I still fail to see any advantage in using descriptive attributes. In the best case you can translate them into numbers with an extra step.

In the worst case it is desorienting or a false friend for starters if the designer didn´t do his hoemwork fitting the resolution system to the name or when the player had experience with a system that used the same term differently.
With a number it is obvious that you need a scale to use it.

Quote from: Maarzan;898507I still fail to see any advantage in using descriptive attributes. In the best case you can translate them into numbers with an extra step.

In the worst case it is disorienting or a false friend for starters if the designer didn´t do his homework fitting the resolution system to the name or when the player had experience with a system that used the same term differently.
With a number it is obvious that you need a scale to use it.

I'd have to agree with this.  The boon from using words is also the bane. When done well it I imagine it adds flavor and a sense of immersion.

I see the boon as words carry with them connotations, that can be evocative, and a built in expectation of what they mean.  I think the later, is the bane.  When player, GM, designer, and more importantly how things play out when playing the game, all don't line up with the expectation then words are worse than numbers.  It is the classic semantics problem.

Words are also numbers and numbers words.  What I'm trying to say is don't get hung up on the names of a set of semantic symbols and the forms of operations between them.  They are all the same under information theory and set theory.  The operations we are most familiar with that apply to what we call words is grammar.  However, logical operations work just as well once you define relations between the elements of your set.  For example, the words unskilled, skilled, expert mean little standing alone (ignore for a second all your knowledge about the semantic meaning of those terms).

Now when you order them unskilled-skilled-expert, you have created and ordered set (defined relations between them), which is what our brains do based on what we know of definitions.  Once done, when you apply them to situations you are using mathematics.  You are primarily using Boolean logic-like operations such as IF, THEN, AND, NOT, UNION, INTERSECTION, etc. That is you are comparing this set of skill level descriptors to a set of task difficulty descriptors.  Let's give the later the same order and set names unskilled-skilled-expert.  Now an example, an Expert Farmer can always perform an unskilled or skilled task and MAY be able to perform an expert task.  How one determines that "MAY" is the random mechanic you are using.  It may be GM fiat, it may be player fiat, it may be story point bidding to determine who gets the fiat, it maybe roll a d20 (which then requires numbers to be used).  None the less you have mathematical operations (I use this term in the broader sense as operations on sets that we call numbers is what we typically call mathematics but that is just a sub-set of the larger concepts of set theory and information theory) that are used on the objects in the set, they are just logic operations.

Note, you could as well called your set or skill level descriptors by numbers, e.g. 1-10 a scale that is very evocative for most.  Likewise with your task difficulty descriptors.

Logic operations are much coarser than the ones we think of as numerical, for good or ill.  I'm generally in favor of simplification, no more detail than needed.  Yet I also like gradation (degrees of success) and dynamic range, both are harder to get when limited to logic operations only.  It can certainly be done, as there is theoretically no difference, but what you end up doing is making a bunch of conditionals that mimic addition and subtraction.  Heck that's the basis of logic circuits, all the math your calculator is doing is really just Boolean logic operations.

What you gain using words is flavor and simplicity but at a price of potential semantic dissonance (what you think the word means is different than your experience with it in play) and a more limited base gradation and dynamic range.

Let me get back to the "MAY" as I think that is really the crux of all of this.  How do you determine it. When it is fiat, we oft call it "narrative" when it has random generators involved we oft call it "simulation."  We could just as well say subjective vs. objective.  Yet the game designer, and our social interactions place a limit on this.  What tasks the game associates with unskilled-skilled-expert difficulty adds an objective aspect.  Although arguments can arise when the game designer knows less about a subject than players or GM.  Likewise the probabilities for dice rolls, although objective in the rules, can likewise derive from very subjective game designer knowledge. (I submit as exhibit 1 AD&D's "rules" for climbing and stealth).  

I'll submit that words, i.e., sets with few elements where operations between the elements or other sets are primarily limited to logic operators, have (when done right) the advantages of immersion (through evocative description) and simplicity, through few elements that relate in a few straightforward ways.  They however do not do well with gradation of outcomes or dynamic range (e.g., character growth).

Quote from: Maarzan;898507I still fail to see any advantage in using descriptive attributes. In the best case you can translate them into numbers with an extra step.

Well, maybe you can address this since Saurondor refuses to--examples of descriptive attributes that cannot be translated to numbers.

Health, in the Lejendary Adventure game, which is a composite of both physical and mental health. In this way, a character with high health may be described as "big and beefy" OR "small but mentally tough." The first one can reach high places more easily and is better as a human shield. The second one can better fit into tight spaces and may be harder to spot. So it's not the case that one descriptive attribute is greater than or less than the other. And they certainly are not equal. Events that effect Health can also effect these descriptors--so losing a good chunk of health to wounds would change the descriptors to "big and beefy with a few cuts" or "small but mentally tough with a few cuts." Also note that these operate in parallel with a numerical score. So there is no need to take that extra step to translate them into numbers. But as descriptive attributes, they rely more on common sense and adjudication than rigid formula.

