LyranaRae: forum

I just entered Round 2. I wanted to give a different perspective on the numbers being presented by both Vreebn and Krazlam.

I think both can be partially correct—it mostly depends on what value you’re assigning to Xanax when you run the math.

A basic PI costs $475m if you’re buying it at the reduced price we’re discussing here (and yes, 475m for a PI is a thing. If you are seeing a PI for 500m, go check your education and complete LAW2910: Law of Property.)

Vreebn estimates that as roughly 590 Xanax.

$475m / 590 = roughly $805k per Xanax.

Honestly? That’s a feasible Xanax price. I’ve sold Xanax around there, and Vreebn previously stated that he sells it for around $810k.

At ~$805k/Xanax, the advertised structure works out almost exactly as stated: 590 Xanax toward the PI, 100 Xanax toward the four secondary prizes, and roughly 10 Xanax retained.

That’s a house margin of about 1.43%.

At $810k/Xanax, the rounding changes things slightly:

590 × $810k = $477.9m

If the PI actually costs $475m, that’s an additional $2.9m retained.

This is where Krazlam’s 35.8% number comes from. The originally stated 10-Xanax profit would be worth $8.1m, and $2.9m is about 35.8% of $8.1m.

So yes—the operator’s PROFIT increases by about 35.8%.

But that does not mean the lottery has a 35.8% house margin.

It means the house margin goes from roughly 1.43% to roughly 1.94%.

Now, Xanax prices fluctuate.

At Krazlam’s quoted MV of $847,573/Xanax, his 5.65% calculation is correct.

But if the Xanax are actually being sold around $830k, the margin is closer to 3.96%. At $840k, it’s about 4.93%.

So realistically, depending on the price at which the Xanax are converted to cash, we’re talking about something roughly in the 2–6% range—not 35%.

Personally, there’s nothing in that math that screams “scam” to me. It’s a lottery. Obviously it’s negative EV; otherwise there wouldn’t be a reason to run it.

For an IRL comparison, in the US, California has a lotto called the Powerball; it budgets/allocates roughly 50% of ticket sales to prizes.

In other words, from the player’s perspective, about $1 of every $2 spent is returned through the prize pool.

Using the same $2 example to compare to Vreebn’s. Lotto, that’s roughly:

Powerball: ~$1.00 of $2 returned as prize value.

This lottery: ~$1.92 of $2 returned as prize value.

At a ~$830k Xanax valuation, this lottery returns about 96% of its entry value through prizes.

Obviously Torn money and real money aren’t directly comparable, and neither lottery is an investment.

But, I mean, the Math does math and nothing automatically jumps out as immediately shady. It can sound shady depending on what numbers you choose to use and how you’re doing your napkin math…

Even if I don’t win, a roughly 4% house edge feels perfectly reasonable to me.

If you still don’t agree,  cool, don’t play. I just wanted to reframe the numbers for anyone who saw all the math flying around and didn't know what to trust.  

We do, and it reaches across multiple factions. We have an entry fee that builds the pot, some people donate items towards the prize and then between 1-4 people win various amounts. Paid entries that didn’t win rollover. 

We do free giveaways too, but we really like the format of the raffles we have and because they have to be run on discord to be just our community of factions, they’d get hit by the ban. 

We do, and it reaches across multiple factions. We have an entry fee that builds the pot, some people donate items towards the prize and then between 1-4 people win various amounts. Paid entries that didn’t win rollover. 

We do free giveaways too, but we really like the format of the raffles we have and because they have to be run on discord to be just our community of factions, they’d get hit by the ban. 

Hey bogie— you mentioned Torn has some new pages and areas planned while you’re looking at the upcoming EU rules in a different forum post that touched on the Digital Fainess Act. I know it’s probably too early for specifics, but I wanted to ask: are any of those plans aimed at giving little communities within Torn a place to do things together on Torn that ultimately would be caught up in this ban?

The example I keep coming back to is raffles within a faction family. We’ve got multiple factions that play together, and Discord lets us run semi-private events for everyone in that group. A faction forum only reaches one faction, and a public forum isn’t really the same thing. I get why our current Discord setup would be caught by the proposed rule—it just sucks to lose that part of our community.

