Quote from: the BromgrevI believe there is an example of my personal experiences in my earlier post. Clearly labelled as such, I might add. :keke:

:confused: :confused: :confused:

Fuck, I hate that "do you have statistics for that?" line of argument. I know that as gamers we love dice and numbers, but really, come on. It's so absurd sometimes, you can't say a fucking thing without some doofus leaping on you with demands for facts and figures. "Please give me a reference for your assertion that most people have two legs." Then if you do give figures, they quibble with them. "Oh well that's not a representative sample." And if you give a link online, they say, "well that's not peer-reviewed, you can't trust things on the net." Or if you refer to a book, they don't read it anyway. Then a month later you find yourself having the same conversation again with some idiot who thinks the Earth is flat, or that global warming isn't happening, or most gamers don't like rolling dice.

Besides, 78.63% of all statistics are made up. So Bromgrev, drop that line of argument, or you will feel the wrath of JimBobOz. Fear my righteous geek rage!

And don't be a cocksmock.

Everyone knows roll-over players are communists.

:china:

Quote from: C.W.Richeson:confused: :confused: :confused:

Quote from: the BromgrevI've seen these "over-and-under" arguments on forums for years, but never encountered one at the gaming table.

That's a personal experience.

Quote from: the BromgrevEveryone knows roll-over players are communists.

:china:

 But are they Godless communists ?
 And does Less Nesman have an emergency plan to account for them ?*

- Ed C.

* Look at my location and it will make more sense for some of you.

Quote from: Thanatos02I'd rather you read GURPS then play in my D&D game too.

I'd rather soak my brain in acid* than play in a game you were running, especially if it were D&D.


*OotS refference here.

I'm going to have to drop out of this thread, as defending gurps in it means I'm basically standing shoulder to shoulder with a huge, slimey toad which is making my skin crawl and my stomach heave.


Could some other gurpser please take up the slack here? I'll be taking a hot bath in listerine and hydrogen peroxide, trying to feel clean again.

So it sounds like the arguement is about GURPS vs D&D. It all depends on what kind of game you are playing.

D&D is, in it's heart of hearts, still the same skirmish-level wargame it has always been; the game focuses upon a small commando that ventures into an enemy-held area and fights its way past the opposition. The individual players each take on a specific role within the commando: the fighter (direct combat), the magic-user (fire support), the thief (scouting), the cleric (combat support). As the opposition is overcome, the PCs gain equipment and abilities that allow them to take on more powerful upponents. Some of these bonuses are direct; others are indirect in that they allow the creation of the direct bonuses. Over the years the game has been modified somewhat and has tried to incorporate a skill system...but even the skills commonly selected are still of either one of the two categories.

In it's defense, however, D&D does sword-and-sorcery skirmish-level combat very well. It is a particularly good system for campaigns based upon the Black Company or the Sword of Shannara setting.

GURPS, on the other hand, is a character-specific system; it is the individual character that is important, rather than the role that he fulfils in a combat team.

Of the three RPG campaigns I am currently running, only one of them is GURPS. That particular one -- modern-day conspiracy/horror -- has been running for about 6 years, and (in my experience) the genre is rather difficult to play effectively in a combat-oriented system such as D&D. Besides, the characters have been in play long enough that do not really convert effectively into a d20 system.

The other two campaigns are D&D...specifically, AD&D 2nd Edition. Not that I have anything overwhelming against D&D 3e...The biggest reason is that I lack the 3e Monster Manual that I would need for a campaign, and have more 2e stuff than you can shake a stick at. However, there are two other reasons why those campaigns use AD&D.

One campaign is a "nostalgia" campaign played by adults who want to relive the kind of campaigns that we enjoyed back in high school. The other campaign is played by teens, and I run it under AD&D 2e partially because the role-based system is fairly easy for them to grasp and partially as a way to eye-poke the handful of "D&D is evil" types that still lurk in our community.

So, as I said, it basically boils down into what kind of game you want to play, and what kind of rule system you want to play it under. The only "stupid" thing would be to attempt to browbeat others into believing as you do simply because you have a bias against one particular system.

Quote from: Tom BYou actually have me curious on the issue of the equivalence of roll-over and roll-under.  There are a couple of situations that have come up from time to time that I wasn't sure if you could model in normal roll-under mechanics.

In Rolemaster, a PC wants to try some hideously difficult stunt.  One that was theoretically possible, but very unlikely to succeed.  Assigning the appropriate difficulty modifier (equivalent to about -300), he then proceeds to roll open-ended three times to barely succeed.  That's about .01% chance of success.  How would you approach this type of occurrence in GURPS?

(I mis-spoke earlier.  CORPS is a roll-under system, but not a typical one, and it does allow for open-ended rolls.)

That cannot be done in GURPS, but not because GURPS is a roll-under system and Rolemaster is a roll-over system. That's not the reason.

