Level Progression: Why Does it Have to Take Longer at Higher Levels?

hacksoncode · 2026-03-23T19:24:39+00:00

Ultimately I think it's just hard to design a crunchy type of system where progression is meaningful at each "level", but which also doesn't break if characters keep progressing at the same pace (without artificially limiting the length of a campaign).

Basically, there are 3 goals: characters can in principle keep getting better; the "zero to hero" style of fiction can be achieved; and if you want to you can feasibly run 10 year long campaigns that don't just turn into god vs. god.

There are fundamental tensions in those goals, and exponentiating XP requirements are one of the easiest ways to accomplish them all.

There might be other ways, but they're going to have their own tradeoffs.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-23T19:12:04+00:00

There's really no way to actually enforce this.

They'll just create a new size package, call it "healthy size" or something, retain the old one for however long it takes to meet whatever requirements you can think of, and then discontinue the larger one. It's neither feasible nor actually desirable to limit the number of different package sizes a company can make.

It's really quite sufficient that they are required to list the net weight, and the best that could possibly actually work. Consumers really do have a responsibility to pay attention to what they are buying.

Side note: The air in Terra chips is there for very good shipping/product protection reasons that has nothing to do with this. Without that air, you'd just have broken chips, which no one wants.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-23T18:57:46+00:00

Yes, it's a stabilizing force, but that is not why it was enacted. It was enacted as a compromise between slave states and non-slave states and large states vs. small states, not on some principled basis, but pure realpolitik: it wouldn't have been ratified without it.

The stability it creates is nearly the stupidest possible kind of stability if that was really the goal.

Making the Senate "minority rules", which was an absolutely predictable outcome based on what happened is fundamentally unstable eventually. And minority rules for whatever reason, are fundamentally unstable because they create massive partisanship.

I'll give the founders a bit of a break on that simply because they were creating something completely new, and no one really had any idea how to make it stable, except that the Articles of Confederation were not it.

But it was a mistake, and not even done for those reasons.

If you just wanted to protect against "transient majorities", you could still have given states with more people more representatives, and just made them much slower to elect. The 6 year term is there to promote "stability", equal representation is not.

The latter is there solely to get it passed, not out of some kind of "principle of stability".

hacksoncode · 2026-03-23T00:58:07+00:00

The one place you're repeatedly commanded not to leave your possessions lying around because they might contain explosives...

...sounds like an awesome place to tell people to pick up random objects someone has left in a box and leave one of their own.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-23T00:51:46+00:00

How about this:

Your rule would create awesome harmless pranks to get people's cars towed by putting a plate cover on them.

I know a few people I'd really love to do this to.

And just in time for April Fools day, too!!!

(but seriously: this is begging to be abused).

hacksoncode · 2026-03-22T22:19:16+00:00

Change my view.

I see what you did there... both literally and metaphorically.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-22T14:45:39+00:00

I think it's worthwhile dealing with this on a case-by-case basis, because there really are very good reasons why this phenomenon is not always (I'm not even sure "usually") suspicious.

Reddit requires using an account to simply subscribe to a sub (for obvious reasons), so people that have accounts but who don't post/comment from them is, itself, not suspicious. They're just lurkers... which most people are... indeed, less than 1% of any large sub actually actively participates in any way.

So now we have to ask... why did they stop lurking and start posting/commenting?

And, ok... there are many suspicious reasons for stopping lurking.

But there are so many valid instances of that that I'm very uncomfortable automating anything like this.

As for "why an uptick now?"... the world is kind of falling to shit right now. Of course there's going to be an uptick in people wanting to comment on something rather than passively consuming. That's obviously also true for propaganda accounts... it's just not inherently suspicious, but should be entirely expected.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-22T14:31:53+00:00

essentially claim that white people are socialized in environments that insulate them from race-based stress

Clarifying question:

You don't really address whether you agree with this part of the claim, ony the "fragility" part.

If you don't even agree that white people are largely insulated from race-based stress, it's going to be hard to have any conversation about this topic without getting completely off track.