Another example I used is trying to hurt a werewolf. It places a qualitative requirement on the weapon--that it be silver. But still, the quantitative characteristics of the weapon, like how much damage it does, is used in tandem.

I've just described a twin schematic with both numerical and verbal components. My beef with Saurondor is that he refuses to admit his descriptors behave like the numerical component (and so is splitting hairs by saying, "G'huk, well they're technically not numbers!") and not at all like the verbal one. So my question to you is, you've rightly criticized Pseudo-Verbal Attributes. What do you have to say about True-Verbal Attributes. Things like the silver weapon requirement, which aren't necessarily squishy or malleable, but DO represent a substantial rule that itself is non-numerical?

Quote from: Xanther;898564Now when you order them unskilled-skilled-expert, you have created and ordered set (defined relations between them), which is what our brains do based on what we know of definitions.  Once done, when you apply them to situations you are using mathematics.  You are primarily using Boolean logic-like operations such as IF, THEN, AND, NOT, UNION, INTERSECTION, etc. That is you are comparing this set of skill level descriptors to a set of task difficulty descriptors.  Let's give the later the same order and set names unskilled-skilled-expert.  Now an example, an Expert Farmer can always perform an unskilled or skilled task and MAY be able to perform an expert task.  How one determines that "MAY" is the random mechanic you are using.  It may be GM fiat, it may be player fiat, it may be story point bidding to determine who gets the fiat, it maybe roll a d20 (which then requires numbers to be used).  None the less you have mathematical operations (I use this term in the broader sense as operations on sets that we call numbers is what we typically call mathematics but that is just a sub-set of the larger concepts of set theory and information theory) that are used on the objects in the set, they are just logic operations.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. First of all it's not Boolean because you can interpret the outcome in more than two ways (success or failure). Secondly, the expert farmer may be able to perform unskilled, skilled and expert tasks. The farmer will usually be more successful at performing unskilled tasks than skilled task than expert tasks, but the farmer may also get lucky and perform master or legendary tasks as well. Of course the odds of success in the later is low and the odds of failure with unskilled and skilled is lower, particularly with the former than the later.

This is quite different from placing numbers to each level. A value of 5 is always larger than 3, but a value of expert is somewhat larger than skilled and quite larger than unskilled. While the "statement:

"Expert is better than skilled", is true, the statement

"Expert beats skilled", is partially true. It's true a majority of times, but not always. We could say that it's "truthness" is 72%.

The statement "Expert beats skilled" has a truth level of 50%, and the statement "Expert beats unskilled" has a "truthness" of 87%, but it could occur that the expert fails at an unskilled task.

The degree of failure of course will be lower than the degree of failure between an expert and an expert or an expert vs a legendary task. Failure, just like success, is a gradient, not a binary cutoff of true and false.

Take the following graph as reference

[ATTACH=CONFIG]53[/ATTACH]

Zero is the cutoff point. Any value of zero or better begins to be good and negative values are bad and progressively so. As you can see expert vs expert (orange) has a wide range that goes from highly probable low values to highly probable high values. Expert vs legendary (black) has a higher range of negative values (bad thing) as you'd expect from someone facing a task two levels higher. On the other hand expert vs skilled has a higher range of positive values. All this reads the following way.

Expert vs expert: will tend to have ok to good outcomes and not so bad to bad outcomes as the curve centers around zero, the midpoint between good and bad.

Expert vs skilled: will tend to have pretty good outcomes with lesser ok outcomes and a few somewhat bad outcomes below zero. Most of the time the outcome will be between 8 an 12 which is really good, but sometimes it might be -8 or worse, but only 1.1% of the time would outcomes be so low.

Expert vs legendary: quite the opposite to expert vs skilled. The expert character may deliver a few good blows to the legendary opponent, but never something extraordinary nor out of this world. On the other hand the legendary opponent, task or monster will give the PC quite a beating most of the time.

Now, regarding gradation of outcomes or dynamic range (e.g., character growth), sure, you won't see characters leveling up every other session. Going from experienced to expert will take some time and also involves the broadness of the progress. It's one thing to become master in radio frequency equipment for cellular communications and quite another to be master at electronics, all electronics. So the character may be a legendary hacker, but skilled or experienced with Word or Excel.

This doesn't mean there's a small dynamic range. Don't think expert is experienced + 1 and experienced is skilled + 1, etc. If you look at the following graph the difference between levels is around 3.5 points.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]52[/ATTACH]

The difference between the midpoint of skilled and legendary is around 10 points. You'd need +10 from equipment modifies, extra bonuses, etc. to even begin to have a 50-50 chance of success.

