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IQubic
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icon Describing DROD with XKCD's Simple Writer (0)  
I have just stumbled upon a nifty little tool: XKCD's Simple Writer. It is a tool that forces you to write while only using the ten thousand most common words in the English language. Here is the link: http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/

Here is my description of DROD (using XKCD's Simple Writer):
There is this game that I like. You play as a guy wearing a yellow shirt. This is a game that make you use your brain. It forces you to think of how to do each room. This game has things that want to kill you in rooms. When a room is done there are no more things that want to kill you in that room. You have a big and pointy metal killing thing. You use it to kill the things that want to kill you before they kill you.

You play the game in turns. In each turn you do one of three things: move, turn, or wait. After you do your turn, the things that want to kill you move.

Some of the things that want to kill you are black things. There is also a silver thing that creates more black things. These things can be killing with your pointy killing thing. The black things want to move closer to you. The silver things move away from you so they can make more black things.

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12-02-2015 at 12:58 AM
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DimWiddy
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icon Re: Describing DROD with XKCD's Simple Writer (+1)  
A simple exposé on doors.

There are green doors that only open or close when you kill all the bad things in the room. Sometimes you have to touch a green circle in order to make it go down too. Blue doors close or open when you kill all the bad things in all the rooms. Yellow doors go close or open when you hit a yellow circle with your metal pointy killing thing or when you step on a shape on the ground. Black doors close or open when you kill all the blue or red or green bad sh*t-with-eyes. Red doors open or close when you get rid of all the falling things that aren't cold.

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12-02-2015 at 04:47 AM
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Insoluble
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Heh. I'm loving how this "simple" writer pretty much forces you to write overly confusing descriptions of things. This is an interesting little tool nonetheless. One last thing, the black door description is slightly off. As written it sounds as though you only need to kill tar-stuff mothers to drop black doors. I don't think I could come up with a better description of tar-stuff than yours though.

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12-02-2015 at 05:34 AM
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Tamsk
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IQubic wrote:
I have just stumbled upon a nifty little tool: XKCD's Simple Writer. It is a tool that forces you to write while only using the ten thousand most common words in the English language. Here is the link: http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/
Point of order: thousand most common (or "ten hundred" in Simple). Ten thousand would get you a large fraction of books ever written.

Even with a thousand, you can get some pretty coherent plot explanation in:

"The huge place below the surface is controlled by two groups of people: one wants to kill all the people living on the surface because it's too hard to keep up with what they're doing, the other group wants to keep them safe but tell them what to do."

(As for tarstuff, I suggest "stick-together-stuff".)


12-02-2015 at 11:40 AM
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DimWiddy
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Tamsk wrote:
(As for tarstuff, I suggest "stick-together-stuff".)
Probably a better explanation, yes... I just tried to come up with synonyms for tar, mud, or gel, none of which were acceptable. Apologies! :P

Anyways. A small little paragraph on game structure:

After each group of rooms is done, you go down or up some stairs to go to another group of rooms. Once you have beaten every group of rooms, you win the game! However, even then, there are some rooms that you don't have to beat. If you get those done, you will often be given a whole new group of rooms that are very hard. Please do not throw your computer in a fire.

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12-02-2015 at 03:05 PM
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Insoluble
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Always the contrarian, I have attempted to write a brief description of DROD using NO simple words. Note that this precludes pronouns, conjunctions, the verb "to be", and most prepositions. So the result is not the most elegant. But I think it works.

Insoluble recommends DROD: extraordinary puzzle experience.

DROD exemplifies puzzle experiences. Protagonist Beethro traverses various chambers destroying monsters. Monsters include roaches, goblins, etc. Monsters traverse chambers utilizing differing rules/mechanics, attempting Beethro's demise. Beethro/monsters alternate movement. Destroying monsters throughout various chambers unlocks subsequent chamber collections. Puzzles progressively acquire devilish difficulty.

