unreality

The night ends tonight at 11pm.

Day One: Suspicion: Taking turns staying up as watchguards didn't seem to achieve much today - perhaps there's just too much to watch over, or the lights in the sky are too appealing for our sentries… or perhaps there's another explanation. Any way you have it, upon awakening at dusk, 10 rations have been destroyed. And Scout seems to have come back from scouting to have brought back a muttering man, ice clinging to his face like a crystalline beard. "He was out in the mountains," Scout explains. "We ran into each other on the stairs." "Who are you?" insists Brother Mandrake. "Identify yourself!" the Vice Admiral declares. "My name is Calcutta. I'm an American. This is World War I, the Himalayas, you crazy bastards. I can't believe anyone would be here by choice." "What happened to you?" "My plane was shot down. Almost out of food I decided they weren't out to rescue me. I've been trekking it solo for a week." "Do you need any food?" someone says, to be elbowed by a partner. "No, I have my own subsistence, don't worry," says the pilot, head angling toward his bag filled with something. "What are you guys up to?" Meanwhile, people are arguing over the food shortage problem. "I have something that may help organize us," hints Mandrake. "And we need to face this head on. We have 80 rations now. Enough for 8 people. Calcutta and the Savage can subsist themselves but what about the other 9 of us? We don't have enough food." "My god are you suggesting canibalism?" "No… just, uh, truncation from the group. We need to be reasonable, and get rid of who is least valuable to us. We simply can't afford to starve on the way down." Amid this, the harsh winds from the day are settling down. Scout has come back from surveying the first region of terrain. Night falls. (We found a way to get dawh into the game, as Calcutta. Welcome to the game dawh )

I'll be gone for a bit but when I get back later tonight (between midnight and 1 i'd guess), the day will end, so be aware of that

SCARS

near the end of the day period, Scout will wake up to scout ahead and return around dusk when the first night of trekking shall begin (assuming you leave).

Clarification: you can PM each other (and include me if you want so I can get a grasp of what's going on, but you don't need to). If it's during the day, you can talk privately without others knowing. But during the night when everyone is trekking in a line, you can still whisper to each other but it will be known that the two people are conversing. So in that case do include me in the conversation so I know, and I will say on the thread "so-and-so are having a conversation". If that gets tiresome I'll drop it but we'll try it out haha

you're far away from civilization - there's no "recharging". Just clearing that up it is daytime. And it's been a few hours SINCE dawn. Until dusk, like 10 hours (in the game) but you have to sleep in the day too, tis the point, but anyway in terms of real-life time, I haven't quite figured out the timing yet but right now i'm thinking daytime discussion will go to tonight when I get back from being out so maybe in the time window of 11 pm to 1 am (EST).

By the way; I forgot to add this: in 10-12 days a rescue team (pre-arranged) will arrive at the plateau. So don't worry about food rations on the way back to civilization, afterwards. If that's a concern or whatever

By the way, this game is very experimental. I don't know how exactly the gameplay will go, there are too many fluid factors. So a lot of the storytelling is up to the players. Feel free to flesh out your backstories within reason, and kind of make it an immersive experience, because the way I see it's 1/4 actual game with fixed and rules, and more like 3/4+ of fluid roleplaying/storytelling. There's a lot of degree of freedom here. Play with it and get into it as much as you want

yep Okay in a minute, all role PMs will have been sent (most already are). edit: ok we're good. If I forgot any extra info for any characters they'll know by today probably. Anyway, tis just the beginning ;D

