Let's set aside the bashing of Luke Crane and his litle biases, as enjoyable as that is, and just look at the ideas themseves.

First up, I call "Let It Ride" a guideline rather than a rule because I think of a "rule" as something fairly clear and precise, like, "broadswords do 1d8, broadswords of fine quality which cost twice as much do 1d8+2." This is more of a guideline, something to guide the GM in play.

Quote from: jhkimOne of the features of BW is the "Let It Ride" rule, which basically forbids repetitive rolls on a given skill or stat.  [...] why do I like this?  [...] I hate repetitive rolls.  

[...]

There is vagueness in the Let It Ride rule about when the circumstances have changed enough to require a new roll.  I think it could be phrased better, but the thrust of the rule as a whole is still useful for my enjoyment.

I think this vagueness is natural, but is also the source of the "Let It Ride" guideline in the first place. It comes from the enormous variation in things that can happen in a game session.

It's often difficult for GMs to know how many dice rolls to ask for. Combat in most game systems is wel-structured and detailed, so it's easy there. But what about stealth? Diplomacy? If your character offended someone, do they get to try again? If they failed to pick the lock,  does that mean they can't try again until they learn something more (the AD&D1e answer: "not until next level"), or can they just tinker away with it until they get it?

On one extreme we get the GMs who ask for new rolls constantly. This makes skill level unimportant, because if you roll enough times eventually you'll fail; a skill of 64% rolled eight times where one failure makes the other successes irrelevant is equivalent to a skill of 1% rolled once.

On the other extreme we'd have "okay, everyone is 1st level, now make a roll to see if you slay the dragon, make it to 7th level and become wealthy lords."

Here we should also consider what level of abstraction and player input we want. "I use my Lifting skill to crank open the stuck door... damn, failed the roll. Hey, how about I use the crowbar? Can I get another roll?" If you want to abstract things, then you'd say, "no, because part of Lifting skill is knowing to use a crowbar - you already used it without saying." If you want to encourage player imagination, then you'd say, "okay, that gives you +10, roll again." That's good, but taken too far can lead to players rolling and rolling until they get what they want - this time making not skill levels but the dice rolls irrelevant.

Between those extremes, it's reasonable to suppose that each roll is one use of a skill which applies until something changes. So if you were trying to pick the lock while under fire, you get one roll only; but if you come back to it later, and have hours and hours to do it while consulting a manual, okay you can have another roll.

Quote from: peteramthorWow. I've been using 'Let it ride' for years now. Didn't know that somebody put it into a game. Just seemed like common sense to me.

On the whole the good work of the Forge has been to put into words things which people did already; the bad work has been to pretend this was revolutionary. I think it's good to try to express concisely what lots of people are already doing, it helps make it clear in our minds and reminds us to do it. Sometimes we forget.

Quote from: TimWell, it goes a bit beyond that, actually. Say you're trying to infiltrate the thieves guild headquarters...you'd make one Stealth roll at the beginning, and would Let it Ride through the entire scene. You'd have to apply that same roll to all challenges within that scene. Say you get four successes...that's great versus the run of the mill footpads milling about with their Observation skill of 3d, but not such a sure thing against the master of assassins with his Observation of 6d.

Of course that cuts both ways...the GM would hold to one roll for the underlings and one roll for the assassin guy.

Tim

Okay that is a bit different.  I would do something similiar but with a little difference.  Modifiers to the roll would still vary from situation to situation, same roll though.  So if they are sneaking through a room with lots of shadows and plenty of hiding places then the Master Assassin may not see them there.  Where as a bright hallway with bare walls would make it likely that even the footpads would see them.

Quote from: Kyle AaronOn the whole the good work of the Forge has been to put into words things which people did already; the bad work has been to pretend this was revolutionary. I think it's good to try to express concisely what lots of people are already doing, it helps make it clear in our minds and reminds us to do it. Sometimes we forget.

Yeah pretending something is new and never thought of does have a way of putting a bad taste in the mouths of those who already do it.  They also have a tendency of acting like many of the ideas should be used by everybody in every game.  Basically the old "you're not really having fun" arguement they used to use on people a lot.  Trust me I've heard that more than a few times.

I do think it's a good GMing guideline, though. I've encountered both kinds of GMs, the ones who make you roll a zillion times so you'll fail, and those who are soft and let you roll again so you can succeed. The first makes skill levels meaningless, and the second makes dice rolls meaningless.

