Quote from: Shipyard Locked on April 15, 2023, 05:37:39 PM
Don't forget video games as a factor. Younger players grew up on computer RPGs automating a lot of math and mechanics for them. They haven't built up the 'mental muscle' to take on that load themselves.

It reminds me of something a math teacher said a long time ago. In the old days homework would consist of only a few problems because students would have to use tables and a slide rule to evaluate the answer. Now there are more questions because its less work per questions. The value of problem solving is in knowing how to set up the equation to be evaluated, not in the number crunching.

I like enough of a barrier to entry to deter non comital casuals that can't make it through one arc of a year long campaign, but I am not looking to do finite element analysis by hand every time the GM calls for a check either.

I spend more time in the rule than I do imagining the fiction is a real concern, while unspecified complaining about "too hard" is not. Some people want the payoff with no effort and for it to feel rewarding, which is just self contradictory.

Quote from: saki on April 15, 2023, 10:53:09 AM
It's interesting to see this idea floated, because I am a relatively young player (and game designer) and often find myself aggressively simplifying and consolidating things - and just in general breaking standing rules - to see how they work and to try to make the game run faster. It's sort of like the opposite of Chesterton's Fence: fuck around and find out, game design edition. I actually have a particularly pertinent example here.

I wasn't introduced to RPGs via D&D or any of the big-name systems; I started by playing a friend's custom-built homebrewed games and later moved to Dead Simple Roleplaying's one-page systems for the first few campaigns I ran. DSR Fantasy didn't use 3-to-18 attribute scores. It was on a 1 to 4 (or 5?) scale. When I started reading retroclones and D&D, I started asking myself what the point of having the ability score and the ability score modifier was, if not just for a matter of tradition (and a holdover from when they were scores that you rolled under, in the case of D&D).

Well, in my earliest home-made fantasy systems, I kept the ability score modifiers but dropped the scores themselves. And after years of playtesting, design, and tweaking, I can say with some certainty that the ability scores do serve a handful of interesting purposes that the modifiers can't. Specifically, their range is bigger, and it's also never negative. Modifiers go -4 to +4 (or -3 to +3 if you're using the weird scaling that a lot of retroclones do) and scores go 3 to 18. You can't roll anything except a d4 against a modifier because it's such a small range. Increasing or decreasing a modifier by d4 is like doing the same to a raw ability score by d8, and it's even worse with the smaller -3 to +3 range. Also, it's a pain to generate the modifier range by itself if your system doesn't have a concept of the score. Can you say "3d6/2-5" six times in a row? It's just not as fast as 3d6 and then convert.

So after a couple of years of experimentation, I'm thinking I might re-introduce it. Things that last a long time are probably solid design. That extra number sitting on the sheet hurts nobody and has a lot of weird non-obvious uses for your game design space. But I'm going to keep breaking things until I figure out how everything works. In this sense, I am probably averse to complexity, but specifically needless complexity. I want everything to be as fluid and elegant as possible, and it can be complex if the topic deserves it. That doesn't mean I always know what's useful and what's not; that's why I've been experimenting in private and not on a live system, ha ha. 

As far as others go, I only have anecdotal experiences to state. Most of the circles I play with skew heavily young (nobody over 30), and they're more or less fine with complexity in system design. Some of my players have chastised me for my attempts to streamline systems, actually, and sometimes they've been right (but it is experimentation, after all). But my circles also mostly shun 5e, so it's all but a given that we're outliers.

Your invocation of Chesterton's Fence is apropos.  Once you have a measurement of a character's dexterity that ranges between 3 and 18, you can easily test that dexterity by asking a player to roll under on 1d20.  Were you to create a modifier-based roll, or any other roll based on 2 linear spread of values, you would not have the same probability of results as a linear d20 versus a number generated by 3d6 (which has a bell curve).  So your player with an 18 does not have the effectively small increase in success chance (5% per point difference), as the 18 dexterity was far less probable to be rolled in the first place.  The 18 is far more powerful than just 10% more success than a sixteen, because the 18 was far harder to generate in the first place (0.46% vs 2.77%).

Once again, the more that you investigate the original rules of the first few iterations of D&D, the more you find layers of utility that you never expected.  Only the foolish discard them without carefully considering the purpose of the original rules...

Quote from: saki on April 15, 2023, 10:53:09 AM
It's interesting to see this idea floated, because I am a relatively young player (and game designer) and often find myself aggressively simplifying and consolidating things - and just in general breaking standing rules - to see how they work and to try to make the game run faster. It's sort of like the opposite of Chesterton's Fence: fuck around and find out, game design edition. I actually have a particularly pertinent example here.

