Quote from: John Morrow;547692While I certainly think die rolling can be taken too far and too many die rolls can strain or even break verisimilitude, nobody ever talks about the time their character tried to do something and the GM said, "OK, you just do it."  Even a sequence of failed attempts at making camp or cooking dinner can lead to some interesting role-playing and a running joke for the campaign.  I've seen a lot of interesting play generated from a failed DFU* rolls.

I agree. However, I think such rolls should still be reserved for when the situation is quite out of the ordinary. If the PCs are making a 100-day trek across the wilderness, having to roll to cook each meal and to set up camp every night is silly (IMHO). Sure, if the whether is terrible or the like, a roll might be a good idea -- but most people don't fuck up badly enough to call it a failure on things they do every day. Few people who work 5 days a week fail to successfully drive to work 5% of the time (fumble chance in many games), for example.

Quote from: B.T.;547481I'm a pretty scrawny guy.  Not strong, rather thin.  Should probably start lifting.  Point being, I could never climb the rope in gym class.  Not on Monday, not on Tuesday, not on Wednesday, not on Thursday, and not on Friday.  I couldn't do it.  Problem is, RPGs say I can climb the rope if I try enough times.  That is wrong.  A random skill check doesn't work.  So my thinking is that climbing (and certain other skills) should have a base skill that must be met before a character even has a chance to climb.

Someone slips a couple of these in the side door and you'll rediscover your monkey roots quick enough. Its all about the motivation. Never say never!

The system doesn't have to disqualify someone from doing something, just make it exceedingly unlikely that they will succeed. With the additional wrinkle that if they are trying to beat the odds by doing it over and over again, a "training" system kicks in, whereby attempts are aggregated over days and weeks.

For example, my own system, a d10 variant, you'd have strength 4 out of a possible 10, and climbing skill 0 out of a possible 10. Climbing a rope would be average difficulty, target 15, so you'd have to roll an 11 on a d10.

Impossible, but the system allows open ended rolls if you like, which means if you roll a ten, you can add the next roll to it. As an added bonus you've probably now got a climbing skill of 1.

The downside is, if you roll a one after declaring an open ended roll, you've just managed to hang yourself upside-down at exactly the right height for the abovementioned pitbulls to conduct some impromptu plastic surgery.

If someone was trying to game the system by rolling over and over therefore they'd have as great a chance of injuring themselves as success, or the GM could invoke fatigue rules, making it more difficult again to succeed incrementally, or the GM could invoke training rules, whereby the risk is reduced but you need to spend days increasing your skill, training essentially, in order to try again.

All perfectly realistic.

Quote from: jibbajibba;547708To the widerr point though its totally reasonable to have skill threshold levels. To climb a rope you need climbing of x your base skill is computed from your stats.

In general, I feel that most RPG systems vastly over-emphasize the random element compared to real life - and one that isn't necessary for heroic gaming.

A typical system might say a talented expert has a rating of 80%, while a typical beginner has 20%.  That is a big difference, but picture that in real life.  Suppose someone is an expert physicist and is given a tricky quantum mechanics problem that they have a 20% chance of failing.  That is *not* something that you can just bring in five beginners and have better odds of getting a success.  Likewise, if there is a tricky cliff and you want someone to get over it, one expert climber should be better than a group of a dozen beginners.  

Required minimum skill is in my opinion a fudge for this understated effect of skill.  A more direct change would be to reduce the variance of the die roll.

Quote from: jhkim;547824In general, I feel that most RPG systems vastly over-emphasize the random element compared to real life - and one that isn't necessary for heroic gaming.

A typical system might say a talented expert has a rating of 80%, while a typical beginner has 20%.  That is a big difference, but picture that in real life.  Suppose someone is an expert physicist and is given a tricky quantum mechanics problem that they have a 20% chance of failing.  That is *not* something that you can just bring in five beginners and have better odds of getting a success.  Likewise, if there is a tricky cliff and you want someone to get over it, one expert climber should be better than a group of a dozen beginners.  

Required minimum skill is in my opinion a fudge for this understated effect of skill.  A more direct change would be to reduce the variance of the die roll.