So is there any chance one of those new areas could give allied factions a shared space to run things like paid raffles on Torn, assuming the eventual rules allow it? I know you can’t promise anything right now. I’m just wondering if this is a gap staff are thinking about.

Thanks for this— I went back and read your updates again, and I think I get what they’re trying to do now bringing this to us for our perspectives. 

I love this game. And at the end of the day, staff have to make sure Torn can keep operating under whatever laws end up applying to them IRL. I know the Digital Fairness Act isn’t finalized yet, but looking at it from that angle, I’d support the ban. It still sucks that we’d lose something fun we’ve built within our faction family, though.

Maybe this is a “much later, once the dust settles” conversation, but I do wonder if staff could eventually give faction families/alliances some kind of shared, semi-private space on Torn. If we can run paid raffles in a faction forum, could there be a way for multiple factions to run them together on Torn too, as a sub-community—assuming the final rules allow it?

Yeah, see, that’s where I’d lean towards a no.

If a faction family has, say, 5 or 10 factions that play together and support each other, there isn’t really a shared private faction forum for all of those people, is there? At least not one I know of… that’s sort of the whole reason Discord has become such a big part of gamplay and so many factions have discord servers.

The way we do these now is pretty straightforward: it gets posted on Discord so everyone in the family sees it, people send their entry money to one person in Torn, and the entries get logged. Then we pick a winner (by pick, I mean an RNG, not someone just selecting— and I think that’s the part being targeted if I’m reading things correctly), announce it, send the prize, and post the logs so everyone can see how it went. The person running it keeps none of the pot.

If that gets caught by the ban because the entry list/announcement is on Discord, I don’t think I could support it as written. We’d basically have to put a family event on a public Torn forum and potentially open it up to people outside our group, which kind of defeats the point.

So I guess my question is: if the money is sent through Torn, but the raffle is organized and logged on Discord, is that allowed? Or does the actual entry list, announcements, the entire event, have to live in a Torn forum post?

Okay, I tried to skim through the thread, but I might’ve missed this being answered somewhere.

How would this affect raffles run in a faction or alliance Discord? I’m part of SYN, and we do things across our faction family. Say someone runs a raffle where entries are $10k in Torn cash, the winner gets the entire pot, and the person running it keeps none of it. As written, I think that would be banned because it exists in Discord? Am I reading that right?

And would free giveaways or competitions with prizes be treated differently?

I get why people want to crack down on third-party casinos, especially ones where nobody can see what’s happening behind the scenes. But I’ve also had a lot of fun with little community events like this. If those would get caught in the ban too, I’d probably vote no.

Could the rule be aimed more specifically at the opaque casino sites, like how scripts are required to have public documentation to meet Torn’s requirements? Or has staff already clarified this and I’m just blind? 😅

Also, as just… an adult playing this game? I’ve taken part in these casinos and have recently defended the math of one of them regarding profit/payout in the forums. I think as the game evolves, these are absolution absolutely conversations worth having…. 
But if the players are inventing, necessity is the mother of invention. Clearly, there’s some niche in the Torn gameplay that is calling for services like these. To me, that makes this a more complex question than “ban/no ban”… it’s clear that people are willing to take these risks as part of their gameplay. Maybe this needs to come alongside a wider conversation about fresh gameplay, which I know is hard with a small team and a huge player base. I hesitate to say “Forum only makes these issues go away”— scammers gonna scam. They can be just as opaque and cause just as many issues on the forums as off them.

Edit: Fixed a sentence I accidentally deleted. (Italicized), and an autocorrect error (strike through)

I just entered Round 2. I wanted to give a different perspective on the numbers being presented by both Vreebn and Krazlam.

I think both can be partially correct—it mostly depends on what value you’re assigning to Xanax when you run the math.

A basic PI costs $475m if you’re buying it at the reduced price we’re discussing here (and yes, 475m for a PI is a thing. If you are seeing a PI for 500m, go check your education and complete LAW2910: Law of Property.)

