posted
Last Saturday at work, while bored, a co-worker and I started wondering who would win in a hypothetical knife fight between various co-workers. It was a slow day, and as more co-workers gravitated over to us, they joined in as well. I was a little disturbed, but everyone seemed to accept very readily the premise of the thought experiment.
So naturally I've developed a March Madness style bracket. Luckily my work is almost dead even between men and women, so I created two conferences on each side, split the restaurant between cooks and servers, and used a randomizer to place them in the bracket.
The problem now is deciding who wins each round. I suppose we could talk each round out, but that ruins the fun of there ever being an upset victory or any real surprise. So I was wondering, is there a free online simulator I can use to plug in stats for the various entrants and click a button to have it crunch the numbers and figure out who wins?
I was thinking of the following stats, based on a very easy scale from 1-10:
Agility Energy Reach Rage Ferocity
I'm not sure yet how I'd weight them, but I feel like this way would be more fun. I just think the math would be too annoying to do by hand on each individual matchup, but I'm willing to rank them all and enter values.
posted
sans any sort of training specific to, uh, ~honorable blade combat~ or whatever, the things that predispose someone to be a superior knife combatant are typical and boring. Young men with lots of observable upper body strength will have a clear and decisive advantage. Most people who got even moderately far in an even half-decent martial arts program will have a clear and decisive advantage. Anybody with any decent quantity of combat readiness training (military, police, etc) will have an even more clear and greatly more decisive advantage.
a better bet is to turn it into a purposefully dialed-up punk-core anime action trading card game sort of thing. Carol from Accounts Receivable becomes Carol "The Viper" with 5 body, 9 reflexes, 3 nerves, two special moves learned on the mean streets of Compton, and is especially lethal if you can tap her pre-equipped with a Butterfly Knife (+2/+3) or higher. Competing for office territory squares is a must.
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posted
We all universally agreed that Jorge the line cook would have won before because he was a narcotics swat team officer in Mexico before coming here. But he was fired recently, so the race is wide open.
I was thinking of just randomizing everyone's stats and making it totally random, but then you get into a situation where little Samantha from the host stand could take out 6'3 Derek from the serving staff. So at least some of the stats need to be subjective.
I just need a place where I can feed in the stats and have it crunch the numbers to spit out the winner.
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posted
In a knife fight, you will get cut. That brings another possible advantage into play, FAT. Gladiators used to fatten up to better withstand getting slashed. So a fat guy that can still move well could be a strong contender.
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posted
i'd say just come up with stats which aren't tied into the otherwise boring realm of the physical biases. make it purposefully a little bit ridiculous. come up with attributes like MOXIE and ATTITUDE and EDGE and HUMANITARIAN CRITICAL RATIONALISM
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: i'd say just come up with stats which aren't tied into the otherwise boring realm of the physical biases. make it purposefully a little bit ridiculous. come up with attributes like MOXIE and ATTITUDE and EDGE and HUMANITARIAN CRITICAL RATIONALISM
then just roll dice
I like the idea of fun stats. That's a good way to have fun while reducing the possibility that anyone takes offense.
Still need a way to ur the numbers though. I'd like to avoid 300 dice tosses.
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posted
PLAYER cards have five stats, ranging from 1 to 5
MEAT - hale & hardiness, general overall strength and constitution FINESSE - coordination, dexterity, and quick thinking MOXIE - attitude, determination, willpower, and drive NERVES - trained or natural capacity to keep one's head in a fight LUCK - some people just have it, others get a knife to the eye
PLAYERS have one or two special attacks which allow them to substitute a weapon's given ATTACK ATTRIBUTE or TARGET, with modifiers
WEAPON cards provide players with an attack that uses a player stat as an ATTACK ATTRIBUTE, and can attack one or more of the enemy's stat as a chosen attack TARGET.
Weapons additionally provide inherent bonuses to player attributes.
A more complicated and awesomer game would give each player three tokens and a system where MEAT EXHAUSTION removes a token and NERVES EXHAUSTION causes them to lose a turn and reset those stats respectively. But a simpler game would simply pair up weapons with players and do a simple system of Best Roll Wins with a d6. Most weapons target MEAT but all players have the choice to substitute FINESSE as defender at their discretion, per attack. LUCK can negate damage or permit re-rolls.
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When subtlety won't cut it, this heavy blade will. "Me father say, what is man but fragile thing of spun glass in this universe. Me not understand. Me pretty sure am made of meat." - Gorgothor, at the Compton turf war of '93
Can attack from MEAT +3 Can target MEAT for damage equal to your MEAT If target opts to defend with FINESSE, roll a d6. On a 5 or 6, your attack targets MEAT anyway.
If cleaver is forced to target FINESSE, your attack is at -6.
Cleaver can never not attack from MEAT. In any situation in which you would otherwise be forced to attack from a stat which is not MEAT, attack from MEAT anyway.
This weapon is great for use against enemy players with low FINESSE and can cut through tanky opponents, but high FINESSE players will be at low risk. The weapon is additionally of marginal use for non-MEATy players.
BUTTERFLY KNIFE
The preferred style of cholo studs, and vice presidents. "Hang on, when I open this right, it's totally badass. Hang on, .. whoops" - Sonny Pacheco of the Varrio Nuevo Estrada
Can attack from FINESSE +0 Can attack from MOXIE +2 Can target MEAT or MOXIE Does damage equal to the higher of your FINESSE or MOXIE stats.
For the first attack with BUTTERFLY KNIFE, if your unmodified attack roll is less than 6 minus your LUCK stat, you screwed up your dramatic unsheathing and your MOXIE stat is halved (round down) for the rest of the match
A fairly versatile weapon that is useful to round out a squad's arsenal. Comes with some flavorful downsides, especially if an enemy can attack your MOXIE.
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