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Game With The Dragoons => Other Forum-Based Games => Topic started by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2019, 07:06:32 PM

Title: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2019, 07:06:32 PM
Since the Grogheads new forum host is having trouble making the dice-roll module work, I'm going to use Armchair Dragoons as a neutral ground for making game-critical dice rolls while umpiring our epic forum game of the (somewhat notorious) boardgame THE REPUBLIC OF ROME (combined with its fan expansion THE BIRTH OF THE REPUBLIC, which we've already finished although a few pre-Early Era cards are still floating around, and with another briefer fan expansion THE CIVIL WAR ERA).

(I'm having some trouble dialing in a readable font and size, so bear with me if I experiment somewhat.)

Most Dragoons presumably know what I'm talking about, being from the GH forum originally, but if not here's the start of the game thread... http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=22942.msg631023#msg631023

I'll explain where we are in the game in a minute, once I've done some testing on the dice-rolling module here, to refresh my memory on how it works. (Once I've created a post, I can't edit it without invalidating the dice result.)

Rolled 3d6 : 3, 6, 4, total 13


Let's see what this test looks like.
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: mirth on February 21, 2019, 07:32:37 PM
I could bump up the font size in the results box if you want.
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2019, 07:34:09 PM
Hm, yes, that should be sufficient.  8)[

All right, quick summary. By my standards.

The six current Players of the game (we have room for 2 more by the way!), not including me (I'm only the umpire keeping track of the infamous rules so the Players can just play the game), each represent a political Faction of the emergent Republic of Rome. The game started with the Players being each dealt a few starting senatorial families, and then dealing with kicking out Rome's final king to start building the Republic.

Senators in this game aren't the Players, but are more like hero characters collected and managed by the Players, though senators can sometimes be persuaded to switch Factions (thus going to other Players).

The game is both co-op and competitive. The game is trying to beat everyone, and if certain things happen then all Players lose together. Whereas if the Republic lasts past its historical overthrow into the Roman Empire, everyone wins together! (Yes, there's a sequel game based on the same system called "The Empire of Rome", but I figure everyone will be tired of the game by then, so I haven't made plans yet to continue on. And I don't think it's on TTS yet.)

The game also, however, constantly tempts the Players into competing with one another, especially toward one Player manipulating the political situation around to get one of his senators elected Consul for Life -- or to successfully stage a military rebellion against the Republic! -- winning the game in effect by himself by controlling the first Roman Emperor.

This leads to a significant amount of back-channel plotting among the Players, not all of which I'm necessarily privy to. This is a political strategy game which occasionally erupts into violence. We've had one judicial murder already, for example.

Clear so far? Okay.

Currently Rome is beset by three Active Wars, with one Inactive War (the 1st Illyrian) lurking in the background. If a Combat Phase ever ends with 4 or more Wars still active on the board, the Republic will shatter from the strain, and everyone loses. So aside from various benefits to winning wars (both for the Republic generally and for senators personally!), the Players have a vested interest to remove as many Wars per Turn as feasibly possible. And they have to politically cooperate with each other to do this effectively!

I'm tracking all this using a Tabletop Simulator module (partly created by a Russian and by someone else), providing snapshots (and one video for demonstrating a critical game winning or losing portion we were passing through) to the Players as we go along.

Here's an overview of the main board as a snapshot example to end my introductory context with.

(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img921/8670/UU2v7S.jpg)

...also this allows me to test posting snapshots of the game for the Players during the Combat Phase next.

Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2019, 07:35:24 PM
I could bump up the font size in the results box if you want.

I'm not sure what that means, but I'm currently trying size 16, thanks!  :bigthumb:

(But not for this post, as a test.)
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: mirth on February 21, 2019, 07:51:30 PM
I could bump up the font size in the results box if you want.

I'm not sure what that means, but I'm currently trying size 16, thanks!  :bigthumb:

(But not for this post, as a test.)

In the dice results box the font is set to "x-small". It's hard-coded into the plugin. I don't know that you can change that from the post settings.
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2019, 07:56:58 PM
Oh, okay, thanks Mirth, I understand now! That'll be fine, 16 font please.
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2019, 08:02:15 PM
So much for the general overview.

Recently the Players finished the Turn Eleven Senate Phase, where they worked out a deal to elect and appoint various senators to offices; to Raise some more Legions and Fleets to Active Status from the Force Pool (representing logistic potential of the Republic for its main fighting forces); and then Deployed some senators to fight against two of the Wars as Commanders of two Forces.

With the departure of the Presiding Magistrate (currently the Dictator Paullus Macedonicus of the Conservative Faction) out of Rome, the Senate was adjourned (and the Senate Phase ended).

