Quote from: SpikeTo go back to my comment: it wasn't about niche protection by itself, but the entire idea of altering games purely around metagame considerations, often without thinking through how those metagame considerations are really reflected by the reality you are simulating.  Is it synthetic hearts that let you dodge like crack-yoda but do fuck all else in combat? Is it 'learning to shoot rifles is more complex than learning to build a car from spare parts'?

Is it: once you pick up a sword, the magic forever leaves your body, but if you learn magic you'll forever be a wimp no matter how heavy a backpack you can lug around?

Is it: allowing snipers to kill orcs with single arrows to the head at the start of the game is broken,so therefore all creatures can essentially ignore a yard long pointy stick stuck in their vitals?

Is it wanted to model every possible thing you could learn, but to keep character creation under control, your character will never know how to do half the things YOU know how to do because if we did that everyone would wind up playing superhumans that dont know how to do anything at all?

So, trying to get a grip on what you are asking. Are you asking about the effect of meta-mechanics on a game? Or is it more in-setting modelling via the rules?

I mean, yeah, if you make it so that your fantasy game arrow kills a man in plate mail with one shot 90% of the time vs 1% of the time, hells yea, that will effect play, the setting and your players love of you for suggesting such a system.

If the root of this is your comment in another thread about SR4 and syth-something-or-other basically making dodge a super pool of combat goodness, well, yeah again, if you monkey with the underlying mechanics you can have all manner of unforeseen and foreseen effects. You always need to be aware of what I call fundamental factors of your system. The factors are things like stats in a stat+skill system. Stats can carry across a lot of skills and effect the basic functioning of the character.

If I missed, then sorry...

Bill

Quote from: gleichmanSett started the first post with a reference to an old (and worthless) article of mine that spoke of nich protection in tactical game design. That seemed to spawn another thread on nich protection (which was a sub-subject of the first one) and this one also thread also seemed to directly reference some of the material found in the first two.

If they're truly unrelated. The error is mine. I thought that unlikely, but upon reflection I realize I don't actually know that.

I don't have a lock outside of references to that article. Nor frankly all that much interest. I just wanted to respond to critism of the original article to either make myself clear or to learn where I went wrong.

I missed the references. This does explain though, why I keep feeling like I am only in on part of the conversation.

Bill

Quote from: HinterWeltI missed the references. This does explain though, why I keep feeling like I am only in on part of the conversation.

I don't think getting the references would have helped that. I was in all the threads and it was basically still half a conversation.

Quote from: gleichmanI don't think getting the references would have helped that. I was in all the threads and it was basically still half a conversation.

You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. I thought you tried at least.

Bill

Quote from: David RIt's only illogical if you're seeing NP where there's none (or in this case, you're finding it difficult to make a case for NP with these characters) Take heist films for instance. You'll normally find NP in most heist films. Then you get something like Reservoir Dogs, where the only niche, is how badass you are.



What's this got to do with the topic at hand :confused:

Regards,
David R

Ya know, David, let me get back to you on Reservoir Dogs.  I bet if you looked at it through a specific prism....hmmm...I'd have to watch it again...

Quote from: HinterWeltSo, trying to get a grip on what you are asking. Are you asking about the effect of meta-mechanics on a game? Or is it more in-setting modelling via the rules?


If I missed, then sorry...

Bill

I meant, initially to start a serious, probably boring, discussion of why we use so many 'meta-game' mechanics in design, and how they can be, and when they shouldn't be avoided.

Of course, since I'm bitchy and stressed out, and I was growing increasingly aware of some truly bizarre reasoning coming out of some players mouths it degenerated into frothing at the mouth style ranting pretty quick.

Niche protection, at least as it's usually defined tends to crop up a lot, in a lot of different game discussions, and usually gets me riled quick.  Co-incidentally, Gliechman's been talking a lot about it elsewhere, in threads I generally avoided, but since his defintion of weak or moderate nicheprotection is weak to the point of uselessness (characterization is now niche protection? Re he heallllyyyy now....) I'm not sure how to take it.

I pointed out a few other things that fall into 'bizarre metagame designing'... for example subdividing weapon skills to the point where to be remotely good at shooting someone either requires stupid levels of specialization or enough training to make a PHD of someone.  In the same system you might find a single skill that allows complete mastery of the mechanics of crafting a bike, a car, a truck, and APC, a main-faaking-battletank... without batting an eye. Why does one character ostensibly need three skills to cover a single area of competence while another needs only one?

Its a metagame decision, even openly admitted as such, that has no real logical reason behind it, much less a 'setting based rationale'.

