Did you ever look up "bad faith" like I suggested?

Wikipedia is awesome.

Quote from: Saurondor;897726Back in grade school my teacher used to line us up in alphabetical order by last name, effectively ordering us by a comparison operation. Yet my last name is not a number. I really can't multiply my last name with yours for example.

Did your last name influence your performance on class assignments? If you changed your last name, would your grades tend to rise or fall as a consequence? Conversely, if your grades fall, does your last name change? If you study hard and get straight A's, do you take on the last name of the kid who's at the head of the class?

Contrast this with how I described LA's Health's Score vs Description. Getting hurt could adjust both the description of your character's state of health as well as the health score itself. Healing would reverse the effect on both counts. Illness or poison could likewise affect both the character's outer appearance at the same time it adjusts the Health statistic in the direction of character death. For that matter, magical effects, like Borgasta's Flatness, which makes the character paper thin to enable him to slip through cracks or glide through the air, but simultaneously reduces health to one-tenth normal commensurate with the new form.

Clearly your example is not an apt or relevant example of anything I'm talking about, nor is it a valid counter-example to my criticism of your view on this matter.

QuoteSecondly, an experienced character may at times beat an expert one so the expression ' experienced' < ' expert' is sometimes true and sometimes false. This is not consistent with numbers. Ten isn't greater than nine sometimes and then smaller some other time. It's always greater than nine.

And this would be a great point had I not already anticipated it and blew it out of the water in my previous post. So I'll try again to explain it.

Yes, greater-than, less-than, equal-to comparisons are only meaningful with linear quantities (plain numbers). However, if you replace numbers with probability distributions, those distributions are just sets of numbers. Your "prose" component is merely assigning an arbitrary name to the distribution set. Whether you call it "1, 2, 3..." or "good, better, best..." or, "Johnny, Franky, Mike..." is not especially important. I'll use variables A, B, and C to make this argument as general as possible--no matter what naming scheme you use, they'll fit this. So let's look at the relevant part. What they actually mean. The probability distributions.

Probability distributions, again, are just sets of numbers. And the concepts of Pareto Inferiority/Superiority can be applied to sets. So if set A = {1, 2, 4, 8} and set B = {2, 4, 6, 8}, I can say set B is superior to set A on the following basis: There exists a correspondence between the sets in which no element of A is greater than its corresponding element of B (since these are sets of numbers, this greater-than comparison is kosher), but at least one element of B is greater than its corresponding element in A. Specifically, the matching is 1 vs 2 (b>a), 2 vs 4 (b>a), 4 vs 6 (b>a), and 8 vs 8 (a=b).

The system you offer up has the Legendary probability distribution, as a set, being superior to the expert one, being superior to the novice one. I'm not telling you anything you can't see plainly in your graphs and aren't implied by your "prose" terms. And your skill levels are elements of the set of all possible skill levels in the game. The set of all possible skill levels, then, is an ordered and transitive set. They have all the key properties of a system that is not merely ordinal, but also cardinal, and thus have the same properties as a strictly numbered set of skill levels.

Quote from: Saurondor;897760Farming X, U, M, L, etc. is even shorter!

It may not be precise numerically, but if I don't know the system farming 4 means nothing.

Meh. This is not so much a valid argument as it is a false conceit.

I'm no newbie to the RPG world. I've played quite a few. I've bought even more than that. And I've seen or read even more than I've bought.

How many times have I seen terms like "novice", "expert", and "legendary" in RPGs?

If I were a newbie, I might be FOOLED into thinking these terms give me some idea of what a character's skill level is without knowing the system. But I'm not so naive. I know these are game terms. I know I can't count on them meaning the same things they mean in plain English. In fact, after playing WhiteWolf, I'm fairly certain an "expert" is someone whose skill level is unreliable as he has a very high whiff factor. I see them for what they are: artifacts of a pretentious game designer who wants to pretend his stats aren't stats and his shit doesn't stink. And I know you see them quite clearly as numbers as well. That's what made you think your example would be so crystal clear, because of their clear correspondence to numbers.