This leads into the (almost) entirely automatically resolved...

TURN ELEVEN -- COMBAT PHASE
---------------------------

For the first of two fights this Turn, we start with...

(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/4278/WXHp17.jpg)

Field Consul Manlius, Faction Leader of the Militarists, vs. Antiochus III and the Syrian War!

I won’t explain all the things the cards and chits mean, but some things will make sense as I go along. The current Players will all understand.

“Tripoli” is the Militarist Player, by the way. Now that the game has left the tutorial Eras and fully kicked into gear, his senators have been profiting steadily from the increased demand for their special headquarter capabilities: their minions or “knights” (Manlius has 5 of them, per the chit on the lower right of his card) have the unique ability to help manage Legions and Fleets more effectively than normal.

“Knights” in this game don’t usually have special military abilities, except for the Militarist Faction. Knights are normally-invisible extra senators who have been Persuaded by the Players to bring more votes, and more income, to more politically important senators, the characters of the game like the Manlius family representative here. Each Faction does get special benefits from their knights beyond the normal extra votes and income, but these differ from Faction to Faction. And that’s all you need to know about them for our purposes here.

Manlius is at some risk of dying in this fight, but because he’s a Faction Leader (indicated by the pawn on his card, red for the Militarist faction mat), the Manlius family will make sure a new scion is raised to the senate immediately so that they can keep being Faction Leader! The game Turns each cover many years (even decades in the previous tutorial Eras), and it’s assumed that normally senatorial families groom successors seamlessly transitioning from Manlius to Manlius (in this case) without making a difference in the game. But occasionally senators die catastrophically without the families being prepared, and this affects the cards.

In this case, the practical result will be that if Manlius dies, his card will go back to Tripoli’s mat without going into a sort of holding area to await respawning (where two other families are waiting in line by the way) -- but he’ll lose all the extra pieces on his card that Tripoli has built up over time!
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: bayonetbrant on February 21, 2019, 08:03:14 PM
are you moving the whole game here?  players & all?
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2019, 08:10:38 PM
I will if they want to. But the Players (and sometimes me, too!) often need to refer back to prior posts for information and snapshots, including some extensive behind-the-scene p-mails for secret information, and it would be definitely clunky to shift back and forth between forums for a while.

(This is a little clunky, too, of course, but the Players will be able to visit here, catch the results in one straight read, and then go back to the main thread. And maybe bookmark here for reading and participation in other threads! -- so it's like free marketing for this forum. Also, future situations won't need this much introduction for host visitors, so to speak, about what's going on: I can just make a couple of posts explaining and showing the rolls.)

I certainly appreciate the offer, though, thanks!
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2019, 08:32:43 PM
With the most immediate context explained for new readers, time to resolve the fight! Here’s the snapshot again for ease of reference.

(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/4278/WXHp17.jpg)

They’re a little hard to see against the colorful backdrop painting on the board, but Manlius has brought along the 1st and 2nd Fleets (for this War’s necessary logistic Support); and 10 Legions: the Veteran 1st, 2nd and 11th, and the regular 3rd through 9th inclusive.

Total Legions: 10 (the Fleets don’t fight in Land Battles.)
Total Veteran Legions: +3 (they do extra damage.)
Manlius’ Mil Skill: +8 (he and the Militarist knights together can manage 8 Legions enough for them to do extra damage again. The other two Legions will do their normal damage.)
Syrian War’s Land Strength: -6
Antiochus III’s skill: -5
The Die Roll Modifier will be 10+3+8-6-5 = +10.

This (for those joining us to watch) is such a hefty advantage for Manlius and his men, that there is no chance of Rome being Defeated in this fight, and the minimum possible chance of a mere Stalemate.

However: see those black and brown squares on the enemy cards, with D and S next to them? If the 3d6 naturally totals any of those four results, there will be an automatic Standoff or Disaster for Rome. Which will cost a lot of Legion casualties for no gain!

The time has come. Normally I would just roll the dice in TTS, but there’s no easy way to demonstrate the validity of the results -- and these fights are absolutely crucial for the survival of the Republic through the next Turn.

So, here we go. Rolling 3d6...



Rolled 3d6 : 4, 1, 2, total 7
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2019, 10:28:51 PM
1+2+4=7, which is not a D/S result (whew!), +10 DRM = 17.

For context, a final result of 7 would be a Defeat with 1 Legion lost. Manlius would die, I’d roll to figure out which Legion died (Vets get increasing preferential advantages here depending on their level), that Legion would go to the Force Pool, and the surviving Legions would return to Rome immediately.

