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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7900400" data-attributes="member: 4937">I have a strong aversion to this as well. And it's become a weaker but real aversion to any dice pool system.The absolute basic thing that a game system has to have is math that works. If we didn't have to have math that works, we would never need a system more complex than Celebrim's famous &quot;World's Simplest RPG&quot;, which has only one rule - basically, &quot;Flip a coin&quot;. The reason that system is not satisfying is the math doesn't work. In the world's simplest RPG, the odds of Superman jumping over a puddle is the same as odds of Lois Lane leaping a tall building in a single bound (and vica versa). And both also have the same odds of leaping the Atlantic ocean. So the very basic thing all systems are trying to achieve is plausible task resolution.And the problem I have with custom non-numerical dice and dice pools is I almost always find that the designers didn't pay much attention to whether or not the math of their system actually works. They didn't set things according to an idea like, &quot;I want this sort of task to succeed 2/3rds of the time, and this sort 1/5th of the time, and this sort 9/10ths of the time.&quot; They set up the system based on an aesthetic ideal and not based on a pragmatic examination of the math. It's very hard in a system with wonky math to know as a player or as a DM what odds you are actually setting on a task succeeding or failing. Games like Storyteller and FUDGE and FATE and Mousegaurd all have in common that they have hideous math in the general case and that they strongly hide from the participants the odds of the outcomes. Matters only get worse when you hide the math further by replacing the numbers with symbols.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7900400, member: 4937"] I have a strong aversion to this as well. And it's become a weaker but real aversion to any dice pool system. The absolute basic thing that a game system has to have is math that works. If we didn't have to have math that works, we would never need a system more complex than Celebrim's famous "World's Simplest RPG", which has only one rule - basically, "Flip a coin". The reason that system is not satisfying is the math doesn't work. In the world's simplest RPG, the odds of Superman jumping over a puddle is the same as odds of Lois Lane leaping a tall building in a single bound (and vica versa). And both also have the same odds of leaping the Atlantic ocean. So the very basic thing all systems are trying to achieve is plausible task resolution. And the problem I have with custom non-numerical dice and dice pools is I almost always find that the designers didn't pay much attention to whether or not the math of their system actually works. They didn't set things according to an idea like, "I want this sort of task to succeed 2/3rds of the time, and this sort 1/5th of the time, and this sort 9/10ths of the time." They set up the system based on an aesthetic ideal and not based on a pragmatic examination of the math. It's very hard in a system with wonky math to know as a player or as a DM what odds you are actually setting on a task succeeding or failing. Games like Storyteller and FUDGE and FATE and Mousegaurd all have in common that they have hideous math in the general case and that they strongly hide from the participants the odds of the outcomes. Matters only get worse when you hide the math further by replacing the numbers with symbols. [/QUOTE]

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