Statistical Roulette

You have a six-shooter a pistol and three bullets.

At this time the writer would like to assert the writer does not like guns.

At all.

A diatribe about the US Constitution fifth Amendment right to bear arms and use them in self defence and to form militias in event of a rogue government, may follow.

None of that is what this blog is intended to be about.

You have a six-shooter and three bullets.

How do you load them?

Personally, despite having admitted in public my distaste for guns and an intention to never have anything to do with them if at all possible, I would load a bullet into every other cylinder. That way I can easily keep tabs on where the bullets are even after spinning the cylinder.

But as others have often pointed out, I do not think like other people.

It is from accepting that factor, I observe most other people will more probably load the three bullets into consecutive cylinders, leaving the next three cylinders empty.

Why is this important?

You could express it is important for the sake of argument. I have no intention at all in picking a half-cocked argument with somebody who is holding a half-loaded pistol. 

It is important for the sake of this blog. 

It is important for the following reason.

Today we are doing fractions. 

We are doing probabilities.

My friend, today we are doing maths.

The question is simple.

What is the statistical possibility of pulling the trigger and hitting a blank versus pulling the trigger and firing a bullet?

Most people will say, that is easy. It is a three-in-six chance, which is the same as a 50/50 chance. Those people would probably be right. What are the odds.

From here on in, it gets more interesting.

You pull the trigger a second time.

Now what are the odds?

You immediately understand the relevance of why I made a point of mentioning how we load the bullets into the barrel.

O I O I O I  = my method

O O O I I I  = majority method 

As stated previously, for the purposes of this blog we are going with what I have dubbed the ‘majority method’ for how those bullets are arranged.

I told you it would get more interesting. 

The second time you pull the trigger, is it more likely, less likely, or the same chance of firing a bullet versus firing a blank?

For the sake of argument and to keep things simple, we will go from the position that the first time you pulled the trigger, it fired a blank. No bullet. 

Are we here: 

X O O I I I 

or here: 

O X O I I I 

or here: 

O O X I I I 

Where the X signifies the first time we fired the gun (which fired a blank). 

At this time we simply do not know. 

Now you understand why I think the way I do and would personally have loaded it the way I have called ‘my method’.

So, we pull the trigger a second time. What is the statistical possibility of firing a bullet vs firing a blank? 

There are now less than 3 empty cylinders. 

It is no longer a 3 in 6 fraction. 

It is no longer 50/50. 

Or is it? 

One school of thought is that there is still a 50-50 chance. 

One school of thought is there is a 2 in 5 chance of firing another blank, which is the same as a 60% chance of firing a bullet on the second go. 

Which of these two schools of thought is correct? 

Is it possible they can both simultaneously be correct?

If they are both simultaneously correct, there are two parallel universes coexisting at the same time. 

Neither is more right or more wrong than the other. 

Has it clicked yet?

Now look at those three possibilities again. 

In two of the possibilities, the next cylinder is empty. In one of the possibilities, the cylinder had a bullet in it. That’s 2/3 probability the next cylinder will fire a blank despite we know logically there are more bullets than empty cylinders. How does that make sense? 

Theoretical philosophy is one matter. It all changes when you invest some money into it, gambling against the odds. 

It all changes significantly when a persons life is on the line, which in the case of loaded guns is deadly. 

GM Types

This is a roleplaying community blog post. 

Types of GM: The RailRoader

“For the good of the story...” 

“I own everything, even your decisions.”

Significant red-flag sociopathic, dominating personality.

The last time I encountered this guy several years ago online. 

I saw an online advert; 

“new players wanted for established campaign world.”

One of the players had quit and had left no forwarding information as to why he had quit. No mention was made of any other players. In retrospect I concluded they had already quit several weeks previously. The gamesmaster had been running the game regardless, using the player characters as NPCs to continue the adventure. 

So he was running that last remaining Player Character as an NPC ‘for the good of the story’. Fair play, He’s invested a lot of mental and emotional attachment, a lot of time and work into developing this adventure he wanted to see it through to its conclusion.

What he needed was another player to come in to play another character who it turned out was an NPC for the main character, who was now an NPC.

So we had a situation where the only existing player was playing a disposable NPC while the Gamesmaster was playing technically an NPC as a main protagonist.

That’s not a good situation for a role-playing group because it does not put the players at the heart of the action.

It delegates them to a secondary place to the NPC‘s which puts the gamesmaster in a situation of power and control.

Most people would have conceded defeat and shelved the project for lack of interest. Not this guy. His Obsessive score rates too damn high for that. 

It was when I realised this that I recognised the probable reason the other player had quit was to do with the gamesmaster investing more heavily into the story than into the players enjoyment. 

I suggested “Why don’t you start a new game with the new players?” He told me that would be happening later after ‘I’ have finished this story to its conclusion.

