You are at your local village’s Evil Overlords Club meeting. (Yes, Evil Overlording, or to be more precise, wanna-be Evil Overlording, is very popular in this civilization).
Several other club members have coincidentally also taken an interest in arranging for adventures, and some fruitful discussions have taken place (see other people’s comments for details).
One of the club members, however, reveals some further information:
“When I sent to get adventuring data from the guild” said your fellow club member, who you only know as simon, “the Evil Overlords liaison there showed my representative something he wasn’t supposed to see. It was only a moment, but that was enough—he got it with his Secret Encoder Ring. It was a list of adventure data, but with an additional column, for something called “Threat Level”.
“What,” you say, “the liaison didn’t show my representative that. I thought the liaison was supposed to show data to all Evil Overlords International member representatives equally.”
“Indeed. Which caused me some concern that it might strain relations if I used it. But, I wasn’t specifically told to throw it away. Now, the liaison said that this data, supposedly, “didn’t end up being used”, but even if it wasn’t “used”, it’s potentially of interest since it might be in some way related to dungeon difficulty or perception of difficulty—or someone’s perception of what someone else might perceive as the difficulty—or something. Anyway, this “Threat Level” column had numbers in it and I figured out a formula for the numbers. If you’re interested, keep listening.”
“So, what’s the formula?”
“Simple. It’s a sum of contributions from the individual encounters in the dungeon, minus 0.25.
“Yes, that does seem simple,” you say, “I assume that was pretty easy to figure out.”
“Uh...of course,” Evil Overlord simon responded, with a slightly pained look. “Not that it had to be easy… a lesser mind than myself might have proceeded from the assumption that there’s no 0.25 subtraction, and then, since the first entries when sorted by Threat Level each include exactly one physical trap (by which I mean Boulder Trap, Lever Puzzle Room, Snake Pit, or Poison Needle Trap), counted the physical traps as having 0.25. And then later, that lesser mind would have noticed that they needed to count extra physical traps beyond the first as having 0.5. And, if they had extended that as well to magic traps (by which I mean Riddle Door and Cursed Altar) everything would have worked out, since all dungeons have at least one trap of one sort or another. But, that lesser mind might have been tripped up by the fact that the first magical traps, when the dungeons are sorted by threat level, occur along with a physical trap—so the 0.25 subtraction is accounted for already—and before dungeons with two physical traps are encountered, so before they knew that traps after the first contributed 0.5 to the threat level. So it looks like magic traps are a straight 0.5 and different from physical traps. And since many later dungeons have some magical and no physical traps, the lesser mind would then get the wrong answer for those dungeons and add epicycles. And then become tied in knots trying to make the epicycles work, knowing something is wrong but expecting some simplification to become apparent when they just add enough epicycles, but not looking back to the very earliest assumptions. Of course, super-smart Evil Overlord that I am, avoided that easily.”
“That’s, um, a very specific pitfall. How did you avoid it.”
“Intuition,” Evil Overlord simon grimaced. “By the way,” he added, changing the subject. “there were some very tiny discrepancies that look like rounding errors. Like, on the order of 10 to the minus 16th or thereabouts. Anyway, I won’t be looking into those. I consider my duty to equalize the information properly discharged.”
You are at your local village’s Evil Overlords Club meeting. (Yes, Evil Overlording, or to be more precise, wanna-be Evil Overlording, is very popular in this civilization).
Several other club members have coincidentally also taken an interest in arranging for adventures, and some fruitful discussions have taken place (see other people’s comments for details).
One of the club members, however, reveals some further information:
“When I sent to get adventuring data from the guild” said your fellow club member, who you only know as simon, “the Evil Overlords liaison there showed my representative something he wasn’t supposed to see. It was only a moment, but that was enough—he got it with his Secret Encoder Ring. It was a list of adventure data, but with an additional column, for something called “Threat Level”.
“What,” you say, “the liaison didn’t show my representative that. I thought the liaison was supposed to show data to all Evil Overlords International member representatives equally.”
“Indeed. Which caused me some concern that it might strain relations if I used it. But, I wasn’t specifically told to throw it away. Now, the liaison said that this data, supposedly, “didn’t end up being used”, but even if it wasn’t “used”, it’s potentially of interest since it might be in some way related to dungeon difficulty or perception of difficulty—or someone’s perception of what someone else might perceive as the difficulty—or something. Anyway, this “Threat Level” column had numbers in it and I figured out a formula for the numbers. If you’re interested, keep listening.”
“So, what’s the formula?”
“Simple. It’s a sum of contributions from the individual encounters in the dungeon, minus 0.25.
Goblins = 0.325
Orcs=Skeletons=Zombies=Boulder Trap=Lever Puzzle Room=Riddle Door=Cursed Altar=Snake Pit=Poison Needle Trap=0.5
Goblin Chieftain=Wolves=Orc Shaman=Ghosts=0.75
Orc Warlord=Basilisk=1.25
Lich=1.75
and Dragon=2.5″
“Yes, that does seem simple,” you say, “I assume that was pretty easy to figure out.”
“Uh...of course,” Evil Overlord simon responded, with a slightly pained look. “Not that it had to be easy… a lesser mind than myself might have proceeded from the assumption that there’s no 0.25 subtraction, and then, since the first entries when sorted by Threat Level each include exactly one physical trap (by which I mean Boulder Trap, Lever Puzzle Room, Snake Pit, or Poison Needle Trap), counted the physical traps as having 0.25. And then later, that lesser mind would have noticed that they needed to count extra physical traps beyond the first as having 0.5. And, if they had extended that as well to magic traps (by which I mean Riddle Door and Cursed Altar) everything would have worked out, since all dungeons have at least one trap of one sort or another. But, that lesser mind might have been tripped up by the fact that the first magical traps, when the dungeons are sorted by threat level, occur along with a physical trap—so the 0.25 subtraction is accounted for already—and before dungeons with two physical traps are encountered, so before they knew that traps after the first contributed 0.5 to the threat level. So it looks like magic traps are a straight 0.5 and different from physical traps. And since many later dungeons have some magical and no physical traps, the lesser mind would then get the wrong answer for those dungeons and add epicycles. And then become tied in knots trying to make the epicycles work, knowing something is wrong but expecting some simplification to become apparent when they just add enough epicycles, but not looking back to the very earliest assumptions. Of course, super-smart Evil Overlord that I am, avoided that easily.”
“That’s, um, a very specific pitfall. How did you avoid it.”
“Intuition,” Evil Overlord simon grimaced. “By the way,” he added, changing the subject. “there were some very tiny discrepancies that look like rounding errors. Like, on the order of 10 to the minus 16th or thereabouts. Anyway, I won’t be looking into those. I consider my duty to equalize the information properly discharged.”
Intellectual Integrity Score: 10⁄10
Evil Overlording Score: 0⁄10