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Players: Why Do You Want to Roll a d20?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7796234" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>I think we're at the point that the example is morphing to the needs of the argument rather than remaining useful. I understand your approach, here, and I'm not denigrating it. I'm saying that there's another way to do it that doesn't ever involve knowing the number of flips done. I can determine anything that's important to me for a scene without having a sliding scale single roll tell me how many discrete flips are done. That's the sum of my point.</p><p></p><p>I will note, though, that not a single person other than you is insisting that a pass/fail check is either 10 flips or no flips. Pass/fail is just 'did enough flips' or 'didn't do enough flips.' The exact number of flips is largely flavor. A fail could be 9 flips, or 2. It's not important to me to have the check determine the exact number of flips completed because the number of flips is really a middleman for a different determination of success. I skip the middleman.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I used to use this method. I used to let the number on the die tell me what happened in the scene, but I disliked how that worked because the players began to expect it all the time rather than when appropriate, and started chasing 20s on the die rather than engage the fiction. The game felt disconnected, even as I tired it. I'm not saying this is your experience, but it was (is) mine with the resolution mechanic you're discussing. I find much better play (again, for me) by discarding the dice determining the fiction and going with the pass/fail for a stated goal using the approach to adjudicate the difficulty. The result can now be whatever works out, but my maxim for a roll is that it must change the fiction. No whiffs. You succeed, and the fiction changes by moving towards your goal (often, all the way); you fail, and it moves away from your goal. The exact nature of how this is represented in the fiction is wide open to whatever drives the conflict best.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That's not quite the point. The point I made was that often the apparent need for a sliding scale is because you're using whatever you're rolling for as a proxy for an unstated or untested goal. In the case of the flips, 10 flips gets the PC something they want, fewer may get them something else or nothing. You use the sliding scale to determine the proxy value to determine the level of reward. And that's great, it's effective at doing this. I don't see the value in this anymore, and chose to test the end result goal directly. I use the check not to determine the proxy, but the goal's success or failure. </p><p></p><p>Both ways are valid, and I like how much you clearly love your style. You do you, and have fun doing you -- this is really the only goal of play. I like talking about how mechanics work, sometimes bluntly, but if you like how you play, then it's a good way.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 7796234, member: 16814"] I think we're at the point that the example is morphing to the needs of the argument rather than remaining useful. I understand your approach, here, and I'm not denigrating it. I'm saying that there's another way to do it that doesn't ever involve knowing the number of flips done. I can determine anything that's important to me for a scene without having a sliding scale single roll tell me how many discrete flips are done. That's the sum of my point. I will note, though, that not a single person other than you is insisting that a pass/fail check is either 10 flips or no flips. Pass/fail is just 'did enough flips' or 'didn't do enough flips.' The exact number of flips is largely flavor. A fail could be 9 flips, or 2. It's not important to me to have the check determine the exact number of flips completed because the number of flips is really a middleman for a different determination of success. I skip the middleman. I used to use this method. I used to let the number on the die tell me what happened in the scene, but I disliked how that worked because the players began to expect it all the time rather than when appropriate, and started chasing 20s on the die rather than engage the fiction. The game felt disconnected, even as I tired it. I'm not saying this is your experience, but it was (is) mine with the resolution mechanic you're discussing. I find much better play (again, for me) by discarding the dice determining the fiction and going with the pass/fail for a stated goal using the approach to adjudicate the difficulty. The result can now be whatever works out, but my maxim for a roll is that it must change the fiction. No whiffs. You succeed, and the fiction changes by moving towards your goal (often, all the way); you fail, and it moves away from your goal. The exact nature of how this is represented in the fiction is wide open to whatever drives the conflict best. That's not quite the point. The point I made was that often the apparent need for a sliding scale is because you're using whatever you're rolling for as a proxy for an unstated or untested goal. In the case of the flips, 10 flips gets the PC something they want, fewer may get them something else or nothing. You use the sliding scale to determine the proxy value to determine the level of reward. And that's great, it's effective at doing this. I don't see the value in this anymore, and chose to test the end result goal directly. I use the check not to determine the proxy, but the goal's success or failure. Both ways are valid, and I like how much you clearly love your style. You do you, and have fun doing you -- this is really the only goal of play. I like talking about how mechanics work, sometimes bluntly, but if you like how you play, then it's a good way. [/QUOTE]
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