The reason is that Rolemaster has open-ended rolls (that is, if you roll 96-100, you can roll again and add both rolls), whereas GURPS doesn't. Let's imagine that GURPS, instead of having a rule for automatic successes, has a rule for open-ended rolls, that is, if you roll 3-4 you can roll again and substract the result, so you could roll negative results. There would be no difference. Of course, you could say that this solution is not elegant, and I would agree. But it can be done.

Quote from: SettembriniThat´s true. but psyche is the larger godess in that arena.

Show me a GM who asks for your exact margin of failure in a roll-under precentage environment.

It depends. When I GMed GURPS, sometimes I asked for the margin of success/failure, and sometimes I didn't, because I only needed to know whether it was a success or not. But the same thing happens with roll-over systems, like Coda, sometimes we only needed to know whether it was a success or not. What difference does it make? :idunno:

Quote from: Christmas ApeI believe I covered my objection to roll-under with the 'can't get excited about rolling a 1' statement.

And that's OK. You admit that you don't like roll-under systems because you, just, don't. You don't state that roll-over systems are better than roll under systems, nor the contrary.

Quote from: James J SkachI'd get Hinter in here to give you details, or go to the Hinterwelt forum...I'm just getting into the system - learning it a little.

But in Iridium, there are parts that are roll over (combat), and parts that are roll under (skill checks) - at least that's the way I understand it.

As I said, I'm no expert...Hinter's the one to show you the way...

Hinterwelt offers a skeleton of the Iridium rules for free, something like GURPS lite.

I wish more companies did this, one would know exactly what one's buying. :highfive:

Quote from: Lord SvengaliSo it sounds like the arguement is about GURPS vs D&D. It all depends on what kind of game you are playing.

It shouldn't be so, there are people who like both GURPS and D&D. I'm not one of them, but well, whatever.

Besides, it wouldn't be a fair comparison in the context of this thread. For example, Sengoku (Fuzion) uses 3d6, just like GURPS, but it's a roll-over system, unlike GURPS. Or Pendragon, it uses 1d20, just like D&D, but it's a roll-under system, unlike D&D. These would be fair comparisons.

QuoteD&D is, in it's heart of hearts, still the same skirmish-level wargame it has always been; the game focuses upon a small commando that ventures into an enemy-held area and fights its way past the opposition. The individual players each take on a specific role within the commando: the fighter (direct combat), the magic-user (fire support), the thief (scouting), the cleric (combat support). As the opposition is overcome, the PCs gain equipment and abilities that allow them to take on more powerful upponents. Some of these bonuses are direct; others are indirect in that they allow the creation of the direct bonuses. Over the years the game has been modified somewhat and has tried to incorporate a skill system...but even the skills commonly selected are still of either one of the two categories.

In it's defense, however, D&D does sword-and-sorcery skirmish-level combat very well. It is a particularly good system for campaigns based upon the Black Company or the Sword of Shannara setting.

GURPS, on the other hand, is a character-specific system; it is the individual character that is important, rather than the role that he fulfils in a combat team.

I could be nitpicky with some of the details, but generally you're very right.

QuoteSo, as I said, it basically boils down into what kind of game you want to play, and what kind of rule system you want to play it under. The only "stupid" thing would be to attempt to browbeat others into believing as you do simply because you have a bias against one particular system.

I'm going to say a lame "I agree" to that.

Quote from: James J SkachI'd get Hinter in here to give you details, or go to the Hinterwelt forum...I'm just getting into the system - learning it a little.

But in Iridium, there are parts that are roll over (combat), and parts that are roll under (skill checks) - at least that's the way I understand it.

As I said, I'm no expert...Hinter's the one to show you the way...

I really need to keep up on these threads. Yes, James has the gist of it. Skills are roll under (get within you skill chance of success) and have critical success, failure base on amount made/failed. Skills advance based on a curve so your first skill buys you more but eventually taking skill ranks means almost nothing. There are level and stat bonuses though which reflect experience and natural ability and their influence on skills over time.

Combat is roll over and based on defeating your opponent's Defense. You have modifiers that raise your attack die total based on stats and skills. Again, you  have critical success/failures.  Defense is based on your opponent's STR, AGL, and CON, essentially his physical ability to move out of the way.

As Claudius and James have mentioned, you can download what I call the Iridium System Core Reference at our site and look it over for free.

I should mention, as might be shown here, I have no preference on roll over or under. It is all just statistics to me. I am talking with folks about a Iridium V2 and the possibility of a unified mechanic. We will see.

Bill

I don't have a roll over task resolution mechanic that can be dropped into the StarCluster 2 system yet, but I do have optional dice pool, bell curve, and d20 mechanics that work with the standard StarCluster 2 system, along with the standard percentile roll under. I hope to get the StarCluster 2 System Toolbox out this year, along with a free commercial development license. Do you roll over fans really care that much? If so, I'll come up with something you can drop in. I've always held roll under and roll over as functionally equivalent, whereas dice pools, and bell-curve pools are functionally different, so I hadn't bothered.

-clash