Quote from: Bill;732083So on your sheet, a 62 skill would just look like 62/31/6

Very easy to note at a glance when you roll.

No calculations.

Writing down all those incremental numbers for each skill and then adjusting them every time a skill increases would probably push a % system into "too much hassle for the benefit" in my books (roughly on par with using symbol dice) but it's certainly a good solution for people determined to play that system.

Quote from: Old Geezer;732045"What's 62 x 75%!  Now!"

"It's FUCK YOU, that's what it is!"

That is my new response to any number-related question.

(Previously, it was "I'm an accountant. I can only do maths for other people when someone is paying me. Ante up.")

Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;732090Writing down all those incremental numbers for each skill and then adjusting them every time a skill increases would probably push a % system into "too much hassle for the benefit" in my books (roughly on par with using symbol dice) but it's certainly a good solution for people determined to play that system.

Re-enter your character info into a spreadsheet and use that for your character sheet, or ask the GM or someone else in the group to do it for you. It's a little more work, yeah, but doing it pre-game saves time doing it in-game and killing the momentum.

Quote from: One Horse Town;732064Once Justin has wheeled out the illiterate line, it's not worth continuing the discussion, Jude.

When any RPGsite conversation turns into tedious word-picking, the useful part is long-since over.

Quote from: Ladybird;732102Re-enter your character info into a spreadsheet and use that for your character sheet, or ask the GM or someone else in the group to do it for you. It's a little more work, yeah, but doing it pre-game saves time doing it in-game and killing the momentum.

Agreed, any system requiring that level of constant math should offer an Excel-based character sheet.

Herr Arnulfe, the article you cite is a case of some people misapplying statistics, suddenly realizing their mistake, and then patting themselves on the back for their discovery.

It's also irrelevant to this discussion because what a diced resolution system produces is variations in individual performance; it has nothing to do with distributions of performance across individuals.

Back to bell curves, I agree that the factors influencing performance in the real world probably don't "stack" in a simple manner. But for an approximation, I think the shape of the differential effects of varying difficulty on people of different skill is better with a normal curve. This is almost certainly true with something like running a 100m dash or doing a broad jump. With other activities, it's harder to measure.

You'd first have to come up with a meaningful measure of performance. Say, if we were talking about marksmanship, the % of shots that hit a target. Then for an individual we'd measure performance as we varied the target size, range, wind, rate of fire, and qualitative factors such as equipment. This will give you an n-dimensional plot. My hypothesis is that you can derive a single number (scalar) from each person's plot, which we'll call "skill", and people with similar skill will have similar plots.

With me so far? This is just groundwork.

Quote from: Piestrio;731183Well that settles it, if Kiero hates it it must be good design.

Next thread?

Quote from: One Horse Town;732064Once Justin has wheeled out the illiterate line, it's not worth continuing the discussion, Jude.

Sometimes, someone in this forum utters a pearl of great wisdom. In this thread we have been honored with two such pearls.

This is not sarcasm. I agree with both of you 100%.

Quote from: Arminius;732112Herr Arnulfe, the article you cite is a case of some people misapplying statistics, suddenly realizing their mistake, and then patting themselves on the back for their discovery.

It's also irrelevant to this discussion because what a diced resolution system produces is variations in individual performance; it has nothing to do with distributions of performance across individuals.

Don't you think there's ever a correlation between individual performance and group performance? Granted the relationship is probably weaker for raw attributes like strength or endurance vs. "skill", but to assume they're completely separate would mean that some people are just naturally inferior or simply aren't trying.

For example, isn't it conceivable that an actor who's rehearsing or performing might cluster more towards average (i.e. bell curve) over 100+ attempts, whereas an actor going for auditions would cluster towards the extremes (i.e. U-curve) after 100+ attempts? Or that a climber scaling a cliff with top-rope and harness would perform on a bell curve, whereas freeclimbing a cliff without any aids would follow a U-curve pattern instead?

Note: these new "anti-bell" studies are measuring the performance of athletes, politicians and academics, which tend to be all-or-nothing vocations. It would seem that in RPGs, a large proportion of tasks would be comparable to those. Rarely does a GM ask for rolls to determine how many lines of code a PC managed to program in a workday, for example.