Personally? Here's what I've found to be most helpful in figuring out what game stats mean. I'll continue to use Lejendary Adventure's Health as an example. The rules state the average health  of a human adult is 20. Anything below 10 is the rating of very young children, the sick, elderly, or feeble. There is no hard upper limit--scores of 200+ are possible but unlikely to occur. That alone tells me a lot more than what terms live, "average, better, best" might. But then I note that starting adventurers will have between 40 and 100 health, and this not only gives me an idea of what the different levels mean, but also what the different levels mean in the context of the game. This is how we avoid the WhiteWolf's Whiffing Expert problem.

Quote from: Lunamancer;897854Yes, greater-than, less-than, equal-to comparisons are only meaningful with linear quantities (plain numbers). However, if you replace numbers with probability distributions, those distributions are just sets of numbers. Your "prose" component is merely assigning an arbitrary name to the distribution set. Whether you call it "1, 2, 3..." or "good, better, best..." or, "Johnny, Franky, Mike..." is not especially important. I'll use variables A, B, and C to make this argument as general as possible--no matter what naming scheme you use, they'll fit this. So let's look at the relevant part. What they actually mean. The probability distributions.

It is specially important if you can convey a meaning with the words which other symbols can't convey as well. Your character's health is Franky. Careful, one more hit and you could be Mike. How careful should I be? Careful "death is imminent" or careful I'll need better magic to heal? Having 18 hit points means something in one game and quite another thing in others.

Quote from: Lunamancer;897854Probability distributions, again, are just sets of numbers. And the concepts of Pareto Inferiority/Superiority can be applied to sets. So if set A = {1, 2, 4, 8} and set B = {2, 4, 6, 8}, I can say set B is superior to set A on the following basis: There exists a correspondence between the sets in which no element of A is greater than its corresponding element of B (since these are sets of numbers, this greater-than comparison is kosher), but at least one element of B is greater than its corresponding element in A. Specifically, the matching is 1 vs 2 (b>a), 2 vs 4 (b>a), 4 vs 6 (b>a), and 8 vs 8 (a=b).

The system you offer up has the Legendary probability distribution, as a set, being superior to the expert one, being superior to the novice one. I'm not telling you anything you can't see plainly in your graphs and aren't implied by your "prose" terms. And your skill levels are elements of the set of all possible skill levels in the game. The set of all possible skill levels, then, is an ordered and transitive set. They have all the key properties of a system that is not merely ordinal, but also cardinal, and thus have the same properties as a strictly numbered set of skill levels.

Lets go back to Manzanaro's comment. His first question:

QuoteWhat does that text mean in terms of simulation?

Question, do I need to know what the text means in terms of simulation? Sure, I need to do some number processing to resolve an action, a task, situation, conflict, whatever. What I'm asking here is if the internals of the simulation is needed to be able to understand what "the text" means which means do I need to understand the meaning in terms of simulation to begin playing.

Now, you can try to frame it in any way you want, but I'm not writing numbers on the character's skill set. I'm writing words which, as you rightly mentioned, represent sets of numbers inside the simulation. In one game such words represent a range of values from a 2d20 roll, in another they're the graphs I showed you, and in Itza it will probably be an infinite distribution curve so set A is just as big as set B, it just happens that some numbers in B of higher value have a higher chance of occurring than in A.

The question here is if I need to know the numerical representation of the skill to make a decision in the game. Let me take a character in which I write a discrete list of skills in the form of skill:number and another in which I write a prose description of the character from which I can infer skills in the form of skill:rating. In Weapons Free +4 means something different than +4 in Saints &  Sinners and in turn it's different from the weight of +4 in Itza, but 'expert' is expert in all three regardless of the 'numeric simulation' behind each one. The character becomes portable from one game to another. If some time after I retire from work I can create an "analogue" simulation mechanism that doesn't use numbers the characters would still be usable whereas the skill:number list is useless.

More so, let me revisit what I've just said and restate what I'm writing down.


Let us recall what Manzanaro said a while back:

Quote3. Don't feel like you constantly have to shoehorn everything into something that can be adjudicated by dice rolls. Let people talk. Let choices matter.

