Quote from: CRKrueger;786660That's the thing about Palladium - it's not dated layout, it's just BAD layout.  It sucked then and it still sucks now.

"Editor's Note: I don't exist."
-HoL

Quote from: Gabriel2;786501But would it matter in less extreme cases?  Is it really that meaningful a difference that the chance is 55% instead of 53%?  I know gamers will argue over every little point, but does that 2% really have a great enough meaning to be worth it?

It matters if I rolled a 54 or a 55. So about 2% of the time. If we are making say 10 rolls per round* total (for PCs and NPCs) than it matters about one round in 5 to someone. That's often enough to matter to me.

Quote from: David Johansen;786542... I doubt anything is as badly messed up as KABAL with its square root of stat divided by square root of stat times one hundred to figure base chance to hit.

Well it is an overly complicated formula.

I'm not certain how to parse your English into a formula, but it sounds like one of the following. Which all equal a constant where the STAT is irrelevant.
   (Sqrt(STAT)/(Sqrt(STAT))*100 = 100

   Sqrt(STAT)/(Sqrt(STAT)*100) = .01

   Sqrt(STAT)/(Sqrt(STAT*100) = Sqrt(STAT)/(Sqrt(STAT)*Sqrt(100)) = .1


* Which is often a lower than expected number of rolls for 3-4 PCs fighting an equal number of NPCs in a Chaosium-type game like BRP, CoC, or Runequest.

Sorry, one hundred times the square root of your stat divided by the square root of their stat.  I think, maybe.  The game wasn't easy reading by any standard.

Quote from: David Johansen;786709Sorry, one hundred times the square root of your stat divided by the square root of their stat.  I think, maybe.  The game wasn't easy reading by any standard.

Well at least that isn't a constant. :rolleyes: I do have to admit I've toyed with using Sqrt(Stat) for certain house rules before. But at the end of the day it never seemed to be worth the effort for anything other than calculating the true distance between two points.

Part of KABAL's problem was that it was written by a teenager who's parents had enough money to indulge him in a pretty expensive print run.  But then again they did have nice parchment dungeon tiles and even came out with a spy game after KABAL.

Anyhow, I always want to do multiplicative modifiers for a d% game.  Sure you can duplicate the effect with die rolls for each factor but then you're getting into calculating multiple percentile factors to roll against each of them in turn.  I can hear the players sharpening their pitch forks as I shriek "BUT THE MATH IS RIGHT!"

Quote from: David Johansen;786716Anyhow, I always want to do multiplicative modifiers for a d% game.  Sure you can duplicate the effect with die rolls for each factor but then you're getting into calculating multiple percentile factors to roll against each of them in turn.  I can hear the players sharpening their pitch forks as I shriek "BUT THE MATH IS RIGHT!"

I like the math being right. I'm fine with formulas. Multiplicative modifiers are OK with me if at least one of the following hold.

1) The calculation is only done at character creation or infrequently between sessions based on character improvements e.g. leveling up.

2) The players don't ever have to do the calculations.

3) Everyone in the game is an engineer, mathematician, or math nerd (calculators for each player are optional).

Quote from: CRKrueger;786660That's the thing about Palladium - it's not dated layout, it's just BAD layout.  It sucked then and it still sucks now.

I was a huge fan of the Robotech RPG, mostly because I was a giant Robotech fan as a kid, and I still to this day don't think I ever played the game that was written in the book because the layout made the whole thing confusing.

But I loved the game anyway, that was played at the table out of a hodgepodge of what I understood from the book and my own imagination, and that was all that mattered.

(And seriously, I would love a Robotech RPG done by a company that could do slick layout and art. Even if the rules were bad it could make a good artbook )

Nobody plays Palladium system by the book, even Kevin Siembieda ! ^^ And yes, at a time with internet and easy access to Macross artbook, the Robotech books by Palladium were great sourcebooks for art, e. g. the Zentradi sourcebooks, full of spaceships blueprints.

Quote from: Bren;786719I like the math being right. I'm fine with formulas. Multiplicative modifiers are OK with me if at least one of the following hold.