Say your character is into skydiving. You took the course, jumped a few times and go on trips two or three times a year. Your character is skilled. A SEAL with ten years experience is legendary. There's a 98.95% chance he'll beat you hands down. Ok,so you've got a good job and you buy yourself all the nice little gadgets and you get a +3. Awesome, now the SEAL beats you only 96.23% of the time. Turns out you've got some serious cash and some military industry connections, fuck that you're Tony Stark's son. All these nice gadgets now add +6. Hurray! Now the SEAL only beats you 89.64% of the time. Of course, if you were experienced and enjoyed those same modifiers you'd get beaten only 75.76% of the time. If you're expert then 54.63% of the time. As you can see skill counts a lot more than gear. In other words, getting the most awesome rifle and scope will not make your PC a sniper. Unless your character is Macgyver, and even then you'd probably need legendary, or at least master, Swiss Army Knife skill.

The character skills are clearly quite distant one from another and modifiers weigh in more the closer the skills are. Like I showed you a skilled character vs a legendary task with a +6 only gets about a 10% improvement (from 98% to 89%). An expert character (closer to legendary) gets a 25% improvement (88% to 53%) from the same +6. This also helps to keep modifier values small and the math simpler. Small modifiers go a small way if characters and tasks are of similar level and such modifiers are quite irrelevant if there's a large skill difference. Like I mentioned, you can't get good at something just by buying all the fancy stuff.

Note how the labels are arbitrary. Like, you say that a Navy seal with 10 years para-trooping experience is "legendary". What legends are told about him? The skill labels are just place holders. To explain how they work under your proposed rules of simulation you need to break them down into the numbers. The words alone do not suffice, nor do they map precisely to the actual meaning of the words. In reality, for example, you may have two people who are both legitimately "skilled" in a given area of expertise, yet do not fall into the same express range of capability. So this idea that you could tell your players that their characters are "skilled" in something, and by the word alone this would inform them of their capabilities is inaccurate. For "skilled" to be meaningful to them they will need to be able to translate what the word means mathematically in your system.

By just calling these skill levels 0, 1, 2 and etc. you have the same mechanical effect but you don't pretend that being an "expert" in a given field will produce the same results in your game that being an "expert" in reality would produce.

EDIT: By the way, I think Xanther's summary is excellent.

Quote from: Saurondor;898631Wrong, wrong, wrong. First of all it's not Boolean because you can interpret the outcome in more than two ways (success or failure).

First, don't be a dick to me Saurondor.  The example I gave is not "wrong" what was wrong is I somehow failed to read your mind.  You clearly missed this was an example and I used the term Boolean-like.  You also failed to miss that none of what I said hinges on Boolean logic.  Rather that is a strength of word based, the more you move away from it the more number based descriptions shine.  
 

QuoteSecondly, the expert farmer may be able to perform unskilled, skilled and expert tasks. The farmer will usually be more successful at performing unskilled tasks than skilled task than expert tasks, but the farmer may also get lucky and perform master or legendary tasks as well. Of course the odds of success in the later is low and the odds of failure with unskilled and skilled is lower, particularly with the former than the later.

Fair enough.  That doesn't undermine what I said one iota.  All you have done is ignore the example you quoted but bring up my example of:  IF skill x AND task y THEN MAY succeed.  I don't think you get the example you quoted actually argues in favor of words instead of numbers while yours does not.

QuoteThis is quite different from placing numbers to each level. A value of 5 is always larger than 3, but a value of expert is somewhat larger than skilled and quite larger than unskilled.

Your joking right?  You realize the terms somewhat and quite are subject.  I can easily say 5 is somewhat larger than 3, and quite larger than 1.  Now just set 5=expert, 3=skilled and 1=unskilled.  There is no FUNDAMENTAL functional difference except in your head.  They are both ordered sets.  The only difference is the connotations words provide that numbers normally lack, except I would say if you put something on a scale of 1-10 those numbers carry a lot of connotation.

QuoteWhile the "statement:
"Expert is better than skilled", is true, the statement
"Expert beats skilled", is partially true. It's true a majority of times, but not always. We could say that it's "truthness" is 72%.
The statement "Expert beats skilled" has a truth level of 50%, and the statement "Expert beats unskilled" has a "truthness" of 87%, but it could occur that the expert fails at an unskilled task.

And that's your implementation.  I will repeat, all you have done is convert every task into: IF skill x AND task y THEN MAY succeed.   Where do you get these percentages?  They are very precise.  Do you see that all you are doing is using the word "skilled" as a place holder for a number because once you have the skill level (described with a word) and a task difficulty (described with a word) you then go to some table or graph (or other numerical reference) to get such percentages.  That is, how did you make those curves? How do you adjudicate where someone is on the curve; roll a die?  All you have done is cloak the number in words.

Just some advice on your probabilities.  If I am a player with an expert skill and I fail an unskilled task 13% of the time, then I'm going to be upset. That is incredibly high in play.  Of course it all depends on what qualifies as an unskilled task.  If you set it high enough then there is no problem for the expert, but then the unskilled person may be doing some pretty tough things more easily than one would expect.  This naturally occurs when you do it this way and have such low resolution and dynamic range in your skill levels (your mention only 4 levels, see below for more explanantion).  I've seen this occur in play as this is not new.  What ends up happening is GMs ignore making experts roll for unskilled tasks because the failure rate is unrealistic and/or doesn't matter (if doing your degree of failure thing).

