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Mikan posted:Praise Dungeon World all you want but part of the reason Dungeon World works is very careful attention to word choice, a solid mathematical foundation and solid game design. You make a few good points but it's painful how you get there. The math is absolutely part of the problem and we desperately need more game designers who understand it. I never said the maths isn't part of the problem, but part of the reason Dungeon Worlds maths are so good is because it's simple. Everything is 2d6 and a narrow range of modifiers, and most things don't require a roll. That's it, nice and simple. None of this 'commoners can't see the sun' nonsense ever comes up because it knows when to stop rolling and leave it up to the GM. So yes, do your maths right. Make sure the numbers are solid, but that's way easier if you stop trying to do every drat thing with them. As for 'more mathematicians in game design', I'm not sold. While it's certainly important to make the numbers work, you want to let that drive the design. I've seen maths geeks get into a real numberwank when left to their own devices, often because they assume everyone is as fascinated by complex numbers are they are. The numbers should be simple as hell from the player's perspective, no matter how complicated they are on the other end (and they shouldn't be too complicated). My earlier comments were based on two things: 1) That the silly rear end 'rules as physics' notions of D&D seemed to be spawned from people treating fantasy fiction like a science project. 2) The fact that I always get annoyed watching maths and science types thinking things like creativity, design and writing aren't real skills. Sometimes I think what game designers really need is a fairly ordinary person to say "I don't understand that", "That doesn't make sense to me", "Can you make that simpler?" WordMercenary fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 11:46
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Piell posted:Would you have fun playing D&D if your big, super-strong fighter can't break down doors? If one character hits every time and another barely hits? If another character did exactly what you did, but twice as well? You can't make a good game without a solid rulebase, and that requires the designers to know the math. The key word there is "designers", not "math" by the way. It's fine for the underlying math to not be immediately apparent as a player. But it's not OK for the designer to ignore it. I think you've taken my point entirely the wrong way. I never objected to any of that. I'm simply arguing for keeping it simple. In fact I specifically called for people to focus on things like making sure you're hitting the right amount, and stop caring about whether Asmodeus can identify himself.
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Jun 8, 2013 11:49
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WordMercenary posted:I never said the maths isn't part of the problem, but part of the reason Dungeon Worlds maths are so good is because it's simple. Everything is 2d6 and a narrow range of modifiers, and most things don't require a roll. That's it, nice and simple. None of this 'commoners can't see the sun' nonsense ever comes up because it knows when to stop rolling and leave it up to the GM. D&D Next's math is not any simpler than 3.x or 4th edition. It is, however, much more poorly balanced than 4th edition (and much more obviously poorly balanced than 3rd). Edit: Yeah, you seem to be confusing "the designers aren't interested in looking at the math" as "the math is simpler." It isn't simpler - it's just as complex as it ever was, but now the designers are pretending they can just throw random numbers together and have it somehow work out correctly.
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Jun 8, 2013 11:51
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victrix posted:(It's a sacred cow, so it's pointless to bring up, but I'd argue that a system based on a single d20 is worse than one based on XdY with player and dm controlled added bonuses and penalties to swing results outside an expected range. Amusingly this is one of the few things I've seen in Next that I do like - combat dis/advantage gives you two rolls and you take the better or worse of the two) There's nothing inherently awful about a single-die resolution mechanic - d% systems (well, ok technically two dice) have been doing OK with it for decades. The problem is that D&D uses wandering target numbers, there's only one die so nothing normalize your rolls, and it's convoluted to look at. And the system frankly isn't designed around a single-roll resolution. So to do succeed at something "about half the time" BRP (Call of Cthulhu) would require you to have a 50% in that skill, but importantly doesn't mandate a test for routine tasks. Suppose you have a 50% drive; The keeper may have you test to avoid hitting a deer but not every time you parallel park. In D20, a "normal guy succeeds half the time" DC would be 11 (assuming no skill bonus/penalty, half the numbers on a D20 are 11 or higher.) But when are you ever in a situation where there are no modifiers? It's nighttime take a -2. And raining -2. Oops, first roll initiative... ok the deer has surprised you so you won't be acting in this round and oh wait don't bother rolling you've already hit it.
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Jun 8, 2013 12:02
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WordMercenary posted:I never said the maths isn't part of the problem, but part of the reason Dungeon Worlds maths are so good is because it's simple. Everything is 2d6 and a narrow range of modifiers, and most things don't require a roll. That's it, nice and simple. None of this 'commoners can't see the sun' nonsense ever comes up because it knows when to stop rolling and leave it up to the GM. Good design is hard. Making it simpler is good design, but that means it is hard. Good design looks simple from the outside, and works well even if the user (from the outside) don't understand why it's good. The principles on which a good game is built may require a math background to appreciate, but the results should not need any such background to use. Part of the problem in D&D Next actually seems to be that people are trying to simplify, but these people don't understand the implications of the design choices they're making, and as a result we're getting all sorts of unintuitive behavior when the system is forced to actually perform.
