Why is math so underrated?

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Voss
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Post by Voss »

Guts wrote:Voss, maybe it deserves it's own topic, but, long-story short, Shadowrun is simply too cluttered and incoherent for it's own sake. It aims at a group doing criminal heists while conflating physical, virtual, astral and vehicular action. In practice, though, it doesn't pull if off, because each sub-system is unnecessarily complex and slow, and fit badly together . Add to that an opaque resolution mechanic (dice pools) that's even worse depending on edition (game feels pulpy with variable target numbers up to 5, and feels gritty with targets above that).

The other cited games aim for the same goals (criminal heists) but in much faster, simpler, coherent and transparent ways.
That's a (flawed and stupid) critique of Shadowrun. Not an answer to either of the questions I asked.

The hell would anyone want fast or simple heist mechanics? Heists are 95% of the game! Not playing it is damn easy.
Last edited by Voss on Sun Dec 10, 2017 4:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Zaranthan »

Guts wrote:Whatever, just forget about those games then.

Contrast Shadowrun with Blades in the Dark. Or just analyse it in isolation.

The point stands. ;)
They're the same damn game with different set dressing. Changing the setting does not change our complaints about the system.
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Post by Guts »

Sorry, but are you saying Shadowrun is the same game as Blades in the Dark? I must respectfully disagree. Poke at any corner of Blades in the Dark ruleset and it stands. Mix Shadowrun's Combat, Matrix and Rigging rules and it crumbles the game to a halt. O just run Combat.. with a dozen opponents, and give sayonara to the reminder of your 4 hours session.
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Post by Guts »

Voss wrote:
Guts wrote:Voss, maybe it deserves it's own topic, but, long-story short, Shadowrun is simply too cluttered and incoherent for it's own sake. It aims at a group doing criminal heists while conflating physical, virtual, astral and vehicular action. In practice, though, it doesn't pull if off, because each sub-system is unnecessarily complex and slow, and fit badly together . Add to that an opaque resolution mechanic (dice pools) that's even worse depending on edition (game feels pulpy with variable target numbers up to 5, and feels gritty with targets above that).

The other cited games aim for the same goals (criminal heists) but in much faster, simpler, coherent and transparent ways.
That's a (flawed and stupid) critique of Shadowrun. Not an answer to either of the questions I asked.

The hell would anyone want fast or simple heist mechanics? Heists are 95% of the game! Not playing it is damn easy.
You're actually supporting me here. "Who would want a combat subsystem that takes 2 hours to resolve?? It's a heist game, not a World War 2 one!".

Precisely my point.
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Post by Username17 »

Guts wrote:Sorry, but are you saying Shadowrun is the same game as Blades in the Dark? I must respectfully disagree. Poke at any corner of Blades in the Dark ruleset and it stands. Mix Shadowrun's Combat, Matrix and Rigging rules and it crumbles the game to a halt. O just run Combat.. with a dozen opponents, and give sayonara to the reminder of your 4 hours session.
No. He's saying that Blades in the Dark is the same fucking game as The Sprawl. In that it appears on the Powered By the Apocalypse list and therefore the core criticism of the game mechanics is unchanged. You can bring up literally any fucking Powered By the Apocalypse game and my criticism would remain unchanged. And in any and all cases, the opacity of the core mechanic is literally infinite, so claiming that it is more transparent than literally any other game is laughable on the face.

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Post by Guts »

Again: whatever. Analyze Shadowrun in isolation if you will. My point remains.


Edit: Heh, you seem to have agreed with me in another thread:
FrankTrollman wrote:honestly, getting Shadowrun into a less second by second accounting of the physics engine and more into abstract action resolution is a great idea. That is the direction that Shadowrun should move into. That it should have moved into twenty actual fucking years ago
That's the problem of Shadowrun in a nutshell. So much granularity and minutia made the subsystems untainable in play. As anyone who played with a decker in the group will attest. ;)
Last edited by Guts on Sun Dec 10, 2017 4:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Username17 »

Shadowrun has lots of problems, but you have not been accurate when describing them. And your proposed solution of "Just play Apocalypse World, LOL" makes the problems you claim to care about worse. Literally infinitely worse.

