Dice ?? Game mechanic ??

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

No, it's not you. It tripped me up, too.

In other news, I hate roll-under. I know, it's purely psychological. But then, so are a lot of rules. I need "higher = better."

Also, variable number of dice = bleargh. I'm not a maths person. With a fixed numder (d20, 2d6), I can calculate a probability in like .3 secs. With variables, I need like 3 to 5 secs. As a player, that distracts me from the immersion, and as a GM, it can trip me up.

I may want to make a task "tough-but-doable" and may end up making it nigh-impossible. Because in order to determine the probability I essentially need to do the task res in my head beforehand. Assiging the difficulty level is not enough here--I need to look at the specific player's char & skill also.

 

[Malenfant]

Its' just ass-backwards in my opinion too. Similar systems (including MT, I think?) have you rolling your skill+attribute vs a fixed difficulty number (well, it varies depending on whether it's easy, medium, difficult etc). That makes some degree of sense at least. But by doing it the way he's doing it here, Marc is (surprise surprise) making things unecessarily complicated and unintuitive again.

This sort of thing just confirms my suspicion that Marc simply isn't a good game designer. These are basic issues that a decent designer would and should have avoided.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Yes, it's strange that your stats and skills together define a fixed target number, which you then must roll against.

I tell you why it feels wrong: because it feels right to have something in the gameworld be a fixed obstacle against which you then pit the variable of a) your skill plus b) luck. It's like jumping a hurdle--very intuitive.

Whereas in this system, you're the hurdle, and you're hoping the gameworld doesn't manage to jump over you.

So, ass-backwards is exactly right, funnily enough.

 

[Malenfant]

Exactly! That's why it rubs me the wrong way too.

So that's two very obvious strikes against the task system - the way the basic keystone concept of it is expressed, and the backward logic of its design - noticed very quickly by people who aren't even on the playtest.

So WTF are the people who are on the playtest doing, for crying out loud? Why aren't they telling Marc how obviously flawed his rules are? Then again, given Marc's previous attitude I can imagine he's just telling them to test what's given to them and not complain if it doesn't make sense...

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Actually, let me start a new thread.

 

[robject]

There is also a 2D roll-high draft for T5.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by robject:
There is also a 2D roll-high draft for T5.

"Oh, for frak's sake!" (except less family friendly ) is literally what I thought when I looked at that.

Marc can't really be serious with that, can he? Half a page taken up by a squiggly flow chart and an task system with wacky modifiers? Does a system where you take an initial target number, subtract a skill, add half of the relevant characteristic and any other modifiers to get the final target number not strike anyone as being horrendously complex?

The flowchart really is taking the piss though, it reads like something out of a psychology journal (much like most of the stuff he's written so far, IMO)...

I'd really love to be less critical of what he comes up with, but this sort of thing is just awful.

 

[robject]

Yes, it needs to be fixed to say:

2D + skill + char/2 + mods > diff

There's a slightly older draft that has it this way.

 

[Malenfant]

What I don't get is why he doesn't realise he's phrasing these things all wrong in the first place. Has he not looked at any other RPGs in the past decade or two and learned anything from them?

 

[scout_harris]

Originally posted by robject:
There is also a 2D roll-high draft for T5.

I ignored the diagram at the top. It adds nothing to the description of the task system, and simply describes the obvious. (i.e its a waste of space).

The task system is MT with stat/2 instead of stat/5, giving a mod range of +1 to +7, with he average being around +4 to +5 (if a players stats still range from 1-15... does this change in T5?)

Hmmm, this implies that an average task will rarely fail in the hands of somone with stats of 8 and skill of 1 (actually, read that as never, unless snake-eyes is an auto-fail). I think the stat bonus seems a little high when compared tot he target numbers.

Hmmm... I think I like the idea I read in another thread of using 7 as a central point, every two above 7 giving a +1 and every two below giving a --1.

However, I would probably buy the game if it had this task system. Its familiar, and can be used with a lot of the traveller stuff I already have with little or no modification.

Hmmm... and when I see this, my appreciation for the elegance of the D20 system for skill based resolution grows. Opposed skill checks, "Hide" versus "Spot", are resolved in a simple and obvious manner.

I recently had another look at the CT system. All I can say is that D20 seems like CT system refined to make sense, and uses d20 instead of 2d6. CT seemed primitive and clunky. But hey, I know one of my players is a fan of it.

 

[robject]

Originally posted by scout_harris:

Hmmm... I think I like the idea I read in another thread of using 7 as a central point, every two above 7 giving a +1 and every two below giving a -1.

Yes, that's quite balanced and reasonable.

Compared to the above draft, it's mainly a matter of shifting the target numbers.

2D + skill + [char-7]/2 + mods > difficulty
2D + skill + char/2 + mods > difficulty + 3.5

So you're suggesting target numbers 6, 10, 14, 18... or perhaps 7, 11, 15, 19...

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by scout_harris:
I recently had another look at the CT system. All I can say is that D20 seems like CT system refined to make sense, and uses d20 instead of 2d6. CT seemed primitive and clunky. But hey, I know one of my players is a fan of it.

What CT system to which are you referring? The UTP?