you will get a minimum of +1 something with your card drawn, likely more, especially in the end game.

Temple Librarian and Arbiter of the Precipice deal with the issue of unwanted cards in your hand in slightly different ways. Each of them is overall card neutral (+2 cards, discard or banish one). It is telling that the act of banishing a card over discarding one is worth two runes in card cost, even more, as the Arbiter only gives your one honour rather than the normal two for a four-rune card in the end game. But as our previous simulations suggest, the banishing is totally worth it.

Kor the Ferromancer is a tricky card to get a bead on. At +2P,+0.5C for 3R/2H, it’s considered slightly more powerful than +1P,+1C for 2R/1H. I find this a bit surprising, as you would think the card drawing would be more important. In gameplay, it turns out that +2P is much more powerful[1] than +1P, and you end up drawing the card much more often in later gameplay, making the card worth more when it counts.

The last three cards are the most costly of the card drawing cards in the basic Ascension set. Master Dhartha (+3C for 7R/3H) is considered the most powerful card in the set[2], and it should be[3], as it gives you two extra cards, or a 40% stronger hand. Interestingly, it’s 1R/1H for +1C, 5R/2H for +2C and 7R/3H for +3C, suggesting that it’s either much easier to get 5 Runes than 7 Runes (which it is), or that +2C is that much more useful than +1C than +3C is to +2C.

Comparing Flytrap Witch (+2H/+1C) to Ascetic of the Lidless Eye (+2C), both costing 5R/2H shows how powerful card drawing is perceived to be, that drawing an additional card is worth two honour! If you have multiple card-drawing cards in your deck (as I generally do), this can easily be the case. If the card you draw is a heavy infantry, +2P can easily be worth +2H, and the cards scale up from there.

As always, thanks for reading, comment if you want specific parts of this game (or others) analyzed!

[1]Ha!
[2]Except for possibly Hedron Cannon (+1P/turn for each Mechana Construct, for 8R/8H)
[3]Except possibly for an early ‘The All Seeing Eye’ (+1C/turn for 6R/2H), which we removed from our games for being too unbalanced.

An Elemental of Surprise

Character Classes, Games!, Idle Speculation, Puns

Elementals

Elementals are incarnations of the elements that compose existence.

Surprise Elementals

Surprise Elementals inhabit the demiplane of Surprise, a mildly chaotic-aligned[1] plane loosely connected to the Prime Material plane. They embody the plane’s ethos of “always be surprising, especially when you are not”. This ethos separates the demiplane of Surprise and the Surprise Elementals from beings of pure chaos, as it acknowledges the refractory period between surprises which exists in most species.

Stealth-related skills are very common among denizens of the demiplane of Surprise, and Surprise Elementals are no exception. As surprise is a key component of their makeup, there are actually many exceptions. There are few things more surprising than a Surprise Elemental walking down a hallway towards you, sword in hand, yelling about bees[2].

The demiplane of Surprise is loosely connected to the Prime Material plane in a manner similar to that of the Ethereal plane. Any Surprise Elemental summoned will likely have been observing the actions of the summoner for some time.

When summoned to the Prime Material plane, Surprise Elementals are (usually) composed of the least likely substance nearby (DM’s discretion).

Relations with other Elementals:

Surprise Elementals are standoffish towards the four standard types of elementals. Surprise Elementals consider them excessively regular, that even the chaos of Fire Elementals is of an expected kind.

Relations with other Planes and Demiplanes:

Surprise Elementals have more in common with beings from the positive energy plane, who are some of the few beings who can be quicker and more energetic.

As Surprise Elementals are mildly chaotic-aligned, they tend to get along best with beings from planes that support changes of all forms. Beings from lawful-aligned planes tend to try to destroy or banish Surprise Elementals whenever they see them. Beings from the strongly lawful-aligned demiplane of Expectation are in direct opposition to beings from the demiplane of Surprise.

Combat:

Surprise Elementals always act in every surprise round, and can take full round actions, even though most beings can only take one action during a surprise round. Note that this means that they can use their ‘Surprise!’ special ability (see below) during a surprise round.

The actions and abilities of Surprise Elementals can vary from encounter, even from round to round, depending on their whim. Some ideas for skills, feats, and special abilities are below.

Surprise Elementals are often described as ‘going faster than one might expect’. They can travel as fast as is required to be surprising, up to a normal maximum of 120′. It is not fully known what method of transport they use. It may be somewhat dependent on the materials from which they are formed.

