[Design] Fwd: relative strength of randomness and skill
Lev Lafayette
lev_lafayette at yahoo.com.au
Mon Oct 17 02:01:28 UTC 2005
Fwded to the list ;-)
And you're quite right. High skill makes your final
effect more consistent with *some* skills. I agree
100%.
The original draft I had for this basically kept on
removing pips from the die options as a character
improved in skill. Beginning characters tended to be
all over the place with their results. Skilled
characters tended to be very consistent.
All the best,
Lev
--- Kyle Schuant <kyle3054 at iprimus.com.au> wrote:
> From: "Kyle Schuant" <kyle3054 at iprimus.com.au>
> To: "Lev Lafayette" <lev_lafayette at yahoo.com.au>
> Subject: relative strength of randomness and skill
> Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 11:51:18 +1000
>
> From: Lev Lafayette
>
> OK, the idea is pretty simple. The basic principle
> is
> the degree of randomness varies according to the
> action performed.
> ...
> Depending on the type of activity or their relative
> importance of the incident to the story, different
> skills will have a different influence of randomness
> in determining the Trait Effect.
> ****
>
> OH NO, NARRATIVISM!
>
> Okay, so that's, "if it's important to the story,
> randomness will be important, too. If it's not
> important to the story, not so much."
> That's what we miight call a "Narrative"
> approach. Or "storytelling" or whatever. I'd call it
> a "dramatic" approach. Problem with these words is
> that they all come from movies... and in movies, we
> have the opposite effect. The more important a task
> is, the LESS likely a PC is to do really well or
> badly. The less important the task, the more random
> the result! So Jackie Chan may fumble making a cup
> of tea, or may make the most delicious dinner ever.
> But he will almost never fail when sliding down a
> large ribbon through the middle of a multi-storey
> mall, and landing on a foe and knocking him out.
> In rpg design, we keep aiming for the opposite
> of movies, whereas players keep hoping for action
> movies... I think this is perhaps a reason for
> trouble in many game groups!
> In rpg design, we shie away from the idea of
> making ridiculous tasks easier than simple tasks,
> because we feel that players would do ridiculous
> tasks all the time, then, and the game would
> become... ridiculous. Many systems solve this by
> having a basic system of, the more difficult the
> task, the greater the degree or need for randomness
> (ie, "you need a good roll to succeed"), and balance
> it for the "movie" feel with some system of Hero
> Points, allowing you to buy successes or rerolls.
>
>
> HELP, EVEN WORSE, GAMISM!
>
> Then there's the approach of simulating reality.
> My view is that as you become more skilled in an
> area, random chance plays a smaller part. So for
> example there's the 100m sprint. I have no skill in
> it, I may run it in 14.50 sec today and 12.50 sec
> tomorrow. My performance will vary by +/-1 second,
> or +/-1 7%, roughly. But your Carl Lewis will run it
> at 10.01 sec today, and 9.92 sec tomorrow. His
> performance varies by 0.09 seconds, or +/-0.05%. His
> higher skill doesn't just make him faster, it makes
> his performances more consistent, too.
> In most games, however, the randomness of the
> dice rolls is very great compared to the
> skill/attributes involved, so that in say 10% of
> contests, I could outrun Carl Lewis.
> So that's why the dice number range compared to
> the attribute/skill number range is very important.
> For example, in Rolemaster, the number range for
> dice is 100 (roll d100 and add to to skill+attribute
> bonus), with a 5% chance of going below that, and a
> 5% chance of going above that. It takes up to about
> level 10 for most characters to have skills of
> around +100. So there's several months of play (of
> weekly sessions) before the skill number will match
> the random number in importance. A skill +40 guy has
> a decent chance against a skill +70 guy, because the
> random roll is on the order of 100.
> Whereas in Runequest 2, which was a roll-under
> system (attacker roll to hit, defender roll to
> parry; attack and parry were separate skills but
> let's set that aside for the moment) a skill of 70%
> was FAR superior to one of 40%. The higher skilled
> guy would roll to hit (70% chance) and the
> lower-skilled guy roll to parry (40% chance), for an
> overall (70% chance to hit x 60% chance of parry
> failing) 42% chance of the higher-skilled guy
> striking for a wound; whereas the lower-skilled guy
> has just as (40% chance to hit x 30% chance of parry
> failing) 12% chance of striking for a wound.
> In Masterbook (skill+attribute, adjusted by
> d10-d10, compared to difficulty number, highest
> wins), a skill+attribute of 7 is quite superior to
> one of 4, because the d10-d10 roll will make the
> performance cluster around the skill+attribute
> level. If you had a roll-under system (d10 roll, vs
> 0 to 10 skill+attribute), then the attacker with
> skill 7 vs the defender with skill 4, it'd be just
> like RQ2 as above. But with the skill+attribute
> being altered by d10-d10, you get a different
> result. The results are their chances are, -3 (7%),
> -2 (8%), -1 (9%), 0 (10%), +1 (9%) and so on. So
> the chance of the 4 beating the 7 is, success if
> they get +3 or more. The chance of +3 or more on
> d10-d10 is 28%. How to illustrate it, um....
> Let's look at it as a ladder. Imagine there are
> possible ranges of results, 1 to 10, skill plus a
> d10-d10 roll, and the results are capped at either
> end. So if you have two guys of skill 4, the two
> ladders look like,
>
> 10 10 (10%, coming from 4% chance of 10 alone,
> plus 3% for the prohibited score of 11, 2% for 12,
> 1% for 13)
> 9 9 (5%)
> 8 8 (6%)
> 7 7 (7%)
> 6 6 (8%)
> 5 5 (9%)
> (4) (4) (10%)
> 3 3 (9%)
> 2 2 (8%)
> 1 1 (28%, coming from 7% chance of 1 alone,
> plus 6% chance of the prohibited score of 0, 5% for
> -1, etc)
>
> Each has equal chances of success. The ladders are
> matched in probability, the chances of each result
> for each guy noted. . Their performances will hover
> around 4, with a 10% chance of its being 4, a 10+9+9
> = 28% chance of its being 3, 4 or 5, a 10+9+9+8+8 =
> 44% chance of its being 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, and so on.
