Exploiting Traps and Problems.

My favorite thing about Science and Biz is that the FORCES balance out. I'm listening to Space Oddesy 2001 and remember the line "Nature always balances the books" when explaining the Slingshot to Saturn. 

In a Conan Game, we learned there were other Treasure Hunters other than us, so we did what every 80-90s Cartoon Villain would do - let the Good guys do all the work and jump them when they find the treasure. It partially worked - we got the competition to set off all the Traps. We were so "Fresh" that we fought off the bonus encounter. "the Deceiver" guy was killed and we enjoyed the game. I for one loved seeing the context clearly and exploiting it. 

My regret with Mutant Chronicles was not EXPLOITING the 10-man gang. exploiting the Trap. I should have placed a letter telling them that the Bldg manager was going to exploit them for more cash and to meet him in the 4th Floor. That would have been SWEET. 

These opportunities are there and can be found in many adventures when you study them as written. Exploiting these problems is just understanding the Potential and Motivations - and HAVING THE INFORMATION to exploit these. 

Sorry, this is what I do at work, learn people's motives and make many EQ and Admin Rolls to let the Inertia of huge forces be redirected to create VIRTUOUS Cycles. I love practicing it in games, and working with more and more NUANCED situations. 

You don't get the next generation Geniuses from being BORN, you train a bunch of students to think - get them to have game-in-the-brain - they think like a gamer and SOLVE problems. You teach them to ENJOY and find the thrill of it. Teaching them sustainable means so they can keep rolling with no crit-fail. 

When work is too INSPIRING!

 You cannot believe how many people dont understand BREAK EVEN, fixed/variable costs, cost benefit analysis, BATNA, and other BASIC biz concepts. Mastering them in Low stakes traveller when so many don't know these concepts.

Wife was telling me how an executive just learned how Break Even works and started repeating it in every meeting. Heck Cashflow is something 90% of biz don't understand - but the 70% of biz that fail after 3 years have a large chunk of them in mismanaging this key concept.

Cashflow - ever fall short paying your Crew or Suppliers in Cash - that's some ROLE-PLAYING I want to see.  

I train Students (On the Job Trainees) I'd prefer running CE and putting their Challenges into "CASE STUDIES" in CE lolz. I'd like roleplaying Debtors, Creditors, Competitors, Unreasonable Clients, Corrupt Gov't agents, etc... 

I know I run games in a Niche Way, but its the BEST system for running this kind of game. Making the Stakes Interesting is where the fantastic elements come into play. 

I remember doing the Break Even Analysis - I gave the GM a hard time because I told the Crew "We have to take jobs that ATLEAST pay X or else we will go under." = You mean Players don't do Profitable Risky Jobs... just RISKY unprofitable Jobs? 

The GM can always Handwave - but at least the Handwave should be "Profitable or NOT". The GM can next time check the BEA and roll 2d6*10% or 20% for the risks and payout of the JOB. 

When ever I see stupid Biz Decisions - I am INSPIRED in using the same conditions in the GAME. Its mentally as demanding as a Mystery Game - IMO. One really feel smart seeing the Trap and Avoiding it. Especially when you exploit the trap. 

When work is too INSPIRING (with too many bad decisions) it makes me want to game even more. 

Hangouts Updated 2016

Google System Requirements for Hangouts

JUST VOICE
300kbps (kilobit) (35KBps or KiloByte/s) uploading just voice and downloading just 1 other participant for a total of 600kbps (70KBps)

For every additional participant you download more data. So if you are talking to 3 other people then you will be download 300kbps (35KBps) per participant for a total of 900kbps (105KBps). Don't forget to add yourself for a total of 900kbps down and 300kps up for a total of 1.2mbps or (140KBps).

Like Marching you can move only as fast as the slowest member. This means that the user experience is by the person with the worse internet. This can translate to a bunch of you being affected.

Hardware Matters!
Noise Cancelling Headphones is just plain basic Courtesy in Voice/Video over IP. Even the robust Iphone Earbuds are pretty good noise cancelling. The more ambient sounds you have the get into your mic the harder it is to be understood.

Latency, like in Online Game, Matters
So PING or MS matters. I normally use my Steam PING measures to see how things are by loading Insurgency and see how the Ping is per

or you can use a PING test  to see how is the MS of your country or region with your players/gm's region.