An adjusted final result of 17, however, is a Victory! -- with one Legion lost.

So, processing the results:

Unrest goes down 1 point, from 1 to 0. (If the people of Rome become too unhappy with the Senate, various problems result: at worst, a popular uprising overthrows the Senate and loses everyone the game! 0 means no Unrest at all for now.)

The Republic’s Treasury increases by 45 Talentons of Spoils (the number printed over coin art on the bottom right of the War card), from 32 to 77! (Talentons, more popularly known as Talents, were the heaviest standard weight of silver, thus the largest unit of money, in ancient Mediterranean societies; and are the basic unit of cash in this game. If Rome is forced to spend money below 0 cash then the Republic goes bankrupt, the people revolt, and everyone loses. There was a serious danger of that next Turn; now much less so.)

Enemy Leaders don’t normally risk death in a War, and if they’re Defeated they can often go to a special slot on the board called the Curia where cards wait to respawn (and where they may die a natural death, as has often happened in this game). However, Antiochus only had this one War! -- so with its Defeat, this Successor candidate for the late Alexander the Great leaves history permanently, dying in battle or in obscurity afterward. His card discards.

Sometimes a Victory over a War grants Rome a new area to manage. In the pre-Early Eras, this would involve areas farmed for taxes, or a permanent increase in the Republic’s normal income, and/or a permanent increase of logistic capability (how many Legions and Fleets can be Active at once).

Syria can be a Province of Rome, as noted on the card. But for whatever reason, Defeating the Syrian War does not provide that Province! The Players will have to wait to gain it some other way. With that, the War permanently Discards into history.

Manlius, as the Victorious Commander, adds half the War’s basic Land Strength (of 6) to his Influence and to his Popularity. So Pop +3, up to 4 (maximum is 9); and Influence up from 23 to 26, new Militarist total 78. (Popularity and Influence help senators in various ways, as you might expect; Influence is also the ultimate score of the game. >=21 means a senator can be elected as Consul for Life, winning the game outright for his Player. A senator can also be automatically crowned Emperor by the people if his Influence and his Faction’s get far enough ahead of everyone else, but there’s no danger of that yet -- we’re using a house rule on that.)

As the Players will know, there’s a unique historical Event which has been lingering around since the Latin Era (the first tutorial Era of the game), called the Spolia Opima, waiting to be triggered by the first Victory over an Enemy Leader. So far, the Republic has had a lot of good luck in its Enemy Leaders dying off before attaching to their Wars, since this Event was drawn and primed long ago! -- but someone was going to win it at last, and Manlius turns out to be the one! (He got to fight first, because he had to be Deployed first before the Dictator could leave Rome for War.)

Manlius thus adds 5 each to his Influence (up to 31, quickly approaching the normal rule for an automatic game win for Tripoli alone at 35!); for his Popularity (up to 9, the maximum possible); and for his personal cash (from 0 to 5 Talents). Militarist total Influence up 5 to 83.

I’m feeling genuinely a little nostalgic for the discard of the Spolia, one of the few remaining cards in the game specific to the tutorial Eras.

Manlius did lose 1 Legion in this fight. And while that isn’t enough to make him more un-Popular, I still have to randomly decide the casualty. (This isn’t a crucial roll, so I’ll use TTS.) I do this by working my way down the Legion list, from highest number to lowest, roughly representing the experience and history of even regular Legions rolling a black die. Even it survives, odd it dies. If I go through the whole list this way, and I haven’t filled out the casualty total, I start over again, as many times as necessary.

It happens in this case that the 11th Legion is a Veteran, and must be tested first. Vets normally have no defensive bonuses in this game, but I house ruled the ability for the Senate to vote on training regimens (similar to the Marian and other reforms of the pre-Imperial period), improving the survivability of Vet Legions. The Players voted (and spent cash) to institute one regimen reform already a few Turns ago, so all Vets are automatically Level 1 now, “Seasoned”.

The 11th gets 1 extra survival roll; but passed it the first time anyway.

The casualty turns out to be the 8th Legion, a regular unit. It’s sent to the Force Pool.

More joyously, any battle result but a Defeat means the oldest regular Legion in the fight upgrades to (Seasoned) Veteran! In this case, that’s the 3rd (which was already previously a Veteran Legion. For the odd story, see the main game thread. ;) ) Manlius earns the Loyalty of the 3rd Legion, as a chit on his card. He has to hand the Legion back to serve the Republic (unless he rebels), but in case of a Civil War he can call upon this Veteran Legion to stand with him (for or against the Republic!)

