hey all

anyone still playtesting dnd next?

I looked at a recent playtest packet, does that count?

@SimonGill heh

maybe

@DForck42 I guess it depends on why you brought it up :P Are you looking for info or to discuss it so you can work something out?

@SimonGill curious if anyone here has kept up with it, maybe tested it out

jsut got an email about the next eval being out

Somebody in chat has been, and curse my fragile memory, I don't remember who.

@DForck42 i haven't got an e-mail.... hmmph.

@SimonGill hmm. wonder if it's @waxeagle

@DForck42 Could be. That's tickling at a memory of a conversation.

Anyway, what's your opinion of the game as it stands?

@SimonGill i've only jsut read a bit of Next

it seems to have more of a 3.5 feel, which i've only played a little of

i'm more familiar with 4e

Hehe, that's not a bad perspective to be coming from - since you're the kind of person that Wizards really needs to avoid annoying with this new edition.

:-D

@DForck42 I've done some testing, none lately though

@waxeagle ahh

is @brian-ballsunstanton still around?

@DForck42 Probably not for a while... it's around half seven (or half eight or half six) in the morning in his time zone.

@SimonGill i meant has he been around chat lately

@DForck42 He was here yesterday afternoon my time.

ok

@DForck42 Ah, yeah, he's around quite a bit.

And yes, I'm pretty sure he's at least got an eye on D&D Next.

@DForck42 see him from time to time, but the 14 (15 in your case) hr difference make things crazy

Yeah, I'm just an hour off from him.

@waxeagle i bet

how's he liking australia?

[shrug] Not the kind of thing we've talked about.

ahh

@DForck42 He has mentioned the melting.

@SimonGill Right, I forgot that. I taunted him with my mild clime.

@BESW Did you hear that they've had to invent more colours for their temperature scale?

@SimonGill Reelly? Wow.

Yep. 52-54 degress celsius is now a kind of hot/fuchsia pink.

They ran out of red for REALLY FREAKING HOT.

Florid pink sounds about right.

@SimonGill that's what color most of us would turn at that temp

@waxeagle actually - that makes some kind of sense.

Great weather for cannibals though - cooked meat on the boot.

@SimonGill we also ran out of black.

@DForck42 yo, and that hypenation won't ping me :)

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Just wait a few days, there's plenty of charcoal out there you can make more with.

hehehe

@BrianBallsun-Stanton :-(

oh hai!

@DForck42 howdy

how have you been?

warm

well you did move to australia

are you in the summer months currently?

@DForck42 oh gods yes

heh

how hot is it?

@DForck42 varies. was 43 tuesday

is 25 or so today

@BrianBallsun-Stanton 43C?

yes

ouch

have you formed a play group over there yet?

yep

nice! what cha playing?

Ars Magica, 4e

@BrianBallsun-Stanton cool

yeah

still waking up. What's up?

@BrianBallsun-Stanton oh, not too much

almost off work

welp, i'm off

have a good one!

unsung sadistic DM puzzles, part one: Calculate the derivative for these coordinates on this production possibilities curve.

@DForck42 cheers

@LitheOhm what?

@LitheOhm I really hope that isn't in any game......

@Vi I've got a dungeon idea in which I want to try and simulate that kind of puzzle while being less sadistic.

@BESW heh.

@BESW There is no way to be less sadistic with that kind of puzzle. See Brian's question about binary tree puzzles.

I want to design a dungeon around the idea of Tomb of the Cybermen: the tomb was built to attract curious adventurers, and only allow the smartest into the center for conversion.

I've experimented with logic gates and calculation mazes.

@BESW Hmm, don't forget that there is more than one kind of intelligence.

Certainly.

And the Cybermen also wanted the strongest, etc.

@SimonGill functionally it's "Are you trained in this kind of thinking? If not? Go home."

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Yeah, that's the problem I keep running up against.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Wasn't that the first 10-20 years of D&D traps?

@BESW Yeah, I don't know what you are doing, but I have played a lot of different types of games where they end up being general knowlage rather than pure intelegence

@Vi I don't want trivia games.

@SimonGill yep, and a whole bunch of no fun at all

@BESW Unless you can teach the skills you want to test shortly before you test it.

@BESW Or like Mensa tests where you need to be a very particular kind of intelegence

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I only got to trigonometry. Basic calculus functions exist in microeconomics, like derivatives. Ugh

@Vi me too.

@SimonGill lmao

@BESW I think what you need to do is things like establish how a system works and see how quick they are on the uptake

@Vi I either need a broad set of puzzles that are each easy for people who think that way and rough but not impossible for people who don't, or to tailor the whole dungeon to the group I'm running it for.

My two big ideas right now involve these guys: mazelog.com/show?15

And simple logic gates that have a clear physical component.

@BESW Think Portal: Start off very easy and get harder while keeping the same set of rules

One concept: doors that unlock when logic gates are completed. Each door's open/closed state sends a 0 or a 1 to the next door's logic gate circuit. I would provide clear lights and lines indicating state and relation.

@BESW yes

and be prepared to burn an entire sessions or three

@BESW Yeah, again that's maths, if you don't provide a whole route that isn't maths you will block out quite a lot of very smart dislexics

And people who don't have a good grasp of the rules

I think you need to have a dungeon that doesn't run on maths but rather on lateral thinking

Puzzle solving

And so on

With multiple routes to success.

Because there are as many types of brains as people and you simply can't quantify someone who is smart in a way that is universal

.....yes, I said that.

@BESW Hmmm, maybe I misunderstood your emphasis on maths puzzles

That's all I've got right now.

@BESW Ah right

It's part of my problem:

@BESW Yeah, sorry, it's late and I have been pounding my brain all day, sorry. :P

'sokay.

@BESW You know what you could do.

@BESW Look up modern intelligence tests for people with speical needs

They are often filled with puzzles that require nothing but the puzzle in front of you

It might be a good starting point design-wise

Good call.

@BESW Regular tests will help as well, but they probably put more of an emphasis on the reader having memorised a pile of things in school that will leave them with dead-ends everywhere they go.

Another cool one is to play through the original Dungeon Master

One thing they did was present you with puzzles that required a certain number of keys to pass a door, so they could hit you with ones that were harder but give you enough variety to mean that most people would get through

Their puzzles weren't always that hard, but I'm thinking they might help you with design

Plus it is a crazily fun game XD

Hope at least one of those helps. Problem with being a puzzle designer is that you have to be several levels smarter than anyone who solves it simply so that you can prevent them giving a legitimate answer that doesn't open the door. XD