Quote from: gleichman;645152I'm not as focused on that as one might expect and will accept a number of ways of doing it as long as the mechanic is clear about your chances and how works.

So no dice pools.

For the games I currently play- HERO System used 3d6, roll under your skill after applying modifiers. My homegrown is the same with d100 but has some other nice details.

Unlike many I don't think skills are worth a great deal of work and effort in game design, as they are mostly just a given in the genre sources. Thus for RPGs I think the main use is to individualize characters.

I do however think they should be dependable in producing the results they should. So while Dark Heresy is a d100 roll under- the skill levels you get in the game are so puny that even masters of them come off acting like the keystone cops.

What about a dice pool that has reasonably clear probabilities?

d10's,target numbers on a scale of 1 to 10, retaining only the highest single d10. Most people can handle increments of 10 and percentages of 10%.


I suppose there is no compelling reason to use a die pool in the first place, other than to make a game different than another.

Quote from: gleichman;644871I have lots of nicks and cuts too you know.

Honestly, man... no, not really.

I'll admit you have lots of rather interesting ideas. But when you comes to execution and saying what you mean, I've noticed you tend towards the very vague and cryptic.

Like... reading your posts is like reading some of the modern philosophers. Lots of purple prose, dancing around the ideas without fully presenting them. Being a philosophy student I'm used to that, but it is still somewhat frustrating. I get the sense that you fully understand what you're getting at, your presentation is just... moderately unhelpful to getting other people on the same page.

Take this exchange, for example. You said "injuries are injuries." You then say "I have lots of nicks and cuts." In this context, those two statements seem pretty diametrically opposed: how are you modeling small injuries, if injuries are injuries? I get the feeling that you don't mean them to be, that there's something more going on in your head that you're not sharing or presenting clearly, but that's the problem here.

Examples from other posters of how you respond to people not quite grasping your ideas doesn't really help, either. I'm half-expecting you to tell me that I don't get it, then, and will be unable to, or I'm being willfully ignorant or purposefully misrepresenting your position.

I'm not asking you to completely spill your guts here and explain everything you do down to the exacting details, either. But somewhere between what you're saying and that, is the "sweet spot" for enough information for me to grok what you're getting at.

Quote from: Sommerjon;645182Amusing to see someone with such a nerd-on for 'reality' who uses one of the worst dice mechanics to simulate 'reality'.

Personally I think the crowning point here was when G - man was talking shit to everyone, then people starting apologising to him for his insults towards them.

I took a look at hero.

Didn't really understand it.

Why 3 dice? Is it roll under a fixed number with circumstances providing modifiers as appropriate?

Combat seemed to have two different sytems; one that was a table cross referencing values for a target number while another had you rolling to reduce the opposing defence value to see if you could make it low enough to attack.

or something.

I didn't read it particularly deeply, admittedly, but it's not really for me I think.

Why would dice pools be bad?

Quote from: Bill;645185What about a dice pool that has reasonably clear probabilities?

d10's,target numbers on a scale of 1 to 10, retaining only the highest single d10. Most people can handle increments of 10 and percentages of 10%.

That's fine for a single die, but what's the chance of rolling a 7 or better or 4 d10? I know how to figure it (87%), but that's not intuitive to most people who are limited to more = better, less = worse judgements.

Quote from: Bill;645185I suppose there is no compelling reason to use a die pool in the first place, other than to make a game different than another.

Some people think they're quicker and easier to use with single digit addition by adding/removing dice. Some like their probability curve (claiming their more realistic) and yet others like the ease of determing degrees of success. Some want all those factors. And some just like rolling lots of dice.

I care little for any of that. Success is binary in most fantasy or sci-fi genres and doesn't need degrees of success. Meanwhile the requirements of play and simulation (again of genre) have probability requirements different than reality.

Thus nearly all the above I see as drawbacks, and when added to how difficult a time players have knowing their real chances of success- I never accepted their use. In the attempts a running such RAW, the results were always unsatisfactory over an extended time- failing at matching the genre and failing at being much fun either.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;645188Take this exchange, for example. You said "injuries are injuries." You then say "I have lots of nicks and cuts." In this context, those two statements seem pretty diametrically opposed: how are you modeling small injuries, if injuries are injuries? I get the feeling that you don't mean them to be, that there's something more going on in your head that you're not sharing or presenting clearly, but that's the problem here.

I'm sorry, I'm trying not to re-write my rules in forum posts and I do suffer from the problem that this is very simple to me and their are examples in other well known games to draw found.

