4dF

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Anthony

That's the chance of a specific result, not the chance of success. The cumulative probability (to get X or better) is:
+4: 1.2%
+3: 6.2%
+2: 18.5%
+1: 38.2%
+0: 61.7%
-1: 81.5%
-2: 93.8%
-3: 98.8%

In particular:

+4 on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 4 or less in GURPS.
+3 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 5 or less in GURPS.
+2 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 7 or less in GURPS.
+1 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 9 or less in GURPS.
0 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling an 11 or less in GURPS.
–1 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 13 or less in GURPS.
–2 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 15 or less in GURPS.
–3 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 16 or less in GURPS.
–4 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling an 18 or less in GURPS.

They're remarkably similar.

By contrast: 1d6–1d6
+5 or better is comparable to 4 or less.
+4 or better is comparable to 6 or less.
+3 or better is comparable to 7 or less.
+2 or better is comparable to 8 or less.
+1 or better is comparable to 9 or less.
+0 or better is comparable to 11 or less.
–1 or better is comparable to 12 or less.
–2 or better is comparable to 13 or less.
–3 or better is comparable to 14 or less.
–4 or better is comparable to 16 or less.
–5 or better is comparable to 18 or less.

That may not seem much; but note that even adding another level between Superb and Legendary, that still means that someone with Fair ability is still getting a Legendary result on one out of every 36 rolls. (As opposed to one or of 56 for a critical success in GURPS.)

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

In particular:

+4 on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 4 or less in GURPS.
+3 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 5 or less in GURPS.
+2 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 7 or less in GURPS.
+1 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 9 or less in GURPS.
0 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling an 11 or less in GURPS.
–1 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 13 or less in GURPS.
–2 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 15 or less in GURPS.
–3 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling a 16 or less in GURPS.
–4 or better on 4dF is comparable to rolling an 18 or less in GURPS.

They're remarkably similar.

Until you want a probability of about 50%, give or take 5%. Which is, you know, the sweet spot.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Until you want a probability of about 50%, give or take 5%. Which is, you know, the sweet spot.

It's surprising how many systems don't actually target 50%, even if they're capable of achieving it (for example, D&D targets around 70%), but Fate has the concept of a tie result, which means you get a 38.2% of success, 38.2% of fail, and 24.6% of a tie.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anthony

FATE doesn't use the same adjective system as Fudge; there are 7 levels between Terrible and Legendary in Fudge, 10 in Fate.

The version I remember didn't have that many levels. I think it had an extra level or two above Fair, but it had one less level below Fair (which was a big reason I didn't like it).

But in any case, if we're talking about a roll of 4dF, as such, focusing only on the adjective levels for FATE, and disregarding those for FUDGE, seems arbitrary. The argument ought to be "without loss of generality."

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Actually, “Fair” is entry-level competence; “Mediocre” is “needs training before you can do the job”. “Good” is “you've been doing this for some time now, and you know the ropes”. “Great” is “you're among the best in the company”. “Superb” is “you are the best”. The chance of someone with Fair Ability achieving a Legendary result is 1/81, comparable to a Critical Success in GURPS.

* What's your textual authority for that interpretation? It seems to me that the GM in FUDGE ought to have permission to assign their own interpretations to those adjectives.

* The way I take it is that Terrible = worse than an ordinary untrained person (analogous to Incompetence in GURPS); Poor = no training; Mediocre = someone who has tried something a little; Fair = hobbyist; Good = entry level professional; Great = experienced professional; Superb = one of the best in the hobby, sport, or profession. A Good skill lets you achieve a Fair result or better 80% of the time, and a Great skill lets you do so 94% of the time; those are unrealistically low in real world terms, but workable as risk levels for a game. If an entry level professional has Fair skill, they'll get Fair or better results only 62% of the time, which seems implausibly low even for gaming purposes.

* I don't think that Legendary ought to equate to critical success. Legendary ought to make you really a figure of legend; at a minimum, an Olympic record setter, or a mathematician or scientist who awes the top people in their field, like John von Neumann, or a military commander on a level with Alexander or Napoleon, and perhaps even beyond human capabilities entirely. That's more than a critical success will get you. I would equate critical success to a Superb result and critical failure to a Terrible one.

[dataweaver]

Agreed. While it's true that Fate has been flourishing and Fudge has stagnated, both should be under discussion here. And the fact that Legendary and its opposite are within reach of the center of the scale in Fudge is a problem.

But then, that's why Fate added levels (though I don't recall it having taken any away). If the problem is that Legendary is too close to the center, then move it out a bit.

In fact, reviewing it:

In Fudge, the scale is “Terrible, Poor, Mediocre” (on the negative side); “Fair” (in the middle); and “Good, Great, Superb” on the positive side. “Legendary” is briefly mentioned, but only in the sense of “it's whatever is beyond Superb; you don't need to let the players have access to it.” I rather like this structure because it follows a pattern of "X”, “more X”, and “most X”, which makes it easy to remember. More on that later.

By contrast, Fate moved the midpoint from Fair to Mediocre, inserted a new “Average” level between Fair and Mediocre, and added two new levels between Superb and Legendary: Fantastic and Epic. This has some problems in terms of intuitive use (just what is the difference between Average and Fair, Superb and Fantastic, Epic and Legendary?); And I've found that players of Fate generally don't use the adjectives anyway: they just go with the –2 to +8 scale.