If you want a system with no skill levels or one with no dice rolls, they're out there and we can use them. But when you tell me we're using this system with skill levels and dice rolls, I expect they'll be meaningful.

That's why I think it's good to say this kind of thing clearly. A lot of what we do while GMing or playing is quite instinctive or intuitive. If we can express it clearly (as for example in my gaming mottoes in my sig) then that helps us do it more consistently, and lets other players and GMs know what to expect from us, so we can game with people whose styles fit with ours.

"Let It Ride" is part of that.

But I wouldn't call it a "rule". It's GMing advice. And that is indeed a problem with many indie game books, that they mix up rules and setting and GM advice and designer's notes in this big spaghetti mess. That works for a homebrew where the GM wrote it and can explain it to everyone, but not so well for a thing you want to sell.

I think it's a good guideline. And if it's vague, well as I said I think that's natural. Also perhaps the vagueness is a good thing - leave it up to the judgment of the GM, who can judge it not only according to what's reasonable, but the pace of the game session, how interested the players are and so on.

I like 'letting it ride', so to speak, as long as future rolling would just be for the same thing, under the same circumstances, any any future rolling is just nitpicking. This is pretty much the same as many White Wolf skill rolls, where in some instances you make it "for the scene" instead of for each and every round. For example, why bother having a PC roll "socialize" every 10 minutes if the party pretty much stays the same and no new NPCs or circumstances arise? Have 'em roll once and be done with it. But other than that? Nah, there's always a chance to fail. As long as the Gm understands the difference between 'bogging shit down' and 'realistic rolling that keeps the threat of failure real' everything should be cool.

-=Grim=-

Quote from: Caesar SlaadAgain, only own BE, but judging from BE, it seems like the "scene economy" is a founding principle of the game and it has a sort of gamist bent than being concerned about modeling reality. So I think that some sort of GM resource that would dictate challenges could be mustered to be applied to the same or different skills, as is appropriate.

My bad, I should have read your posts more closely and I would have known you had BE! The scene economy thing is where BW and BE are profoundly different, and the strict regimentation of BE pretty much turns me off.

Quote from: RPGPunditSince Luke Crane has apparently all but admitted that the rule is there to deprotagonize GMs, and since the Forgies out there tend to take pride in this fact, I don't see where the point for argument is, or on what basis someone could say that isn't the real intent of the rule.

I don't think anyone has been talking about Luke's intent. We've been talking about what the rule actually does in play, which is far more important.

QuoteAlso, Eyebeamz statement on it just seems like common sense; not only does it deprotagonize the GM by taking away his right to decide when players should make a roll...

Nah, this is just wrong. If I'm GMing BW and one of the characters has a belief like "I will penetrate the lair of the necromancer and put a dagger in his eye." I still get to set up the situation and make the test obstacles as hard or as easy as is appropriate. I still get to play my NPCs as tough as I want. I still get to call for a Stealthy test to get past the guards. I still get to call for a Lockpicking test to get in the treasure chamber, etc. Let it Ride just gets rid of a bunch of ticky-tack bullshit rolls that serve NO purpose when taken in concert with the rest of the system.

Maybe it seems like a dumb rule to good kind-hearted wise GMs like yourself, but I fail to see what harm is done by having good GMing techniques codified in the rules.

Tim

Quote from: peteramthorOkay that is a bit different.  I would do something similiar but with a little difference.  Modifiers to the roll would still vary from situation to situation, same roll though.  So if they are sneaking through a room with lots of shadows and plenty of hiding places then the Master Assassin may not see them there.  Where as a bright hallway with bare walls would make it likely that even the footpads would see them.

Yep, there are situational modifiers like that built into the system that add dice to the favored character's pool when conditions are favorable. There's also this nifty mechanic called Linked Tests which lets you...um...link tests together. For instance, maintaining the thieves guild infiltration example, your character might have a skill like Assassination-Wise (seriously!) and use it in a linked test to find a good spot to off the Master. If he succeeded at his Assassination-Wise roll it gives a +1D to whatever test it's linked to (probably some sort of Knives/Crossbow/Sword test in this instance).

Tim

Quote from: Elliot WilenIn short I think both can work, but non-"let it roll" gets a bad rep due to abusive and handwavey GMing practices that came out of the desire to advance a plot instead of neutrally referee a situation.

