[Gllug] "Open source has its own problems" - article in Computing

[Robert Newson]

David Damerell wrote:

...
>>A piece of trivia regarding Nethack: I pick my race and class, but leave 
>>gender to chance. The top 9 entries in my score file are female. So is 
>>being female an advantage?

I don't know abot nethack (never got into it), but when I used to play 
MUD/MIST at SX on the DEC-10, I discovered that female characters started 
with better stamina and dexterity, but less strength than males, which 
helped my style of game (at the beginning).  As the character progressed up 
the levels, each characteristic increased until it reached max, so after 
playing a while, there was no difference between male & female.

Next time you're bored and off on a nethack escapade, check out your stats 
at the beginning of the game and as the game progresses.  There may be a 
correlation between the initial character stats and your style of game: the 
female initial stats preferring your style (and hence the predominace of 
females in your high score table; or that may just be a bias in the random 
selection of the sex of the character - it picks female more often than 50% 
of the time; or perhaps the sequence from the random number generator 
doesn't give a good game if it gives a value that selects Male when chosing 
the sex - assuming it uses a pseduo-random (sequence) number generator, that 
is).

> If you polyself you are much more likely to end up as a female
> oviparous monster. Also Valkyries are always female and one of the
> easiest classes to play.

Interesting...a bias in polyself towards female?  What does polyself do?

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