DSLReports is the Bandwidth tester I use these days. It tells me my Ping as well.

Latency Benchmarks are those you need for an FPS, about more than 200 becomes noticeably difficult and blow 100 becomes easy and undetectable. (Check the MS rating for the location)

DDOS Attack Map: Checking the Internet Weather.
Check the Digital Attack Map to see if your Country and Backbones are experiencing any irregular attacks.

Google Alerts ISP Outage and Conditions 
If you use Google Alerts than make an alert sends alerts before your game day about Outages, Interruptions, Maintenance, and Servicing. (Use those words as key words).

VOICE and VIDEO
2.6mbps (megabit) (350KBps) up or down with video.
So in a Game of 4 other players, thats 10.4mbps (1.4MegaByte/sec). This can even be more if the Video is in HD.

Example.
My internet at home is measured at 100KBps. This means I can talk to 2 other people in a voice only Google Hangout. I have a "advertised" 4mbps aka 500KBps. 

If PLDT FINALLY comes up with 50mbps (60usd/mo) and PLDT delivers only 1/5 of promised at 10mbps (1.25MBps) I need to still do the Hangout on Audio to maximize the user experience. 

GM and Players need to MATCH Bandwidth.
If I run a game with 4 other players EVERYONE will need about 1.4MB and a latency of about below 300ms.

Roll20
Roll20 needs about 400kbps to 800kbps (50-100KB/s) to add on. Again check the latency of this all.  Here is Roll20's image best practices and my Optimized Combat Mapping Post

Turn Off Mic if not Speaking
You will learn that turning off the Mic when its not your turn (and to comment on the chat or send whispers) is better to minimize confusion and maximize everyone's Mental and ISP bandwidth. More Voice Streams of data the more Download the system needs.
If you find it Rude for the GM or Other players to mute you, then be aware when its not your turn and your Mic is on.
The GM may make a disclaimer - Will mute you if its not your turn to talk to limit noise and bandwidth. 

Computer CPU and RAM.
Browsers can surprisingly eat up a lot of ram, and when I have it on my CPU monitor shows all 4 cores firing at max in my i3 computer. So if you can divide tasks by devices it would help. I ran a hangout from my phone and Roll20 on my laptop to help with the responsiveness.

In Closing
Hopefully one day someone can make a Chrome or Firefox Plug-in to automate all this. I'm sure someone would have figured out this pain point and

Second - Skype and Hangouts can have a dashboard for matching.
If all VOIP services can have a way to test and measure. like my tested bandwidth quality, capacity, and beside each name the PING/MS/Latency I have with each player updated every couple of minutes would be AWESOME!

Allow us to Search by Hubs and Discussion on User Experience.
If we can find gamers to play with online by the Quality of the Connection it would also be awesome. Breaking it down to "Hubs" would be ok and an opt in system. As well as informing people how they can improve their User Experience. In my area X is the best way, as I've tried Z, Y and B!

The Philippine Condition
It seems my timing leaving Roll20 is not so bad since I've been downgraded and will need to look for a good ISP. The example is true that If I do get to move to a new ISP at BEST I have only 1.25MB/s to look forward to or 4 player slots in only Voice.

But I'm not getting that until PLDT gets a fiber backbone in our area (by the experience of them just setting up a leased line in our provincial plant may mean x2-3 the amount of time, for a project that should have taken 60 days), I can only get 8mbps which is sobering 200KBs (remember 1/5 of the advertised rate) and that means Voice only and latency problems. Thats probably 2 years away (2018) or never.

Open Table; 5 or more Players in Roll20

I have an open invite to my GURPS Modern Fantasy Game. I tend an interested person every other week. So far out of the 4 people who asked (which i clicked invite to game) 1 has joined and 1 has voiced interest in playing and has chosen Merle Jessie's character (because Jessie can't make the schedule and I have little time to make a new pregen).

I try not to limit the max players because I have some fall out. Many of the interested people are really just shopping around. Although I do really have a maximum number of players, and I'm worried if I might go over that maximum which will cause the game will suffer, it seems that it never happened. Life seems to get in the way of so many of us, it hasn't gone overboard YET.

