Richard Garfield on Luck

[Ridley's Cohort]

Comments about chess aside, which were informative, it is fairly apparent you've missed Garfields key point. Specifically he wasn't saying "people who are good at a game are good at modifying it" he was saying "people who are good at a competitive game will want to modify it to remove luck, so they can win more often."

Well, D&D is not a competitive game, so it is not clear this applies in any way whatsoever.

Secondly, I deny that the overall luck profile has changed significantly. A healthy low level PC fighting any vanilla Orc has roughly a 1-2% of being vaporized by a lucky critical. We may no longer be losing PCs to nominally weak "+4 Save vs. Poison" attacks and their ilk, but PCs are dying in other ways.

Third of all, the disparity between your super-optimized PC and your pedestrian PC in 3e is not greater than the difference a well-built Elven multiclassed PC compared to a typical Human single classed PC in earlier editions.

 

[Huw]

Comments about chess aside, which were informative, it is fairly apparent you've missed Garfields key point. Specifically he wasn't saying "people who are good at a game are good at modifying it" he was saying "people who are good at a competitive game will want to modify it to remove luck, so they can win more often."

Ah, that makes it clearer. I was approaching from a D&D perspective. Thanks.

I can still think of a counter example - casinos. Casinos want to increase luck, as that gives them better returns. Card counting in pontoon/blackjack, done right, turned a 2% house advantage into a 0.5% player advantage. Most casinos responded by increasing the deck size (using additional decks) and shuffling more often, increasing the amount of luck involved. That shifted the advantage back to the house.

 

[Cor Azer]

Ah, that makes it clearer. I was approaching from a D&D perspective. Thanks.

I can still think of a counter example - casinos. Casinos want to increase luck, as that gives them better returns. Card counting in pontoon/blackjack, done right, turned a 2% house advantage into a 0.5% player advantage. Most casinos responded by increasing the deck size (using additional decks) and shuffling more often, increasing the amount of luck involved. That shifted the advantage back to the house.

Well that still sort of supports Garfield's position - the players who are good (ie, card-counters) want to "modify" that game in their favour... obviously, the House wants to modify the game in the other direction, but there's no guarantee the House consists of expert players (which is the source of Garfield's game modifiers, and so he makes no direct comment on the tendencies of non-experts, or other people tied into the game's design).