RULE # 1: In the short term, binary logic [soul equation] is far superior (?) than fuzzy logic [cloning equation].

April 11, 2007 1:58 PM

Hybrid: the roleplaying game. A Timecube style "role playing game." via Grand Text Auto
posted by juv3nal (51 comments total)

sweet fancy fuckin' moses:

Rule # 550: There are 5 parts to this rule. Based on my Rule # 3 & Rule # 6, this: {(0,0) END} is a human, usually a male human, at least in this rpg HYBRID, since women are too complicated to make in my rpg, since creating women in my rpg requires politically incorrect math [...]

posted by boo_radley at 2:04 PM on April 11, 2007

Rule 0 is 80% of the way down the page! And it's after a set of movie reviews!
posted by boo_radley at 2:08 PM on April 11, 2007

At least it's less complicated than FATAL.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:25 PM on April 11, 2007

Sigh. I am enough of a nerd that before I clicked on the link, I actually hoped it would be a new rpg.
posted by voltairemodern at 2:26 PM on April 11, 2007

aaaand only slightly more complicated than Rolemaster.
posted by boo_radley at 2:29 PM on April 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

This is truly crazy. I'd like to see this as a great big coffee table book. Just flip it open now and then to a random page.
posted by cortex at 2:33 PM on April 11, 2007

HYBRID ( BROWNIE ) CAKE HYPERLINK \l "recipe" µRECIPE§ { the secret is 1d6 flour to 1 part sugar for type of pastry, when making brownie @ gpa of 2 for cake; to create perfect cake, use (1/5) of ingredients, except for cake flour which is used @ 100% }: this is proportional to equation for perfect religion is @ 1/5 of Islam @ 5 gpa vs. 1/3 of Islam @ 3 gpa, while 1/1 gets a gpa of D grade, same as cake recipe, where 1/1 is a D grade }. But, do not forget that amount of baking powder is (gpa)x that of 1 packet of yeast in flour: use 1 box of cake flour ~ 1 similar volume of flour for bread, but for cake use only 1/2 of flour.

It's just...I don't know. I don't know what the hell to make of this. Or of his weird habit of renderning non-link text as blue and underlined.
posted by cortex at 2:39 PM on April 11, 2007

Politically incorrect math?

Q: Train A leaves NYC at 8pm on Wednesday, traveling to San Diego via Saint Louis. Train B leaves Seattle at 9am on Thursday, traveling to Charlotte via Saint Louis. How fast would each train have to travel in over to meet at Saint Louis?

A: Doesn't matter, because Train A's conductor is an asian woman, and they can't even drive in a straight line!
posted by CKmtl at 2:40 PM on April 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

I have no idea at all what is going on there, but I quickly scrolled through it. I must say that, although I have no clue what that is about, I really do like this:

Rule # 525: # of useful rules in my rpg will be {(# of rules)/(gpa)}.

I'm going to convert that to something about useful posts/comments on Mefi. I just need to be on whatever that guy was on to craft it.
posted by dios at 2:41 PM on April 11, 2007

*order to meet ... yay, spelling.
posted by CKmtl at 2:41 PM on April 11, 2007

Maybe this will all be on Trent Reznors new album.
posted by boo_radley at 2:42 PM on April 11, 2007

I also thought immediately of Nomic when I saw the enumerated, numbered rules. Ah, Nomic.
posted by cortex at 2:44 PM on April 11, 2007

Egads! This could give rpgs a bad reputation!

*casts Nybor's Mild Admonishment*
posted by Benjamin Nushmutt at 2:45 PM on April 11, 2007 [3 favorites]

Anybody know how to get past the water elemental? He doesn't seem to be vulnerable to physical damage...
posted by Kwine at 2:59 PM on April 11, 2007

I was not aware of Timecube before this FPP. My head feels inside-out now.
posted by EatTheWeek at 3:02 PM on April 11, 2007

Ah HYBRID. Which goes to show, old USENET kooks never say die, they just GTOFB (actually, it's just hosted by M. Tromeur).
posted by bonehead at 3:03 PM on April 11, 2007

I want to believe that this is a joke, but I... I just can't...
posted by OverlappingElvis at 3:05 PM on April 11, 2007

It's like a fractal... it never fucking ends!

"my version or interpretation of Marvel Universe is different from the official version, since I interpret MU stories differently, as I rarely trust either the narrator to be truthful in telling a non-slanted story, nor do I trust the characters to be truthful, as I take everything that being information with skepticism, meaning everyone within the story & characters of MU have some sort of hidden agenda"

Imagining Marvel Comics to have a narrator, supposing that the narrator is unreliable, and then trying to figure out what is really going on, is a totally awesome idea.

This guy obviously interprets reality to work this way too.