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Post by Guts »

I'm glad we agree Shadowrun is full of problems.

Edit: About PbtA I'm 100% sure you're talking out of your ass and never actually played any of them. So whatever. ;)
Last edited by Guts on Sun Dec 10, 2017 5:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Voss »

Guts wrote:
Voss wrote:
Guts wrote:Voss, maybe it deserves it's own topic, but, long-story short, Shadowrun is simply too cluttered and incoherent for it's own sake. It aims at a group doing criminal heists while conflating physical, virtual, astral and vehicular action. In practice, though, it doesn't pull if off, because each sub-system is unnecessarily complex and slow, and fit badly together . Add to that an opaque resolution mechanic (dice pools) that's even worse depending on edition (game feels pulpy with variable target numbers up to 5, and feels gritty with targets above that).

The other cited games aim for the same goals (criminal heists) but in much faster, simpler, coherent and transparent ways.
That's a (flawed and stupid) critique of Shadowrun. Not an answer to either of the questions I asked.

The hell would anyone want fast or simple heist mechanics? Heists are 95% of the game! Not playing it is damn easy.
You're actually supporting me here. "Who would want a combat subsystem that takes 2 hours to resolve?? It's a heist game, not a World War 2 one!".

Precisely my point.
No, it isn't your point - if you actually think you are quoting me you're an utter moron.

Replacing a heist (which is not 2 hours of combat- its planning, surveillance, sneaking, diplomancing, bullshittery, and all sorts of other complexity) with a half dozen 'is bears?' checks is fucking terrible.

At its best, a Shadowrun should be like one of the better Ocean's XX movies, with the constant threat of violence breaking out.
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Post by Guts »

Constant threat of violence is fine. A combat encounter that takes 2 hours long (even 1 hour!) has nothing to do with heists genre.

That's the point.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Okay, I'm gonna try to break this down slowly for you Guts.

Everyone here gets that Shadowrun is needlessly complex and that some of its rules are literally unplayable. We have entire threads dedicated to that observation. The bit people are disagreeing with is the conclusion you're drawing from that. Shadowrun being bad isn't sufficient to prove that PbtA isn't opaque. Like, at all. They have wildly different opacity problems generated by wildly different approaches.
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Post by Voss »

that... isn't the point. It wasn't even your point, since it wasn't on your own damn list of stuff you think the game is 'conflating' by having separate complex systems for them. Which I hope at some point you realize is a stupid fucking thing to say.

Combat wasn't even under discussion until you randomly brought up world war 2. Your failure at SR combat isn't anyone's problem, and replacing the actual SR gameplay with simple die rolls and a whole lot of asspulling is not worth considering.
Last edited by Voss on Sun Dec 10, 2017 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Guts »

Whipstitch wrote:Okay, I'm gonna try to break this down slowly for you Guts.

Everyone here gets that Shadowrun is needlessly complex and that some of its rules are literally unplayable. We have entire threads dedicated to that observation. The bit people are disagreeing with is the conclusion you're drawing from that. Shadowrun being bad isn't sufficient to prove that PbtA isn't opaque. Like, at all. They have wildly different opacity problems generated by wildly different approaches.
Thanks, Whipstitch. But I've dropped the comparison to other games already. Shadowrun is bad enough by itself. Lol

Sorry if I disrupted the topic or something. Let's move on.
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Post by Mistborn »

Guts wrote:Sorry if I disrupted the topic or something. Let's move on.
Just bear with me for a second. So a year or so back the den had to deal with the blatant troll who did nothing but shill for *World games. It was unbearable. This has made the den a bit of a bear market with respect to games of it's ilk.