I built a skill system for ADRPG which is diceless. It all works on thresholds and compared rolls. So to rebuild a car engine you might need 20 mechanic less and you can't do it without help more and its all about how well and how fast.

Quote from: jibbajibba;547833I built a skill system for ADRPG which is diceless. It all works on thresholds and compared rolls.

So how does one have a diceless system that compares the rolls of dice?

Quote from: jhkim;547824A typical system might say a talented expert has a rating of 80%, while a typical beginner has 20%.  That is a big difference, but picture that in real life.  Suppose someone is an expert physicist and is given a tricky quantum mechanics problem that they have a 20% chance of failing.  That is *not* something that you can just bring in five beginners and have better odds of getting a success.  Likewise, if there is a tricky cliff and you want someone to get over it, one expert climber should be better than a group of a dozen beginners.  

Interesting subject. There was a bunfight over in the Design & Development subforum awhile back over the somewhat related issues of opposed rolls and taking-10 here (in amongst other discussion).
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=22152

Quote from: RandallS;547741I agree. However, I think such rolls should still be reserved for when the situation is quite out of the ordinary. If the PCs are making a 100-day trek across the wilderness, having to roll to cook each meal and to set up camp every night is silly (IMHO). Sure, if the whether is terrible or the like, a roll might be a good idea -- but most people don't fuck up badly enough to call it a failure on things they do every day. Few people who work 5 days a week fail to successfully drive to work 5% of the time (fumble chance in many games), for example.

The way to handle this, in my opinion, is to start out with a daily "something unusual happens today" roll.  The next thing I'd roll would probably be a degree roll if the unusual thing might be good or bad, using a low-is-bad and high-is-good assessment.  If you are using a d20 and assume something unusual happens on a 1 only, then you'd get an average of 5 "something unusual happens today" days in a 100 day trek across the wilderness.  They could range from being potentially suddenly fatal (e.g., avalanche, deadly disease) to simply curiously odd or even beneficial (e.g., a long-abandoned caravan, traveling merchants that have supplies that could help the PCs).  So on average you'll get one or two events that might kill some PCs.

In your diving to work example, roughly once a month "something unusual happens today" would happen on your way to work and it would probably be a potentially bad thing ..  That something unusual would probably be negative -- something requiring a driving check -- a car slamming on it's brakes in front of you, a child running out into the street, etc.

As I've previously mentioned, I roll a lot of dice when I GM.

Quote from: John Morrow;547907So how does one have a diceless system that compares the rolls of dice?

Sorry typing in a hurry meant compare skills just like the rest of the adrpg system. Me bad.

In RL i suspect the random element of compared checks is far lower than in most games. So in a 100m race each runner might have a skill of 1-100 on to which you add 1d6 as opposed to a skill of 1-20 onto which you add 1d20 which seems to be the sort of randomness you get in most games

Quote from: jibbajibba;548016In RL i suspect the random element of compared checks is far lower than in most games. So in a 100m race each runner might have a skill of 1-100 on to which you add 1d6 as opposed to a skill of 1-20 onto which you add 1d20 which seems to be the sort of randomness you get in most games

Are footraces much to do with real life either though? They are tightly controlled events with every element considered, between min-maxed athletes.

Quote from: The Traveller;548019Are footraces much to do with real life either though? They are tightly controlled events with every element considered, between min-maxed athletes.

Well you can take anything at all and compare it in exactly the same way and a footrace doesn't have to between min-maxed atheletes . You and I could have a foot race. Chances are one of us is better at racing and would win every race. If we happened to be well matched then randomness would come into it.
The exact came would be true of a game of chess, a painting competition, solving a set of quadratic pynomials or climbing a wall.

Another issue with RL is that people have a lot of skills a lot more than in most games (maybe not GURPS ). Most adults can drive, read, have a job with a set of related skills, have a hobby or follow a craft etc etc . Then there is all the knowldge you pick up through school reading or whatever.
If you try to stat yourself out for all the skills you possess from novice from that week long potttery class you took last year to expert in Cooking becuase you work as a sous chef at a top hotel and you add all that stuff up in comes to an impressive list.
Now most of the time you aren't stretching your skill you are doing things inside your threshold. Its an argument for the all D&D PCs are adventures so then can all do this basic stuff, but I hate the idea of a world with professional adventurers and also once you do stretch yourself how do you determin the result if everyone can basically do whatever they like and where skills do intervene, like a thief having move silent of just 10% so an untrained person should have lower, or a thief having 70 climb an untrained person should have lower (and people should read the theif climb rules again, it requires hand holds etc and doesn't turn them into spiderman).

