Model-Based Testing for Dungeons & Dragons

It feels like the laziest possible section separator and generally would be better with an extra space divider or something.

It’s so prevalent in AI writing.

Do I understand correctly that the Quint code is not needed 'at runtime', that it's there for model-based testing of the XState implementation?

It's probably way different than you expect (and will be different between DMs).

I played from the early 80s through early 90s. Mostly AD&D 1e but earlier on the red/blue boxes and later on 2e.

Recently I've taken to reading r/adnd for nostalgia reasons. One thing become abundantly clear real fast, no one I ever played with ever truly understood the rules. Even the "rules lawyers" among us. And I played with a large variety of people from different friend groups, to different game shops, and even some smaller cons.

We understood the key details for the parts we actually used, but we weren't intentionally avoiding the rest, we just didn't understand that they existed. There's just so much minutia in those rule books.

This also makes me chuckle when I see newer players come into r/adnd as part of the OSR movement. Because they *do* seem to assume that all of these rules were commonly applied. But my anecdata would say otherwise. I originally assumed that these newcomers to the old rules would be playing a game I found alien as they'd be bringing in newer sensibilities, but instead I suspect I'd find it alien as they're more likely to be sticklers for the full ruleset!

Shadowdark does not only have much simpler (and fewer) rules, there's also a lot less world building. This encourages the DM and the players to create their own fantasies, rather than adhering to the races described in the (MASSIVE) DnD manual.

[1]: https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/pages/shadowdark

D&D is better as a video game. Try Baldur's gate. It has the side benefit of teaching you the rules if you ever want to jump in to a local game

D&D has a strong narrative aspect when you look at the published adventure modules. There are usually plenty of characters to interact with in some way or another and some quests can be solved entirely by following the breadcrumbs offered up through them. But the DM needs to role-play all of these characters and do a lot of improv to make this work. This isn't so easy.

Also, combat in D&D is a slog. Whereas turn taking outside combat is rather fast and loose, the game turns into this enormous ceremony once the words "roll initiative" are spoken. The effect is that combat can take up a lot of playtime relative to the non-combat role playing, while often also leading to less overall quest progress per time.

To some extent, this is weirdly a good thing: if you want strictly enforced rules, you may just want to play a videogame instead. D&D succeeds best as a social lubricant enabling a framework in which social gaming (roleplaying) can happen to be "fun". Rarely is strictly following rules "fun", especially socially with friends; the rules in D&D are meant to be guideposts and tools for enough structure that people that want structure find comfort and enough flexibility that "fun" isn't lost in the process.

Which is a long way to say that you probably aren't going to learn the right lessons from a well fuzzed computer spec of the rules, you probably are going to learn more lessons asking the people you play with what rules they find important, to explain things you feel you don't understand, and to suggest which chapters in which books to try to read to best improve your understanding for that group. At the end of the day, if the table seems too hard to play at you might also just be playing with the wrong group, especially if you aren't having fun.

This is also directly why I don’t like D&D. It is way too combat focused and video gamey. If your combat system is so complex that people find (or even feel that they need to find) “exploits” in it then your system probably sucks. So many class features are purely combat focused completely ignoring the actual roleplaying part of role playing games.

Also the “counter chaining” feels odd to me, is this something that actually happens? Like people waste spellslots counterspelling a counterspell?

I intended to do as a C library (which would then be available for other programs in C to call). I know many of the rules of Pokemon but not all of the cases, and then, knowing the data structures to make, etc. I also wanted to make the rules customizable (and to implement all generations, although perhaps only some of them will be implemented the first time and others later) and I have some ideas about that.

I would hope that some people can work on something together.

So yes, your peasant railgun spear would fire at the speed of light in reality. But the game simulation doesn't care. The last peasant in the line throws the spear for 1d8 damage.