QuoteThe degree of failure of course will be lower than the degree of failure between an expert and an expert or an expert vs a legendary task. Failure, just like success, is a gradient, not a binary cutoff of true and false.

You are confusing chance of failure and success with degree.  There is nothing in these graphs that tell me if I am at -8 it is worse than -16, or +16 is better than +8, nor what that difference is.  See more below.

QuoteTake the following graph as reference
Zero is the cutoff point. Any value of zero or better begins to be good and negative values are bad and progressively so. As you can see expert vs expert (orange) has a wide range that goes from highly probable low values to highly probable high values. Expert vs legendary (black) has a higher range of negative values (bad thing) as you'd expect from someone facing a task two levels higher. On the other hand expert vs skilled has a higher range of positive values. All this reads the following way.

And here we see the problem arise, semantics.  The base mechanic you illustrate is binary, success or failure.  Above zero or below.  It's just that the chance of success or failure varies between curves
To get a gradation you have to impose it through some other rule, it doesn't come out of the mechanics themselves.  That is what you are doing here, you are looking at theses curves and deciding where to draw lines to represents steps of failure or success.  That is exactly the same as saying if you succeed by n1 or more result z1, if you succeed by n2 or more result z2, etc. and likewise for failures.    I covered that in my previous post and it is something you can do with any skill description, words or numbers.  It just works better with numbers, one less conversion step.

QuoteExpert vs expert: will tend to have ok to good outcomes and not so bad to bad outcomes as the curve centers around zero, the midpoint between good and bad.
Expert vs skilled: will tend to have pretty good outcomes with lesser ok outcomes and a few somewhat bad outcomes below zero. Most of the time the outcome will be between 8 an 12 which is really good, but sometimes it might be -8 or worse, but only 1.1% of the time would outcomes be so low.
Expert vs legendary: quite the opposite to expert vs skilled. The expert character may deliver a few good blows to the legendary opponent, but never something extraordinary nor out of this world. On the other hand the legendary opponent, task or monster will give the PC quite a beating most of the time.

You realize this is just your implementation.  These curves are not inherent to a word based description, and in my opinion really defeat the whole purpose of a word based system.  
Further, these bell curves, or the normal probability distribution, can all be obtained fairly well (and rather directly) by using 3D6 with a target number (i.e. to set the zero correctly) and even 3D6, 4D6, 5D6 type dice pools.  That is, you don't need to look at words then go from words to these curves.  You can set you skill level and task difficulty numbers such that when you roll 3D6 with such modifiers what you are rolling is directly those curves in your example then you can use the amount you are off from the target for a degree of success directly.  You can do the same thing with letting skill level represent number of D6, although the odds are a little harder to figure and the width of the distributions change somewhat.
In short, your example with the curves argues in favor of using numbers instead of words.  Better would be to use words with numbers., for example, 5 (Expert); 3 (Skilled); 1 (Unskilled).

QuoteNow, regarding gradation of outcomes or dynamic range (e.g., character growth), sure, you won't see characters leveling up every other session. Going from experienced to expert will take some time and also involves the broadness of the progress. It's one thing to become master in radio frequency equipment for cellular communications and quite another to be master at electronics, all electronics. So the character may be a legendary hacker, but skilled or experienced with Word or Excel.

You realize you are just talking about your implementation here.  It has nothing to do with the fundamentals of differences in word based versus numbers based.  If it takes 1 session and 1 skill, or 100 sessions and a 100 intertwined skills to level up it makes no difference.  However, what you describe is a game where character growth is slow and/or each growth step represents a large improvement, versus fast growth or more granular improvement.  In the system you describe, dynamic range in the mechanics is not so important.  I've played several games that are very fun which have very limited character growth in this fashion.   Dynamic range is not good or bad, you just need to be aware as a game designer the degree to which your mechanics have it, how much you want and the mechanics that will give you more or less.  

QuoteThis doesn't mean there's a small dynamic range. Don't think expert is experienced + 1 and experienced is skilled + 1, etc. If you look at the following graph the difference between levels is around 3.5 points.
The difference between the midpoint of skilled and legendary is around 10 points. You'd need +10 from equipment modifies, extra bonuses, etc. to even begin to have a 50-50 chance of success.

First looking at these graphs, they look pretty much like a 3D6, 4D6, 5D6, approach, that is dice pool.
Second, I use the term dynamic range to refer to the range of skill level; that is, how many steps do you have?
unskilled-skilled-expert-legendary that is a range of 4.  
Compare a system that rates on a scale of 1-10, that is a range of 10.  The latter has greater dynamic range.  The example you give doesn't show dynamic range, it shows the gaps between the steps in your levels are large, you have less resolution.  Typically the larger the dynamic range the greater the resolution.  So your graphs argue for a low dynamic range.