1) The calculation is only done at character creation or infrequently between sessions based on character improvements e.g. leveling up.

2) The players don't ever have to do the calculations.

3) Everyone in the game is an engineer, mathematician, or math nerd (calculators for each player are optional).

One of the funny things that tends to come up in Rolemaster fan debates is how many people ditched the weapon tables for the formulas in one of the companions.

I really only got into Rolemaster with the third edition where various new rules caught my attention.  When it became apparent that they would never be used or supported in future editions I got in a huff and left.

But Rolemaster isn't so much complex as it is dense.  I find it easier to get people to play it than Traveller the New Era or GURPS but that might just be generic fantasy's strangle hold on the hobby.

I found Torg (from the late 90s) a bit complex. It has this unified log table for everything, it has a die chart to derived values (also log-ish), and so on.

However, in Torg... it all fits together for a really USEFUL set of interlocked mechanics. The only big weakness in Torg is the lack of a consistent metasystem, so a lot of the specialty stuff ends up wildly imbalanced or exploitable. (Like Aylish spell creation, where, if you roll well, you can end up with a spell that's better in every way than the guy next to you)

I remember a system I made in college, ~1996, that was... oh my God. It was the original system for the game I'm converting to 5e, in fact.

Most of the system was ok and ignored most of the time. But magic... everyone felt a great deal of sympathy to the one player who dared to play a mage in my game.

At one point the system was vaguely like spell points. And, of course, logically, the cost of a spell was based on the... volume of the effect x constant based on the spell.
So I included equations for the volume of spheres, cylinders, cones, hemispheres...

Logical!

Quote from: Bren;786708It matters if I rolled a 54 or a 55. So about 2% of the time. If we are making say 10 rolls per round* total (for PCs and NPCs) than it matters about one round in 5 to someone. That's often enough to matter to me.

And that's fine.

So if I'm interpreting you correctly, you don't feel that percentile systems are dated.  And you consider it worthwhile to stack 1% modifiers multiple times per roll for multiple rolls, because 1 time in 10 that might make a difference.  That sounds snarky, but it wasn't meant that way.

And that actually helps me focus on why I find the percentile mechanic to be dated and clunky.  To me it represents a time when RPGs were obsessed with minutiae which I felt added nothing to the proceedings of the game.  Those 1% increments are shorthand for a bygone philosophy more obsessed with the math than the playability.

Incidentally, this discussion thread convinced me to FINALLY read over the BRP PDF I have.  I kind of view BRP as the definitive percentile system, just because that's the kind of reputation it seems to have.  Skimming through, I noticed that nearly all charts or basic values are in 5% increments (other than pure defaults which are typically lower than 5%).  Even the Major Wound and Weapon tables are all in increments of 5% until they get in the 90-100 range where they start to add in some extra granularity.  Of course, standard difficulty is determined by multiplying or dividing double digit numbers (just halving or doubling).

The One Ring thread has me looking at MERP.  There again I primarily see 5% increments with meaning for the 1% increments at the edges of probability.  It occurs to me I've seen the same thing in other percentile systems I've encountered.  (Damn if MERP isn't fucking glorious in it's datedness.)

Philosophically, I feel games are already dealing with the edge cases in the form of heroic characters.  So this becomes a focus on dealing with the edge cases of the edge cases.

Quote from: Will;786772I found Torg (from the late 90s) a bit complex. It has this unified log table for everything, it has a die chart to derived values (also log-ish), and so on.

Yeah, that was kind of a strange fad that seemed to exist for a while.  I forget what other games I've seen that in, but I know I've seen it in more than one.

They always seemed to come across as: "Wow, I've discovered this neat thing called a logarithm.  Look at all the cool things you can do with it!"

Quote from: Will;786772I found Torg (from the late 90s) a bit complex. It has this unified log table for everything, it has a die chart to derived values (also log-ish), and so on.