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Jun 8, 2013 12:06
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"The math" doesn't just refer to how many times out of 10 you're supposed to hit an orc. It refers to most of the game. All of the mechanics of an RPG and some of the fluff depends on "the math" being right. The fluff being believable in play mostly depends on the math being right. It's not fair to say you wouldn't give a gently caress about Next "even if the math was right" because "it would still be used badly". If it were done right, the game would look shockingly close to good. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 12:08
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Piell posted:D&D Next's math is not any simpler than 3.x or 4th edition. It is, however, much more poorly balanced than 4th edition (and much more obviously poorly balanced than 3rd). That's not what I'm doing at all. I don't know why you've assumed I'm pro Next or in favour of random number game design. In fact pretty much everyone seems to have taken my comments the wrong way entirely, except Mikan. Honestly I was just trying to provide an alternative point of view to the whole 'the math is the most important thing' attitude. Yes it has to work, but even if Next's math was beautiful in its balance, it would still be a lovely game, because what they're asking those numbers to do is deeply flawed. It doesn't matter how well elegant the maths of a commoner trying to walk uphill are, because you shouldn't even be trying to do that. Having taken a look at the 4chan thread, the one place where I'm oddly on Next's side is the decision not to give monsters trained skills. Why do we need to know how good Asmodeus is at identifying monsters? We don't. Similarly a commoner has a 1/4 chance to persuade Asmodeus to back down from the Blood War. Bad maths, right? Well not really, what chance should our hypothetical commoner have? He or she should have a 0% chance. So the error is not in the maths, it's in the fact that a simple persuade check is capable of such things in the first place.
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Jun 8, 2013 12:14
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WordMercenary posted:As for 'more mathematicians in game design', I'm not sold. While it's certainly important to make the numbers work, you want to let that drive the design. I've seen maths geeks get into a real numberwank when left to their own devices, often because they assume everyone is as fascinated by complex numbers are they are. The numbers should be simple as hell from the player's perspective, no matter how complicated they are on the other end (and they shouldn't be too complicated). That's not really how it works. I'm by no means a math dude - I only took statistics as part of my psych education, and I was a lit major before I switched over - but the whole point of having a strong mathematical basis in the design is that you can reduce complex things to a simple, easy to use process for players. You need someone skilled to do that. It's the same way a talented scientist can explain complex issues to layfolk, or a talented storyteller can present a complex story and explain its significance. The situation you describe, the lovely and over-complex math, is instead the result of people who are really bad at it. The status quo when it comes to RPG design is flawed math on a fundamental level - we have far, far too many people who are "creative" already, we need people who can actually make the math work in a way that brings that creativity to life. WordMercenary posted:I never said the maths isn't part of the problem, but part of the reason Dungeon Worlds maths are so good is because it's simple. Everything is 2d6 and a narrow range of modifiers, and most things don't require a roll. That's it, nice and simple. None of this 'commoners can't see the sun' nonsense ever comes up because it knows when to stop rolling and leave it up to the GM. Yeah, Dungeon World's simple math is great. It's not why Dungeon World works, but it's great. The rest of it though, you're off-base. "stop rolling and leave it up to the GM" is bad game design. It's a designer failing to do their job. What is good game design, and why Dungeon World/Apocalypse World/Monsterhearts/etc are so good, is because the moves are written in such a way as to provide a valid mechanical framework to apply those actions. * World is all about logic. You take an action, find out if there's a proper Move to model that action, and go from there. It's designed to work with the strengths of RPGs. It's every bit a design failing that 5e Asmodeus can't recognize other major devils. Dungeon World doesn't avoid this by just saying "gently caress it we all know he can right, it's cool" - it also does it in the way the moves have been designed. Part of it is that * World doesn't use binary success and is really more of a cause/effect system - if you fail a roll, it's not so much that you failed your action but that a bad thing is going to happen. You don't just roll 2d6, add a number and have a table tell you success/failure. Instead, you find the applicable move (Discern Realities) and follow it (okay, I roll +Int, roll a 9, see my options here and select from them, then we feed those results back into the gameplay and see what happens). D&D Next instead has the skill roll system or straight up DM fiat, those are your only options. Every action in D&D is the same Dungeon World move. quote:When you do literally anything at all, look at your DM and see if they agree with it. If yes, roll 1d20+modifier. On a (number), yes. On lower than (number), no. If they don't agree with it, listen to what they say. What makes Dungeon World work isn't that it relies on the DM - the DM doesn't have to leap through hoops to handle where the system failed - it's that it provides an awesome toolbox and works with the human element. 5e's problem isn't strictly a math issue, but it's absolutely exacerbated by the godawful math on display. WordMercenary posted:2) The fact that I always get annoyed watching maths and science types thinking things like creativity, design and writing aren't real skills. I don't disagree with any of this - but it's not happening in this field. "Less math" is actually what got us into this mess in the first place. There aren't any real math and science types making games here. (There aren't many good creative types designing games out there either) I don't know that I necessarily disagree with what you're saying because I agree DW owns and Next is bad, and I agree there's a lot of bad math out there from people who think they're good at it, but I think the main obstacle is we need more folks who are good at math and good at creative work designing games, because we generally have neither.
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Jun 8, 2013 12:15
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Speaking of Next math, did they fix the XP table yet?
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Jun 8, 2013 12:16
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AlphaDog posted:"The math" doesn't just refer to how many times out of 10 you're supposed to hit an orc. It refers to most of the game. All of the mechanics of an RPG and some of the fluff depends on "the math" being right. The fluff being believable in play mostly depends on the math being right. Then we have extremely different definitions of the word. I would consider that 'design', not 'the maths'. But honestly that's a semantic difference, and like Amodeus being able to identify monsters, who cares? I think it's also worth saying that trying to make the system model too many mundane things might well the reason D&D maths so frequently goes wrong. The more demands you place on your numbers the harder it'll be to fulfill them all.