Quote from: Arminius;732112Back to bell curves, I agree that the factors influencing performance in the real world probably don't "stack" in a simple manner. But for an approximation, I think the shape of the differential effects of varying difficulty on people of different skill is better with a normal curve. This is almost certainly true with something like running a 100m dash or doing a broad jump. With other activities, it's harder to measure.

For every reality-based example that supports a bell-curve effect for modifiers, I can provide a reality-based counter-example that supports a differently-shaped curve, or even an opposite one. I could continue this quid pro quo across a variety of fields, ad infinitum. It would be extremely tedious, both for us and everyone reading this thread, so I hope you won't take me up on the challenge. I've already provided a few counter-examples earlier in this thread.

Quote from: 3rik;732068Haha.

In CoC I suggested rolling a separate d5 (a d10 numbered 1-5 twice) with every roll to quickly determine critical successes without having to calculate what 20% of your skill level is, but my players didn't mind doing the math - either that or they didn't understand my explanation - so the d5 remains unused...

One thing I love about MRQ2 and the BRP golden book, is how easy it is to calculate in your head criticals and specials, because decimals are always rounded up. For example, 57% in MRQ2 the critical is 6% (you take the first cipher and round it up). In RQ3 it was so convoluted that we always checked the chart. In MRQ2 we never had to.

Quote from: Arminius;732112You'd first have to come up with a meaningful measure of performance. Say, if we were talking about marksmanship, the % of shots that hit a target. Then for an individual we'd measure performance as we varied the target size, range, wind, rate of fire, and qualitative factors such as equipment. This will give you an n-dimensional plot. My hypothesis is that you can derive a single number (scalar) from each person's plot, which we'll call "skill", and people with similar skill will have similar plots.

With me so far? This is just groundwork.

Such a model should also take into account individual psychology. e.g. A generalized performance curve for myself probably looks something like "inverted camel-humps", with results clustered in really bad, average and really good, and comparatively fewer results in kinda bad and kinda good. The reason for this is that I tend to either give up or push for at least average when things are looking "kinda bad". And when things are looking "kinda good", I usually have enough patience and/or perfectionism to push for really good.

But I wouldn't project my own performance psychology on anyone else, hence my preference for flat probabilities when GMing.

Quote from: Old Geezer;731980If your group's idea of a memorable adventure is based on somebody's dice rolling, I pity you all.

Memorable rolls. When it comes to game mechanics, the gaming group likes exploding dice. One of the reasons is that big number. An improbable roll can make a scene really memorable. But its mostly about being able to go far beyond what would normally be the statistical limit on a normal roll, for that big "you rolled what?" factor. I even played TORG and Shatterzone for a bit because of the d10 roll ups back in the day before I found Earthdawn. Its just a feature not offered in a lot of the other RPG games that I have played, like roll under d100% games, D20, etc.  The other reason is I just like rolling equal or higher than DNs than lower than or equal to DNs in games.

Our most memorable adventures have been the ones lately in Savage Worlds in 50 Fathoms/Deadlands: The Flood due to a lot of buy-in by all the characters and tremendous roleplaying. And Earthdawn Kratas Quest where we killed Garlthik the One-Eye  then betrayed our allies Mordom and Vistrosh who helped us bring him down and took over Kratas.

Of course one of our most memorable past games was D20/DnD3.0 with my Gnome Druid taking the Tamer of Beast class from Masters of Wild and trying to gain enough levels to tame the Tarraque and let it loose on civilization, bringing the whole world back to nature by force. And everyone else was playing rangers, barbarians, clerics of Obad-Hai who were completely down with this. And my menagerie of awakened magical beasts that all could talk.

Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;732061As we've already discussed, "reduced swinginess" is irrelevant if you're not measuring degrees of success and failure

What a bizarrely absurd claim. All it requires to become significant is to attempt multiple tasks over time (particularly multiple tasks at varying levels of difficulty).

Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;732061"Swinginess" and "claustrophobic" are the kinds of empty theory-buzzwords that bell curve proponents often bandy around without really knowing what they're talking about, so my eyes might have glazed over while reading your post.

So you want someone to explain to you how the mechanics "feel" at the game table, but you want them to do it strictly without using any words that describe how they feel.

... Fascinating.

Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;732062Here's a relevant article from today's Toronto Star:

Ding, Dong, the Bell Curve is Dead

http://www.thestar.com/business/2012/05/09/ding_dong_the_bell_curve_is_dead.html

The linked article claims that bell curves don't apply to the distribution of results in the population at large because a small number of superstars show consistent performance at an exceptional level.