I mentioned I have no idea what my character was supposed to be doing as I had no leeway to make that decision for myself, or who these are other NPC’s / ex-PCs were in relation to my character. The Gamesmaster did not explain it to me. Simply that my NPC was a surprise element of an old adversary returned, to be thwarted by the main character before the build-up to the final scene. 

I was berated for not having read the backstory. I had read the games overview but I had not read the many excruciatingly detailed pages of previous adventure sessions yet. There are several hours of work to do in reading all that. I did not know if I wanted to heavily invest my time into this guys writing simply for the task of playing an NPC for a couple of scenes.

Bearing in mind I had been told my character had a specific type of task to do, which me made it feel like 

“Why not run that character as an NPC?” As I have not much if any at all player-input into that character anyway.

I did two sessions during which there was very little back-and-forth between myself and the Gamesmaster. 

I was expected to step in after he had finished writing a certain lengthy descriptive paragraph and complaining about how he was having to play everybody else’s characters because none of them have turned up this session either.

At that point I made the decision there are much better roleplaying groups and much better things to do with my time.

That type of gamesmaster is sociopathic. While it is admirable to invest a lot of focus and attention into the story, it’s also admirable to invest a lot of focus and attention into the people, the players who you are playing the role playing game with.

Sucking people in on the pretence that it’s a role-playing game only to dictate to them that they must write lines in your novel which you are writing anyway even without them, does generally tend to make people stop wanting to play with you.

We call them Power-Gamer Games-Masters. 

The mentality is such that if anybody is running a gaming group in the region and they find out about it, they will take over and assert their domination. They know the rules better than everybody else and their imagination is better than everybody else’s imagination. They tell other people what to think, what they must do with their characters ‘for the good of the story’.

They gravitate towards positions of authority. Games-mastering is a creative endeavour and does have a level of authority. 

However, authority is based on respect. Respect is earned. Respect is earned by respecting the people who you are involved with. 

When significantly high number of your gaming group drop out, not because they don’t want to play roleplaying games anymore, but because they do not want to play with sociopaths. That is when it is time to reassess the value of other people existing in the world and the relative value you bring to their lives. 

What happens with this type of Gamesmaster is social isolation further entrenches them towards their supremacy complex because it validates to them how everybody else is clearly in the wrong by not understanding their genius.

Such people are better off honing their skills by writing a masterwork of epic fiction which perhaps somebody might read someday. At the very least the time they dedicate to sitting in a room alone with a typewriter and their imagination cuts the rest of us a much needed break from having to deal with them face-to-face in a controlled environment. 

There are literally numbering into the thousands of people looking for role-playing gaming groups to become involved with.

A healthy ecology has biodiversity. Not all Gamesmasters are as the Railroader type. Because of their nature, you are likely to encounter these more often.

Attaining validation through critical control of those you seek validation from is abuse. 

Check out  THE +O+TH TUNNEL blog! 

 

ADDITIONAL 13.11.2022 

Since posting this blog I discovered the following relevant quote: 

“How are the Players going to do that? 

Thats not my job. 

That's their job. 

A lot of GamesMasters think of themselves as Story-Tellers 

but I prefer to consider myself a Conflict Designer. 

I create conflicts but I don’t need to know how the Players figure their way out of the conflicts. 

That is where the story emerges and that is their department. 

My job as I see it is to provide an objective, location, antagonists and time-limit. 

Players drive the action with their decisions. 

I never know what my players are going to do. 

Maybe they’ll kill the villain, maybe he escapes. 

Maybe they’ll live, maybe they’ll die. 

That’s up to them and the dice. 

So why plan further than the next session? 

If I did I might be tempted to steer the game toward my preferred conclusion. 

But I don’t want to do that. 

I want to be just as surprised as the Players.” 

Professor Dungeon Master, 

Dungeon Craft, YouTube

The Reviled Society, Part 1 (Ep.291) 

RPG types

 This is a roleplaying community blog post. 

“Sit ye around our campfire 

and listen to tales 

of wisdom and adventure.” 

Intone the sacred words through languages un-numbered and generations un-counted, ever since the dawn of time.

A very recent phenomena has emerged of the so-called professional GamesMaster who charges money to provide people the experience of playing a role-playing game.  

It involves the skills of painstakingly preparing a ready-made adventure and necessarily alienating from the group anybody who uses their own imagination beyond the remit of that pre-ordained adventure path. 

For decades, GamesMasters as part of a group have provided their service for free in the same way that players have provided their service to the GamesMaster for free.

The objective is to have fun creating shared storytelling adventures. 

This traditional type of GamesMaster generally does not railroad players along a predestined route, but rather works with the players desires for the greater good of the story itself. It involves the skills of improvised storytelling.