                     Surprise Elemental, Medium   Surprise Elemental, Large
Size/Type:           Medium                       Large
Type:                Elemental (Extraplanar)      Elemental (Extraplanar)
Hit Dice:            4d8+8 (26 hp) 	          8d8+24 (60 hp)
Initiative:          +8 (+see above)              +8 (+see above)
Speed:               Up to 120' (see above)       Up to 120' (see above)
Armor Class:         4d8+8 (26 hp) 	          8d8+24 (60 hp)
Base Attack/Grapple: +3/+4                        +6/+12
Attack: 	     Surprise. (see below)        Surprise. (see below)
Full Attack: 	     Surprise! (see below)        Surprise! (see below)
Space/Reach: 	     5ft./20ft. (see below)       5ft./20ft. (see below)
Special Attacks:     Surprise. and Surprise!      Surprise. and Surprise!	
Special Qualities:   Varies (see below)           Varies (see below)
Saves: 	             Fort +1, Ref +3, Will +9 	  Fort +2, Ref +5, Will +13
Abilities: 	     Varies (see below)           Varies (see below)
Skills: 	     Any (see below)              Any (see below)
Feats: 	             Any (see below)              Any (see below)
Environment: 	     Demiplane of Surprise        Demiplane of Surprise
Organization: 	     Solitary or groups           Solitary or groups
Challenge Rating:    5 or varies                  7 or varies
Treasure: 	     Varies (see below)           Varies (see below)   	
Alignment: 	     Mildly Chaotic               Mildly Chaotic
Advancement: 	     5-7 HD (Medium)              9-15 HD (Large)
Level Adjustment:    —                            —

Surprise.: As a move- or attack-equivalent action, a Surprise Elemental can attempt a ‘Surprise.’ This is based on any skill that the Surprise Elemental chooses, although they may not choose the same skill in two consecutive rounds, unless they do. The damage done is all subdual, and is equal to the DC achieved minus 20. The damage may be avoided by the target spending an action on an opposed skill check.

Surprise!: As a full-round action, a Surprise Elemental can attempt a ‘Surprise!’ This is a similar attack to ‘Surprise.’ above, but with a +5 to the roll, and if the attack is successful, the target is confused for one round. Note that this ability can be used during a surprise round, as Surprise Elementals are able to perform full-round actions during a surprise round.

Space/Reach: Normally, medium and large Surprise Elementals take up a 5′ square. If it is surprising enough (DM’s discretion), they can reach up to 20′ away to perform an action.

Special Qualities: Most Surprise Elementals have Sense Darkvision, 60′, so that they can better understand what the beings around them can perceive. Surprise Elementals have the following general traits of Surprise races:

– +1 bonus to Surprise lawful creatures, +2 to those associated with the demiplane of Expectation
– -2 penalty to saving throws against spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities with the Expectation subtype or used by creatures of the Expectation subtype
– Any one of the special abilities of any elemental subtype (does not breathe, stability, fire resistance, or natural swimmer)

Saves: Surprise Elementals depend on mental flexibility, and therefore are not as physically flexible (except for when these are reversed).

Abilities: Typically, Surprise Elementals will have the following abilites:

Medium: Str 11, Dex 14, Con 4, Int 21, Wis 11, Cha 11 	
Large:  Str 11, Dex 16, Con 6, Int 25, Wis 11, Cha 11

Note that Surprise Elementals are typically very intelligent, and will plan their surprises, skills, and feats to be the most surprising.

These abilities may vary wildly with no warning from one Surprise Elemental to another.

Skills: Surprise Elementals receive (6 + Int modifier)*4 skill points at first level, and 6 + Int modifier per hit die above that. All skills are class skills. The skill points may be allocated any way the DM wishes. a random generation may yield the best results. Remember that the Surprise Elementals will be working to optimize their ‘Surprise.’ and ‘Surprise!’ attacks, and so will tend to specialize and diversify, except when they don’t.

Feats: Any. Choose the most surprising. Horseback riding for an elemental that commonly takes the shape of a horse is a good example.

Treasure:

Surprise Elementals cannot generally bring items from the demiplane of Surprise when summoned, but will pick up any surprising items as they go past them when moving on the Prime Material plane. Treat this as version of ‘Kender Pockets’.

When encountered on the demiplane of Surprise, Surprise Elementals can be carrying literally anything, even things one might not expect them to be carrying, or they should not be able to carry (DM’s discretion). It is rumored that some Surprise Elementals incorporate dimensional rifts into themselves (similar to a portable hole) so as to be able to carry arbitrary objects.

Player Characters as Surprise Elementals:

This should not be allowed, unless you are running a very unusual campaign, and all characters are elementals or similar creatures. Any player character playing a Surprise Elemental should be expected to roleplay all surprises.

[1]The demiplane of Surprise is mildly chaotic, while Delight is mildly chaotic good and Prank is mildly chaotic evil. Expectation is strongly lawful, while Hope is strongly lawful good and Presumption is mildly lawful evil.

[2]Bees?

Go and Weaknesses of Decision Trees

Analysis, Games!, Machine Learning, Programming, Thoughts on Thoughts

Yesterday, we reported that an artificial Go player had defeated one of the top human players for the first time, in a best of five match.