Well, I'm sure some Burning Wheel fan has said some stupid thing like all other games are broken or what-not.  I'm not endorsing any particular "bad rep" from someone else.  

However, that said, I have seen real GMs call for repetitive rolls for many reasons besides just trying to control the plot.  Sometimes it is just following strict rules, i.e. like "Roll climb for every 10 feet" or "Roll Search for every 5 foot by 5 foot area".  Sometimes it is done in the name of realistically simulating probabilities.  Sometimes it is done to try to make the players feel the boredom of their characters doing a long task.  Sometimes it is done to try to add a sort of tension to the outcome (a sort of mechanical tension that I personally am uninterested in).  

There are many cases where rerolls aren't particularly bad, but at best they seem like a wash to me.  

Quote from: Caesar SlaadThe "player creativity" thing comes in, as I see it, when you fail the roll. When a roll is failed, the players are forced to deal with the consequences of such a roll. That could include applying other skills or coming up with a way that it is practical to retry the roll.

I just find "Let it Ride" ham-handed and impractical.

Well, trying other skills is fine and that's perfectly consistent with Let It Ride.  If I fail my Stealth roll and the guards see me, I can try to Bluff them.  

However, as a player I'm totally not interested in finding a creative answer to give me a reroll on the same skill.  If I have some creative ideas for Stealth, then I'll say them on the first roll.  I find it hard to picture a creative answer for a basic reroll on the same skill, and it sounds suspiciously to me like just wheedling the GM.  cf. My answer to Kyle below...

Quote from: Kyle AaronHere we should also consider what level of abstraction and player input we want. "I use my Lifting skill to crank open the stuck door... damn, failed the roll. Hey, how about I use the crowbar? Can I get another roll?" If you want to abstract things, then you'd say, "no, because part of Lifting skill is knowing to use a crowbar - you already used it without saying." If you want to encourage player imagination, then you'd say, "okay, that gives you +10, roll again." That's good, but taken too far can lead to players rolling and rolling until they get what they want - this time making not skill levels but the dice rolls irrelevant.

Giving a reroll for using the right tools for the job strikes me as (1) obvious, and (2) something that should have gone in the first roll.  Giving rerolls for this encourages holding back ideas in order to get repeats.  i.e. "OK, I'll try to climb the wall... (failure)  Well, now I'll try to climb with my rope and pitons." will get you two rolls, whereas just climbing with the right tools only gets you one.  

If some extra bonus was forgotten for some reason, I would add to their original roll.  i.e. They rolled a 22 total, then the +2 for the crowbar makes it a 24.  (Or in a dice pool system like Burning Wheel, they might roll only the extra bonus dice to add.)  I wouldn't let it reroll the original.  

Quote from: Kyle AaronBetween those extremes, it's reasonable to suppose that each roll is one use of a skill which applies until something changes. So if you were trying to pick the lock while under fire, you get one roll only; but if you come back to it later, and have hours and hours to do it while consulting a manual, okay you can have another roll.

On the whole the good work of the Forge has been to put into words things which people did already; the bad work has been to pretend this was revolutionary. I think it's good to try to express concisely what lots of people are already doing, it helps make it clear in our minds and reminds us to do it. Sometimes we forget.

Um, yeah.  That's exactly what Let It Ride says.  The roll applies until something substantive changes.  Yes, that is a judgement call, but GMs have to make judgement calls all the time.  

I might put this down to just common sense, but repetitive rolls are something that I've seen in lots of games.  It's often directly encoded into the rules, like "Roll Climb for every 10 feet moved".  Even if not directly encoded, though, I've seen it used lots of times.  

As for pretenses, I'm just saying that I find the application of this rule good.  I'm not endorsing how all Burning Wheel fans (or authors) talk about it.  For what its worth -- my Harn group was reasonably interested in trying out Burning Wheel, and the main thing that unsold us on the idea was certain Burning Wheel fans who posted on the Harn forums about the game.

Quote from: TimMaybe it seems like a dumb rule to good kind-hearted wise GMs like yourself, but I fail to see what harm is done by having good GMing techniques codified in the rules.

Tim

Mainly that the BEST GMing technique is "be flexible".

If you codify something, even if you think that something is a good thing for GMs to do as a general case, by taking away the GM's power to do something different you will inevitably create a situation where that usually-good practice will end up making things suck.