With the advent of the Internet and online gaming groups, studies were done into specific types of role-players. 

Within White Wolf’s World of Darkness game is Vampire and Werewolf. It was discovered all vampire fans want to be the gamesmaster because vampires are all about control, and all werewolf fans all want to be the players because werewolves are all about the pack. 

Conclusion: Different games attract different mindsets. 

When we take this awareness back to the original 1974 version of D&D which spawned the industry, we recognise the same difference between early edition and later addition of the rules. Those playing by first and second edition want to be part of a group of friends collaboratively sharing wonderful storytelling. Those playing by later additions prefer to be led by the nose without having to think much beyond puzzle-solving and vanity-valuing.

 

Because: We the old-schoolers with traditional community values are putting friendship before commerce. 

The question: 

Is a professional, paid gamesmaster going to give you a better experience than somebody who is a gamesmaster but does not charge money for it or feel the need to describe themselves as a professional for doing it? 

And the answer is: 

50 long and experienced years of No. 

It’s not fun because I’m paying to be told what to do. It’s fun because collaborative imagination is about freedom. 

Roleplaying is about creating a safe-space to enjoy that freedom. If you have to pay for freedom it’s not freedom. If you have to imagine what you’re told to imagine by someone who has already imagined it for you, it’s not freedom. 

Check out  THE +O+TH TUNNEL blog! 

 

The Spaceship

One of my earliest childhood memories is waking up in a state of anxiety from a nightmare set in the garden of the house I lived in up until the age of four. A space rocket in the garden was about to take off and my family in their excitement all got on board but forgot to bring me.

I watched the space rocket take off and leave me behind. They forgot about me and left me alone. I was overwhelmed with feeling it was because I didn’t matter to them at all.

My maternal grandparents had six kids of whom four had their own kids all roughly around the same age. I am one of seven cousins. It’s a large family which caught attention of a Plastic Toy Company who had produced a prototype plastic spaceship toy and gave one to my grandparents for feedback from the kids prior to mass-producing it along with an expanded range of similar.  

After we all looked at it without being allowed to touch it we were then individually selected to play with it to provide feedback for the company. Our parents and grandparents discussed whether having a competition would be the best way to decide which children got to keep it. 

All the kids said it was cool. That was about all any of them said. My brother said it wasn’t as good as a famous plastic brick building product. 

I explained the plastic was cheap and unrealistic, it being purple which was unlike any illustrations or photos of spaceships I’d ever seen. They’re usually silver and white. 

The tiny purple figures were comprised of two sections, the torso and legs clipped together so they bent in the middle. It meant they could stand or sit in the spaceship but it also meant they had a flaw because they couldn’t actually stand up, they kept falling over. 

I liked how the roof panels opened to allow access to the inside but had no idea what the different compartments of the spaceship were actually for and also with only one pilot seat why did all the figures need to be hinged? 

Also they’re tiny at two centimetres each most of them would probably get lost especially if you play with it outside. 

While it’s fun there are around twenty identical figures could they be in two colours or have a smaller crew because what are we supposed to do with them all except store them in the cargo bays where they rattle around. 

Everyone else said I had put a lot of thought into it. My gran decided the amount of feedback I had given was sufficient I won the competition therefore I won the toy. 

I felt embarrassed and awful because I was immediately alienated from my cousins who all thought favouritism was in play and stopped playing with me. I was surprised my gran had chosen me because she could never remember my name, always called me by my brothers name. 

My famously jealous brother became even more jealous and made as many of the little figures disappear as he possibly could before anyone got a chance to stop him. He gave them to the other cousins who collectively took them, unifying the cousins against me while covertly enhancing his position in the family ranks by bribing them into sharing a secret. My brothers strategy was feeding on their collective greed, so natural to children having an as-yet-unreleased spaceship toy flashed before their eyes. 

We were told we had the only one in existence at this time, which I questioned because it was moulded plastic and had clearly come off a production line even if it was only a small print run. 

I decided the toy was not worth having because it was a symbol of how the parents and grandparents were manipulating us and causing me to be isolated from my cousins. It angered my brother who I knew from experience would exact his revenge upon me soon and be protected by my parents. 

Lessons. 

Learning through play. 

The gameplay is in the design. 

The bent one is in control (only one pilot seat). 

Everybody can be bent. 

Everyone is interchangeable. 

Everybody is rattling around unable to stand up. 

The next time I saw the toy was over a year later when some of the cousins were visiting. My mother retrieved it from wherever she had hidden it so the cousins could all play nicely together with it. 

The reminder of their jealousy that I had been favourited caused them to stop taking with me. They didn’t want to play with the toy anyway it was something we had all emotionally disconnected from and written off as a toxic entity. I felt so bad about the experience of being alienated I didn’t want to play with the toy either. 

