(http://i703.photobucket.com/albums/ww33/gotchan/probability.jpg)
Dice or other randomizers are used in RPGs to:
•sidestep disputes about what happened;
•relieve the GM and players of the burden of deciding the outcome of each action;
•add a chaotic element.
Much of the inspirational material for RPGs adheres to the belief that one-in-a-million chances work out nine times out of ten, as satirized in Order of the Stick (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/ootslatest.html) (above) and Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards! This can lead to a disconnect where the chain of events and the build to the climax leave everyone at the table expecting the million-to-one-chance to be more likely than not to succeed and bring a dramatically satisfying conclusion to play. Unfortunately, dice don't give a shit about drama.
There are various ways to address this disconnect:
•ignore it (the dice fall where they fall, all praise the dice);
•additional fate or plot dice
•GM fiat
•luck attributes or luck dice
•player declaration
•...
What are your thoughts on stacking the deck for dramatically important actions? How do you determine a dramatically important action? If you are in favour of jigging the odds, what is your preferred method?
I am all for Fate points. Let the players decide for themselves when things are dramatically important.
I like stacking the mechanics so they can TRY the heroic stuff. Then making them take risks to get it to fall their way.
Hearts & Souls gives them a way to reroll dice in character.
High Valor allows heroes to assist each other by doing something in character, then mechanically lending dice to them to try and succeed.
Despite those options I've seen lucky one shots of the highest target numbers without all that stacking. Then I've seen miserable failures. Yet sometimes its fun to let both fallout as they may. I have in the past felt hero points/fate points as used in many games are stop gap fixes for mechanics not doing what was desired in the first place--Truth and Justice, and otherwise fine game, suffers from the somewhat higher randomness because of opposed rolls. (2d6 vs 2d6.) Which I felt should be stacked a bit more on the superheroes side in the first place.
Some games make it a central part of play--which I feel is superior method. Because players are NOT their characters, the player's luck good or bad, shouldn't always stand in for the characters luck. (I've a friend who NO matter the game he fails most rolls, period in tabletop games. He's urged everyone to play card games over dice based ones because of this and it has been a running joke with him and dice for years.)
I play roleplaying games, not storygames, so this has never been an issue.
Quote from: The Worid;338747I play roleplaying games, not storygames, so this has never been an issue.
Two smug points!
Quote from: Halfjack;338750Two smug points!
My signature has been duly updated.
You just have to follow Pratchett's example -- if the players can demonstrate to the GM that the odds against their success are exactly 1,000,000:1 (and not something like, say, 998,576:1) then their chance of success is modified to 90%. Duh!
I haven't used a whole lot of mechanics to do this kind of stuff. That said I think I like fate points better when they provide a bonus to an upcoming roll, but not a sure thing. Even a retroactive bonus could be okay (as opposed to declaring a result) since it might not always overcome a really lousy roll. The reason has to do with supporting the uncertainty of outcomes that makes the game seem real.
Another approach might be to distort probabilities in favor of "weird stuff happens" on the theory that you're compressing action to focus on the most interesting events in characters' lives, or something like that. The philosophy is similar to some wargames that increase the lethality of attacks so that combat finishes faster/with less repetition, while maintaining roughly realistic outcomes. Example: Avalon Hill's Luftwaffe had numbers adjusted so that one Allied air raid could stand in for an entire month's activity, making it viable to play out the entire air war in Europe while maintaining a semi-tactical feel.
The problem with this though is that (a) weirdness both benefits and harms PCs, and (b) too much weirdness overwhelms PC decisions/actions. Therefore I think it'd be good to use a system that reduces the likelihood of extreme results based on how recently something extraordinary has just happened. And also one that somehow balances out for/against the PCs. Some sort of "initiative token" trading could work, but I haven't really worked that out in my mind.
Something along these lines though is found in Mythic RPG, where you cross-index an "objective" evaluation of how likely something is, with a "chaos factor" that modifies the number needed on the dice. The chaos factor goes up or down depending on how much the PCs seem to be in control of the situation. This mechanic, combined with other elements, tends to regulate how often the implausible occurs.
The new Heroquest (2e) may have something similar, but the way it's been described hasn't really appealed to me.
Quote from: Halfjack;338750Two smug points!
You're giving out smug points for answers that are options in the OP?
Nice to meet you, Monty. :D
I was very satisfied with Star Wars SAGA destiny points. One point is awarded every level and once you spend them they're gone forever. It worked well in a long term campaign because I knew that I couldn't squander any Destiny points for low level stuff. And later in the game the ability to roll consecutive nat 20s and activate destiny point only powers is enough added kick to derail almost any railroad.
I also really enjoy D&D style once per day spells provided that they're powerful corner cases.
I don't care for stuff that's awarded as a function of playtime (DEADLANDS bennies, GURPS luck, D&D4.x action points etc....) because I don't like mechanics that are disassociated from in-game resources. Actualy, I'd be very happy to associate more mechanics with in-game time but that's probably for another thread.