However, in Torg... it all fits together for a really USEFUL set of interlocked mechanics. The only big weakness in Torg is the lack of a consistent metasystem, so a lot of the specialty stuff ends up wildly imbalanced or exploitable. (Like Aylish spell creation, where, if you roll well, you can end up with a spell that's better in every way than the guy next to you)

I remember a system I made in college, ~1996, that was... oh my God. It was the original system for the game I'm converting to 5e, in fact.

Most of the system was ok and ignored most of the time. But magic... everyone felt a great deal of sympathy to the one player who dared to play a mage in my game.

At one point the system was vaguely like spell points. And, of course, logically, the cost of a spell was based on the... volume of the effect x constant based on the spell.
So I included equations for the volume of spheres, cylinders, cones, hemispheres...

Logical!

Alright, sad admission time. When I was in high school and first started working on the idea of creating a game I used the following for determining damage: 1/2 Strength X Dexterity^2, a only slightly re-skinned Momentum formula. While this appealed to a friend that went on to become a rocket scientist, no really, a rocket scientist, nobody else really dug the idea.

This concept for damage died a horrible death sometime before my Junior year, but damn if I didn't try to make it work.

I got all my crazy math out, long before starting Fractured Kingdom, I promise.

Hell, I still fall into math lunacy. It's an easy trap in game design. I have an excel workbook for a game I will never inflict on another human being that automatically derives the percent bodyfat, lean weight, and power to weight ratio for anything with two legs.

It's stupid.  I'm glad I had the sense to realize how stupid it was.

Back on topic, resolution charts in general are something you just don't see that much of. Marvel Superheroes had the grand poobah of resolution charts. I'm wondering if they'll ever make a comeback the way random event generation has with the OSR.  Tables are pretty cool, an can encode a lot of information in a very small space.

Quote from: Gabriel2;786780So if I'm interpreting you correctly, you don't feel that percentile systems are dated.

Nope, not at all dated.

• The direct translation of die roll to probability D100 system is intuitive in a in a way that D20, 2d6, 3d6, or various dice pools is not.

• 1% increments allow for degrees of success that directly relate to the basic chance for success instead of being independent of the chance of success, e.g. a 60% chance of success has a (.2x60)=12% chance of a special success, a (.05x60)=3% chance for a critical success, a 40% chance of failure, and a (.05x40)=2% chance of a fumble.

• In contrast systems that have the chance for an especially good success or bad failure (i.e. criticals and fumbles) that are the same regardless of the chance for success seem flawed to me. It doesn't stop me from playing them, if they are otherwise appealing, but that is despite what I see as a flaw.

QuoteThose 1% increments are shorthand for a bygone philosophy more obsessed with the math than the playability.

Those systems are eminently playable. Your dislike is just a personal, subjective preference. It isn't based on any objective measure. Just like my dislike for some recently produced games.

QuotePhilosophically, I feel games are already dealing with the edge cases in the form of heroic characters.  So this becomes a focus on dealing with the edge cases of the edge cases.

Objectively some games are specifically not dealing with heroic characters. For example, a number of BRP style games focus on characters that are only heroic in their actions and choices, not because they possess any legendary or superhuman ability - because they don't have such abilties.

======================

Separate topic

This discussion of math and logs reminds me of the original DC Heroes system which had a not very intuitive, but easy to use and very mathy AP system based on logs. It allowed for a very easy calculation of how far a character of could throw an object of a given mass.

So Power Man with a STR of 10 APs could throw a bus of mass 8 APs (10-8)=2 APs in distance. Whereas Power Man a couch with mass 3APs 7APs distant. It also made it easy to determine that Batman with a STR of 5 could not lift, much less toss a bus, but Batman could toss the couch the same distance as Power Man could throw a bus. It required a table listing the relations of mass to AP and distance to AP as well as other AP tables.

It also allowed some really unique determinations like how fast Batman could read War and Peace. Basically compare Batman's Mind (which was probably something like 10 or 12 APs) to the Information content of War and Peace (which was either listed in the table or could be calculated based on page length) to find out how many APs of time it would take to read War and Peace. Not for everyone, I'll admit, but it did some damn cool things that no other game I've seen could do.