Murphy's Law

There's loads of lists on the net, but they all reiterate the same old examples. Here are some new ones.

Urwin's First Law Of Meetings

The amount of time taken by any meeting is proportional to the square of the number of people attending.

Urwin's Second Law Of Meetings

The number of decisions made by any meeting is inversely proportional to the square of the number of people attending.

Forum Incompetency Theorem

When a question is asked on a public forum, the supplied answers will split as follows

  • 10% will report having the same problem but offer no help.
  • 10% will report having an entirely different problem.
  • 20% will answer a different question.
  • 15% will answer incorrectly.
  • 5% will correct the questioner's spelling, grammar or etiquette.
  • 10% will respond to another answer's off-topic comments.
  • 15% will give information that helps.
  • 10% will give a correct answer that is incomplete or incomprehensible.
  • 5% will provide a full and correct answer.

These answers will be posted in the most unhelpful order; a thread length of at least 20 replies is required before a full and correct answer is received.

Murphy's Rules

Steve Jackson Games published a booklet pointing out the weird rule failures and edge cases in roleplaying games. They missed one.

Bang, Bang, Bang; I'm dead

SJG pointed out that a player in Car Wars cannot commit suicide with a Magnum 44. They failed to notice that he can do so, but only if he is wearing body armour.

(A pedestrian has three hit-points, and if he only has one left then he's unconscious. A Magnum 44 does 2 points, so the first shot knocks you out and you can't fire again. However body armour adds three more hit-points, so after three shots, you're dead. Do you feel lucky, punk?)


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