The Synthecardium argument requires a little too much in depth understanding of the shadowrun system.  To sum it up generically: there are no items that allow distinct improvements to combat defense specifically, but due to a minor glitch in skills design, an athletics skill can be used to defend against ranged attacks equally to the combat specific dodge skill, yet can get a nice cheap bonus that is essentially unmatched from this item designed for athletics improvements.

The designers made the only rational call when this was pointed out in allowing that athletics are athletics, regardless if its used for combat or rock climbing... making the non-combat dodge objectively better than the combat dodge skill.

Not that it needed much help, since the Dodge skill was ONLY good for dodging, while Gymnastics (the athletic skill) covered a wide variety of physical tasks PLUS dodging... with no penalty.


Now: I do propose that a more rational design would have limited the feasability of non-combat dodge skills from teh get go, or a smarter design of said item would have given it a different sort of functionality that 'skill boosting' more in line with its stated use.  Meta-design, if only by way of  illustrating general laziness....

Hope that cleared up the OP a bit for you.

Quote from: SpikeCo-incidentally, Gliechman's been talking a lot about it elsewhere, in threads I generally avoided, but since his defintion of weak or moderate nicheprotection is weak to the point of uselessness (characterization is now niche protection? Re he heallllyyyy now....)

I'm basically done with this, but I didn't say say characterization is niche protection. I was speaking only of mechanically or socially enforced rules.
Or at least that was my intent.

The term that covers that (that I've used and seen used in the past) is Shtick.

But whatever. Checking the other threads I note that they're back to everyone is using whatever meaning they wish. After that whole exchange I had with Stuart on how Niche Protection <> Functional Group (or rather the latter is a subset of the former), they're back to "but you have to a fighter, thief, cleric, and wizard" crap and calling it the whole of niche protection.

So I leave you to it, agreeing with HinterWelt. This place just isn't a worthwhile location to talk about game theory.

Spike, the specific examples of synthecardium and weapons skills sound to me like they're the same as the fundamental problem with point-based systems that try to incorporate "realism" into point costs. GURPS has this problem, at least in some cases pre-4e.

It can be summed up as: you can't assign points from a single pool to traits based on both usefulness and rarity. And furthermore even if you assign them based only on rarity, you still won't achieve a "normal" balance of characteristics in a group of PCs, because PCs are designed by players, not selected randomly from the population.

I don't know SR at all, but from what you're saying, I'd recommend that you simply increase the point cost of synthecardium and group long arms into a single skill that costs more.

Quote from: SpikeI meant, initially to start a serious, probably boring, discussion of why we use so many 'meta-game' mechanics in design, and how they can be, and when they shouldn't be avoided.

Of course, since I'm bitchy and stressed out, and I was growing increasingly aware of some truly bizarre reasoning coming out of some players mouths it degenerated into frothing at the mouth style ranting pretty quick.

Niche protection, at least as it's usually defined tends to crop up a lot, in a lot of different game discussions, and usually gets me riled quick.  Co-incidentally, Gliechman's been talking a lot about it elsewhere, in threads I generally avoided, but since his defintion of weak or moderate nicheprotection is weak to the point of uselessness (characterization is now niche protection? Re he heallllyyyy now....) I'm not sure how to take it.

I pointed out a few other things that fall into 'bizarre metagame designing'... for example subdividing weapon skills to the point where to be remotely good at shooting someone either requires stupid levels of specialization or enough training to make a PHD of someone.  In the same system you might find a single skill that allows complete mastery of the mechanics of crafting a bike, a car, a truck, and APC, a main-faaking-battletank... without batting an eye. Why does one character ostensibly need three skills to cover a single area of competence while another needs only one?

O.k., Spike, I will give it a shot. This sounds like a lot more rant than question so I suspect you know this already but I will explain my motives in design.

Wht you describe is something I battle with every design. The "Expert Skill" vs the "Plebian Skill". With Expert skills, say brain surgery, you want the character trained in it rather than allowing unskilled attempts, easy access or the like. You have some tools at your disposal but the most common is skill trees. I try my best to avoid them since they require a level of researching the system to understand but Iridium V2 may have some. Alternatively, you can make an action dependent on multiple skills. In the example, you could have a Surgery, Anatomy and Neurology check to accomplish the goal.

Where does this lead us? To Weapons and how the roots of weapons are in fantasy games. One issue with modern settings is that guns have been made, for the ost part, so that an untrained person can pick one up and kill someone;i.e. point and click interface. However, it takes a lot of training to sit 2 km out with a highly specialize rifle and hit a target the size of a walnut. So, you run int the issue, as a designer, which do you accommodate? The problem is that most designers say "Both!". To do this, you end up with ridiculously complex and expensive weapons specialization mechanisms with the ability to pick a gun up and shoot at one end and shooting the ey out of an eagle at 50000 paces with on thumb up your but at the other.

