Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Prak]

@Zinegate: The problem with that is that I'm not super familiar with cars myself.

@erik: I also don't know much about Mariokart...

And it's not so much that I'm shoe horning in DnD attributes, 6 stats is just the number I personally find good for stats. I think 4 is too few, and 8 is too many. Overall, this is actually shaping up to be very close to After Sundown in base.

[tussock]

Gas would be speed. Give it more gas. It's actually air they lacked, but it took computers solving flow equations in the 90's to work out why they weren't getting it without superchargers (or turbos, later). Though, consumable, ooh.

Tank. If you got a big tank, you can go a long way, run more hours. Simple as that. People can have a big tank too.
Spring would be handling. Got big strong springs, massive springs on dune buggies. Also got a spring in your step, is a good thing.
Gears would be strength, in the days when trucks had 8 gears and cars 3, more gears gets more weight rolling. Works better in a 1 is terrible and 8 is brilliant range.

Chrome. That's how pretty it looks. Chrome everywhere is the most beautiful thing in the 50's, little sharp ones all over the inside of the car to bump your head on. So beautiful it hurts.

Hmm, that's about it for me. What did you have?

What I'm looking at is Chassis (body), Wheels* (agility), Jets** (intelligence), Lights (perception), Paint (charisma) and Roar (willpower)

Right. I like Lights, maybe beams when on? So you want high beams, win you a stare-down. Tank could be willpower, depending what you use it for in game.

Gears (Body). Punishment could even make you drop a few gears, if you want a death spiral.
Springs (agility). Beams (perception). Chrome (charisma). Tank (Willpower). Hmm...

Why this car is automatic
It's systematic
It's hydromatic
Why it's grease lightning (grease lightning)
We'll get some overhead lifters and some four barrel quads
Oh yeah
(Keep talking whoa keep talking)
A fuel injection cutoff and chrome plated rods oh yeah
(I'll get the money I'll kill to get the money)
With a four speed on the floor they'll be waiting at the door
You know that ain't no shit we'll be getting lots of tit
In Grease Lightning
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go
Go grease lightning you're burning up the quarter mile
(Grease lightning go grease lightning)
Go grease lightning you're coasting through the heat lap trial
(Grease lightning go grease lightning)
You are supreme the chicks'll cream for grease lightning
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go
Purple french tail lights and thirty inch fins
Oh yeah
A Palomino dashboard and duel muffler twins
Oh yeah
With new pistons, plugs, and shocks I can get off my rocks
You know that I ain't bragging she's a real pussy wagon
Grease lightning
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go
Go grease lightning you're burning up the quarter mile
(Grease lightning go grease lightning)
Go grease lighting you're coasting through the heat lap trial
(Grease lightning go grease lightning)
You are supreme the chicks'll cream for grease lightning
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go
Go grease lightning you're burning up the quarter mile
(Grease lightning go grease lightning)
Go grease lighting you're coasting through the hit lap trial
(Grease lightning go grease lightning)
You are supreme the chicks'll cream for grease lightning
Lightning, lightning, lightning
Lightning, lightning, lightning
Lightning

Oh right, "4 Speed", and apparently it's the charisma stat. And "Shocks". Le sigh. Words are hard. Also, apparently motor vehicle engineering excites the ladies. That is just so sexist. Oh, right, the 50's, so Great Balls of Fire, crass sexism, racial segregation, regular lynchings, ... so I guess a better version of the 50's, like XCOM3.

Intelligence for a car, to some extent it depends what you're doing with it. Gas or Jets would be fine for a pool you add to enhance other stats. Because giving it some gas, or turning on the jets, it solves a lot of problems.

[Whipstitch]

I don't think "Jets" really works since it's too easily confused with speed by modern audiences. Period slang can be fun but never forget we're all just playing telephone with the past. Ron Howard is over 60 years old, Happy Days and Back to the Future are old as fuck and both of those shows were already nostalgia acts when they came out.

[deaddmwalking]

I don't think that using jargon for stats is a good idea. If a particular term could imply multiple different attributes, it's needlessly confusing. If you say 'gas is speed' most players are going to want to speak 'in character' about speed. And that's not even a bad thing, since a Speedometer measures...Speed.

If you're going with 'stat + skill', you're actually probably better off having a smaller number of stats. It's hard to make them come out equally (see, Charisma). You could even combine them in interesting ways. In the post-apocalypse, child-bearing hips and massive biceps really could be the ideal of 'beauty', so having 'Body' apply to STR/CHR type skills isn't crazy.

Body (Strength/Charisma)
Gas (Speed/Endurance)
Shocks (Reflexes/Toughness)

Those can be used 'colloquially' and still fit with a car aesthetic.