Manlius must now draw chits from the Death Bag, equal to the units he lost -- so one chit. If his family number comes up, he dies! He’s family 6, as can be seen under his name. But I drew a 12. By house rule, any active senatorial family with a casualty in battle gains 1 Popularity. Family 12 are the Acilians, with a scion currently allied to the Plutocrat Faction (run by the Player with the Groghead forum name Ethel the Frog). He goes up from 0 to 1. (Acilius has had a rocky history; for more on his story, and Plutocrat political cunning, see the main thread.)

The Victorious Manlius begins the journey home to Rome with his surviving Force.
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2019, 10:57:08 PM
Now for the second and last battle this Turn:

(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/5655/c4WAlx.jpg)

Dictator Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus of the Conservatives (played by Arizona Tank at Grogheads), and his appointed Master of Horse Julius of the Militarists, vs. Philip V and the 1st Macedonian War!

This other Successor candidate is no slouch, with a +6 bonus to all four of his Wars, which by themselves threaten the Republic’s existence!

You may notice that Paullus’ card has red text, not black, and that he has a printed special ability (and generally awesome stats). That’s because he’s a Statesman: a historical character senator. Many (not all) families have at least one, as shown by a bracket around their family number beneath their name. The Julian family has at least one Statesman in the game (take a wild guess who ;) ), as the bracket shows, but this Julius isn’t him, just a regular member of the family who has been around a lonnnng time in this game and who has been buffed by Tripoli quite far.

Paullus comes from the Aemilius family, and I think the bracket around his number means they have at least one more Statesman somewhere. But I’m not sure.

Families never Discard out of the game, and so neither do vanilla family Senators; but Statesmen, being unique historical characters, permanently Discard when-if-ever) they die.

While multiple senators can attack a War, they usually have to use distinctly separate Forces, and so attack one at a time. A Dictator however can appoint one senator (not necessarily voluntarily!) to be his Master of Horse temporarily, which allows that senator to contribute his Mil skill to headquarter management. Julius’ Mil 9 is about to be very helpful...!

This War doesn’t require a Naval battle, but does require 10 Fleets worth of Support to secure the logistic line, which Paullus has brought. He has also brought 11 regular Legions: the 10th, 12th through 20th, and the 21st.

Total Legions: 10
Vets: none
Paullus’ Mil: +5
Julius’ Mil: +6 out of 9 used. (There are only 11 Legions, so the extra 3 Mil adds no benefit.)
 War’s Land Strength: -12 (this is the toughest War seen by the Players so far!)
Philip’s skill: -6 (toughest Enemy Leader, too!)
DRM will be 11+5+6-12-6 = 4.

Not so great, but better than average. It risks only a minimum possible chance of outright Defeat (with no casualties), and improves chances of a total Victory by a considerable amount, while significantly reducing Stalemate chances.

Moreover, Paullus special ability as a Statesman (they all have something) voids any D/S result from a Macedonian War! -- of which there were three possibilities in this case! However, the risk of Philip causing Rome a Standoff or Disaster remains, on a natural total of 14 or 15.

Could still be a tough fight! The roll will be...


(https://www.armchairdragoons.com/forum/Themes/lazarus20/images/dice_warn.gif) This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 3d6 : 4, 5, 2, total 11
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 21, 2019, 11:08:50 PM
Huh, I don't know why the module says the dice roll has been tampered with. I didn't edit the post after sending it: the forum would mark it as edited. (Possibly like this post, which I edited to add this remark, and for demonstration purposes.) Maybe I previewed it while I had the code text included? That will generate a dice result, and might flag as having been edited.

I wish I could edit it, because I listed the Legions wrong! -- should be 11 not 10, so the DRM = +5, not +4!

Anyway, results: 2+4+5 = 11, which is not a D/S result -- but it would have been a Standoff if Paullus had not been sent in Command!!! (On the tan square next to the S on the War's card, there's an 11 as well as an 18. Either one of those would work.) That just saved the Republic 25% casualties rounded up, or 3 Legions!

A final result of 11 (aside from D/S results for this War) would have otherwise been a Stalemate, with the Republic losing 2 Legions. Wars don't (usually) lose casualties, so their Land Strength would have been 12 next Turn, too -- or worse if another Macedonian War arrived! Julius would have gone home, but Paullus would have had to stay at the War, now as a Proconsul going forward.

As it is, the adjusted result is 11 + 5 = 16. That's a Victory (phew, the Players will be relieved with Wars stacking up), with 2 Legions lost.

I'll post the results tomorrow afternoon, as it's late here now.

