PDA

View Full Version : D20 Variance in practice



Haruspex_Pariah
2021-09-11, 12:14 AM
After over a decade of lurking, reading D&D-related material, and playing D&D video games, I've finally joined an actual gaming group what plays D&D. And I will say there are a lot of things you just don't get from studying theoreticals.

Like how a good roll here and a bad roll there can swing the course of events in ways that can be really fun but also maybe a tad frustrating. A (admittedly low level) party member catching a crit on the first round and dropping immediately, as an example. On the flip side, a party member rolling a 20 on a Strength check and busting down a door so we can escape a danger zone. Certainly these are thrilling, memorable moments, but the results-oriented gamer in me feels a little...put off.

When theorycrafting it's fairly obvious that a +5 modifier is better than a +0 one. Probability favours the one with the higher modifier. That's just basic math. But in a situation where a small number of D20 rolls are made, it sometimes happens that the character with the +0 does better. Because that's how randomness works.

I suppose for gamers who mostly play video games, accepting true randomness is difficult. We take good rolls for granted and act like a bad roll is an offense against us, sometimes. Even though we knew going into it that we were playing a game with RNG-determined outcomes.

Just my thoughts on things. I am enjoying D&D so far, but I am surprised at how much I have to alter my mindset with regards to the gameplay side of it. Rolls in Warhammer 40k, as a comparison, have much lower variance.

Hytheter
2021-09-11, 01:36 AM
It's worth noting that the variance of the dice matters not in a vacuum; it's the relative size of the applicable modifiers that really matters. The impact of the d20 is very large when a good modifier is +5 and a bad one is +0, but much smaller when the good modifier is +10, +20, +30.

In D&D the modifiers scale over time so the impact of the d20 will lessen, though the specific edition you're playing will affect the extent of that.

Haruspex_Pariah
2021-09-11, 02:36 AM
It's worth noting that the variance of the dice matters not in a vacuum; it's the relative size of the applicable modifiers that really matters. The impact of the d20 is very large when a good modifier is +5 and a bad one is +0, but much smaller when the good modifier is +10, +20, +30.

In D&D the modifiers scale over time so the impact of the d20 will lessen, though the specific edition you're playing will affect the extent of that.

That makes sense. Admittedly I just hit level 5, in my first ever campaign, so I may not have a comprehensive overview of the game as a whole.

Playing D&D 5e, if that matters. Compared to my understanding of 3e, it does seem like the overall range of modifiers is a lot smaller in 5th. A lot of the flat numerical bonuses that the CO sorts hunted for in 3rd seem to be cut out in 5th. I see a lot of advantage and proficiencies, as well as non-numerical bonuses. Ability scores seem harder to boost as well. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.

Hytheter
2021-09-11, 02:44 AM
Yeah, the numbers are a lot flatter in 5e. You typically only add your proficiency (+2 to +6) and an ability modifier (up to +5) so your typical roll won't be any higher than +11, though there are a few other modifiers which can apply. Contrast with 3rd edition where your skills and attack bonus can go up every single level and a roll in something you're specialised in likely has tons of other numerical bonuses as well.

Crake
2021-09-12, 07:14 AM
3.5 dnd had a bell curve roll variant, where you roll 3d6 instead of 1d20. You have a max of 18 instead or 20, but also a minimum of 3 instead of 1, and an average roll of 10.5 which is actually the same average as a d20. The crit ranges were also sorted out differently, based on similar probabilities. A 16-18 matched a natural 20, 15-18 matched 19-20, 14-18 matched both 18-20 and 17-20 , and 13-18 matched the 15-20 range, though auto fails/successes still only happened on natural 3s/18s.

If you're looking for a lower variance roll system, might be worth trying something like that instead of a flat d20 roll.

Anonymouswizard
2021-09-12, 08:07 AM
2d6 and 3d6 are some of the note common basic rolls in the industry for a similar reason (the other really common one is d%). Having more rolls that produce average results rather than ever results tends to make smaller modifiers matter.

Although it's also not modifier size that matters as much as modifier variance and weighting. 3.X had PC offensive and defensive modifiers weighted heavily in favour of offence, which makes the d20 roll relatively meaningless at higher levels. 5e keeps the end have modifiers smaller but also reduces some starting game modifiers (although not the attack or defence ones) which makes the d20 matter a lot more.

Compare this to something like Vortex (used in the Doctor Who game and Rocket Age). Vortex uses 2d6, but also has relatively larger modifiers and now meaningful variance from the get go. Normal characters are rolling at maybe +3 or +4, specialists in their field at +8 or +9, which while a similar numerical difference to 5e is also much larger compared to the values you can roll (which are also weighted towards 7). Being good at something matters a lot more compares to lie level D&D (and about as much at end game).

warty goblin
2021-09-12, 10:43 AM
It's worth noting that the variance of the dice matters not in a vacuum; it's the relative size of the applicable modifiers that really matters. The impact of the d20 is very large when a good modifier is +5 and a bad one is +0, but much smaller when the good modifier is +10, +20, +30.

In D&D the modifiers scale over time so the impact of the d20 will lessen, though the specific edition you're playing will affect the extent of that.

It's not even really the modifiers, it's the difference between the DC and the modifier that matters. If X is the d20 roll, m is the modifier, and d the DC, then the math looks like

Pr(success) = Pr(X + m >= d) = Pr( X >= d - m) = 1 - Pr(X < d - m) = 1 - Pr(X <= d - m -1)

This particular equation holds for any game based on comparing a result to a modifier (i.e. not dice pool systems). What changes is the probability function Pr. If you think of modifying the success threshold t = d - m - 1, then you're simply stepping through the cumulative distribution function (CDF)* of a discrete distribution. All CDFS start at zero (here, guaranteed success, you cannot roll under the threshold) to 1 (here guaranteed failure, you always roll under the threshold), the only things that vary are how you move between those extremes. The d20 moves in 5% steps, so as long as the threshold is less than 20, each +1 to your threshold decreases your success probability by 5%. 2d6 is a bit more interesting, increasing the threshold from 2 to 3 moves you from a success probability of 35/36 to 33/36, while a threshold of 6 has a success probability of 21/36, and 7 has 15/36, i.e. that one point increase in DC/1 point decrease in skill costs you a whole 1/6 probability of succeeding in the center, while the 2 - 3 change only costs you 1/18. The effective change when near the center of the distribution is 3 times that at the edge, which is a very different behavior indeed from the d20.

In character terms if Alice needs to roll a 7+ to stab the cultist under 2d6, she'll succeed 15/36 = 5/12, or just under half the time, while if Bob needs a 6+, he will enjoy the benefits of cultist perforation 7/12 of the time. If the cultist chugs a potion of armor so Alice only succeeds on a roll of 12, and Bob on a roll of 11+, Alice will hit 1/36 of the time, and Bob will hit 3/36 of the time. This is what people mean when they say that more skilled characters are more consistent under 2d6 than 1d20. The upside is that, compared to d20, increased skill means more, i.e. Bob's 1 point advantage over Alice is much more substantial under 2d6 than 1d20. The downside is that increasing the difficulty slightly can massively impact the probability of character success; in particularly you're much less likely to do hard/unlikely things in general.

3d6 behaves very similarly to 2d6, but with more probability near the middle of the curve, and I can't run the probabilities in my head anymore.

*If you want to be completely technical, 1 - Pr(X < x) is the survival function not the CDF. If you are familiar enough with this stuff to care, you're also familiar enough to not care.

Easy e
2021-09-13, 02:58 PM
Yeah, d20's are swingy as feth. You have a 5% chance of getting any particular number on any given roll.
Even a +% is only changing your odds by 25%, BUT it gives you a 100% of getting 6+.

It can make D&D kind of annoying as character builds that are "optimized" at lower levels to do certain things can still blow it at those things. That is why Advantage and Disadvantage are so critical to 5E.

Games with dice pools really reduce this issue and allow you to focus on success more than rolling.

Anonymouswizard
2021-09-13, 03:45 PM
Games with dice pools really reduce this issue and allow you to focus on success more than rolling.

Honestly, past a certain point mitigating the chance of failure doesn't appeal to me.

Personally I've grown to like percentiles, while they're even more swingy than d20s most people seem to be able to grasp how the probability works.

Plus they have a really cool feature compared to most non dice pool in that doubles appear every 11 steps, make them special/critical results and suddenly more skilled characters are less likely to get catastrophic results and more likely to get amazing ones.

warty goblin
2021-09-13, 06:09 PM
Honestly, past a certain point mitigating the chance of failure doesn't appeal to me.

Personally I've grown to like percentiles, while they're even more swingy than d20s most people seem to be able to grasp how the probability works.

Plus they have a really cool feature compared to most non dice pool in that doubles appear every 11 steps, make them special/critical results and suddenly more skilled characters are less likely to get catastrophic results and more likely to get amazing ones.

They're not really more swingy, they're just more granular. The underlying distribution is still discrete uniform, so the behavior of the CDF is the same, and that entirely dictates the success probability function.

Pauly
2021-09-13, 07:37 PM
D&D in particular has a huge amount of variance for low level characters. Other games such as Warhammer FRP have even more variance.

Generally speaking, regardless of system, as your characters progress, learn skills, acquire magic items and so on the game becomes much less variable. High level characters can mitigate/practically eliminate variance.

A lot of people consider mid level characters (level 5 t0 10 for D&D) to be the sweet spot. You have enough variance for random chance to be a factor, but are not bored by too many foregone conclusions, nor can you be wrecked by one or two bad rolls.

Cluedrew
2021-09-13, 08:17 PM
In all my home-brew work I don't think I have ever so much as considered using a d20. At that point you are basically dealing with a percentile system in 5% groups. I usually use dice pools or 2d6 plus stat. Not only because the d6 have a bigger impact on a +1 (and if you need a +2 or +3 to make a notable impact, why use the larger die?) but then you put it on a bell curve so that the middle results are more common. Which you can do by adjusting numbers, but it happening naturally. It also builds in diminishing returns.

Or you can do something like Powered by the Apocalypse or Blades in the Dark and fold in multiple levels of success into a single role.

Which is to say: Yeah 1d20+stat vs. a target number is only a step up from rolling a die in my opinion.

Anonymouswizard
2021-09-14, 04:04 AM
In all my home-brew work I don't think I have ever so much as considered using a d20. At that point you are basically dealing with a percentile system in 5% groups. I usually use dice pools or 2d6 plus stat. Not only because the d6 have a bigger impact on a +1 (and if you need a +2 or +3 to make a notable impact, why use the larger die?) but then you put it on a bell curve so that the middle results are more common. Which you can do by adjusting numbers, but it happening naturally. It also builds in diminishing returns.

Or you can do something like Powered by the Apocalypse or Blades in the Dark and fold in multiple levels of success into a single role.

Which is to say: Yeah 1d20+stat vs. a target number is only a step up from rolling a die in my opinion.

I've done stats as die types before, it's interesting. Not had the chance to playtests the system, but seeing as how most rolls are attribute die+skill die versus target number it's down some potential for fun (there's special results on doubles, generally bad things).

icefractal
2021-09-14, 04:17 AM
While it's not the best fit for all games, I like the transparency of the d20. Something is DC X and you have a +Y in it? Easy to see what your odds are. How much is a +2 bonus? It'll change the result on 10% of rolls, simple.

Bell curve systems need a look-up table unless you've got it memorized, and systems with "interesting" dice mechanics often make the odds pretty opaque. I think sometimes the intent is "players shouldn't care about the odds", but that doesn't work IMO - players who don't care wouldn't have cared with a simpler system either, and players who do care get extra friction.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-14, 04:40 AM
Yeah, trying to one-up people who are obsessed with calculating the odds by making sure the odds are only calculable by the people obsessed with calculating them is a classic game design fib. :smalltongue:

Generally speaking, you can turn any independent probability function into % values (and dependent ones too, the values just have to be recalculated turn-by-turn) if you know the relevant math. How the original probability function is set up can make it easy or very hard, but there's little reason to use convoluted dice mechanics that make it very hard unless you think Yathzee is the greatest game ever or like rolling dice for sake of rolling dice.

MoiMagnus
2021-09-14, 04:46 AM
While it's not the best fit for all games, I like the transparency of the d20. Something is DC X and you have a +Y in it? Easy to see what your odds are. How much is a +2 bonus? It'll change the result on 10% of rolls, simple.

Bell curve systems need a look-up table unless you've got it memorized, and systems with "interesting" dice mechanics often make the odds pretty opaque. I think sometimes the intent is "players shouldn't care about the odds", but that doesn't work IMO - players who don't care wouldn't have cared with a simpler system either, and players who do care get extra friction.

Simple formula have a clear advantage as they facilitate communication between the game and the player.
And that's why tactical video-game (fire emblem, XCOM) tend to have in appearance very simple mechanics, which allow for players to have fun optimising numbers here and there.

However, they still tend to use more complex curves internally by the subtle but practical method of "lying to the player". E.g, a lot of fire emblem use the 2RN system where instead of making one percentile roll, the game makes two of them and takes the average, which makes attacks with high probability to land quadratically more likely to hit. (Later fire emblems use a system much more complex mathematically). Note that contrary to fudging dice, this lie is "fair" in the sense that it is applied to both side equally.

I believe that some TTRPGs try to rely on opaque systems for a similar reasons: they want to build an illusion of how the odds actually work, different from the actual odds. So that the players can optimise using those illusionary odds (which are tailored to be "interesting to optimise" or "more intuitive to non-mathematicians"), while the system runs with different odds (which are tailored to be "balanced" or "less frustrating"). IME, it's much less effective in TTRPGs than in videogames.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-14, 10:54 AM
It's much less effective in tabletop games because some poor human has to read and run the math.

kyoryu
2021-09-14, 11:51 AM
I think framing helps, and how you handle skill rolls.

I mean, usually, the issue is less absolute variance and more "big strong guy fails to open the door but weak wizard succeeds".

So, what I like to do is a few things:

1. Don't roll for things that aren't possible.
2. Don't roll for things that are obviously going to succeed
3. For things in the middle, assume that if something's possible, then it will be done eventually, given infinite time and resources
4. Identify what constraint is in play - make the roll into "can you do this before the bad thing happens?" rather than "can you do it?"
5. Alternately, let the roll also inform things about the situation - maybe the lock can't be picked because it's rusted through.

- either way, a straight "let the wizard try" doesn't work, because either we've determined that the door just can't be moved, or you have to deal with The Bad Thing before trying another roll

6. In other cases, turn it into a group roll, using whatever rules your system has for groups.

So, for the door scenario, we'll assume the door is heavy, and is theoretically movable by both the barbarian and the wizard. If we don't want to turn it into a group effort, figure out what will stop the barbarian from trying to open the door... maybe guards might appear? Now a failure doesn't mean that the barbarian "can't", it means he couldn't in time. Okay, so now you can't just have the wizard try, you have to deal with the guards coming... and even then it probably still makes more sense to have the barbarian try again, or figure out a way to get the whole group to work on it together.

While the variance of a d20 is high, and causes these to occur more often, I do think that they're really just inherent problems with how rolls are often framed, and can present in any system.

Easy e
2021-09-14, 02:18 PM
I don't make people roll for things if them failing makes no sense or makes the game less interesting.

For example, if the group can not get through a doorway, and therefore can not progress it is not interesting if they fail. Therefore, they should not roll to be able to open the door.

They may have to roll, but it is not to get through the door, it is how long it takes them to get through it.

So, the big guy will eventually batter it down, just does he do it in one go, or does it take him a few minutes? The thief can pick the lock, but does it take a minute or one hour? Gandalf can figure out the riddle, but does he do it immediately or does it take him an hour while everyone sits around the lake with the tentacle monster in it?

kyoryu
2021-09-14, 03:55 PM
They may have to roll, but it is not to get through the door, it is how long it takes them to get through it.

And not just time, but other things as well... did you pick the lock before you broke your picks? Did you climb the cliff before the bad guy got away?

There's lots of ways of having stakes on a roll that can make rolling for it interesting.

Psyren
2021-09-14, 04:00 PM
3.5 dnd had a bell curve roll variant, where you roll 3d6 instead of 1d20. You have a max of 18 instead or 20, but also a minimum of 3 instead of 1, and an average roll of 10.5 which is actually the same average as a d20. The crit ranges were also sorted out differently, based on similar probabilities. A 16-18 matched a natural 20, 15-18 matched 19-20, 14-18 matched both 18-20 and 17-20 , and 13-18 matched the 15-20 range, though auto fails/successes still only happened on natural 3s/18s.

If you're looking for a lower variance roll system, might be worth trying something like that instead of a flat d20 roll.

Came to suggest this, if a uniform distribution is too swingy then try a bell curve. Dragon Age tabletop uses this as the default and it worked really well, especially with the "stunt" system to replace crits.

vasilidor
2021-09-17, 01:36 AM
when it comes to picking a lock, they do not break that often. if there is no rush, don't bother to roll if it is possible to pick the lock with their modifier. only make them roll if it matters if they make it on this turn or if failure can result in a trap going off.

Martin Greywolf
2021-09-17, 05:03 AM
I suppose for gamers who mostly play video games, accepting true randomness is difficult. We take good rolls for granted and act like a bad roll is an offense against us, sometimes. Even though we knew going into it that we were playing a game with RNG-determined outcomes.

That's XCOM, baby. A 90% shot doesn't mean you have a high probability of success, it means you have a one in ten chance of getting plasma bolt to the face if you are lucky. If you arent lucky, that was a mind control on your heavy. Who still has his rocket. You did bring a guy with Stasis, right?

And for DnD 5e at least, the low levels play the best if you play them like a game of XCOM: use cover, proceed with caution, deploy consumables when necessary. Don't kick the door in and go swinging, because you are going to get super shot that way.

The issue is, I think, in not communicationg that properly to the players. If you want LotR-like adventure, where the Fellowship when cornered can take down dozens of enemies fairly easily, you need to start at level 5, because level 1 is a bit of a meatgrinder, and there will be at least one, more likely several, deaths in your party.

Man_Over_Game
2021-09-17, 10:48 AM
I suppose for gamers who mostly play video games, accepting true randomness is difficult. We take good rolls for granted and act like a bad roll is an offense against us, sometimes. Even though we knew going into it that we were playing a game with RNG-determined outcomes.

Randomness, or the lack of information or expectation, is the enemy of Strategy. The less you know, the less you can plan around it, the less strategy you're allowed to insert into your reaction.

Strategy always favors the expected winner. When two players play Chess, you are rarely surprised at the outcome, because the person you'd expect to win is probably going to win since there aren't any outcomes that a better player can't predict (presumably).

By adding randomness, and destroying expectations of what happens next, you increase the chances of underdogs winning and both sides being surprised.


Unfortunately, this happens to not translate too terribly well at the table, as players are the ones who generally develop actual strategies, not the NPC enemies, and playing those strategies out is what a lot of players find fun. For that reason, you'll find that there are just some moments a DM shouldn't roll the dice, because failing an interesting plan due to a poor die roll may make the story interesting, but it might not make it any more fun.

Players have the most fun when:

They can play the way they expected to.
Getting what they want is still a challenge.


And sometimes, it takes a bit of experience to know exactly how to make those two things happen, and usually it doesn't involve the dice making the decision for you.

Quertus
2021-09-18, 08:33 AM
And not just time, but other things as well... did you pick the lock before you broke your picks? Did you climb the cliff before the bad guy got away?

There's lots of ways of having stakes on a roll that can make rolling for it interesting.

How long the Orcs on the other side of the door have to prepare (or maybe even call reinforcements, or, Gygax forbid, retreat?)?

DwarfFighter
2021-09-18, 06:22 PM
Honestly, past a certain point mitigating the chance of failure doesn't appeal to me.

Personally I've grown to like percentiles, while they're even more swingy than d20s most people seem to be able to grasp how the probability works.

Plus they have a really cool feature compared to most non dice pool in that doubles appear every 11 steps, make them special/critical results and suddenly more skilled characters are less likely to get catastrophic results and more likely to get amazing ones.

As warty goblin points out, no: 1d100 and 1d20 both have linear distribution: Each result has an equal chance of being generated.

Though to be fair, if you have a 64% skill, that is 0 steps removed from figuring out the percentage chance of succeeding, where-as the dominant d20 system of today requires more steps to determine the percentage chance of success.

The bit about doubles appearing every 11 steps, though, seems to skip over the fact that 99 and 100 are next to each other at the extreme end of the scale. This actually skews the chance of special results towards failures, and while skill is is involved, it actually works against you compared to a d20 system's 1 = critical fail and 20 = critical success (usually a GM's house rule, mind you).

1d100: If you have a 10% chance of success, none of your successful rolls will be a double, i.e. no critical successes. However, 11.1% of your failed rolls will be critical failures. Overall you have 0% chance of critical successes, 10% chance of critical failures.

Flip this to 90% chance of success, and 8.9% of your successful rolls are critical successes, 20% of your failed rolls are critical failures. Overall, you have an 8% chance of critical success, and 2% chance of critical failure.

In order to have a equal chance of critical successes and failures, you need a skill of 55%, which you will notice. If you have an equal chance of succeed or fail, i.e. a skill of 50%, there is a higher chance of critical failure than of critical success.

1d20: If you need to roll 19 or 20 to succeed, 50% of your successes will be a critical success. However, 5.6% of your failures will be critical failures. Overall you have a 5% chance of a critical failure, 5% chance of a critical success, which remains equal regardless of skill.

Conclusion: The 1d100 and 1d20 systems are virtually identical, except for granularity and for critical success/failure. If you are keen on scoring critical success, the 1d100 system is the worst option of the two.

-DF

sreservoir
2021-09-18, 07:16 PM
The bit about doubles appearing every 11 steps, though, seems to skip over the fact that 99 and 100 are next to each other at the extreme end of the scale. This actually skews the chance of special results towards failures, and while skill is is involved, it actually works against you compared to a d20 system's 1 = critical fail and 20 = critical success (usually a GM's house rule, mind you).

To be fair, this is a problem with reading 00 as 100 and not as 0.

DwarfFighter
2021-09-19, 12:03 PM
To be fair, this is a problem with reading 00 as 100 and not as 0.

I know of no percentile system that has the d100 roll range for 0 through 99. Problem or not, it's built into any system using the 1 through 100 range.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-19, 01:43 PM
After over a decade of lurking, reading D&D-related material, and playing D&D video games, I've finally joined an actual gaming group what plays D&D. And I will say there are a lot of things you just don't get from studying theoreticals.

Like how a good roll here and a bad roll there can swing the course of events in ways that can be really fun but also maybe a tad frustrating. A (admittedly low level) party member catching a crit on the first round and dropping immediately, as an example. On the flip side, a party member rolling a 20 on a Strength check and busting down a door so we can escape a danger zone. Certainly these are thrilling, memorable moments, but the results-oriented gamer in me feels a little...put off.

When theorycrafting it's fairly obvious that a +5 modifier is better than a +0 one. Probability favours the one with the higher modifier. That's just basic math. But in a situation where a small number of D20 rolls are made, it sometimes happens that the character with the +0 does better. Because that's how randomness works.

I suppose for gamers who mostly play video games, accepting true randomness is difficult. We take good rolls for granted and act like a bad roll is an offense against us, sometimes. Even though we knew going into it that we were playing a game with RNG-determined outcomes.

Just my thoughts on things. I am enjoying D&D so far, but I am surprised at how much I have to alter my mindset with regards to the gameplay side of it. Rolls in Warhammer 40k, as a comparison, have much lower variance.

There is something really important to understand about 5E in particular, which the game’s text doesn’t explain at all, but once it clicked for me (through playing and DMing the game for several years) the d20 “chaos plateau” became much less of a problem.

It’s all about setting stakes on dice rolls. It’s the most important part of a dice roll, much more important than setting the DC. Essentially, as the DM when you call for an ability check you should be clear on what the player is trying to achieve, what they can achieve, what is the best case scenario and the worst case scenario, *before* you call for the check, choose the stat/proficiency, or set the DC. And you take everything in the current fiction into account when you set the stakes, including the player character themselves. What this means is that the character with the right proficiency and stat for the job probably doesn’t only have a better chance of succeeding on the dice roll, but also a better result on either a success or a failure.

For example:
The party are in a tavern and, wanting to make a good impression on the townsfolk, the bard decides to give a performance. They make a Charisma (Performance) check with their +6 bonus and roll a natural 1. This *does not* mean that they break the e-string on their lute and fall off the stage. They’re a bard, that would be ridiculous. Instead it means they give a technically flawless but uninspired performance and the townsfolk aren’t especially impressed.

Say the party go back the next night and this time the fighter gives it a try, with their -1 modifier, and rolls a natural 20. This doesn’t mean the fighter somehow spontaneously learns how to perform better than the bard. It means, perhaps, that they give a rowdy, spirited, if out-of-key rendition of a popular sea shanty and all the drunk villagers join in and have a great time.

Or when the wizard tries to decipher some runes and fails, they can probably still make an educated guess as to what the runes roughly mean despite not knowing what they actually say, while the barbarian who succeeds perhaps recognises the rune for “fire” because they happen to have seen it before, even if they don’t really know what they’re looking at.

In 5E, everything is contextual. And sometimes this will go all the way up to “there’s no roll, you just succeed” or “there’s no roll, this isn’t possible for you”. Play with this approach and the randomness of the d20 isn’t nearly as problematic. Again, no one can be blamed for not knowing this because the PHB and DMG really don’t explain it at all. But from running and playing the game, I’m convinced that this is how the game’s actual design wants us to approach it.

One very important caveat though: in combat, all of this goes out the window. That’s because in combat the DM doesn’t directly set the stakes. Instead the stakes are set for you by the overdetermining system of hit points, turns, rounds and actions. The stakes are always “if you miss you don’t move any closer to victory and the enemy gets that much more time to damage you.” This definitely makes combat at low levels very swingy. But from about level 3 onward you can use the CR system as a very rough guide to make sure there’s enough leeway and buffers to keep the randomness from producing horrible results.

I hope that’s helpful anyway. Take it with a pinch of salt as I’m sure others will have other perspectives.

icefractal
2021-09-19, 04:17 PM
I think that's good GMing advice for 5E, and I think that kind of system can work with the right group, but it does require the GM and players being very much on the same page.

Essentially skills do whatever the GM thinks they do, based off criteria the players may not even know about. If that thinking lines up with the player's thinking, then all's well. If it doesn't, it can feel like you're trying to play poker without being able to see your cards.

I mean, spells could be written that way too, but I wouldn't like them to be:

Fireball
Difficulty: Moderate
A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within fairly long range, and then blossoms with a low roar into an impressively large explosion of powerful flame.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-19, 04:44 PM
I think that's good GMing advice for 5E, and I think that kind of system can work with the right group, but it does require the GM and players being very much on the same page.

Essentially skills do whatever the GM thinks they do, based off criteria the players may not even know about. If that thinking lines up with the player's thinking, then all's well. If it doesn't, it can feel like you're trying to play poker without being able to see your cards.

I mean, spells could be written that way too, but I wouldn't like them to be:

Fireball
Difficulty: Moderate
A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within fairly long range, and then blossoms with a low roar into an impressively large explosion of powerful flame.

Some games do have spells written like that!

I mean, I think all RPGs rely on the GM and players being on the same page to some extent, that’s inherent to the medium imo. Different games try to mitigate this and provide some certainty and universality, to different extents and in different ways. But I can’t imagine an RPG whose rules would completely negate the basic need for a shared understanding of the fiction. This might even be the core definition of an RPG in my view.

Cluedrew
2021-09-19, 04:49 PM
Though to be fair, if you have a 64% skill, that is 0 steps removed from figuring out the percentage chance of succeeding, where-as the dominant d20 system of today requires more steps to determine the percentage chance of success.OK, but what is the closest X/36 chance of success?

OK I am being silly, the two serious points are:
How you actually represent the chances of success isn't super important.
Running the numbers is a good sanity check (that some systems missed), but often all you need is a sense of if this is a good bet or not. And some people are bad at statistics and can't seem to convert the statistical results into chances of success very well. So I think having a good feel for it might be more important.



I know of no percentile system that has the d100 roll range for 0 through 99. Problem or not, it's built into any system using the 1 through 100 range.Oddly enough, I can only remember reading one percentage based system and although it claimed it went from 1-100, 99 was an auto-failure and 100 was an auto-success, effectively making it a "lower" result than 01 (that is to say zero). Or I have that whole thing backwards and it was a role-high system and everything else swaps too. I just remember "Why did you go add the line about reading 00 as 100 when the next line makes that irrelevant and counter intuitive?"

warty goblin
2021-09-19, 05:28 PM
I think that's good GMing advice for 5E, and I think that kind of system can work with the right group, but it does require the GM and players being very much on the same page.

Essentially skills do whatever the GM thinks they do, based off criteria the players may not even know about. If that thinking lines up with the player's thinking, then all's well. If it doesn't, it can feel like you're trying to play poker without being able to see your cards.

I mean, spells could be written that way too, but I wouldn't like them to be:

Fireball
Difficulty: Moderate
A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within fairly long range, and then blossoms with a low roar into an impressively large explosion of powerful flame.

There's a lot of things to be said for spells as skills. Aesthetically I think there's some real advantages to turn the roiling mass of special resolution mechanics D&D uses into, basically, a bunch of skills some character types get access to. It also handily allows different levels of mastery of individual spells; if you want to cast a better fireball put points into fireball. Modifying spells can also be done pretty seamlessly with this, just turn upcasting or downcasting or whatever into a difficulty modification on the check. If the system has existing rules for multi-round/ multi-participant checks, you automatically get rules for multi-round/multi-caster spellcasting* almost for free. Finally, it allows spellcasters to fail at casting spells (or in systems with gradiated success, succeed more or less well), which is something that tends to crop up a lot in fantasy fiction.

My favorite example of this is the Dark Eye, which treats all spells as skills, but since TDE uses a nifty roll-under three separate attributes skill system, with not all spells requiring the same three attributes. In other words your character may simply be bad at some spells, because they are inherently good at others.

*The original and almost entirely forgotten Sovereign Stone RPG has multi-round spells by default; the game uses attribute dice + skill dice, and you need to accumulate a high enough total across multiple rounds/casters to cast the spell. A relatively low powered spell to do more damage with a thrown rock requires 5, casting Earthquake requires 107.

Anonymouswizard
2021-09-19, 06:15 PM
I know of no percentile system that has the d100 roll range for 0 through 99. Problem or not, it's built into any system using the 1 through 100 range.

Eclipse Phase and d00 Lite systems (Barebones Fantasy ect.) both count rolls as 00-99. Unknown Armies 3e doesn't, but separates critical results (01 and 00) from special results (11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99).

So yeah, they exist. You just haven't heard of them, which is fine I kind of specifically went looking a few years ago.

Now going 00-99 does mean your skills aren't strict percentages anymore, but I honestly think it's fine. I've been considering running a 40k game using d00 Lite, although I need to find a group first.

martixy
2021-09-19, 11:39 PM
It's worth noting that the variance of the dice matters not in a vacuum; it's the relative size of the applicable modifiers that really matters. The impact of the d20 is very large when a good modifier is +5 and a bad one is +0, but much smaller when the good modifier is +10, +20, +30.

In D&D the modifiers scale over time so the impact of the d20 will lessen, though the specific edition you're playing will affect the extent of that.

This is the essence of why I like 3.5e over 5e.

It represents the hero's journey so well. You start as a low-level schmuck, who gets off more on luck than skill. By the high levels, you're a power-house who can overcome bad luck through sheer skill and mastery.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-20, 01:04 AM
This is the essence of why I like 3.5e over 5e.

It represents the hero's journey so well. You start as a low-level schmuck, who gets off more on luck than skill. By the high levels, you're a power-house who can overcome bad luck through sheer skill and mastery.

My problem with the 3.5 approach is that, for the game to remain interesting, the target numbers have to increase alongside your bonuses, so you just get this arms race effect where the numbers all cancel each other out and you might as well not have bothered.

Zombimode
2021-09-20, 02:52 AM
My problem with the 3.5 approach is that, for the game to remain interesting, the target numbers have to increase alongside your bonuses, so you just get this arms race effect where the numbers all cancel each other out and you might as well not have bothered.

First, your assertion that "for the game to remain interesting, the target numbers have to increase alongside your bonuses" is rather questionable. Why would that be the case? In fact, does the last part of your sentence not contradict the first in that it shows that it wouldnt make it interesting?

Second, thankfully 3.5 does not feature Oblivion-style (or 4e if you prefer) scaling. Static skill DC do not increase at all. And everything else ("contest" skills, saves, attack bonus, AC) does vary wildy.

icefractal
2021-09-20, 04:41 AM
If you think of skill rolls as primarily/only a way to add tension/uncertainty to the story, then indeed only the ones that keep pace with the PCs are useful, and thus scaling becomes arguably meaningful.

On the other hand, if you think of skill rolls as one of the things which represents a character's interaction with the world, then outpacing a DC isn't an issue, it just means that how that particular character relates to the world has changed.

Someone's so good at climbing that they don't even need to roll in most cases? That means that one capability (potentially able to climb things with some risk) has been replaced by a different capability (able to climb anything, no problem). Now they'll have different paths open to them and different points where obstacles appear. Which is not an unreasonable type change to occur - consider how becoming a knight could change (can maybe sneak weapons into the upper city with a plan and a lot of risk) to (can wave hello to the guard as you walk in fully armed).

DwarfFighter
2021-09-20, 05:26 AM
Now going 00-99 does mean your skills aren't strict percentages anymore, but I honestly think it's fine. I've been considering running a 40k game using d00 Lite, although I need to find a group first.

It only means 64% skill requires a roll LESS than 64 to be correct.

Anonymouswizard
2021-09-20, 05:27 AM
Second, thankfully 3.5 does not feature Oblivion-style (or 4e if you prefer) scaling.

Isn't this more of a GM deal than a system deal? 3.5 can definitely have Oblivion style level escaping if the GM devices that goblins and cheap locks are no longer a threat and upgrades then to ogre magi and high quality locks.

DwarfFighter
2021-09-20, 05:32 AM
This is the essence of why I like 3.5e over 5e.

It represents the hero's journey so well. You start as a low-level schmuck, who gets off more on luck than skill. By the high levels, you're a power-house who can overcome bad luck through sheer skill and mastery.

I don't get why some players consider the risk of failure an inconvenience to their games.

-DF

Kurald Galain
2021-09-20, 06:19 AM
This is the essence of why I like 3.5e over 5e.

It represents the hero's journey so well. You start as a low-level schmuck, who gets off more on luck than skill. By the high levels, you're a power-house who can overcome bad luck through sheer skill and mastery.
I agree.


My problem with the 3.5 approach is that, for the game to remain interesting, the target numbers have to increase alongside your bonuses, so you just get this arms race effect where the numbers all cancel each other out and you might as well not have bothered.
That's only true if you consider it interesting for heroes to have a substantial chance of failure at common tasks.

DwarfFighter
2021-09-20, 07:25 AM
My problem with the 3.5 approach is that, for the game to remain interesting, the target numbers have to increase alongside your bonuses, so you just get this arms race effect where the numbers all cancel each other out and you might as well not have bothered.


That's only true if you consider it interesting for heroes to have a substantial chance of failure at common tasks.

From his post, I figure HidesHisEyes is talking about maintain the excitement of the challenge for the players. This is an actual issue I've had trouble with in the past: When there is no risk of failure, the players get jaded and bored. So yeah, a "substantial" chance of failure is justified in my experience.

On the other hand, it doesn't make sense to move established goal-posts. If the PCs needed to make a DC 15 check at level 1, then when they return to the same wall at level 20 it should still be DC 15. If the GM increases the DC arbitrarily to make the world keep pace with the PCs skill level (trailing or in lock-step), it will at best keep the game interesting for the skilled characters. However unskilled characters actually become worse at performing tasks as their overall ability improves!

The workaround is to present the the PCs with more and more powerful challenges. However, it's easy to populate your dungeon with demons instead of orcs, but it's hard to justify a castle wall at level 20 being more epic than at level 1...

-DF

Zombimode
2021-09-20, 07:28 AM
Isn't this more of a GM deal than a system deal? 3.5 can definitely have Oblivion style level escaping if the GM devices that goblins and cheap locks are no longer a threat and upgrades then to ogre magi and high quality locks.

Yes, the GM can do it. But in 3.5 they would have to go out of their way to approach anything close to 4e.

For skills, they way they are supposed to work is plainly laid out in the PHB, so any interested player just can look it up.

For other numbers, the PC side is somewhat outside of the GMs control: chances are good that the +5 Fort save bonus will sit right next to the +22 Reflex, the AC 13 of one PC to the AC 37 of the other and so on.

On the NPCs side, it's true that the GM can commit to only use enemies of CR = APL (which is NOT recommended), the differences even between entries of the same CR can be huge: compare the Aboleth (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/aboleth.htm) to the Huge Air Elemental (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elemental.htm#airElemental). Look at the number within these entries: Aboleths have clear strengths and weaknesses (Reflex +3 to Will +11). When you're at it: compare the CR 17 (!) Aboleth Wizard to the Huge Air Elemental: the actual numbers are not that different.

Of course there IS scaling in 3.5, but it is a far cry from what we have seen in for instance 4e.

martixy
2021-09-20, 07:38 AM
I don't get why some players consider the risk of failure an inconvenience to their games.

-DF

What a ridiculous non-sequitur. How did you get that from anything I said?

In any case, how variance works is only one component of why I like the way 3.5e does the power fantasy.

This document (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gQ3Hdb7U4ZgwnhsCOVGulH3sDouTOY74yFa6LSqrX8g/edit) is a more complete write-up of the various stages of play that contribute to creating the zero-to-hero-to-god journey.

DwarfFighter
2021-09-20, 07:40 AM
Yes, the GM can do it. But in 3.5 they would have to go out of their way to approach anything close to 4e.

For skills, they way they are supposed to work is plainly laid out in the PHB, so any interested player just can look it up.

For other numbers, the PC side is somewhat outside of the GMs control: chances are good that the +5 Fort save bonus will sit right next to the +22 Reflex, the AC 13 of one PC to the AC 37 of the other and so on.

On the NPCs side, it's true that the GM can commit to only use enemies of CR = APL (which is NOT recommended), the differences even between entries of the same CR can be huge: compare the Aboleth (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/aboleth.htm) to the Huge Air Elemental (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elemental.htm#airElemental). Look at the number within these entries: Aboleths have clear strengths and weaknesses (Reflex +3 to Will +11). When you're at it: compare the CR 17 (!) Aboleth Wizard to the Huge Air Elemental: the actual numbers are not that different.

Of course there IS scaling in 3.5, but it is a far cry from what we have seen in for instance 4e.

In 5e, the GM can involve both the +11 specialist and the +0 unskilled character in a challenge.

In 3.5 the GM picks either the +22 specialist or the +0 unskilled character: Only one of their rolls will matter.

There is a lot more variety to 3.5 than 5.e, but I figure the "best" of the two systems has got to be the one that is playable by the most players.

-DF

noob
2021-09-20, 07:45 AM
In 5e, the GM can involve both the +11 specialist and the +0 unskilled character in a challenge.

In 3.5 the GM picks either the +22 specialist or the +0 unskilled character: Only one of their rolls will matter.

There is a lot more variety to 3.5 than 5.e, but I figure the "best" of the two systems has got to be the one that is playable by the most players.

-DF

There is the help another action: your players should not hesitate to use it.
Also it can be more complicated than that.
Example: there is a trap that throws an hail of arrows from a wall.
You can try to block it by placing a plate on the wall by using strength (there is no check involved: just look if the sum of the carry capacities of the characters is enough and even the weakest character can participate), you can tough it out and go next to the wall while under the hail of arrows then bash it down with your adamantine weapons, you can use the disable traps skill as a rogue and by some unknowable magic(the same magic that makes that with the profession skill you can gain money while on a desert island by selling wine or that magic that allows you to stare iron ingots in submission and then the craft skill make them turn into swords 1 week later) make the trap stop working and you could have the party cleric cast shield of entropy on the rogue so that if their unknowable magic triggers the trap instead of disarming it then 20% of the arrows will miss.

You seem to put in the same group 3.5 encounters and 4e skill challenges.

Also in 5e you can get a +25 specialist that can take 10(combine rogue, bard and the guidance cantrip) and a -5 unskilled character for the same skill.
(bounded accuracy is for the challenges not the characters so you can get a character that can routinely do "dc impossible" challenges)

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-20, 07:53 AM
From his post, I figure HidesHisEyes is talking about maintain the excitement of the challenge for the players. This is an actual issue I've had trouble with in the past: When there is no risk of failure, the players get jaded and bored. So yeah, a "substantial" chance of failure is justified in my experience.

On the other hand, it doesn't make sense to move established goal-posts. If the PCs needed to make a DC 15 check at level 1, then when they return to the same wall at level 20 it should still be DC 15. If the GM increases the DC arbitrarily to make the world keep pace with the PCs skill level (trailing or in lock-step), it will at best keep the game interesting for the skilled characters. However unskilled characters actually become worse at performing tasks as their overall ability improves!

The workaround is to present the the PCs with more and more powerful challenges. However, it's easy to populate your dungeon with demons instead of orcs, but it's hard to justify a castle wall at level 20 being more epic than at level 1...

-DF

Yeah this is what I was getting at. People have made some good points in defence of the 3.5 way, but for me it’s too clunky.

Reaching level 15 and sinking every point into Climb means you’ll probably never have to worry about failing a check to climb something, but is that the most elegant or potent way of expressing that in a character? There are games (I’m thinking of PbtA but there are others too) where the target number for a success never changes because the assumption is that if you’re rolling the dice then the task is not easy, not impossible, and your modifier might increase by 1 or 2 points max over the course of a campaign. Certain character types might get a “climb anything” move to express that they’re really great at climbing in particular. Once I discovered that kind of game I decided I can’t be bothered with the enormous stat ladders in games like 3.5 as I just don’t think that what they add is of much value.

Telok
2021-09-20, 10:20 AM
In 5e, the GM can involve both the +11 specialist and the +0 unskilled character in a challenge.


I admit to being prejudiced against the d&d 5e version because all the novice DMs I've played with accidentally turned the game into "the Three Stooges go to D&D-land" by setting the normal dc for nearly everything at 15, and then creeping it up when bards and such (usually a multiclass & stacking magic) started hitting 20+ regularly. When the DMs are calling dcs 15 to 20 most of the time your +5s and +8s don't feel like 'competent' or 'heroic'.

I have a thing I scribbled down on different types of game rolls, see if I can find & post later

martixy
2021-09-20, 12:40 PM
In 5e, the GM can involve both the +11 specialist and the +0 unskilled character in a challenge.

In 3.5 the GM picks either the +22 specialist or the +0 unskilled character: Only one of their rolls will matter.

There is a lot more variety to 3.5 than 5.e, but I figure the "best" of the two systems has got to be the one that is playable by the most players.

-DF

This post exhibits some hidden assumptions, with which I do not agree. It's not a given that involving the most players is the best.

Trying to involve the +0 shmuck in the skill check for the specialist is like trying to involve joe schmoe in a heart surgery along with the surgeon.

icefractal
2021-09-20, 02:06 PM
In 5e, the GM can involve both the +11 specialist and the +0 unskilled character in a challenge.

In 3.5 the GM picks either the +22 specialist or the +0 unskilled character: Only one of their rolls will matter.

There is a lot more variety to 3.5 than 5.e, but I figure the "best" of the two systems has got to be the one that is playable by the most players.

-DFMy main disagreement would be that rolling dice != playing the game.
Only one of them will be rolling, yes. And in some scenes, nobody rolls anything. Are those scenes "not playing the game"? Is planning a heist in Shadowrun not part of the game? Is a climactic negotiation to make peace between the PCs' city and the Drow city underneath it, so they can together resist the invading Mind Flayer empire, "barely playing the game" because there may be only a couple rolls involved? Is a caster who only uses spells without attack rolls not playing until they need to roll something?

The other angle is challenge, and while I'd agree that the given skill check is only a challenge for one of them, I don't see that as a problem. Lots of things are only conditionally challenging:
* Crossing a big chasm is difficult ... unless you can fly.
* Getting inside the court is difficult ... unless you're a noble.
* Crossing Fever Swamp is difficult ... unless you're immune to disease and poison.
* Getting passage to Middle-of-Nowhere Island is difficult ... unless you're rich enough to charter your own ship.
* Deciphering this ancient script is difficult ... unless you happen to speak the language.

Challenge is best thought of in aggregate rather than a set of fixed points which must each be challenging. You have a series of obstacles. Depending on the party, some of those will be challenges and others won't. The ones that aren't should generally be resolved quickly, which means that in terms of real-time spent playing, challenging situations will account for a larger portion than their absolute frequency would suggest. If you miscalculated and an entire adventure is resolved with very few difficulties? Not a problem IME - no player has complained about a single adventure being too easy, and often it's a welcome chance to show off. If all the campaign is too easy it could get dull, yes, but it's not hard to make the next part more difficult.

Kurald Galain
2021-09-20, 03:00 PM
In 5e, the GM can involve both the +11 specialist and the +0 unskilled character in a challenge.

In 3.5 the GM picks either the +22 specialist or the +0 unskilled character: Only one of their rolls will matter.
But that's at level 20.

Realistically, you'd be playing at level 5-10 because that's what most players actually do. So that means in 3E, the GM can involve both the +11 specialist and the +0 unskilled character in a challenge; whereas in 5E they're effectively the same. The difference between specialist and unskilled is so low that it's drowned out by the d20 variance.

So by your own standard, the best system is actually the other one, except at levels well beyond what most people play. But hey :smallamused:

Pauly
2021-09-20, 09:19 PM
There is a different approach to using bonuses, and that is to use different dice.

Statistically you get the same average outcome using a D8 as a D6+1 or a D4 instead of a D6-1. When combined with using multiple dice the difference is a different shape to the bell curve,, not shifting the bell curve

One system I remember reading but not playing used 3 dice. In an average situation an average skilled character with average equipment would roll 3D6.

In a situation where the character was at disadvantage you would replace the situation D6 with a D4 (-1) and in advantage D8 (+1) or D10 (+2) for highly advantageous.
If the character was low skilled D4, highly skilled D8 and exceptionally skilled D10.
If the equipment was poor D4, good D8 or legendary D10.

Depending on the situation/equipment your effect would be the lowest, middle or highest dice. The default being middle dice was the effect.

Rolling doubles on a success meant you did double effect, and triples on an effect meant you did triple effect.

One roll gave you success, damage and critical effects. The only math was adding up the numbers with no need to remember +1 for this and -1 for that. There was a table for the DM on how to set target numbers, with the freedom for the DM to use any number as a target number.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-21, 01:30 AM
The difference between specialist and unskilled is so low that it's drowned out by the d20 variance.


As far as I know I’m completely alone in this but I don’t think the d20 variance is a problem in 5E if you approach the game the way it wants to be approached. Numerically there is not that much difference between +0 and +6 but there can still be a huge amount of qualitative difference between the two characters which factor into situations and dice rolls.

My post from earlier:


There is something really important to understand about 5E in particular, which the game’s text doesn’t explain at all, but once it clicked for me (through playing and DMing the game for several years) the d20 “chaos plateau” became much less of a problem.

It’s all about setting stakes on dice rolls. It’s the most important part of a dice roll, much more important than setting the DC. Essentially, as the DM when you call for an ability check you should be clear on what the player is trying to achieve, what they can achieve, what is the best case scenario and the worst case scenario, *before* you call for the check, choose the stat/proficiency, or set the DC. And you take everything in the current fiction into account when you set the stakes, including the player character themselves. What this means is that the character with the right proficiency and stat for the job probably doesn’t only have a better chance of succeeding on the dice roll, but also a better result on either a success or a failure.

For example:
The party are in a tavern and, wanting to make a good impression on the townsfolk, the bard decides to give a performance. They make a Charisma (Performance) check with their +6 bonus and roll a natural 1. This *does not* mean that they break the e-string on their lute and fall off the stage. They’re a bard, that would be ridiculous. Instead it means they give a technically flawless but uninspired performance and the townsfolk aren’t especially impressed.

Say the party go back the next night and this time the fighter gives it a try, with their -1 modifier, and rolls a natural 20. This doesn’t mean the fighter somehow spontaneously learns how to perform better than the bard. It means, perhaps, that they give a rowdy, spirited, if out-of-key rendition of a popular sea shanty and all the drunk villagers join in and have a great time.

Or when the wizard tries to decipher some runes and fails, they can probably still make an educated guess as to what the runes roughly mean despite not knowing what they actually say, while the barbarian who succeeds perhaps recognises the rune for “fire” because they happen to have seen it before, even if they don’t really know what they’re looking at.

In 5E, everything is contextual. And sometimes this will go all the way up to “there’s no roll, you just succeed” or “there’s no roll, this isn’t possible for you”. Play with this approach and the randomness of the d20 isn’t nearly as problematic. Again, no one can be blamed for not knowing this because the PHB and DMG really don’t explain it at all. But from running and playing the game, I’m convinced that this is how the game’s actual design wants us to approach it.

One very important caveat though: in combat, all of this goes out the window. That’s because in combat the DM doesn’t directly set the stakes. Instead the stakes are set for you by the overdetermining system of hit points, turns, rounds and actions. The stakes are always “if you miss you don’t move any closer to victory and the enemy gets that much more time to damage you.” This definitely makes combat at low levels very swingy. But from about level 3 onward you can use the CR system as a very rough guide to make sure there’s enough leeway and buffers to keep the randomness from producing horrible results.

I hope that’s helpful anyway. Take it with a pinch of salt as I’m sure others will have other perspectives.

Satinavian
2021-09-21, 01:45 AM
As far as I know I’m completely alone in this but I don’t think the d20 variance is a problem in 5E if you approach the game the way it wants to be approached. Numerically there is not that much difference between +0 and +6 but there can still be a huge amount of qualitative difference between the two characters which factor into situations and dice rolls.

My post from earlier:Sorry, but that reads like a horrible experience.

What the PCs can do and achieve or not is completely based on DM whim and backstory, not on their numbers or their rolls. This is getting around the D20 by free form narrating whatever you think fits. If you are willing to do this, it is better, to do proper freeform, maybe with a cointoss for good/bad attached instead of a rules heavy system.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-21, 02:04 AM
Sorry, but that reads like a horrible experience.

What the PCs can do and achieve or not is completely based on DM whim and backstory, not on their numbers or their rolls. This is getting around the D20 by free form narrating whatever you think fits. If you are willing to do this, it is better, to do proper freeform, maybe with a cointoss for good/bad attached instead of a rules heavy system.

I guess I think there’s a spectrum from free form roleplaying to very crunchy rules, and I think 5E is somewhere around the middle, while 3.5 is further towards the crunchy end.

That said, I think it’s actually impossible to have an RPG that doesn’t involve some amount of GM (and player) fiat, free form narration, judgement calls and “whims”. The medium relies on a shared understanding of a fictional scenario, no matter how rigorous the rules. In a game like 3.5 the rules for climbing a cliff might exactingly account for all the different factors and potential outcomes. But to engage those rules in the first place the group has to agree, in a qualitative and free form way, that someone in the imaginary world is attempting to climb a cliff. The 5E style I described is doing the exact same thing, just the free form part extends a bit further and the role of the rules is smaller.

Personally my favourite games tend to go even further in this direction than 5E, but I have zero interest in going fully free form, because the presence of rules is also a definitional part of RPGs imo. The whole idea is that it’s a mixture of imaginative freedom and rules supporting and driving one another. It’s absolutely a matter of personal taste as to the ratio of the mix.

Satinavian
2021-09-21, 02:24 AM
Sure.

But my point was that if you bother with as may rules as 5E has and all its rule based restrictions, you would expect the rules to give you proper answers instead of heavily relying on freeform.

There are many games with way better skill systems where i don't have to explain away how the performance of the fighter is not actually better than the bard ones even if the rolls say so. It is a weakness of 5E. And it remains a weakness even if i can paint it over with freeform and GM fiat.

noob
2021-09-21, 03:58 AM
I guess I think there’s a spectrum from free form roleplaying to very crunchy rules, and I think 5E is somewhere around the middle, while 3.5 is further towards the crunchy end.

That said, I think it’s actually impossible to have an RPG that doesn’t involve some amount of GM (and player) fiat, free form narration, judgement calls and “whims”. The medium relies on a shared understanding of a fictional scenario, no matter how rigorous the rules. In a game like 3.5 the rules for climbing a cliff might exactingly account for all the different factors and potential outcomes. But to engage those rules in the first place the group has to agree, in a qualitative and free form way, that someone in the imaginary world is attempting to climb a cliff. The 5E style I described is doing the exact same thing, just the free form part extends a bit further and the role of the rules is smaller.

Personally my favourite games tend to go even further in this direction than 5E, but I have zero interest in going fully free form, because the presence of rules is also a definitional part of RPGs imo. The whole idea is that it’s a mixture of imaginative freedom and rules supporting and driving one another. It’s absolutely a matter of personal taste as to the ratio of the mix.

Both 3.5 and 5e are on the very far end of crunchy.
Try basic dnd if you want the least crunchy dnd and it is still very crunchy.
50 pages of rules is considered very crunchy and it is close to the minimum number of pages of rules to play dnd(unless you are a normal person and forget half of the rules then play a druid that do not use even half of his class features, a bow firing wizard and some other characters that all proves the fact you did not read most of the rules then his normal gm forgets what is advantage and disadvantage and what is the difference between an weapon attack, a weapon attack with a weapon and an attack with a weapon and then forget to add modifiers to the D20).
basic dnd had less rules and was clearer than dnd 5e on what the rules implied the issues is that it got a bunch of tables because it was adapted from a wargame and did not have yet roll uniformisation (so depending on situation you did not roll the same kind of dice).
There is a whole lot lot of rpgs with less rules than dnd that still manages to be clear they just are played way less than dnd because dnd is famous.

Zombimode
2021-09-21, 04:24 AM
There is a whole lot lot of rpgs with less rules than dnd that still manages to be clear they just are played way less than dnd because dnd is famous.

I'm sure that is the only reason.

DwarfFighter
2021-09-21, 06:27 AM
But that's at level 20.

Realistically, you'd be playing at level 5-10 because that's what most players actually do. So that means in 3E, the GM can involve both the +11 specialist and the +0 unskilled character in a challenge; whereas in 5E they're effectively the same. The difference between specialist and unskilled is so low that it's drowned out by the d20 variance.

So by your own standard, the best system is actually the other one, except at levels well beyond what most people play. But hey :smallamused:

5e works at level 20, 3.5 breaks before level 20.

-DF

noob
2021-09-21, 06:54 AM
I'm sure that is the only reason.

It is the main reason: dnd being famous means that
1: When people starts playing rpgs they start with dnd
2: The games you can find the most tables for are dnd games
3: Most people playing an rpg excepts a dnd like experience.
So it is normal to play dnd over other rpgs because it is way more convenient(you find a table easier) due to the game being famous and people except to play that rpg (so when you introduce them to rpgs you start by dnd because it is what they heard about).

It is how famous things works: famous things are more talked about and known and so stays or become more famous.

The fact there is one rpg that is famous is actually a good thing because it means there is more people playing rpgs in general: if dnd was not so much represented in fiction people would probably play rpgs in general less.

In terms of design dnd is in many ways horrible or over-convoluted or lacking in advice for the gm and players but design does not matters because people playing dnd often do not even read half of the rules and people probably disregard any advice the game gives them.

Anonymouswizard
2021-09-21, 08:37 AM
5e works at level 20, 3.5 breaks before level 20.

-DF

Honestly, I'm not sure 5e works at level 1.

Although I feel 5e's problem is closer to 'numbers are designed for situations where you roll multiple times, most skill uses are once and done'.

Telok
2021-09-21, 10:18 AM
Found my stuff on rolls. Still rough draft, missing full suite of examples.

1. Who rolls
One person
Several people in order
Several people at once
Everyone in order
Everyone at once

2. Target numbers (may combine)
Over/under a static number
Opposed (Amy vs Bob)
Sum total (add all rolls until the number is something)
Sum total being reduced by something

3. Outcome (may combine)
Binary success/failure
Continue rolling until something
Best X out of Y rolls (a.k.a. X success before Y+1-X failures)
By amount (degrees of success/failure)

Examples:
A single basketball half court free throw for $100,000. One person, one roll, binary outcome.
Tug-of-war game. All at once, sum total reduced by opposed team roll, continues until amount of success is reached by one side.
Chess match, play by play. Each person in order by side, could be opposed by the previous persons roll, could be roll until 6 success before 3 losses with possible success/loss removed for rolling a sufficient degree of success.
Open giant door. Several people at once, each person has to get over a minimum number, sum rolls until over a large number, reduce by opposed check of person on other side of door trying to keep it closed.

Frankly it all comes down to whether you're rolling to find success/failure, how long it takes to succeed, or how much you succeed/fail by.

Quertus
2021-09-21, 11:20 AM
In 5e, the GM can involve both the +11 specialist and the +0 unskilled character in a challenge.

In 3.5 the GM picks either the +22 specialist or the +0 unskilled character: Only one of their rolls will matter.

There is a lot more variety to 3.5 than 5.e, but I figure the "best" of the two systems has got to be the one that is playable by the most players.

-DF


My main disagreement would be that rolling dice != playing the game.
Only one of them will be rolling, yes. And in some scenes, nobody rolls anything. Are those scenes "not playing the game"? Is planning a heist in Shadowrun not part of the game? Is a climactic negotiation to make peace between the PCs' city and the Drow city underneath it, so they can together resist the invading Mind Flayer empire, "barely playing the game" because there may be only a couple rolls involved? Is a caster who only uses spells without attack rolls not playing until they need to roll something?

The other angle is challenge, and while I'd agree that the given skill check is only a challenge for one of them, I don't see that as a problem. Lots of things are only conditionally challenging:
* Crossing a big chasm is difficult ... unless you can fly.
* Getting inside the court is difficult ... unless you're a noble.
* Crossing Fever Swamp is difficult ... unless you're immune to disease and poison.
* Getting passage to Middle-of-Nowhere Island is difficult ... unless you're rich enough to charter your own ship.
* Deciphering this ancient script is difficult ... unless you happen to speak the language.

Challenge is best thought of in aggregate rather than a set of fixed points which must each be challenging. You have a series of obstacles. Depending on the party, some of those will be challenges and others won't. The ones that aren't should generally be resolved quickly, which means that in terms of real-time spent playing, challenging situations will account for a larger portion than their absolute frequency would suggest. If you miscalculated and an entire adventure is resolved with very few difficulties? Not a problem IME - no player has complained about a single adventure being too easy, and often it's a welcome chance to show off. If all the campaign is too easy it could get dull, yes, but it's not hard to make the next part more difficult.

I was going to write a spoof of the "have to be challenged to be playing the game" stance, but plenty of posters have already pointed out the problems with this mindset, so I'll refrain. Instead, I'll just ask, what does the world-building look like when the clueless kid beating on your head with a rock not infrequently does better at brain surgery than the trained medical professional? It seems to me that, due to the world-building overhead, "everyone can participate has a chance" is decidedly not the playable/"best"/easy solution.

For aggregate difficulty… I mean, the same group made 3 parties. One was "average", a second struggled with most things, and the third was a group of BDHs who waded through almost everything like they were humans (and struggled to convince the citizens that we were… if not "the good guys", then at least "the lesser of two evils". So I think that there's a huge range of amount and frequency (and source) of challenge that can still make for a fun game. Other than that clarification, @icefractal, I agree with your excellent post. Kudos on pointing out that the "not a challenge" portions generally shouldn't consume significant table time! :smallsmile:

Cluedrew
2021-09-21, 11:51 AM
On D&D's Quality: D&D is kind of like Call of Duty. Call of Duty is a good computer game, no question about it. Is Call of Duty the best computer game? Does liking computer games mean you have like Call of Duty? No to both.


Instead, I'll just ask, what does the world-building look like when the clueless kid beating on your head with a rock not infrequently does better at brain surgery than the trained medical professional?You know I don't care how good at brain surgery you are, hitting someone on the head with a rock is not going to fix brain damage. So I expect those two to do about as well as each other. Which leads into my question:

What d20 system (or any really) makes both of those viable character concepts and then puts no more support behind it than a skill modifier? Can a name a system that has "Medicine: Brain Surgery" as a skill and lets you attempt that with no modifier or other buys? How about equipment? Does giving the trained medical professional tools, an operating room and a support team do anything?

Which I think gets into the real problem here: I have my problems with the 1d20+stat vs. a target number resolution system. But even locking all that in (and not adding things like graded success, multi-part checks or rerolls) that is already ignoring so much of what can make a skill system good or bad. Like where do the modifiers come from? What rules determine when you make a role? Plus you have things like how you frame the results which aren't mechanical but do effect the feel of a system.

In other words: I think d20 variance is too high but good supporting rules structure can make or break the system overall.

Telok
2021-09-21, 02:07 PM
In other words: I think d20 variance is too high but good supporting rules structure can make or break the system overall.

I think d20 variance is great for playing Paranoia. Honestly you could write almost any randomization system (heck, I did one that used beer, pretzels, and a bowl) a get it to work for almost anything with great supporting rules. Likewise you could take the best dicing method and turn it into "roll for shoes" with bad rules.

We have 40+ years of using d20s in the hobby, it can work just fine. Write something like the early d&d 4e skill challenges where %success went closer to 100% the higher "difficulty" went and it isn't the dice that are the issue.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-22, 12:46 AM
Sure.

But my point was that if you bother with as may rules as 5E has and all its rule based restrictions, you would expect the rules to give you proper answers instead of heavily relying on freeform.

There are many games with way better skill systems where i don't have to explain away how the performance of the fighter is not actually better than the bard ones even if the rolls say so. It is a weakness of 5E. And it remains a weakness even if i can paint it over with freeform and GM fiat.

Well that’s the thing: when I run 5E the way I described I’m not “painting over” anything. The process of setting the stakes and determining contextually what success and failure mean on this specific roll aren’t some extra thing you need to do. It’s just how the game works. You call for a check when something’s at stake, taking the whole state of the fiction into account to decide what’s at stake. That’s just playing the game. And the rules do give you proper answers: the ability check answers “does this go well or badly?” which is all it’s meant to answer, everything else comes from context.

To your first paragraph: I’ll point out that, outside of combat, the rules of 5E are pretty damn simple. I mean, I’m only really talking about ability checks here. As I said, none of this applies to combat because in combat there are all these other rules and structures that determine the stakes for you. But you are right that once you start playing in this way you feel less need for all those complex rules. 5E isn’t my favourite game and I wasn’t defending it per se - just explaining why I don’t think the “d20 variance” is actually a problem.

Hytheter
2021-09-22, 04:10 AM
Honestly you could write almost any randomization system (heck, I did one that used beer, pretzels, and a bowl) a get it to work for almost anything with great supporting rules.

I believe that's what they call designing a TTRPG. :P

You're right, though. The RNG is less important than the mechanics it plugs into. You can get a long way just by adjusting modifiers up and down, let alone all the rules and interactions that go on top.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-22, 05:17 AM
I believe that's what they call designing a TTRPG. :P

You're right, though. The RNG is less important than the mechanics it plugs into. You can get a long way just by adjusting modifiers up and down, let alone all the rules and interactions that go on top.

Yeah definitely. I think structures are more important than specific mechanics, in fact.

kyoryu
2021-09-22, 09:53 AM
I believe that's what they call designing a TTRPG. :P

You're right, though. The RNG is less important than the mechanics it plugs into. You can get a long way just by adjusting modifiers up and down, let alone all the rules and interactions that go on top.

See my post way earlier in the thread about how to reduce the worst bits of this :) And most of that isn't even with adjusting modifiers, just in changing how skill checks are framed.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-22, 10:12 AM
See my post way earlier in the thread about how to reduce the worst bits of this :) And most of that isn't even with adjusting modifiers, just in changing how skill checks are framed.

Just went back and read it, and yeah, exactly that.

A good simple concrete example is to track time in some way. Use a timeline, or countdown clocks, or random encounter checks so you can fall back on “it takes up time” as a default meaningful consequence.

martixy
2021-09-22, 12:24 PM
That said, I think it’s actually impossible to have an RPG that doesn’t involve some amount of GM (and player) fiat, free form narration, judgement calls and “whims”. The medium relies on a shared understanding of a fictional scenario, no matter how rigorous the rules. In a game like 3.5 the rules for climbing a cliff might exactingly account for all the different factors and potential outcomes. But to engage those rules in the first place the group has to agree, in a qualitative and free form way, that someone in the imaginary world is attempting to climb a cliff. The 5E style I described is doing the exact same thing, just the free form part extends a bit further and the role of the rules is smaller.

Allow me to introduce you to something called a "Single player computer RPG". No GM fiat, no free-form anything, no judgements, no whims. At best one player's headcanon.


What d20 system (or any really) makes both of those viable character concepts and then puts no more support behind it than a skill modifier? Can a name a system that has "Medicine: Brain Surgery" as a skill and lets you attempt that with no modifier or other buys? How about equipment? Does giving the trained medical professional tools, an operating room and a support team do anything?

Put the schmuck in scrubs in the operating room with all the support staff and equipment (and for the sake of argument accept the absurd situation he's allowed to perform the operation) and tell me how high the chances of success are. It seems to me you're moving the goalposts here.

The point is, calling someone a specialist, when someone lucky can achieve the same success is a weakness of the system.

Lets approach this from the other end. Answer the following question:

At what point do we consider someone a specialist? What part of the performance of a specialist should be luck? 50%? 10%? 1%?

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-22, 02:16 PM
Allow me to introduce you to something called a "Single player computer RPG". No GM fiat, no free-form anything, no judgements, no whims. At best one player's headcanon.



Yeah when I said RPG I meant TTRPG, not video games. I was talking about medium specificity and that’s a different medium of course.

martixy
2021-09-22, 02:39 PM
Yeah when I said RPG I meant TTRPG, not video games. I was talking about medium specificity and that’s a different medium of course.

Why exclude video games though?

kyoryu
2021-09-22, 02:53 PM
Why exclude video games though?

Because this is a TTRPG-focused forum, in a TTRPG-focused section of the forum, so that's the understood context unless specified otherwise?

martixy
2021-09-22, 03:07 PM
Because this is a TTRPG-focused forum, in a TTRPG-focused section of the forum, so that's the understood context unless specified otherwise?

This is not a good reason. Including them illustrates that you can have RPGs entirely devoid of GM-fiat.

I agree with HidesHisEyes on the stakes. It's a neat solution to a problem. The point I'm trying to make is not that the solution is bad. It's that the problem exists.

MoiMagnus
2021-09-22, 03:15 PM
Allow me to introduce you to something called a "Single player computer RPG". No GM fiat, no free-form anything, no judgements, no whims. At best one player's headcanon.

That's also the kind of games that says "no you can't do that" every other idea you have that seems reasonable (like jumping/climbing over some obstacles but not others, or not being able to say relevant things to NPCs that could really use those info).

Especially if you're doing a single playthrough the the game, there is a fair share of fiat, judgements and whims, like if you had a GM. Except here it is the developers instead of the GM. Sure, you will eventually get a feeling of how the game will react (assuming the devs keep it consistent over time), but that's the same if you play with the same GM for a long time.

If the dev decided that something would happen at point X, it will happen, no matter how much sense it makes, how consistent it is with what was before, etc. IRL, you can point some obvious mistakes to your GM and they can correct them. You can give feedbacks. In video games, you are powerless against the whims of the devs.

The main difference is that the devs and beta-testers of a game have put thousands of hours of prep before you start playing to map all the different path they will allow you to take and try to maintain consistent rulings for each path. While a GM will be much more limited in prep time, and will be expected to not say "no you can't" each time the players try an action that was not planned at this moment of the scenario and rather rely on improvisation.

noob
2021-09-22, 03:16 PM
Why exclude video games though?

In videogame rpgs it is common to put an emphasis over some aspect at the cost of most others such as an emphasis about a loop of killing and using the equipment of those you killed to kill more.
This in turn created a culture where people say that they are not "real roleplaying games"

Lord Raziere
2021-09-22, 03:29 PM
In videogame rpgs it is common to put an emphasis over some aspect at the cost of most others such as an emphasis about a loop of killing and using the equipment of those you killed to kill more.
This in turn created a culture where people say that they are not "real roleplaying games"

This is funny to me, since DnD started that loop before any of those games existed, and I'm pretty sure you can trace back all the videogames that have the kill/loot cycle to DnD murderhobo games as their origin in some manner. so people saying they're not "real roleplaying games" while in turn playing DnD is the original pot calling all the kettles made in its image black.

noob
2021-09-22, 03:34 PM
This is funny to me, since DnD started that loop before any of those games existed, and I'm pretty sure you can trace back all the videogames that have the kill/loot cycle to DnD murderhobo games as their origin in some manner. so people saying they're not "real roleplaying games" while in turn playing DnD is the original pot calling all the kettles made in its image black.

I do not think that this loop is a bad thing in itself: it makes pretty fun games.
What I do not like is the tedious farming aspect some videogame rpgs have: I do not want to do 5000 times the same dungeon: I am no longer playing a fun role that makes any sense I am now a worker working at the most boring killing factory.
One videogame rpg I would have liked to try was based on that loop but did not have farming: when you killed something it was dead forever and you could not just restart and see the thing alive again and kill it again.(I believe the name was something like van hellsing I forgot the real name)

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-22, 05:11 PM
Why exclude video games though?

Well, because it’s a different medium. It just happens to have the same name. For me, it’s part of the definition of a tabletop RPG that it relies on a shared understanding of a fictional space. In a video game the developers create that space and as player you have to accept it. That’s a very different process and not related to the point I was making.


This is not a good reason. Including them illustrates that you can have RPGs entirely devoid of GM-fiat.

I agree with HidesHisEyes on the stakes. It's a neat solution to a problem. The point I'm trying to make is not that the solution is bad. It's that the problem exists.

How do video games fit in to this? I’m confused.

martixy
2021-09-22, 06:05 PM
Well, because it’s a different medium. It just happens to have the same name. For me, it’s part of the definition of a tabletop RPG that it relies on a shared understanding of a fictional space. In a video game the developers create that space and as player you have to accept it. That’s a very different process and not related to the point I was making.

What is your point exactly?


How do video games fit in to this? I’m confused.

Oh, those 2 statements were mostly unrelated. Sorry for the confusion.

Although not entirely... in video game design there is a term "ludonarrative dissonance" - when the gameplay conflicts with the story being told to the player. 5e suffers from this effect. Being fixed by GM fiat does not erase its existence.

TBH I wish people would answer the question I posed in that post instead of focusing on my off-hand remark.

Cluedrew
2021-09-22, 08:12 PM
Likewise you could take the best dicing method and turn it into "roll for shoes" with bad rules.Why you beating on Roll for Shoes? It may not have the deepest mechanics (it fits on an index card) but I played it, I had fun and the mechanics contributed to that fun far more than they detracted from it. That makes it a good system in my book.


It seems to me you're moving the goalposts here. [...] At what point do we consider someone a specialist? What part of the performance of a specialist should be luck? 50%? 10%? 1%?I was very purposeful ignoring the original goal posts and aiming for another set and did not intend to trick anyone. Because that was the point, I think people were asking the wrong question. "Is it better for a specialist to have a +11 or +22 base modifier" is not a useful question to ask in isolation (even if we know its 1d20 plus stat).

In fact, how am I even supposed to answer your other questions? I'm not sure how to define specialist beyond "is specialised" but even taking the extreme of someone really good at one thing only, the second question is still hard. Is this in a single action or over a scene? Are they doing something routine or something they were called in for because they were the only one who even has a chance. Context is important. Also I'm not sure I could put exact numbers to it either. I once had homebrew system, crunched the numbers to get the success rates where I wanted and one play test in I realized that those numbers were obviously not what I wanted.

So, sorry I can't answer the question, but I honestly don't see how. I can tell you I want a system where characters can contribute to scenes, people can operate outside their strengths but it is also really obvious when a character is doing something they are good at. And that's not even the full list, just some of the high priority ones related to a the topic. Boiling all of that done to "+22 or +11" doesn't mean anything to me.

Telok
2021-09-22, 10:15 PM
Why you beating on Roll for Shoes? It may not have the deepest mechanics (it fits on an index card) but I played it, I had fun and the mechanics contributed to that fun far more than they detracted from it. That makes it a good system in my book.

Oh I'm not bashing Roll for Shoes, its got a good system for it. You just probably shouldn't use the system for something less light-hearted and improv.

Its a bit of an extreme comparison but D&D 4e and 5e non-combat felt a lot like Roll for Shoes without the fun, under a couple different DMs. In combat you're one-hit-killing ogres and dropping fireballs that roast a dozen goblins. Leave combat and its all "walk up a moderate gravel slope: dc 11" and "offer a bribe to the guy who just asked for it: dc 13" or "spot unhidden hanging net trap in middle of well lit room: dc 17".

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-23, 01:33 AM
What is your point exactly?



Oh, those 2 statements were mostly unrelated. Sorry for the confusion.

Although not entirely... in video game design there is a term "ludonarrative dissonance" - when the gameplay conflicts with the story being told to the player. 5e suffers from this effect. Being fixed by GM fiat does not erase its existence.


Ah, I see where you’re coming from. My point was that fiat isn’t a fix for something, it is an inherent part of TABLETOP roleplaying games. Not just fiat but conversation, collaborative imagination and subjective agreements. This is definitional imo: if it doesn’t have these aspects then it’s not a TTRPG. And I don’t consider it a problem whatsoever.

I was saying that games like 3.5 or Pathfinder try to limit the subjective aspect of the medium by making the rules more deterministic, in pursuit of consistency, predictability and so on. And I was arguing that 5E (outside of combat) takes a different approach where the mechanics are much less deterministic and subjective agreements about the fiction play a bigger role.

To be clear, both approaches are valid. My point was that if you take the more subjective approach (as I think 5E wants you to) then the problem of “the numbers are too small, they get drowned out by the d20 variance” isn’t a problem. It’s not that you solve the problem, it simply isn’t a problem in the first place.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-23, 01:38 AM
Oh I'm not bashing Roll for Shoes, its got a good system for it. You just probably shouldn't use the system for something less light-hearted and improv.

Its a bit of an extreme comparison but D&D 4e and 5e non-combat felt a lot like Roll for Shoes without the fun, under a couple different DMs. In combat you're one-hit-killing ogres and dropping fireballs that roast a dozen goblins. Leave combat and its all "walk up a moderate gravel slope: dc 11" and "offer a bribe to the guy who just asked for it: dc 13" or "spot unhidden hanging net trap in middle of well lit room: dc 17".

That’s what Kyoryu and I have been getting at: those examples are bad GMing. Unless there’s some other pressure or danger in the fictional context, none of those things are meaningful challenges for a character and they don’t call for a roll. I agree what you’re describing sucks, but it’s not the game’s fault.

Telok
2021-09-23, 03:18 AM
I agree what you’re describing sucks, but it’s not the game’s fault.

I would phrase it as "it's not the fault of the dice mechanics of the game when those mechanics are misused".

I consider the game to be the whole published bundle that people hold in their hands, read, and run from the books. Therefore I consider places where the game hands you a problem with no solution or bad advice to be the game's fault.

Now, how much of an issue these faults are is variable and subjective. Variable based on the skills of the groups, the style of the game, etc., etc. And subjective based on some people not noticing, not caring, having previous habits that avoid an issue, etc., etc.

I, personally, have not had fun in D&D non-combat encounters since the end of v3.5 up to the plague shutdown, if the d20 was in play. Because the d20 high-or-low result often made anything I said, anything I did, anything on the chatacter sheet, irrelevant. Plus of course the too frequent rolling and the 'normal' dc 15. To me that indicates problems in, if not in the mechanics, then the presentation and advice coming from the game materials to those DMs. Of course, I also despised StarFinder space combat. I like sci-fi games and have a selection of space combat models across them, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The StarFinder space combat boardgame had several immedately apparent design flaws and that grated on my nerves. The DM and I sat down and hashed out agreements on which things we would avoid to not totally fubar the whole thing. Definite issues.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-23, 04:22 AM
Computer games don't actually lack fiat, arbitration etc.. They just take place at a different point of a game's life cycle. Whoever makes a single player computer game has to make all the same kind of decisions as a tabletop game master while they are designing and programming the game. When and where ever they fail at making the game complete enough, the game program will crash, halt, terminate or be caught in a loop up untill the program is returned to them and they make a new ruling and program it into a game patch. There isn't a fundamental difference between that and a game master on the tabletop making rulings, the process just has greater latency.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-23, 09:45 AM
I consider the game to be the whole published bundle that people hold in their hands, read, and run from the books. Therefore I consider places where the game hands you a problem with no solution or bad advice to be the game's fault.


Yeah that’s fair. The fact that the game’s text doesn’t explain these concepts is a problem with the game. And the majority of my experiences with 5E have been plagued by such problems, including as a GM because it took me several years of playing and running the game to figure it out. To be honest I’m not sure how much of a conscious choice the design philosophy of 5E even was, on the designers’ part.


Computer games don't actually lack fiat, arbitration etc.. They just take place at a different point of a game's life cycle. Whoever makes a single player computer game has to make all the same kind of decisions as a tabletop game master while they are designing and programming the game. When and where ever they fail at making the game complete enough, the game program will crash, halt, terminate or be caught in a loop up untill the program is returned to them and they make a new ruling and program it into a game patch. There isn't a fundamental difference between that and a game master on the tabletop making rulings, the process just has greater latency.

Well I can see what you’re saying on a purely technical level, that it’s only a quantitative difference in latency. But I still think that on the level of the actual experience of play, it is fundamentally different. In a video game, the experience of play is that the game world is there (whatever version of it) and I’m interacting with it entirely on its terms. In a TTRPG the game world only exists through my interaction with the other players. We have to agree that something is the case in the fictional scenario before we can engage the mechanics at all.

MoiMagnus
2021-09-23, 10:09 AM
Well I can see what you’re saying on a purely technical level, that it’s only a quantitative difference in latency. But I still think that on the level of the actual experience of play, it is fundamentally different. In a video game, the experience of play is that the game world is there (whatever version of it) and I’m interacting with it entirely on its terms. In a TTRPG the game world only exists through my interaction with the other players. We have to agree that something is the case in the fictional scenario before we can engage the mechanics at all.

If you're playing a single player TTRPG (which some peoples do), the game world exists entirely within the mind of your GM. And with a GM dictatorial enough, you're interacting with it entirely on his term too.

kyoryu
2021-09-23, 10:10 AM
Well I can see what you’re saying on a purely technical level, that it’s only a quantitative difference in latency. But I still think that on the level of the actual experience of play, it is fundamentally different. In a video game, the experience of play is that the game world is there (whatever version of it) and I’m interacting with it entirely on its terms. In a TTRPG the game world only exists through my interaction with the other players. We have to agree that something is the case in the fictional scenario before we can engage the mechanics at all.

Also, the game can only deal with things (either explicitly or on a system level) that the designers/programmers thought of in adavnce. A GM can make a ruling on the fly - for a video game you'd have to somehow submit a request and wait for a patch (even if the ask was technically possible).

Telok
2021-09-23, 10:13 AM
To be honest I’m not sure how much of a conscious choice the design philosophy of 5E even was, on the designers’ part.

I believe the "design philosophy" for it was a cross between a committee meeting and a "what's popular this week" survey. It doesn't seem, to me, to have as much a 'core design' as it has bunch of D&D tropes dropped onto a combat engine.

Over time I've started preferring systems designed by one person or a small group. They seem to have better... focus? And are often better able to describe what they're good at, bad at, and how they intend to be used.

martixy
2021-09-23, 11:27 AM
I consider the game to be the whole published bundle that people hold in their hands, read, and run from the books. Therefore I consider places where the game hands you a problem with no solution or bad advice to be the game's fault.

I'm with Telok on this one.

Due to the complexity of GMing, any assistance the system can give me, taking off the mental burden of running the game, I consider a good thing. Requiring more GM fiat requires either more brain power or more shortcuts taken by the GM. I'm sure there's people a lot better than me at multitasking, but I need any aid I can get when running the game.


So, sorry I can't answer the question, but I honestly don't see how. I can tell you I want a system where characters can contribute to scenes, people can operate outside their strengths but it is also really obvious when a character is doing something they are good at. And that's not even the full list, just some of the high priority ones related to a the topic. Boiling all of that done to "+22 or +11" doesn't mean anything to me.

I was looking for any answer you care to give that you deemed reasonable. Perhaps some pattern would emerge over multiple answers, but alas no one took me up on it. I wanted to do some interesting things with the answers.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-23, 11:27 AM
If you're playing a single player TTRPG (which some peoples do), the game world exists entirely within the mind of your GM. And with a GM dictatorial enough, you're interacting with it entirely on his term too.

I disagree, I think the game world exists in both your minds. Bear in mind by “game world” I don’t mean the setting, I mean the imagined scenario. If I say “I climb the cliff” then the GM can be as dictatorial as they want, they have to collaborate with me in that act of imagination in order for the game to proceed. Even if they tell me I can’t do it, that’s still a collaboration. In a video game I can either climb the cliff or not depending on what the code says.


I believe the "design philosophy" for it was a cross between a committee meeting and a "what's popular this week" survey. It doesn't seem, to me, to have as much a 'core design' as it has bunch of D&D tropes dropped onto a combat engine.

Over time I've started preferring systems designed by one person or a small group. They seem to have better... focus? And are often better able to describe what they're good at, bad at, and how they intend to be used.

Yeah I get that impression too. Nothing I’ve said is intended as a strong defence of 5E btw. I don’t think it’s terrible, I’ll always have a soft spot for it, but it’s not the game for me. I just wanted to explain why I think it actually does “want to be played” a certain way, even if it’s by accident, and by playing that way you sidestep the “chaos plateau” problem.

Cluedrew
2021-09-23, 11:27 AM
Oh I'm not bashing Roll for Shoes, its got a good system for it. You just probably shouldn't use the system for something less light-hearted and improv.Woops!

I remember in the early conversation about Roll for Shoes there was a modification suggested that was countered (not by the creator, just someone on the thread) with something like "might encourage thinking, bad idea". It's a light-hearted romp through a made up fantasy land, mechanics with trade-offs and calculations actually could get in the way of that. The current system rewards failure and exceptional success, and that works.

D&D an the other hand... I've never felt the mechanics really pushing me towards anything particularly fun or interesting. It is bread. You can make sandwiches with it. It is a good enough system that it can continue to be the iconic and marketable brand it is supposed to be. Which I think is 5e's real design philosophy. Maybe not deliberately but from the bits and pieces of design history I have heard there seemed to be a real fear of rocking the boat and getting the fans angry again.

martixy
2021-09-23, 11:32 AM
3 responses at the same exact time, lol :smallbiggrin:


Woops!

I remember in the early conversation about Roll for Shoes there was a modification suggested that was countered (not by the creator, just someone on the thread) with something like "might encourage thinking, bad idea". It's a light-hearted romp through a made up fantasy land, mechanics with trade-offs and calculations actually could get in the way of that. The current system rewards failure and exceptional success, and that works.

D&D an the other hand... I've never felt the mechanics really pushing me towards anything particularly fun or interesting. It is bread. You can make sandwiches with it. It is a good enough system that it can continue to be the iconic and marketable brand it is supposed to be. Which I think is 5e's real design philosophy. Maybe not deliberately but from the bits and pieces of design history I have heard there seemed to be a real fear of rocking the boat and getting the fans angry again.

I am fairly certain the design philosophy of 5e is largely external to the game and motivated by market goals (mass market appeal, economic targets), rather than gameplay considerations.

Quertus
2021-09-23, 11:35 AM
Write something like the early d&d 4e skill challenges where %success went closer to 100% the higher "difficulty" went and it isn't the dice that are the issue.

Wait, what? I though WoD was the only system where their world-building had to make sense of the character wanting the task to be harder. How did 4e fail here? As much as I rag on the 4e skill system, I wasn't aware of this.


On D&D's Quality: D&D is kind of like Call of Duty. Call of Duty is a good computer game, no question about it. Is Call of Duty the best computer game? Does liking computer games mean you have like Call of Duty? No to both.

You know I don't care how good at brain surgery you are, hitting someone on the head with a rock is not going to fix brain damage. So I expect those two to do about as well as each other. Which leads into my question:

What d20 system (or any really) makes both of those viable character concepts and then puts no more support behind it than a skill modifier? Can a name a system that has "Medicine: Brain Surgery" as a skill and lets you attempt that with no modifier or other buys? How about equipment? Does giving the trained medical professional tools, an operating room and a support team do anything?

Which I think gets into the real problem here: I have my problems with the 1d20+stat vs. a target number resolution system. But even locking all that in (and not adding things like graded success, multi-part checks or rerolls) that is already ignoring so much of what can make a skill system good or bad. Like where do the modifiers come from? What rules determine when you make a role? Plus you have things like how you frame the results which aren't mechanical but do effect the feel of a system..

We're again touching on the question of what role-playing actually means… or glancing off it into "what do 'skill' and 'understanding' mean" with the "brain surgery via concussive maintenance". My point was, a sufficiently ignorant stone age tribe, their best attempt at brain surgery with their +0 bonus might be to hit you upside the head with a rock. Yet, mechanically, in certain editions of the game, they will not infrequently outperform the trained professional

If you start going too fast down the road of "bonuses for X, Y, and Z" (thereby, in actuality, making X, Y, and Z into requirements (not unlike Vorpal sword are for beheading)), you've got to be careful not to go down the Path of Marty alla the SUE Files.

But a skilled surgeon, working with passable tools in the dirt? Sounds like a good place for "success, with complications" (which, itself, is simply the product of lazy minds trying to boil multiple factors down into a single roll, rather than evaluating them individually).


In other words: I think d20 variance is too high but good supporting rules structure can make or break the system overall.

I have the skill "create minions" at +1000. As a Common Divine action (see rules), I can create my skill check result number of CR ½ minions of a type based on my Portfolio. To create higher CR minions, subtract 100 times the CR from the result. (Alternately, convert to DC - base DC 0, +100/CR, amount over DC = # of minions created, but this actually changes other interactions in the system.)

Is d20 variance too high?


Allow me to introduce you to something called a "Single player computer RPG". No GM fiat, no free-form anything, no judgements, no whims. At best one player's headcanon.

Also, not an RPG. At least not as I define the term. Because you cannot just ask, "WWQD?". You can't just roleplay, you have to constantly metagame, and select from the limited options that the interface provides. You cannot burn down the slums in Pool of Radiance, you cannot hand off your lightsaber to a teammate in any Star Wars videogame I've played, you cannot buy your own boat in Titan Quest, not for a million gold. You are almost never actually taking the action that matches WWQD.


In videogame rpgs it is common to put an emphasis over some aspect at the cost of most others such as an emphasis about a loop of killing and using the equipment of those you killed to kill more.
This in turn created a culture where people say that they are not "real roleplaying games"


This is funny to me, since DnD started that loop before any of those games existed, and I'm pretty sure you can trace back all the videogames that have the kill/loot cycle to DnD murderhobo games as their origin in some manner. so people saying they're not "real roleplaying games" while in turn playing DnD is the original pot calling all the kettles made in its image black.

In (at least most editions of) D&D, the PCs can talk to the mayor, erect a statue of the town hero, burn down the library, steal farmer Bob's prize cow, and/or a NI number of other things. Having the ability to handle such actions is a requirement for an RPG, as I use the term. Not having such capacity is what disqualifies computer games from being RPGs.

But if your players can only engage D&D as a kill/loot cycle, such that you cannot tell the difference, then you have my pity.

warty goblin
2021-09-23, 12:58 PM
Trepanning is well attested in a number of stone age cultures, and is at least brain surgery adjacent. Based on indications of healing, patients also survived fairly commonly.

That said, I suspect the number of GMs who would allow the player to roll for removing a tumor from somebody's temporal lobe because the player says "I smack him with a rock" is very, very, small. The bit of the rules that handles this is the bit where the GM only calls for a roll when the outcome is in doubt, and the outcome is entirely obvious here.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-23, 01:00 PM
I'm with Telok on this one.

Due to the complexity of GMing, any assistance the system can give me, taking off the mental burden of running the game, I consider a good thing. Requiring more GM fiat requires either more brain power or more shortcuts taken by the GM. I'm sure there's people a lot better than me at multitasking, but I need any aid I can get when running the game.

Sorry, I missed this one earlier.

It sounds like maybe our brains are just wired differently, which means there’s no real disagreement, we will just like different games.

For me, I want the system to give good, rigorous assistance in running the game. I absolutely don’t want to be in the position of having to write a story, since the whole reason I play TTRPGs is to have stories write themselves while I drink beer and play a fun game with my friends. (I’ve written several stories and it’s hard work).

But when the system assists me by being (what I would consider) overly deterministic, I actually find it adds to the mental burden. If I’m playing a TTRPG then I’m already thinking of the basic act of gameplay as primarily rooted in a shared, subjective understanding of the fiction. Beyond the bare minimum core mechanic that makes it into a game instead of pure free form roleplaying, any added mechanical complexity is, for me, added mental burden that needs to justify itself by adding something that I’m not getting from the subjective interpretation that I’m doing anyway. And again, we *are* doing subjective interpretation anyway, because that’s a definitional part of a TTRPG.

Sorry, long day, not sure if that makes sense!

Telok
2021-09-23, 01:19 PM
Wait, what? I though WoD was the only system where their world-building had to make sense of the character wanting the task to be harder. How did 4e fail here? As much as I rag on the 4e skill system, I wasn't aware of this.

From my (possibly faulty) memory it was related to the expected success rate of any one roll being >50% and the law of really big numbers. The challenges were initally worded as "higher difficulty = more rolls" not the difficulty being the ratio of success/fails. If the expected success rate was 2/3 and you had 3success:2fail challenge you averaged landing at roll #4 with a 67% success at the challenge. Crank it up to a 6:4 challenge and you expect averages of 6 success and 3 fails after roll #9. Crank it up to a 9:6 and at roll #13 you average 8 success and 4 fails already banked and now face effectively a 1:2 challenge, plus because you had more rolls happening you were closer to the avarages across multiple challenges.

Its like combat, more rolls is more average which makes the outcome more certain. Fewer rolls is more swingy and closer to a flat distribution. If the pcs can put their best face forward and succeed more than they fail then the function looks more like "more rolls = greater success rate". It was just your basic "didn't do the math" failure.

MoiMagnus
2021-09-23, 01:20 PM
I disagree, I think the game world exists in both your minds. Bear in mind by “game world” I don’t mean the setting, I mean the imagined scenario. If I say “I climb the cliff” then the GM can be as dictatorial as they want, they have to collaborate with me in that act of imagination in order for the game to proceed. Even if they tell me I can’t do it, that’s still a collaboration. In a video game I can either climb the cliff or not depending on what the code says.


But you might not know whether or not you can climb the cliff in a video game. You make a suggestion by clicking on it, and the "game" either accept or deny this suggestion by making you climb or not. (And by making "suggestions" that were not initially intended by the devs, you might even end up in weird glitchy area you were not supposed to access)

For me the in-between case that shows that those two worlds are not that different is those text-based RPGs where you have a description of the room on the screen, then you enter a sentence to describe your action, the RPG tries to understand what you mean (based on keywords for the old ones, the new deep learning ones are a little more advanced than that) and act in consequence.

kyoryu
2021-09-23, 01:40 PM
From my (possibly faulty) memory it was related to the expected success rate of any one roll being >50% and the law of really big numbers. The challenges were initally worded as "higher difficulty = more rolls" not the difficulty being the ratio of success/fails. If the expected success rate was 2/3 and you had 3success:2fail challenge you averaged landing at roll #4 with a 67% success at the challenge. Crank it up to a 6:4 challenge and you expect averages of 6 success and 3 fails after roll #9. Crank it up to a 9:6 and at roll #13 you average 8 success and 4 fails already banked and now face effectively a 1:2 challenge, plus because you had more rolls happening you were closer to the avarages across multiple challenges.

Its like combat, more rolls is more average which makes the outcome more certain. Fewer rolls is more swingy and closer to a flat distribution. If the pcs can put their best face forward and succeed more than they fail then the function looks more like "more rolls = greater success rate". It was just your basic "didn't do the math" failure.

IIRC, though, higher difficulty challenges did up the DC as well.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-23, 02:25 PM
Well I can see what you’re saying on a purely technical level, that it’s only a quantitative difference in latency. But I still think that on the level of the actual experience of play, it is fundamentally different. In a video game, the experience of play is that the game world is there (whatever version of it) and I’m interacting with it entirely on its terms. In a TTRPG the game world only exists through my interaction with the other players. We have to agree that something is the case in the fictional scenario before we can engage the mechanics at all.

The play experience differs, but that isn't what's relevant. Fiat, arbitration, judgement calls and degree of freeform are about what kind of decisions the game master equivalent is doing. If you analyze what a tabletop game master is doing and what the designer and programmer of computer game is doing, you will find they are doing the same kind of decisions.

Let me give you an analogy. An airport, I forget which one, had a problem with people complaining they had to wait several minutes for their luggage. So, how did they solve the complaints? They moved the point from which passengers receive their luggage further away from the arrival gate, so people had to walk for several minutes to get there. Complains dropped to zero. The actual way the airport processed the luggage and the actual time it took remained the same, but the experience of having to wait was eliminated by having the people walk around for a bit.

The idea that you are engaging a tabletop game on "your terms" and a computer game at "its terms" is similar kind of psychological trickery. A tabletop game has you do some extra legwork, like having to imagine how characters look like versus a computer game drawing how they look for you, but the actual game relevant process is the same. Your brain still needs to interprete and agree with a fictional scenario created by another entity in both cases.

---


Also, the game can only deal with things (either explicitly or on a system level) that the designers/programmers thought of in adavnce.

This is a common misconception of how computer programs works. A computer program can only do what its instructions allow, but it isn't a given that all functions allowed by its instruction were preprogrammed and predicted by makers of that program. Computer programs of all kinds, games included, exhibit unanticipated behaviours fairly frequently. When they are detrimental, we call them bugs or glitches, but sometimes they are just unexpected functionality caused by the game's processes.

For an example that recently made the news, treasure seeking foxes in Skyrim. (https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/the-mystery-of-the-treasure-seeking-foxes-in-skyrim-has-been-solved-3025253) None of the game makers decided to make the foxes that way, their behaviour is an emergent trait of the complex subsystems they made.

Another famous example: building computers in Minecraft. (https://www.businessinsider.com/virtual-computers-built-inside-minecraft-2015-2?r=US&IR=T) I can almost guarantee the original designer of Minecraft didn't think people would build computers, much less the specific computers they eventually made. They never needed to, complex generative games can allow for emergent functions never anticipated by their makers.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-23, 05:21 PM
The play experience differs, but that isn't what's relevant. Fiat, arbitration, judgement calls and degree of freeform are about what kind of decisions the game master equivalent is doing. If you analyze what a tabletop game master is doing and what the designer and programmer of computer game is doing, you will find they are doing the same kind of decisions.

Let me give you an analogy. An airport, I forget which one, had a problem with people complaining they had to wait several minutes for their luggage. So, how did they solve the complaints? They moved the point from which passengers receive their luggage further away from the arrival gate, so people had to walk for several minutes to get there. Complains dropped to zero. The actual way the airport processed the luggage and the actual time it took remained the same, but the experience of having to wait was eliminated by having the people walk around for a bit.

The idea that you are engaging a tabletop game on "your terms" and a computer game at "its terms" is similar kind of psychological trickery. A tabletop game has you do some extra legwork, like having to imagine how characters look like versus a computer game drawing how they look for you, but the actual game relevant process is the same. Your brain still needs to interprete and agree with a fictional scenario created by another entity in both cases.

---



This is a common misconception of how computer programs works. A computer program can only do what its instructions allow, but it isn't a given that all functions allowed by its instruction were preprogrammed and predicted by makers of that program. Computer programs of all kinds, games included, exhibit unanticipated behaviours fairly frequently. When they are detrimental, we call them bugs or glitches, but sometimes they are just unexpected functionality caused by the game's processes.

For an example that recently made the news, treasure seeking foxes in Skyrim. (https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/the-mystery-of-the-treasure-seeking-foxes-in-skyrim-has-been-solved-3025253) None of the game makers decided to make the foxes that way, their behaviour is an emergent trait of the complex subsystems they made.

Another famous example: building computers in Minecraft. (https://www.businessinsider.com/virtual-computers-built-inside-minecraft-2015-2?r=US&IR=T) I can almost guarantee the original designer of Minecraft didn't think people would build computers, much less the specific computers they eventually made. They never needed to, complex generative games can allow for emergent functions never anticipated by their makers.

This is interesting stuff but not really what I was talking about.

What I was getting at is that in a video game, the fictional scenario or game world exists in the game’s code before the player starts playing. Any action the player takes to interact with it similarly pre-exists their play experience, as a potential action that could happen within that system, whether the devs planned for it or not. Playing the game is working the machine. It might work in dazzlingly complex, varied and unexpected ways, but it doesn’t rely on an act of collaborative imagination - it happens when you press the buttons.

By contrast, a TTRPG doesn’t happen at all without an initial act of collaborative imagination. The equivalent to pressing the buttons and engaging the game mechanics - is, say, making a stealth check. But we can only do that once we’ve established that a character is attempting to be stealthy. And the mechanics can’t tell us that that’s happening, we have to agree on it subjectively.

Another way of thinking about it, this one’s about board games but I think it’s relevant to video games as well:

A game of Monopoly arguably tells the story of a group of ruthless entrepreneurs competing to gain a stranglehold on a city’s property market, with the players playing the roles of the entrepreneurs. Why don’t we call it a roleplaying game? I think it’s because if you played a version of Monopoly with “points” instead of money, “tokens” instead of houses and “space 1, space 2” etc instead of Old Kent Road, Leicester Square etc, the game would still function. It might not be as interesting but it would absolutely work as a game. But try to imagine playing D&D with no fiction, only mechanics. The game simply couldn’t happen, because the fiction is what tells you which mechanics to engage and when and how to interpret their results. And the fiction has to be agreed on subjectively and collaboratively in the first instance.

Arguably this doesn’t quite apply to a lot of video games. It’s hard to imagine the gameplay mechanics of Ghost of Tsushima without graphics and animation that at least somewhat resemble sword-fighting, for example. But it’s still a closed mechanical system: from the moment you start playing you’re engaging directly with mechanics. In a TTRPG this isn’t the case, you need to engage purely with the fiction before it’s even possible for the mechanics to get involved.

kyoryu
2021-09-23, 05:49 PM
This is a common misconception of how computer programs works. A computer program can only do what its instructions allow, but it isn't a given that all functions allowed by its instruction were preprogrammed and predicted by makers of that program. Computer programs of all kinds, games included, exhibit unanticipated behaviours fairly frequently. When they are detrimental, we call them bugs or glitches, but sometimes they are just unexpected functionality caused by the game's processes.

For an example that recently made the news, treasure seeking foxes in Skyrim. (https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/the-mystery-of-the-treasure-seeking-foxes-in-skyrim-has-been-solved-3025253) None of the game makers decided to make the foxes that way, their behaviour is an emergent trait of the complex subsystems they made.

Another famous example: building computers in Minecraft. (https://www.businessinsider.com/virtual-computers-built-inside-minecraft-2015-2?r=US&IR=T) I can almost guarantee the original designer of Minecraft didn't think people would build computers, much less the specific computers they eventually made. They never needed to, complex generative games can allow for emergent functions never anticipated by their makers.

I am literally a professional game programmer.

Note that I said "explicitly or at a system level". Did the minecraft developers anticipate computers? No. (Well, maybe.) Did they create the systems via redstone that allowed for computers to be made? YES. It was not explicitly added, but it was added at a system level.

If a concept doesn't exist in a program (or the systems that can create such a concept), then it can't be added. If you take Conway's Game of Life, you can't just add new rules to it without.... adding code for them. But that doesn't mean that things like gliders were part of the original design - they're just a resulting pattern from the systems that were created.

Treasure-hunting foxes were written into Skyrim - just not deliberately. They were following programmed behavior that didn't take navmesh density into account at the design level. I can't just add a laser into Skyrim without modding it or in another way programming it. I can add it to a TTRPG on the fly.

The examples you gave were about emergent behavior from complex systems. That is absolutely a thing. However, said behavior is still limited by the systems as programmed (deliberately or not - computers alwyas do what you tell them, sometimes you just think you told them to do something other than you did).

Cluedrew
2021-09-23, 06:59 PM
My point was, a sufficiently ignorant stone age tribe, their best attempt at brain surgery with their +0 bonus might be to hit you upside the head with a rock. Yet, mechanically, in certain editions of [D&D], they will not infrequently outperform the trained professionalSo I had a long journey with this paragraph, at one point it was going to start with "How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck would chuck wood?" But it all kind of came down to... and what point are you trying to make about the variance of a d20?


But a skilled surgeon, working with passable tools in the dirt? Sounds like a good place for "success, with complications" (which, itself, is simply the product of lazy minds trying to boil multiple factors down into a single roll, rather than evaluating them individually).Lazy minds you say? Like if they weren't so lazy they wouldn't boil it down to a single roll. OK.

I would like to issue a challenge: Can you create a framework for combining the results of multiple rolls, each with a binary result (for bonus points, 1d20+stat vs. target number). It should have similar ease of use, speed and generality as similar systems that include success with complications as a single result at minimum. Examples include Powered by the Apocalypse and Blades in the Dark (which actually show the trade offs that can be made, as they are weaker in generality and, to a lesser extent, ease of use respectively). Then on top of that it needs to show the advantage of this system over the success with complication pattern that "lazy minds" resorted too instead of developing your system.


I have the skill "create minions" at +1000. [...] Is d20 variance too high?Considering that the first bit sounds like something someone would say sarcastically while mocking the d20 system: Yes.

I actually consider huge modifiers to be a patch on top of the too high variance of the d20. If a +1 is too small to make a difference then why are we operating at that level of detail at all?

Quertus
2021-09-24, 11:32 AM
@Cluedrew, a woodchuck could chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. :smallwink:

Based on some of your posts (at least some of which I think were made after I started my previous post), we're saying the same thing: that the "too big - Y/n?" variance of the d20 cannot be measured in a vacuum.

The specific "woodchuck" statement… although more aptly allocated to the current point of the flow of the conversation than directly to the main topic… and misunderstood by most… most directly maps to your comments on "rock it" science brain surgery, that a single modifier doesn't cover or account for every important factor very well, actually. Although my "B.C." comic reference attempting to find the most difficult to believe example to parallel illiterate Barbarian brain surgery… ran afoul of the difference between my ignorance and the Playground's superior knowledge of stone age brain surgery. :smallamused:

As far as "success, with complications" being lazy… I've seen far too many programmers take dozens or hundreds of variables, and condense them down to 1-3, for lots of loss and no gain - "lazy" is the *kindest* term I have for such behavior.

And, yes, it is definitionally lazy, offloading the work from the system or the module to the GM.

Granted, sometimes, that's where the work legitimately belongs. Sometimes, the GM (or the group), with their boots on the ground so to speak, are better able to make that call, or better able to make it in a way that matches their table's priorities.

And, sometimes, we *have* to use an abstraction, because we lack the ability to properly estimate the *real* factors, let alone the real odds, on a given action.

Shrug. Also, despite *literally* being a 4-letter word, much like "muggle", "lazy" is not strictly a pejorative in my vocabulary - I buy wholeheartedly into the motto "all good programmers are lazy".

Vote's still out on whether "lazy" is the correct paradigm to use in this instance.



Another famous example: building computers in Minecraft. (https://www.businessinsider.com/virtual-computers-built-inside-minecraft-2015-2?r=US&IR=T) I can almost guarantee the original designer of Minecraft didn't think people would build computers, much less the specific computers they eventually made. They never needed to, complex generative games can allow for emergent functions never anticipated by their makers.

Although your post generally missed the point (as others have already explained), on this particular point, I'm dubious, as story mode literally had a redstone computer, IIRC. So I cannot accept that the developers had never even considered the concept.

That said, I have a strong preference for games complex enough to have "emergent functions never anticipated by their makers", a strong dislike when games are developed without even testing the base case, righteous fury when developers respond negatively to the obvious being pointed out to them, and… darn senility, where was I going with this? Maybe "my one joy as a GM is when the players do something unexpected"? Eh, let's go with that.

But, yeah, there's a difference between seeing what you can do within a bounded system, and thinking outside the box. Your examples are all "inside the box" thinking. And while, like 26 letters, plus spaces/punctuation, can produce all kinds of creative and unexpected results, they are beyond suboptimal for producing the full experience of Starry Night, or the works of Mozart. Just as computer games are beyond suboptimal for responding to a roleplayed character's *actual* response to a given scenario, most of the time.

EDIT: man, it's a pity I didn't have this "complex enough to produce emergent functions never anticipated by their makers" concept decades ago. One of my friends was an amazing artist, and a highly innovative game designer, but… his games were generally lacking something. And "the complexity to produce unexpected results rather than dominant strategies" pretty well describes what they lacked. It'd be nice to go back in time and explain that to him. The world might be a different place, dominated by different games.

kyoryu
2021-09-24, 12:08 PM
Although your post generally missed the point (as others have already explained), on this particular point, I'm dubious, as story mode literally had a redstone computer, IIRC. So I cannot accept that the developers had never even considered the concept.

Story Mode was made well after the introduction of redstone and people making redstone computers. It's an indicator that the devs were aware of what was done, not an indicator that they intended it.


That said, I have a strong preference for games complex enough to have "emergent functions never anticipated by their makers", a strong dislike when games are developed without even testing the base case, righteous fury when developers respond negatively to the obvious being pointed out to them, and… darn senility, where was I going with this? Maybe "my one joy as a GM is when the players do something unexpected"? Eh, let's go with that.

At the risk of going on a tangent, there's a ton of tradeoffs.


But, yeah, there's a difference between seeing what you can do within a bounded system, and thinking outside the box. Your examples are all "inside the box" thinking. And while, like 26 letters, plus spaces/punctuation, can produce all kinds of creative and unexpected results, they are beyond suboptimal for producing the full experience of Starry Night, or the works of Mozart. Just as computer games are beyond suboptimal for responding to a roleplayed character's *actual* response to a given scenario, most of the time.

Right. You can use redstone in ways the authors didn't intend, but you can't invent some new type of block that has a function not thought of by the developers.

In a TTRPG, you can. Essentially, the "submit idea/triage/patch it in" cycle gets reduced to seconds, at most.

Cluedrew
2021-09-24, 06:01 PM
Based on some of your posts ([...]), we're saying the same thing: that the "too big - Y/n?" variance of the d20 cannot be measured in a vacuum.And if you use an almost vacuum the few things you do bring in sway the answer a lot. Actually I may not have said that part but that is also why I think getting as close as we can isn't necessarily useful either (unless you know those few things will be true in your game).


As far as "success, with complications" being lazy… I've seen far too many programmers take dozens or hundreds of variables, and condense them down to 1-3, for lots of loss and no gain - "lazy" is the *kindest* term I have for such behavior.What do you mean no gain? I think there are lots of advantages that come out of systems that are more nuanced than the traditional pass/fail binary (and the kindest term I have for that is genius). And I'm not entirely sure what is lost, other than simplicity.


Right. You can use redstone in ways the authors didn't intend, but you can't invent some new type of block that has a function not thought of by the developers.People were already making calculators with stone, torches, water and sand in Minecraft before redstone got added. I don't think that was entirely surprising.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-25, 09:59 AM
@Kyoryu and HidesHisEyes: I'm going to continue the tangent about computer games versus tabletop games in "different RPGs thread" (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?634406-Different-RPG-systems/page10), because I find this discussion to fall more in line with that topic.

dafrca
2021-09-25, 02:58 PM
I suppose for gamers who mostly play video games, accepting true randomness is difficult. We take good rolls for granted and act like a bad roll is an offense against us, sometimes. Even though we knew going into it that we were playing a game with RNG-determined outcomes.
Having listened to both my son and my friends rant and rave about how unfair RNG is in their video games I have to question the dislike of random rolls being a medium thing.

I think people who understand probability struggle with the reality of any game because the data points are very small an thus the random distribution can be very skewed, table top or video games. :smallbiggrin:

noob
2021-09-25, 03:31 PM
Having listened to both my son and my friends rant and rave about how unfair RNG is in their video games I have to question the dislike of random rolls being a medium thing.

I think people who understand probability struggle with the reality of any game because the data points are very small an thus the random distribution can be very skewed, table top or video games. :smallbiggrin:

Personally I want as few random things as possible in a RTS.

DwarfFighter
2021-09-27, 07:57 AM
Having listened to both my son and my friends rant and rave about how unfair RNG is in their video games I have to question the dislike of random rolls being a medium thing.

I think people who understand probability struggle with the reality of any game because the data points are very small an thus the random distribution can be very skewed, table top or video games. :smallbiggrin:

Heh.

Player: "HOW DID I MISS? I HAD A 99% CHANCE TO HIT!"

That's XCOM, baby.

-DF

noob
2021-09-27, 08:34 AM
Heh.

Player: "HOW DID I MISS? I HAD A 99% CHANCE TO HIT!"

That's XCOM, baby.

-DF

Xcom lies on percentages.
It is intentional: they adjust percentages over time to keep the game experience fun but writes the same constant percentages displayed.
So when you read 5% it might actually be 50% and trying to make you feel lucky and think you had only 1/20 chance to succeed while you had 1/2 chance of success.

Zombimode
2021-09-27, 09:18 AM
The irritation with RNG increases as the number of actions descreases but the impact increases.
In other words:
Few high impact actions: "HOW CAN A 99% ATTACK MISS????" (X-Com)
Many low impact actions: "Ok, these Spear Militias did held out longer then expected against my Feudal Footknights, but that's the chaos of battle!" (Total War battle mechanics)

That is not really surprising, of course.

The perception of what is a "good" chance (= should hit) and what is a "bad" chance (= can fail) changes with both
a) presentation - that is how the number is presented to the player, mostly with visual cues
b) distribution - how comon are the specific success rates, what is the base line

Lets compare Battle for Wesnoth and Pillars of Eternity 2 Deadfire. Lets take a 70% chance.
Presentation: Wesnoth presents it in a nice green with no shade of yellow left. In Deadfire 70% is long in a pale yellow (I think everything under 80% is yellow, maybe even before that).
Distribution: 70% in Wesnoth is almost as good as it gets. There are only very few cases of a to-hit of >70%. And even 70% is rare. Baseline is 50%.
In Deadfire on the other hand, the baseline for most actions is... 100%. A normally competent attacker against a normally competent defender usually has a 95% - 100% success chance. Conversely everything below 90% is not good, and a 70% to hit against a normal (non-boss) enemy will make you seriously reconsider your action.

The chance is the same. And impact-wise the two games are roughly in the same ballpark. But Wesnoth makes the players believe that 70% is a good chance, and as such the irritation with the RNG is huge among players.

kyoryu
2021-09-27, 10:17 AM
I almost suspect that the best case for displayed percentages is to never show a percentage over like 80%. At some point, we seem to essentially assume something is a "sure thing" and not think about the failure, and presume that any failure means bad RNG.

noob
2021-09-27, 10:22 AM
I almost suspect that the best case for displayed percentages is to never show a percentage over like 80%. At some point, we seem to essentially assume something is a "sure thing" and not think about the failure, and presume that any failure means bad RNG.

There is literally a game that intentionally says "this have a 20% chance of success" when the real odds of success is 50% and other psychological manipulations like this.
So you can not trust tooltips: you have to do statistics yourself or obtain info from people who did read game code.

Telok
2021-09-27, 10:23 AM
Wesnoth also used to either lie like dog or miscalculate. It was years ago but after a few series of having a wounded enemy surrounded that not only survives 9+ 65% attacks but lands 3/4 of its 55% attacks I did a game where I wrote down all the %s and results. I forget the exact results but recall that at level 3 of a unit the real hit/miss started skewing to the ai and got slightly worse as the unit level increased.

It could have been a rng coding issue and it could have been fixed in the intervening years. But it annoyed me enough to quit the game and I still remember it a decade+ later.

kyoryu
2021-09-27, 10:37 AM
There is literally a game that intentionally says "this have a 20% chance of success" when the real odds of success is 50% and other psychological manipulations like this.
So you can not trust tooltips: you have to do statistics yourself or obtain info from people who did read game code.

I'd consider actually capping chance of percent at 80%, not just the tooltip.

Quertus
2021-09-27, 01:55 PM
Story Mode was made well after the introduction of redstone and people making redstone computers. It's an indicator that the devs were aware of what was done, not an indicator that they intended it.

Well, I guess it's obvious that I'm not a Minecraft early adaptor / grognard. :smallredface:


I almost suspect that the best case for displayed percentages is to never show a percentage over like 80%. At some point, we seem to essentially assume something is a "sure thing" and not think about the failure, and presume that any failure means bad RNG.


I'd consider actually capping chance of percent at 80%, not just the tooltip.

I think it depends on the game.

I'm playing Brigandine (one of the top 10 best video games, IMO). (EDIT: let's be safe, and call it "top 100", as I'm not up to actually ranking them right now)

For clarity, I'm playing the new one. The original, damage was random; the new one, it's static. It took some getting used to, but it's nice, being able to see exactly what each of your units will do… if they hit… and don't crit.

Getting your accuracy up to 100% is really nice. I'm pretty sure the game would be worse if they capped the accuracy at 80% (although Halo - a spell that gives "auto hit" to a unit's next attack - would probably see more use then… or none, if it were similarly limited.).

Or imagine if PAC Man only had an 80% chance to actually eat the dots he moved over. Or a game with "double jump" had it only work 80% of the time.

On topic, if Brigandine used a d20 instead of a d100, and "99%" was rounded to 100% chance to hit? I don't think that the game would lose much, except that small tension of, "am I *actually* going to miss this 99% attack?!".

kyoryu
2021-09-27, 03:31 PM
Or imagine if PAC Man only had an 80% chance to actually eat the dots he moved over. Or a game with "double jump" had it only work 80% of the time.

Actually reliable abilities are a different situation. I guess I'm making two related points:

1) If the chance of something happening is supposed to be a factor, making it happen 100% of the time subverts that part of the game design.
2) High percentages lead people to assume it's actually 100%, and then bitch when it isn't.

"Do I eat the dot" isn't a factor in Pac-Man, therefore neither of those apply.


On topic, if Brigandine used a d20 instead of a d100, and "99%" was rounded to 100% chance to hit? I don't think that the game would lose much, except that small tension of, "am I *actually* going to miss this 99% attack?!".

No, but then what happens on the 98% chance? Where do you draw the line?

DwarfFighter
2021-09-27, 03:46 PM
No, but then what happens on the 98% chance? Where do you draw the line?

At 90%, of course. :)

-DF

DwarfFighter
2021-09-27, 03:49 PM
Xcom lies on percentages.
It is intentional: they adjust percentages over time to keep the game experience fun but writes the same constant percentages displayed.
So when you read 5% it might actually be 50% and trying to make you feel lucky and think you had only 1/20 chance to succeed while you had 1/2 chance of success.

If I say your rolls have a 50% chance of success, but you pass 90% of your rolls, if you never see the rolls, how do you know if the game is rigged, or if you're just lucky? :)

kyoryu
2021-09-27, 03:53 PM
At 90%, of course. :)

-DF

That's probably a reasonable place, tbh.

Quertus
2021-09-27, 06:22 PM
No, but then what happens on the 98% chance? Where do you draw the line?

… I thought a) basic rules of rounding were still taught to grade schoolers; b) that people who aren't me can actually convert bases in their head; C) that the Playground would have no difficulty with assuming and applying the inheritance concept of "use base rule if no rules given".

So… rounding to 1's, it breaks at .5; rounding to 5's, it breaks at 2.5.

So 97.5-100=100-> a 1+ (or 20-) on the d20,

92.5-97.499999 =95-> a 2+ (or 19-) on the d20,

Etc.

(Not that the decimals matter, as Brigandine only uses (displays) whole integer percentage numbers)

Clear as mud?

martixy
2021-09-27, 07:48 PM
If I say your rolls have a 50% chance of success, but you pass 90% of your rolls, if you never see the rolls, how do you know if the game is rigged, or if you're just lucky? :)

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/random_number.png

Cluedrew
2021-09-27, 07:57 PM
To Quertus: I think they were asking what granularity is appropriate, not what the granularity of a d20 is. If you are going to express things in percentages, I think 10% increments are fine. I like fractions here for some reason, but 1/10 is a good step.


Wesnoth also used to either lie like dog or miscalculate.I think they have fixed that. Or everyone who has ever looked at the source code is in on the lie because they claim that it is fair. The Battle for Wesnoth is my favourite game I never play.

noob
2021-09-28, 07:48 AM
If I say your rolls have a 50% chance of success, but you pass 90% of your rolls, if you never see the rolls, how do you know if the game is rigged, or if you're just lucky? :)

Because some devs leaked that fact.
It is not hard to know if developers from the game tells you (this information is not written in the game help itself but the information can be found).

kyoryu
2021-09-28, 10:38 AM
… I thought a) basic rules of rounding were still taught to grade schoolers; b) that people who aren't me can actually convert bases in their head; C) that the Playground would have no difficulty with assuming and applying the inheritance concept of "use base rule if no rules given".

So… rounding to 1's, it breaks at .5; rounding to 5's, it breaks at 2.5.

So 97.5-100=100-> a 1+ (or 20-) on the d20,

92.5-97.499999 =95-> a 2+ (or 19-) on the d20,

Etc.

(Not that the decimals matter, as Brigandine only uses (displays) whole integer percentage numbers)

Clear as mud?

Let's go with d) not everyone was assuming a d20-based context.

Quertus
2021-09-28, 07:06 PM
Let's go with d) not everyone was assuming a d20-based context.

I mean, just because a d20 is the thread topic, I'll agree, that isn't sufficient to guarantee that someone - especially me - is actually talking about a d20. However,



On topic, if Brigandine used a d20 instead of a d100,

Bolded for emphasis.

kyoryu
2021-09-29, 05:47 PM
I mean, just because a d20 is the thread topic, I'll agree, that isn't sufficient to guarantee that someone - especially me - is actually talking about a d20. However,




Bolded for emphasis.

Yeah, but we were talking about high percentages to hit in games like XCom. Come on, man.