Recent content by Ruin Explorer

They're related but more precise in purpose and tend to actually be vastly more performant for the specific and specialized tasks they're used for. https://aisera.com/blog/small-language-models/ That's a rather sophomoric comparison, I'd suggest, however appealing that kind of...

The only reason you can use LLMs freely is companies burning literally billions to tens of billions as loss-leaders to try and create hype. Most actual AI projects aren't public facing because they're serious research and development and not about being massive hype-fuelled loss-leaders, or...

Calling using "circumstance modifier" correctly, as a term that means a modifier based on the actual circumstances (like it sounds), as opposed to a modifier based on other factors like skills/traits/powers, given its demonstrated history in D&D specifically (as well as other games, including...

None of those are circumstance modifiers by definition. They're spells and abilities. We can exclude spells and abilities sure, but if a system insists on checking for actual circumstance modifiers on every attack, that is a step/check. https://www.d20srd.org/srd/theBasics.htm Emphasis mine...

I think it is though, because you use a D&D attack as an example, but because 5E decided to be weird, we do in fact have to ask "is there cover on the attack" in 5E as a step if we're playing RAW. In practice, I would say most people ignore that concern unless someone is intentionally trying to...

I don't think that's quite true, because you're not just looking at D&D's resolution, where you could kinda make that argument, you're attempting to compare system-on-system, and when you do that, you do need to look a bit deeper to determine how resolution works. Like, in both systems, you...

To be clear he's talking about NWoD, not oWoD, it's just very confusing because he says "first print edition of World of Darkness", by which he means the literal book World of Darkness, the NWoD core rulebook. Mage: The Ascension was oWoD, and oWoD didn't do things the ways he's describing, in...

This is a really good point re: resolution complexity - and yeah it's true in 5E and DH that a lot of rolls you just know they succeed/fail without even thinking about any math - but as you say, in 3.5E and 4E, you pretty much always had to do the math. Indeed with 3.5E, if you had multiple...

Oh I tend to agree, you need a personality/backstory which is compatible with the mechanical character, but the idea that a build has to have a 1:1 correlation with full backstory explanations for literally every mechanical element which seems to possibly be implied would be bonkers (but not so...

That's my main critique of Everspace 2 - it reminds me more of an MMORPG than a single-player RPG or even an ARPG, because you get into so many nigh-identical fights, and I feel like the weapons/devices/spaceship classes aren't quite as in-depth as I'd want for a space-combat-ARPG (which is what...

Yeah it's interesting how the American "standard" and British "standard" (Received Pronunciation) diverge strongly here. In Received Pronunciation or whatever fancy name it has now (they seem to change the names of every not-strictly-regional dialect in Britain every decade or so lol), h is...

Looking at the number of steps in isolation is not very meaningful, especially as how to break them down into steps is (perhaps surprisingly) subjective (like you split out "determine Hope and Fear", but I don't think that's really a separate "step" from the roll resolution). I would suggest...

I kind of agree, but I don't think it's because the fundamental functionality as much as what some LLMs can autocomplete. What you're describing isn't fundamentally that different from fancy autocomplete. It's just got more layers to it, more of a recognition of syntax and so on, so maybe on...

By "needs roleplay" do you mean "needs a backstory justification"?

Even as you typed this you knew it was not what I said, so why even say that? The problem is people burning down the game to "win". Playing builds you don't even enjoy is just a symptom.