Some scholarly correspondence.

As I am an interesting person with a complex and fulfilling inner life, I decided some time ago to embark on a project to maintain a meticulous set of records relating to one small aspect of an imaginary game (in between all the basejumping, winetastings and high-powered business meetings, obviously).

Although the fruits of this endeavour are, at best, only beginning to ripen, it seemed that now would be the best time to share them with you fine ladies, gents and <gendertitle>s, as they are vaguely relevant to the grave business of Sacksmas.

Spoilered for neatness.

Data first, conclusions second.

                                                                Drawn 

Bohemian 93
Church 99
Constables 104
Criminals 113
Docks 107
Great Game 109
Hell 115
Revolution 103
Society 103
Tomb 116
Urchins 122
TOTAL 1184
Other 9472
TOTAL 10656

% deviation from expected frequency (107.6)
Bohemian -13.60
Church -8.02
Constables -3.38
Criminals +4.98
Docks -0.59
Great Game +1.27
Hell +6.84
Revolution -4.31
Society -4.31
Tomb +7.77
Urchins +13.34

All of these cards were drawn in The Flit. My connections for these factions are in the 100-150 range, except Docks which is always <20 and Constables at <50 (and Criminals which was at ~150, now renown 19). Probably not relevant, but I have the connections items for all these factions as well.

So, the first and last factions make the plainest case that there does seem to be a relationship between the location you draw and the frequency of faction cards. Not a huge difference, but it’s there; despite some spikes in the numbers Bohemians has always been at least ~10% less common and Urchins ~10% moreso than if the faction cards had equal frequency.
Anecdotally, it was drawing so many Urchins cards in The Flit while grinding for Spending Favours that prompted me to start this (along with a little bit of research to see whether the received wisdom that location doesn’t matter was based on any hard numbers).
It’s somewhat harder to tell for the other factions, but it could be the case that there are other gradations of frequency - e.g. Tomb, Hell, and Criminals have generally been slightly more frequent than expected, while Church, Society and Constables have generally been slightly less - I’m not really making any calls on this, though, as the numbers are close enough to the expected frequency for this to be statistical static.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you want to draw more Urchins cards, try The Flit.
If you want to take issue with my methods and/or question my sanity, have at it.
If you think there may just be something to this (or have noticed the glaring hole in my thesis, in that I have no control group in another location), well, there are seven empty columns in my spreadsheet (how appropriate!) for the other starting and mid-tier stat locations. Feel free to share in the joyous burden of curiousity and the gnawing madness that comes with staring at the same spreadsheet for months on end (did that number just move?). Likely suspects would be Wolfstack (more Docks) or Veilgarden (more Bohemian, maybe less Urchins?) and possibly The Palace for more Society.

I share this knowledge with you goodfolk in its embarassingly embryonic state as I’m a little burnt out on numbers and, due to real-life stuff, may not have the time to post anything coherent before Sacksmas begins in earnest. Hopefully, it will serve to bring you all just a little bit of extra Sacksmas melancholia.

TL;DR If you’re trying to draw Urchins cards, do it in the Flit (probably).
edited by PStrange on 11/29/2015
edited by PStrange on 11/29/2015

Did you draw all the cards in the flit or in random places? Because it doesnt seem very productive to draw in random places to prove the non-uniformity of cards &quotdensity&quot

Says right after the data that all cards were drawn in the Flit. I was not aware that it was taken for granted that there is no variance, I had expected the latter, myself. If some stories are native to some areas, it would seem to follow that some quasi-random draws are also.

– Mal

The deviation doesn’t seem large enough, given the sample size, to draw a reasonable conclusion yet.
But keep at it. I’m fascinated to know how these will play out over a longer period of time.

[quote=malthaussen]Says right after the data that all cards were drawn in the Flit. I was not aware that it was taken for granted that there is no variance, I had expected the latter, myself. If some stories are native to some areas, it would seem to follow that some quasi-random draws are also.

– Mal[/quote]
Well, some cards are native to some areas. Salt Weasels only appear in Ladybones for example; many locations have standard or rare frequency cards. The thing is that their frequency doesn’t change between areas: 100% in one, 0% in the others.