[Zinegata]

@Zinegate: The problem with that is that I'm not super familiar with cars myself.

Find a friend or acquaintance who is? It's part of the fun of design.

[Prak]

I don't think "Jets" really works since it's too easily confused with speed by modern audiences. Period slang can be fun but never forget we're all just playing telephone with the past. Ron Howard is over 60 years old, Happy Days and Back to the Future are old as fuck and both of those shows were already nostalgia acts when they came out.

What about Gears? As in "I can hear the gears turning" to refer to someone thinking hard.

[OgreBattle]

Mario Kart stats are...

Speed - Your overall top speed. Collecting Coins boosts this, too.

Acceleration - How fast you reach your top speed. Good acceleration means quick recovery from Items that hit you.

Weight - Affects both how far you drift off course when you power slide and how much you are affected by other drivers who hit you. Lighter karts get knocked around more. Heavier karts drift farther off course.

Handling - How close you stick to a corner. Bikes have much better handling than karts.

Traction - Allows you to traverse routes off of the main track faster.




I could see this working for a Mad Max game both for vehicles and human stats.

Here's Mario Tennis stats:

[RobbyPants]

Personally, I'd use person-sounding stats for people and car-sounding stats for cars. I know you're going for a gimmick, but I feel it's more confusing than cute.

[angelfromanotherpin]

My PCs will soon enter a cave that's been sealed to air for some time, and I have a recollection of reading that stagnant air 'goes bad.' Is that a thing, how bad is it, and what can you do about it?

[Iduno]

My PCs will soon enter a cave that's been sealed to air for some time, and I have a recollection of reading that stagnant air 'goes bad.' Is that a thing, how bad is it, and what can you do about it?

You can send in the character nobody likes first, to check for traps or something. If they die, everyone else should avoid following until the problem is solved.

The causes (if there is a problem) are depleted oxygen or build-up of things you can't breathe (sometimes toxic/poisonous). Ventilation could be achieved by making a second hole, and pushing fresh air through.

[deaddmwalking]

My PCs will soon enter a cave that's been sealed to air for some time, and I have a recollection of reading that stagnant air 'goes bad.' Is that a thing, how bad is it, and what can you do about it?

It's a real thing.

Generally speaking, air is odorless, tasteless and invisible. You only know it's there because you're not suffocating. Normal air is 21% Oxygen. As the amount of oxygen in the air decreases (or the total amount of air decreases, such as at higher elevations) you cannot oxygenate your blood. If normal blood oxygen is 100%, following below 80% can kill you. Breathing one or two breaths of non-oxygenated air can knock you out, cold.

3.x doesn't do a great job with these things, but you should probably treat it like drowning. People would be 'breathing normally' but making checks to avoid falling unconscious and/or dying. I imagine your players will just love being killed by something they can't see or respond to in any meaningful way.

[Eikre]

My PCs will soon enter a cave that's been sealed to air for some time, and I have a recollection of reading that stagnant air 'goes bad.' Is that a thing, how bad is it, and what can you do about it?

Stagnant air will go bad if there's something in there to use up the oxygen. It could have been the anaerobic metabolisms of a yeast or bacteria that otherwise had something to subsist on, or it could be an oxidizing material.

In the case of the former, the oxygen will be replaced with CO2, which homo sapiens is equipped to detect. In the case of the latter, the oxygen is just gone and you might asphyxiate without really noticing. This happens sometimes to people who go into rusty ship hulls.

A PC who has some trapfinding or dungeeoneering should realize that they can try to light a torch or bring a tiny songbird with them to detect unbreathable air.

Cave systems are rarely airtight, however. They usually have a multitude of other openings and osmosis will carry pretty much any atmospheric substance through porous materials like soil. Even if the seal on the entrance seems perfectly airtight, the rest of the cavern probably isn't.

[OgreBattle]

I imagine your players will just love being killed by something they can't see or respond to in any meaningful way.

Which book is this Gygax quote from

[Thaluikhain]

A PC who has some trapfinding or dungeeoneering should realize that they can try to light a torch or bring a tiny songbird with them to detect unbreathable air.

A torch doesn't detect flammable gases that well. Or rather it does, but there's a problem there. A bird, yeah, or a lantern sealed with a fine wire mesh that allows air in, but not fire out. If the fire isn't burning at its usual level, something is up.

[OgreBattle]

So DocWagon: http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/DocWagon

Is that service cheaper than IRL healthcare in America?

[Username17]

So DocWagon: http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/DocWagon

Is that service cheaper than IRL healthcare in America?