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Jun 8, 2013 12:20
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WordMercenary posted:Then we have extremely different definitions of the word. I would consider that 'design', not 'the maths'. But honestly that's a semantic difference, and like Amodeus being able to identify monsters, who cares? The game is a game of math interacting with other math. Designing the game means designing the math. Yes, putting a theme on the mechanics is part of it too (this is Dungeon Fantasy, put a Dungeon Fantasy theme on the mechanics), but every time a +0 to +5 modifier interacts with a range of DCs from 10 to 30 the designer needs to have been on the ball in making sure that range of mathematical interactions work in the context of the game system. The designer can't simply make really hard poo poo DC 50 and thus impossible to reach on a roll of d20+modifier by anyone and call that good because all the other elements of the design hang together in their head. quote:I think it's also worth saying that trying to make the system model too many mundane things might well the reason D&D maths so frequently goes wrong. The more demands you place on your numbers the harder it'll be to fulfill them all. This is to do with a level of abstraction, yes. We don't model every single footstep we take in an RPG because we're comfortable with abstracting that stuff away for the sake of gameplay and sanity both, even if we logically know there's a chance for people to fall over during normal walking. What a lot of people don't realize, or prefer not to think about, is that all mechanics are abstractions. People talk about "dissociated" mechanics - mechanics that don't "reflect reality" - as if they were bad because they aren't realistic. None of this poo poo is realistic! But people design towards "simulation" anyway and fall into the same trap over and over again: No simple abstraction can possibly cover every single thing in that kind of "realistic" manner, or even a consistent one. It has to become a really, really complex abstraction to do that, which goes directly against the goal of making a "light" system. But even this gets down to math. Math interacts with all of the above. Math is the reason climb checks are awful and deadly; making multiple rolls to succeed always has a higher chance of failure than making one! Math is the reason all those particularly stupid interactions were discovered and outlisted on 4chan. You can make a system that makes all of those interactions make much more sense to people by getting the math right in the first place. It really does boil, in a whole hell of a lot of ways, down to sitting down with some dice and a calculator and working this poo poo out.
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Jun 8, 2013 12:37
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WordMercenary posted:Then we have extremely different definitions of the word. I would consider that 'design', not 'the maths'. But honestly that's a semantic difference, and like Amodeus being able to identify monsters, who cares? I see it as the math, because the math is the framework of the game. It doesn't matter how many awesome words you write about mighty warriors being great at breaking down doors if the math works out such that a fighter breaks down doors ~10% of the time. Asmodeus being unable to break out of iron chains? hosed math (and because of that hosed fluff, and because of those two things, noticeably bad design). You will, at some point, need to know who in the party, if anyone, can break out of chains. Probably you want to set it up so that the "mighty" character has more of a chance to just bust out than the "wise" character. Asmodeus' ability to break out of chains (or not) is something that could reasonably come up in a D&D game even if you're not being a sperglord. Asmodeus identifying things? Yeah, who gives a gently caress it shouldn't come up, and neither should commoners ability walking shallow slopes. You're kinda right, it's a bad design choice, but you could with some effort design a system of math that worked such that Joe Commoner could carry his farm stuff around, Aragorn could haul the hobbits out of danger, Conan the Barbarian could hold up bigass rocks, Samson could knock the temple down (with a bit of a divine buff), and Asmodeus The End Boss Of D&D could break out of loving mundane iron chains. The design is bad, but it's only noticeable because the math is bad. If the math worked out such that all of the above were true, you wouldn't be likely to notice the bad design. Edit: Personally, I'd avoid the math question in this instance with a system of tags for things like "can't be restrained" and just tag the monster with that. But that doesn't mean you couldn't build a system very much like Next that worked out such that monster level x couldn't bust out of chains, x+10 might, and x+20 definitely could. It's just a lot more effort and involves sitting down with a spreadsheet and doing math. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 12:43
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Mikan posted:That's not really how it works. I'm by no means a math dude - I only took statistics as part of my psych education, and I was a lit major before I switched over - but the whole point of having a strong mathematical basis in the design is that you can reduce complex things to a simple, easy to use process for players. You need someone skilled to do that. It's the same way a talented scientist can explain complex issues to layfolk, or a talented storyteller can present a complex story and explain its significance. I don't think either of these things is always true, there's some give and take there. I've certainly been presented by systems made by mathematicians that are incomprehensible to ordinary folk. Again, I'm not saying every designer should be a dunce with numbers or something, I'm just saying that 'ability to add up' is not the chief quality you should be looking for in a lead designer. It should be part of the skillset for sure, but it's not the be all and end all. quote:The status quo when it comes to RPG design is flawed math on a fundamental level - we have far, far too many