I wasn't introduced to RPGs via D&D or any of the big-name systems; I started by playing a friend's custom-built homebrewed games and later moved to Dead Simple Roleplaying's one-page systems for the first few campaigns I ran. DSR Fantasy didn't use 3-to-18 attribute scores. It was on a 1 to 4 (or 5?) scale. When I started reading retroclones and D&D, I started asking myself what the point of having the ability score and the ability score modifier was, if not just for a matter of tradition (and a holdover from when they were scores that you rolled under, in the case of D&D).

Well, in my earliest home-made fantasy systems, I kept the ability score modifiers but dropped the scores themselves. And after years of playtesting, design, and tweaking, I can say with some certainty that the ability scores do serve a handful of interesting purposes that the modifiers can't. Specifically, their range is bigger, and it's also never negative. Modifiers go -4 to +4 (or -3 to +3 if you're using the weird scaling that a lot of retroclones do) and scores go 3 to 18. You can't roll anything except a d4 against a modifier because it's such a small range. Increasing or decreasing a modifier by d4 is like doing the same to a raw ability score by d8, and it's even worse with the smaller -3 to +3 range. Also, it's a pain to generate the modifier range by itself if your system doesn't have a concept of the score. Can you say "3d6/2-5" six times in a row? It's just not as fast as 3d6 and then convert.

So after a couple of years of experimentation, I'm thinking I might re-introduce it. Things that last a long time are probably solid design. That extra number sitting on the sheet hurts nobody and has a lot of weird non-obvious uses for your game design space. But I'm going to keep breaking things until I figure out how everything works. In this sense, I am probably averse to complexity, but specifically needless complexity. I want everything to be as fluid and elegant as possible, and it can be complex if the topic deserves it. That doesn't mean I always know what's useful and what's not; that's why I've been experimenting in private and not on a live system, ha ha. 

As far as others go, I only have anecdotal experiences to state. Most of the circles I play with skew heavily young (nobody over 30), and they're more or less fine with complexity in system design. Some of my players have chastised me for my attempts to streamline systems, actually, and sometimes they've been right (but it is experimentation, after all). But my circles also mostly shun 5e, so it's all but a given that we're outliers.

In my current design project I did away with ability scores and switched to modifiers too, though I didn't start from D&D as a baseline.  I haven't had a single problem with it.  Are there any specific issues I should be looking out for?

And d6 minus d6 gives a nice -5 to +5 distribution, if you want a simple way to do it.

Quote from: Vestragor on April 14, 2023, 05:42:38 AM
Maybe it's me and this is simply a case of yelling at clouds, but I started noticing a curious trend in recent years: younger players seem to be heavily averse to everything that requires mechanics/game principles slightly more complex than a couple of (single) dice rolls and single digit sums.
In the more extreme cases, even that is regarded as "too much"; just to make a couple of memorable examples from r/rpg: one guy lamenting that Savage Worlds is "an extremely math heavy system" (roll two dice, keep the highest and if it's 4 or more you're good, with modifiers rarely going over a single digit is apparently the new defition of "math heavy") and another proclaiming that the Witcher TTRPG crafting system is "extremely crunchy" (the system being find or buy a recipe, find the correct materials and then roll one d10 plus one number against a fixed difficulty).

Anyone else noticed the trend or am I imagining things ?

You are seeing some of the tendrils of the Storygamer "movement" as they push this to this day.

Over on Reddit the occasional glances through and like once a week I see someone, often several spouting off about how hard 1+1 is. I forget the thread but one person was advocating for dumbing down 5e more because one of his players, a trained doctor, could not do basic math.

The problem may be that our schools are not actually teaching the basics anymore? Then again I saw one schools idea of how to do basic math and it was like 4 steps to get 10-20?
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/


But there is a definite trend going on of people just unable to grasp Roll die and add 3.

Quote from: Mishihari on April 16, 2023, 04:11:46 AM

In my current design project I did away with ability scores and switched to modifiers too, though I didn't start from D&D as a baseline.  I haven't had a single problem with it.  Are there any specific issues I should be looking out for?

That's kind of a tricky question, because it's one of those things where if you aren't using it, you might as well take it out.  OTOH, if you have it in, you might find yourself using it. 

As an example, I kept it in my main home brew because I wanted to generate the ability score, and 3d6 (and a chart) gave me the progression I specifically wanted.  If you want your modifiers to mostly be between -3 and +3, even if the system allows for some room outside that (exactly outliers), 3d6 will give you a good spread.  Even though my modifiers don't match old or current D&D in assignment, the spread was close enough, and thus the reasons 3d6 was handy.