QuoteSay your character is into skydiving. You took the course, jumped a few times and go on trips two or three times a year. Your character is skilled. A SEAL with ten years experience is legendary. There's a 98.95% chance he'll beat you hands down. Ok,so you've got a good job and you buy yourself all the nice little gadgets and you get a +3. Awesome, now the SEAL beats you only 96.23% of the time. Turns out you've got some serious cash and some military industry connections, fuck that you're Tony Stark's son. All these nice gadgets now add +6. Hurray! Now the SEAL only beats you 89.64% of the time. Of course, if you were experienced and enjoyed those same modifiers you'd get beaten only 75.76% of the time. If you're expert then 54.63% of the time. As you can see skill counts a lot more than gear. In other words, getting the most awesome rifle and scope will not make your PC a sniper. Unless your character is Macgyver, and even then you'd probably need legendary, or at least master, Swiss Army Knife skill.

Again, all these numbers are just an implementation, and actually show the small dynamic range of the skill levels, so far only 4 steps.  But the implementation you have set up allows for great dynamic range in gear.  That's cool.   In my experience that is exactly how games with few character skill levels play out.  "Progression" is in the gear.  It looks like from your examples a gear range from -10 to +10 is built in.  That is great dynamic range for the gear.  Sounds like your SEAL could kill a noob with his pinky (gear -10).  I do really like how that works, nice flavor that comes right out of your mechanics.  It still doesn't change the fact that you skill level mechanic has low dynamic range.

QuoteThe character skills are clearly quite distant one from another and modifiers weigh in more the closer the skills are.

Yes, there are big steps between skills in your system, and few steps.

QuoteLike I showed you a skilled character vs a legendary task with a +6 only gets about a 10% improvement (from 98% to 89%). An expert character (closer to legendary) gets a 25% improvement (88% to 53%) from the same +6. This also helps to keep modifier values small and the math simpler. Small modifiers go a small way if characters and tasks are of similar level and such modifiers are quite irrelevant if there's a large skill difference. Like I mentioned, you can't get good at something just by buying all the fancy stuff.

I would not call your modifiers small.  Small is a low range of modifiers that make a difference, like +1 to +4 on a 2D6 system.   You have a high resolution in your modifiers, small steps, so they can span a large range and still not overpower skill level.  That sounds like exactly what you want in your game.   Your modifiers are small in that they appear to be rarely more than single digit, which makes the math easier, however, if you have to start stacking many small ones it slows the mechanics down.

In sum though, these examples you give are very "simulationist" more so than many games that are considered stereotypical "simulationist" like older D&D.  Looking at the curves and modifiers, I'd guess the mechanics are very similar to GURPS or T4 or Traveller 5, any system where increased skill gives you more D6 to roll and there are a plethora of "tiny" modifiers that you get from gear.  I call these gear heavy, advancement lite games.
Also, I see nothing in your example that distinguishes word descriptions from numbers.  In fact, it's incredibly numerical what you are doing with fine gradations in gear and using bell curves to slice the success and failure pies into small slices.  You would be much better served to include a number with each word description, that number chosen so when you input it (along with a difficulty number) into the mechanics to answer the MAY question you get on the curve you want.  Certainly keep the word description, it adds flavor and helps immersion.

It seems though the word versus number discussion took a tangent into your specific mechanics.  It's fun to think about these things but I typically don't have time for such long posts.    I can respond to more focused stuff or questions on how some mechanic works in play and mechanic options.

Quote from: Manzanaro;898635Note how the labels are arbitrary. Like, you say that a Navy seal with 10 years para-trooping experience is "legendary". What legends are told about him?

Amen to that. Every time I pick up an RPG that has "legendary" either as a skill rating or even as just a guide to tell me how awesome a certain numerical skill level is when it's within the realm of ordinary play, I just do a huge eye roll.

Second, by tying it to just any old job, I don't think it translates to actual competency. A guy who took a job as an accountant at age 25 and is about to retire at 65, with 40 years experience under his belt is not necessarily of "legendary" accounting ability. A private investor with no job title at all but has 5 years experience researching companies, reading SEC filings, and analyzing the books is probably going to have the superior ability. The demands and rewards are very different from working a 9 to 5 vs really having your ass on the line.

Of those 10 years of Navy Seal experience, how much of it is actually seeing action, vs how much of it is just training exercises for which the seal draws a salary?

QuoteThe skill labels are just place holders. To explain how they work under your proposed rules of simulation you need to break them down into the numbers.

