Shadowrun d20?

[MoogleEmpMog]

When did WizKids and WotC become megacorporations?

By the standards of this industry they are.

 

[twistnack]

By the standards of this industry they are.

Calling any company that makes RPGs a megacorporation seems a little odd to me. I wouldn't even call Hasbro a megacorporation.

 

[the_dunner]

When did WizKids and WotC become megacorporations?

When they were bought by Topps and Hasbro?

OK, mega might be stretching it, but by RPG standards, that's scary-big.

 

[Ranger REG]

When they were bought by Topps and Hasbro?

OK, mega might be stretching it, but by RPG standards, that's scary-big.

Simply because they are now part of a conglomerate?

White Wolf is a megacorporation by your standard, since they are also a publishinghouse for Arthaus and Sword & Sorcery Studio.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I think we can safely let the WotC and WizKids as megacorps joke die now. :\

 

[ruleslawyer]

Now that's weird...and here I thought that, the more dice you have to roll, the better your chances are that one of them is going to roll the number you need to beat the TN. Like with a "standard" TN of 4...which is 50% on 1d6. So if you have 5d6 to roll, the chances that one of them shows up 4 or higher are better than with just 1d6.

Better, yes. Now try explaining in plain English, or simple math, how changes to TNs above 6 (and that's generally where the changes go in SR: up) affect the probability of achieving X successes with Y dice when X and Y also can change, depending on the circumstnances.

Well, do me a favour and, when you got the time, try to explain that to me, maybe in an email, if you'd prefer. I always was under the impression that the number of dice rolled was directly tied to calculating the possibility to have a certain number of "successes" at a certain TN.

Directly, yes, in the same way that load-bearing members made of stronger materials allow a structure to support more weight. Making a more precise statement as to what that relationship is, however, requires a lot of engineering experience and calculus chops. My point is merely that SR's system makes it very, very difficult to figure out on the fly what a character's chance of accomplishing X task given Y dice, Z number of required successes, p target number, and r mods (especially the mods!). The one-die-plus-applicable-mods structure of d20 makes doing this a snap, and does away with SR's probability structure, which is highly disjunctive due to the exploding dice roll rule. Note, for example, that a +3 to the TN has a vastly different effect on probability if the initial TN is 2, compared to if it is 5. Or the fact that 6 and 7, 12 and 13, etc. are equally easy results to roll. I am merely explaining why my players have issues with SR, not whether the system is "better" or "worse" than d20.

Anyway, simply adding successes based on "by every 5 you beat the DC" to d20 is by far not the same...as skill and attribute (and whatever else) modifiers are added in a linear fashion in d20, it doesn't even come close to model the success-based results of Shadowrun, in my opinion.

Actually, it does model success-based results in a more predictable and cleaner manner. But that's just IMHO...