Well, the narrator of the thing does, anyway. Maybe.

Shit. I'm starting to think like him.
posted by painquale at 3:05 PM on April 11, 2007 [5 favorites]

Thanks bonehead. Via your linked thread, a review of Hybrid.
posted by juv3nal at 3:12 PM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

bonehead's right, there's tons of usenet posts about this... system. Sweet Stan Lee!
posted by boo_radley at 3:14 PM on April 11, 2007

I cannot play this as long as singularity brotherhood infests my brain.
posted by CynicalKnight at 3:17 PM on April 11, 2007

Hybrid is pretty well-known among the online tabletop gaming community. It's one of those freak things that gets rediscovered on a regular basis: Somebody posts a "Hey, look at this!" on a message board, someone responds with "Whoa, that's crazy!", then somebody realizes "Hey, that thing is racist and sexist", and so on, until somebody points out "Hybrid's author is obviously mentally ill", and then everybody drops the subject.

Because making fun of the mentally ill isn't cool, even for people who like to live in fantasy worlds.
posted by faster than a speeding bulette at 3:19 PM on April 11, 2007

the professor always skipped so many steps that if I was that fictional character ‘Bruce Almighty’, I’d fire half my college professors, and why due to my lack points I mostly use theoretical physics for my role playing game HYBRID which is mostly a science-FICTION role playing game in an attempt to figure out how many college classes could the fictional MARVEL character Reed Richards take & get all A’s which comes out to his age in # of WEEKS by [[[123^LOG10(123) @ C3 where 123 = C2 DP]^(1/2)]-1] per semester where each semester = 4 months with summer consisting of 2 but HALF two-month semesters with the latter’s sum would be {(1/2)+(1/2) = 1 summer semester}

I've always found this guy's page strangely compelling--he seems to be trying to express some sort of Grand Unified Theory using mathematic equations and comic book characters.
posted by EarBucket at 3:23 PM on April 11, 2007

This is truly crazy. I'd like to see this as a great big coffee table book. Just flip it open now and then to a random page.

I was about to post something about buying the rights and publishing it as a sequel to Nobilis--which I believe is still the only RPG published in coffee-table-book format--but you beat me to it.

(# OF CORE RULES = SQUARE ROOT OF TOTAL # OF RULES)

Awesome. It's like an RPG written by OuLiPo.
posted by Hogshead at 3:36 PM on April 11, 2007

RULE # 228: Pilot Varsity makes an excellent dip pen.

They sure do.
posted by EarBucket at 3:41 PM on April 11, 2007

RULE # 290 IS THE M-THEORY OF EVERYTHING, except how to make textiles

...
posted by Spacelegoman at 3:50 PM on April 11, 2007

I can't wait to play this as an MMORPG.
posted by Foosnark at 3:55 PM on April 11, 2007

World of WTFcraft?
posted by Spacelegoman at 4:00 PM on April 11, 2007 [5 favorites]

Wow. Just wow. Awesome.
posted by dazed_one at 4:03 PM on April 11, 2007

My current greatest equation yet is Part ii OF RULE # 297 which accurately predicts all forms of violence from the beginning of human history to the present

Wow, he can predict the past!
posted by wildcrdj at 4:24 PM on April 11, 2007

RULE # 368: The dating / marriage game can be reduced to a couple of equations, but they contradict each other somewhat

Dude, tell me about it.
posted by Tiresias at 4:26 PM on April 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

So... any recorded incidents of someone actually playing it?
posted by Artw at 4:34 PM on April 11, 2007

My current greatest equation yet is Part ii OF RULE # 297 which accurately predicts all forms of violence from the beginning of human history to the present

Wow, he can predict the past!

I was just reflecting on this use of the word "predict" earlier today. It's common in science to devise models and equations which "predict" past events. It's just saying, this is a solid model because of its predictive power, and in future situations if we keep this model in mind we may be able to accurately predict other similar events. Scientists can predict the past :)
posted by lostburner at 4:54 PM on April 11, 2007

Does anyone have a towel? I need to wipe this crazy off.
posted by anotherpanacea at 5:06 PM on April 11, 2007

Holy shit.
posted by Clave at 5:14 PM on April 11, 2007

I was just reflecting on this use of the word "predict" earlier today. It's common in science to devise models and equations which "predict" past events.

There's a term for that: retrodict.
posted by painquale at 5:25 PM on April 11, 2007

Reading this made my eyeballs confused.
posted by Wonderwoman at 5:35 PM on April 11, 2007

painquale: There's a term for that: retrodict.