people who are "creative" already, we need people who can actually make the math work in a way that brings that creativity to life. Again, I'm not sure I agree, and the quote marks around 'creative' sadden me. Just to try and explain why this gets my goat. I'm a writer. People don't think writing is a skill. They think anyone can do it. The (video) games industry is a great example of this, programmers are the maths guys, they think they can do your job, even though you freely admit you can't do theirs, because anyone can write, right? quote:Yeah, Dungeon World's simple math is great. It's not why Dungeon World works, but it's great. Do you think it's important that Asmodeus be able to identify monsters? Do you think that it's important to know the stats of a commoner? Or how well he or she can walk up hill? I'm not saying "Stop rolling forever!". That would be dumb. I'm just saying "Your system doesn't have to represent everything, some things just are". I mean we all stop rolling somewhere, right? Otherwise we'd never do anything else. quote:It's every bit a design failing that 5e Asmodeus can't recognize other major devils. Dungeon World doesn't avoid this by just saying "gently caress it we all know he can right, it's cool" - it also does it in the way the moves have been designed. There are absolutely parts of World that say "this just happens" Usually if there's slim to no chance of failure (which I think is fair of Amodeus recognising himself, don't you?). Hell the Asmodeus situation wouldn't even come up in Apocalypse World, because the DM doesn't roll anything, he just does things. That's kinda why I love it. quote:What makes Dungeon World work isn't that it relies on the DM - the DM doesn't have to leap through hoops to handle where the system failed - it's that it provides an awesome toolbox and works with the human element. That's pretty much what I was saying. Next is a poorly designed game whose numbers don't support its design goals. Even if those numbers were good, it would still be a poorly designed game and not worth playing. quote:I don't disagree with any of this - but it's not happening in this field. "Less math" is actually what got us into this mess in the first place. There aren't any real math and science types making games here. Sadly it's often hard to find those things in packages, that's why teamwork is good. I've been doing some amateur design alongside a much more maths focused guy recently, which is why I made the comment, because it's often down to me to say "I'm sure your system is well balanced and clever, but no-one understands it." I guess what I was trying to say with 'less math (It could probably do with being simpler to read too, I liked 4e, but drat was the formula to get your attack modifier long winded to explain to new players) *I have been trying so hard not to slip into American spelling in this thread, God you guys are making it hard.
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Jun 8, 2013 12:48
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WordMercenary posted:That's not what I'm doing at all. I don't know why you've assumed I'm pro Next or in favour of random number game design. In fact pretty much everyone seems to have taken my comments the wrong way entirely, except Mikan. Good game math is the same way. Both of them are foundations which ought to support their intended use WITHOUT becoming things which you notice over and over again. The only time people pay lots of attention to the game's math is when the game's math fails as a foundation. WordMercenary posted:Similarly a commoner has a 1/4 chance to persuade Asmodeus to back down from the Blood War. Bad maths, right? Well not really, what chance should our hypothetical commoner have? He or she should have a 0% chance. So the error is not in the maths, it's in the fact that a simple persuade check is capable of such things in the first place. Now, it might be that someone should have a non-zero chance of convincing Asmodeus, like if I make a Bard who is the setting's answer to Orpheus, but this means we need reasonable goal-posts set up such that we can distinguish Orpheus from a commoner.
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Jun 8, 2013 12:50
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WordMercenary posted:And because game design is mind control, the more time you spend on this poo poo, the more people think that's what the game is about. If you do it well as well as right, people won't even notice it's there, let alone a focus of the game. *world works well because the one math thing is both "right" and is integrated well into all the other pieces of design. The math done can literally be hidden from customers, or preferably explained in an appendix in case someone wants to make a homebrew monster and have it balanced. You should never ever have to look at it just to play the game. One of the cool things about 4e was the way the monster math and character math got merged (via math) into an XP-budget system that (after some tweaking in errata and supplements) provided very very nearly balanced encounters, so if you followed the rules of the game it was loving unlikely that you'd throw unbeatable bullshit at a party. That math was mostly hidden when the game was released, and by the end of the game's life (after countless people had picked it apart and it had been fixed) you could just look at the XP budget, pick monsters based on that, and play. No math-caring required, but the system is only there because of a fuckload of math being done at the design level. If you want to see what happens when you don't do the math for a system like that, both Next (xp budget) and 3e (CR) are good examples. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 12:55
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Bad maths leads to bad design or is part of bad design however you'd like to think about it. You don't want to have to think about maths to have a good time driving your car, but you're far more likely to have a good time driving your car if the guy who designed it put some thought into the maths of the design, rather than going, "Drivers don't care about the maths of my car design, why should I?" which is what's happening here.