great! Sorry to dawh and Segul, I know you both wanted to play, but we did wait 2 and a half days, so I hope you're not too mad or anything. Here's the roster: Brontson's Team: [1] Framm = Scout [2] Araver = Gregor Ivanov [3] maurice = Nischal [4] Blablah = Vice Admiral Sebastian Mordock [5] DD = Hieronymus Fabricius [6] Hirkala = John the Savage [7] DarthNoob = Vick Brontson [8] GMaster479 = Mr. Kirkpatrick [9] woon = Willem Klein [10] Izzy = Brother Mandrake (I'll PM the secret info after posting the intro story) Dawn, 1917… The frostbitten plateau at the base of this anonymous peak is a mighty thing to behold for being so mundane. It's lined by crags and spears jutting their icy fingers into the oxygenless air. Hundreds of miles from any known civilization, a small huddle of red tents, washed by pools of lampglow, fights the glacial conditions bravely. In these tents, ten occupants - one of them the great Bront Brontson - wait eagerly for the eleventh member of the team, Scout, to return from navigating the mysterious icy staircase to the long hidden sanctuary. While everyone else huddles around artificial warmth in the tents, only a man so determined as Bront Brontson waits outside, at the foot of his greatest discovery, at the moment of beautiful (but near sunless) dawn, peering into the swirling fogs hiding any vantage point of Scout's safe return. This makes Bront nervous and fidgety. He looks around impatiently, cold, but determined. He's about to get a lot colder. Someone is creeping up out of the shadows cast by the lamps and fires. Someone holding an icicle, as nervous as Bront, hand shaking. A quick plunge, a yell muffled by a hand, another stab, jab, stab, another, another. The bloody icicle is left in the back of the great explorer. The assassin recedes back into the shadows. Twenty minutes later, Scout descends the capstone of the staircase, (engraved in some forgotten language) and finds the body. In less than two minutes, everyone knows, and the situation has quickly deteriorated into shouting matches, stubborn shock and resolute anger… and fear. What will happen to the mission? To the lives of the remaining explorers? "We should keep going," Mr. Kirkpatrick says adamantly. "We all signed on knowing that some of us wouldn't be coming back." (Hieronymus shuffles his feet agitatedly.) "Bront was a great man" (Vick nods, eyes still blank and suffering) "but this is not a one-man escapade and never was. We have representatives from many countries and many backgrounds. We have military oversight, scientific presence, and a kickass chef. Let's make something out of all the funding I put into this, let's not be deterred by Bront's death but rather strive on in his name and in his honor!" "We should go back," mutters the Savage. "No, I agree with Mr. Kirkpatrick," butts in Vice Admiral Mordock with a knowing smile. "I refuse to return in shame. In failure." "I'm on the same page. This is it for me. This mountain attracts me - if you guys turn back, I'll go on alone," states Dr. Fabricius. "This is a dangerous place," Nischal says. "Not a good place. Not a place where life happens." "Precisely why we conquer it," replies Mr. Kirkpatrick. "Let us ask young Vick. If you want to turn back, we'll honor your needs." "No," breathes Vick. "We go on." "So it's decided!" Mandrake exclaims. "Oh, good! I was hoping we were going to argue out in the wind all day. What did you find out Scout?" A muffled indistinguishable voice emerges from Scout's snowmask: "It's hard going. The winds are too fast during the day. We'll have to camp and sleep in the daytime, though we won't have all that much time for sleep everyday, if we want to make any progress at all. We'll ascend in the night, but it's tricky. Everyone needs to do at least another hour of practice with the pitons and rappelling equipment. And you might as well get rid of your softer boots, we'll need the studs, all the way up. And probe poles, because of the kind of ravines that have opened up." "This is ridiculous," says the Savage. "We can't possibly make it." "Stop being such a pussy," quips Mordock. "Bront didn't die for nothing." "Bront died so we can tell when to turn back," Nischal reasons, but Kirkpatrick cuts through the arguing with "I thought we already decided this. We're going. We just need proper preparation - my faith is in Scout." Ignoring the quibbling, Scout continues: "It looks like we'll be able to cover varying distances each night, depending on the type of terrain. That way each night is a different terrain. I estimate that after five nights of travel we can reach the sanctuary… if we push ourselves to the limit. Luckily we have exactly 90 days worth of rations. For nine people, that's 5 days up, 5 days down. (The Savage doesn't need our food according to him. So far that's been true). One of the most important rules of ascension is don't go up if you don't have enough supplies to come back down." "Perfect," says Mandrake. "What about gear?" "We should be set, unless we come across some kind of obstacle we couldn't have anticipated. In that case we'll have to either innovate or turn back. It's as simple as that. If we proceed systematically we might all make it up and down alive." "Um, I have a question," Ivanov says. "What if… what if Norway didn't come back because he found the Yeti? Or rather, it found him. And what if, what if it finds us?" "Don't be ludicrous," Klein rolls his eyes. "I've been researching Himalayan organisms for my entire career. I'll have you know I'm the recipient of several prestigious biological awards. And I've never come across this 'abominable snowman' of legend. If such a thing exists it's probably more afraid of us than we are of it. Or maybe not, knowing you idiots. But anyway it's the least of our problems." Finally, Vick couldn't take this anymore. He lets out an earsplitting scream: "We're forgetting something! We're talking about trivialities! Has everyone already forgotten??? Someone just killed my father, in cold blood!" An uncomfortable silence follows. "That is a problem," Scout mumbles. "I don't really know how to proceed about it. As if normal, I suppose, but with extra caution." "Be careful who you trust," sneers Vick, looking around with dark eyes. "Yes, well, we can jump that hurdle in a minute here. The day has just begun, we just arrived here, we've been hiking for the past 24 hours to just get here. We need rest. This will be our first day of rest. And during the day, well, we can delve into our current problem at hand. But remember, after resting, we start our ascent tonight. At dusk."