Thus if you unironically sing the praises of those sorts of games without doing the bear minimum of research into the dens criticism of those systems people are going thing you're trolling. Leading to a grizzly fate for your reputation on this website.
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Post by Guts »

Nice wording. :D
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Post by erik »

Does the Sprawl or Blades in the Dark address the problem of *world games that the output of any roll or action is always "Whatever the MC was thinking of"?

Most RPGs use mechanics to resolve conflicts and uncertainty, not to create them.
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Post by Guts »

Played both and never had this problem. I suggest giving both a read and taking your own conclusions. And, if needed, discussing it out on their respective threads.,;)
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Post by John Magnum »

At a glance, it seems like PBTA evangelists have really good experiences where their particular MC is a great storyteller and has cool ideas for scenes, and then they attribute that to the system Unshackling Them From Petty Rules. It's obviously not impossible to have a great actual-play experience with a PBTA game if you and your MC are on the same wavelength, but that's true of literally every RPG and also "no system at all".
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Post by Username17 »

Guts wrote:Played both and never had this problem.
I submit that it is obvious that you did have this problem, but that you're too fucking stupid to figure out that that is what you were looking at. Here's my challenge to you:
  • Think back to the last time someone rolled "success at a cost" on a test.
  • What did the player declare they were trying to do?
  • What actually happened?
That's it. That's the whole challenge. I submit before you even start to think back on what the last relevant event even was, that the thing that happened was that there was an MC ass-pull event. And further I submit that if you write it down it will be painfully obvious to absolutely everyone that that is what happened. Because in PBtA games, that is what happens on literally every roll. And while it is sometimes hard to see that that is what is going on when people roll full success or full failure, it is always and forever extremely easy to see that going on when someone rolls the partial success result.

It is inconceivable that anyone who has "actually played" one of these pieces of shit will have not be able to think of a success at a cost result. They happen on like one roll in four even for characters who stay within their specialties when making moves. And it is further inconceivable that the result won't have been an MC ass-pull, because that is how the game actually works.

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Post by Guts »

FrankTrollman wrote:Think back to the last time someone rolled "success at a cost" on a test.
Our mage trying to bypass a sentry spirit during an Aztechnology run. He previously discovered this "kill switch" that liberated the spirit which consisted in drawing a pattern in the air with the fingers tips in blood.
What did the player declare they were trying to do?
Bypass or disable he spirit so the group could go on.
What actually happened?
He bypassed the spirit BUT in a sloppy way that his blood was all over the place, meaning the Mission Clock (which tracks the site alertness) went up one notch as soon as we left the room. It was still too low for any alerts to trigger, but enough to raise some suspicion in local guards. No player complained, which means everybody felt comfortable with the MC arbitration, and we moved on.

Please enlighten my "ignorance" in the situation, or what's supposedly wrong with the game.
Last edited by Guts on Mon Dec 11, 2017 1:54 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Post by Zinegata »

angelfromanotherpin wrote:As a guy who worked at a gaming store for the entirety of 4e's run, I can confirm that 'the math just works' was an official marketing phrase, parroted both by the reps running D&D encounters and the players who came to buy it.
I checked the front and back covers and don't see it for 4E materials.

""It" (the game) just works"" is something I've heard people say to defend 4E, but that's hardly equal to just the math.

Again, it seems to me that it's a talking point specifically for people who want to bring up the math issue; which is why it's the biggest thing ever for the Den but not really something I've found with other 4e playgroups.

And really, it's 2017. The idea that games only sell because of math was barely acceptable back in 2004. It's pretty much a totally dead idea now. Your theme and artwork are just as important, and in many cases more so.