My mother told me I had to play with the toy in front of my cousins to show them it had gone to the right person, that I loved it so much I was still playing with it. She wanted that feedback to come from the cousins to her parents to help them know they had made the right decision to give it to the right child. 

I declined and hid from everyone until after my cousins had gone home. My mother told me since nobody wanted the toy anyway and it took up space she was going to throw it out. None of us ever saw it again. 

That’s how my mother raised me. 

None of the cousins speak with me even to this day.

When I was fourteen I discovered the following information in a White Wolf storytelling roleplaying game book.

“Pentex seek to corrupt the human populous. Many of Pentex‘s products contain low-level wyrm poisons. The effects are subtle; maybe Junior has become more violent and his grades have dropped, but who would attribute this to the new set of wonder guy figures (made from Pentex plastics) that he got for Christmas?” p.54 Werewolf The Apocalypse, 1st edition 

“Pentex is a multi-national megacorporation. Its main agenda is the spiritual, moral, and environmental corruption of the planet. Pentex began its existence as Premium Oil.”

https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Pentex

Hence it’s association with cheap plastic products, for example toy spaceships, slipped innocuously into large families to do as much damage as possible. 

That was during the 1980s. Things have changed since then. Pentex has become more subtle than ever. 

Enjoy your plastic-based electronic and digital devices much? 

MyThepoesis

“You are a good person aren’t you? What’s with the name? SnakeAppletree the garden of Eden I get. Who is the snake? You? Satan? Lucifer? The light bringer? The villain or the hero. Interested in your POV”  

retromunda BullGorg @walter 

“Ask and thou shall know.”

An Egyptian scribe wrote my name in hieroglyphs. 

Snake = J

Apple / Heart = O

Tree / Feather / Knife = E 

I used it as a stage-name for my music gigs for awhile and then as my internet name. 

As for the story of the garden of Eden, can’t you remember being there? 

It’s a mythology which Christianity took from Egypt, stellae from 5000BC tell the same story. For the Egyptians it was an ished tree (compare djed pillar). I believe they got it from a much earlier source. 

In the Egyptian version there is a cat wielding a feather/blade, it cuts the snake who’s blood/heart/apple/seed falls to the ground in one version the tree grows from that, in another it takes place in the tree. 

It compares with Norse mythology of Wodan sacrificing himself self-knowledge, there’s a world serpent in that too. Aboriginal peoples all over the world mention about it.

Snake is a symbol for that-we-fear but also universally in shamanism it is a symbol for healing. It’s similar to the zig-zag symbol for fire/water/journey/sound-wave. 

The Devil is a more modern invention. After the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066 the concept of d’evil (the evil) and god (the good) which are represented not as external things but as our own drives and actions and how they affect the community. It’s a very basic religion for uneducated medieval peasants. 

Lucifer is a word which got translated wrong from Hebrew. It literally means ‘the most beautiful light’ there is no moral bias there. 

The word for ‘cast out’ in modern times we interpret expelled like as if comparable to a Twitter ban. Originally it was talking about when a farmer sows seeds he casts out the seeds into the field. The Hebrew word for sowing seeds. 

“The most brilliant light was sown from heaven (the source of life).” 

Modern version of the garden of Eden story is a parallel to that, an echo of it.

Illuminati = illuminated ones. Knowledgable ones. 

The Egyptian symbol for feather means enlightened. Light. 

There are two interpretations and both are accurate: 

someone aware, wise, it’s why the priesthood associated with feathers, Thoth (later known ad Hermes) the scribe. 

light. Have you heard of the Baghdad battery? The ancients had electricity. 

Atlantean civilisation. There was a rebellion against technology, it all got smashed because the path of technology led to a terrible war. Something like what Islamic extremists are doing, and how Amish choose to live. 

The Indian holy books and the Assyrian clay tablets both talk about the nuclear war 8000 years ago. The whole world went back to the dark ages. 

It has taken us a long time to put the information together again. There is evidence, it takes a lot of research. They don’t teach it in schools. 

Michael Tellinger is a good place to start researching.

The Devil in the New Testament occurs in the chapters Matthew Mark Luke John. Carbon dating of the Sinai Bible reveal it was made around 400ad (after Rome left Britain) but those chapters were made in the 1600s, they’re forgeries. They form the foundation of modern Christianity because they back each other up by telling the same events. While all the rest is mostly ignored by modern Christianity. 

The story they tell is of Mithra, an Assyrian holy man from 5000BC and perhaps even older. Assyria is modern Syria, which the West recently bombed and which Al Qaeda recently bombed. A lot of archeological evidence was destroyed. 

It’s one of the oldest inhabited places which is still inhabited now (Damascus is the oldest, from where we got the Law of Dharma ‘everything in its right place’).

Lecture ends. 

Thanks for showing an interest in this stuff :)