(Edited to add: look right below here -- it makes the post as edited! So I didn't go back and tamper with the dice roll.)
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 22, 2019, 09:19:27 PM
In hindsight, I suspect the reason for the "tampered" mark is because between the time I started the post and the time I actually posted, Mirth made an adjustment to the die-text size, for which I thank him muchly!

Also, Erax (the Progressive Faction Player, who often double-checks my proceedings), points out that I correctly resulted a DRM +4 for the Macedonian War, but for whatever reason I listed the Legions as numbering 10 instead of 11.  +4 result does include the 11 Legions, so there's no fix to the calcs (only to my text record).

This means the final adjusted score is 15, not 16. That's still a Victory, but one with 3 Legions lost.

(In case you're wondering why I often capitalize certain terms, that's because the guys who wrote the rulebooks did and I'm following suit. I'm not talking about Defeat as a concept usually, or Enemy Leaders, but as technical game terms. My one deviation on that is to call all senators "senators" with a small s, unless I'm talking about vanilla family Senators and then I use a capital S. Statesmen are also senators, but not vanilla Senators.)
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 22, 2019, 09:21:15 PM
Now for the detailed results of the Victory over the 1st Macedonian War.

Unrest -1, but already at 0. (The Players have been both lucky, and also quite religious about keeping Unrest down.) Defeating this 1st War doesn’t make Macedonia a Roman Province yet, but it does provide the Republic Treasury with 25 Talents in Spoils, up from 77 to 102. Philip grouses in Defeat over to the Curia (respawn section of the board). The 1st Macedonian War Discards.

Paullus, being the Commander (not Julius the Master of Horse), gains the Victory, and so gains +6 (one half the War’s printed Land Strength) Popularity, up from 0 to 6, and +6 Influence, up from 11 to 17. Conservative total Influence up to 33. The 21st, 18th, and 17th Legions (all regulars) are destroyed, and return to the Force Pool. The 10th Legion levels up to (Seasoned) Veteran! Paullus loses 1 Influence for 2 or 3 units lost, down to 5. After a thorough shuffle, Families 20 and 11, plus a blank, are drawn from the Death Bag. Aemilius Paullus and Julius (from families 19 and 4) survive. But Paullus’ fellow Conservatives Papirius (11) and Terentius (20) each lose a close relative in the Legions, earning 1 Pop each (up to 2 and 1 respectively).

The Support Fleets all sail back to Rome immediately, dropping off Julius who finishes his office as Master of Horse: Militarists votes back up 8 from 4 to 12. Paullus starts shepherding his Legions to the city.

This ends the Combat Phase. The 1st Illyrian War remains Inactive (since the Players decided not to risk the Republic’s destruction by aggro-ing it!). But the 1st Punic War, and its Leader Hamicar, remains Active and Unprosecuted.

AzTank and Tripoli must declare, early in the next phase (the aptly named Revolution Phase, the final one for any Turn), whether Paullus and Manlius respectively will hand back their Legions to the Republic -- or whether they will rebel! They are allowed to ‘test the waters’ before they do so, by polling the Active Legions. Paullus can rely on the Loyalty of the Veteran 10th Legion in a Civil War; and Manlius now has the Loyalty of the 3rd (plus his fellow Militarist Julius can rely on the 1st and 11th Vets. The Manlians have been Victorious a few times already, but not since Veterancy was unlocked.) Manlius also has 5 Talents in his personal cash which he could sacrifice to add +1 to the loyalty rolls of five of the active legions. (Other Loyal Vets would surely be called into defense of the Republic by their former Commanders, so no point testing them.) During the Early Era, a 1d6 result of 5 or 6 will grant Rebel Allegiance for any Legion. This test doesn’t necessarily require rebelling afterward, but it must be done publicly so other Players will know about it! If both Players decide to rebel, AzTank’s Paullus as Dictator will have priority and Manlius’ rebellion will be ignored.

To see the continuation of the game (until the next crucial rolls), you can follow this link back to the main game thread at Grogheads. http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=22942.msg642811#msg642811

Thanks to Brant and the Armchair Dragoons (e.g. Mirth admin help especially) for agreeing to host and validate these important times in the game!
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 28, 2019, 08:35:06 PM
Not a crucial roll in the sense of the game's end being at stake, but there's quite a bit of personal cash at stake (in the game, not real life) in this roll.

Context: this is Sulpicius.

(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/5903/YVAFfa.jpg)

He smirks like that all the time, but in this case he has a reason. Despite coming from a below-average senatorial family, with below-average stats, and despite not even being aligned to a Player's Faction, Sulpy has amassed 28 Talantons of silver in his personal treasury.

