The New School Manifesto

[erik]

That of course is assuming you only need a single success, if Kemperboyd is copying of reign (which is amazing) then the width of your dice pool can matter, thus allowing for two tiers of probability, 1: Succeeding at all and 2: succeeding well?

Also This math assumes all the die are different apart from the pair... If I understand it correctly?

No, this math does not assume all dice are different other than the pair, it includes triplets, multiple dupes, etc. This math is just the simpler calculation of whether there are *any* matches, or 1-(probability that there are no matches).

Oh shit, I have played some One-Roll Engine games before to my dismay. If I recall in the very opener of the book it outright notes that the system is broken and that it is upon the players to not abuse it (a friend bought the book and read it aloud thinking it was a great insight by the designer... rather than a shameful admission of failure). Unfortunately not abusing it is a tall order since some of the math is so obfuscated you might not realize you are destined to fail or auto-succeed. One-roll engine is not a system that you ever want to emulate.

And if you are emulating it to the degree of needing extra successes, wiggle dice, hard dice and so forth... gooooood fucking luck being able to eyeball those probabilities.


[edit/correction: it turns out I bought a Wild Talents core book also since it was cheep cheep, and I rummaged through trying to find the excerpt I was recalling. turns out it was at the end of the book. the designer says it can be "min-maxed" and that players should make an agreement to stay on the same level as each other rather than making invincible or overly weak characters.]

[Kemper Boyd]

I think that the basic design wisdom is that any system can be gamed. There's some rather famous CharOp examples regarding 3rd ed D&D and of course the Wild West game Aces and Eights, where (to my recollection) the best way to fight someone is circlestrafing.

I assume that game groups should police their own social contracts, which have the purpose of making the game fun for the whole group. After all, there are no systems that are impervious to cheesy minmaxing tendencies.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Personally, I think player empowerment relates more to giving them some narrative control and making it clear that the player characters are straight away cool and competent people, instead of being guys that die of one hit, like 1st level D&D wizards.

Sure, but it can be more than one thing.

Knowing that you have some directoral control and room to screw up definitely does increase player comfort levels – but so does accessible system mastery. If player empowerment is a key part of your goals, you should implement it everywhere you can.

[Username17]

If you want your players to do your fucking balance work for you because you are a lazy and shitty designer, then you'd better make an easily comprehensible and predictable mechanic so that they can fucking do that.

Obtuse mechanics are only acceptable if you're going to put in the effort to balance everything yourself and commit yourself to patching things if it doesn't work out. It's OK for the numbers to be mostly hidden in a game like WoW, because you're going to balance things if people find exploits. If you're going to make the people at home patch exploits on the fly, then the system needs to be transparent enough for the MC to figure out whether an exploit is in use right away.

-Username17

[Kemper Boyd]

Knowing that you have some directoral control and room to screw up definitely does increase player comfort levels – but so does accessible system mastery. If player empowerment is a key part of your goals, you should implement it everywhere you can.

Not part of my manifesto really, but I feel that system mastery is in itself a bad design goal. I'd rather have something that might be a bit harder to master but plays a lot faster.

Monte Cook designed 3rd ed D&D on a basis of rewarding system mastery, and he himself has admitted that there's stuff in there that just doesn't work right because of that.

[Stormgale]

That of course is assuming you only need a single success, if Kemperboyd is copying of reign (which is amazing) then the width of your dice pool can matter, thus allowing for two tiers of probability, 1: Succeeding at all and 2: succeeding well?

Also This math assumes all the die are different apart from the pair... If I understand it correctly?

No, this math does not assume all dice are different other than the pair, it includes triplets, multiple dupes, etc. This math is just the simpler calculation of whether there are *any* matches, or 1-(probability that there are no matches).

Well it accounts a count those all those rather than representing them all in one calculation. My point was that if you dictate the amount or value of a matching set as a factor like ore does the there is less of a stagnation of.gain at higher dice pool, as you are able to gain larger matching sets or pick one of a higher value

[erik]

Requiring more successes or success of particular numbers will bring a wider range of probabilities, but it's already somewhat obfuscated and once you add in additional factors it gets confoundingly complex to calculate, let alone intuit, and that just compounds the already pressing problem where players are not empowered to make informed decisions.