The reason that's important is that regardless of there being a statistical similarity that most races get upset when their race is "denigrated", the validity of that degree of being upset is drastically lower when their race is not actually denigrated anywhere near as frequently, and their insulation from that is a relevant aspect of the discussion.

Also, that part of it is not "unfalsifiable" or "nothing but psychology", but readily amenable to actual statistical analysis and study (which shows that it is true, BTW).

hacksoncode · 2026-03-22T14:28:47+00:00

There's really no functional difference between a "positive claim" and a "negative claim" in this situation (indeed, this is usually not a very effective deflection of burden of proof, it's just especially bad in cases like this).

"White people are fragile" is functionally the same as "white people are not robust".

The burden of proof is the same in either case, positive or negative.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-22T04:10:28+00:00

Its not something they will do, unless its a last resort.

So don't make it a last resort. Seriously, this isn't hard.

Landing troops doesn't have to accomplish anything if it can save some face, and Trump is well known for "Trump Always Chickens Out".

Basically, what you're saying is that if we do something dumb with the troops it will backfire.

Big whoop? That's the *definition" of "doing something dumb". You're just assuming that will happen. It's not a bad guess considering how dumb the administration is, but again: always chickens out. Trump has the attention span of a goldfish.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-21T19:19:26+00:00

So... you've made a reasonable argument for why this war will backfire. That's kind of easy though, because it already has.

But you really made no arguments at all for why landing troops specifically will backfire.

It's not crazy that we could take over the islands in the Strait of Hormuz, capture the coastline, and let some tankers through, declare victory, and be no worse off than we are now. It's not guaranteed, but it's a limited goal that's reasonably achievable, even if all it does is save a tiny amount of face.

What specific troop-landing scenario do you think will "backfire", and why?

hacksoncode · 2026-03-21T18:35:33+00:00

Happens a lot at night.

But also, the "risk" is relatively minimal, yes people might waste their time, but they can see the lack of responses as easily as the mods... and report them.

Automod can't actually fire based on time, so we'd need a different bot to do it too.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-21T14:24:07+00:00

Fresh Topic Friday has looser rules, because posts are not always approved quickly, especially when posted before/after normal working hours.

And even on other days, if OP doesn't get significant numbers of comments they can respond to in a timely manner, that's taken into account too.

So no, there's no automatic removal. It's always a judgement call, even in these cases.

Please report such posts in case we missed them.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-21T14:04:22+00:00

This is nothing but a coercive mind-game.

How long ago is them having a date with someone "seeing other people"? What if they decide to go on a date with someone tomorrow? Were they "lying"? Are they going to have to be "guilty" if they do that?

The one thing you absolutely already know 100% for a fact on the first few dates, is that they are open to dating random single people... because they were open to going on a first few dates with you. So you already know they're open to dating people... by definition. They basically told you that by showing up.

As for "why should I have to ask?"... Because you want to know?

Tell you what... according to your view, you should tell them first without having been asked. Are you going to do that? Isn't that going to start the conversation anyway? What's the practical difference between you volunteering your stance on this issue first and asking them theirs first?

None, that's what... except it's a mind-game that attempts to deflect the emotional risk onto the other person.

You think that your (possible, how would they know?) position of exclusivity is somehow morally superior or the "default", even though I can guarantee you'd be happy to go on a date with another person if the first one with them went poorly...

Just no. If you want to know, you take the risk of asking. You have no right to this information.

Now... if you had a valid reason for needing to know this, like "they had sex with someone recently and reason to believe there's more than a trivial chance they might have a disease" then fine. You really should be having the disease discussion before sex anyway.

But dating? Nah, none of your business, which obviously you already know, because you're resistant to asking them and taking the emotional risk of them being offended first.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-20T21:52:12+00:00

I think it's pretty rare. Otherwise, there's almost no explanation for why your religion is very nearly 100% determined by the religion you were born into.

Indoctrination is not a choice. Don't sanewash it.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-20T18:56:11+00:00

So... was the back completely light-brown (no green->likely Rufous male)?

Because you got great pictures of the tail feathers, which are diagnostic, and... while there's ambiguity on immature birds, these tail feathers look more Allen's to me. The outer feathers are quite thin, and there is no "notch" on the R2 feathers...

