QuoteAnd certainly a simple d% is easier, but there's no mystery to it, and I find it kind of boring.

Looking to spice things up by obfuscating from the brain what the dice might do.

I must admit - unless you use funky narrative dice, I'm not sure if turning dice mechanics into some mysterious puzzle is proper place to put mystery in RPG.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll on March 29, 2022, 11:07:18 PM

I'm not a fan at all of percentage rolls. But if I were, then how would you handle degrees of failure/success? Or would it just be pass/fail?

If you have opposed rolls, you have 4 possible outcomes. Fail vs fail, pass vs fail, pass vs pass and fail vs pass.

Fail vs pass is a critical failure, pass vs fail is a critical success, fail vs fail is a simple failure, and pass vs pass is a simple success. That's if you want to have a system where there isn't much in the way of stalemates and action is encouraged.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on March 29, 2022, 05:48:45 PM
One thing as noted above is that going by this analysis, getting totals as high even as 20 on a reliable (i.e. more than half the time) basis will require pools of 4d10 or more, or the equivalent. Getting any total of 50 or higher half the time or more requires 10d10 or 5d20. You may have to assess how much character development is required to reach that point.

You're absolutely right, and roll-under would be better suited, as it would lead to fewer dice.

Except then each dice you add makes your chances worse.  It could be done that way, but it's more adversarial than what I have in mind.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll on March 29, 2022, 11:07:18 PM
I'm not a fan at all of percentage rolls. But if I were, then how would you handle degrees of failure/success? Or would it just be pass/fail?

Pass/fail, I think.

You can vary the rate by changing the TN.  And you could have a separate roll for effect, if desired.

Quote from: Wrath of God on March 30, 2022, 05:27:08 AM
I must admit - unless you use funky narrative dice, I'm not sure if turning dice mechanics into some mysterious puzzle is proper place to put mystery in RPG.

How lucky are we that you can walk and chew gum at the same time, then?

I'd be interested to hear the counterpoint, if there's anything deeper here.  Is it that you feel knowing the odds of a roll increases the fun for most players?

I rather think the opposite, and having been to a casino within the month, feel like there's some evidence backing me up.

Quote from: migo on March 30, 2022, 05:50:59 AM
If you have opposed rolls, you have 4 possible outcomes. Fail vs fail, pass vs fail, pass vs pass and fail vs pass.

Fail vs pass is a critical failure, pass vs fail is a critical success, fail vs fail is a simple failure, and pass vs pass is a simple success. That's if you want to have a system where there isn't much in the way of stalemates and action is encouraged.

Crits and fumbles are on my radar, yes.  But I'd like to settle on a core mechanic first.

My chief concern with opposed rolls is how dynamic that can be.  Especially if you're rolling a TN between 1 and 100...

Quote from: mcbobbo on March 30, 2022, 08:19:54 AM

Quote from: migo on March 30, 2022, 05:50:59 AM
If you have opposed rolls, you have 4 possible outcomes. Fail vs fail, pass vs fail, pass vs pass and fail vs pass.

Fail vs pass is a critical failure, pass vs fail is a critical success, fail vs fail is a simple failure, and pass vs pass is a simple success. That's if you want to have a system where there isn't much in the way of stalemates and action is encouraged.

Crits and fumbles are on my radar, yes.  But I'd like to settle on a core mechanic first.

My chief concern with opposed rolls is how dynamic that can be.  Especially if you're rolling a TN between 1 and 100...

The benefit of opposed rolls with four options rather than two, is the mechanics tell you something about what happened.

So you're shooting at someone, you hit and they dodge. That means it was a graze. If you hit and they don't dodge, it's a hit right in centre mass. If you miss and they don't dodge, they were standing there and you just missed. If you miss and they do dodge then they're automatically in a better position to defend against your next shot.

Depending on what the context is, you'll have different outcomes that are the logical interpretation of the results of the dice. It also immediately obfuscates the chance of success, because you only know your chance, you don't know that of your opponent. And with four possible outcomes rather than two, it's further less clear what the outcome will be.

You can do this with any system - you could do a step system, an additive pool system where you add 1-3 dice of different size, you could use 2d6, 3d6, 1d20 or 1d100 either roll-under or roll-over. With opposed rolls you just get some easy variety in outcomes that you don't have if you have a system of a simple success if you meet the target number, and a critical success if you beat it by 5 or more (or 30% or more, or whatever system you want to use).

Quote from: mcbobbo on March 30, 2022, 08:18:22 AM

I'd be interested to hear the counterpoint, if there's anything deeper here.  Is it that you feel knowing the odds of a roll increases the fun for most players?

I rather think the opposite, and having been to a casino within the month, feel like there's some evidence backing me up.

Handling time is a thing, whether casual players or very experienced, invested gamers.  That's because the interest and desire to sift through the complexity is a moving target.

