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Re: (TFT) football and IQ



I'd disagree on the idea that one point of damage is too 'subjective.'

First of all, it needs to be, by definition. There is no such thing as 'objective' damage, because as has been pointed out, the same amount of force applied in different ways results in very different amounts of damage, let alone the countless variations in people, ways to inflict force, where the force is inflicted, the psychological aspects, etc. Its just not possible to be able to totally map things out, so its better to be a bit subjective about it. Case in point: To a St:10 human, 12 points of damage is more than enough to kill you. To a St: 60 dragon, its a bad cut, but nothing debilitating. If you ignore the differences between the dragon and the human (and the differences between where you cut, how you cut, etc) and assume that those 12 points of damage are just the same amount of force being applied, which it seems you have tried to do, you will be disappointed, because thats NOT how it works in real life, and it doesn't make the game any better. Or more objective.

Secondly, the real issue is not over 1 pt of damage, its a much deeper problem with 'what is 1pt' of ANYTHING in this game? How DO we plug in the real world to the game? Simple enough, we find one 'constant' and say 'that lines up with the real world in THIS way.' The closest thing we have to that in TFT is "10 St, Dx, or IQ = average human." Even then, its literally impossible to come to any real conclusions involving units, measurements, etc. We dont' really know what ST is measuring, exactly, its more of a 'feel'. it IS subjective, its meant to be. Just like "strength" (in the sense of toughness, ability to take damage, carry things, break things, wield weapons, etc) in the real world is no one thing, but countless things, with many 'spare tires.' one guy might be able to take more damage due to having so much more mass that it just takes more 'oomph' to cause him significant damage, while another person has such strong will that they are able to take the damage but keep going. These are both ST in TFT, but are totally different ideas in the real world.

So what CAN we get out of this is the following:
10pts of damage is enough to kill the average person.
The average person can carry a rapier or dagger, but not a shortsword, and use it effectively in combat. The amount of kg's an average person can carry (i'd need to look this one up...)--> this is one of hte few that DOES scale, cause its in the rule book. This is basically the only hope for success in ever finding anything consistent about what ST means ,but even then its not enough info to actually get any farther than TFT already does by telling you how much different STs can carry. And even then, its not really enough info to account for all the real world reasons for this. 10 talent points worth of talents is the amount of talent your average person has (this could be used to determine what a talent actually means, but of course, with the idea of needing to actually train to have a talent, this is skewed anyway.)

Etc.

Nothing else. And as can be seen, this in no way can be connected to real world numbers, as the STARTING POINT is vague. So you CAN subjectively make approximations, and a good GM will be able to synch with the group's ideas on what makes a good approximation, but because the starting point itself cannot be equated to real world numbers, you can never get anywhere by expanding upon it.

Finally, even with the above numbers, it doesn't "scale" the way I think you think it does. You tend to assume that 1 IQ is equal to 1/10 of 10 IQ. Not only is this ignoring the abstract nature of such things in TFT, but the idea is completely disproven by the fact that 9DX does not equal 9/10 of the chance of hitting compared to 10 DX. So, basically, 1 point of ANYTHING (and this applies to damage too, by extrapolating this idea, and taking the idea of being unconscious and dead and the difference between 10 and 11 ST, for example) is inherently subjective within TFT's system, changes depending on context, and therefore cannot (lemme say it again CANNOT) be equated to real world numbers in a way that actually works.

In conclusion: your stuff on sociology and such is great, and can be of great use in a campaign (though I think you should start just applying it, for overthinking things can just make it more difficult for no gain). The physics and biology stuff is, frankly, useless, and it would be more effective to just play TFT as an internally consistent game (which it is) with the only connection to the real world being the idea of the 'average' and the collective idea on what makes a good 'approximation' based on your and your players' minds.

On Apr 30, 2011, at 11:14 PM, Jay Carlisle wrote:

Roethlisberger
A three step 5 yard drop is about 3.5 hexes in ~1 second
A five step 8 yard drop is around 5.5 hexes in ~1.5 seconds
A seven step 11 yard drop is about 7.5 hexes ~2 seconds

A ~60mph pass velocity is 20 hexes per second MA

A receiver with 4.5/40 speed has an MA of ~31 or roughly 6MA per second

When professionals talk about football being a game of inches they are not simply referring to moving the ball forward on the field but are also talking about issues concerning timing and ranges.
One rule of thumb is the window for a successful pass.
By the high school level a quarterback can expect regular accuracy drills including tire drills which is a two foot in diameter target. At the top level of college competition last year only 5 of the 120 schools fielded teams with a completion average below 50% and only 1 had an average below 40%. Of the top 50 one A teams in completion average, only 1 averaged below 60%. Of the top 10 teams in completion average last year the range was from 71.83% to 66.33% with a combined record of 98 wins and 28 losses, or around 3 wins for every loss. Only 1 of the top 40 teams had a losing record, #21 Colorado St (3-9) 64.21% 8 of the teams between 41 to 50 had losing records (the other 2 were 6-6) with completion averages between 61.04% to 59.7%.

Now quarterback accuracy isnt the only factor in completion average, but its usually the most heavily weighted and in college its called a 2 foot window in physical reference to the old tire drill. So as a rule of thumb a top performing college QB is expected to hit a ~2 foot window about 2 out of every 3 throws in competition.
But the pros are playing a game of inches.
A ~6 inch window is about a quarter of the 2 foot window and is about the diameter of the target offered by a receivers hands.
As a rookie in the NFL Peyton Manning threw 28 interceptions.
I heard Warren Sapp this week tell a story from Marshal Faulk about Peytons rookie year where he kept coming back to the sidelines saying to himself I didnt think he could get there. His point was that the 2 foot window had closed considerably for Manning because we play a game of inches.
http://www.danpatrick.com/2011/04/29/warren-sapp-sticks-up-for-sapp-thinks-titans-reach-on-locker/
4:27sec to 5:00min

Manning had a completion percentage that year of 56.7% and has a carrier average of 64.95% over 13 seasons. The average completion percentage in the NFL over the last decade is about 60%.
Manning obviously got the hang of things.