Having decided that, I built my "Ability Improvement" mechanic around it.  A character gets selective improvement based on other choices they make.  When they get one, they roll d20, trying to get higher than the score.  If they do not, it's 1 point in the score.  If they do, they roll a d6, with 1-3 being +2 points, 4-5 being +3 points, and 6 being +4 points.  In normal D&D, that'd be too generous.  In my system, it works exactly as intended because of that skewed chart.  It means anyone with a really lousy score is guaranteed to get rid of at least 1 modifier minus in 2 improvements, and highly likely to do it in 1 improvement.  Whereas upper scores take dedicated effort to move.

Now, all of the improvement stuff could have been done without the scores, sort of.  It's just math and a track, after all. Having the scores, I used them for the track.  And given the range, the d20/d6 thing made a very simple way for players to implement some intuitive but mildly tricky math.  In other words, I put some complexity in the design specifically to take out the complexity for the players.  The upshot is that players that get unlucky rolling their 3d6 down the line during character generation get considerably better improvements than the players that are lucky early.  They also have more control over which scores improves.  Which is also as intended.

I have some magic that gives bonuses to the scores, not directly to the modifiers. Again, that's deliberately using the track to make some magic more appealing to certain characters, and lets me introduce minor magic early.  +1 to your Might modifier is a significant increase.  +1 to your Might score will only help select characters, and that will change as their ability scores improve.  So it is highly likely that a non-melee caster, for example, could end up with a minor Might ring, just for the health improvements that go with it.  It's not implemented yet, but I also intend to have some curses and blessings situated around scores.

BTW, with my creatures, I don't bother.  I use only the modifiers to keep the listing short as possible.  It's up to the GM to decide what the track might be under that score, since most such creatures aren't going to stick around very long.  If one does stay around (e.g. pet wolf), then I set the track at average for the modifier, and start tracking from there.

I'm not using the ability scores for anything else in the main mechanics.  It's all about that skewed track, in one way or another.  If I didn't have the ability scores, I'd need something else for the track.  I could come up with something simpler than a separate track for each ability score, if I wanted.  In fact, I did for my previous system.  But it's six familiar items on the sheet that gives the players an intuitive sense of where they are on the track, even the ones that are lousy at probabilities. 

The math question is very much a case of two things being true at the same time. My father is not entirely wrong when he grouses about how kids can't make change anymore. There is something real at the heart of his complaint. Schools in the US do a piss poor job of teaching mathematics. His complaints fall on deaf ears because making change is an obsolete skill in the United States.

There is definitely a need to change mathematics education, because we no longer need to train humans to be cash registers. Computers can do this job far more quickly and accurately. It may very well be that, despite the insistence of some advocates, mathematics is not as important as it once was for most people. It's important for the advancement of society and technology, but maybe it's not terribly important for day-to-day life. It may be a lot like physical exercise. People in developed countries don't need to be in excellent physical condition to navigate the world, but they do need it for the health benefits. So, we have to do wasteful physical tasks in order to keep our bodies in good condition so that we don't have heart attacks and other maladies. Likewise, we may need to do wasteful mental tasks in order to keep our brains in good condition. Games (tabletop, video, or otherwise) may actually serve a useful purpose for our long-term health.

What if games are how we actually learn math in this brave new world?

Quote from: Omega on April 16, 2023, 09:03:23 AM

Quote from: Vestragor on April 14, 2023, 05:42:38 AM
Maybe it's me and this is simply a case of yelling at clouds, but I started noticing a curious trend in recent years: younger players seem to be heavily averse to everything that requires mechanics/game principles slightly more complex than a couple of (single) dice rolls and single digit sums.
In the more extreme cases, even that is regarded as "too much"; just to make a couple of memorable examples from r/rpg: one guy lamenting that Savage Worlds is "an extremely math heavy system" (roll two dice, keep the highest and if it's 4 or more you're good, with modifiers rarely going over a single digit is apparently the new defition of "math heavy") and another proclaiming that the Witcher TTRPG crafting system is "extremely crunchy" (the system being find or buy a recipe, find the correct materials and then roll one d10 plus one number against a fixed difficulty).

Anyone else noticed the trend or am I imagining things ?

You are seeing some of the tendrils of the Storygamer "movement" as they push this to this day.

Over on Reddit the occasional glances through and like once a week I see someone, often several spouting off about how hard 1+1 is. I forget the thread but one person was advocating for dumbing down 5e more because one of his players, a trained doctor, could not do basic math.

The problem may be that our schools are not actually teaching the basics anymore? Then again I saw one schools idea of how to do basic math and it was like 4 steps to get 10-20?
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/


But there is a definite trend going on of people just unable to grasp Roll die and add 3.

