Talk:3092: Baker's Units

Why did he go with only 9/13ths of a Baker's List? 172.69.65.8 23:48, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

This suggests that the "expected" length of a list is 12. ISaveXKCDpapers (talk) 07:24, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

A ruler for a "baker's foot" is, apparently, similar to a metal casting patternmaker's shrink rule, although in practice those top out at 2.5%, versus 13/12ths or 8.{3}%. JohnHawkinson (talk) 23:59, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

It appears to me like g marked by the g-clef is on the second space making the notes b and c which wound be 13 semitones apart. Two compensating errors or just a bit more cleverness for lagniappe?Lordpishky (talk) 01:07, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

There's also baker's percentages. All the ingredients are defined as a percentage of the weight of the flour. So if you have 1kg (1000gr) of flour and 600ml (gr) of water then the water is said to be 60% hydration.

"which are not Platonic solids and cannot be used as dice due to having multiple face types, rendering dice-based games unbalanced"

Being a platonic solid is sufficient, but not necessary, for a fair die. The simplest shape for a fair 13-sided die that I can think of off the top of my head is two 6-sided pyramids joined at the base, with one of them truncated for the 13th side. To make it fair, the lengths of the pyramids and the truncation would have to be fine-tuned, but that's certainly possible. Where's John von Neumann when you need him? --Coconut Galaxy (talk) 10:45, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

I'd imagined two 6SPs joined by a barrel (maybe a smooth ring, maybe a set of squares/triangles for either a primsatic or anti-prismatic hexagonal-faced centre-section, but all the way round counting for the same 'roll', either way.) Too short, the chances of landing on the 'edge' is greatly lowered, too long a mid-section, it'll be almost impossible to land anywhere but on it (imagine a pencil, sharpened at both ends).

Thus there's a point where a symmetrical (lengthwise, as well as by rotations) shape has just enough 'middle band' to have equal chances of landing with that as with any other single 'point ends' face (landed on; with it being prismatic, an obvious and readable 'face-up' also presenting itself).

But it'd be a tight specification, perhaps need emperical testing. The angle between adjacent 'pointy end' triangles with each other would be different from the angle between any of them and the 'barrel', so sharper or rounder edges between faces (not an issue with platonics, as the rolling-resistance is equal by all edge-/corner-intersections being exactly as equal as the faces are) could decrease or increase the probability of mid-roll tumbling. As could deliberately rolling along the prismatic axis to either try to stay on 'that face' or to make it more likely thst the random-walk of tumbles sends it off it (I'd have to run a few simulations; either bias, or both, might be easiest to manipulate by a bit of practiced handling).

I do rather envisage it being 'numbered' as having +1..+6 and -1 to -6 on the pyramidal ends (by tradition, every +n is on the opposite triangle of the opposite pyramid to its -n counterpart, but you can alternate +s and -s between adjacent pyramid faces), and 0 on the mid-section, so that it'll give symmetrical chance distribution across the good/bad range, which might make the "natural zero" midpoint a not quite so vital number to ensure is as strictly equally likely as all the others. Alternatively, 1..12 (similarly distributed to add up to 13 when taking sat-upon and face-up together) leaves either 13 (beyond-lucky) or 0 (the most critical of fails) on the ring which is deliberately mad less-likely to get.

For even better game-symmetry, supply two "D12±" dice, design your system on rolling them in pairs. Rolling either the 0 on the 0..12 or 13 on the 1..13 gives you the critical [failure|success] on top of the sum-of-the-dice result. Rolling both 0 and 13 invokes a "critical funny" result (or a "fortunate fail"/"pyrrhic success"), in whatever way suits the game style, current encounter or even the scenario/plot's ultimate challenge. (To contrast a Toons-type game from a Paranoia one, or a straight-up Dungeon-Dive where extreme peril/hilarity needs to be more tightly modulated by the GM.)

Of course, I'm generally working on the assumption that "12 (or 13) is good, 1 (or 0) is bad", but there's nothing to say the D13 rolls are for the players, and a D13 with a higher-than-normal chance of a 13 would be just the thing for a Horror-themed RPG, invoking the latest plot-stage of whatever cthuluesque escalation is lurking and awaiting the (un?)wary players. I've played all kinds of dice-led games (favourite variation, amongst them is "Babylon 5 dice" - roll two D6, one red, one green... lowest pips counts, dice-colour dictates if it's positive or negative (upon the baseline for the task attempted), equal dice is zero-offset except for double-6/double-1 which are critical success/failure ...all nicely symmetrical, as a modified version of a 2D6 distribution 'around' the result of 7), and a 'cursed dice' would not even be amongst the strangest treatments I've seen. 172.69.224.82 13:35, 22 May 2025 (UTC)