He got that cash by not being aligned to a Player's Faction. At a certain point each Turn, each Player has one chance at Persuading a senator to join the Player's Faction, whether from another Player's Faction (which is usually harder), or from the Forum generally (which is usually easier).

A Player has to roll within a target window to do this, equal to or lower than a target 2d6 total. This target number is determined by the Persuading senator's Influence plus his Oratory skill, minus the target senator's Loyalty, minus another 7 if the senator already works for another Player (and minus the senator's number of minions if he's in the Conservative Faction), minus also the target's personal cash.

On the other hand, the senator chosen by the Player to try the Persuasion can give bribes to the target senator from his own personal cash (not from the Faction Treasury). This cash once ante'd up belongs, win or lose, to the target senator now. Which means it will managed (spent, redistributed, etc.) by whomever controls that senator.

On yet the other hand, every other Player gets one chance (in asynch forum play) to add a counterbribe -- from their Faction treasury, not from any senator's personal cash.

After this, the Persuading senator's Player has one last final-bribe opportunity to add more cash from his Persuading senator's personal cash.

Adding and subtracting all those figures together, arrives at the target window for the Persuading Player to try not to exceed in a 2d6 total. But there's one more catch! -- the highest possible target total is 9. Any naturally rolled 10, 11, or 12, will automatically fail. No amount of bribing or personal Influence can change that. (This rule keeps richer and more influential players from destroying poorer players by persuading away all their senators automatically.)

Sulpy, in that snapshot, has passed through one or maybe two Persuasion attempts already, and has collected 28 tons of silver basically in bribes and counterbribes. Of course, each time he adds to his personal treasury, that makes him ever more resistant to actually joining a Faction. Why should he? -- he already has as much or more cash than some Factions on any given turn!


Enough context? (Probably more than enough... ;) )

Okay, the current situation. The Aristocrat Faction Player, I.I., wants to try Persuading Sulpy. His best senator for this (with the highest total of influence and oratory) is the Statesman Scipio Africanus; so back during the Revenue Phase I.I. distributed out a lot of cash to Scipio for this attempt later. And now it's later!

Sulpy's stats, between his (self-)loyalty, and his personal cash, total -36. In order to maximize his chances (target window 9), Scipio has to add an initial bribe of 18 Talents. Sulpy is now going to get this cash, too, one way or another.

The Militarist and Conservative Players, Tripoli and Arizona Tank respectively, want to discourage I.I., whose Faction is getting kind of overpowered (although the Militarists recently passed him solidly in total influence...!), from focusing on his personal gain when the Republic is under constant threat from the Wars clustering upon them right now. Between them they have agreed that Tripoli will spend all 8 of his Faction cash counterbribing Sulpy, while AzTank will spend half as much as is necessary to keep I.I. from succeeding -- that comes out to 18 more Talents in his case.

In effect AzTank was gambling that making the chance harder, not impossible, would be enough to convince I.I. to back off instead of risking all Scipio's money on what will amount to a little more than a 1/4th chance at best (saving AzTank 4 Talents).

Instead, I.I. has decided that the Godawfully huge pot Sulpy controls is worth the risk -- and if he fails, then he has at least put Sulpy more-or-less permanently out of reach for anyone else to try later. So he antes up Scipio's final 22 Talents for the final bribe.

One way or another, the meager smirky Sulpy will now control 28 + 18 + 8 + 18 + 22 = NINETY-FOUR TALANTONS OF SILVER! That's more than the Republic itself often has at the end of Revenue Phases so far! It's a good thing he's willing to just be rich and not also ambitious...

So much for the setup. I'll run the roll in the next post, in case I need to edit this one.  ::)

Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 28, 2019, 08:36:40 PM
2d6 roll. The total must be 5 or LESS. Any total 6 or more will lose.

(Weirdly, there are no less than three dice roller modules in the toolbar now. There seems to be no distinction? I'll aim at the one in the middle. ;) )

(https://www.armchairdragoons.com/forum/Themes/lazarus20/images/dice_warn.gif) This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 2d6 : 4, 6, total 10
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on February 28, 2019, 08:47:45 PM
RRrrrrgh, I do not understand why it say that the roll has been tampered with! I'll need to run experiments, maybe one of the other dice roll modules isn't broken...??

Anyway, I know there has been no edit. (The post itself would show subsequent editing, too!)

A total of 10 would always lose, regardless.

