> And you can't infer this knowledge just from playing. You need to look it up from some out-of-band source.
I disagree with this in principle. Given enough time, you can collect enough statistics to infer pretty much anything about the game. I've participated in efforts to reverse-engineer web-only games where neither source nor binary were available -- the server does all the compute and the client only receives information to show the user.
But in practice: how long will it take to first inscribe elbereth, and then notice its effect? Yeah, probably not happening in a few of my lifetimes.
I disagree with this in principle. Given enough time, you can collect enough statistics to infer pretty much anything about the game. I've participated in efforts to reverse-engineer web-only games where neither source nor binary were available -- the server does all the compute and the client only receives information to show the user.
But in practice: how long will it take to first inscribe elbereth, and then notice its effect? Yeah, probably not happening in a few of my lifetimes.