Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dethklok" data-source="post: 6137148" data-attributes="member: 6746469">Throughout the course of a day, a person's ability to run, write an essay, or hit a target will fluctuate. To say "My ability to hit a target of X size at Y meters distant with rife Z is exactly 57%" is only plausible if we assume that my character has no existence apart from a set of numbers on a character sheet. If we're trying to imagine an actual person in a fantasy world whose characteristics are measured or represented numerically, then I really do think the precision is false.Yes. Yes, but look:1. It wasn't Call of Cthulhu, and wasn't intended to be "Cthulhu with  2d6." Skill checks were awarded only for ties and crits, not successes,  so they were actually received at less the rate as in a Cthulhu session.  Also the skill set was different - it was smaller, so overall a skill  improvement was more useful than it would be in Call of Cthulhu.2. We set the system for the rate of advancement we liked best. It's elementary to speed or slow advancement by making advancement checks easier more difficult, or giving them out under more or less stringent circumstances.Some people do like flat probability curves, yes. But X% is always X% isn't necessarily a benefit. There's a reason GURPS uses 3d6 to get that bell curve.OK, I get that. I do see that you are paying attention to my first post or posts.Oh, absolutely! Remember where I said percentile systems are appropriate for certain games, like a high-tech game or Straight Paranoia? And there are lots more things I've been wanting to say, but haven't had much chance to. For better or for worse, the discussion goes where the arguments are. Bagpuss isn't having any of this false precision stuff; with you it seems more to do with my claims that a mechanic can ever be better or more appropriate than another. So for him, I'm just going to have to talk about precision a while longer. With you, it's going to be this idea of zillions of d10s. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Mike, I want to ask you, what do you think my point is?So you would find a dGoogol system fun?See, it isn't disingenuous of me to say you don't seem to be paying attention to this argument, when I keep making it and you keep ignoring it. I'm not suggesting you're being deliberately obtuse, or that you are looking at it and thinking, "I can't address this, so I just won't respond and hope it goes away." It's a big thread, and I probably missed stuff you've said, too. But I see this issue as being critical to your disagreement with me. You've either got to bite the bullet and say, "Yes, I'd love to play a dGoogol system, it would be, um, really great" at which point laughter will ensue, or else you have to admit that, fine, some dice systems really do use too much granularity, even if d100 doesn't have too much. Or you may come out of left field with some other scintillating point; I'll wait and see.Glad to have been of service!Eh, at this point we may just be arguing over semantics. It's OK with me if you want to draw a distinction between everyone subjectively agreeing and something being objectively true.Even then, though, wouldn't it strike you as interesting that millions of human beings, each with an individual opinion, might all agree about something being not fun? And if that were the case, then would it be unwarranted to say that this agreement probably came from their universally apprehending some genuinely objective feature about life in this universe, even if they don't know what it is?Absolutely, play what you like! But it isn't a coincidence that no one throws a hundred d10s for task resolution.I'm not trying to tell people that game system X can't be fun because it uses a poorly considered mechanic. I do think that when people insist that all mechanics are equal for all purposes, they're not really being honest with themselves. It seems to me that people like and enjoy a game, and then feel the need to defend it, even where it is weak. Doesn't the ability to identify, admit the existence of, and explore good and bad points of rpgs show a developed attitude toward the hobby? When is the last time somebody told wine tasters that they're all crazy when they talk about some wines being better than other wines, and then have the audacity to agree with each other about it? They may be snobs, but who seriously goes up to them and says the Bordeaux isn't any better than their $8 bottle of Ripple?</blockquote>

Verification