(http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?34039-How-to-Get-a-Good-Narrative-From-Rules-of-Simulation&p=895990&viewfull=1#post895990)

What if there is no "numerical" aspect to the simulation? What if we're not rolling dice inside the simulation? It is Manzanaro who's enforcing this "numerical" prerequisite to simulation, but as others have mentioned in this thread, that need not be the case. There have been many examples of simulations that are not the computer-numberish style of a flight simulator or FPS. What happens then?

What happens when I need to "simulate" something for which the game has no set rule and for which my decision (or authoring as Manzanaro would have it) is a better (and quicker) solution. What's the value of Farming 4 when I'm resolving something without die rolls and without the need to add numbers. In such a case I don't need to translate "farming expert" to any "underlying numeric set".

I agree with you that my "labels" get translated into sets of numbers that represent the probability curves I put forward on the graphs. But that only happens when I need to resolve something "numerically" and/or "with dice". I find the prose, skill+label definition a much better fit than skill+number when I want to follow some of Manzanaro's own advice (as shown in the linked post) and still have the option for a "numerical simulation". I have a character representation that is easily portable between game systems, and it allows the player to leverage the skill sets in a "numerical" and "non-numerical" simulation.

Yes, I did say, "Don't feel like you constantly have to shoehorn everything into something that can be adjudicated by dice rolls. Let people talk. Let choices matter."

Let's examine that a little closer. Some of you, or one of you anyway, can't seem to decide whether my aspiration is towards a purely narrative based game, or a purely simulation based game. Well, I would like to think at this point that I have amply shown that virtually no roleplaying game is purely one or the other (with some exceptions on the "story game" end of the spectrum). All RPGs are going to be a mix of outcomes decided by rules of simulation and things that are simply authored by the players or GM. What I am suggesting is to learn to recognize which is which for starters, and this is not that hard to do.

To go further, while I will certainly author things into existence in the gameworld, even in the middle of play, I will do so with an eye towards tenets of simulation. I won't just have my favorite NPCs show up anytime I think they would be cool; I won't change facts about the game setting that I have already established in my head; I make an effort to track important "offscreen" events and characters; and, most importantly, when I refer to actual rules of simulation, whether that be combat rules, or skill checks, or whatever, I will actually abide by whatever outcome those rules generate, rather than fudging things towards an outcome I find more 'dramatically pleasing". I want to find drama, not manufacture it.

That, being said, I try not to be overly hasty in going to the rules of simulation. If I know there is a safe behind a painting in a room, the PCs can certainly do search rolls to see if they find it, but if a player declares that they look behind the painting? They will find the safe regardless of the search roll.

So with this in mind, let's look at social skills. I see quite a few GMs where, when you start talking in character, they immediately want to resolve it with a roll. "So are you making a persuasion attempt?" Even worse, you have a fair number of modern games in which social interaction is always treated as social "combat" or "conflict". This is just tremendous bullshit to me and very much takes me out of character as a player when a GM employs this mindset too strongly.

Let characters talk. I don't mean let them talk aimlessly to the bartender because they think your dwarven bartender voice is hilarious. I mean let them play out conversations that are important or interesting. And then only refer to the rules of simulation as necessary, so maybe at critical moments in the discussion. But, you might say, doesn't this mean that the smooth talking player can use Charisma as a dump stat and just count on his own speaking skills? Well no, because at the very least, you apply a mental filter to the player is saying and take into account that it is the equivalent to what the player is saying, but spoken by a guy with a 4 charisma (or whatever).

Anyway, another thing I have been thinking about is the idea of having random 'event checks' rather than random encounter checks. But what I have been thinking about is ways that you might do this in a very broad sense, and not because I prefer broadly defined events, but because if you want a table of events that are specific and appropriate you would need a significant number of event tables for use in particular circumstances. e.g. an event table specific for sea travel is going to look significantly different than an event table for city life, or one for operating a business.

Anybody have any thoughts on this? The basic idea is that, just like wandering monster checks allow for a simulation based chance of stumbling into monsters without needing to actually track monster movement outside of the PCs zone of perception, so too could other sorts of event tables generate all manner of seeming epiphenomena from other untracked processes.