And this is a point I meant to make but forgot to. Saurondor mistakenly thought he had a point by saying, "Well garsh, I just can't seem to be able to add 'skilled' to 'expert' g'huk! That must mean they're not numbers." As if I ever add 30 skill to 60 skill. If there is a skill over-lap, for instance, where two of the characters skills are both applicable to a situation, I don't just add them together. What I typically do is take the highest and boost it by 10% of all the rest of the applicable skills. But the precise way in which I handle it is not what's relevant. The point is, regardless of whether we're using numerical skill ratings or pseudo-verbal ones or even true-verbal ones, there exists some sort of Eval function that translates the skill rating to something the core mechanic can use. Often times with numerical systems, the Eval function is trivially simple so we aren't aware of its existence until a special case arises. I do feel if we can save a step or make things simpler in at least 80% of the cases, we ought to and just allow for special cases, rather than having a single so-called "elegant" solution which is equally clumsy in 100% of cases.

QuoteThe words alone do not suffice, nor do they map precisely to the actual meaning of the words. In reality, for example, you may have two people who are both legitimately "skilled" in a given area of expertise, yet do not fall into the same express range of capability.

Yeah, if you're going to go verbal, you may as well go all the way and do stuff with it that numbers can't do. Like Big Beefy and Harry Houdini, equal overall Health ratings, but they do have different ranges of capability.

I'm having a hard time imagining a better schematic than having a numerical rating to hang your hat on that interfaces well with the core mechanic, but then just allowing as much creativity as possible (in keeping consistent with what the numerical rating/mechanics are telling us) for the verbal component to the system--essentially a free form appendage that may require GM adjudication in special cases. Again, this is with the idea that it's better to have something black & white and streamlined 80%+ of the time, allowing for special cases, then to just unify the system into a tangled mess.

Quote from: Manzanaro;898635Note how the labels are arbitrary. Like, you say that a Navy seal with 10 years para-trooping experience is "legendary". What legends are told about him? The skill labels are just place holders. To explain how they work under your proposed rules of simulation you need to break them down into the numbers. The words alone do not suffice, nor do they map precisely to the actual meaning of the words. In reality, for example, you may have two people who are both legitimately "skilled" in a given area of expertise, yet do not fall into the same express range of capability. So this idea that you could tell your players that their characters are "skilled" in something, and by the word alone this would inform them of their capabilities is inaccurate. For "skilled" to be meaningful to them they will need to be able to translate what the word means mathematically in your system.

By just calling these skill levels 0, 1, 2 and etc. you have the same mechanical effect but you don't pretend that being an "expert" in a given field will produce the same results in your game that being an "expert" in reality would produce.

EDIT: By the way, I think Xanther's summary is excellent.

Manzanaro you're simply confusing "arbitrary" with "non-linear". Let us take a step back and forget for a moment about those labels and use numbers to represent skills, ok?

So I'll take the base skilled roll in the system as a constant roll similar to a d20, d100 or 4dF, it's the thing players use to roll. Now I'll add numbers to it instead of placing labels.

So I will take away the words (unskilled, skilled, experienced, expert, master and legendary) and replace them with numbers. This because you say that " The words alone do not suffice, nor do they map precisely to the actual meaning of the words."

So now I'll have farming = +3 instead of "skilled farmer". This will somehow be clearer to the player as to the benefit this +3 provides over an ambiguous term such as skilled.

I want you all to take a moment to answer the following question without knowing the mechanics and particularly the dice. What does +3 represent?

Do I get a 15% increase as in d20? Is it a +8% increase to my odds or a +16%? If I'm facing a certain challenge should I take it or pass it? This is what I will answer in the following paragraphs.

It would look something like this:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]59[/ATTACH]

Now let us face off the +0 vs +11, the curve looks like this:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]60[/ATTACH]

As you can see the curve is heavy towards the negative values. Something not good for the PC with the +0 facing a +11 challenge. The odds of getting 0 or better in the roll is 6.24%.

Now let's give the PC a break and add +1, so now the PC is Farming 1

The odds of getting 0 or better is now 8.27% (+2% over past value)

Now let's give the PC a +3

The odds are up to 13.74% which is about 6.5% higher than the initial odds (about double).

Let me add one more and make it +4. The odds of 0 or better are 17.22% which is about +3.5% higher than +3. So adding +1 to 0 (initial +1 score) adds +2% bonus to the odds, and adding +1 to +3 adds 3.5% to the odds, almost twice as much.

Let us keep going on. Allow me to take the bonus to +6. Now the odds of 0 or better are 25.67%. Let me add 1 and make that a +7. The odds go to 30.57%, almost a 5% increase (+4.9%). So going from 0 to 1 was +2%, 3 to 4 +3.5% and 6 to 7 +5%.

Now I'll jump to +9. The odds of 0 or better are 41.39%, and I'll add +1 to that for a +10 making the odds of a 0 or better 47.11 or a +5.72% increase.

Let me add +1 to 10 to take it to eleven and match the challenge "rating". Now the odds of 0 or better are  52.89% a +5.78% increase.

So

+0 = 6.24%
+3 = 13.74% (+7.5% over previous)
+6 = 25.67% (+11.9% over previous)
+9 = 41.39% (+15.7% over previous)
+12 = 52.61% (+11.2% over previous)

So each +1 doesn't mean the same thing.


