Quote from: deadDMwalking;734187bou may think that they are silly or wrong to dislike it, but if it weren't common, people  wouldn't have developed a perception that it was a disdained mechanic.

Well, that could be said of any mechanic.  d20 is not universally popular.  I personally do not like counting successes on dice pools.

Doesn't logic dictate that %d mechanics are easy to understand becuase everyone knows what a 35% chance of doing something is.
However, if your system requires something beyond a simple pass/fail then its harder to introduce without aditional sums. So a "critical sucess is 10% of your base chance so 35% base => 4% critical".
Whereas other systems that use different dice option, like exploding dice or dice pools primarily, give you other methods to count such things that require less sums at the table. So counting the number of 10s to work out criticals is less effort than working out threshold levels especially multiple threshold levels.

Thus -
%d fine for pass/fail.
More effort for granular levels of sucess => lots of %d systems that want granular sucess using lookup tables. eg James Bond 007 which is (skill x difficulty) vs %d on a look up table to yeild a 1-4 level of sucess, would be very tedious to do this manually.

There may also be a natural push back on roll low systems as a wider category.

Quote from: jibbajibba;734195However, if your system requires something beyond a simple pass/fail then its harder to introduce without aditional sums. So a "critical sucess is 10% of your base chance so 35% base => 4% critical".
Whereas other systems that use different dice option, like exploding dice or dice pools primarily, give you other methods to count such things that require less sums at the table. So counting the number of 10s to work out criticals is less effort than working out threshold levels especially multiple threshold levels.

I doubt the real cost of granular success in d% is greater than either counting increments of success above TN, or counting dice pool successes. The first two both require mathematical processing, the last one swaps the processing for time spend hunting and pecking for successes--something that's complicated even further the more states each die can have (botch on a 1, fail, pass, critical on a 10; now how do 10s interact with 1s? etc.)

Quote from: smiorgan;734213I doubt the real cost of granular success in d% is greater than either counting increments of success above TN, or counting dice pool successes. The first two both require mathematical processing, the last one swaps the processing for time spend hunting and pecking for successes--something that's complicated even further the more states each die can have (botch on a 1, fail, pass, critical on a 10; now how do 10s interact with 1s? etc.)

In my anecdotal experience counting 10s or how many 4 steps over the target number I rolled on my exploding dice is less effort than deviding my eventual target number into quadriles or deciles or whatever. And of course you can subdivide 1% to get that 1 in a million chance. In my system using 2d10 v target the other day a PC with 2 advatages managed to roll a natural 20 (4d10 drop highest 2) which was a 1:10,000 chance.

However at this point we get back into the previous 450 posts as relative ease of sums is obviously a subjective thing so I have no way to tell what you or anyone else finds easier.

I don't even understand how this thread got this convoluted.

The OP question was straightforward: is the porcentual mechanic (rolling 1d100 and getting a number equal or less than your % of success) a widely disliked mechanic?

The answer is obvious: FUCK NO. Some of the most important, sucessful and widely played games ever use it. If you do not know Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest or you do not consider them some of the most important games in history, you have lived under a rock or you are mental. Many many persons play BRP or similar games, and it is an easy and straightforward mechanic.

Now, of course, some people may not like the mechanic for many reasons. To each their own, it's irrelevant to the discussion.

Every time people play CoC they're using this mechanic. That fact alone should answer the question.

Quote from: Old One Eye;734192Well, that could be said of any mechanic.  d20 is not universally popular.  I personally do not like counting successes on dice pools.

At the end of the day every mechanic is disdained by someone somewhere.

Hell, if it has dice AT ALL there is a whole faction that will despise it.

Some people despise d20s. Some have a mad on for d4s. (probably because they stepped on one of the caltrops...) etc ad nausium.

Quote from: Imperator;734220I don't even understand how this thread got this convoluted.

The OP question was straightforward: is the porcentual mechanic (rolling 1d100 and getting a number equal or less than your % of success) a widely disliked mechanic?

The answer is obvious: FUCK NO. Some of the most important, sucessful and widely played games ever use it. If you do not know Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest or you do not consider them some of the most important games in history, you have lived under a rock or you are mental. Many many persons play BRP or similar games, and it is an easy and straightforward mechanic.

Now, of course, some people may not like the mechanic for many reasons. To each their own, it's irrelevant to the discussion.

Every time people play CoC they're using this mechanic. That fact alone should answer the question.

At least at RPGnet, before the recent RuneQuest revival there seemed to be a common dislike for the d100 (frequently, mind-boggingly qualified as prone to yielding "too random" results*, as if any fair die could be "more random" than another) and for roll-under (frequently, mind-boggingly qualified as "counterintuitive"). The rising popularity of RQ6 shows that it was just a matter of trendiness and mental laziness.


*Apparently, some people aren't able to dstinguish between a property of the system from a property of a specific game (CoC, in which characters are meant to be common, fallible people likely to break down when facing otherworldly dangers)

Quote from: Imperator;734220I don't even understand how this thread got this convoluted.

