Quote from: Lunamancer;1087631Technically Anselyn is actually wrong on this. So are a lot of people. Here's an example illustrating why taken directly from this thread:



If you were to graph out how rounds it takes the ogre to go down, I assure you, you will NOT end up with a bell curve distribution. At a minimum, it's going to take one hit while there is no theoretical maximum. So there's no symmetry. And that's fine, because bell curves can be perturbed. But there's also only a tail on one side.`I doubt the left side even starts to tail out. It lacks one of the key inflection points characteristic of a bell curve. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Bell curves in the real world are not as common as assumed. This example is actually more of a perturbed Pareto distribution rather than a bell curve.

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That is right. If you have two outcomes, you have a binomial that only has a bell shape in the case that the probability of success is 50%.

Not to go meta on this but here is a twist that can offer another angle on the dice. The TL;DR is that the dice don't matter at all. I don't 100% agree, because I am not the same kind of GM as JW.

http://johnwickpresents.com/rants/no-dice/comment-page-1/

I completely disagree with that article because studies have shown that tactile involvement (i.e. rolling dice in this case) increases your investment and interest in any activity.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1088100The reason some people like the distribution curve of 2d10 is it TENDS to align more with our real life expectations.  

When most people do things consistently, they tend to consistently get the same result.  They're not equally likely to have their best or worst day - they tend to have their average.  

That may not be your cup of tea, but I think people on this thread generally understand that decreasing the likelihood of extreme results and increasing the likelihood of average results does exactly that - it makes average results more likely.  That's one reason people roll stats on 3d6 and not 1d20.  You end up with a 90% chance of a 7+ but only a 10% chance of a 15+.  Average people cluster around the average.

Assuming you set the target numbers correctly, yes.  I know you know that, but since these types of discussions bring out a need for precision, I'll include to forestall the obvious counter argument.  

Also, "real life expectations" are by definition somewhat psychological, even emotional things.  It is precisely at that point that the math stops being useful, and a wide experience with how people act and feel becomes more important.  Thus the "tends".  

One thing I've noticed is that people who tend generalist by temperament and life experiences tends to have different attitudes about this topic than those that tend specialist along the same criteria.   The more skills in which you tend to "talented amateur" or "experienced amateur", and the more people you know that tend the same way (at least well enough to see their skills status), then the more you care about the mechanics producing that average most of the time.

Quote from: Chris24601;1088159I completely disagree with that article because studies have shown that tactile involvement (i.e. rolling dice in this case) increases your investment and interest in any activity.

Dice can still be tossed. The point is *that doesn't matter* for the goal he assumes.

Quote from: soundchaser;1088174Dice can still be tossed. The point is *that doesn't matter* for the goal he assumes.

Well, I think there's even a little bit more than that wrong with JW's argument.

Ultimately it's the GM who decides, therefore dice don't matter.

Well, ultimately, we all pack up our papers and pencils and dice and go home. If that means nothing that happened in the preceding four hours matters, we wouldn't have a hobby and JW wouldn't be blogging about it.

Ove. That's the thing. The dice establish the illusion. It keeps people playing, this illusion.

The game he *did* design based on his idea is roll and move.

Quote from: soundchaser;1088257Ove. That's the thing. The dice establish the illusion. It keeps people playing, this illusion.

The game he *did* design based on his idea is roll and move.

I think it is more than just an illusion to it, though. Obviously it's not real. We're talking about make-believe after all. But it still has to be real enough to keep the players playing. That's no trivial thing.