Quote from: Manzanaro;898051Yes, I did say, "Don't feel like you constantly have to shoehorn everything into something that can be adjudicated by dice rolls. Let people talk. Let choices matter."

Let's examine that a little closer. Some of you, or one of you anyway, can't seem to decide whether my aspiration is towards a purely narrative based game, or a purely simulation based game. Well, I would like to think at this point that I have amply shown that virtually no roleplaying game is purely one or the other (with some exceptions on the "story game" end of the spectrum). All RPGs are going to be a mix of outcomes decided by rules of simulation and things that are simply authored by the players or GM. What I am suggesting is to learn to recognize which is which for starters, and this is not that hard to do.

Once again the issue is how. If it seems like I can't decide on your mix of narrative-to-simulation base it's because I honestly I'm not deciding nor designing based on your particular case. It makes no sense to me to analyze all this or to crate a game based on your particular "mix" of narrative and simulation. Yes, you've shown that there is no roleplaying game which is purely one or the other. The reason I don't keep addressing this is because of the obviousness of it. More so, and like you clearly state, recognizing which is which is "not hard to do", so there's not much to add to this thread regarding that either.

The interesting part is "how", once we know all this (which is either obvious or trivial to identify), do we get good narrative from rules of simulation.

QuoteTo go further, while I will certainly author things into existence in the gameworld, even in the middle of play, I will do so with an eye towards tenets of simulation.

I would sure hope so!

QuoteThat, being said, I try not to be overly hasty in going to the rules of simulation. If I know there is a safe behind a painting in a room, the PCs can certainly do search rolls to see if they find it, but if a player declares that they look behind the painting? They will find the safe regardless of the search roll.

Well that's a point in which we differ. I won't allow a die roll to replace player actions. As much as the MTTD concept is interesting to look at and get a birds of view of combat, it's not a substitute for round to round combat. Walking into the room and rolling "to find something" is like going into combat and rolling MTTDs and then narrating, "Well it took you three rounds to finish of the goblins and now you proceed".

QuoteAnd then only refer to the rules of simulation as necessary, so maybe at critical moments in the discussion. But, you might say, doesn't this mean that the smooth talking player can use Charisma as a dump stat and just count on his own speaking skills?

Well, why is there a dump stat to begin with? If orcs (or any intelligent monster for that matter) could get a +1 to hit against creatures they truly despise and such displeasure came from low PC charisma score, trust me, CHA would not be a dump stat.

Quote from: Saurondor;898040The question here is if I need to know the numerical representation of the skill to make a decision in the game. Let me take a character in which I write a discrete list of skills in the form of skill:number and another in which I write a prose description of the character from which I can infer skills in the form of skill:rating. In Weapons Free +4 means something different than +4 in Saints &  Sinners and in turn it's different from the weight of +4 in Itza, but 'expert' is expert in all three regardless of the 'numeric simulation' behind each one. The character becomes portable from one game to another.

Again, this might have been a great point if I hadn't just obliterated it in my previous post. "Expert" does NOT mean the same thing from one game to the next. And EVEN IF it did--which it doesn't--but even if, who's to say the power level isn't such that the level of "expert" is just about bare bottom? I will again repeat what I thought is actually helpful, instead of just mindlessly agreeing with what you pretend to be helpful. When I look at Health in Lejendary Adventure, I know that 20 is the adult human average, I know that adventurers start between 40 and 70, and I know the there is no arbitrary upper limit, but scores of 200+ are unlikely. This is about the minimum information I need to know to understand what the different skill levels mean.

When I know that, I know that 10 is weak. I know that 40 is double human average. Maybe this would qualify as "Expert" but this is the very minimum for an adventurer. If I'm walking around with 40 health, I should not necessarily be making decisions as if I'm one tough SOB. The "expert" label, even if accurate, is misleading.

