Reducing many rolls to fewer rolls

[Gnome]

There are many rules in GURPS that require an extreme number of rolls, particularly against HT. For example: dealing with heat/cold, running long distances, tracking in a city (that last one would be Tracking of course).

Is there a nice general way to assign a penalty to one roll and have it represent many rolls? This would help reduce the insane number of rolls needed for, say, an hour-long sprint, and also provide a way for HT scores above 16 to shine, as currently sprinting long distances is just a series of straight HT rolls, so HT 16 and HT 30 have equal utility. Similarly for withstanding heat/cold, urban tracking if you're really skilled or following a group, etc.

[kdtipa]

I think in general when I run a session, I just skip rolls if they're not going to make the enjoyment better. Health rolls to keep running, I'd probably ignore unless the outcome of the rolls could cause a problem. I had a scene in a session where the characters were trying to run through a dark hallway to escape a powerful ghost they found. I figured out how much of a lead they had, and the total distance they had to run, and each turn they had to make a DX check to avoid tripping in the dark unfamiliar place. I didn't bother with HT rolls. I already had a roll they could make each turn, and they would lose ground if they tripped.

I think it was fun for the players, especially at the end of the chase when they had to climb up a rope to get out of the underground structure. The ghost was close and they were watching their rolls like hawks.

But I wouldn't have bothered with extra rolls. Just enough for it to be fun.

And if you're dealing with something like tracking where you need to make new rolls pretty frequently, I think I'd play out each segment of tracking, so that each roll is important. Instead of saying "start making tracking rolls and either you'll fail or I'll tell you when to stop", I might say something like...

"You're lucky there was condensation on the fire escape because you can just make out some foot prints on the ground leading away from the bottom. Your roll was good enough that you can tell they were wearing running shoes, that they were size tens, and that they were jogging quickly away from the building. Make your next roll..."

"At the corner of the next building on the side walk, the water seems to have worn off and those tracks are gone, but you know this person was heading along the sidewalk at least, and you spot what looks like a single drop of blood and it's still moist. You know the person was injured before fleeing the room, and this is likely his blood. Make your next roll..."

And so on. Instead of making a bunch of rolls that don't have any meaning to the player, give each roll meaning.

[kdtipa]

Maybe I can answer with fewer words. I wrote too much previously.

If a series of rolls doesn't add to the fun, I ignore them. They're not important to having a good time with friends at the table. If a series of rolls can be part of the fun, and even build tension... I'll try to include description to make it better.

I don't bother trying to condense a bunch of rolls into one. Usually I can ignore them entirely or make each roll more exciting.

[Black Leviathan]

I tend to fudge a lot of the complex systems with a single skill roll or at best a supporting skill roll and a skill roll with bonus. I want my players to have dice-in-hand, anticipating a chance to have character interact with world but I don't want to make that tiresome. As far as penalties for reducing a process to a single roll, a lot of the time I don't like the process enough to make it hard. I just base the roll on the complexity of what they're doing, usually a -1 or -2.

The exception to my one-rollism is if you're pushing against the game world, like designing technology not found in the setting or inventing a new spell, creating a new work of art. I'll give you a handful of skill rolls and three rolls against the key skill. For example, one of my players is a gunsmith who does engraving. He wanted to inlay a pistol with witch's iron. I made him make armory and connoisseur - guns rolls. If Armory failed the gun would be of lower quality, if Connoisseur failed the design would be unpopular. If he had hoped to enchant the gun he'd also have had to make a Thaumatology roll. Then I made him make three Artist - Engraving rolls any failure would represent an error that would ruin his artwork. I want those efforts to feel like you're trudging a bit and testing the limits of what your character can do.

[Gnome]

Ok, I guess I should clarify that what I’m looking for here are game mechanics. I understand that rolls should add something and have narrative support, but especially with high-powered characters it’s hard to use the existing mechanics to determine whether or not a character can achieve something. Will you be able to sprint to a place 100 miles away? How long will it take and how tired will you be when you get there? I would like the game to help me answer these questions, especially in high point games where the seemingly impossible may become possible.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Gnome

Will you be able to sprint to a place 100 miles away? How long will it take and how tired will you be when you get there?

These questions could be answered with the expected value of the success roll. If you really wanted the variation, you could take the distribution of the series of rolls (the "binomial distribution") and roll once against a table for that distribution. (Though that still won't tell you exactly where in the sequence the successes and failures occur.)

[RobKamm]

What I do:

If it doesn't matter: don't roll.

If it does, but the number of rolls gets in the way: approximate the number of rolls, divide by 8 (rounding up), and use that as a penalty.

Why 8? It feels about right for a wide range of numbers (obviously it's imperfect and breaks down if you think about it too much). Ideally I'd calculate the fractional probabilities but that's too much like math and I prefer to keep the story going and let the plastic fly.

[(E)]

One thought I had was just have one roll and increase the critical chance by an appropriate margin. 7 or lower = crit success (narratively speaking) and 14 or higher = crit fail. Less mathematics based and more keep the story moving.

The numbers I used above are generic, some eyeballing happens at the gaming table.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Gnome

Is there a nice general way to assign a penalty to one roll and have it represent many rolls?

Not really, but anydice is your friend.

https://anydice.com/program/1218c is an example of rolling 100 dice with a success chance of 10-. You can change either number easily. You can also have it roll for you -- click on the 'roller' button, choose how many times you want it to roll (default 6) and it will generate that many counts.

[Brandy]

This was something that we talked about a long time ago* with regard to the bleeding rules.

The link I provided then is long since defunct, but I quickly recreated the table using the same math and hosted it as a pdf here.

The old thread will explain the background math. What the table does is answer the question "How many successes will I have before I have a failure?" and "In all those rolls, did I ever roll a critical success?" Similar thinking could be done for other die-rolling scenarios.

*In 2005! Eeep!