Take 1E RuneQuest. You might have say 6 points in a location. Say an attack does d10+1 points.

That means there's a 60% of a strike disabling that location and 40% chance of it being a nick and cut. See?

Quote from: GnomeWorks;645188Examples from other posters of how you respond to people not quite grasping your ideas doesn't really help, either. I'm half-expecting you to tell me that I don't get it, then, and will be unable to, or I'm being willfully ignorant or purposefully misrepresenting your position.

No, you'd have to start that. I don't.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;645194I took a look at hero.

Didn't really understand it.

Why 3 dice? Is it roll under a fixed number with circumstances providing modifiers as appropriate?

The 3d6 are used to create a bell curve centered on a result of 11.

For skills, this really doesn't matter much as far as I'm concerned as skills are rated in numbers ranger from 9-16 typically (although they can go higher). It's a simple roll-under system, modifiers can be assigned.

Where it comes into its own is in combat.

The center is 11, and that's the number you need to hit something. Your OCV (offensive combat value) subtracted from your roll and your target's DCV (defensive combat value) is added (or you can do it the other way around if you want, producing say a 14 or less to hit for a OCV of 7 and a DCV of 4).

The bell of 3d6 allows small differences to matter, giving them greater weight than a straight linear modifier on a say a D20. It always allows for sub 1% results at the extremes.

As an aside, both combat and non-combat work the same (judging them by math alone), but they are presented differently.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;645194Why would dice pools be bad?

My primary issue with them is that it's very difficult for people to determine their odds of success and failure with Dice Pools. And since the game mechanics are intended to present players with interesting choices- it's counter productive to make the important details of those choices invisible.

Quote from: gleichman;645198I'm sorry, I'm trying not to re-write my rules in forum posts and I do suffer from the problem that this is very simple to me and their are examples in other well known games to draw found.

I'm not expecting wholesale quotes from your rules, obviously. That would border on the absurd.

However, I'll admit that I don't have a whole lot of experience with other game systems. I've read through what I feel like is a large number, compared to most members of the hobby at large... but I don't have any of them committed to memory, nor do I have a lot of "oh hey, this game did X mechanic, so I can draw parallels to it" things to draw from.

QuoteTake 1E RuneQuest. You might have say 6 points in a location. Say an attack does d10+1 points.

That means there's a 60% of a strike disabling that location and 40% chance of it being a nick and cut. See?

I get that, but then the statement "injuries are injuries" seems inaccurate. Some injuries are worse than others, with this sort of setup.

QuoteNo, you'd have to start that. I don't.

Fair enough.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;645215I get that, but then the statement "injuries are injuries" seems inaccurate. Some injuries are worse than others, with this sort of setup.

That's very true. And those that exceed the location's HP have tiers of getting even worse.

What I meant however that that each injury is in truth a real injury unlike the abstraction common to many games. Each will need to be treated, each are tracked individually.

Quote from: gleichman;645225That's very true. And those that exceed the location's HP have tiers of getting even worse.

What I meant however that that each injury is in truth a real injury unlike the abstraction common to many games. Each will need to be treated, each are tracked individually.

Okay. This makes significantly more sense to me.

So you need to roll under 11 on 3d6 (+/- modifiers and - Skill score)?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;645243So you need to roll under 11 on 3d6 (+/- modifiers and - Skill score)?

Yes, although the skill score is typically always summed already on the sheet, for Example: Steath 14-

Quote from: gleichman;645246Yes, although the skill score is typically always summed already on the sheet, for Example: Steath 14-

Why is that better than the roll under used in Dark Heresy?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;645267Why is that better than the roll under used in Dark Heresy?

Because skill Dark Heresy is capped at a very low level. It also has a high min resulting in a narrow window where all possible character skill is represented by only 40% of the dice. In contrast a character in HERO has a skill range that could exceed the entire dice range if what you're modeling needed it.

Dark Heresy tries to make up the difference in external modifiers, but sadly fails. The result is highly undependable skills. Meanwhile skills in HERO can be very dependable even under adverse conditions if the character is good enough.

Quote from: gleichman;645296Because skill Dark Heresy is capped at a very low level. It also has a high min resulting in a narrow window where all possible character skill is represented by only 40% of the dice. In contrast a character in HERO has a skill range that could exceed the entire dice range if what you're modeling needed it.

Dark Heresy tries to make up the difference in external modifiers, but sadly fails. The result is highly undependable skills. Meanwhile skills in HERO can be very dependable even under adverse conditions if the character is good enough.

Dark Heresy is 1-100, Hero is based around 3d6 (3-18). How is that narrower?