Now there are a lot of ways I can do what you pretend words do entirely with numbers. In fact, the Lejendary Adventure system is a percentile system. If my character's combat skill is 60, I know I'm hitting about 60 percent of the time. Now that's easily understood without knowing anything about the game system. That's completely portable and far more precise than the term "expert." But alone, it's still not enough information. If I know that and that alone, it still doesn't tell me whether fighting someone is a viable option. I don't know what to expect of the other guy's skill level. I still need to know that average human ability is in the 10-20 range, with adventurers beginning in the 10 to 60 range, and that 131+ (minimum requirement to reach highest rank as a soldier) is not unheard of.

Common attributes (like Health) could be expressed as a proportion of human norm. So I could state that "Starting adventurers begin with Health equate to between 2 and 3 and a half men. There is no upper limit, but being healthy as 10+ men is unlikely." Here, I don't need to state what "average" is.

I could also speak in terms of averages and standard deviations. I could instead say, "Starting adventurers begin with health between one and two standard deviations above adult human norm." Now that is actually more succinct. I don't need to explain how 200 health is possible but unlikely. We already know 6 standard deviations is possible but unlikely. I'm also clear if my character is at +1 S.D., I know that's actually low rather than high in the pond we're playing in. What this approach misses, however, is that being 1 standard deviation above the norm means I have double the Health of an average person. That might be relevant.


However you decide to do it, there is no getting around that you have to add other information to establish the scale. Knowing "expert farmer" in a vacuum really isn't going to tell you any relevant information like you claim. Again, this is simply a false conceit. It's actually impossible to do what you claim verbal ratings do. I mean, hey, a lot of what goes into an RPG can be highly subjective. So it can be challenging enough to design a system as it is. You don't need to complicate that by chasing impossible design goals like this one. This ought to be Game Design 101.

QuoteWhat if there is no "numerical" aspect to the simulation? What if we're not rolling dice inside the simulation? It is Manzanaro who's enforcing this "numerical" prerequisite to simulation, but as others have mentioned in this thread, that need not be the case.

Let's get away from the word "numerical" because it is problematic. Numbers themselves, like "one" "two" "three" and "four" ARE words. They ARE verbal. The only thing relevant about words is not the arrangement of letters but the meaning for which that arrangement stands. Some information is qualitative, some is quantitative. We have a word called "numbers" because those special words (one, two, three, etc) have meanings which are quantitative. By which we mean there is an ordering where certain mathematical properties apply. Your skill ratings have the exact same properties. They use an equally arbitrary combination of letters from the exact same alphabet as do numbers. Your skill levels represent quantitative information.

Look, I don't know if you're taking Manzanaro out of context here. I have little desire to go back and read his post. So I'm taking this at face value. Yes. There are exceptions to what you claim Manzanaro is saying. Absolutely. But no, your skill system is NOT a counter example to it. It's a quantitative system. It literally does nothing, provides no additional meaning, than naked numbers. You believe otherwise, but that belief is a false conceit. I'm not disagreeing with anything else you're saying. I'm busting you on that one point. And it's because you ARE busted on that point that I got into this to say, in this case, it's actually you and not Manzanaro that is splitting hairs on this.

QuoteWhat happens when I need to "simulate" something for which the game has no set rule and for which my decision (or authoring as Manzanaro would have it) is a better (and quicker) solution. What's the value of Farming 4 when I'm resolving something without die rolls and without the need to add numbers. In such a case I don't need to translate "farming expert" to any "underlying numeric set".

There's no difference between saying, "Anyone of expert skill or higher can do this automatically, no check necessary" and "Anyone of 40 skill or higher can do this automatically, no check necessary." It's still qualitative because you're comparing the skill level in greater-than/less-than/equal-to fashion to a benchmark. Contrast with something like, "Only silver weapons harm the werewolf." It's not the case that silver weapons are superior to the ordinary sort. And it's not the case that gold will work just as well or even better. Nor is it the case that some fantasy alloy of equal market value as silver works.

