I kind of struggle to see how one can dislike both roll under and d[number > then 10ish] systems as a general principle.

I get the argument that one might be easier to understand than the other (I'd think for most people "roll under" would be easier) but in pure action resolution terms they're so similar that it's hard to see how one could strongly prefer one or the other.

Quote from: tanstaafl48;731328I kind of struggle to see how one can dislike both roll under and d[number > then 10ish] systems as a general principle.

I get the argument that one might be easier to understand than the other (I'd think for most people "roll under" would be easier) but in pure action resolution terms they're so similar that it's hard to see how one could strongly prefer one or the other.

You're assuming "logic" enters into this.

% is easy and makes me happy.

Perhaps it's the easy bit that others don't like?

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;731218If this is "pretentious jackholery" . . .

It is.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;731218. . . which annoys BV . . .

It doesn't.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;731218. . . that's a bonus.

Game over. No replay.

Sorry, Charlie.

Quote from: NathanIW;731302Yeah, Brander's point literally has nothing to do with what dice you happen to be picking up at the time.

All I was trying to note was that in my experience d% systems were poorly implemented by nearly all the GMs I played with, which has/had negatively impacted my perception of them.  It's an explanation, not a counterpoint of any kind.

That said, when so many GMs did it wrong in my experience, I'm inclined to want it explained better, as we saw in Unknown Armies, which went a very long ways towards making me more open to d% systems.

Also the failure mechanics can matter as well.  If a single failure is just a setback, not falling to your death, then a lower percentage skill can be much more acceptable, since it ends up being more how long it takes you to succeed. Where "stress" can mean that you don't have that much time and you may not succeed in time.

Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;731310Exactly, no matter how many dice you cram into your fists, games still come down to a percentage chance of success in the end. ...

While true, it can matter a lot in how you get there.  Bell curves can certainly impact the feel of a game.  An identical modifier to a skill in the middle of a curve is much greater than to a skill at the extremes and it's much simpler to model a bell curve with a multiple randomizer sum instead of a variable modifier for skills in the middle versus the extremes.  

As an example, going from a skill of 11 to 13 in a 3d6 system is a much greater change than going from 15 to 18 and this, to designers who desire/agree, more accurately models diminishing returns from high skills without having to work out what exact percentage change should be applied to get the same effect.

None of this is a knock on d% but it can be a valid design decision depending on exactly what a given designer wishes to model.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;731332% is easy and makes me happy.

Perhaps it's the easy bit that others don't like?

I think that's part of it. It's just too obvious and out in the open... there's less street cred for 'rules mastery' on a % game.

Quote from: Simlasa;731340I think that's part of it. It's just too obvious and out in the open... there's less street cred for 'rules mastery' on a % game.

Part of it may be that some gamers cant read percentile dice to save their lives.

Some will deliberately read 00 as zero. Some cant figure the 10s and 1s.

And its probably these types who are bitching about % roll under.

Or a great example of BGG at at its best.
"I hate percentile dice because the d10 is biased to roll 5.5."
I wish I were making that line up. Really.

Quote from: Brander;731336All I was trying to note was that in my experience d% systems were poorly implemented by nearly all the GMs I played with, which has/had negatively impacted my perception of them.  It's an explanation, not a counterpoint of any kind.

That said, when so many GMs did it wrong in my experience, I'm inclined to want it explained better, as we saw in Unknown Armies, which went a very long ways towards making me more open to d% systems.

I get what you're saying.  I'm dealing with early Runequest right now and the text in the skill section isn't as clear or robust as I would like.  I could totally see how if someone read the rules with the idea that there were only two options, total success and total failure, and that you never took the situation into account, that they could want to play it that way.

There's some modifiers listed here and there, like how to take into consideration the quality of the lock when someone tries to pick it, but it'd be easy to get into the habit of not ever using anything but the player's skill, straight up.

Quote from: Warthur;731211Either way, with COC I think they wanted to reflect the distinction where in the modern era most of your professional skills are a matter of education and training, and there are a lot of pursuits you can't simply expect to pick up and bluff you way through without any prior training, hence your skills coming from your Education and Intelligence pools rather than being directly derived from stats.

I don't know. I tend to think that character creation in CoC was meant to be as quick as possible, given that it's a high-lethality game and that the differences between humans are negligible in the Great (Old) Scheme of (Elder) Things. After all CoC's system is a stripped-down version of RuneQuest's, with skills that don't exceed 100 etc.

Quote from: Brander;731337As an example, going from a skill of 11 to 13 in a 3d6 system is a much greater change than going from 15 to 18 and this, to designers who desire/agree, more accurately models diminishing returns from high skills without having to work out what exact percentage change should be applied to get the same effect.

I like bell curves very much when used to randomly generate character stats, since bell curves describe how characteristics are distributed among a population. When implemented in resolution mechanics, they don't make as much sense, unfortunately*: while it can be very nice (in some but not all settings) how a high skill gives you diminishing returns as its rating exceeds the average result rolled on the dice and approaches the highest possible result, it's open to endless debates if the increasing returns a low skill gives you as its rating approaches the average result resemble anything real. The mechanics can be defended by arguing that it models how you need a decent level of proficiency to be able to use tools profitably, while a master of a skill can get along without tools just as fine; but it also fails to "represent" how in many daily activities you just need a basic level of proficiency to get by ("a little can go a long way").**


* I'm not saying I don't like games that use such mechanics.
** IIRC, Hero accounts for this facet by having the lowest target number for a skilled character be 11- on 3d6.

Quote from: Warthur;731204I guarantee that 99% of the people who say "I don't like percentile systems" really mean "I don't like the way some people run percentile systems".

I don't give gamers that much credit.  I've always presumed "I don't like percentile systems" to mean "It's not what I'm used to playing so it's automatically weird and it sucks."

Quote from: Ravenswing;731347I've always presumed "I don't like percentile systems" to mean "It's not what I'm used to playing so it's automatically weird and it sucks."

Which is also the meaning of "game X's system is not intuitive".

I only have found people who dislike % systems in Internet discussions. I haven't found them in real life. That's my anecdotical evidence, right there.

Quote from: Brander;731337As an example, going from a skill of 11 to 13 in a 3d6 system is a much greater change than going from 15 to 18 and this, to designers who desire/agree, more accurately models diminishing returns from high skills without having to work out what exact percentage change should be applied to get the same effect.

Bell curves might change the way a game feels when sitting back and theorizing about it, but when players are rolling the bones they're rarely thinking about diminishing returns at each end of the spectrum.

Actually, I would even argue that a more realistic method of modelling diminishing returns is by increasing the XP cost of skill improvement as proficiency increases e.g. 40KRP games, Ars Magica and BRP. It's not realistic IMO to have diminishing returns at the low end of the spectrum.

I don't have any problem with them. If the mechanic does its job and isn't completely borked then whats the big deal?