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Presentation vs design... vs philosophy
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7952213" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Turning undead. Climbing walls. Evasion out-of-doors. Listening at doors allows retries. Opening normal dungeon doors allows retries. I'm pretty sure picking pockets allows retries.</p><p></p><p>I'm not sure what work "makes sense" is doing here. If what's behind a lock materially changes, the game doesn't give me a new chance to roll to successfully pick it. Nor if I buy new thieves' tools. The game says I have to gain a level.</p><p></p><p>If I lose a fight to some goblins and survive (eg I run away or my friends carry my unconscious body of the field), I'm allwoed a retry although nothing might be materially different.</p><p></p><p>I think it's very hard to find any consistency in the AD&D rules over what calls for one roll, multiple rolls with cumlative effect, the possibility of retires with or without cost (in the form, say, of wandering monster checks), etc. Which goes back to the claim that it is more flexiible than a uniform system because of its variety of sub-systems. I'm really not seeing any evidence in favour of that assertion.</p><p></p><p>Well, if granularity <em>is</em> imporant, why not (as someone suggested upthread) use d1000? Or d10 rather than d6 for intiative or surpise? I'm honestly not sure there's any answer to this question in the logic of AD&D's design. Much of it seems rather arbitrary. (And I believe some of it was driven by a desire to sell polyhedral dice.)</p><p></p><p>One quite flexible system that I mentioned upthread is Cortex+ Heroic, which uses polyhedral dice from d5 to d12 and does have a logic to it (in the sense that both mechanical inputs and resulting effects are measured in die sizes, and stepping these up or down is an important aspect of resolution).</p><p></p><p>Of classic systems I think Classic Traveller is certainly as flexible than AD&D, and probably moreso, and it uses 2d6 as it's most common throw for resolution. It has multiple subsystems each with its own bonus structure - one feature that tends to lessen its flexibiity - but one effect of 2d6 is that even a +1 is significant. To me at least there does seem to be a clearer logic to Traveller's systems than to AD&D's.</p><p></p><p>Probably the most flexible fo the class systems is BRP/RuneQuest, and it uses d100 almost uniformally.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7952213, member: 42582"] Turning undead. Climbing walls. Evasion out-of-doors. Listening at doors allows retries. Opening normal dungeon doors allows retries. I'm pretty sure picking pockets allows retries. I'm not sure what work "makes sense" is doing here. If what's behind a lock materially changes, the game doesn't give me a new chance to roll to successfully pick it. Nor if I buy new thieves' tools. The game says I have to gain a level. If I lose a fight to some goblins and survive (eg I run away or my friends carry my unconscious body of the field), I'm allwoed a retry although nothing might be materially different. I think it's very hard to find any consistency in the AD&D rules over what calls for one roll, multiple rolls with cumlative effect, the possibility of retires with or without cost (in the form, say, of wandering monster checks), etc. Which goes back to the claim that it is more flexiible than a uniform system because of its variety of sub-systems. I'm really not seeing any evidence in favour of that assertion. Well, if granularity [I]is[/I] imporant, why not (as someone suggested upthread) use d1000? Or d10 rather than d6 for intiative or surpise? I'm honestly not sure there's any answer to this question in the logic of AD&D's design. Much of it seems rather arbitrary. (And I believe some of it was driven by a desire to sell polyhedral dice.) One quite flexible system that I mentioned upthread is Cortex+ Heroic, which uses polyhedral dice from d5 to d12 and does have a logic to it (in the sense that both mechanical inputs and resulting effects are measured in die sizes, and stepping these up or down is an important aspect of resolution). Of classic systems I think Classic Traveller is certainly as flexible than AD&D, and probably moreso, and it uses 2d6 as it's most common throw for resolution. It has multiple subsystems each with its own bonus structure - one feature that tends to lessen its flexibiity - but one effect of 2d6 is that even a +1 is significant. To me at least there does seem to be a clearer logic to Traveller's systems than to AD&D's. Probably the most flexible fo the class systems is BRP/RuneQuest, and it uses d100 almost uniformally. [/QUOTE]
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