So as a baseline of pass accuracy I use ~8 foot windows (~2 hexes) for the youngest levels of competition. By around the college level of competition the target window has narrowed to around 2 feet.
The window of success at the professional level is about half a foot.
As 1.3 meters is about 4.3 feet, when I draw square-hexes on quarter inch graph each square is roughly a square foot (actually 13 inches by 13 inches is closer). So its 2 hexes to start for target size going to 2 squares then half a square as the class of competition ramps up. Completion averages suggest that an average quarterback hits the window at their level of competition about 60% of the time with a very good QB completing at ~65%+ and subpar QBs throwing around >55% completions.

http://views.washingtonpost.com/theleague/smarterstats/2009/09/quarterback-accuracy-beyond-the-ratings.html

Ownership and management
The minimum salary in the NFL is around 250,000

Seven NFL players currently earn in excess of 10,000,000
4 are quarterbacks, 2 are defensive ends, 1 is a cornerback

Average quarterback salary 1,970,982
Top is Carson (please dont hurt me) Palmer @ 13,500,000

Average defensive end salary 1,583,784
Julius Peppers is the highest paid player in the NFL @ 14,100,000
4 of the leagues 8 highest paid defensive players are ends

Average offensive lineman salary 1,267,402
5 of the top 10 offensive linemen are tackles and 3 are centers
Center Ryan Pontbriand is top @ 8,900,000

Average defensive tackle salary 1,223,925
Dewayne Robertson top @ 7,400,000

Average cornerback salary 1,193,666
Nate Clements top @ 11,100,000

Average linebacker salary 1,175,788
Ray Lewis @ top 9,400,000

Average wide receiver salary 1,054,437
Terrell Owens @ top 9,700,000

Average running back salary 957,360
LaDainian Tomlinson @ top 7,100,000

Average safety salary 947,887
Adam Archuleta @ top 5,100,000

Average kicker salary 868,005
Chris Kluwe @ top 5,000,000

Average tight end salary 863,414
Todd Heap @ top 4,900,000

Different frames of Action require different types of information.

Also of note.
In Desperately Seeking Symmetry on Radio Lab there was an interesting account of some research in well clicking?
http://www.radiolab.org/2011/apr/18/
about 5:00
What I found interesting was the particulars of the experiment being conducted. A kind of map of the brain was created using voxel units so that individual readings could be compared then the researcher took readings of herself telling a story from her past, taking about 15 minuets. She then took readings of others listening to her story and afterwards asked them a series of questions about the story. She was able to show a correlation between the ability of a listener to recall details of the story and the number of voxels between her brain and the listeners that were both in the same state. The more closely the listeners brain mirrored her own brain in the voxel map the better the listener was able to recall and answer questions about the story.

That is the job of a game master, to be able to mirror their brain in their players brains and vice versa.
I call this visuals.

As for voxels

C. Koch lists the total number of neurons in the cerebral cortex of a human at 20 billion (Biophysics of Computation. Information Processing in Single Neurons, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999, page 87.

Number of neurons in cerebral cortex (rat) = 21 million (Korbo, L., et al., J. Neurosci Methods, 31:93-100, 1990)

Heres one of my favs of the rat brain running a little car thingie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QPiF4-iu6g

I figure Joe Averages brain @ IQ 10 could run roughly 1000 little cars continuously at maximum capacity and par things down from there making 1 point of IQ the ability to think about 100 little cars of action over a given time period at full effort.

This still needs LOADS of work owing both to my own stupidity and a more general ignorance regarding our in depth understanding of the brain in suti so to speak As Ive said before, that whole we only use a third of our brain type statement is more a measure of what we understand about the brain rather than a measure of capacity.

Anyway, the whole little car bit isnt much of a picture of IQ over time but it actually is a picture. IMHO anything that helps a GM/player to mirror those voxels in the shared mind that is fantasy role playing games makes for good visuals.

Im philosophically looking at boundaries between rules and play.

Rules as I see them are tools that help establish objective systems for organizing brain-voxels. On the other-hand, a complex rule-set tends to hinder simple play in the abstract sense. Game implies entertainment so as I see it a player shouldnt have to learn a boat-load of tools just to participate in play. This is hardly science or academic stuff were attempting is it, I just wanna play. However, without any rules at all play devolves down to early childhood make believe with all the old BANG! I got you!, Uh uh, you MISSED! arguments. Thats a major point to the whole die roll part of the game, its a tool that objectifies to the point that everyone who sees a roll of one, one, three has the 5 on 3d6 voxels light up.
Moving 5 hexes does similar.

1 point of damage doesnt do this in TFT it seems to me.
1 point of much of anything including the economics seems more weighted to the subjective than the objective too me in TFT. I believe strongly in the abstract play principals of TFT but feel that some of the basic mechanics of the rules involving the units of measure most specifically could be defined objectively enough to plug real world data into a TFT gameworld without making GM/players do any limit process calc though approaching from the infinitesimal may be required from a professional jargon pov, and Newton can toss my salad, (Leibniz spawned Jakob and Johann Bernoulli et. Al. and Newton wouldnt publish like that Shakespeare guy or Mother Shipton English heros are somewhat suspect)
I kindda dig Churchill, but not as much as Tommy Douglas
Anyway.
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