[TheFlatline]

Personally, I think player empowerment relates more to giving them some narrative control and making it clear that the player characters are straight away cool and competent people, instead of being guys that die of one hit, like 1st level D&D wizards.

How do you have narrative control when you don't know what the fuck your odds of doing something are? Fiat? Magic Tea Party?

You've already admitted you don't know what the math is of your system, just that "moar=good!" levels of bullshit. Which means that *all* of the grey area of your game design basically comes down to "fuck if I know!"

You need good, solid math and dice resolution mechanics because when the math works, you don't have to playtest every scenario in existence to verify that the basic resolution mechanics stand a chance of working. You know the math works, the conflict system is robust and can withstand abuse, and you can trust in it somewhat to be reliable in the grey areas of a game... where most games take place to be honest.

And frankly, as far as matching/pattern recognition, we are adept at it but not always particularly fast. I know at least 4 players who would probably take close on to 30 seconds to sort through 10 dice. In fact, people will start missing shit after 2-3 hours of gameplay.

How does the mechanic function when people are tired? Drunk? Distracted? When the DM has 4 people all yelling different things at him how easy is it to match pairs up in combat? You need to ask these questions of your system.

And here's a question. Is 3 of a kind one matching pair or two? Is 4 of a kind two pair or six pair? If I roll two 2s and four 6s how many pair is that? I mean seriously... Do multiple "successes" matter? If they do, computing odds gets funky fast again, since you're calculating iterative dice pools.

[Stubbazubba]

I assume that game groups should police their own social contracts, which have the purpose of making the game fun for the whole group. After all, there are no systems that are impervious to cheesy minmaxing tendencies.

This is true, and a perfectly balanced game with absolutely no minmaxing potential will never be designed.

But look at it this way; if you are relying on the players' social contract to keep them from being way more powerful than other people's characters anyway, then do you really need the rules at all? Why can't you just get on an online forum and free-style RP? If there are rules, then the rules need to be reliable and sound, so that people who use them are balanced against each other and against the game's appropriate challenges, so you can focus on role-playing your character, overcoming adversity, and triumphing over evil, as your philosophy implies. If, on top of all that, you have to police each other's character decisions and figure out on the fly what your odds of success are, it disengages the player from the RP experience, and you end up spending more time learning the system and bickering with your own play group than you do rescuing hostages, defeating dark lords, and relishing in your victories. So you have to design a system with the intent that it can withstand a high degree of abuse as was previously mentioned, most of which will come on accident, just by players experimenting with different things. If that is not one of the features of your system, it actually can't help people get together and tell exciting stories any more than they could do so on their own, without it.

That's why Frank immediately jumps to calling you stupid. There is an intermediate step, but around here, the fact that unbalanced and/or "broken" systems which rely almost wholly on the social contract (Magic Tea Party) or the give-and-take between a player and DM's negotiation skills (Mother May I) to keep the game fun for everyone are garbage is assumed background knowledge, thus we don't have to explain to each other each time why X mechanic or system is garbage; once we've proven that the math produces incorrect results, the rest naturally follows, so we skip straight to insults, the fun part.

[Kemper Boyd]

How do you have narrative control when you don't know what the fuck your odds of doing something are? Fiat? Magic Tea Party?

You've already admitted you don't know what the math is of your system, just that "moar=good!" levels of bullshit. Which means that *all* of the grey area of your game design basically comes down to "fuck if I know!"

You need good, solid math and dice resolution mechanics because when the math works, you don't have to playtest every scenario in existence to verify that the basic resolution mechanics stand a chance of working. You know the math works, the conflict system is robust and can withstand abuse, and you can trust in it somewhat to be reliable in the grey areas of a game... where most games take place to be honest.

And frankly, as far as matching/pattern recognition, we are adept at it but not always particularly fast. I know at least 4 players who would probably take close on to 30 seconds to sort through 10 dice. In fact, people will start missing shit after 2-3 hours of gameplay.

How does the mechanic function when people are tired? Drunk? Distracted? When the DM has 4 people all yelling different things at him how easy is it to match pairs up in combat? You need to ask these questions of your system.

And here's a question. Is 3 of a kind one matching pair or two? Is 4 of a kind two pair or six pair? If I roll two 2s and four 6s how many pair is that? I mean seriously... Do multiple "successes" matter? If they do, computing odds gets funky fast again, since you're calculating iterative dice pools.

