d100 % Dice can do everything well. 

Finite Detail?  Yes. 
General Pass / Fail?  Yes.
Easy to Read and Understand?  Yes.

Why haven't d100 % Dice Mechanics become more universal, in RPGs?

Quote from: Man at Arms on August 09, 2024, 05:38:41 PMd100 % Dice can do everything well. 
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Why haven't d100 % Dice Mechanics become more universal, in RPGs?

Largely because Rune Quest wasn't D&D.

Also there is really nothing that a d100 system does unless they go for super granularity, that a d20 roll low or high cannot replicate at the table.

The last d% game that I really loved was Star Frontiers.  Then they came out with a colored chart which firmly sent me into the Traveller camp.

I guess it's the charts.  For some reason people who design d% games want to make you use a ton of charts during a game.  Rollmaster, Marvel, Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Hârnmaster.... It just got on my nerves.  I want to know if something happens without having to stop the game and thumb through a book.

That's not to say I hate all charts.  Or even a d% mechanic. 

And if a really good GM runs a d% game I will very likely enjoy myself. 

Most dnd players can't count to 100.

Quote from: Man at Arms on August 09, 2024, 05:38:41 PMd100 % Dice can do everything well. 

Finite Detail?  Yes. 
General Pass / Fail?  Yes.
Easy to Read and Understand?  Yes.

Why haven't d100 % Dice Mechanics become more universal, in RPGs?

Very few players actually care about that list of features. Even Chaosium doesn't care about them, which is why Call of C'thulu now has Bonus and Penalty dice which work precisely like 5E advantage, thus ruining percentile's perfect mechanical transparency.

Players typically prefer game mechanics which convey game feel, which do something unusual, or have streamlined arithmetic. The order will vary from player to player and occasion to occasion, but players typically understand and appreciate streamlined arithmetic the most. They will prefer systems which take less work to run more than everything else in most circumstances. Percentile takes more effort to use at the table than D20 and players can't realistically feel anything modifying a roll by less than 5% (that figure is probably closer to 10%), so why would you bother upgrading D20 to D100?

Because a 2% increase is lame, but a 5% increase is ok.  Divide by 5.  Hey, a 1D20.

Personally, I wouldn't mind an RPG that uses 1D10 as the core rule.  It's just percentile, but in 10% increments. 

"How hard is it to jump over this crevasse?  About a 60% success rate?  Ok, roll 1D10 and get equal or under a 6, but Carl is can add his +1 DEX bonus to raise it to 70%, aka a 7."

It's sort of like a percentile.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on August 09, 2024, 06:49:33 PMBecause a 2% increase is lame, but a 5% increase is ok.  Divide by 5.  Hey, a 1D20.

This really stood out to me reading the Warhammer Fantasy rules.  You buy advances in percentile increments and it takes a couple of sessions to earn enough to advance once.  So you're looking at 10 sessions to get a 5% increase.

That's one hell of a commitment to get to high competency in that game.

Is there a resistance to d100? After D20, I'd say it's the most popular core dice mechanic. The only contender would be D6, but I can name way more popular/significant/famous D100 games than I can D6 ones.

Star Frontiers is still chugging away with fan stuff and a magazine even after wotc changed the deal with the SF group.

Quote from: Man at Arms on August 09, 2024, 05:38:41 PMWhy haven't d100 % Dice Mechanics become more universal, in RPGs?

Because individual mechanics each convey a certain "feel" in action. 3d6 roll-under feels different from Ability + d20 vs. DC, which in turn feels different from d% roll-under, which in turn feels different from d% roll-over, which in turn feels different from d10 success-counting dice pools which in turn feels different from WEG's D6 total-it-all-up dice pools ... you get the idea.

None of these mechanics is "better" or "worse" than any other, only more or less appropriate for the particular feel of a given game.

Most don't need fine detail. Numbers under 5% difference will be lost in the randomness of the dice. Just think of it this way: suppose a player didn't know how good their Sword skill was, but the DM knew. Every time the player threw the dice, the DM said pass or fail. How many dice rolls would it take, how many sessions, weeks or months, before they figured out their skill level was X?

In a percentile system, it'd likely be a long time. With something like d20, quicker. A single d6, quite quickly. In other words, percentile offers a difference which is mostly illusory - you can't actually see it in play.

Most of the more popular systems have a general pass/fail, though some like a critical success or failure - as does the original percentile system, RuneQuest.

Most skill systems are easy to read and understand. The only issue there is how many different skills characters have, or can have. Fewer than about 20 skills and your skill system is essentially a character class system. "My skill is Fighter, his skill is Wizard."

More than 100 skills and you get the "what do you mean I have 90% Longsword but only 15% Shortsword, that's stupid!" or else you put in defaults, "Okay so I have 90% Longsword which gives me half-skill which is 45%, but I also have Club 60% which gives me one-third skill which is 20%, so is my Shortsword 45% or 20% or do I add them together and get 65%? I forget," and then it's no longer easy to understand - cf GURPS.

So in practice most skill-based systems will settle down to 30-80 different skills, though it may be more depending on how you count them, eg there might be Drive - manual, Drive - auto, Drive - rigid truck, Drive - tracked, and so on, is that 10 Drive skills or just 1?

But aside from the consideration of number of skills, most skill systems are easy to read and understand, whether you're using percentile, 2d6, dice pools or whatever. That's why people use them.

Quote from: Man at Arms on August 09, 2024, 05:38:41 PMd100 % Dice can do everything well. 

Resolve a test with one die?

QuoteFinite Detail?  Yes. 
General Pass / Fail?  Yes.
Easy to Read and Understand?  Yes.

Why haven't d100 % Dice Mechanics become more universal, in RPGs?

I'm being serious here. The D20 is the last dice in the standard RPG set* that can generate a number on it's own. After that, you have to roll multiple dice. And the D% represents a 5X increase in granularity and some (I think most) gamers don't want that amount of granularity and the typical increase in complexity that D% systems come with.

*a huge-ass 100 sided dice is pretty uncommon and unwieldy.

Quote from: Jaeger on August 09, 2024, 06:02:45 PMLargely because Rune Quest wasn't D&D.

So, ducks?

I'd have to give this more thought before I committed to it, but one possible advantage of the D20 over the D100 is it being closer in value to the other dice in the standard gaming set. By adding a +1d12, you get a variable range of anywhere between +5% and +60% to the chances, and you can modulate the top end of that set down by using smaller dice or the bottom end up by using multiples.

Quote from: Man at Arms on August 09, 2024, 05:38:41 PMd100 % Dice can do everything well. 

Finite Detail?  Yes. 
General Pass / Fail?  Yes.
Easy to Read and Understand?  Yes.

Why haven't d100 % Dice Mechanics become more universal, in RPGs?

Six sided dice are more common and familiar to people.