So I decided that the game I'm making make skill checks with a roll of 3d6. I wanted to incorporate an advantage/disadvantage system, so I decided that on an advantage you roll 4 and drop the lowest, and on a disadvantage you roll 4 and drop the highest.

I needed to get the average roll for what I described to see if it made a big enough difference, and I couldn't find a dice calculator willing to do that for me, so I rolled it 20 times myself and took the averages.

On dropping the highest, I got 8.55, and on dropping the lowest I got 12.55.

I decided that that didn't look quite right, so I made this spreadsheet with about 16,000 cells to calculate it for me, and got my results.

On dropping the highest, it got 8.75, and on dropping the lowest it got 12.24. It lead me to the same conclusion that the other numbers would have lead me to anyway.

What is the most convoluted thing you've had to do to make an informed design decision?

Sorry for the long post, but it's a long story.

I am working on an effects-based generic RPG called "Tribute", and have been for a few years now. I wanted my game's effects to be more "atomic" than say GURPS or Hero, meaning that instead of buying the "flight" power, you build the power from rules "elements" that accomplish the effect of flight.

In short, Elements are words that are simultaneously nouns and verbs and which have about a page of rules attached to them describing how they can be used.

This allows me to have fewer rules while retaining all of the power (in theory) of games with more pages of rules. It also allows players to write all of the rules for their character's powers right on the character sheet using a shorthand called a Tribute Expression.

Edit:
The reason that Elements are both nouns and verbs is so they can be the active force of an effect, or the object acted upon. Proper names for things can take the place of a noun element when they are specifically targeted or referenced. Elements are in all caps. Non-elements are not, and are often placed in quotes to signify that they are specific instances of the Element they take the place of.

Continuing the flight example, my game in it's current state models the effect with the expression:


The value 10 is arbitrary in this case; it stands for the speed of the RELAY effect. Things like how much weight you can carry with you are inherited from the stat that you use to power the ability (defined by where you put it on your character sheet).

Getting back to the point of the thread, I was at a loss after coming up with the original concept as to which elements I'd need. I thought about reverse engineering GURPS and Hero powers, but at that stage I didn't even have enough clarity in my ideas to mock up working expressions.

So I went looking for premade systems of classifying and describing phenomena. I figured that a lot of my work would be done for me if I found the right system.

Eventually I hit on the idea that I might be looking for some sort of pictographic alphabet. At some point I came to the Wikipedia page on Phoenician, and recognized the letter names as being the same as the Hebrew alphabet (Aleph-Bet). Then I remembered reading a few things about Kabbalah when I was younger, and began looking into it.

I studied and learned old-school Kabbalah (to a low level) for my game over the next three years. I was and am an agnostic- at no point have I been pushing an agenda of faith in anything. But the funny thing is; it worked.

In Kabbalah the 22 letters* are attached to concepts like giving, accepting, and a lot more esoterica. However, I've done my best to extract the axiomatic concepts independent of Jewish spirituality, and to this end I've had to read a lot of writings on Magic, Tarot, Astrology and other occult matters as they tie into Kabbalah by a system of correspondences.

Keep in mind that this was all as an unbeliever. I figure that even if these belief systems are much ado about nothing (and I can't claim that they are or are not) they at least have internal consistency to a large degree.

I've also made a lot of tables based on ancient astrological rulerships and a system that one occultist purports shows that the Hebrew alphabet's (and by extension the Phoenician) letter meanings combine and build upon each other in an additive fashion to create each successive letter and its meaning, etc. The cool thing is that I can do a find and replace on an Element name when I think I understand a letter more fully and see how it fits into the tables, and whether it follows from its related elements in a logical fashion. It actually does far more often than I would have expected and when it doesn't it means I need to reexamine my understanding of the concepts.

So yeah, that's pretty far to go for game design.

*I'm still deciding whether I can use the 10 sephiroth of the tree of life, but they don't seem eminently gameable at the moment. I just might not understand them well enough, though.

Also, I can't understand Hebrew at this point aside from a few words, but I can read it out loud.

Wow. That is quite a ways. And that game sounds really cool.

As it happens I am looking to do build a subsystem tangentially related to what you're describing. I'll give that alphabet a look as well.

Quote from: Doccit;688120Wow. That is quite a ways. And that game sounds really cool.

As it happens I am looking to do build a subsystem tangentially related to what you're describing. I'll give that alphabet a look as well.

Cool, but be warned. It's a rabbit hole.

Edit: You know, I think I want to start a design blog with my long post in this thread as the first post. There are a lot more details I could cover in a dedicated space.