Quote from: Lunamancer;898113Again, this might have been a great point if I hadn't just obliterated it in my previous post. "Expert" does NOT mean the same thing from one game to the next. And EVEN IF it did--which it doesn't--but even if, who's to say the power level isn't such that the level of "expert" is just about bare bottom? I will again repeat what I thought is actually helpful, instead of just mindlessly agreeing with what you pretend to be helpful. When I look at Health in Lejendary Adventure, I know that 20 is the adult human average, I know that adventurers start between 40 and 70, and I know the there is no arbitrary upper limit, but scores of 200+ are unlikely. This is about the minimum information I need to know to understand what the different skill levels mean.

When I know that, I know that 10 is weak. I know that 40 is double human average. Maybe this would qualify as "Expert" but this is the very minimum for an adventurer. If I'm walking around with 40 health, I should not necessarily be making decisions as if I'm one tough SOB. The "expert" label, even if accurate, is misleading.

Could be that "expert" is bare bottom, but then below bare bottom you'd still have "experienced", "skilled" and "unskilled". You're just moving the expressions and keeping others out in the convenience of your argument without making any actual sense. If "Expert" is the very minimum in your game, fine, but in the example I presented "Expert" is in the mid-high range so you can't change the relative value without changing the cardinality of the set. You've pretty much left out the other three ("experienced", "skilled" and "unskilled") to make a false point. You're simply wrong in your assumptions.

Quote from: Lunamancer;898113Let's get away from the word "numerical" because it is problematic. Numbers themselves, like "one" "two" "three" and "four" ARE words. They ARE verbal. The only thing relevant about words is not the arrangement of letters but the meaning for which that arrangement stands. Some information is qualitative, some is quantitative. We have a word called "numbers" because those special words (one, two, three, etc) have meanings which are quantitative. By which we mean there is an ordering where certain mathematical properties apply. Your skill ratings have the exact same properties. They use an equally arbitrary combination of letters from the exact same alphabet as do numbers. Your skill levels represent quantitative information.

Wrong. It can't be a set (like you mentioned before) and a number that you're trying to convince of right now. Please make up your mind. I can add "two" and "two" and get "four", I can multiply "four" times "four" and get "sixteen". "Four" is the square root of "sixteen". "One" times "Ten" plus "Six" equals sixteen. "One" times any other number is said number. Now "experienced" plus "experienced" is? What is "expert" times "expert"? "Expert" is the square root of what? If "Legendary" is the highest attainable skill level, of what value is "legendary" the square root of? By this I mean a skill level whose square root is "legendary". What skill level can I multiply any of the skill levels (unskilled, skilled, experienced, expert, master, legendary) in such a way that the resulting skill level is the same (identity operator).

Quote from: Lunamancer;898113Absolutely. But no, your skill system is NOT a counter example to it. It's a quantitative system. It literally does nothing, provides no additional meaning, than naked numbers.

It has a meaning outside naked numbers. The actual numbers may vary from one game system to the other.

Quote from: Lunamancer;898113There's no difference between saying, "Anyone of expert skill or higher can do this automatically, no check necessary" and "Anyone of 40 skill or higher can do this automatically, no check necessary." It's still qualitative because you're comparing the skill level in greater-than/less-than/equal-to fashion to a benchmark. Contrast with something like, "Only silver weapons harm the werewolf." It's not the case that silver weapons are superior to the ordinary sort. And it's not the case that gold will work just as well or even better. Nor is it the case that some fantasy alloy of equal market value as silver works.

Right, there is no difference, but it doesn't derive from your false claim that "expert skill" and "40 skill" are the same and thus "expert" is a numeric value. It derives from the fact that there's no uncertainty. It's the two tailed coin all over again.

QuoteWhen I look at Health in Lejendary Adventure, I know that 20 is the adult human average,

Well when I look at myself in the mirror I don't see any numbers. When I eat some bad tacos and get dysentery I don't feel like 3 or 4 I feel like shit. I don't need a "number crunching" process to realize I can't pick up my backpack and go on a weekend trip. If my character drinks some bad water and gets as sick I can write down "drank bad water and feels like shit". Travelling to the wizard tower to get the potion is impossible. I try to pick up my stuff and leave but the midday sun burns my eyes and I can hardly take three steps without resting against the wall. Is this realistic? Yes! Is it a pretty good simulation of what would happen if it were real? Yes. Did I use numbers? No. So I can feel like "shit" and I can feel "good" and I can feel "excellent", and "awesome" and "incredible" and you can come around and say that they behave like numbers and that maybe "excellent" is just about bare bottom, but there's still "good" and "shit" cramped down there in between. So please don't come around saying they're numbers just like any other because then if I have bad water and bad tacos ("shit" + "shit") I'm not all of a sudden going to feel "excellent", I'm still going to feel like shit.