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Jun 8, 2013 12:57
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Rulebook Heavily posted:The game is a game of math interacting with other math. Designing the game means designing the math. Yes, putting a theme on the mechanics is part of it too (this is Dungeon Fantasy, put a Dungeon Fantasy theme on the mechanics), but every time a +0 to +5 modifier interacts with a range of DCs from 10 to 30 the designer needs to have been on the ball in making sure that range of mathematical interactions work in the context of the game system. The designer can't simply make really hard poo poo DC 50 and thus impossible to reach on a roll of d20+modifier by anyone and call that good because all the other elements of the design hang together in their head. It's also a lot of things that aren't maths, like "shall we let the Fighter actually do anything." quote:This is to do with a level of abstraction, yes. We don't model every single footstep we take in an RPG because we're comfortable with abstracting that stuff away for the sake of gameplay and sanity both, even if we logically know there's a chance for people to fall over during normal walking. What a lot of people don't realize, or prefer not to think about, is that all mechanics are abstractions. People talk about "dissociated" mechanics - mechanics that don't "reflect reality" - as if they were bad because they aren't realistic. None of this poo poo is realistic! But people design towards "simulation" anyway and fall into the same trap over and over again: No simple abstraction can possibly cover every single thing in that kind of "realistic" manner, or even a consistent one. It has to become a really, really complex abstraction to do that, which goes directly against the goal of making a "light" system. I agree completely, in fact that covers a lot of what I'm been trying to say. quote:But even this gets down to math. Math interacts with all of the above. Math is the reason climb checks are awful and deadly; making multiple rolls to succeed always has a higher chance of failure than making one! Math is the reason all those particularly stupid interactions were discovered and outlisted on 4chan. You can make a system that makes all of those interactions make much more sense to people by getting the math right in the first place. It really does boil, in a whole hell of a lot of ways, down to sitting down with some dice and a calculator and working this poo poo out. And again I'm on 'eh'. Like I said (and you said) the decision of when to roll is an important one, both for mathematical reasons but also for a host of practical ones. For instance when you look at the 4chan post, the reason Asmodeus is poo poo at everything is because he doesn't have any skills. Now that could be taken two ways, oversight, or a statement of intent that he doesn't need skills, please stop rolling to see if he can recognise himself, it's not important. Sadly I think it's more likely to be the former, given how Next is constructed. Stuff like a Ranger not being able to climb well I totally agree with them doing by the way, I wasn't saying all number crunching is bad, just pointing out that some of it is just funny, but not actually important. AlphaDog posted:I see it as the math, because the math is the framework of the game. It doesn't matter how many awesome words you write about mighty warriors being great at breaking down doors if the math works out such that a fighter breaks down doors ~10% of the time. Asmodeus being unable to break out of iron chains? hosed math (and because of that hosed fluff, and because of those two things, noticeably bad design). Then we use words differently and that's that. I think there's more to a game than math+fluff. For instance I think the decision as to whether Amodeus has to roll to get out of iron chains at all is as important as balancing the roll correctly. quote:You will, at some point, need to know who in the party, if anyone, can break out of chains. Probably you want to set it up so that the "mighty" character has more of a chance to just bust out than the "wise" character. Asmodeus' ability to break out of chains (or not) is something that could reasonably come up in a D&D game even if you're not being a sperglord. Asmodeus identifying things? Yeah, who gives a gently caress it shouldn't come up, and neither should commoners ability walking shallow slopes. Let's devil's advocate a bit, how bad would it really be if door kicking was simply decided by how sturdy the GM decided the door was? "Can I kick the door down?" "Yeah it's pretty flimsy, go ahead" or "Nah it's made of stone, you'd break your foot". Or similarly "He's Amodeus, of course iron chains can't hold him" "Well what could?" "Well there's this valuable dwarvern metal..." quote:You're kinda right, it's a bad design choice, but you could with some effort design a system of math that worked such that Joe Commoner could carry his farm stuff around, Aragorn could haul the hobbits out of danger, Conan the Barbarian could hold up bigass rocks, Samson could knock the temple down (with a bit of a divine buff), and Asmodeus The End Boss Of D&D could break out of loving mundane iron chains. Like I said, I think the amount of rules you write for something imply how important it is in the game. If you've got pages of charts for breaking out of different kinds of chains, you'd better be writing "Bindings and Bondage 3rd Edition"
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Jun 8, 2013 13:05
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Gort posted:Bad maths leads to bad design or is part of bad design however you'd like to think about it. That's not what I said, but so many people have taken it that way that I clearly didn't explain myself well. I simply pointed out that while the car designer should know something about maths, he should design his car bearing in mind that the driver doesn't care. He should design it so that the driver does as little maths as possible.
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Jun 8, 2013 13:08
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WordMercenary posted:It's also a lot of things that aren't maths, like "shall we let the Fighter actually do anything." Yes. I said that and you agreed!  But "shall we let the fighter do anything" also boils down to math in extremely important ways. Look at 3e and how it neutered everything the fighter did by making its armor penalize everything it could specialize in and by giving it too few skills. All of those are mathematical concerns. Armor penalties were too high or not easily negated enough. DCs were too high. There were too few skill points available to raise your mathematical bonuses. Even absent the underlying philosophic issues of "wizards rule fighters drool", the math hosed over even what the fighter was supposed to be good at by design. Now take Next and its "best climber in the world" who can't climb a slippery rope at level 20 without falling three-quarters of the time. The system intends to allow the best climber to climb things well (by giving mathematical bonuses), but falls down purely on a mathematical level because the math is hosed. That's why we say math is important. Yes, it would be nice if the underlying issues of having some classes simply declare success in a system where everyone else has to ask the dice for permission were also resolved (which is a level of design concept I expect even fewer designers to think about than I expect for basic mathematics), but it would also be nice to not have a god-slaying planar-travelling D&D character fail to climb a rope most of the time after specializing in it. It's obvious that the game intends to be about heroes who climb from early levels to late levels and becoming better at mundane tasks to the point where they exceed realistic human potential, but the system doesn't deliver on that because someone seems to not have thought it through.