GMing tips should thus NOT be codified as laws. "Good GMing" isn't something that can be created artificially, much less by a distant game-designer who has no connection to the playing group in question.

RPGPundit

Seriously, could those in favor of repetitive rolls give some more concrete examples of when they think it is significantly better than a single roll?  

I can think of many times when repetitive rolls wouldn't be so bad, but I can't think of any cases where the rule actually causes any problems for me.  (Though this might be a difference in taste compared to others.)

Quote from: jhkimSeriously, could those in favor of repetitive rolls give some more concrete examples of when they think it is significantly better than a single roll?  

I can think of many times when repetitive rolls wouldn't be so bad, but I can't think of any cases where the rule actually causes any problems for me.  (Though this might be a difference in taste compared to others.)

I don't know if I've ever seen a repetative roll, one after the other.  Gamers always seem to have a lot of dice so if five d20 rolls are neeed to scale the cliff, five d20s are rolled at the same time.  It's one roll with 5 dice.  You can order them or just roll randomly for where in the order any failures occur.  It's just like rolliing a pool of dice.

For my sessions, "Let It Ride" has been a great guideline.  But we had a lot of folks who continually wanted to retry to reroll on each and every task.  "Let it ride" became a table catchphrase, and our games did speed up a bit.

Quote from: Elliot WilenThe whole problem with it boils down to the vagueness, which extends as well to identifying the "bad" practices that "Let it Ride" is supposed to correct.

Elliot -- stop. You're making me redundant.



With very little left to say, that's directly on topic, I'm going to ramble.

I'm not a big fan of multiple rolls in general -- but they can serve a legitimate purpose (mainly to calibrate the level of difficulty of a task and/or *reduce* the element of luck).

They can also be used to manipulate the game, of course, but as Elliot and others point out the "let it ride" rule is a fairly crude failsafe -- all it really does is give a player an inalienable right all players, everywhere, already have (the right to call shenanigans).

From previous discussions with luke, it sounds like he found some significant value in calling this out with a rule that gives a player the right to complain under some situations (a perceived arbitrary re-roll)... but as a player, I'd rather say I have the right to complain about any number of things including being fed orcs for breakfast five sessions in a row, and I'd rather the rules *not* try to tell me what it's valid to whine about.

Take 10 and Take 20 are categorically different -- they're concrete and they represent a truth many rules-sets pay lip service to but few codify so well (the idea that the listed success chance represents extreme conditions).

Anyway, in short, I agree with Elliot (unless something I've said here disagrees with him, in which case I don't agree with Elliot.)

Cheers,
-E.

Well, I've seen repetition invoked as a possible good thing in 3.5's Unearthed Arcana and core WW games as a way to determine how fast things get done. In 3.5, I think they called them Extended Checks where you attempted to hit a DC more then once in a series of rolls (a roll simulating a certain amount of time where 20 can't be taken) *or* a series called Complex Checks where more then one skill needs to be succeeded at, and you just roll the dice pretty much all at once.

WW was the same. I'm sure a LiR scenerio could be concoted for those, but I'd just roll once for the Extended and say it simulated the whole thing. Depends on the situation, though.

Quote from: Thanatos02WW was the same. I'm sure a LiR scenerio could be concoted for those, but I'd just roll once for the Extended and say it simulated the whole thing. Depends on the situation, though.

Ah, I wasn't aware of the extended check thing: that's pretty cool.

There are two ways to handle time constraints of that sort in BW. 1) You make time-based failure a part of the stakes of the contest (if you fail your lockpicking roll you don't get the door opened before the guard patrol arrives). 2) Players can choose to work carefully, which gives them a bonus to their roll, but a time-based complication is required in the case of failure.

I think the extended roll thing might be more fun if your character is competent.

Tim

Quote from: jhkimWell, trying other skills is fine and that's perfectly consistent with Let It Ride.  If I fail my Stealth roll and the guards see me, I can try to Bluff them.

Sure, but it's not like:
1) As stated, you are allowed to make a new sneak roll against different entities after you bluff or otherwise deal with the guards.
2) It gives you the latitude to try something to change conditions to permit a reroll.

It's just one of those rules that buggers with reality, like the old "wizards can't use swords." Not "wizards aren't very good with swords" but "can't use."