I love magical tea parties! Or at least the term sounds like fun, I have to say I have no idea what it even means.

Ok, for reals, trying to answer your questions here despite having a cat demanding my attention constantly.

No system works well under all conditions. Some people are bad at math for example, which makes systems like D&D 3rd Ed and D6 hard to play. If people are distracted, tired or drunk, no system will perform well.

Three of a kind is three of a kind, four of a kind is four of a kind. How many of a kind you have tells you how well you do. In certain situations (I don't really feel like going into too much detail right now) rolling multiple matches of various numbers is good.

While sometimes it's hard to calculate exactly how well you can do, it's not too hard to figure out if you have a chance of success, like eric proved with his quick chart a few posts back.

[Kemper Boyd]

[So you have to design a system with the intent that it can withstand a high degree of abuse as was previously mentioned, most of which will come on accident, just by players experimenting with different things. If that is not one of the features of your system, it actually can't help people get together and tell exciting stories any more than they could do so on their own, without it.

I have actually tested the basic rules (ran a short campaign last summer), some parts of the game are new and somewhat untested as of yet, but rest assured, I do believe in playtesting. Playtesting is, in my opinion, much more important that ultra-solid maths since if done as a proper process, it gives you much more insight into how rules work in play, than just working out maths on paper.

Your Business Sucks has a pretty good description about the process: http://yourbusinesssucks.wordpress.com/ ... your-turd/

And if something doesn't work in play, I'll dump it overboard. No problem with doing that.

[Libertad]

I think that this thread has some good points about the system and I'll leave it at that.

It's not as obtuse as it's made out to be.

[Username17]

Knowing that you have some directoral control and room to screw up definitely does increase player comfort levels – but so does accessible system mastery. If player empowerment is a key part of your goals, you should implement it everywhere you can.

Not part of my manifesto really, but I feel that system mastery is in itself a bad design goal. I'd rather have something that might be a bit harder to master but plays a lot faster.

Monte Cook designed 3rd ed D&D on a basis of rewarding system mastery, and he himself has admitted that there's stuff in there that just doesn't work right because of that.

You have no idea what the words that are coming out of your mouth mean.

When Monte Cook was talking about "rewarding system mastery", he meant that there were things that were good that did not look good. And conversely that there were things that were bad that did not look bad. If your resolution system is incredibly, pointlessly, deliberately opaque, then you're fucking right that things will be shitty or awesome without looking that way on the first or forty-seventh glance.

In short, you just referenced Monte Cook apologizing to the gaming community for doing the thing you want to do to the whole game system - but he only did it a couple of times. System mastery is about knowing the game and being able to get it to do the things you want it to do. The "rewards" that Monte was referencing in that essay were simply parts of the system that behaved in a non-intuitive fashion that people familiar with the mechanics could take advantage of.

But if your entire resolution system is a catastrofail that you can't even figure out while you're making it, then chances are good that at least half of the game will behave in reality in a very much counterintuitive manner. Exactly the thing Monte said was a bad thing to do a handful of times. For half the fucking game.

Do not cite essays about how your idea is shit in an attempt to defend your idea unless you cite the essay in order to refute it.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

I'm really at the point of saying "troll" in this thread and being done with it. Either that or the dude is in high school or is rolling on no real RPG experience at all.

[PoliteNewb]

I don't even give a shit if roll-and-match systems are good or sucky; I've looked at the One Roll Engine in Godlike, and while it looks interesting, I seriously doubt it would play all that well...while I love the setting for Godlike, it would probably need healthy amounts of MTP (and might even play better as a freeform)...the fact that all the cool characters in the game were built WAY better than anybody you're likely to play are proof that this game is not about player empowerment.

My sole gripe is with backlash dice. Whether or not roll-and-match can create a good or predictable RNG is beside the point. My point is entirely that backlash dice fuck over players, and do so on an extremely regular basis. That is utterly incompatible with any kind of "player empowerment", because it is flat-out statistically designed to fuck players over.

You are giving them a power which will bite them in the ass. That is the opposite of player empowerment, which is "here is a power and you can do cool stuff with it". Having a chance of failure can generate a debate about how big it can be...having a chance of destroying yourself by trying to use the power you invested game resources in is a non-starter. If you design a game like that, you are an asshole. Full stop.