Not really the same as what lostburner was talking about. Retrodiction is saying, for example, "let's imagine X happened 1000 years ago, [insert theory] could explain Y, which we know happened 50 years ago."*

*Notice the phrase "One speculates about uncertain events in the distant past..." in the wiki.

lostburner's use of 'prediction' is more like "X1, X2, X3 have happened 1000, 900, and 800 years ago respectively. According to [insert theory/model], Y1, Y2, Y3 should have happened 700, 600, and 500 years ago. Great Scott, it did! [insert theory/model] works!"

It's also common to see "predicts" used as statistical jargon when talking about a link between variables. Like... say you're studying currently non-suicidal patients in a depression clinic. You find that the severity of the latest suicide attempt is related to the number of previous attempts. You could say "the number of previous suicide attempts predicts the severity of most recent attempt", even though you're only dealing with data about the past.

Did I really just nerd out about statistics in a thread about RPGs? I hope this doesn't mean Furries can make fun of me now...
posted by CKmtl at 6:15 PM on April 11, 2007

This is just the output of a random word generator, right?
posted by tehloki at 6:47 PM on April 11, 2007

Looking at it again, part of me wants to see if it makes any more sense if you go and put in some anchor tags every time he cross references a rule #. Somehow I doubt it.
posted by juv3nal at 6:58 PM on April 11, 2007

CKmtl: huh, that's funny. I've always known 'retrodict' to have a meaning more along the lines of the definition given at wiktionary: "To attempt to estimate the previous state from the present." (I linked to wikipedia without checking their definition too carefully.) Google gives results that conform to both uses. Either there are an awful lot of people using the word incorrectly (like me), or the word has two meanings.
posted by painquale at 7:28 PM on April 11, 2007

painquale: "To attempt to estimate the previous state from the present." ... Either there are an awful lot of people using the word incorrectly (like me), or the word has two meanings.

Well, I think it's using it incorrectly-ish, for nitpicky reasons. The from in "estimating previous state from the present" and oppositely "estimating a future state from the present" shouldn't be taken as the temporal location of the estimator, but rather as the source-data of the estimation.

Let's say that, today, you have some sort of data about some conditions (financial, weather, whatever) from 5 year ago. If you use that data and a theory to speculate about conditions 10 years ago... you're retrodicting. If you use that data and a theory to speculate about conditions 2 years ago... you're predicting. In both cases you're talking about the past (from your standpoint today), but the data use is slightly different.

So, back to the RPG-writer's "violence equation". Say it somehow mathemagicalizes the socio-political and economic situations prior to the outbreak of ... the Battle of Thermopylae, just to pick something old and violent. If his equation takes those pre-battle situations, crunches the numbers, and spits out "These situations will result in war! Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!", then it has predicted the past.
posted by CKmtl at 8:07 PM on April 11, 2007

So predicting is kind of like differentiation, and retrodicting is kind of like integration?
posted by tehloki at 8:19 PM on April 11, 2007

I suppose it could be put that way, sure.

I've seen people use predict when they mean retrodict, but I guess that's because 'predict' is more commonly used and 'retrodict' would cause a general "Huh?" reaction.
posted by CKmtl at 8:28 PM on April 11, 2007

Tooooooooooo much (clap clap) time on his hands...
posted by davejay at 8:38 PM on April 11, 2007

Gene Ray is a lunatic. I wrote a song about it. Wanna hear it? Here it goes...
posted by ZachsMind at 8:41 PM on April 11, 2007

The disclaimer is great:

IF & IF all police had the morals & ethics of Captain America, then the police would get lot more respect, but often I see on tv is police acting as thugs, imho, which now sometimes even includes animal cops, who sometimes unfairly seize animals. They ought to be stopping the making & selling of most kinds of candies [which is different from pastry, which contain much LESS sugar than candies, but still contain sugar, which ought to be avoided by the consumer(s), except in rare circumstances, such as on birthday, if they choose to buy & eat a cake, which ought to contain LESS sugar or/and ought to be diluted with more or/and excess flour, diluting the sugar in the cake, which usually contains excess sugar, since excess sugar is NOT something anyone ought to promote, which is often promoted by candy companies & manufacturers, most of which is harmful or (ought to be) closing down stores or/& factories that sell/promote candies, , such as those that they promote for children which seem like child abuse....

It also mentions that he has a brownie recipe somewhere in there.
posted by Citizen Premier at 8:43 PM on April 11, 2007

I just found my new lorem ipsum.
posted by rifflesby at 1:10 AM on April 12, 2007

Awesome. Anyone have a link to fatal.pdf that works?
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:16 AM on April 12, 2007

Don't forget the expansion packs!
posted by jbickers at 9:04 AM on April 12, 2007

He mentions Dr. Who. That almost makes up for women requiring politically incorrect math.
posted by Deoridhe at 9:48 AM on April 13, 2007