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Is "roll under %" a disdained mechanic?

Started by Shipyard Locked, February 14, 2014, 12:01:59 PM

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Gronan of Simmerya

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Quote from: Old Geezer;738015Girls, GIRLS!  You're BOTH pretty!

You're not a gamer, by the way. Though you *might* be a role player. ;)

soltakss

Quote from: Bill;737942I know one gamer that will not play any rpg that uses a d20.

Because D&D and HeroQuest are the same game?

That's as bad as not playing in a setting because there are elves.
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Gronan of Simmerya

Quote from: soltakss;738024Because D&D and HeroQuest are the same game?

That's as bad as not playing in a setting because there are elves.

Generally speaking, most people don't have logical reasons for their dumbass notions.
You should go to GaryCon.  Period.

The rules can\'t cure stupid, and the rules can\'t cure asshole.

gleichman

#499
Quote from: soltakss;738024Because D&D and HeroQuest are the same game?

Never played or saw HeroQuest that I know of, but I wouldn't be surprised if in my view they were the same game. Too many games are D&D with insignificant changes.
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Brander

Quote from: Old Geezer;738039Generally speaking, most people don't have logical reasons for their dumbass notions.

"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal."
-Mr. Heinlein
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Phillip

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I still think Age of Heroes is a well crafted system, though I'm not likely ever to use it. And I still think some other things, which might make your eyes bleed oh prophet, are good designs because I actually do use them and find them a lot of fun.
And we are here as on a darkling plain  ~ Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, ~ Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Phillip

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.
That's just a FUCK YES to the question of whether it's widely liked.

As is the case with people, things can be both widely liked and widely disliked. In the case of percentile dice tosses, the number of people in the "like" or "don't care" categories combined are plenty to make a big seller. Along with the "don't like" people, they're going to pass up a majority of publications anyway. Why fret about your glass being half empty, when half full is a spectacular success?
And we are here as on a darkling plain  ~ Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, ~ Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Phillip

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.
Except when you get someone who instead spends his cogitation on thinking that it's weird, and thinking about irrelevant stuff that gets him confused.

I tried a D&D-variant attack roll that came down to seeing whether the number on a d20 was
(A) higher than a number on the character sheet (plain miss); or
(B) not higher (call it out, and you hit a defense factor that high or lower).

Oy. Take arithmetic out of the process, and it becomes too simple for some people!
And we are here as on a darkling plain  ~ Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, ~ Where ignorant armies clash by night.

arminius

Quote from: gleichman;738047Never played or saw HeroQuest that I know of, but I wouldn't be surprised if in my view they were the same game. Too many games are D&D with insignificant changes.

Pretty sure they aren't. I haven't been able to fully wrap my head around HQ (assume we're talking the Stafford/Laws game) but HQ seems structurally based around the ideas of:

Universal mechanic based on opposed rolls
Arbitrary traits that can be matched against each other
Some hippie shit with a symbol that looks like a Cyrillic letter. Or more seriously, open-ended, tiered trait scores that allow you to resolve conflicts between opponents who have wildly different scales. I don't understand or remember why characteristics can't just go from zero to infinity, and instead are treated as "N levels of Mastery plus x degrees of fine differentiation".

I think it may have some Over the Edge in its ancestry along with Ars Magica but since I know those systems even less well, I'm kinda flailing at a piñata.

Nevertheless if you look upthread I think I said something similar about dice as a proxy for design heritage in both a mechanical and aesthetic sense.

MatteoN

#505
Quote from: gleichman;737966D20 screams D&D or a clone

Quote from: gleichman;738047Never played or saw HeroQuest that I know of, but I wouldn't be surprised if in my view they were the same game. Too many games are D&D with insignificant changes.

Quote from: Arminius;738115Pretty sure they aren't.

Nor are clones of D&D Pendragon, Alternity, The Dark Eye (the game with the "gazing d20" on the cover), Kult, Mutant Chronicles, Dungeonslayers and others. These (in the case of TDE I'm referring to its first or second edition) are all roll-under systems using a d20, fancy that!

gleichman

#506
Quote from: Arminius;738115Universal mechanic based on opposed rolls
Arbitrary traits that can be matched against each other

Opposed rolls, ugh. Hate those, double hate it when using a d20 (or any other linear die).

Quote from: Arminius;738115Nevertheless if you look upthread I think I said something similar about dice as a proxy for design heritage in both a mechanical and aesthetic sense.

I think it holds up quite well, one can list exceptions of course. But even then I think they are a case of the designer saying something like "I love me the D&D d20, but I need to do something different with it...". That never ends well.

But all that isn't to say that I'll rush to a game just because it used d100 or 3d6. Only War (d100) was a complete failure and so is GURPS. Nor does it means I'd reject a d20 (although I have yet to see one that I like) game in all possible cases. It just alters how easy it will be to get me to look closer.
Whitehall Paraindustries- A blog about RPG Theory and Design

"The purpose of an open mind is to close it, on particular subjects. If you never do — you\'ve simply abdicated the responsibility to think." - William F. Buckley.

Imperator

Quote from: Phillip;738112That's just a FUCK YES to the question of whether it's widely liked.

As is the case with people, things can be both widely liked and widely disliked. In the case of percentile dice tosses, the number of people in the "like" or "don't care" categories combined are plenty to make a big seller. Along with the "don't like" people, they're going to pass up a majority of publications anyway. Why fret about your glass being half empty, when half full is a spectacular success?
Yeah, so anyway, OP has been sufficiently answered, ain't it?
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LordVreeg

Quote from: Imperator;738174Yeah, so anyway, OP has been sufficiently answered, ain't it?

No.
This is the RPGsite.
we need to bring up some more off-topic minutiae to argue about.
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