Now let me do a quick comparison vs a +4 challenge.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]58[/ATTACH]

Odds of 0 or better are 30.57% with +0 to the skill. Now adding +1 makes the odds of 0 or better 35.84% or 5.27% better. Making the skill +3 takes the odds to 47.11% or 16.54 % higher.

So whereas with the +11 challenge a +3 skill represented a +7.5% boost to the odds vs a +4 challenge it represents a 16.54% boost.

So I took away the words (unskilled, skilled, experienced, expert, master and legendary) and replaced them with numbers. This because you say that " The words alone do not suffice, nor do they map precisely to the actual meaning of the words."

So now I have farming = +3 instead of "skilled farmer"

Looking back at the opening question it turns out that +3 is both a +8% increase and a +16% increase (well more or less rounding up and down). It depends on the challenge at hand.

Now let me express it back with labels and compare an introductory paragraph to the skill system with words and with numbers.

You've got labels such as: unskilled, skilled, experienced, expert, master and legendary. They each represent a die roll that you will have to make for your PC and the GM rolls for the challenge's difficulty. To achieve success you must equal or better the challenge roll. If you're on the same skill level or within one your odds are in the ok and average range and your equipment modifiers will weigh in well. If you're up to two out your odds are low and your gear will weigh in somewhat depending on the bonus value. If you're three or more apart your odds are very slim and your gear wont count for shit.


On the other hand

You've got skills that are represented with numbers such as 0, 1, 5, 8, 11 etc and add such modifier to your PC's roll. The GM in turn rolls for the challenge and add's the challenge's difficulty rating which is a similar value (+2, +4, etc. depending on the difficulty). To achieve success you must equal or better the challenge roll. For example a character may enjoy a +3 bonus vs a +4 difficulty or a +4 bonus vs a +10 difficulty. The higher the difficulty the lower the odds and the less impacting the lower bonuses will be.

Now you might be a human calculator and the later may make more sense, be clearer and more precise than the former. Personally I prefer the former.

When it actually comes to telling the story I can narrate:

"Well the combine has broken and fixing it will be an expert's task. The good thing is your character is experienced with these machines due to his upbringing and work in the farm. Roll"

vs

"Well the combine has broken and the difficulty is +6. Your character is +5 farming right? Roll".

Please explain to me how +6 and +5 is clearer if the probability bonus is non-linear and depends on the challenge's difficulty. Please explain in general, not your particular case of a gifted number crunching brain. I'm sure you see +5 and +6 and conclude oh well that's a 47.11% chance of success. I'll just add my +1 farming tools, my +1 diagnostic computer and get the +2 from the farm's shop for an extra +4 and that gives me a 69.43% success rate.

Quote from: Saurondor;898716I want you all to take a moment to answer the following question without knowing the mechanics and particularly the dice. What does +3 represent?

You keep coming back to some form of this question. Can I ask why it's even relevant? Is there something preventing the player from knowing the mechanics as well?

Your question seems to be about the equivalent to saying, "If a bear is riding a unicycle while playing a violin, how is he dangerous?"

How could I respond to such a question? "Well, yeah, the bear is still dangerous because he could still attack you by putting down the violin and jumping off the unicycle!"

And the response would be, "Aah bup bup bup! That's not what I was asking. I was asking how dangerous a bear riding a unicycle while playing the violin is."

To which the only acceptable conclusion would be, "I guess not dangerous at all."

Not because bears aren't dangerous. But because the question was rigged to not accept the truth.

Quote from: Lunamancer;898630Well, maybe you can address this since Saurondor refuses to--examples of descriptive attributes that cannot be translated to numbers.

Health, in the Lejendary Adventure game, which is a composite of both physical and mental health....

Another example I used is trying to hurt a werewolf. It places a qualitative requirement on the weapon--that it be silver. But still, the quantitative characteristics of the weapon, like how much damage it does, is used in tandem.

...
 What do you have to say about True-Verbal Attributes. Things like the silver weapon requirement, which aren't necessarily squishy or malleable, but DO represent a substantial rule that itself is non-numerical?

Re Health:
First I see it just as a more abstract health attribute than more physical ones, like most hitpoint versions.

With the rest the question is how is it managed? Are there any rules how you can label your value and what the effects of these labels are? How much harder is the small one to see and how much more cover does the big one give?


Numbers are just a tool. If something maps unequivocally to the setting (liking this type of creature can be hit with this attack type) we don´t need extra numbers to represent it, but more often than not this is not true. And getting everyone on the same track with the content of the shared imaginary space is hard enough that you don´t want to load everything on vague language.

I think "common sense" is not that common and much more often stands for "This is what I think and everyone who disagrees must be ... ".

Xanther, first of all I apologize if I sounded rude by saying wrong wrong wrong. I should have been more moderate about it.

