Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > Roleplaying in General

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 01-16-2011, 09:32 PM   #11
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Linear vs curved dice mechanics

One of the big questions I ask if, if criticals/fumbles are possible, what's the smallest chance of one happening? In 1d20, it's 5%. In 2d6, it's 2.8%. With FUDGE dice, it's 1.2%. In 1d100, it's 1% (by definition!). In 3d6, it's 0.5%.

I feel that 5% is just way too high. Even 2.8% bothers me. The other three all seem like decent odds; frequent enough to happen every game or two, but not so commonplace that the game seems unrealistic, or that you have to make the effects fairly unimpressive.

Bill Stoddard
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-16-2011, 10:03 PM   #12
Joseph Paul
Custom User Title
 
Joseph Paul's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Indianapolis, IN
Default Re: Linear vs curved dice mechanics

One of the things I have seen done with BRP derived games is to make fumbles a moving target. As the skill level rose the chance for a fumble decreased. Likewise the chances of specials and criticals went up.

Don't like 5% for a fumble? Cut it in half by needing to roll 1-3 on a D6 or what ever combination brings it down to what you are comfortable with. Too much die rolling just to find out if something is a complete FUBAR? Throw both dice at the same time, every time. I have seen wargamers do this to reduce turn length lag to the minimum.
__________________
Joseph Paul
Joseph Paul is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-16-2011, 10:10 PM   #13
Hans Rancke-Madsen
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Default Re: Linear vs curved dice mechanics

In my homebrew system, Heltesagaerne, I use D20 open-ended (on a roll of 20, you roll again and add 10, take the highest of the two results; similar for rolling a 1), which seems to work fine. Critical results are represented by how far above or below the target number you roll.


Hans
Hans Rancke-Madsen is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-16-2011, 11:49 PM   #14
Crakkerjakk
"Gimme 18 minutes . . ."
 
Crakkerjakk's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Default Re: Linear vs curved dice mechanics

I think that for actual resolution it doesn't matter whether you're using 3d6 or d100 or whatever. Like others have said, 74% is 74%. But the big difference (I've found) is in the mods.

In linear systems, a small mod is a small mod, +5% is the same whether your skill is 10% or 90%. I find this discourages people from scraping for positive mods and trying to eliminate negative mods, because it's unlikely to affect their skill that much. In bell curve systems, it depends. If your skill is enormous you can just flat out ignore negative mods. If your skill is not that great you scrape to get every last mod because that can make a very large difference in your chances of success.

Plus, I've personally found that GMs in linear systems very rarely award positive mods and due to the usual skill cap of 100% (or at least it's usually pretty hard to get a skill over 100%) even small mods substantially lower your chances of succeeding for complete bad-asses, and the whiff factor tends to be high even for professionals.
__________________
My bare bones web page

Semper Fi
Crakkerjakk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-17-2011, 03:35 AM   #15
copeab
 
copeab's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
Default Re: Linear vs curved dice mechanics

Quote:
Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk View Post
In linear systems, a small mod is a small mod, +5% is the same whether your skill is 10% or 90%. I find this discourages people from scraping for positive mods and trying to eliminate negative mods, because it's unlikely to affect their skill that much.
I'll add that this can be good or bad, depending on your gaming style.

Quote:
In bell curve systems, it depends. If your skill is enormous you can just flat out ignore negative mods. If your skill is not that great you scrape to get every last mod because that can make a very large difference in your chances of success.
Whether linear modifiers on curved dice mechanics are a bug or a feature really depends on how important it is for you that a modifier has a constant value.

Quote:
Plus, I've personally found that GMs in linear systems very rarely award positive mods and due to the usual skill cap of 100% (or at least it's usually pretty hard to get a skill over 100%) even small mods substantially lower your chances of succeeding for complete bad-asses, and the whiff factor tends to be high even for professionals.
This this from the systems lacking positive modifiers (assuming that base skill represents the peak of ability) or GMs just not wanting to use them?
__________________
A generous and sadistic GM,
Brandon Cope

GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com
copeab is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-17-2011, 03:39 AM   #16
copeab
 
copeab's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
Default Re: Linear vs curved dice mechanics

Quote:
Originally Posted by roguebfl View Post
Quick Contest, Well Resistance rolls coming to mined so there is Magic, and Affliction, Malediction Psi and others (eg Supers and some Martial Arts).
BRP has the Resistance Table for attribute vs attribute contests. I'd have to pull out CoC or Stormbringer for how (if at all) it handles skill vs skill contests,
__________________
A generous and sadistic GM,
Brandon Cope

GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com
copeab is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-17-2011, 04:27 AM   #17
William
 
William's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Upper Peninsula of Michigan
Default Re: Linear vs curved dice mechanics

The reason I prefer bell-curve dice is consistency.

A stronger tendency to cluster near the middle of the distribution means I know what I'm likely to roll, in a given situation, with given mods. I can roleplay my character as knowing how tough or easy a task is likely to be, and as unlikely to risk much on wild chances. That's obviously a personality thing; some people like flamboyant chances, lots of crits, and wild margins of success and failure.

Me, I buy a skill, I want it to work.
William is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-17-2011, 06:17 AM   #18
Joseph Paul
Custom User Title
 
Joseph Paul's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Indianapolis, IN
Default Re: Linear vs curved dice mechanics

Unless nearly every skill roll relies on a measure of the Margin of Success your skill is working exactly the same when you roll less than the target number. With skill 12 a 12 is just as good as a 6 (and a 5 if I remember the GURPS crit rule) so what really matters is the percentage chance to roll that number.

That clustering doesn't mean that your dice won't roll 13+ ~26% of the time.

To me that clustering effect has no effect for the vast number of "roll skill x" applications where simple succes or failure is being tested for.

Now for MoS it does have a huge impact. With skill 12 I have a 50% shot at generating a 2+ MoS. At skill 8 I have less than a 10% chance of doing so.

So some of the usefullness hinges on how skill competency is defined.
__________________
Joseph Paul
Joseph Paul is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-17-2011, 06:46 AM   #19
copeab
 
copeab's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
Default Re: Linear vs curved dice mechanics

Quote:
Originally Posted by Joseph Paul View Post
So some of the usefullness hinges on how skill competency is defined.
I think many game designers have characters start with low (sometimes incompetently low) chances at skill success because they want to create a "challenge" or don't want to make things "too easy". Combine this with linear mechanics being the easiest to use (and visualize) in a system and it may explain some of the dislike of linear systems.
__________________
A generous and sadistic GM,
Brandon Cope

GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com

Last edited by copeab; 01-17-2011 at 07:20 AM.
copeab is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-17-2011, 08:29 AM   #20
Joseph Paul
Custom User Title
 
Joseph Paul's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Indianapolis, IN
Default Re: Linear vs curved dice mechanics

That has a familiar ring to it. CoC long ago...
__________________
Joseph Paul
Joseph Paul is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
dice mechanics

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:17 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.