Let's Talk About Core Game Mechanics

[...m...]

...mister T was a core mechanic...

 

[Bill Zebub]

The problem I always saw with that is I know a fair number of people (I might even be one of them) that would just sit on Hope forever and never use it.

Agreed, and it could have used some tweaking, but they over-tweaked and ruined it (imo).

But that's also the basis for my opinion about before- vs. after-the-fact mechanics. I see the same thing with Inspiration in D&D, not because it's "precious" but because so many people keep saving it for an important roll, hoping they will succeed anyway, and then they save it for so long they forget about it. Whereas if you could use it after the roll (to re-roll) you would be more likely to spend it.

Which is exactly what happens when I house-rule Inspiration to be usable for a re-roll. (And then Shadowdark came along, and that's exactly how Luck tokens work.)

 

[Bill Zebub]

...mister T was a core mechanic...

Sounds like a background for a Star Wars character. "I used to work on cores, then I joined the resistance."

 

[Thomas Shey]

Agreed, and it could have used some tweaking, but they over-tweaked and ruined it (imo).

But that's also the basis for my opinion about before- vs. after-the-fact mechanics. I see the same thing with Inspiration in D&D, not because it's "precious" but because so many people keep saving it for an important roll, hoping they will succeed anyway, and then they save it for so long they forget about it. Whereas if you could use it after the roll (to re-roll) you would be more likely to spend it.

Which is exactly what happens when I house-rule Inspiration to be usable for a re-roll. (And then Shadowdark came along, and that's exactly how Luck tokens work.)

Yeah, its essentially the same problem a lot of people have with not-easily replaced consumeables.

 

[Retros_x]

If something is less likely to occur, I want the mechanics to reflect that

Yes, by setting a high DC DC setting is an interesting thing if you use 3d6 because it has a much higher impact and a DM needs to be really careful with the DC. Just a few values too high and you rapidly decrease the chance of success. Non-linear rates are much harder to grasp for most DMs.

even if you present it as if that were obviously true.

I repeatedly stated "I don't understand". I thought this marked is clear as an opinion, not as a fact. Let me emphasize - this is not an objective truth. I just would never fit my resolution mechanic to the same probablity curve that is used for standardized metrics like IQ tests or for measuring natural occurences like body height over a population. Its the anti-thesis to storytelling in my eyes. Its used to measure real, natural events. Heroes should be living as outliers of statistics, not forced to be normalized.

I am passionate about this, because its a small subset of the big topic "Statistics ruining art" which I might open up a thread at some point.

edit: I just used anydice to roll 40 times 3d6. Look at this exciting dice log.

output 1: 12, 11, 7, 10, 10, 13, 12, 9, 14, 6, 9, 7, 8, 5, 10, 12, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 13, 15, 10, 8, 10, 4, 12, 15, 14, 17, 3, 12, 10, 11, 11, 7, 5, 11, 13