Now skills are not numbers, they're a set of numbers that have a higher or lower probability of occurring. Some values in the set "expert" are actually lower than some "high" values in the set "experienced". When I talk about an "expert" skill I'm not talking about a 5 that is better than a 3 ALWAYS. I'm talking about a set of values which generally tend to come out higher than experienced, but it's not always so. So an expert will usually get rolls around 5, but might come up with a 3 at times. An experienced will usually roll around 3, but might get lucky and get a 5 every so often.

You actually can't get these curves and outcomes by just rolling 3d6 or similar rolls as these lack the long tails characteristic of the rolls I'm using:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]62[/ATTACH]

Now, following your recommendation

QuoteYou would be much better served to include a number with each word description, that number chosen so when you input it (along with a difficulty number) into the mechanics to answer the MAY question you get on the curve you want.

Seeing that the black curve (unskilled) goes from -20 to +20, what value would you suggest I place on unskilled? Should it be -20, -18, -2, 0, +4, +8, +10 or +20, or any of the others that lay under the curve? What's the best fitting number to the word description? And in what way would that make it clearer for you?

Take a look at real time individual sports, say 100m dash.
Everyone has his current potential, but the athlete will not achieve the same time in every race. It will be a certain distribution leading to results next to his potential while generally staying at this potential (more Training, better equipment, technique improvements, illness, injuries etc can all modify the potential of course) . So there will be people that will not swap places unless some accident happens and there will be people who will usually be better or worse but on a special day things could swap and there are other athletes with similar potential, where every race could swap playes back and forth.

Quote from: Maarzan;898730With the rest the question is how is it managed? Are there any rules how you can label your value and what the effects of these labels are?

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "rules" in this context. The rule book, when it explains health, includes what I have said, that high health could mean the obvious big, tough guy, but it could also be the little guy who is mentally tough. So when a player describes his high-health character as being small, we generally assume his mental toughness makes up the physical difference. In general, we can find wiggle room within whatever is vague or unsaid to make up the balance.

There is another factor, though. The other Abilities a character has can be telling. A number of Abilities are highly physical in nature. Others are highly mental. Many are both. A very small number are neither. If the character has mainly mental abilities, especially numbering among the health-based ones, then that suggests a very different character from one in which they are primarily physical. Whatever the Abilities, obviously they are also part of the rules, though the player generally has complete freedom in choosing them.

QuoteHow much harder is the small one to see and how much more cover does the big one give?

It's all situational. If they're hiding behind a fig leaf, I'd say it doesn't matter. Same if they're trying to provide cover for an elephant. However, the small one hiding behind the big one is clearly plausible while the opposite isn't. Isn't it generally true that the precise mechanical modifier is based on a percentage of cover? And isn't that fairly easily determined a-mechanically via verbal description? e.g. a 6 foot character standing behind a 3 foot high stone wall effectively has about 50% cover, while a 4 foot character has 75% cover. Either can generally crawl to get 100% cover, even though there's no explicit rule saying so.

QuoteNumbers are just a tool. If something maps unequivocally to the setting (liking this type of creature can be hit with this attack type) we don´t need extra numbers to represent it, but more often than not this is not true. And getting everyone on the same track with the content of the shared imaginary space is hard enough that you don´t want to load everything on vague language.

So? Use precise language. Yes, we all know the English language can be ambiguous at times. But still most books I pick up are mostly filled with words, not strings of numbers. For all its flaws, natural language is still by far the best means of communication. That doesn't mean numbers should be abandoned. They're most effective at communicating certain types of information, generally quantitative. The key is to use the correct means of communication that best matches the information you're trying to communicate. RPG game designers, however, have an incredibly bad habit of doing the exact opposite, attempting to use natural language to communicate quantitative information, or else getting too hopped up on the imagined "precision" of numbers and attempting to boil everything mechanically down to numbers.

QuoteI think "common sense" is not that common and much more often stands for "This is what I think and everyone who disagrees must be ... ".

Common sense means a lot of different things. Some of them are common. Some are not but are sensible enough if you give them any thought that I'm okay with someone being "punished" in an RPG for not exercising it. And others are just things that are said to be common sense when they are neither common nor sensical. I'm fine just ignoring them as a straw man attack against the use of common sense.

Quote from: Lunamancer;898725You keep coming back to some form of this question. Can I ask why it's even relevant? Is there something preventing the player from knowing the mechanics as well?

Not at all. Why should it? I never said the player shouldn't know the mechanics, just that the player need not know the mechanics. I'm not preventing then from understanding the mechanics, just not making it a requirement to start playing.

There are 2 elements I would like to know there.

The first one is about how these lables to health flow back into the resolution. Even your % value doesn´t tell how it influences for example a stealth roll or an attack.

And if these labels influence the resolution I would like if there are any rules how theses label get chosen or how far someone can go with finding labels to wring them for boni.

There we are decidedly of different opinions. Language is chronically short on precission.