Vreebn estimates that as roughly 590 Xanax.

$475m / 590 = roughly $805k per Xanax.

Honestly? That’s a feasible Xanax price. I’ve sold Xanax around there, and Vreebn previously stated that he sells it for around $810k.

At ~$805k/Xanax, the advertised structure works out almost exactly as stated: 590 Xanax toward the PI, 100 Xanax toward the four secondary prizes, and roughly 10 Xanax retained.

That’s a house margin of about 1.43%.

At $810k/Xanax, the rounding changes things slightly:

590 × $810k = $477.9m

If the PI actually costs $475m, that’s an additional $2.9m retained.

This is where Krazlam’s 35.8% number comes from. The originally stated 10-Xanax profit would be worth $8.1m, and $2.9m is about 35.8% of $8.1m.

So yes—the operator’s PROFIT increases by about 35.8%.

But that does not mean the lottery has a 35.8% house margin.

It means the house margin goes from roughly 1.43% to roughly 1.94%.

Now, Xanax prices fluctuate.

At Krazlam’s quoted MV of $847,573/Xanax, his 5.65% calculation is correct.

But if the Xanax are actually being sold around $830k, the margin is closer to 3.96%. At $840k, it’s about 4.93%.

So realistically, depending on the price at which the Xanax are converted to cash, we’re talking about something roughly in the 2–6% range—not 35%.

Personally, there’s nothing in that math that screams “scam” to me. It’s a lottery. Obviously it’s negative EV; otherwise there wouldn’t be a reason to run it.

For an IRL comparison, in the US, California has a lotto called the Powerball; it budgets/allocates roughly 50% of ticket sales to prizes.

In other words, from the player’s perspective, about $1 of every $2 spent is returned through the prize pool.

Using the same $2 example to compare to Vreebn’s. Lotto, that’s roughly:

Powerball: ~$1.00 of $2 returned as prize value.

This lottery: ~$1.92 of $2 returned as prize value.

At a ~$830k Xanax valuation, this lottery returns about 96% of its entry value through prizes.

Obviously Torn money and real money aren’t directly comparable, and neither lottery is an investment.

But, I mean, the Math does math and nothing automatically jumps out as immediately shady. It can sound shady depending on what numbers you choose to use and how you’re doing your napkin math…

Even if I don’t win, a roughly 4% house edge feels perfectly reasonable to me.

If you still don’t agree,  cool, don’t play. I just wanted to reframe the numbers for anyone who saw all the math flying around and didn't know what to trust.  

Okay, I think this is maybe why they look weird in dark mode, like they have that slight outline? I don't play in light mode, but the light mode buttons look clean and I do really like them.... 

Not enough to you know, play in light mode, but I'm cool with chalking the buttons up to "designed for light mode, looks just a little off in dark mode". 

I'm not much of a poker player, but I'd love to learn. Seeing things like this is so cool. For reference, this combinatinon of events is rarer than getting 27 heads in a row while playing heads or tails! (Which does not sound impressive at first but those odds are 1 in 134M)

Have played a couple of times now. I'm very happy with it! 

Only gave one xanax to try it out, now I'm up a xanax. 

I really thought it was gonna be a gimmick but this is super clean, very transparent. I love all of this. 

ALL HAIL THE MAGIC GLOW CL-- 

sorry wrong fandom 

ALL HAIL THE MAGIC CONCH

Wanted to try here before I make my own post: 

On the idea of "staging" OCs, I want to ask if someone can clarify how OC completion works when staging:

Let's say a crime has three slots. 

Player 1 and Player 2 take slots A and B. They complete their time and the OC pauses. 

Player 3 now takes slot C. Their timer starts. 

Can either player 1, or player 2, or both, leave and be replaced by new members? Like could you have members that rotate through "prepping" crimes?

I requested an animated profile signature, and DJ did not disappoint! Paid upfront and DJ was true to his word, a trustworthy artist. While he does include tweaks after the first draft, I fell in love with mine the first time around! 10/10 would commission again. 

This one worked for me!

Quick, good prices, and mug free. Would trade again!