Oh, in case anyone is wondering why my math might be one notch off: I forgot to mention there's an Evil Omen event affecting this roll, dragging the target number not-to-exceed one notch lower, in effect making Sulpy's Loyalty equal 9 instead of 8. (A second Evil Omen randomly popped up on the next Player's round, making most rolls worse by 2 instead, but that doesn't affect this roll, which for various political reasons is lagging asynch behind where the game is for everyone else.) Anyway, my calculations did include that, as can be seen in the main game thread here: http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=22942.msg643102#msg643102

So, Scipio's personal cash goes to zero. Sulpy's personal cash goes up to 94, which he shall continue to warily watch while subtly smirking over in the corner of the Forum.

Onward to the Senate Phase this Turn!

Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: mirth on March 01, 2019, 06:26:28 AM
I don't know that there are any other dice rolling plugins for SMF. And it can be difficult getting support for these things from the folks who make them. I'll see what I can find out when I have the chance.
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on March 01, 2019, 08:35:33 AM
Did you turn on the font resizer for the module? I didn't have the problem at first, so something had to have changed in the background, and I haven't done anything as far as I can recall. But you were going to do the font resizer for the module, so that it wouldn't be such tiny print.

If you've activated that, try deactivating it and we'll run an experiment to see if that helps.

Meanwhile, here's a test of the first and the third dice-roll module shortcut -- I think these are only multiple shortcuts, they seem to produce no differences, purely a {roll}{/roll} command.

(https://www.armchairdragoons.com/forum/Themes/lazarus20/images/dice_warn.gif) This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 2d6 : 5, 2, total 7

(https://www.armchairdragoons.com/forum/Themes/lazarus20/images/dice_warn.gif) This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 2d6 : 3, 5, total 8


And for comparison, here's me simply typing out the code.

(https://www.armchairdragoons.com/forum/Themes/lazarus20/images/dice_warn.gif) This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 2d6 : 2, 3, total 5
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on March 01, 2019, 08:36:54 AM
Okay, as I expected, no distinction there. (But be aware there are now three shortcuts to the dice-rolling code on the toolbar, one of which is grouped with youtube commands and spoiler tags and offtopic tags and... changelog?)
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: bbmike on March 01, 2019, 08:47:10 AM
Doesn't the fact that the post itself doesn't show it has been edited mean that the dice roll hasn't been edited? Or is there a way to hack that?
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: mirth on March 01, 2019, 09:26:19 AM
Did you turn on the font resizer for the module? I didn't have the problem at first, so something had to have changed in the background, and I haven't done anything as far as I can recall. But you were going to do the font resizer for the module, so that it wouldn't be such tiny print.

If you've activated that, try deactivating it and we'll run an experiment to see if that helps.

Meanwhile, here's a test of the first and the third dice-roll module shortcut -- I think these are only multiple shortcuts, they seem to produce no differences, purely a {roll}{/roll} command.

There was nothing turned on in the module. I changed the font size using a CSS style which is entirely separate from the dice module.

The dice roller is a third party module so it's basically what you get from whoever developed it. I don't think it is actively supported any longer either. I'll look at the code and see if i can do anything with it.
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: mirth on March 01, 2019, 10:03:58 AM
I've fixed the issue with the tamper warning. You can see the tests I did in this thread:


https://www.armchairdragoons.com/forum/index.php?topic=641.msg10321#new


Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: bbmike on March 01, 2019, 10:24:33 AM
^That dude's an intellectual T-Rannasaurus Rex!
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on March 01, 2019, 05:14:47 PM
^That dude's an intellectual T-Rannasaurus Rex!

...seems like there should be a chaw joke in there somewhere.

Great! -- and also, there's only one dice-roller shortcut in the shortcuts again, too, so yay for that.

I'm now trying to figure out why the post 'title' doesn't act like a hyperlink I can right-click on to generate an address pointing to the post. (This will be important on occasion later, if the players agree to migrate the game here for dice-rolling convenience.  8) )
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on March 01, 2019, 05:16:22 PM
hm, not yet. Tis odd.

Oh, and dice-rolling test, forgot that, let's see... Combat and several other rolls require a 3d6 so:

Rolled 3d6 : 6, 3, 2, total 11
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on March 01, 2019, 05:25:49 PM
Drat, my working theory was that I didn't have something in my profile toggled correctly. But I've gone over every tab I can find, and I don't see anything that would indicate that functionality (turning post title hyperlinks on or off).

On the other hand, quotes do generate hyperlinks that I can click on! -- I noticed that when I quoted bbmike a minute ago.

Also, user ip is a hyperlink under the post title. Just not the post title.

Brant confirmed that standard functionality should apply: I should be able to right-click the post title (just like right clicking the thread title) to generate a direct link to the post.