Quote from: SpikeIts a metagame decision, even openly admitted as such, that has no real logical reason behind it, much less a 'setting based rationale'.

The Synthecardium argument requires a little too much in depth understanding of the shadowrun system.  To sum it up generically: there are no items that allow distinct improvements to combat defense specifically, but due to a minor glitch in skills design, an athletics skill can be used to defend against ranged attacks equally to the combat specific dodge skill, yet can get a nice cheap bonus that is essentially unmatched from this item designed for athletics improvements.

The designers made the only rational call when this was pointed out in allowing that athletics are athletics, regardless if its used for combat or rock climbing... making the non-combat dodge objectively better than the combat dodge skill.

Not that it needed much help, since the Dodge skill was ONLY good for dodging, while Gymnastics (the athletic skill) covered a wide variety of physical tasks PLUS dodging... with no penalty.


Now: I do propose that a more rational design would have limited the feasability of non-combat dodge skills from teh get go, or a smarter design of said item would have given it a different sort of functionality that 'skill boosting' more in line with its stated use.  Meta-design, if only by way of  illustrating general laziness....

Hope that cleared up the OP a bit for you.

Yes, it did clear it up a bit. All I can say here is that I faced a similar issue (although not precisely the same) in the addition of Dodge skill to Iridium. With modern settings, I added a Dodge skill that allowed one to increase Defense (making you harder to hit) when moving from cover to cover. The first thing players asked was if the Movement Skill bonus for Agility applied and I had to say no. It would just make Dodge to easy a skill check. However, it never sat well with me because it was a meta-game decision, not a "rooted in the setting" decision. What I mean is, if Acrobatics gets movement bonuses why the hell wouldn't Dodge? Essentially the same thing but I had to take it from the "How will it effect combat pacing?" point of view.

So, sometimes you screw up. Sometimes you have to look to the next version to iron these things out or some quickfix rules on your site. Sometimes, you have no choice since that is where your logical design choices have taken you and other times you just screwed up.

Bill

Eliot: that's one reason I always point to White Wolf games as paragons of excellence in the character design phase. They know attributes and abilities shouldn't be weighted the same, so they seperate them.

Sure, they've got other areas that screw up on with stunning indifference... but the core method of making a character always seemed remarkably elegent.

Of course, technically Sythecardium is bought with money...


Bill:  I can see where you are going and I pretty much agree. I DO think that making guns that work both ways is do-able, and fairly easy depending upon how you structure your combat system and skills (as in: guns can be fired with no (or little) penalty without any skill at all (fer ex)...) with the high end problem being a pure function of skills scaling up... bah, I'm starting to talk gibberish.

We run into an issue with game play (relating to your dodge thing) in that game combat is remarkably 'wiffless' in most cases. Statistics tend to show that hits are FAR more common than misses, even when dealing with trained combatants.  On the other hand, it slows game play down and is remarkably unfun.  This is where D&D's abstracted combat rounds first started coming into play.

I should point out that I don't think eliminating meta-game thinking from rule design is a goal, just that it shouldn't be the excuse/rationale for stuff that otherwise doesn't make sense.

I might have handled your dodge issue seperately (make dodge computation less tied to straight skill checks or something... its a one time calculation essentially so you can make it reasonably complex...) but then again, you're the guy with the game company and I'm the guy with a full time, non-gaming, job.... :keke:

Quote from: SpikeBill:  I can see where you are going and I pretty much agree. I DO think that making guns that work both ways is do-able, and fairly easy depending upon how you structure your combat system and skills (as in: guns can be fired with no (or little) penalty without any skill at all (fer ex)...) with the high end problem being a pure function of skills scaling up... bah, I'm starting to talk gibberish.

We run into an issue with game play (relating to your dodge thing) in that game combat is remarkably 'wiffless' in most cases. Statistics tend to show that hits are FAR more common than misses, even when dealing with trained combatants.  On the other hand, it slows game play down and is remarkably unfun.  This is where D&D's abstracted combat rounds first started coming into play.

I should point out that I don't think eliminating meta-game thinking from rule design is a goal, just that it shouldn't be the excuse/rationale for stuff that otherwise doesn't make sense.

I might have handled your dodge issue seperately (make dodge computation less tied to straight skill checks or something... its a one time calculation essentially so you can make it reasonably complex...) but then again, you're the guy with the game company and I'm the guy with a full time, non-gaming, job.... :keke:

Well, Basically, we have Defense which is based on (STR+AGL+CON)/3. This is your chance of being hit or your opponent's target number. Dodge was meant as a skill for modern settings, specifically Shades of Earth (1938). It was meant to help there be fewer hits since healing was less common. At the same time, it was meant to maintain suspense and action. I guess we could have made it be a static bonus enacted when you "Dodged". An idea for V2.

Thanks,
Bill