Percentile Systems? Just Say No!

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mason?

Its a simple dice game:

Take 6d6 and roll them. Count the number of dice that roll a 4 or better and pick them up, putting the others aside.

Throw the dice you picked up, counting the number that rolled a 4 or better. Pick them up putting the others aside. Repeat until no dice remain to be picked up.

Total the number of die rolls over 4.

My personal best is 21.

 

[Mike Eagling]

Its a simple dice game:

/snip

Ah. Thanks. Not heard of that before.

Actually, no thanks at all as I've just spent the last twenty minutes playing it and expect to waste large quantities of time doing so in the future...!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Is ridiculous, isn't it?

 

[Dethklok]

1) the behavioral psychlogists disagree with you on the irrelevance of small, frequent rewards.

Waking up every forty minutes to roll a die and add pennies into a pile is a form of sleep deprivation.

2) if I could set it up via computer

The GM is not a computer. I have no interest in programming an experience point reward system on my laptop.

So it seems like the real questions are:

1) How much granularity is desirable?

2) Are some forms of dice-rolling more satisfying than others?

and

3) How do the answers to either of those change based on the genre, campaign, or scenario?

Absolutely, Sword of Spirit.

To address point 1, clearly, more granularity is desirable; equally clearly, less complicated arithmetic is also better.

Less obvious is the fact that these benefits are likely to suffer from diminishing marginal utility. A game where "1+1" or "1 -1" are the most complicated operations to be completed is not likely to be much faster or better than one where numbers as large as 2 must be manipulated. Likewise granularity of a million is not much better than a hundred - otherwise people would regularly tell time to the second, or buy meat weighed to the dram.

The issues you raise at point 2 and 3 are harder to address, but I think there are costs and benefits to be discussed there as well - people like shiny dice of different shapes and colors, but in his review of Dragon Warriors, creator Dave Morris regretted using polyhedrals instead of d6 only, as he said it made the game less accessible. (For his own games, he evidently doesn't use Dragon Warriors, and apparently prefers a form of GURPS that he calls 7URPS - it has seven attributes instead of only four.)

Indeed. And the the answers to each question will vary from player to player.

That's true, Mike, but I think your conclusion does not follow:

Which one is best? None of them.

Answers to the question "what is the integral of 4x with respect to x" will vary from person to person, but some answers are clearly better than others. Now, it is true that some questions are purely subjective, like, "do you prefer chocolate or strawberry ice cream?" So clearly subjectivity can play the dominant or even exclusive role in decision making. But different dice systems come with different benefits and costs, and this mimics situations from in engineering and design, where effective solutions must maximize benefits and minimize costs.

For must situations, 1d2 has insufficient granularity, while 1d100 just has insufficient speed and ease of use. Dice systems that maximize benefits and minimize costs will generally fall somewhere in between 1d2 and 1d100.

They were in the original edition of Paranoia! The second edition went to d20 instead.

Cheers!

Really? Actually that's pretty cool! Not only since I've heard that 1st Edition was closer to Straight Paranoia than the later editions, but also because 1st Edition was reviewed as "cumbersome," "tricky" and riddled with "complications" relative to "slick" 2nd Edition.

 

[Mike Eagling]

That's true, Mike, but I think your conclusion does not follow:

Which one is best? None of them.

Now, it is true that some questions are purely subjective, like, "do you prefer chocolate or strawberry ice cream?"

Or even "do you prefer System X that uses a d20 mechanic or System Y that uses a d% mechanic?" That question certainly is subjective. Consequently, neither system is objectively better than the other. It is purely a matter of personal preference.


I suppose I could have added the caveat in my opinion neither system is better than the other but I honestly don't believe it is necessary.


In my experience the d% mechanics of RuneQuest/Call of Cthulhu/etc. work well within the framework of the rest of the rules. Given that characters in those games have neither levels nor classes, and skills improve by small amounts in relation to their successful use, the "headroom" of having those skills range over 100 points means they don't max out as quickly as they would if they ranged over 20 points.


Meanwhile, in DnD, that "headroom" is transfered to the xp required to level up, allowing that system to have its skills (for want of a better term) range over 20 points without curtailing the time necessary for the character to max out.


Both systems essentially do the same thing albeit in different ways. I happen to like them both.