If you cannot understand this despite people screaming it in your face, you are too ignorant to be a game designer.

Playtesting is, in my opinion, much more important that ultra-solid maths since if done as a proper process, it gives you much more insight into how rules work in play, than just working out maths on paper.

Playtesting cannot be more important than ultra-solid maths, because of 2 reasons:

1.) If you're using fair dice and a big enough testing pool, the playtest results will utterly bear out your solid maths. Except that doing the math beforehand lets you know what to expect, so you don't have to go "huh, that resulted in 9 out of 10 TPKs, oh well, back to the drawing board". Doing the math ahead of time would have told you that without giving 100 people a bad experience.

2.) Playtesting always includes the chance that the people playing will simply ignore your rules if they give unfun results. If your maths show that the rules as written will kill half the parties that play with them, a lot of groups will say "shit, that's obviously wrong", and ignore it, and have a good time. And then YOU will say "hey, people had a good time, my game must be awesome!".

People can have fun with a game no matter how shitty it is. That is why play experiences cannot fully tell you if a game is good or bad.

I love magical tea parties! Or at least the term sounds like fun, I have to say I have no idea what it even means.

In case you really do need this: Magical Tea Party (MTP) is where the DM and/or players simply make something up, rather than rolling any dice or having any established rules. It is so-called because it is indistinguishable from little kids play tea party, or cops & robbers, or any game where it simply collaborative imagining with no hard rules.

It's not a bad thing. Most games use it to some extent. But it is absolutely NOT part of the game rules, and relying on it to deal with rules problems is a big mistake.

Your game should also not rely heavily on it, because MTP is free. Everyone can do it without buying anything. So why should they pay money for a game that says "make something up!"? They can do that already without paying any money!

No system works well under all conditions. Some people are bad at math for example, which makes systems like D&D 3rd Ed and D6 hard to play. If people are distracted, tired or drunk, no system will perform well.

I disagree. Some games work better when people are drunk.
Obviously, all systems do not work well under all conditions. What you are refusing to grasp is that this system performs worse than other systems regardless of circumstances. Under what circumstances does your roll-and-match abortion work better than simply 1d20 + bonuses vs. Target Number? Or Roll Percentiles under Skill Rating? Or flip a fucking coin?

Personally, I think player empowerment relates more to giving them some narrative control and making it clear that the player characters are straight away cool and competent people, instead of being guys that die of one hit, like 1st level D&D wizards.

I can agree with that. But your rules system does not provide, at least not for spellcasters.

If your spell blows up in your face one time in five, you are NOT a cool and competent wizard. You are a fucking joke. You can die in no hits...you can die because you tried to cast a spell that you invested ten fucking dice in, because you wanted to be an awesome wizard.

[Username17]

I think that this thread has some good points about the system and I'll leave it at that.

It's not as obtuse as it's made out to be.

No they don't. Actually, having checked to see that this is in fact part of a troll thread shitstorm by the Something Awful dumbasses, I think TheFlatline is right. This is a troll thread.

The OP is just saying stupid shit to offend us so that the Something Awful types can circle jerk each other some more. I predict that we're about to be invaded by a bunch more dumbasses that I'm going to have to put on ignore. Last year there was an invasion of trolls from there, I'm guessing it's just time.

-Username17

[Koumei]

No they don't. Actually, having checked to see that this is in fact part of a troll thread shitstorm by the Something Awful dumbasses, I think TheFlatline is right. This is a troll thread.

Oh joy, they're still at it. Is Professor Cirno involved by any chance? Hating the Den is one of his main hobbies.

I predict that we're about to be invaded by a bunch more dumbasses that I'm going to have to put on ignore. Last year there was an invasion of trolls from there, I'm guessing it's just time.

Oh joy. Still, they're later than last year, maybe it won't last as long.

[PhoneLobster]

While I like to see people insulting Frank and calling him stupid... those something awful guys there are so damn fucking moronic and so clearly wrong... they just pick any quote and call it stupid and anger inducing... for no relevant reason, they don't need one, just you know, they hate Frank or something.