Quote from: jibbajibba;548058Well you can take anything at all and compare it in exactly the same way and a footrace doesn't have to between min-maxed atheletes . You and I could have a foot race. Chances are one of us is better at racing and would win every race. If we happened to be well matched then randomness would come into it.
The exact came would be true of a game of chess, a painting competition, solving a set of quadratic pynomials or climbing a wall.

If that were true bookies would be out of business, things just aren't that predictable. I prefer one third chance, one third skill, and one third native endowments as a reasonable mix.

Quote from: jibbajibba;548058Now most of the time you aren't stretching your skill you are doing things inside your threshold. Its an argument for the all D&D PCs are adventures so then can all do this basic stuff, but I hate the idea of a world with professional adventurers and also once you do stretch yourself how do you determin the result if everyone can basically do whatever they like and where skills do intervene, like a thief having move silent of just 10% so an untrained person should have lower, or a thief having 70 climb an untrained person should have lower (and people should read the theif climb rules again, it requires hand holds etc and doesn't turn them into spiderman).

Ah see I haven't played D&D in a looong time so I'm coming at it from a completely different mindset. I vaguely recall something about thaco.

Quote from: The Traveller;548060If that were true bookies would be out of business, things just aren't that predictable. I prefer one third chance, one third skill, and one third native endowments as a reasonable mix.


Ah see I haven't played D&D in a looong time so I'm coming at it from a completely different mindset. I vaguely recall something about thaco.

Well now bookies deal with odds and handicapping. If Horseraces weren't handicapped then bookies would indeed be out of business but they are handicapped. The Odds of Usain Bolt winning the 100m final at the Olympics this year are 8/15. this is before Bolt has even arrived in the country and are based on him fouling gettting ill or all the random stuff that might happen  before the race actually starts. On the day despite the fact that he will be lining up against 7 of the 8 fastest men in the world you will get odds closer to 1/5. In skill terms all these guys have running in the high 90%s but Bolt will very likely win.

When you have larger teams with longer events say a game of soccer or American Football then the number of skill rolls required througout the course of the event grows so odds even up. Even so I suspect that the Dallas Cowboys could play a bunch of part timers and beat them every single time. When they play another pro team the randomness comes into play but the randomness is about the margins. The massive part of the result is already set by skill training etc.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;547915Interesting subject. There was a bunfight over in the Design & Development subforum awhile back over the somewhat related issues of opposed rolls and taking-10 here (in amongst other discussion).
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=22152

and there are some very very simple solutions here.  Some, more basic skills, have  a large component of native talent that incorporates into success.  More advanced skills (such as said quantum physics problem) require much more grounding in the discipline; with experience and knowledge being much more critical ingredients into success.

So any skill system worth a shit that wants to tackle this has to address this.  Nesting skills (with basic versions being needed for subskills) solves this problem nicely.

Quote from: jibbajibba;548064Even so I suspect that the Dallas Cowboys could play a bunch of part timers and beat them every single time. When they play another pro team the randomness comes into play but the randomness is about the margins. The massive part of the result is already set by skill training etc.

True, but nobody is saying a massive skill level difference won't carry the day almost without exception, most rules cover that. So the highly skilled are already covered (maybe not in D&D?), but in most real life situations outside of pro sports and science experiments, randomness comes into play a lot more.

Quote from: LordVreeg;548069So any skill system worth a shit that wants to tackle this has to address this.  Nesting skills (with basic versions being needed for subskills) solves this problem nicely.

Easier just to give each skill a difficulty level as I do. Anything beyond difficulty 1 or 2 cannot be learned on the fly, and even then only "gross mechanical skills" are applicable, or wit based skills like charm. Climbing is difficulty 1, quantum physics difficulty 5.

This also feeds nicely into putting skill advancements on a gradient, making it slower to advance in difficult skills, and helping to decide skill starting scores.