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Jun 8, 2013 13:16
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WordMercenary posted:Let's devil's advocate a bit, how bad would it really be if door kicking was simply decided by how sturdy the GM decided the door was? "Can I kick the door down?" "Yeah it's pretty flimsy, go ahead" or "Nah it's made of stone, you'd break your foot". Or similarly "He's Amodeus, of course iron chains can't hold him" "Well what could?" "Well there's this valuable dwarvern metal..." Part 1: If you ever want to do organised play or publish adventures or have any consistency between groups, it's important to be able to say "this door can always be broken", "this door can never be broken" and "this door can sometimes be broken". The sometimes is where the math comes in. Someone has to do the math, but all the GM needs to know is "door is this hard to break" and all the player needs to know is "my door breaking number is this". Part 2: That's not what I meant - I meant you could design a system that worked much like Next's but where "breaking out of chains" (not an uncommon thing to attempt in fantasyland) runs the spectrum between "lol nope" and "for sure", but you would need to sit there and work out the math. The players and GM would not have to work out the math. The players would have a number to add to a die for strength stuff, and the Gm would have a number for "chains are this hard to break out of". The only reason anyone is looking at this particular math in the first place is because it's blindingly obvious that it's hosed even before you sit down and work out how hosed it is. If it was already set up so that Joe Average could never break out of chains and Asmodeus could always break out of chains and a strong heroic type might break out of chains, then this would never have come up in this thread. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 13:24
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AlphaDog posted:Part 1: If you ever want to do organised play or publish adventures or have any consistency between groups, it's important to be able to say "this door can always be broken", "this door can never be broken" and "this door can sometimes be broken". The sometimes is where the math comes in. Someone has to do the math, but all the GM needs to know is "door is this hard to break" and all the player needs to know is "my door breaking number is this". All I'm saying is, if we sit down and think about it, is the 'might' part always necessary?
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Jun 8, 2013 13:54
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WordMercenary posted:I simply pointed out that while the car designer should know something about maths, he should design his car bearing in mind that the driver doesn't care. He should design it so that the driver does as little maths as possible.
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Jun 8, 2013 13:54
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WordMercenary posted:All I'm saying is, if we sit down and think about it, is the 'might' part always necessary? You are looking at this, and saying "Why bother with rules at the endpoints? Asmodeus should be all fiat!" You may be right, but that's irrelevant, and here's why: the rules need to cover SOME situations. Like, the PC may be able to use Diplomacy to influence SOME devils. Which devils in particular, and how much of a challenge is each of them? THAT is what the rules ought to cover. They don't. They don't even work at the end points, where the results should be totally obvious to everyone. That's why we're focusing on the end points (like Asmodeus). If the rules don't even cover totally obvious situations in a way that leads to the totally obvious conclusion, then they're not much good for situations where we rely on them to cover less obvious situations. Look at my example of the Orpheus player who wants to build a PC who can sway the course of the Blood War (or other deity-level conflict). What's the qualification necessary to build that PC? What does it cost him in terms of missed opportunities?
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Jun 8, 2013 14:01
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Contrabassoon posted:Every single poster in this thread since you started on this topic agrees 100% with this, and that's why they're nitpicking and carefully explaining the point of good game systems design to you now. What Next is providing, in your analogy, is a car with three and a half wheels that aren't parallel and two of them don't even touch the ground, and the driver has to continually compensate for this. And they never needed to point that out to me, yet they are. To stretch this torturous analogy further, I'm trying to say that while it'd be great if they made a better car, we were all after a boat. Dodge Charms posted:The examples of why Next is broken go all the way to the end points. That's true for some of those observations, but not others. Whether Asmodeus can recognise himself isn't the endpoint of anything, I honestly can't think why you'd ever want a dice roll for a monster recognising another monster. Like I said, part of the reason Asmodeus is failing at this poo poo is because he doesn't have skills, which may imply you aren't supposed to use him that way. But with things like persuading him to end the Blood War, I agree that it's badly modelled, but I think that's as much down how D&D models social interactions as it is down to making the numbers balance correctly. I've been using Apocalypse World as an example, so let's carry on with that. In Apocalypse World, if you ask Asmodeus to end the Blood War, he will say no. If you try and Seduce or Manipulate him, he may agree to it, but he'll want something in return. It's simple, it has no modifier for his stats, it just assumes that the DM will scale up the 'thing in return' appropriately. That and they have the opportunity to say no if the character is firmly against it. So while it's important that Next's persuasion system is poorly balanced against Asmodeus, I think it's at least as important (if not more) that Next lets you flat out force someone to do something they're completely against with charisma mind control. WordMercenary fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 14:04
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WordMercenary posted:That's true for some of those observations, but not others. Whether Asmodeus can recognise himself isn't the endpoint of anything, I honestly can't think why you'd ever want a dice roll for a monster recognising another monster. Player: "I summon an Imp and ask it what that thing is." How do you resolve this? WordMercenary posted:But with things like persuading him to end the Blood War, I agree that it's badly modelled, but I think that's as much down how D&D models social interactions as it is down to making the numbers balance correctly. (...) So while it's important that Next's persuasion system is poorly balanced against Asmodeus, I think it's at least as important (if not more) that Next lets you flat out force someone to do something they're completely against with charisma mind control. That might avoid the anti-intellectual impetus to cry out against caring about math.
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Jun 8, 2013 14:50
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Tyndolionel posted:Speaking of math, Finger of Death doing 12d8 pretty much makes the "instakill at less than 40 HP" completely redundant. 12d8 does at least 40 damage 97% of the time. Actually using the spell as it's implied it should be, waiting until the big bad goes under 40 and trying to zot them, is pretty much always a bad decision. Wrong. Below 40HP there's no save (right?). Above 40 HP, they have a chance to save for half damage, giving them a strong likelihood of survival. Also I think that NEXT's design team has somebody there who comes up with what seems like a good idea and then isn't willing to give up on it when it turns out that their idea doesn't play well with the rest of the system. There are several parts of the game, particularly in the skills system, where there are clearly cool ideas that don't add up mathematically.