They are so dumb about calling things dumb they discredit ever calling anything dumb that Frank or anyone says. As someone who likes to call stupid things stupid this offends me, because when you say stupid things to call something sensible stupid it undermines those of us with the ability to tell the fucking difference. Someone you dislike, someone who even has said stupid things in the past, is not automatically saying stupid things now and not understanding that makes you fucking stupid. Even shadzar, in a manner similar to monkeys on typewriters, may, one day, in an imagined future, say something moderately decipherable as sanity.

But all in all fuck it, compared to 5 shadzar "what is a thingz?" threads in one week...

[erik]

Wow, it's like we're being trolled into violating one of our few rules here. I'll resist tho and just set the ignore beam to stun.

To Kemper, I'm assuming you came here in good faith, hopefully some of the analysis, if not the insults will take seed and be helpful to your endeavors.
To the douchebags on something awful, well, I don't really have any hope that you can read your way out of this sentence let alone understand basic math, so fuck off.


[edit: unsurprisingly, I was right. the somethingawfulbags could not read their way out of my sentence. they have attributed multiple of my posts including this one to Frank... way to fail guys]

[Stubbazubba]

[So you have to design a system with the intent that it can withstand a high degree of abuse as was previously mentioned, most of which will come on accident, just by players experimenting with different things. If that is not one of the features of your system, it actually can't help people get together and tell exciting stories any more than they could do so on their own, without it.

I have actually tested the basic rules (ran a short campaign last summer), some parts of the game are new and somewhat untested as of yet, but rest assured, I do believe in playtesting. Playtesting is, in my opinion, much more important that ultra-solid maths since if done as a proper process, it gives you much more insight into how rules work in play, than just working out maths on paper.

Your Business Sucks has a pretty good description about the process: http://yourbusinesssucks.wordpress.com/ ... your-turd/

And if something doesn't work in play, I'll dump it overboard. No problem with doing that.

I don't know how that was supposed to refer to what I said, but OK, I'll roll with it.

What was the scenario of your playtesting? What power level were the characters at, against what power level of enemies? What were the results of your playtesting? What problems came up, what was the cause of said problem, and what changes did you make? Did those changes mitigate resolve the problem?

[Kemper Boyd]

To Kemper, I'm assuming you came here in good faith, hopefully some of the analysis, if not the insults will take seed and be helpful to your endeavors.

(Posting in kind of a hurry since I'm heading off to the courthouse to do work)

Thanks for you consideration here. Rest assured I always argue in good faith, I discuss the things I get as feedback with people who work with me and the testing groups, trying to find out what works, what doesn't and what needs to be communicated more clearly. There's different schools of design, and while I do my own thing, I still like to get other people's viewpoints.

[PoliteNewb]

Rest assured I always argue in good faith.

Among the many things I don't think you understand, you apparently don't know what it means to "argue in good faith".

Most people define it as being willing to, when people raise points, either address them or concede them.

The way you are mostly ignoring mine (and most people's) has got me pretty convinced you're not here to argue in good faith at all.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Assuming this isn't a troll thread, I'm a little curious to know why d10s are the dice of choice for this. If you're checking for numerical matches, 10's a pretty significant number of digits. And I find most d10s kind of cumbersome. They aren't platonic solids, and it's easier for them to tip over.

The one real upside I can think of is that you might be able to do some kind of substitution where you can use playing cards instead of dice (one of the things that drove the brief period in which I was interested in Framewerk) but I'm not sure how well that would work in this system.

If the math isn't being examined in depth, why pick this specific RNG component?

[John Magnum]

There's different schools of design, and while I do my own thing, I still like to get other people's viewpoints.

Okay, but apparently the school of design you wrote your manifesto about is wholly different from the school of design you follow when you actually make games. What gives?

[PhoneLobster]

If the math isn't being examined in depth, why pick this specific RNG component?

In my experience there is a very strong correlation between game designers who don't examine their math and it's implications in depth and game designers who use punishingly complex and counter productive math in their base mechanics.

There is also a strong correlation between players who will accept such punishing and counter productive math in a game's base mechanics and the players who show themselves to be least equipped to understand how the fuck that mechanic even works or WTF it means.

Take what message you want from that.

But for me it is certainly absolutely no surprise after seeing that mechanic to find that the guy who made it doesn't even know off the top of his head the sorts of results it is likely to produce.