Today, Lee Sedol responded with a ‘consolation win’, to make the score 3-1.

From this analysis of the game, it seems that (at least) two things were at play here (Hat tip PB).

The first is called ‘Manipulation’, which is a technique used to connect otherwise unrelated parts of the board. My understanding of it is that you make two (or more!) separate positions on the board, one which is bad unless you get an extra move, and the other which might allow you to get an extra move. Since the two locations are separate, the player has to have a very specific sense of non-locality in order to be able to play it correctly[1].

To me, this feels like an excellent example of why Go is so difficult to solve computationally, and why there is still much fertile ground here for research.

The second seems to be an instance of what is called the ‘Horizon Effect‘[2]. Simply put, if you only search a possible gameplay tree to a certain depth, any consequences below that depth will be invisible to you. So, if you have a move which seems to be good in the short term, but has terrible consequences down the road, a typical search tree might miss the negative consequences entirely. In this particular case, the supposition is that Sedol’s brilliant move 78 should have triggered a ‘crap, that was a brilliant move, I need to deal with that’, instead of an ‘now all the moves I was thinking of are bad moves, except for this subtree, which seems to be okay as far out as I can see’. The fact that at move 87 AlphaGo finally realized something was very wrong supports this hypothesis.

Is the Horizon effect something you can just throw more machine learning at? Isn’t this what humans do?

[1]Specifically, the idea that two things can be related only by the fact that you can use resources from one to help the other.

[2]One wonders what types of ‘Quiescence Search‘ AlphaGo was using that it missed this.

Beautiful AI and Go

Games!, Machine Learning, Programming, Teaching, Thoughts on Thoughts

Something monumental happened today. An artificial Go player defeated one of the top human players three times in a row, to win the best of five match

But I want to go back to game two, where Alpha Go played an inhuman and ‘beautiful’ move 37, a ‘very strange move’.

This is what it must be like to have one of your children, or one of your students surpass what you could ever do. You have given them all you can, and they take that and reform it into something beautiful.

They mentioned that Alpha Go plays the entire board at once, and so is more able to see unusual move possibilities like the one above. Fan Hui mentioned that he’s improved (from ranked 633 to in the 300s) as he plays against Alpha Go.

What else can deep learning teach us? What other amazing, inconceivable things will we learn from this new child which is just beginning to flower?

Ethical In-Game Purchases

Economics, Games!, Idle Speculation, Internet Culture

Throughout the history of computer gaming, people have tried many different business models.

Early on, models included rental and sales of coin-operated machines, shareware, mail-order sales, sales through distributors, and doubtless others that I’m forgetting.

Monthly subscriptions were a more recent innovation, for games such as World of Warcraft, in an effort to find a more consistent revenue stream.

More recently, ‘Downloadable Content’ or ‘DLC’, and ‘in-app purchases’ have become de rigeur.

At their heart, they seem to be trying to solve the same problem as monthly subscription fees, but in a more explicit and a-la-carte fashion.

My recollection is that DLC was first, being a model very similar to the old shareware and multi-episode games. You would try the first one for free, or perhaps pay for it (depending on whether it was shareware), then that would entice you to purchase the next episode, and the next.

You knew pretty much what you were getting, the developers got a more consistent revenue, everyone was happy[1].

DLC then started branching out into partially or mostly cosmetic items, like the Oblvion Horse Armour

This still seems reasonable to me. You were playing a single player game, you wanted more features, the developers gave them to you for more money.

Then the ‘Free to Play’ games started becoming more and more popular. They would start out being free to play, but you would then need to play to continue after a certain point. Almost exactly the same as shareware, no problem. You purchased access after you had tried out the game. Totally reasonable, still very ethical.

But then the ‘Freemium’ games started coming out, the games that which were ostensibly free to play, but you could only play so many turns before you had to wait for your energy or whatever to recharge. However, you could play ‘just one more turn’ if you were to pay a little more money. This has gone from ‘money for content’ to ‘searching out and exploiting addiction‘.

In a somewhat orthogonally unethical category are games which allow you to pay to achieve an unfair advantage over other players in a multiplayer game. One of the games I currently play is an online turn-based strategy game, where you can pay money (about $15CAD) to get unlimited turn undos. This allows you to not pay for scouting units, and know the disposition of all of your enemy’s units, mostly obviating the ‘fog-of-war’ game mechanic. I’m sure it’s also very profitable.

In summary,

Ethical:
– Pay for more content/features
– Pay a subscription fee to keep playing on company-run servers[2]

Not so ethical:
– Pay to take more turns in the game with no ability to unlock as many turns as you want for a reasonable sum of money
– Pay to achieve an unfair advantage over other players

[1]Perhaps not game developers, but that’s a different story.

[2]We haven’t talked about games which stop working when the game company goes under and the server goes down…

A Long Tail of Whales: Half of Mobile Games Money Comes From 0.15 Percent of Players