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Jun 8, 2013 14:59
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WordMercenary posted:None of this 'commoners can't see the sun' nonsense ever comes up because it knows when to stop rolling and leave it up to the GM. I think that's what is going on with the DC30 'climb a greased rope' stuff. You can't loving climb a greased rope. That's why it's listed in the DC30 impossible tasks, along with stuff like 'break out of manacles' and 'swim out of a whirlpool'. It's 10 points harder than 'climb a sheer surface without handholds'. In Dungeon World, the GM could just say 'nope, can't do it' and that is that. 4chan was whining about not being able to reliably do this impossible stuff, but that was the entire point. Their expectations are those of a 4e mentality where as you gain levels all tasks become more difficult. A level 20 4e ranger is always dealing with high-DC tasks because the DCs for every task scale with your growth. The whole 4e skill system was awful, imo. A Next character doesn't have to worry about that. A difficult wall is always DC20 to climb. That super-climber reliably does that 96% of the time.
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Jun 8, 2013 15:05
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ritorix posted:You can't loving climb a greased rope. I guess this never happened, then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orez-TlGgTQ
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Jun 8, 2013 15:17
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Jimbozig posted:Wrong. Below 40HP there's no save (right?). Above 40 HP, they have a chance to save for half damage, giving them a strong likelihood of survival. I said it a few pages ago: There are some awesome rough ideas in Next, and instead of improving those or building on those, they've "fixed" them by piling other stuff (often legacy stuff) on top of them. Advantage is one of these - you should either have the advantage/disadvantage thing or +1s and -1s. Not both. The fact that advantage/disadvantage is weird math as-written has nothing to do with the idea that you either have a bonus or a penalty to your roll and that bonus or penalty is always the same and doesn't stack with anything, which is basically a pretty neat idea. Instead we've got adv/dis and changing target numbers and +1s from different things.
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Jun 8, 2013 15:20
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No, the problem is that the best way to deal with Asmodeus is to lock him in manacles. The problem is that, at the top of his game, a ranger can barely climb a somewhat slippery rope. The problem is that the entire social aspect of skills simply does not function. The problem is that the math is hosed from start to finish. My view on math is that, outside of some niche games, it's ok for players to be rotten at math. You should not need to be good at math to succeed. Minmaxing and figuring out the strongest ways to do everything will always exist and that's frankly sorta ok, but that isn't what is happening. What's happening is that the people writing the math are really awful at writing the math. You would not get someone terrible at physics to do rocket calculations. You would not get someone terrible at cooking to be your chef. So why do we have people terrible at math making the loving underlaying math system? Also gently caress you. If climbing a "greased rope" is in the realm of the impossible in the same game where wizards start flying over ten levels before you can even attempt it, there's some very, very serious issues with the game. Jesus loving christ, at level 20 you are literally battling Satan, but a door that's kinda heavy is an impossible task to conquer. Trying to tie this to some asinine edition war idiocy is the height of dumbfuckery. If "climbing a fence" is a near insurmountable obstacle then maybe you're pushing personal problems on this. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 15:20
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Dodge Charms posted:DM: "You don't recognize the creature you just slew, but it looks like an Evil Outsider." quote:That might avoid the anti-intellectual impetus to cry out against caring about math. Anti-intellectual? Not remotely, and I'm insulted by the implication. To be honest, mistaking meticulous modelling of meaningless bullshit for 'intellect' is precisely the problem D&D has right now. WordMercenary fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 15:43
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ritorix posted:I think that's what is going on with the DC30 'climb a greased rope' stuff. You can't loving climb a greased rope. Yes, you can. We have competitions in real life that are all about climbing greased poles, for one. This is a thing normal people can do. quote:4chan was whining about not being able to reliably do this impossible stuff, but that was the entire point. Their expectations are those of a 4e mentality where as you gain levels all tasks become more difficult. A level 20 4e ranger is always dealing with high-DC tasks because the DCs for every task scale with your growth. The whole 4e skill system was awful, imo. A Next character doesn't have to worry about that. A difficult wall is always DC20 to climb. That super-climber reliably does that 96% of the time. People could, in 3e, balance on clouds. People could, in AD&D, be as strong as giants, and thieves explicitly could climb surfaces other people would find utterly impossible. This is not some kind of anomalous 4e-only mentality that distorts the perception of Next, this is some basic D&D poo poo older than most people who play D&D. Next is so backwards-looking that it's managed to regress to a time that never existed in D&D's history where climbing a greased rope (or pole, or whatever) is considered utterly impossible, the province of Wizards only to accomplish with ease.
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Jun 8, 2013 15:50
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ProfessorCirno posted:No, the problem is that the best way to deal with Asmodeus is to lock him in manacles.[/quotes] Kicking down a steel barred door, climbing a greased rope and busting out of manacles are classed as 'formidable' tasks, which I guess means tasks that you fail at most of the time. So I guess your issue isn't really with the maths at all (in that one particular instance) so much as what the designers consider formidable, especially in comparison to the fights you should be having at that level. And yeah, what they consider to be formidable is pretty dumb in context. But that's classic grognard thinking for you. Mundane tasks are compared to the 'common sense' abilities of the average RPG player, the fact that you're fighting demons at that point is ignored. That's exactly the same logic that fuels all grognard 'martials can't do poo poo' thinking.