My own preference is to take the “X, more X, most X” approach and add a “somewhat X” at the start. So the adjective ladder should have something like Average in the center, and then go four steps up and down from there, with Good being two steps up, Great being three, and Superb being four. Conversely, the bottom end should probably read something like Mediocre (“kind of bad”), Poor (“bad”), Terrible (“very bad”), and Abysmal (“extremely bad”). If we use Fair as “kind of good”, then ew can have the upper end of the scale be Fair, Good, Great (“very good”), and Superb (“extremely good”). Giving us:

–4: Abysmal
–3: Terrible
–2: Poor
–1: Mediocre
+0: Average
+1: Fair
+2: Good
+3: Great
+4: Superb

Results of –5 or less, or +5 or better, are far enough beyond our common experience that attempting to attach adjectives to them becomes difficult. We are, after all, talking about going beyond the extremes.

[whswhs]

I agree with a lot of what dataweaver says, but I have some comments to make:

Setting aside the question of labels, one of the things that put me off about FATE was that it had only two steps of negative modifiers, -1 and -2. That wasn't fine grained enough to be tolerable. I could get by with three steps—in terms of outcomes, typically these would be an inferior but passable result, an unacceptable result, and an actively harmful result. I couldn't feel happy with just two.

Semantically, if we're going to have the word Average, it seems to me that it ought to mean the zero result: the midpoint of the distribution.

Semantically, I don't really like having the word Average, because to me a Fair result is the same as an Average result: the midpoint being falling short and being overgenerous. I would collapse those two together.

More broadly, while I do see the advantage of having more steps, so that a maximal (minimal) roll can't take you all the way from the midpoint to Legendary (Nonexistent), there's also the disadvantage that as you add more adjectives, their meanings start to blur together. I have a definite sense that Terrible < Poor < Mediocre < Fair < Good < Great < Superb (< Legendary), but when you have more than three levels to either side I start not being sure which leg moves after which.

One way to do this might be to have

-6 Terrible
-5
-4 Poor
-3
-2 Mediocre
-1
0 Fair
1
2 Good
3
4 Great
5
6 Superb
7
8 Legendary

with, in particular, step 7 being a feat that's at the borderline of human capability, something that maybe you'd believe a human being could do and maybe not.

[dataweaver]

While single words are nice, it might be reasonable to go with double-word descriptors:

Extremely Good (“Superb”)
Very Good (“Great”)
Good
Somewhat Good (“Fair”)
Average
Somewhat Bad (“Mediocre”)
Bad (“Poor”)
Very Bad (“Terrible”)
Extremely Bad (“Abysmal”)

That gives you nine levels, four above average and four below average, and with a fairly simple way of judging what goes where. And, like Fudge, you don't need numbers to work within this range.

I'm also inclined to ditch the concept of Legendary almost entirely: Extremely Good (“Superb”) is the best you can do. Likewise, Extremely Bad (“Abysmal”) is the worst you can do. Going beyond these limits requires something more than just rolling dice; you might, for example, need some sort of Scale mechanic, where two characters operating on the same Scale interact normally, while a character who operates on a higher Scale tends to dominate, even if he's at the low end of that Scale. “That's Average… for a God”; that sort of thing. If the Scales don't overlap, then the guy on the higher Scale automatically wins; if they do, then it's probably a case where, say, “extremely good” on the lower Scale only counts as “somewhat bad” on the higher Scale; so it's possible for the former to beat the latter, but only if the former does exceptionally well and the latter performs below average.

If, for example, we reinterpret Legendary as a Scale that overlaps with the upper end of the standard scale, then “Extremely Bad… for a Legend” would tie with “Somewhat Good”; “Very Bad, for a Legend” would tie with “Good”; “Bad, for a Legend” would tie with “Very Good”; and “Somewhat Bad, for a Legend” would tie with “Extremely Good”. “Average or better, for a Legend” would flat-out defeat even the best effort on the normal scale.

[thrash]

I created a rules-light Fudge variant that was intended to be used interchangeably for table-top and live action roleplaying. It had only five levels, with the mnemonic PAGES:

Poor
Average
Good
Excellent
Superb

Realizing that this was too narrow for 4dF, I proposed to use 3dS, where a "dS" was a 6-sided die labelled with four blank sides, one "+", and one "-". The advantage here is that the standard deviation of 3dS is almost exactly 1, although the distribution is flatter than a true standard normal curve.

It meant, though, that each category is one standard deviation greater than the next. This helped me to conceptualize what (e.g.) "Excellent" ability implies.

In the event, rolling dS proved to be simply boring -- so many blanks! That, and the lack of finer distinctions, led me to abandon the project and go back to 3d6.

[martinl]

Similar ro Mr. Stoddard, I find regular Fudge rolls to chaotic.

When I Fudge (I have never used Fate) I call for "regular" and "wild" rolls.

"Regular" rolls are 4d6, every rolled 1 is a -1, every rolled 6 is a +1. "Wild" rolls are 1-2 and 5-6 respectively. (If using fudge dice, color one + and one -.)

Most rolls are "regular." Wild rolls only happen when things are chaotic and unpredictable, like many tense RPG situations. This preserves predictability in regular life while keeping dangerous and tense situations dangerous and tense.

This is similar to the GURPS rule that you don't roll for every pilot to land every plane, cuz the crits happen too often.

Edit - here are the odds:
-4, 0.077
-3, 1.23
-2, 7.71
-1, 23.4
0, 35.0
1, 23.4
2, 7.71
3, 1.23
4, 0.077