> Now consider one guy of skill 4 vs another of skill
> 7. The comparative ladders look like,
>
> 10 10 (10% for the score (4) guy, 28% for the
> score (7) guy, since results are capped at 10)
> 9 10 (5% for the score (4) guy)
> 8 10 (6% for the score (4) guy)
> 7 10 (7% for the score (4) guy)
> 6 9 (8%)
> 5 8 (9%)
> (4) (7) (10%)
> 3 6 (9%)
> 2 5 (8%)
> 1 4 (28% for the score (4) guy, since
> results are capped at 1, 7% for the score (7) guy)
> 1 3 (6% for the score (7) guy)
> 1 2 (5% for the score (7) guy)
> 1 1 (10% for the score (7) guy)
>
> So this illustrates the way add-subtract dice, with
> a comparative resolution system, works. It also
> illustrates the problem of "range of randomness vs
> range of abilites." Which is all a very long way of
> saying, do you want the dice to be very important.
>
> For example, you could have ability ranges of 1-10,
> and use d20 with them; the dice are twice as big as
> the abilities in importance. This encorourages
> players to get a heap of low-level skills, instead
> of a few highly-focused ones, since skill 7 can
> easily be beaten by skill 4. Or you could have
> ability ranges of 1-20, and use d6 with them; the
> dice are one-third as big as the abilities in
> importance. This encourages players to get a few
> highly-focused skills, since skill 7 will only with
> difficulty be beaten by skill 4.
> And then of course the question is of realism,
> whether you want that. For my part, as I said, I
> feel that as skills improve, the range of results
> narrows, too; the extremely good or bad results are
> still possible (like, I can beat Carl Lewis in a
> 100m sprint, in the 1 in 1,000 times he falls over
> along the way). So in a realistic system, you might
> have something like,
>
> "Skills range from 1 to 20. Performance is adjusted
> by a d6-d6 roll. However, when you have skill level
> 6-10, you get to roll d6-6 twice, and take the
> result closest to 0 (negative or positive). When you
> have skill level 11-15, you get to roll d6-d6 three
> times, and take the closest-to-zero result. At skill
> 16-20, roll four times, and take the closest-to-zero
> result."
>
> This would give the effect of the randomness being
> one-third as important as the skill level, overall,
> but that as skill level improves, the randomness
> becomes less important, not only in absolute terms
> (d6-d6, -5 to +5, is relatively larger compared to
> 1-5 than to 16-20) but also in practical terms
> (rolling d6-d6 four times and taking the
> closest-to-zero result gives a much greater chance
> of a close-to-zero result than a single roll).
>
> Of course, such a system would be unwieldy and a
> pain in the arse to use, but it's just an
> illustration I made up just this moment:) Consider
> it the "average results for a character" version of
> the WoD's system. In that, you need to roll 6 or
> above (or whatever it is now) on a d10 for a
> "success", but as you increase in skill, you get to
> roll more d10s. So you have greater chances of
> scoring successes. In this system I just made up,
> you'd have greater chance of success, but also
> greater chance of a consistent result.
>
> In d4-d4, I wanted this effect, of consistent
> results, and also of the higher-skilled guy feeling
> he could quite reliably deal with the lower-skilled
> guy. So I had the Performance Ladder,
>
> Famous
> Olympic
> Outstanding
> Excellent
> Good
> Middling
> Fair
> Ordinary
> Poor
> Terrible
> Crap
>
> The normal human range of abilities is Poor to
> Outstanding. The d4-d4 roll adjusts their
> performance by -3 to +3, giving them results of Crap
> to Famous; results are capped at those. So the
> random die roll has a range 7, the abilities the
> same range of 7, and the actual performance a range
> of 11. (By comparison, what Lev is proposing is
> essentially a range of 100 in abilities, 100 in die
> rolls, and 4 in results: critical failure, failure,
> success, critical success). But (in d4-d4) the best
> an Ordinary guy can do is Good (uni graduate level),
> while the worst he can do is Crap (zero knowledge
> level). The uni graduate )Good) guy can at best
> manage an Olympic performance, and at worst will be
> Ordinary. He can never be Poor, or Crap, or Famous.
> Not without help, that is (ie die roll bonuses). The
> Ordinary guy will consistently be Ordinary, Poor or
> Fair, and the Good guy consistently Middling,
> Excellent or Good.
> So it's a bit like the system I just made up
> above, but less unwieldy. The system I made up above
> gives you the narrower range of results as the skill
> increases; d4-d4, you've got the same range of
> results and probabilities, but because the
> randomness (-3 to +3) is smaller than the range of
> performances (0 to 10) you get it that it's
> impossible (normally, without bonus/malus) for the
> Good guy to do Crap, or the Ordinary guy to do
> Famously.
> It's not entirely realistic, but I think it
> comes close. It gives a higher than realistic chance
> of really bad or really good results in performance,
> but I like that because really good or bad results
> make for entertaining games.
>
> Sorry I write so much. I took a disadvantage,
> "loquacious", and used the points in "handsome." No,
> really!:)
>
> Cheers,
> Kyle
> Better Mousetrap Games
> home of d4-d4 and other stuff
>
http://www.rpgnow.com/default.php?manufacturers_id=339
Lev Lafayette
lev_lafayette at yahoo.com.au
http://au.geocities.com/lev_lafayette
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