9/26: Staislav Petrov Day

Yoinked from mylescorcoran 

"It's September 26th again and I'm remembering Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet Air Force lieutenant colonel who decided a missile attack registered by Soviet satellites on this day in 1983 was a false alarm and at risk to his career chose not to start a nuclear war.

Thank you Colonel Petrov."

Indeed. In my own minor tribute I named a ship in my Star Trek campaign after him.

Statistics Help

Can anyone give me a Plug-Into-Excel level formula for determining the overall percent chance of success of a test where the goal is to get 8 successes before 4 failures (or, put another way, to get 8 successes out of 11 rolls)?

 

For example: a 60% chance must occur 8 times in 11 rolls. What is the % chance this will happen? 

 

( Why, you may ask?  )

Remembering Nigel Findley

Nigel Findley, for those who don't recognize the name, wrote for role playing games in the 80's and 90's, and wrote a few game time in novels as well. While I didn't read a lot of his work, what I did read I liked. To the loss of our hobby he died 13 years ago of a heart attack at the age of 35. (His wikipedia page is here.) My first encounter with his work was in 1987 and the short adventure Nightshade in Dragon #7.

The low level PCs are approached by a nobleman, Olias Sandhillow, who wants to employ them to visit a local wizard, Nightshade, and fetch back a package. Just a simple pick up, he'd go himself but he's a busy man, pays a moderate amount. Of course it's not that easy - Nightshade is totally off his rocker, changing his attitude towards the PCs every few minutes, and they have to keep him calm and stable long enough to get the potion from him (and had better not start a fight!) On their way back they're jumped by thugs hired by Olias' enemies who want to stop the package from getting through. What is the package? A potion of amnesia, to be used on the nobleman's current paramour, as the foolish girl thinks that he's actually going to marry her - and worse, she has an easily angered family. Nightshade himself is round the twist because of his exposure to the obliviax needed to make the amnesia potion. The PCs are out of the plot once they deliver the potion, and probably happy to be so.

I loved this! It had just the right combination of magic, mystery and decadence, of the players dipping into a river of other people's stories and perhaps never seeing them again. There are a million stories in the naked city, after all. I cut the adventure out of the magazine and filed it away.

Players in my Emirikol game might recognize this plot, Melas just helped his drinking buddy Olivar Sandoval by getting a package from Melas' somewhat batty wizard acquaintance Aslan Nightshade. One thing led to another and eventually Melas and Hiram were outracing assassins through Scornbul quarter to facilitate the elopement of Olivar and the daughter of one of Melas' political enemies. Cambias told me later that session was one of the best he's had in years.

It took me over 20 years but I finally got to use Mr. Findely's work. So here's to you Nigel Findely. Thanks for the adventure. (and a second hat tip to Mr Findely because Scornbul quarter is named Scornbul as that city in Findley's adventure "The Serpent's Tooth" from Dungeon issue 19, which I had planned to use but have yet to work in. Give me time....)