captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
Hi all. Back again. I'm hoping this might be a good place for a sane look at the old T/E issues, and more generally, the issue of success and failure in RPG task resolution.
Caveat: I tried to get into this on CoTI and unfortunately both ran into, and inflamed at least one major anti-T/E proponent; and generally added to the rancor until it was locked (ta, Aramis). I'm really hoping to not do this here.
That said, I was involved somewhat in the T/E issue, abeit not passionately at the time (I was mixing it up with someone else on another petty point, to my regret).
Here's how I saw it as developing, with specific reference to the issues only, and NOT the personalities or persons.
My initial observation was that the main bone of contention was that what seemed to be causing the issue was how a high success dice result was described -the original description was very "whammo blammo" IIRC (I'm not quoting); then it was toned down.
However then the stat argument came up...in a nutshell it showed that for natural rolls, and for some of the skills addition systems, that "good" successes" were way more common than "bad failures" regardless of what you called them. Successful rolls had to have more 5 and 6 results athan 1 &2 results; but the converse was somewhat less true for failures.
This was esentially saying that any attempt to quantify degree of success failure was going to cause a skew towards high quality success ; the actual rate of simple success/fail was not changed at all, however.
This was (according to the discussion) amplified by the combat system -the use of T/E caused more damage and quicker responses when successful , compared to less of both when not successful. In other words, faster shots caused more damage than slower shots as a general rule - and missed shots causued more delay than successful ones.
Now, as anyone who has read my stuff here knows, a stat argument is a Big Deal for me.....and usually pretty decisive. yet, this didn't cause me one bit of problem.
When I thought about why this may be, I realized that the issue for me was this: the history of skill resolution in RPG design seems to be based on the assumption that sucess is as likely (or less likely) than failue, and the key is to stack bonuses to gain the edge toward success. But, why is this ? My conclusion was that the T/E issue is a problem if, and only if, we believe that simple success/fail is symmetric, and that additionally, qualitative assessment of task resolution should be the same way- and that this assumption underlies LOTS of task systems.
I'm aware that simple success fail for traveller, and for many games insn't purely symmetric - the 8+ success roll ensures this - as does the fact that a 2d6 roll can't have a rollable midpoint ; yet the first level of advanced skill brings the roll to the other side . My point is not that success/fail has an exactly even distribution, but rather that tasks are perceived in a manner that suggest that either success and failure are about equally likely, or that failure is somewhat more likely than success. Why is this ?
Is a non-symmetric outcome inherently less realistic than a symmetric one ? Or is the natural symmetry of a bell curve driving and distorting the proccess ? Is it the basic boardgame balance issue that seems inherent in many RPG designs , or perhaps the semi-adversarial nature of the GM/Player relationship....?
Honestly, the more I think about it, the less it seems like a good way to model task resolution....I mean, why would I get out of bed in the morning if success essentially = failure or worse in everything I did ? Or that I had to be an expert to have a good chance of success -(or, for some games, to ignore a roll)
Thoughts?
Caveat: I tried to get into this on CoTI and unfortunately both ran into, and inflamed at least one major anti-T/E proponent; and generally added to the rancor until it was locked (ta, Aramis). I'm really hoping to not do this here.
That said, I was involved somewhat in the T/E issue, abeit not passionately at the time (I was mixing it up with someone else on another petty point, to my regret).
Here's how I saw it as developing, with specific reference to the issues only, and NOT the personalities or persons.
My initial observation was that the main bone of contention was that what seemed to be causing the issue was how a high success dice result was described -the original description was very "whammo blammo" IIRC (I'm not quoting); then it was toned down.
However then the stat argument came up...in a nutshell it showed that for natural rolls, and for some of the skills addition systems, that "good" successes" were way more common than "bad failures" regardless of what you called them. Successful rolls had to have more 5 and 6 results athan 1 &2 results; but the converse was somewhat less true for failures.
This was esentially saying that any attempt to quantify degree of success failure was going to cause a skew towards high quality success ; the actual rate of simple success/fail was not changed at all, however.
This was (according to the discussion) amplified by the combat system -the use of T/E caused more damage and quicker responses when successful , compared to less of both when not successful. In other words, faster shots caused more damage than slower shots as a general rule - and missed shots causued more delay than successful ones.
Now, as anyone who has read my stuff here knows, a stat argument is a Big Deal for me.....and usually pretty decisive. yet, this didn't cause me one bit of problem.
When I thought about why this may be, I realized that the issue for me was this: the history of skill resolution in RPG design seems to be based on the assumption that sucess is as likely (or less likely) than failue, and the key is to stack bonuses to gain the edge toward success. But, why is this ? My conclusion was that the T/E issue is a problem if, and only if, we believe that simple success/fail is symmetric, and that additionally, qualitative assessment of task resolution should be the same way- and that this assumption underlies LOTS of task systems.
I'm aware that simple success fail for traveller, and for many games insn't purely symmetric - the 8+ success roll ensures this - as does the fact that a 2d6 roll can't have a rollable midpoint ; yet the first level of advanced skill brings the roll to the other side . My point is not that success/fail has an exactly even distribution, but rather that tasks are perceived in a manner that suggest that either success and failure are about equally likely, or that failure is somewhat more likely than success. Why is this ?
Is a non-symmetric outcome inherently less realistic than a symmetric one ? Or is the natural symmetry of a bell curve driving and distorting the proccess ? Is it the basic boardgame balance issue that seems inherent in many RPG designs , or perhaps the semi-adversarial nature of the GM/Player relationship....?
Honestly, the more I think about it, the less it seems like a good way to model task resolution....I mean, why would I get out of bed in the morning if success essentially = failure or worse in everything I did ? Or that I had to be an expert to have a good chance of success -(or, for some games, to ignore a roll)
Thoughts?