How does 12 - 3 equal 15? Where does the three come from, in the problem?

Quote from: Omega on April 16, 2023, 09:03:23 AMI forget the thread but one person was advocating for dumbing down 5e more because one of his players, a trained doctor, could not do basic math.

What do you have against women being in the medical field?

Quote from: Omega on April 16, 2023, 09:03:23 AM

Quote from: Vestragor on April 14, 2023, 05:42:38 AM
Maybe it's me and this is simply a case of yelling at clouds, but I started noticing a curious trend in recent years: younger players seem to be heavily averse to everything that requires mechanics/game principles slightly more complex than a couple of (single) dice rolls and single digit sums.
In the more extreme cases, even that is regarded as "too much"; just to make a couple of memorable examples from r/rpg: one guy lamenting that Savage Worlds is "an extremely math heavy system" (roll two dice, keep the highest and if it's 4 or more you're good, with modifiers rarely going over a single digit is apparently the new defition of "math heavy") and another proclaiming that the Witcher TTRPG crafting system is "extremely crunchy" (the system being find or buy a recipe, find the correct materials and then roll one d10 plus one number against a fixed difficulty).

Anyone else noticed the trend or am I imagining things ?

You are seeing some of the tendrils of the Storygamer "movement" as they push this to this day.

Over on Reddit the occasional glances through and like once a week I see someone, often several spouting off about how hard 1+1 is. I forget the thread but one person was advocating for dumbing down 5e more because one of his players, a trained doctor, could not do basic math.

The problem may be that our schools are not actually teaching the basics anymore? Then again I saw one schools idea of how to do basic math and it was like 4 steps to get 10-20?
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/


But there is a definite trend going on of people just unable to grasp Roll die and add 3.

I agree with your conclusion.

Quote from: cavalier973 on April 16, 2023, 12:20:31 PM

Quote from: Omega on April 16, 2023, 09:03:23 AM

Quote from: Vestragor on April 14, 2023, 05:42:38 AM
Maybe it's me and this is simply a case of yelling at clouds, but I started noticing a curious trend in recent years: younger players seem to be heavily averse to everything that requires mechanics/game principles slightly more complex than a couple of (single) dice rolls and single digit sums.
In the more extreme cases, even that is regarded as "too much"; just to make a couple of memorable examples from r/rpg: one guy lamenting that Savage Worlds is "an extremely math heavy system" (roll two dice, keep the highest and if it's 4 or more you're good, with modifiers rarely going over a single digit is apparently the new defition of "math heavy") and another proclaiming that the Witcher TTRPG crafting system is "extremely crunchy" (the system being find or buy a recipe, find the correct materials and then roll one d10 plus one number against a fixed difficulty).

Anyone else noticed the trend or am I imagining things ?

You are seeing some of the tendrils of the Storygamer "movement" as they push this to this day.

Over on Reddit the occasional glances through and like once a week I see someone, often several spouting off about how hard 1+1 is. I forget the thread but one person was advocating for dumbing down 5e more because one of his players, a trained doctor, could not do basic math.

The problem may be that our schools are not actually teaching the basics anymore? Then again I saw one schools idea of how to do basic math and it was like 4 steps to get 10-20?
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/


But there is a definite trend going on of people just unable to grasp Roll die and add 3.

How does 12 - 3 equal 15? Where does the three come from, in the problem?

Welcome to the "New Math" being taught in schools that parents have been fighting against. Brought to you by the same people who believe in CRT and Climate Change who want it taught. Political indoctrination instead of learning how to be critical thinkers.

(Sorry if that leans too far into the political, but it does definitely affect the target audience of gamers in this TTRPG hobby. )

Quote from: Corolinth on April 16, 2023, 11:08:34 AM
The math question is very much a case of two things being true at the same time. My father is not entirely wrong when he grouses about how kids can't make change anymore. There is something real at the heart of his complaint. Schools in the US do a piss poor job of teaching mathematics. His complaints fall on deaf ears because making change is an obsolete skill in the United States.

There is definitely a need to change mathematics education, because we no longer need to train humans to be cash registers. Computers can do this job far more quickly and accurately. It may very well be that, despite the insistence of some advocates, mathematics is not as important as it once was for most people. It's important for the advancement of society and technology, but maybe it's not terribly important for day-to-day life. It may be a lot like physical exercise. People in developed countries don't need to be in excellent physical condition to navigate the world, but they do need it for the health benefits. So, we have to do wasteful physical tasks in order to keep our bodies in good condition so that we don't have heart attacks and other maladies. Likewise, we may need to do wasteful mental tasks in order to keep our brains in good condition. Games (tabletop, video, or otherwise) may actually serve a useful purpose for our long-term health.