It's just about always gone this way when I've questioned someone why they object to percentile-based games... they can't just leave it as 'not my taste', they have to go down some Numberwang rabbit hole to prove the objective reality of their preference.
Somehow I have the impression that it ties in with people who want to think that playing RPGs means they're 'smart'... and percentiles are just too easy... vs. showing off their math skills with something more complex.

Quote from: MatteoN;734224and for roll-under (frequently, mind-boggingly qualified as "counterintuitive").

That's hilarious.

Quote from: MatteoN;734224At least at RPGnet, before the recent RuneQuest revival there seemed to be a common dislike for the d100 (frequently, mind-boggingly qualified as prone to yielding "too random" results*, as if any fair die could be "more random" than another) and for roll-under (frequently, mind-boggingly qualified as "counterintuitive"). The rising popularity of RQ6 shows that it was just a matter of trendiness and mental laziness.


*Apparently, some people aren't able to dstinguish between a property of the system from a property of a specific game (CoC, in which characters are meant to be common, fallible people likely to break down when facing otherworldly dangers)

The research I have found on the cognitive cost of mental operations seems to show that the fastest cognitive operation (of those involved in your typical roll) would be to compare two numbers and see if one is higher than the other. After that you have addition, substraction and the like. So, the counterituive argument is fully retarded. Ditto for the too random results. You don't like randomness, go diceless, or go for a system that minimizes randomness, but don't accuse a dice of being too random.

And as shown by the thread, some people can criticize a game without having had the slightest contact with it.

Quote from: Simlasa;734225It's just about always gone this way when I've questioned someone why they object to percentile-based games... they can't just leave it as 'not my taste', they have to go down some Numberwang rabbit hole to prove the objective reality of their preference.
Somehow I have the impression that it ties in with people who want to think that playing RPGs means they're 'smart'... and percentiles are just too easy... vs. showing off their math skills with something more complex.

Maybe. Dunno, it seems silly to me.

Some time ago I had this great player who disliked BRP. Nothing irrational, he simply liked dice pools the most. When I asked him about that, he said "I like the physical sensation of playing Star Wars, spending a Force point and then grabbing a FUCKTON metric dice and comparing it with my humble beginnings, when I got to roll 4-5 at most. Dice pools give you a tactile feedback on how good you are, in CoC you always roll 1d100. BRP is great, nothing against it, but I'd rather roll big numbers of dice."

See? Calm expression of taste, nothing to discuss.

I'm going to design a game called Haruspex. I'll rock up to a convention with a truck full of sheep and they'll be like "hey, what's with the livestock?" and I'll be like "those ain't livestock man, those are my dice."

Reading the livers of sheep instead of the patterns of flocks of birds is counterintuitive!

Quote from: Imperator;734229The research I have found on the cognitive cost of mental operations seems to show that the fastest cognitive operation (of those involved in your typical roll) would be to compare two numbers and see if one is higher than the other. After that you have addition, substraction and the like. So, the counterituive argument is fully retarded. Ditto for the too random results. You don't like randomness, go diceless, or go for a system that minimizes randomness, but don't accuse a dice of being too random.

And as shown by the thread, some people can criticize a game without having had the slightest contact with it.


Maybe. Dunno, it seems silly to me.

Some time ago I had this great player who disliked BRP. Nothing irrational, he simply liked dice pools the most. When I asked him about that, he said "I like the physical sensation of playing Star Wars, spending a Force point and then grabbing a FUCKTON metric dice and comparing it with my humble beginnings, when I got to roll 4-5 at most. Dice pools give you a tactile feedback on how good you are, in CoC you always roll 1d100. BRP is great, nothing against it, but I'd rather roll big numbers of dice."

See? Calm expression of taste, nothing to discuss.

That is a very good explanation of one persons preference for huge piles of dice.

Personally I hate huge piles of dice, but that does put at least one guys preference in perspective.

I like the "roll under %" mechanic. It's simple, straightforward and it's easier to tweak difficulty relatively intuitively and at quite a granular level than with other dice mechanics.

That said, I have a soft spot for exploding dice due to fond memories of playing Shadowrun 2nd Edition many, many moons ago.

Quote from: Imperator;734229Some time ago I had this great player who disliked BRP. Nothing irrational, he simply liked dice pools the most. When I asked him about that, he said "I like the physical sensation of playing Star Wars, spending a Force point and then grabbing a FUCKTON metric dice and comparing it with my humble beginnings, when I got to roll 4-5 at most. Dice pools give you a tactile feedback on how good you are, in CoC you always roll 1d100. BRP is great, nothing against it, but I'd rather roll big numbers of dice."

See? Calm expression of taste, nothing to discuss.

Well, I admit playing CHAMPIONS it was fun to grab a huge wad of dice when Green Lantern let somebody have it with a full-force power beam.

But no less fun for me than picking up percentile dice and knowing that if I roll anything under a 90 I hit.

Honestly, "what dice you roll and how you roll them" is probably the very last thing I consider when I decide if I'll play in a game.

In fact, it's "people, setting, food, beer."  Dice and rules don't enter into it.