Similar. An average annual health insurance premium for a 21 year old is about $3000. But it depends a lot on where you live. Five thousand bucks for a year is not weird, and indeed people in Alaska pay more than that.

The Shadowrun innovation is that because of RFIDs and shit, abulances just won't even pick you up if you don't have health insurance. Which is not an unreasonable extrapolation of American society and the technology involved.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

What's harder or easier to understand

pre 8e 40k's "your ballistic skill is 3, subtract that number from 7 to get 4, you hit on a 4+ on a d6"

or

"Your ballistic skill is 3, roll 3 or under to hit on a d6"

I feel the latter is easier to grasp as written, but it also feels 'good' that rolling high on dice=more chance of success

[Stahlseele]

Where did the 7 and the 4 come from in the first example?
Yes, knowing what you have is what you need to roll under is much easier in this example.

[deaddmwalking]

I always understood the inverse nature of pre 8e: if your BS is 1, you hit on a 6; if your BS is 2, you hit on a 5; ...; if your BS is 6, you hit on a 1. I don't think I ever described it as subtract BS from 7 to derive your TN, but that's functionally how it works.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Alternately, describe the roll as d6+BS, TN 7.

[Username17]

What's harder or easier to understand

pre 8e 40k's "your ballistic skill is 3, subtract that number from 7 to get 4, you hit on a 4+ on a d6"

or

"Your ballistic skill is 3, roll 3 or under to hit on a d6"

I feel the latter is easier to grasp as written, but it also feels 'good' that rolling high on dice=more chance of success

Roll Under is easier to explain to people.
Roll Over is easier to use and modify in actual games.

So the fact that grokking the mechanics is something you only have to do once and really isn't very difficult regardless while using the mechanics is something you have to do over and over and over again, often dozens or hundreds of times in a single game, means that it's a no brainer. Obviously "d6+BS, TN 7" is a better way of doing things and "roll under BS on d6" is a worse way of doing things. It isn't even remotely close.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

Yeah TN7 is a better way to explain it.

How about the Old Warhams strength vs toughness chart
There’s a nice parallel that S=T is a 4+, but “add strength to d6 result vs TN” is an obvious to grasp equation.

So the equavent of “wounds on 4+” would be “Strengh rating of +3 vs toughness rating of 7”

Years of warhammer though have made me just like having equal numbers for s and t, even though it’s not as mathematically obvious at a glance.

[tussock]

Warhammer rolls fucking 40 dice to resolve one unit's turn. No one is doing addition forty times, it's all memory. People do that, mentally, by looking for big enough numbers in the giant pile of dice, or excluding the small numbers.

If you tell them they need d6+4 >= 7, they'll mentally covert it to 3+ and go find all the dice that aren't 1's and 2's, separate them out, and then roll that success pile for the next bit, until they're all finished and can count whatever's left to remove units. Like Warhammer.

For newbs, it just easier if something, somewhere, says 3+ already, so they're not wasting mental energy mid-count checking if they're looking for the right numbers. For experienced players, they just call it "three plus" no matter what you write in the book, because that's what they're doing.

--

Changing from "three plus" to "four" is fine. People are keeping the 1-4 pile instead of the 3-6 pile and that almost certainly does not matter.

It is not harder to notice that your target number goes up when things are good, and down when things are bad. That, like, +1 being good, that's good. That's, right there, the number you need on the dice.

Rather than having a thing where you usually need to search for 3+, but get a +1, so instead you need to search for 2+. Or like AD&D where you get a -1 bonus. That's all crazy talk. Don't do that if you want things to be mentally easy, people learn how that works but needing to learn that is pointless grognardism.

--

Frank has a hate-on for roll under, but maybe he just needs to show us where it bad-touched him. There are a lot of bad roll under systems, WH8 is not one of them, it's a repeat-roll-on-success with variable TN dice pool system and you need to fucking know what number you're sorting on each time: so just tell people that.

[Thaluikhain]

From 3e to 7e, IIRC, there was very little (thought not nothing) that modified your BS. OTOH, given they'd keep codices for a bit after updating the rules, perhaps they thought at some point they'd bring BS modifiers back.

Personally, I think the old way was better, but then I don't have a problem with rolling under your LD on 2d6, so might just be what I'm used to.

[Mask_De_H]

d6+4 >= 7 is a roll over operation. Hunt and pecking for the correct dice is something you can do with roll over or roll under, so why not do it with a system that can handle greater variance in upper and lower bounds?

Tussock, you should really see a doctor. I think the Alzhimers is starting to kick in. Either that or young adult stupid has ossified in your brain so deeply you are the exception that defies the rule of "age brings wisdom".