If you aren't using numbers you're just telling a story. Yes stories can feel realistic; that doesn't make them simulations.

When you tell a player his PC feels like shit? Are you suggesting his PC is limited in some way? In what way? Who decides?

To tell the truth, I think your entire point here in this thread is just pointless argument. I mean, what are you trying to get at?

Quote from: Manzanaro;898130If you aren't using numbers you're just telling a story. Yes stories can feel realistic; that doesn't make them simulations.

That's not true. As mentioned before by myself and others, there are ample cases of simulations that don't use numbers. It's like special effects with CGI and without. Even if computers (and numbers) are not used to produce the special effects (as was the case back in the day) they're still special effects.

The difference between telling a story and running a simulation is scarcity, not numbers, not computers, not rules, it's the principle that not everything is attainable by just writing it down. What you call "simulation" is a set of constraints that leads to the future states of the story from not being equiprobable. I can create this by establishing a percentage chance of failure or success (binary) mechanis as Lunamancer has been pushing forward in the past few posts, but I can also produce a more "fuzzy" like system with degrees of success or failure, as is the case of my example. The issue I'm noticing here is that when the system is less "numerical" the sense of "GM subjectiveness" increases, a sense that these "word" terms will lead to a subjective rather than an objective interpretation "the whim of the GM", whereas the numbers are clear and crisp and "objective". But who set those values in the first place? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Quote from: Saurondor;898125Could be that "expert" is bare bottom, but then below bare bottom you'd still have "experienced", "skilled" and "unskilled". You're just moving the expressions and keeping others out in the convenience of your argument without making any actual sense.  If "Expert" is the very minimum in your game, fine

Actually, I'm not doing that at all. Your demeanor here has changed. You've been proven wrong and you're going into bullshit mode. You can go on believing nonsense, deceiving yourself to think your skill system isn't just numbers if that's what makes you happy. I'm not trying to "convince" you of anything. I don't need to. You know you're wrong. You were being a hair-splitting little bitch to Manzanaro, which in all fairness may have been deserved, but I called you on it and you refuse to man up. And that's pretty much all there is to it.

Quote, but in the example I presented "Expert" is in the mid-high range so you can't change the relative value without changing the cardinality of the set. You've pretty much left out the other three ("experienced", "skilled" and "unskilled") to make a false point. You're simply wrong in your assumptions.

I'm using all the exact same parameters you're using. The only thing I've done different in my example is to shift the focus. WhiteWolf includes the human norm (one dot) and even allows space below that (0 dots). However, that's not where the focus of the game is. It deals in super-human characters. So when the newbie shows up thinking, "I have expert skill rating, I've got this" only to find an enormous whiff factor associated with "expert", suddenly your conceit that using these words somehow have common meaning proves false. Sure, WW is an extreme example. But every RPG that uses "verbal" ratings has this problem to one degree or another. Compounded by the fact that the precise focus of the game is always going to be determined by the individual group. Yeah, the criticism that this doesn't have the inherent meaning you claim it does is valid.

QuoteWrong. It can't be a set (like you mentioned before) and a number that you're trying to convince of right now.

Bullshit mode is clearly affecting your typing.

So I'm going guess what you mean is it can't be a set and a number at the same time. Which is true if we're taking a math class.

But if I'm playing an RPG and my farming skill is 4 and the core mechanic calls for rolling two specialized d6's, one of them numbered "zero" through "five", the other having "minus" on three sides, "plus" on two sides, and "times" on the sixth side, then that number "4" actually represents a set--a probability distribution. And this is 100% valid, without contradiction, because, again, numbers are just words. It just so happens the assigned meaning to those words has certain mathematical properties, the same properties your skill rating system has yet that you choose to pretend is different. Yes, numbers can behave like numbers while being symbols or placeholders for sets. That is totally kosher.