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Jun 8, 2013 15:50
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I'm also a writer, and I don't take the same umbrage at the implication that RPG design is more math than writing. (Though big surprise! I wouldn't expect us to have the same opinions.) Out of sheer curiosity, what skill do you think is primarily being used when designing an RPG? When I say I want a system to have more rigorous math, I'm not asking for Palladium. People wanting a greater degree of rigor from their games is not the same as kicking creative people out of RPG design. In an ideal world, you have both.
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Jun 8, 2013 15:57
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I'm a writer, and the idea that having to think about math somehow inhibits creativity is loving bizarre. There are famous musical compositions that are based on numerical sequences, and Mozart's music is widely appreciated on a mathematical level, and that's pretty drat creative right there! (Not to say RPGs are anything near that level of accomplishment.) RPGs are not novels and need different writing skills, but that is not a knock on creativity itself.
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Jun 8, 2013 16:02
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The problems in Next's math are really funny, but it's not exactly a flaw so much as a symptom of a much deeper flaw, which is that the game is being designed in an extremely lazy and haphazard way that lacks any grand organizing principle. No doubt at least one person on the team is taking an "eh, we'll fix it in post" attitude to skill checks vs. skill DCs, and they're technically right, they can fix it in post - but they'll still have made a game that uses the theater of the mind but contains a "Charge" feat.
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Jun 8, 2013 16:06
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Speaking of Next math, did they fix the XP table yet? If you have d20+mod vs. d20+mod, you're basically in math purgatory unless the point is to make it wildly, crazily swingy.
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Jun 8, 2013 16:08
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Mendrian posted:I'm also a writer, and I don't take the same umbrage at the implication that RPG design is more math than writing. (Though big surprise! I wouldn't expect us to have the same opinions.) Ugh, that's not really what I meant. I'm just kinda sick of nerd's solution to everything being "Put a STEM graduate on it instead of those useless liberal arts types." Which probably isn't what anyone meant either, it's just that even the implication tends to raise my hackles. quote:Out of sheer curiosity, what skill do you think is primarily being used when designing an RPG? When I say I want a system to have more rigorous math, I'm not asking for Palladium. People wanting a greater degree of rigor from their games is not the same as kicking creative people out of RPG design. In an ideal world, you have both. Game Design, duh. Yes it's a skill unto itself. They even teach courses in it now. If you want a more useful answer, game design is the ability to perceive of and create systems that mimick life and/or produce entertaining results. While maths might be considered an important part of that, it isn't the be all and end all. Design is deciding what actions the players should have available, how they intermesh and what the desired probable outcome should be. The reason I phrase it that way is because although RPGs design usually relies heavily on maths, other types of game design don't. Video game design for example uses very different mechanisms to produce the desired effect, but the top down design process is surprisingly similar. Rulebook Heavily posted:I'm a writer, and the idea that having to think about math somehow inhibits creativity is loving bizarre. Then it's a good job I didn't have that idea! Oh for the love of God can we stop talking about this now, because the amount of incorrect conclusions people have drawn from me saying "Keep the maths simple and out of the way, and don't loving make people roll for everything." Is making me weep. Just to be absolutely clear, when I said "I don't care about the maths" it was in response to various people talking about how nerds are really into dissecting the numbers. I was counter-pointing that it should be as simple as loving possible on the gamers end, because there are lots of people who really don't want to think about maths when they're playing. To try one last time to make the point in a way that isn't going to make everyone jump down my throat and assume I'm a dullard. I think when you're calculating how often a commoner can walk up a slippery slope in a game about stabbing kobolds in dungeons, you've already hosed up no matter how well the maths works out. How many rules you make for something, however long you spend on it in the rulebook, this says how important this thing is to your game. So if it's not important, and not likely to come up don't loving make any rules for it. EDIT - Basically I'm in favour of simple, versatile systems like roll under attribute, or hell just the current system but with "Roll whatever skill you think is appropriate against whatever DC the DM thinks is appropriate". WordMercenary fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 16:19
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WordMercenary posted:If you want a more useful answer, game design is the ability to perceive of and create systems that mimick life and/or produce entertaining results. While maths might be considered an important part of that, it isn't the be all and end all. Design is deciding what actions the players should have available, how they intermesh and what the desired probable outcome should be. The reason I phrase it that way is because although RPGs design usually relies heavily on maths, other types of game design don't. Video game design for example uses very different mechanisms to produce the desired effect, but the top down design process is surprisingly similar. Which is the entire point: RPGs, tabletop or otherwise, actually need people who know how to do that. If you don't take the numbers seriously, nothing else about your design matters. Unless it's Nobilis in which case gently caress numbers, we don't need that where we're going.
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Jun 8, 2013 16:32
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Chaotic Neutral posted:If you want this discussion to stop, you should probably stop digging your hole any deeper, because this is also so incredibly wrong - if anything, video game design uses significantly more math, often in smoothly well-hidden ways that, if they weren't tended to, would make the experience horribly broken. Clearly I should, because it seems no matter what I say, you will come up with your own incorrect interpretation. WordMercenary fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 16:35
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