Must ruminate on this puzzle a while.
Title: Re: testing post title hyperlink functionality
Post by: JasonPratt on March 01, 2019, 05:30:48 PM
Ah, wait! Wait wait wait wait...!

I don't have post titles showing! I don't know why yet, or how to turn them on (and I didn't see a functionality for that yet in my profile thingies). But all I have are the date and timestamp. Those are the hyperlinks in some places, like Facebook posts, but not standard for forum, so no surprise that isn't working!

New theory: if I can figure out how to turn on my post titling, that will be hyperlinked as normal.

I am generating post titles; I see one every time I come here to the new post window. I'm looking at the current post title now, which is simply (no brackets) {Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME}, as would normally be expected since I haven't gone out of my way to change a post title.

I'm changing it to {Re: testing post title hyperlink functionality}, which I was able to do. Now let's see if the new title shows up...
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: mirth on March 01, 2019, 05:31:15 PM
Ummm....your welcome for the dice roller being fixed ;)
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on March 01, 2019, 05:34:17 PM
Nope, that didn't work.

Next question is: can anyone else see the post titles?  ??? (And, presumably, are they indeed hyperlinks to the post?)

Back to my account settings to look around...


Oh, right, and thanks for the dice roller being fixed!!  :notworthy:  :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :party: :party: :party: I ran a confirming test and saw the result, but got absent-minded on trying to puzzle out the next thing.
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: mirth on March 01, 2019, 05:37:41 PM
The next thing is a completely separate issue. And I don't get paid to work weekends ...or weekdays ;)
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on March 01, 2019, 05:53:08 PM
No rush; the earliest they might decide to migrate is next week. And for functionality, in the worst case scenario I can quote a small amount as a workaround and generate a link back to the prior post that way. Mainly it would be handy for providing a quick way for players to refer to the snapshot posts for convenience.
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: bayonetbrant on March 01, 2019, 07:06:25 PM
I will look into the post link issue later tonight
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: bbmike on March 01, 2019, 08:24:09 PM
I'll have a scotch and see what that does.
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: mirth on March 01, 2019, 08:31:41 PM
I'll have a scotch and see what that does.

It can't hurt anything ;)
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: bayonetbrant on March 02, 2019, 05:39:19 PM
No rush; the earliest they might decide to migrate is next week. And for functionality, in the worst case scenario I can quote a small amount as a workaround and generate a link back to the prior post that way. Mainly it would be handy for providing a quick way for players to refer to the snapshot posts for convenience.


there is a workaround, but it's not an easy one


I've pinged someone for help so that Mirth doesn't have to parse thru it, but I don't have a short answer at the moment
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on March 02, 2019, 06:59:04 PM
Seems like the easiest workaround is to generate a quote from the target post (perhaps in the post immediately afterward), and right-click that address.

For example, I got this link from your quote, pointing back to my post. https://www.armchairdragoons.com/forum/index.php?topic=627.msg10337#msg10337
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: bayonetbrant on March 02, 2019, 08:07:40 PM
Seems like the easiest workaround is to generate a quote from the target post (perhaps in the post immediately afterward), and right-click that address.

For example, I got this link from your quote, pointing back to my post. https://www.armchairdragoons.com/forum/index.php?topic=627.msg10337#msg10337 (https://www.armchairdragoons.com/forum/index.php?topic=627.msg10337#msg10337)


That is the workaround I had in mind.  But there's gotta be a better way to do it.  This theme does so many other things so well (especially the mobile version) that I can't believe there's not an easier way to make this happen
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on March 02, 2019, 10:29:11 PM
Eh, I can make it work, so I'm happy enough.

Still, I don't know why the code for doing the normal thing hasn't been included in the theme (apparently). Can anyone else see post subjects?!

I realized a day or two ago, btw, that while I can see the thread subject title, I still can't see (so can't click on) the post subject title that started the thread. (I thought I could, but I was misremembering.)
Title: Re: Critical Rolls for THE GROGPUBLIC OF ROME
Post by: JasonPratt on March 15, 2019, 06:47:07 PM
After some discussion, the Players have voted that the easiest solution will also be the best, namely that I just make our dice rolls and chit pulls at TTS, 'behind the GM screen' in effect.

Consequently, we won't be moving the game to a thread here at Armchair Dragoon, though I was hoping to set up for that. But I can appreciate not wanting to change the wagon team halfway across the river!

Thanks to Brant and Mirth for their help and encouragement. I have some plans for offering up a quite different forum game (processed in TTS) here at ArDrag later, although I need to put some projects to bed first. Probably before the Grogpublic is done though! More on this later in another thread, of course, when I get around to it.  ;D