On the other hand, RoleMaster/MeRP employs a d% mechanic too. Now I've not played MeRP in decades so my memory of it is somewhat rusty. However, I remember I didn't particularly enjoy playing it because (in part) I didn't like the way the core mechanic was implemented. Nevertheless, one of my friends really liked it. I thought the system was "bad". They thought it was "good". Neither of us was more right than the other, we just had different opinions.

Answers to the question "what is the integral of 4x with respect to x" will vary from person to person, but some answers are clearly better than others.

I'm fairly sure that's not how maths works but OK...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Waking up every forty minutes to roll a die and add pennies into a pile is a form of sleep deprivation.

Direct deposit and computerized random number generators are wonderful inventions.

The GM is not a computer. I have no interest in programming an experience point reward system on my laptop.

Now you're moving the goalposts. We were, at that moment, talking about money, not XP, as was 100% clear from the rest of the sentence that you chose to selectively quote.

And even in the most liberal percentile systems, there won't be more than a couple of improvements- if any- in a given session. Figuring out how much the PC improves in those events is as trival an event, in GM time-management terms, as generating the contents of a felled Orc's coin purse.

 

[Elysia]

There is a "sweet spot" to granularity. And it isn't found in percentiles or d2s. Yet while nobody in this thread seriously advocates a 1d2 system, many, many gamers advocate the use of 1d100.

...Truthfully, I think there is a sweet spot for the number of dice one throws also.

As a physics major, I would actually find it particularly attractive to find a nice logical mathematical formula that weights various aspects and comes up with that "sweet spot." I think total "sweetness" might take into account a variable of fun, suspense, or something of the sort though, as well as maximizing granularity and realistic effectiveness.

Being female however there is something subliminally attractive about rolling a couple of glittering d100's in the palm of your hand, before tossing them with a gasp of wonder to the table to watch them until...

RPG Percentile Systems? Just say No!

Self control is soooo hard!

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I'm going to answer my own questions from my earlier post, and I'd love to hear disagreements and different opinions, since it will help my design work quite a bit.

1) How much granularity is desirable?

The minimum necessary to reach the desired mechanical results and establish the intended feel.

For instance, the system I'm working on does just about everything in single digits, since I want to have: (a) no derived stats, (b) math you never have to reference a book for, and (c) characters that can be remembered or created extremely quickly based on descriptive words rather than numbers.

Since there are only three descriptive levels of attributes higher than average, the numbers for that (assuming it can work with the rest of the system) don't have to be any bigger than 1, 2, and 3.

2) Are some forms of dice-rolling more satisfying than others?

I think different types of physical dice on the table make a difference in the feel of the game. If you only use boardgame d6s with pips, that will create an entirely different feel than the multi-colored grab bag of random dice of all shapes and sizes I so love in my D&D games. The same thing goes for different numbers of dice. If there is just a single die sitting on the table, or one die for each player, it creates a different feel than the cornucopia of dice everywhere.

In addition, how often you roll them changes the feel. More dicey usually means more gamey.

And then we come to the actual systems. I'm going to agree with some of the thoughts that d% really work better with some genres than others. I'll admit that I have some bias against d%, simply because they feel a bit too retro for me, but I think they might produce a flavor that goes well with a hard sci-fi game. Some people enjoy picking up large pools of dice to roll. I think it might be that it creates a sense of power, since you have visual and tactile representation of your characters abilities, rather than merely adding or subtracting a number you have in your head or on a sheet. It also moves the game outside of the theater of the mind (temporarily) and onto the table more than a system where you are only dealing with a die or two does.

I personally find using the d20 system for anything other than D&D unsatisfying in and of itself, because it turns what should be it's own game into an extensive set of house rules in my gut emotional perception. So that bias on my part means that no matter how good the system, if it's not D&D but we're using D&D dice systems/rules for it, I'm already dissatisfied.

3) How do the answers to either of those change based on the genre, campaign, or scenario?

I already mentioned a bit about genre, and I think it has an enormous impact on how satisfying the different levels of granularity and forms of dice usage are. Let's say you were playing a game all about wonder, enchantment, and magic, and maybe marketed to a young crowd. Having a lot of different highly colorful custom dice to use would really enhance the imagery. Say the dice are really visually attractive and color coded based on size, and when you cast a spell you roll a combination of different dice based on the type of effect (which you can spontaneously create on the spot). You grab the red (d8) for a damaging effect, the blue (d12) for a defensive effect, the yellow (d4) for a mental effect, etc. Or, in a narrative horror game you might want low numbers, and having larger dice to use is bad for you. You only get one to roll, and you want that one to be as small as possible. Maybe even color code it so the larger die sizes are progressively darker shades of grey (or other appropriate colors).