Oh, and since we're talking game store experience: As I'm now a part-owner of two stores and an online shop, I have to say that the selling staff (who are seasoned gamers) are more likely to be amazed at how a "bad" game sells very well purely because of the pretty art and components as opposed to the "good" games that have kinda boring artwork; and that the experience of the majority of shop owners we meet is identical.
Last edited by Zinegata on Mon Dec 11, 2017 3:31 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Zinegata »

Cervantes wrote:I'm not really understanding how you're disagreeing with me here. We do want our RPGs to be fair so we design them that way. And we're obviously not in the world of freeform narrative because we're doing collaborative narrative so we need some sort of social contract to prevent it from turning into "yelling contest" or "most socially skilled person wins".
I'm disagreeing with your specific point that narratives are necessarily fair, because it points to the underlying wrong premise that has caused RPGs to be marginalized despite there being a "Golden Age" of tabletop gaming.

Namely, the idea that RPGs would be great if they have solid math and mechanically fair systems. I would argue that RPGs are in fact enjoyable because they tend to produce unfair situations - because it's the only game system where you can end up being an underdog or enjoying a power fantasy.

Note that there have already been many "fair" games released in the market for the Dungeon Crawler genre - the most prominent of which are Descent and Imperial Assault - and these have even done away with the DM altogether in favor of an app that controls the monsters for you. They are enjoyable for people who really like combat encounters and looting, but they are a pale shadow of what typically makes an RPG campaign memorable.

What's needed is exactly what you noted - a system to prevent one person ("the most socially skilled person") from hogging the limelight in order to facilitate fair narrative play. And yet, quite frankly, very few RPGs codify such a system. Instead they are focused almost primarily in "balancing" the combat or "making it work", when that's not what necessarily makes the RPG tick to begin with.

And that is the danger in holding up math as the be-all-end-all of game design, and of treating design problems as something that can only be solved by math. Sometimes all that clever math just ends up solving the wrong problem.
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Post by Zinegata »

Mask_De_H wrote:First, are you saying a behavioral psychiatrist wouldn't know how to do good math? Or that it doesn't take some understanding of math and human behavior to get the number of cards per hand/in deck/in play right?
The point is that math isn't the beginning and the end.

Indeed, that Frank thinks that math sells and is used as an actual major marketing point for all games when pretty much no game ever literally places it in the packaging should point as to how it's probably only important here in the context of 4venger arguments than a serious communication point. It's very myopic and in no way reflects how modern games are designed.

The reality is that math doesn't sell. It's instead an implicit expectation that the math works. That's why when I see a Reiner Knizia (a mathematician designer) game I know the math is balanced but am unsure about everything else and probably won't buy it - because frankly a lot of his games tend to be very boring.

The advertising moreover revolves primarily around theme and artwork. That this is true should be blatantly obvious even back in the early 2000s when Magic was about the only major tabletop game with regular design articles - as Magic is a game that literally devotes half of each card to artwork!

And the same is repeated across almost every game of every genre. 4E cover? Mostly artwork. Boring Euro game? Some European Trading Guy Artwork. That's the actual reality of advertising games.
And what do you think gets tweaked under the hood in response to playtest feedback? Pictures?

You're trying to prove a point to seem like the wizened "real" gamer against Frank's number autism, but it's a bad point. TTRPGs are games that run on numbers, as are most boardgames.
First of all, I'm not saying I'm a "wizened real gamer". But if your gut is telling you that then maybe you should actually consider why your gut feels that way. It seems to point to your own insecurity about your own gaming chops more than anything else.

Moreover, your main position is very misleading. Games don't run on numbers, because the numbers can't run by themselves in a tabletop setting. This is not a computer simulation. A game only comes alive if the players use those rules.

That's why modern design is based on human emotions and experiences. If the humans playing the game don't have an emotional experience then they'll shrug and not play the game again. Making sure the humans playing the game have a good experience is the ultimate end goal. The math is merely a means to that end, and sometimes it's a kind of means that's not needed for a particular game.

For instance two of the biggest boardgames in recent years - Cards Against Humanity and Codenames - barely has any math at all. They instead run almost purely based on the player's experiences and how they can associate different words and phrases together.