... So I'm assuming that you posted this article as an admission that you were wrong and that mechanics should use bell curves when modeling individual performance in order to reflect that consistency?

(Bearing in mind that I don't actually have a preference for one mechanic over the other.)

Quote from: One Horse Town;732064Once Justin has wheeled out the illiterate line, it's not worth continuing the discussion, Jude.

It's true. Once we've identified this level of incompetence, there's not much more to discuss.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;732245What a bizarrely absurd claim. All it requires to become significant is to attempt multiple tasks over time (particularly multiple tasks at varying levels of difficulty).

Seriously, it really doesn't matter. 92 and 62 are both failures in percentile if you're rolling against 60 without measuring DoS/DoF. The end result is a binary outcome regardless the "swinginess" potential.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;732245So you want someone to explain to you how the mechanics "feel" at the game table, but you want them to do it strictly without using any words that describe how they feel.

I asked for elaboration of your vague descriptors and you declined. At least Brander was able to frame his argument in concrete terms that mean something to another gamer (i.e. mitigating modifier effects for skilled characters).

Quote from: Justin Alexander;732245The linked article claims that bell curves don't apply to the distribution of results in the population at large because a small number of superstars show consistent performance at an exceptional level.

Actually the article doesn't say that at all, you're just making it up. Here's what it says:

"Next up for Aguinis is some other studies that will try to examine what allows someone to become a superstar performer and stay there for a long period of time. “We’re trying to understand the flow of people in and out of the elite group,” he said."

Maybe you're just uncomfortable with the idea that you're a loser, clustered together with a bunch of other losers, looking across a vast gulf of empty mediocrity at the winners on the other side. Especially since you view modifiers as piddly incremental proportions of your base score. If only modifiers were flat bonuses, you might have a chance of bridging that gap!

Quote from: Elfdart;731671The only issue I can think of regarding d% is that way back when, they didn't make dedicated percentile dice . . .

Whereas nowadays you can roll a Zocchihedron, and (when it eventually stops) squint while trying to figure out which number is on top: what an improvement!

Tossing a couple of dice of different colors or otherwise distinct is about a moth's whisper of difference from tossing two identical dice (and then needing to add the results) in Craps or Settlers of Catan.

I thought the article was funny because it sounds to me like they're consistently describing a 'bell' shape.  A bell isn't just a hump - there is a flange around the edge before you get to the steep middle portions.  

And of course, it seems to ignore the fact that the 'worst performers' aren't included.  If you were measuring everyone's ability to hit a baseball, there are some who would NEVER hit, but when you measure professional baseball players, you're well outside of the 'normal population'.  Once you eliminate everyone under a certain level of basic competency, you get rid of the bell shape completely.

Quote from: Adric;731714For D%, the smallest amount you can improve is 1%. If skills regularly increase by more than 1% in a given system, why track it at such fine detail? Just round it off to the nearest 5% and use D20 or the nearest 10% and use D10.

The first big d% game, RuneQuest, did in fact increase basic skill ratings in 5% increments. So, why use d%?

1) Decimal dice were more readily available than dedicated 1-20 dice (which were most often made by coloring half the digits on a dice with 0-9 twice).

2) The game used proportional chances (e.g., 1/20 and 1/5) for special results. Since a second dice would be called for anyway, why not use a pair of decimal dice for a 1-100 roll?

3) Most people are accustomed to seeing probabilities expressed as %.  

4) Percentile chances can approximate the probabilities that many other dice or combinations of dice permit, and exactly reproduce the spreads of some.

QuoteAnother problem with a pass/fail system that uses d% is that 9 times out of 10, the second die won't matter. If the target is say, 55%, the 10's die needs to be a 5 for there to be any tension on the 1's die. If the target number is a flat multiple of 10, and there are no modifiers, the second die never matters at all.

Ditto half the numbers on a d20, but in both cases you have the option (if you've got a d10 in addition to d20) of not tossing what never matters at all.

So what? What makes this a problem, even in cases to which it's relevant? And are you really not aware that its not being relevant, that there are factors less than 1 in 20 that interest us, is the main reason we choose to use d%?

The problem (for some tastes) of making 1 roll in 20 a fumble, is that in a fight with 5 combatants on each side, you end up with someone losing his weapon or whatnot on average every other round.