For example, if you have an overall system geared for relatively few rolls, and every roll carries a lot of weight (e.g. some dice pool games that deal with resolving the better part of a conflict in a single roll), then complexity is a huge boon in some ways, even with casual players.  The game part is not the roll, but all the jockeying that goes into getting another die in the pool or denying the same to the opponent.  Then at the end, you roll and find out who "won". 

Even in those systems, however, it is best to not monkey with all possible aspects, but rather have a few things fixed that the players can build around.  It's bad design in a dice pool, for example, to vary the die size and the TN for a success and the number of dice and the way that people contribute and what the dice means.  Whereas you can get away with changing any one of those, though there is some thought that varying the TN makes the handling time on counting too much for too little return.

If the system has more frequent rolls, then the handling time for complexity starts to really bite.  Where to draw the line is part of the art of the design.

Lastly, if you are looking for pass/fail outcomes, then incremental improvements are counter-productive after a certain point, and the long way around to get to pass fail starts to annoy people.  This ain't about chewing gum and walking at the same time.  It's about patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time.  Just because I can, doesn't mean that I want to, or that I want something riding on it, even if only the health of my pretend elf.

Quote from: mcbobbo on March 30, 2022, 08:18:22 AM

Quote from: Wrath of God on March 30, 2022, 05:27:08 AM
I must admit - unless you use funky narrative dice, I'm not sure if turning dice mechanics into some mysterious puzzle is proper place to put mystery in RPG.

How lucky are we that you can walk and chew gum at the same time, then?

I'd be interested to hear the counterpoint, if there's anything deeper here.  Is it that you feel knowing the odds of a roll increases the fun for most players?

I rather think the opposite, and having been to a casino within the month, feel like there's some evidence backing me up.

First rule I learned in game design when I threw my first iteration out to playtesters is "don't presume your preferences are the majority." As popular as casinos might appear the majority of the population actually doesn't gamble.

Here's some stats on that from the actual casino industry;  https://www.casino.org/features/gambling-statistics/

Also worth noting is that gambling isn't quite the same thing as game play. You go in knowing you'll probably lose money, but might hit it big if you're lucky, but (and this is the biggie) you are determining your level of risk when you set your budget for gambling. "I can afford to lose $20 on the slots" is a very different risk calculation than "This plane has an unknown chance of crashing." We don't hop onto planes with even a 1% chance of crashing unless the consequences of not doing so are worse.

Anyway, my general finding from testing is that people only take risks when they think they know the odds and that those odds are in their favor. Now, in practice, most people are horrible at actually judging what those odds actually mean (ex. 10% doesn't mean you'll succeed after 10 attempts) which actually works really well for simulating the Duning-Kruger effect, but not being able to at least generally size up difficulty will tend to lead to much more timid play in my experience.

The other part to consider is that, no matter how unintuitive you make the system mechanics, anyone who actually sticks with it (or is actually good at probability math... which a disproportionate number of gamers are) will figure out the odds anyway and someone or the other will actually post the odds somewhere searchable so even the match challenged can learn the odds if they want to... at which point you're back to a straight percentile system anyway, just with needless complexity caked onto it.

And extra complexity is the main killer I've found for getting people to actually try and stick with systems. dX+Y vs. target number Z and count successes dice pools didn't become the most popular methods at random. They're just both really simple systems (the first is basic addition then compare, the second is count dice that have a result of X or higher).

You can also get away with adding more together if those dice are smaller. 2-3d6 is solid for precisely this reason, but adding 3d20 would be less so.

My suggestion if you're looking for more interesting resolution mechanics is to not look at dice at all, but towards playing cards as the blend of numbers, face cards and suits can determine multiple aspects of a check with a single draw and you can change up the deck by ignoring or giving emphasis to certain cards as desired.

As an example of that last bit; by default you might ignore face cards, but a special ability might give an advantage to a face card when drawn. Another ability might allow you to ignore A-3 cards, so you have a better chance at a high result. The suit might determine complications or boons on top of success or failure.

Now you could get something close by rolling multiple dice sorta like FFG Star Wars; but there's a certain elegance to being able to accomplish all that with a single card draw.

Quote from: migo on March 30, 2022, 08:41:17 AM
The benefit of opposed rolls with four options rather than two, is the mechanics tell you something about what happened.

So you're shooting at someone, you hit and they dodge. That means it was a graze. If you hit and they don't dodge, it's a hit right in centre mass. If you miss and they don't dodge, they were standing there and you just missed. If you miss and they do dodge then they're automatically in a better position to defend against your next shot.

Depending on what the context is, you'll have different outcomes that are the logical interpretation of the results of the dice. It also immediately obfuscates the chance of success, because you only know your chance, you don't know that of your opponent. And with four possible outcomes rather than two, it's further less clear what the outcome will be.

This seems to assume that "opposed rolls" are two separate people each rolling against a target number, and comparing their success with each other. I would call that "dual rolls," not "opposed rolls" myself. In systems that I've seen using opposed roles, the results of each die are compared to each other. In that sort of "opposed" roll there are only two outcomes.

I have to admit, I haven't seen the sort of roll you describe, which games use it?