5 or more players in roll20

When there are a lot of players or if I'm a player (or the GM), I recommend to write down your actions in Roll20 chat log instead (i think some of my fellow players do the same). The GM can focus on the player he's talking to and quickly respond with the Text Action (multi-tasking without having to eat up extra attention if you used up your spotlight minutes). If your feeling generous with the details feel free to put it in the Chat log. I recommend, Yes& or just Improvising something (with clear intent) and let the GM just decide. Also don't forget to soft remind the GM (he's only human) if he skips your turn.

When the GM responds, write it down as well. That way its all in the campaign notes/ Chat Log so that it would be easy to follow when in doubt. I really should put a Time Unit and export the Chat Log and link it to the Video.

the Running Craze and GURPS

Running is a very basic and very well understood athletic activity now more than ever. Right now the country is experiencing a running phase and I'm somewhat caught in it because of my wife.

Basically I'd rather know the results of a per hour or hours instead of making a roll for every minute.

Paced Running Rules - Half Move in yds/s (m/s)
Rolling per 10 minutes is -3 to running checks with every margin of failure is an additional  FP lost.
Rolling per 30 minutes is -5 to running checks with every margin of failure is an additional 2 FP lost.
Rolling per 60 minutes is -6 to running checks with every margin of failure is an additional 3 FP lost.
Rolling per 120 minutes is -9 running checks with every margin of failure an additional 4FP lost.
Rolling per 180 minutes is -11 running checks with every margin of failure an additional 5FP lost.
Very Fit Cuts the loss to half (rounded to worse)
You cannot use an increment where the penalties will bring a skill below 8.
just add time of rest to time performance so if the total cost of travel over all is 20fp 1FP is 10 minutes of rest.
every level of encumbrance adds one to the loss.

Disclaimer - Forgot my probabilities lessons.
I assumed running-18 and took the probabilities in anydice.com and checked how many rolls it takes for the number to come up. Using the frequency i compared it to Skill-18, and tried to make a penalty to reflect the frequency in one roll. The FP loss is a guess. 

So a character with Running 14 (HT12, Fit, Move 5) can attempt to run  hour at -6. If he fails by 2 he would on average lose 4FP ever hour.
A character with Running 18 (Move 8, HT14, Very Fit) can run a marathon in 3 hours and finish it at 5-6 FP loss.

now imagine this with encumbrance penalties
0.6 (med) * 3yrds/s = 6.4kph travelling 3 hours at (ST11 carrying 72lbs, HT12+1 from fit, Fit) means the character can only take the 30-min increment (-5). Assuming average roll of 10, he loses 1+2FP x2 for a total of 6FP per 30 minute run. He has a pace of 3.24kph since He rests ever after 30min, for 30mins recovering  for a 30min covering 3.2km per hour and losing up to 3FP.

IF the character takes a meal and 4 liters of water, he can recover 1FP faster per hour (1L per hour) which translates to 5minutes saved or translates to an 8.3% increase of pace to 3.5kph. 3 hours a day about 10.5 km carrying 72lbs. Able to sustain 4 hours every day. Excess hours per day is about 1hp of damage per day.

Sustained Pace Ad-Hoc ruling HT or Running -9 in hours per day. Negative means the number of days needed to rest to an HT of 8 is at negative 1 probably 1h every other day. If HT 8 person runs for about 2 hours he would have taken 1hp damage. This reflects shin splints and stress fractures on the legs.

This also helps make GURPS health goals for RL. I want to be ST11, HT12, Fit, and Running HT+2 [8]. After the Zombie Run I realize the importance of Sprinting vs Long Distance running I want to be able to run in an emergency with a load while having the strength to sprint and evade.

I "killed myself" mid run because I couldnt take the increased heart rate of being overly alert to my wife's disappointment LOL. Prior to the Run I was only able to go 3km on the tredmill and after the run with follow up sprints I can now reach 4.8km in 30mins (non-sustainably) Go Science!

My personal goal is to be able to travel 30km in a day with about 60lbs kit (because there is a possibility of having to carry my son).  The distance of 30km is enough to leave the city of metro manila. Its such a simple physical feat in GURPS terms but it can spell survival or death in RL.