If nobody claims the tenth role soon my plan is to cut it down to 9 people (which is totally fine) so we can finally get started

so I'm thinking whoever (Darthnoob, segul, dawh) gets on first and wants to claim [Vick/Vicky] Brontson, will do so and the game can start

ADORN (if result is 1, then the second letter is C by omission)

CILIA

SLOPS S--PS is already a 0 from SHIPS, and the L is a 0 from PLAYS. So if SLOPS is 1 then the letter is O. If SLOPS is 0 then that leaves only the T in STOPS to be the letter

why not have the whole score be based on unpredictability? Because isn't that the point of PRNGs? Or, hmmm, it seems a distribution factor of some kind is still necessary. Were you thinking (if the range is 1 to n, and the generator produces N such random numbers), each number should have a 1/n chance of coming up on average. There could be an error score equal to the sum of the absolute values of the differings from this 1/n mean, divided by N. Or use a standard deviation formula instead, with the squares and square root. Or were you thinking of taking a bunch of cross sections of size n and calculating how many of the numbers between 1 and n were represented in that chunk, then taking the average over all chunks? Or something. I think the most fair is the standard deviation or the MAD deviation... for example if n=100 and N=10000. Then for k = 1 to n, find the number of times k occurs and divide by N, and compare to the mean of 1/n... so for standard dev, subtract f(k)/N - 1/n, square it, add em all together, divide by n, square root. I think that's the formula (or is there something about dividing by n-1?) Or MAD would just be take the absolute value of f(k)/N - 1/n, then averaging these. Anyway the distribution is the easy part to calculate. The hard one is how to calculate unpredictability? I like the idea of length & space but as we've just seen I think it'd mostly be people trying to break the system by finding nonrandom patterns that could maximize the score. Which might be fun in and of itself but still defeats the original point whatever you decide I'm in, but I hesitate to start designing my algorithm before I know exactly how it's being graded. Also should n maybe be fixed? With three different n's, that's three different algorithms maybe, depending on whether the algorithm is scalable. Or maybe scalability is desired? ahh so many factors haha

just so we're ready by 11, whoever reads this first (dawh, Segul, DudleyDude, DarthNoob, whoever & whomever haha) pick one of the two remaining roles lol

'Length' can't possibly be longer than n without shortening 'space'.

haha yeah, well I figure I'll wait til the 48 hours (11 pm tonight) before bringing in DD and DN

oh I didn't realize everything was so structured, sorry. I just kinda started the game willy-nilly it seems. It's not really a mafia game and it won't detract I think so probably just ignore it in terms of what games are going on now

yep good job There hasn't been much progress so I'll go ahead and post the answers KlueMaster got it!

I live with people that celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah and also Kwanzaa. I also do new years eve but that's not really a holiday haha, more of an excuse to party

I'm in! There's a loophole in the scoring system though. If I just list the numbers 1 through n, I'll get the maximum score. My length/n factor will be 1.00, my distribution score will be n, and my space will also be n so I'll get n^2 which I think is the maximum score if I have read correctly