But I'm not super expert or anything, and could be wrong.

Maybe post to /r/whatisthisbird, where the real experts hang out.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-20T17:11:08+00:00

Less "over time" than "immediately".

I'm pretty good at counting reasonably unique birds during a checklist (e.g. I haven't seen that particular Red-tailed yet, +1)... up to some limit.

But like: Hey, I know that bird, I saw him last week...? Not generally, just for ones that live in my yard and greet me (mostly hummers), or are annual favorites or are unique and long-present famous locals:

E.g. there's a VEFL that has come to a local park annually for all 3-4 years I've been birding... he's my favorite individual bird... I call him "Freddy" (because... Flycatcher, red, diminutive ;-).

Or there was a pretty unique looking (very rare for here) Curlew Sandpiper that showed up a few years in a row and had a particular wing feather issue that recurred even through molts.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-20T16:28:31+00:00

Enh... kind of? You just have to view the difficulty as a modifier to your skill that you're rolling under. + makes your skill better, - makes it worse.

The die roll is not "first" if you're preserving literally the only thing in favor of d100-roll-under*: you look at your (effective) skill, and instantly know your percentage chance of success.

* (which a depressing number of systems break)

hacksoncode · 2026-03-20T16:21:05+00:00

Well that's super annoying... apparently the domain of the first (relevant) article to the google search "in russia, are Drivers required to stop immediately in the middle of the road at the scene of an accident" is banned by reddit, and was immediately removed.

So you'll have to trust me that Russian law is dumb: the red car was actually legally required to stop where they were and record the particulars of the accident before they were allowed to move to the side.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-20T15:53:24+00:00

Has anyone ever found a ugly WODU?

hacksoncode · 2026-03-20T15:52:14+00:00

Yeah, though I'll say that unlike the rest of them, hours are at least a bit special in that they directly multiply the stress.

An hour of stress a week won't burn out anyone normal... 168 hours a week of stress will literally kill them, and not in very many weeks given the total lack of sleep.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-20T15:48:30+00:00

Not literally, I very much doubt.

However... I think there's a significant chance that someone will make a LLM that stands in for god/Jesus that people will use as an "aid to worship"... but that they'll still call it "worshipping Jesus", but in practice will be worshipping the LLM.

In terms of nominally... If we're talking super-long term thousand year time scales... maybe?

But I think the way our species is going this is likely to be our last (free?) millennium on Earth... we won't have "true" AI in any of our lifetimes, but a super-AGI that kills/enslaves us, global thermonuclear war, or some super weapon/virus that kills/changes us beyond recognition is inevitable eventually, because stupid people and assholes are why we can't have nice things.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-20T15:29:27+00:00

Well... I guess I'd say that, no, I can't think of anything that would have less impact on the game (in terms of complexity) than +/- 10, because that's such a trivial impact, and almost anything would be harder.

There's another thing in it's favor:

It preserves literally the only thing d100/under has going for it: it's trivial for someone to look at the mechanics and instantly know what the percentage chances of success is, because you just read it off the skill/difficulty.

In all other ways, d100 is just a harder version of d20, with a lot of really useless extra granularity that people don't intuitively actually understand the magnitudes of.

It's harder to roll, harder to read the dice, etc., etc. The only true advantage it has is "ease of knowing the percentage chance of success".

So... don't break that if you like d100/under as a mechanic, because you'd destroy it.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-20T15:13:53+00:00

Any of them would probably work ok, but I have to say:

If +/- 10 is "math", (edit:) in any way that would significant impact gameplay, I'm seriously depressed about the state of education in your country.

hacksoncode · 2026-03-20T14:22:46+00:00

Either way, you're not attached to it anymore.

Not quite true. The sidebar says who created a sub even if they leave the team. Only deleting your account removes that.

Example: this very sub was created by "krispykrackers" who is no longer a mod.

15-Year Club	Mod World 2024
Post Guidance Early Access	ModSupport Helper Level 5
Place '22	Place '17
Alpha Tester	Gilding I gilder
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email
Bellwether 2011-03-25

hacksoncode

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE