The Gazebo Problem

[Willie the Duck]

Online etymology lookups aren't being helpful in determining which usage if either is derivative.

Do they say when the term originated? The process of carbonating water was discovered early-mid 1700s and only made widely known towards the end of the century.

[Max_Killjoy]

Do they say when the term originated? The process of carbonating water was discovered early-mid 1700s and only made widely known towards the end of the century.

All they say is that it's from French sometime in the 1600s, and entered English usage around 1660.

[Tanarii]

Do they say when the term originated? The process of carbonating water was discovered early-mid 1700s and only made widely known towards the end of the century.

Cloudy lemonade (US style)

[Pelle]

I regularly come across game systems that were clearly written without a basic knowledge of probability...

(Or if that's not the case, then for example, they genuinely want the average PC to fail 2/3 or more of their rolls even where there was deep investment in the relative values...)

Or the games expects the players to try to come up with solutions to problems without having to roll at all. Rolling is considered a fail state and is seen more as a saving throw. Or the games may have mechanics for pushing the rolls, granting rerolls at a cost, but which makes the total chance of succeeding much higher.

[kyoryu]

Or the games expects the players to try to come up with solutions to problems without having to roll at all. Rolling is considered a fail state and is seen more as a saving throw. Or the games may have mechanics for pushing the rolls, granting rerolls at a cost, but which makes the total chance of succeeding much higher.

Or cases where you're lumping in "mixed success" with failure, like AW, where "succeed, but with complications" is supposed to be the default the majority of the time, until you advance a bunch.

[Max_Killjoy]

Or the games expects the players to try to come up with solutions to problems without having to roll at all. Rolling is considered a fail state and is seen more as a saving throw. Or the games may have mechanics for pushing the rolls, granting rerolls at a cost, but which makes the total chance of succeeding much higher.

Or cases where you're lumping in "mixed success" with failure, like AW, where "succeed, but with complications" is supposed to be the default the majority of the time, until you advance a bunch.

I'm not talking about that sort of thing, though I'm not a fan of those push mechanics.

What I'm talking about is when the game is just vanilla task-resolution, no rerolls or push, no "yes but", and yet the math and odds just don't match up with the expectations.

[kyoryu]

I'm not talking about that sort of thing, though I'm not a fan of those push mechanics.

What I'm talking about is when the game is just vanilla task-resolution, no rerolls or push, no "yes but", and yet the math and odds just don't match up with the expectations.

That sounds pretty bad.

Examples?

[Max_Killjoy]

That sounds pretty bad.

Examples?

There's one about "Vikings" I can't recall the name of right now, Yggdrasill, where an average PC characteristic will fail to succeed on certain challenges set at average difficulty about 60% of the time because everything is set up to be characteristic + skill, but there are certain things that no skills apply to. The example that jumps out is Strength tests, which from what I can see often have no skill that applies.

[Friv]

Another game system for which that was the case was Serenity, the first edition of the much-improved Cortex system. In Serenity, you rolled one die for your Attribute and one for your Skill; in both cases, the die was between d4 and d12 (at very high levels, you could get a 'die' of d12+d2.) Generally, starting characters could get one or two Attributes and one or two Skills at d10, with the rest cascading down from there. They also set it up so that there were 23 skills, of which you could reasonably purchase 8 to 10, and also if you bought a skill past d6 you had to choose a Specialty and you only got the d6 on any other application (so for example, if you took Medicine d10, you would actually have Medicine d6 and Surgery d10.) You could buy extra specialties at full cost from a base of d6.

Difficulties looked okay on the surface - 3 for easy actions, 7 for average, 11 for hard, and then scaling up through Formidable (15), Heroic (19), Incredible (23), Ridiculous (27), and Impossible (31). This meant, in theory, that if you had 2d6 you had a 58% chance of success on average difficulty tasks, and if you had 2d10 you were at 55% chance of Hard. The problem is that the scale went way up past Hard and what was defined as "Hard" was... all over the map.

Hard tasks included things like "Open professional locks", "shoot a cola can at close range", "run a daily business for a major corporation", or "remember information from a college textbook." This is a difficulty that you can only manage 3/5 of the time at a high level of specialization, which the absolute best possible build in the game is still messing up three times in twenty, and which a moderately skilled and talented person will only succeed at one time in five.

Heroic tasks, something that a person with 2d10 could only manage 10% of the time, included such impossibilities as "shoot the guy holding your friend hostage", "intimidate a hardened war veteran", or "break five cinder blocks in one hit." It is impossible to reach a level of skill that allows for accomplishing these feats with a 1 in 3 chance of success. And there are three more difficulty tiers above it.

In theory, you're supposed to use your plot points to improve your rolls when you want to do something heroic, but you don't get very many of them, they don't give you a very large advantage, you need them for non-roll abilities, and you need to not spend them if you want to gain experience.

[Segev]

On the other hand, this frequent exchange at local eateries always amuses me:
Server: And what would you like to drink?
Me: Coke, please.
Server: Is Pepsi ok?
Me: Even better.

When that happens to me, I excitedly order Mountain Dew. (If the have Pepsi, they usually also have Mountain Dew.)

[Zhorn]

usually the result of having a supply contract with either PepsiCo or the Coca-Cola Company

If they have Coke, they'll have Sprite, Fanta, and sometimes Lift

If they have Pepsi, they'll have Mountain Dew, and sometimes 7up (a bit rarer to see here)

Here in Australia, if a place has Solo, they'll be unlikely to have Lift, and in turn will more likely have the Pepsi line up than the Coke line up.

[Max_Killjoy]

Another game system for which that was the case was Serenity, the first edition of the much-improved Cortex system. In Serenity, you rolled one die for your Attribute and one for your Skill; in both cases, the die was between d4 and d12 (at very high levels, you could get a 'die' of d12+d2.) Generally, starting characters could get one or two Attributes and one or two Skills at d10, with the rest cascading down from there. They also set it up so that there were 23 skills, of which you could reasonably purchase 8 to 10, and also if you bought a skill past d6 you had to choose a Specialty and you only got the d6 on any other application (so for example, if you took Medicine d10, you would actually have Medicine d6 and Surgery d10.) You could buy extra specialties at full cost from a base of d6.

Difficulties looked okay on the surface - 3 for easy actions, 7 for average, 11 for hard, and then scaling up through Formidable (15), Heroic (19), Incredible (23), Ridiculous (27), and Impossible (31). This meant, in theory, that if you had 2d6 you had a 58% chance of success on average difficulty tasks, and if you had 2d10 you were at 55% chance of Hard. The problem is that the scale went way up past Hard and what was defined as "Hard" was... all over the map.

Hard tasks included things like "Open professional locks", "shoot a cola can at close range", "run a daily business for a major corporation", or "remember information from a college textbook." This is a difficulty that you can only manage 3/5 of the time at a high level of specialization, which the absolute best possible build in the game is still messing up three times in twenty, and which a moderately skilled and talented person will only succeed at one time in five.

Heroic tasks, something that a person with 2d10 could only manage 10% of the time, included such impossibilities as "shoot the guy holding your friend hostage", "intimidate a hardened war veteran", or "break five cinder blocks in one hit." It is impossible to reach a level of skill that allows for accomplishing these feats with a 1 in 3 chance of success. And there are three more difficulty tiers above it.

In theory, you're supposed to use your plot points to improve your rolls when you want to do something heroic, but you don't get very many of them, they don't give you a very large advantage, you need them for non-roll abilities, and you need to not spend them if you want to gain experience.

That sort of thing is very common in systems that use escalating die size, especially if they go from d4 to d20, which I've seen.

[OldTrees1]

That sort of thing is very common in systems that use escalating die size, especially if they go from d4 to d20, which I've seen.

What? You mean a 1d20 is not analogous to a 1d4+8 when facing a DC of 5 or 15?

[kyoryu]

Another game system for which that was the case was Serenity...

Interesting. I think I've got that so I'll have to check it out.

When I see stuff like that I have to always wonder if there's other aspects of hte system (like plot points, etc.) that are supposed to come into play. Like, with Fate Core, if you don't use Create Advantage you're gonna have a bad time.

[Friv]

Interesting. I think I've got that so I'll have to check it out.

When I see stuff like that I have to always wonder if there's other aspects of hte system (like plot points, etc.) that are supposed to come into play. Like, with Fate Core, if you don't use Create Advantage you're gonna have a bad time.

Based on how Cortex developed, my theory is that the designers were expecting that plot points would really take over and be a massive resource that is constantly being spent and recovered. The rules note that the maximum number of plot points you can hold at a time is 12, which seems to indicate that they think it's not uncommon to have ten of them in your pool, and it's conceivable that the "1 plot point for doing something really cool" reward was actually meant to be given out multiple times per scene. If one set of designers assumed "each player will only roll once or twice per scene" and "each player will have 2-4 more plot points to play with each scene", scaling difficulties so that you have to keep spending those plot points makes sense. But then you have other sections of the rules that definitely assume that players are rolling for everything and that you're only getting plot points for really cool things, and the whole system falls apart.

(Plus in general, any system that says "at the end of the session, you don't get any experience points if you have six or fewer plot points left" is going to wildly discourage spending them. But that's a huge experience mistake, not a huge die scaling mistake.)

[Max_Killjoy]

Based on how Cortex developed, my theory is that the designers were expecting that plot points would really take over and be a massive resource that is constantly being spent and recovered. The rules note that the maximum number of plot points you can hold at a time is 12, which seems to indicate that they think it's not uncommon to have ten of them in your pool, and it's conceivable that the "1 plot point for doing something really cool" reward was actually meant to be given out multiple times per scene. If one set of designers assumed "each player will only roll once or twice per scene" and "each player will have 2-4 more plot points to play with each scene", scaling difficulties so that you have to keep spending those plot points makes sense. But then you have other sections of the rules that definitely assume that players are rolling for everything and that you're only getting plot points for really cool things, and the whole system falls apart.

(Plus in general, any system that says "at the end of the session, you don't get any experience points if you have six or fewer plot points left" is going to wildly discourage spending them. But that's a huge experience mistake, not a huge die scaling mistake.)

Tying XP to the same same general pool of points used to affect rolls, and forcing that choice on players, has always struck me as less than great. It was the one thing I really disliked about WEG d6 Star Wars, with character points also being used to affect rolls. It puts a player with bad luck in a couple sessions terminally behind, because they're using their CPs to save rolls instead of making their actual stats that go into those rolls better, which just means they'll end up facing that choice more often in the future too.

On Cortex/Serenity, it almost sounds like some of the devs were thinking it was "task resolution", and others were thinking it was "conflict resolution", or that half were thinking "roll for everything" and the other half were thinking "only roll when there's a question" or "only roll when the outcome is 'interesting'".

What? You mean a 1d20 is not analogous to a 1d4+8 when facing a DC of 5 or 15?

Heh.

But it's not just that, it makes any sort of difficulty target number hard to set such that it doesn't become a big gap between characters.

If it's just a d4 and a d20, a TN/DC/whatever of just 5 becomes impossible for the d4 and an 80% success rate for the d20. That's a huge range of capability.

From various discussions with and comments by game devs who use these systems, I get the feeling that they think "d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, there's our scale of stats" is so elegant and simple, so obvious, so clever, that they don't stop to look at how it doesn't fit a lot of settings.

[kyoryu]

Heh.

But it's not just that, it makes any sort of difficulty target number hard to set such that it doesn't become a big gap between characters.

If it's just a d4 and a d20, a TN/DC/whatever of just 5 becomes impossible for the d4 and an 80% success rate for the d20. That's a huge range of capability.

From various discussions with and comments by game devs who use these systems, I get the feeling that they think "d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, there's our scale of stats" is so elegant and simple, so obvious, so clever, that they don't stop to look at how it doesn't fit a lot of settings.

In the given example, part of the point is that both have the same mean result.... so an inexperienced designer might think they're equivalent and that they don't represent a range in capability.

[Max_Killjoy]

In the given example, part of the point is that both have the same mean result.... so an inexperienced designer might think they're equivalent and that they don't represent a range in capability.

I get that part of it, but like I said, there are other issues beyond just mean vs range disparity when it comes to scaling die size systems.

[Pex]

Based on how Cortex developed, my theory is that the designers were expecting that plot points would really take over and be a massive resource that is constantly being spent and recovered. The rules note that the maximum number of plot points you can hold at a time is 12, which seems to indicate that they think it's not uncommon to have ten of them in your pool, and it's conceivable that the "1 plot point for doing something really cool" reward was actually meant to be given out multiple times per scene. If one set of designers assumed "each player will only roll once or twice per scene" and "each player will have 2-4 more plot points to play with each scene", scaling difficulties so that you have to keep spending those plot points makes sense. But then you have other sections of the rules that definitely assume that players are rolling for everything and that you're only getting plot points for really cool things, and the whole system falls apart.

(Plus in general, any system that says "at the end of the session, you don't get any experience points if you have six or fewer plot points left" is going to wildly discourage spending them. But that's a huge experience mistake, not a huge die scaling mistake.)

I do not know this game. I do not know its rules. Only going by your description.

I'm not a fan of game systems like this where it's DM whim you get resources to do stuff. In 5E terms that does mean I don't like Wild Magic Sorcerer getting his stuff back when the DM says he can. I suppose it's the same thing with Inspiration. It means your character is only as good as you the player can impress the DM in real life play. You have no agency. I know, trust the DM. It can work with such a DM. There's a Wild Sorcerer in a 5E game I'm in, and the DM lets her always roll for surges. Works great. That should have been the default. Anyway, you don't always have the luxury of playing with friends you know. Many games start with strangers agreeing to play and hopefully find new friends enjoying the hobby together. Game systems like this is too much DM control over the player. It's easily abusable even if the DM has no ill intent. It's the player's character, not the DM's.

[KoDT69]

Not only did I have a group that fireballs a gazebo, but then they proceeded to lunch the davenport!

But for real, I have always made sure my players get what's going on. I don't name monsters unless I know they have plenty of experience to know what it is. There's still been a few times of confusion but it's never resulted in punishment of the characters in any way, and normally was because a player was distracted somehow.

A game I was a player in with a newer DM we were dealing with a special type of gate to which you pass through carrying a key item or you get disintegrated like a Sphere of Annihilation. Everyone knew the plan for safe crossing except one guy who was taking a leak during the discussion. So in his seal to be the first through the door, he mistakenly threw his key into the gate, then jumped in, getting annihilated. Now if the DM had been rational he would have retconned the player confusion because in character we made it abundantly clear to the entire party what the safe method was. The character in game KNEW better, and was a Paladin under my Cleric. Not only did he always heed my advice, but this would have been totally out of character to disobey something outright, especially considering it was a church mission and the most dire of consequences. Nope. He said it. It happened. Gone. Of course me being the usual DM was only letting a player run a single adventure hook, so I made a separate recovery mission that resulted in a nice long 3 month unforgettable subplot ;) Still doesn't excuse the ruling. He never even asked to run another adventure. He figured out it was more fun being a player for him.

[Fiery Diamond]

Kyoryu - I checked out the discussion over there, and I intend to read more of it this evening. I agree with you for the most part, but I don't think that the specific example is a good one. I do think that the GM should do a better job of explaining, and if the case ever did arise as stated that the GM has a responsibility to lay out the consequences. But I also don't think it's unreasonable to expect that players would know that insulting an absolute monarch to their face is a bad idea and likely to end up with their arrest or possibly execution. If it had been an elf or dwarf kingdom, or treants, or whatever, then I could see it being something that the player may not immediately think of as a problem, because the cultures could be different. But I know that if somehow I was introduced to the Queen of England and decided to insult her, that I would immediately be removed from her presence, and I might expect the guards to do a little covert damage to me on the way out. I can extrapolate that to a dangerous fantasy world where kings are actual rulers, and figure that this is not going to go well.

The GM should make the consequences clear. But in this particular case, I don't think the players really didn't know that there would be consequences. I think they figured the GM wouldn't actually do anything to them, and the shock was when they found out they were wrong about that, not that an absolute monarch doesn't tolerate open insults.

As to the gazebo itself, I wonder if this story was part of the reason there's a gazebo in Zork II. It sounds like something they would do, I know it was white, and I think the description said something like 'it appears to be a gazebo.' I think I need to open up the game, get to the gazebo, and attempt to attack it.

I understood that was actual, I just question whether the motivations of the players were as reported - I certainly have known players in the past that try to bully the GM, and this seems like a move they would have made.

I also thought I was clear that in that situation, I would explain the consequences before we proceeded. So clear, in fact, that I said it twice. My only point was that by using as an example something that strikes me as quite frankly ludicrous that the player didn't know that it was a bad idea, it doesn't make the point as well to people not prepared to accept the point. Let me illustrate by giving an even worse example:

GM: You come to the cliffs overlooking your destination. At the base of the cliff, 1000 feet below you, is a field of jagged rocks that have fallen from the cliff over the years. The ruins of the city stretch beyond them. You see a precarious path meandering down the cliff face, with the starting point to your right.
Player: I jump off the cliff.
GM: OK (rolls dice). You slam into the jagged rocks at the bottom, and your vision fades away as the blood drains from your body. Your character has died, and the body is in very bad shape. Do you want to roll a new character?
Player: What do you mean I died? I just wanted to get to the bottom quickly, how was I to know that would be deadly?

I don't think many people are going to argue that it was not completely clear that leaping 1000 feet onto jagged rocks was not going to turn out well. If you tell people that as an anecdote to say don't think your players are stupid, a whole lot of people are going to say that that player was, indeed, stupid, and they wouldn't want to play with someone like that. My gut reaction, and the reactions of a few people I just asked about this (one of my players, and a GM from a different group), is that the player in your anecdote was, indeed, stupid. None of us would have just gone straight to killing the character, and agree with the idea that the GM should explain the possible consequences. But we also wouldn't want to play with someone that played like that, and that they were probably being willfully obtuse and wanting to make the game all about them.

Actually, no, that's a fantastic example. It's a wonderful example.

Because in D&D, no it's not obvious at all. Since falling damage maxes out well below a mid/high level character's HP, it is a completely understandable assumption in this case that said 1000 foot drop would result in falling damage being applied which, mechanically, would result in a trivial amount of damage to said high level character.

It's also a completely reasonable assumption (and, in fact, what I would do) that in that case the GM would say "no, we use those mechanics in cases where the result isn't obvious" and declare the character to be a small greasy spot at the landing site.

I personally think the "RAW are the physics of the world, even in cases where they make no sense" style of play to be obnoxious. But it still exists. And as a GM, it's still my job to correct that misalignment when it occurs, unless I actually think the player intended to kill their character..

And, yes, it's entirely possible that the player is assuming the GM won't do anything to their character - because that's how a lot of games run.

I'd rather correct that misapprehension politely and without drama rather than after the fact.

I just finished reading the thread and I had to comment on the argument that started with these posts. I find it darkly amusing that this thread is all about communication and miscommunication and clarification and yet both sides of this argument (Darth Credence and kyoryu) seem to be entirely missing the crux of their own miscommunication with one another. Both agree on the basic premise: you should assume players aren't stupid, and that any apparent stupidity is an information or communication error, and that the GM should react accordingly. The argument over the examples used, with Darth Credence calling out the royalty and cliff examples as very bad ones to use to make the point when presenting it to people who DON'T already agree with the premise, and kyoryu countering that they are wonderful examples, comes down to one simple "vision" disconnect, yet neither side seems to understand where the other is coming from enough to understand why the other is insisting what they are insisting.

The disconnect is this:

Darth Credence: When trying to illustrate the point about players not being stupid and how one should assume information/communication error to people who aren't already in agreement about that, you should use the most "reasonable-seeming" example possible - one that your audience can easily see both sides of without having to dig very deeply - and once they understand your point, then you tell them that they need to extrapolate from there to more "ridiculous-seeming" examples, like the royalty one. They must first accept your basic point - otherwise they will just dismiss your argument-, and then you can show them how it applies to things they would normally automatically see as absurdly stupid.

kyoryu: When trying to illustrate the point about players not being stupid and how one should assume information/communication error to people who aren't already in agreement about that, you should use the most "ridiculous-seeming" example possible (which still can be very reasonably explained) - one that your audience would instantly assume the player was being absurdly stupid. Then, you can delve into WHY and HOW it could easily NOT be absurd stupidity, showing them that this concept applies even in extreme situations, emphasizing that they should NEVER assume stupidity even when stupidity, on the face of it, seems to be the only apparent possibility to the GM.

Because both of you explained the reasons you thought those example were good/bad, but neither of you explained why those reasons MADE the example good/bad, neither of you seemed to understand what the disconnect was for why you could have the same reasons but one of you thought that made the example bad and one thought that made the example good.

Either of you feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[zeuspeo]

Did no one else think he assumed it was some kind of mimic for most of the story. Especially if the DM has done it before it's very easy to get paranoid about things like this.

[Jason]

Did no one else think he assumed it was some kind of mimic for most of the story. Especially if the DM has done it before it's very easy to get paranoid about things like this.

No, it's pretty obvious that the player doesn't know what a gazebo is, not that he thought it was something else disguised as a gazebo.

[Quertus]

No, it's pretty obvious that the player doesn't know what a gazebo is, not that he thought it was something else disguised as a gazebo.

Not terribly obvious to the GM

And, if it was obvious to the other players, then that speaks poorly of them for not engaging to fix the miscommunication before the GM went ballistic.

[Jason]

Not terribly obvious to the GM

And, if it was obvious to the other players, then that speaks poorly of them for not engaging to fix the miscommunication before the GM went ballistic.

The GM didn't go ballistic. He said "it's too late, the gazebo caught and ate you," but then the players all had a laugh and explained what a gazebo was, and I'm sure they replayed the encounter without having Eric attack the gazebo.

[Segev]

I dunno, man. Gazeebos are level 8, and you have to face them alone.

[Quertus]

The GM didn't go ballistic. He said "it's too late, the gazebo caught and ate you," but then the players all had a laugh and explained what a gazebo was, and I'm sure they replayed the encounter without having Eric attack the gazebo.

Sorry, "went ballistic" should have been blue.

[FrogInATopHat]

I just had to throw this example in to reinforce the 'lemonade' problem...



Hi from Ireland. I'm not sure this is a thing anywhere else in the world and it has definitely never had a lemon involved in its creation.

[Max_Killjoy]

I just had to throw this example in to reinforce the 'lemonade' problem...



Hi from Ireland. I'm not sure this is a thing anywhere else in the world and it has definitely never had a lemon involved in its creation.

Does it even have artificial lemon flavor?

[FrogInATopHat]

Does it even have artificial lemon flavor?

Apparently, it's still a lemon flavour, according to google. I think the red colour might trick the tastebuds because I was veeeeerrrry surprised at that information. It's been a while since I drank it, mind you.

I have personally described the flavour as 'I dunno, just red lemonade'. It definitely doesn't taste the same as the clear stuff.

It's very popular with either Jameson or Southern Comfort.