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[Last edited by Insoluble at 12-02-2015 04:56 PM]
12-02-2015 at 04:56 PM
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Fix-It Fixen
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Here's my attempt:

The game is very much a great one. You have to not die while doing hard rooms that make your brain hurt. You have a very big cutting thing that you kill bad guys with and there are doors of different colors that you open by different means. The people who play this game are very into the game and share their own rooms with each other across the world.

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12-02-2015 at 06:13 PM
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averagemoe
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Being possibly the biggest prude on the forum, I find it disturbing that this tool allows use of the "S" word.

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12-26-2015 at 07:53 AM
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Insoluble
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averagemoe wrote:
Being possibly the biggest prude on the forum, I find it disturbing that this tool allows use of the "S" word.

Hmm, that's funny. For me it showed as disallowed when I tried typing "Stalwart".


I'm just kidding of course. I actually agree with you though. I was a bit surprised by that too.

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12-26-2015 at 02:34 PM
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slimm tom
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Well I guess you could call it censorship if a word actually is in the ten thousand most common words in the English language and would be ignored in the tool. Would you then include the 10,001st word instead? Who decides if a word is included or not?
12-26-2015 at 09:19 PM
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mrimer
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One thousand most common words.

Wow. Are these stats based on Google search?

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[Last edited by mrimer at 12-27-2015 10:47 PM]
12-27-2015 at 10:47 PM
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Tuttle
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I don't think Randall's ever publicly explained the details. Closest I've seen is in http://blog.xkcd.com/2015/09/22/a-thing-explainer-word-checker/ :
A note on the words: Some words are used more often in certain kinds of writing and talking than in others, which means different ways of counting words will give different answers for which ones we use the most. The set of ten hundred words in Thing Explainer comes from putting together many ways of counting how much people use a word to come up with a single set of ten hundred words that should sound familiar and simple to lots of people.
12-28-2015 at 12:34 AM
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Rheb
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'Death-like' Rooms of Death is a game where you play as a fighter moving below ground, fighting mean animals. It is a thinking game, where you play one turn at a time. When you make a move all mean animals make one move as well.

You only need to fight the mean animals in one room at a time. You make moves until you have killed all mean animals in the room, then the room is cleared. The game is made up of lots of these rooms.

It is a perfect information game, where every state can be understood before you make a move.

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12-31-2015 at 02:40 PM
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Maurog
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The game takes place on rooms with a 38×32 piece floor. Most bad animals and things take up a single floor piece, though some bad animals (such as long animals without legs) take up several floor pieces all close to one another. Each room is a problem on its own, and to beat it the player must kill all the bad animals in the room and leave it. The player controls the moves of Beethro Budkin, a guy whose job is to go under the ground and kill animals with his "Really Big Sharp Metal Stick". In the made-up world where the game takes place (the Eighth), his job as an animal killing guy is to clear areas under the ground of bad animals that don't belong there.

Since the game takes place in turns, bad things will only move once a turn. Each different bad animal has its own way of moving, and when it moves it checks in which direction the player is and how far. This means Death-Like Rooms of Death needs the player to be good in managing thinking problems and it is not about moving fast. Each turn, the player can wait, move Beethro into any of the eight closest floor pieces to the one he is in (if something is not blocking it), or move his sharp metal stick around him one step (where a full circle is eight steps around). Some rooms simply need finding which moves will allow Beethro to beat all bad animals without being killed; other rooms need thinking about harder problems, thanks to other things in the game, such as balls that make doors open and close, floor pieces that fall after being stepped on, and so on.

Ahahaha, maybe there could be a Simple English wiki entry for DROD, but I don't think there's a target audience.
Also, why is "square" a non-simple word? Don't everyone learn basic shapes in like kindergarten?

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01-01-2016 at 04:54 AM
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Tuttle
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Maurog wrote: Also, why is "square" a non-simple word? Don't everyone learn basic shapes in like kindergarten?
Yeah, but you stop talking about them as soon as you've finished high school maths. :) 'Square' would be in common use as place names in some areas and probably in the construction industry, but I can't think of the last time I would've used the word in regular conversation.
01-01-2016 at 06:00 AM
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