Quote from: Zalman on March 30, 2022, 10:04:41 AM

Quote from: migo on March 30, 2022, 08:41:17 AM
The benefit of opposed rolls with four options rather than two, is the mechanics tell you something about what happened.

So you're shooting at someone, you hit and they dodge. That means it was a graze. If you hit and they don't dodge, it's a hit right in centre mass. If you miss and they don't dodge, they were standing there and you just missed. If you miss and they do dodge then they're automatically in a better position to defend against your next shot.

Depending on what the context is, you'll have different outcomes that are the logical interpretation of the results of the dice. It also immediately obfuscates the chance of success, because you only know your chance, you don't know that of your opponent. And with four possible outcomes rather than two, it's further less clear what the outcome will be.

This seems to assume that "opposed rolls" are two separate people each rolling against a target number, and comparing their success with each other. I would call that "dual rolls," not "opposed rolls" myself. In systems that I've seen using opposed roles, the results of each die are compared to each other. In that sort of "opposed" roll there are only two outcomes.

I have to admit, I haven't seen the sort of roll you describe, which games use it?

I see it in systems using roll-under percentile checks. Millenium's End off the top of my head, but it also shows up in others. It's when you're rolling against a known target number, and you succeed or fail based on that.

You're right if it's a system like d20 where the results are compared there are two outcomes, but even if it were roll-over and it were instead beating a target number, you could have that four-outcome spread.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 30, 2022, 09:24:03 AM
Even in those systems, however, it is best to not monkey with all possible aspects, but rather have a few things fixed that the players can build around.  It's bad design in a dice pool, for example, to vary the die size and the TN for a success and the number of dice and the way that people contribute and what the dice means.  Whereas you can get away with changing any one of those, though there is some thought that varying the TN makes the handling time on counting too much for too little return.

Yeah, it certainly makes sense to limit the number of variables.

Quote from: Chris24601 on March 30, 2022, 10:03:00 AM
First rule I learned in game design when I threw my first iteration out to playtesters is "don't presume your preferences are the majority." As popular as casinos might appear the majority of the population actually doesn't gamble.

I can always continue to produce DMsGuild products if I want to appeal to the majority.

Quote from: Chris24601 on March 30, 2022, 10:03:00 AM
The other part to consider is that, no matter how unintuitive you make the system mechanics, anyone who actually sticks with it (or is actually good at probability math... which a disproportionate number of gamers are) will figure out the odds anyway and someone or the other will actually post the odds somewhere searchable so even the match challenged can learn the odds if they want to... at which point you're back to a straight percentile system anyway, just with needless complexity caked onto it.

System mastery makes WotC a ton of money.

Quote from: Chris24601 on March 30, 2022, 10:03:00 AM
And extra complexity is the main killer I've found for getting people to actually try and stick with systems. dX+Y vs. target number Z and count successes dice pools didn't become the most popular methods at random. They're just both really simple systems (the first is basic addition then compare, the second is count dice that have a result of X or higher).

They also rely on the deception that more dice increases occurrence of success.  Most people can't see it this way because their belief system won't let them, but it's at least true in the cynical sense.  I really, really hate that lie we tell our players, and hate it the most when I'm the one rolling a failure on something that probably should have auto-succeeded.  (Don't call for the roll, blah, blah, yeah - I'm talking about the system itself here.)

Quote from: Chris24601 on March 30, 2022, 10:03:00 AM
My suggestion if you're looking for more interesting resolution mechanics is to not look at dice at all, but towards playing cards as the blend of numbers, face cards and suits can determine multiple aspects of a check with a single draw and you can change up the deck by ignoring or giving emphasis to certain cards as desired.

So I did have this thought, but Gloomhaven is already in the 'cards as RPG' space, and my experience with that game is that it is not something I enjoy.  Perhaps I just like dice.

Quote from: Chris24601 on March 30, 2022, 10:03:00 AM
Now you could get something close by rolling multiple dice sorta like FFG Star Wars; but there's a certain elegance to being able to accomplish all that with a single card draw.

And I'm also not necessarily trying to build a subscription service, as Fantasy Flight loves to do.  I'd prefer to use supplies commonly found in the hobby.

So a lot of this is about my personal preference, but under the 50/50 rule, and as I said above, I'm looking to make something that I am passionate about, and that starts with personally liking it.

For the masses, I can do another D&D module...

Quote from: Zalman on March 30, 2022, 10:04:41 AM
I have to admit, I haven't seen the sort of roll you describe, which games use it?

WEG D6 as one example...

Quote from: migo on March 30, 2022, 10:27:09 AM
You're right if it's a system like d20 where the results are compared there are two outcomes, but even if it were roll-over and it were instead beating a target number, you could have that four-outcome spread.

Yes indeed, so long as a target number is involved each roll has its own outcome and the number of final result states will be the number of possible outcome combinations.

To be clear, what I think of as "opposed rolls" have no target number. The dice results are compared only to each other. Roll over or under makes no difference either way -- it could be highest roll wins, or lowest roll wins.