By contrast when talking about RPGs I rarely hear that players enjoy how they got a +20 bonus on a roll. Rather, what players talk about is the action they did and its effects.

For example: The bard saw a bloody encounter with an Ogre coming, tried to charm the Ogre, and rolled a 20. The DM then says the Ogre is now their friend and the players breathe a sigh of relief, have a good laugh, and congratulate the bard's player.

Yeah, it's totally not how Diplomacy should work as written but when I talk to actual current RPG players these are the things they tend to remember. It has very, very little to do with how the math is awesome.
Last edited by Zinegata on Mon Dec 11, 2017 2:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Cervantes »

Zinegata wrote:I'm disagreeing with your specific point that narratives are necessarily fair, because it points to the underlying wrong premise that has caused RPGs to be marginalized despite there being a "Golden Age" of tabletop gaming.

Namely, the idea that RPGs would be great if they have solid math and mechanically fair systems. I would argue that RPGs are in fact enjoyable because they tend to produce unfair situations - because it's the only game system where you can end up being an underdog or enjoying a power fantasy.
I made literally none of these claims you're disputing. I would claim that RPGs need solid math but that that's not sufficient for the RPG to be great. And "solid math" is, of course, relative to the particular use of the math - math fails when it creates outputs which don't match the narrative you're trying to establish.
Zinegata wrote: Moreover, your main position is very misleading. Games don't run on numbers, because the numbers can't run by themselves in a tabletop setting. This is not a computer simulation. A game only comes alive if the players use those rules.

That's why modern design is based on human emotions and experiences. If the humans playing the game don't have an emotional experience then they'll shrug and not play the game again. Making sure the humans playing the game have a good experience is the ultimate end goal. The math is merely a means to that end, and sometimes it's a kind of means that's not needed for a particular game.
Nobody is claiming that game-instantiations are purely mathematical. But game-systems, from which instantiations stem (in combination with game settings), are. We can't critique game-instantiations because they rely on the players and the DM but we can critique the game-system.

We can critique the game setting as well. And we do. But that's not mathematical and we all know it. Have you seen the "Ends of the Matrix" thread? It's all about how the setting of the Matrix is fucking garbage and nonsense and how you can do it better.

A lot of people do not grasp the distinction, which is why we see Guts defending PBtA systems on the grounds that "they worked out for him".
Last edited by Cervantes on Mon Dec 11, 2017 2:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Zinegata »

Guts wrote:Whatever, just forget about those games then. Contrast Shadowrun with Blades in the Dark. Or just analyse it in isolation. The point stands: it's a slow and convoluted ruleset, that does not do what it says on the tin. It's authors "didn't do the math".

My humble opinion, of course, after dozens of hours in both cited games (Shadowrun and Blades) and half-dozen in Sprawl. ;)
Not talking about Shadowrun or Blades in the Dark specifically but...

Modern designers pay great attention to "user interface" and "rules creep", which are sadly two aspects that tabletop RPGs still totally ignore to this day.

More specifically, many games have come to realize that a very complex game system can be made more comprehensible through the use of intuitive player boards and iconography; of which Scythe must be held up as a prime example. It's a fairly heavy Euro 4X game with many subsystems (e.g. Technology, Military Combat, Production), but because the player boards are organized very well and the iconography is clear and consistent it's actually one of the easiest games to teach how to play.

By contrast RPG books still tend to be organized the same way as they were in the 70s; and still tend to be just a mass of rules with very few examples of play to facilitate teaching especially when no one in the group has ever played an RPG before.

Instead, RPGs have remained rooted in the mindset of bloat: More is better, regardless of what people can actually use. Never mind the fact that I probably only ever used less than 1/5 of the available creatures in the Monster Manual because so many are just "goblin with a gimmick". Meanwhile actual examples of how to actually run a game session tend to be taken for granted.
Last edited by Zinegata on Mon Dec 11, 2017 2:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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