QuoteI can add "two" and "two" and get "four", I can multiply "four" times "four" and get "sixteen". "Four" is the square root of "sixteen". "One" times "Ten" plus "Six" equals sixteen. "One" times any other number is said number. Now "experienced" plus "experienced" is? What is "expert" times "expert"?

I can also add together two social security numbers. And what do I get? It won't be another social security number. Are you seriously going to suggest social security numbers aren't numbers just because it can't pass this infantile test you concocted instead of manning up and admitting you're wrong?

QuoteIt has a meaning outside naked numbers. The actual numbers may vary from one game system to the other.

So does the word "expert."

QuoteRight, there is no difference, but it doesn't derive from your false claim that "expert skill" and "40 skill" are the same and thus "expert" is a numeric value. It derives from the fact that there's no uncertainty.

First, my claim is NOT that "expert skill" and "40 skill" are the same, there for "expert" is a numeric value. My claim is that your set of skill ratings has the mathematical properties of a numeric skill system.

Second, your point here is incorrect. Uncertainty or risk (since uncertainty is not the correct term for what happens when you roll a die), or the lack thereof, has nothing to do with it. It could have just as easily been an example that did include a die roll. Or a non-risk form of uncertainty (like when you "take 10" in 3E, the uncertainty comes from the fact that you don't know that 10 will be enough). And the same truth would have applied. At the end of the day, it would come down to a greater-than, less-than, equal-to quantitative style comparison, in contrast to something qualitative, like just needing a silver weapon to harm a werewolf.

QuoteWell when I look at myself in the mirror I don't see any numbers.

Might that be because numbers are not a physical thing, they are abstract concepts. Just like a level of skill. I also don't see my job title floating around in space when I look in the mirror. Again, more childish arguments. Just quit being a pussy and man up, dude.

Quote from: Lunamancer;898151And this is 100% valid, without contradiction, because, again, numbers are just words.


I can also add together two social security numbers. And what do I get? It won't be another social security number. Are you seriously going to suggest social security numbers aren't numbers just because it can't pass this infantile test you concocted instead of manning up and admitting you're wrong?

You're clearly in marketing mode right now falling to your proven technique of making claims without backing them up or using real logic.

First, numbers are just words. Well 1 is one and 2 is two, 16 is sixteen and 20 is 20, but 1,234,233 is "one million two hundred thirty four thousand two hundred thirty three". In this particular case one number is actually 11 words.

Regarding social security numbers. You can add two numbers which are used as a reference to people in the social security database and get a third number which will most surely not reference anybody in the social security database. You're trying to pull the typical trick of trying to prove something by proving something else that does not apply. Does a social security number refer to a probability distribution? Are the numbers used as social security numbers (natural numbers) bounded in any way? Because "legendary" is the top value in the skill set. To be able to add "expert" and "legendary" would require something larger than "legendary".

I can take a social security number such as 078-05-1220 and add another such as 078-06-2333 and most surely the result will point to a valid social security number.  Then again it might not. I might work with 772-23-1233 and add 772-23-2334 which would probably take me out of range. So first of all you haven't even proven that your example is actually true and you're generalizing to counter my skill system which is entirely different.

Do you really think we're this stupid? To believe you can sell these simple counter arguments which can't pass even the lightest of scrutiny.

Saurondor, you are just confused, and it seems to be irremedial.

Quote from: Manzanaro;898160Saurondor, you are just confused, and it seems to be irremedial.

Confused in what way? Can you be more precise?

Quote from: Saurondor;898110...


Well, why is there a dump stat to begin with? If orcs (or any intelligent monster for that matter) could get a +1 to hit against creatures they truly despise and such displeasure came from low PC charisma score, trust me, CHA would not be a dump stat.

That is actually a brilliant idea.  Although I don't use D&D, nor do my players use my version of Charisma as a dump stat, I like this.  It's the stick to the carrot of my "Charisma" getting you better reactions and better prices.