T5 CT MGT? Which? Why?

[nats]

I suppose its better that he got on with it rather than wasting time talking about it. Maybe he just wants to get it done and dusted now after 4 years or whatever! Anyway we will all see what it will be like in a few weeks no doubt. A lot of these creative genius types are very self conscious and withdrawn people they dont communicate well with others. David Braben had to learn the hard way with the Elite Kickstarter, it was almost painful to be part of it. Marc obviously still has to learn how to communicate with his fanbase.

 

[aramis]

I suppose its better that he got on with it rather than wasting time talking about it. Maybe he just wants to get it done and dusted now after 4 years or whatever! Anyway we will all see what it will be like in a few weeks no doubt. A lot of these creative genius types are very self conscious and withdrawn people they dont communicate well with others. David Braben had to learn the hard way with the Elite Kickstarter, it was almost painful to be part of it. Marc obviously still has to learn how to communicate with his fanbase.

Marc self-describes as laconic. While I've never spoken to him, never met him face to face, we are in frequent email conversation. And he's a man of few words. He's terse even by laconic standards, while I tend to be verbose, perhaps even a bit profligate, in my wordings.

CT, T4, and T5 are, for the most part, tables-driven. Most of the rules are encoded in tables and process-charts. This seems to be Marc's writing style. The games with extensive prose-rules are joint efforts.

 

[Dragoner]

Marc obviously still has to learn how to communicate with his fanbase.

Or vice versa.

Marc self-describes as laconic.

It is a typical midwesternism.

 

[robject]

Something else that concerns me about the Traveller 5 dice roll is that each die adds more of a curve to the value. So there is this linear range of addidtions that you're trying to roll under. But your roll is not linear. The resulting numbers tend to bunch up in the middle. Not at a theoretically perfect dice roll of zero (I'm so awesome at the task!) or hair-line failling of the task.

2D6 has a bell, also. Just not as extreme. But enough bell to still allow rolling 2 or 12 more often.

This is actually not as significant past 4 dice... After that the law of averages creates a center plateau that's close to linear.

 

[Shonner]

This is actually not as significant past 4 dice... After that the law of averages creates a center plateau that's close to linear.

How many dice are we talking about?

 

[aramis]

How many dice are we talking about?

T5 you can get up to about 7D in established tasks.

Given Xd6, the flat spot where all results are equally likely runs roughly from (3X) to (4X)...
on 3d6, it's 9-12
on 4d6, it's 12-16
on 5d6, it's 15-20
on 6d6, it's 18-24

 

[Shonner]

T5 you can get up to about 7D in established tasks.

Given Xd6, the flat spot where all results are equally likely runs roughly from (3X) to (4X)...
on 3d6, it's 9-12
on 4d6, it's 12-16
on 5d6, it's 15-20
on 6d6, it's 18-24

From what I've seen, it's all the values getting zero rolls for that cover the flat linear areas on the bell curves (for nD6, where n > 6).

 

[DangerousThing]

From what I've seen, it's all the values getting zero rolls for that cover the flat linear areas on the bell curves (for nD6, where n > 6).

I'm sorry, but I don't seem to understand what you're trying to say here. Could you please elaborate?

 

[Shonner]

I'm sorry, but I don't seem to understand what you're trying to say here. Could you please elaborate?

Let's say that a player is rolling 8D6, the chances of rolling certain numbers are pretty close, if not, zero. Those numbers being: 8 - 15 and 41 - 48. And the chances of rolling those number are nearly the same: zero - 0.2% chance. So, in a way, those range of numbers are linear. But the numbers 16 - 42 form a nice curve with varying chances of rolling them.

2% chance to roll a 20
6% chance to roll a 24
8% chance to roll a 27

The exact opposite of linear.

 

[SmilingKnight]

But why should it be linear? This way there are far more predictable rolls, which makes sense for trained skills. A pilot trying to land in unknown gravity, no sensors and fog everywhere will know that it's a bad idea, and therefore, the player playing should be allowed to know the most likely numbers to come up out of that, and that those are either about his skill level or not.

 

[Shonner]

In some game mechanics, if a range of a roll is curved, then the range created to roll inside of is also curved. And if a roll is linear, then the range created to roll under/over is also linear.

Some games use a +1, +5, +10 DM in any order for any situation. And some games make it easy to add a +1 DM, while making it very hard to add a +5 DM (to retain a range curve for a character). In Traveller, learning each level of a skill takes longer to achieve. It's not a linear "spend 4 points to increase your level 1 skill to a level 5 skill" path.

Anyway, it comes down to personal preference.