When it comes to style of campaigns or scenarios, it's just as important. In a highly story-focused campaign, I prefer few dice, low granularity, and less rolling. If I were playing some sort of gamey high-powered supers scenario, I might be excited about massive dice pools I get to use regularly. For a more explorationist/simulationist scenario, I'd want to roll the right amount of dice for the scene--maybe adjusting the number and frequency based on the part of the scenario itself.

Thoughts? (And I hope I'm contributing rather than hijacking the thread.)

 

[Elysia]

Double post

 

[Dethklok]

Ugh - I'm posting from the same computer as Elysia and accidentally posted from her account. This is what I get for posting so late at night!

Or even "do you prefer System X that uses a d20 mechanic or System Y that uses a d% mechanic?" That question certainly is subjective. Consequently, neither system is objectively better than the other. It is purely a matter of personal preference.

By this reasoning, a dGoogol system is every bit as good as a d10 system. Do you think that the requirement that one carry, count out, roll, and then write out the results for one hundred d10's makes this dGoogol system merely subjectively bad? And, if so, can you find us one single person who would actually find such a system not only fun but preferable to other systems?

In my experience the d% mechanics of RuneQuest/Call of Cthulhu/etc. work well within the framework of the rest of the rules. Given that characters in those games have neither levels nor classes, and skills improve by small amounts in relation to their successful use, the "headroom" of having those skills range over 100 points means they don't max out as quickly as they would if they ranged over 20 points.

Meanwhile, in DnD, that "headroom" is transfered to the xp required to level up, allowing that system to have its skills (for want of a better term) range over 20 points without curtailing the time necessary for the character to max out.

In a game with as few as ten skills which max out as low as 10, it would take a hundred sessions to max out all of those skills. Further given a mechanic something like RuneQuest uses, one could be given only a skill roll to increase a skill, which would then double the amount of sessions required to max out these skills, all without the need to resort to XP. When you consider that most rpgs have much, much larger skillsets, this cannot be a significant problem even for a system that restricted itself to d10's, let alone d20. Knowing this, it should be easy to understand why, in my experience with the 2d6 games I always play with, none of us have never come close to maxing anything out.

I thought the system was "bad". They thought it was "good". Neither of us was more right than the other, we just had different opinions.

Yes, I understand. Do you also think that all designs for bridges are equally good. Or, are all possible temperatures are equally good for cooking a souffle? Or do you think that all coding styles are equally good for computer programs? There is a reason that chefs, civil engineers, and computer programmers go to school for years to develop the ability to produce code, bridges, and food - all designs, styles, and kinds are not equally good.

I'm fairly sure that's not how maths works but OK...

Really? Because the best answer for "what is the integral of 4x with respect to x" is "2x^2 plus an arbitrary constant of integration," with "2x^2" being less good, and all other answers being bad.

As a physics major

Oh thank goodness. Please tell me you know how maths work!

I would actually find it particularly attractive to find a nice logical mathematical formula that weights various aspects and comes up with that "sweet spot." I think total "sweetness" might take into account a variable of fun, suspense, or something of the sort though, as well as maximizing granularity and realistic effectiveness.

Yikes. Wouldn't this be more a question for the social sciences? Because even though there is an objective component to the debate, there are definitely subjective elements as well. You might be able to model them as noise or something, but they would probably interact with the different levels of granularity in predictable ways - no one wants to roll d36, even though numbers would be generated exactly the same way as d100: (1d6-1) * 6 + 1d6. And few people like d12 or d4 systems because the d12 and d4 always rolled awkwardly. If it mattered, I might be able to come up with an equation that measured only the value of a system with respect to granularity and mathematical inconvenience... but even there I could easily be accused of weighting things specifically so that the d100 came out badly.

I hope I'm contributing rather than hijacking the thread.

Not at all! Without these kinds of musings the thread would consist of nothing other than disgruntled posters pinching the bridges of their noses and wondering why they spend so much time arguing on the internet.

(I didn't see your post when I wrote this response, but I'll give a better answer after other posters have had a chance.)