What if games are how we actually learn math in this brave new world?

Then we had better start getting the kids to play a lot more Traveller.

I ran Dark Champions recently, and it has what I would call an easy-moderate attack mechanic.

11- on 3d6, but you add your OCV and attack bonus, and subtract a number I give you.

So say you have 9 with OCV and bonus, minus 6 for enemy DCV. So that's a remainder of 3. 11+3 = 14, roll 14- to hit.

The combats took ffoorreeevvveeerrr, even with me constantly chipping in calculations for the players. Some players simply couldn't do it.

Quote from: Corolinth on April 16, 2023, 11:08:34 AM
The math question is very much a case of two things being true at the same time. My father is not entirely wrong when he grouses about how kids can't make change anymore. There is something real at the heart of his complaint. Schools in the US do a piss poor job of teaching mathematics. His complaints fall on deaf ears because making change is an obsolete skill in the United States.

There is definitely a need to change mathematics education, because we no longer need to train humans to be cash registers. Computers can do this job far more quickly and accurately. It may very well be that, despite the insistence of some advocates, mathematics is not as important as it once was for most people. It's important for the advancement of society and technology, but maybe it's not terribly important for day-to-day life. It may be a lot like physical exercise. People in developed countries don't need to be in excellent physical condition to navigate the world, but they do need it for the health benefits. So, we have to do wasteful physical tasks in order to keep our bodies in good condition so that we don't have heart attacks and other maladies. Likewise, we may need to do wasteful mental tasks in order to keep our brains in good condition. Games (tabletop, video, or otherwise) may actually serve a useful purpose for our long-term health.

What if games are how we actually learn math in this brave new world?

It's not just math; it's number sense.  I've taught at both the high school and college level (presently teaching physics at the high school level... and sponsor of the school RPG club).  It's not that kids can't add or subtract (which is true.  There are a number of reasons for this, including "new" math, calculators, and standardized test prep in lieu of teaching, but this isn't the thread for it).  They don't even have a "feel" for how numbers work.  A student can mess up a calculation and then report that the bowling ball they just measured was moving at 32,000 m/s.  Nothing in their brains connects the number to reality.  And this isn't just a case of unfamiliar metrics (they do the same if you are measuring in feet or miles).  This lack of number sense bleeds over into RPG "math" as well.  They don't know what percentages are really telling them, what their odds are, how difficult things are to hit, not to mention have trouble calculating bonuses or adding.  And this isn't just "lower level" kids.  While I've taught my fair share of remedial-level classes, I'm teaching AP-level students in a program that recruits the best math and science students in the county.  The average kid in my classes is in AP Calculus BC or Linear Algebra.  And they'll be the first to tell you that they can integrate by parts, but can't add in their heads.  I'm Gandalf to them because I can glance at ten divided by point zero one and instinctively answer one thousand... the majority of the kids have no clue how I got there.

Don't get me wrong, there are some kids who remind me of the kids in my youth.  But there are a lot of them who are mathematically illiterate, even when they have all of the course-work and credentials...

Kind of off-topic, but a resource we use with the tax deductions is a math curriculum called "Life of Fred". It goes from preschool (where it focuses on reading) up to calculus. The titular Fred is a five year old Russian kid who teaches at an imaginary university in Kansas. Apparently, there is a story woven throughout the series. Our kids would fight over who got to go through the next book when it arrived in the mail.

It should be supplemented with a lot of math worksheets.

I'm looking at the books, and they deal with fractions, decimals and percents, pre-algebra 1 & 2, beginning algebra, advanced algebra, geometry, and trigonometry. There may be other books, as well.

I have definitely noticed an increase in math-aversion in my groups, but it isn't exclusive to the younger players. Older players who have jobs often come to the table tired enough that they don't want to do mental arithmetic. Anything can feel difficult when you're tired, and many people feel chronically fatigued.

With the younger generation it's more an attention-span thing. They are used to near constant dopamine-hits from their smartphones and when games fail to deliver that, their attention starts to wander.

As to the new math; I understand the theory, but disagree with the execution. The idea is to modify the numbers to make the problem easier to work. The problem is that this is a matter of opportunism, not a formula you can consistently follow to find the fastest and lowest-effort approach. The real solution is to teach kids math with a slide-rule and not a calculator, as a slide-rule is an easy tool to use, but requires you to keep track of the decimal point, so you develop an intuition for what the number should be, which is a skill that transfers to using a calculator later in education.