Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Worlds of Design: Always Tell Me the Odds
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="lewpuls" data-source="post: 7931342" data-attributes="member: 30518"><p>If GMs (and game designers, and gamers) understand “the odds” they will be able to make better choices and understand why some things happen in their games - and some don’t.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">[ATTACH=full]119006[/ATTACH]</p> <p style="text-align: center"><a href="https://pixabay.com/photos/dice-luck-hand-chance-gamble-risk-1209417/" target="_blank">Picture courtesy of Pixabay.</a></p><p>[excerpt]<em>Never tell me the odds!</em></p><p style="text-align: right">--Han Solo (<em>Star Wars</em>)</p><p>[/excerpt]</p><p>[excerpt]<em>Most people don't understand odds and randomness in the most simple dimensions, especially when you're talking about dynamic odds.</em></p><p style="text-align: right">--Keith S. Whyte. Executive Director. National Council on Problem Gambling</p><p>[/excerpt]</p><p>We often hear about “the percentages” and “the odds” in sports. For example, the odds for the home team winning (regular season: NBA 59.9%, NFL 57.1, NHL 55.1, MLB 54.0, MLS soccer (where there are draws) home win ratio of 49.4 percent over a 15 year period, compared to just 26.5 percent away wins). Though game design does not require higher math, game designers need to know simple arithmetic and probability. There are some odds we can talk about in RPGs, as well, and about how people react to those odds.</p><p></p><p>The notion that it can be a "fair fight" in an RPG? 50/50? Nope.</p><p></p><p>How much is a fight biased toward the adventurers? Let’s consider the NCAA Basketball tournament. Let’s say that a team is so good, it can win 90% of its games against the better teams, the ones in the tournament. This is unlikely: how many teams have a season record as good as 27-3 (90%) though they’re playing weak as well as strong teams? When you’re playing the stronger teams, 90% is quite unlikely. But let’s use that anyway.</p><p></p><p>So what are the chances of winning the tournament (six games in a row) even with that 90% (beyond-likelihood) capability?</p><p></p><table style='width: 100%'><tr><td><p style="text-align: center">90%</p> </td><td><p style="text-align: center">win 1 in a row</p> </td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: center">81.00%</p> </td><td><p style="text-align: center">win 2 in a row</p> </td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: center">72.90%</p> </td><td><p style="text-align: center">win 3 in a row</p> </td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: center">65.61%</p> </td><td><p style="text-align: center">win 4 in a row</p> </td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: center">59.05%</p> </td><td><p style="text-align: center">win 5 in a row</p> </td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: center">53.14%</p> </td><td><p style="text-align: center">win 6 in a row</p> </td></tr></table><p></p><p>Even that most unlikely team that can win 90% of games against tournament-quality opposition, only has a 53.14% chance of winning the tournament. Even a team with a 99% win likelihood wins the six-game tournament only 94.15% of the time (“fail on a roll of 1 on d20").</p><p></p><p>(How is this calculated? You multiply, you don't add. So to win three games in a row, it’s 90% times 90% times 90%.)</p><p></p><p>This is why the “best team” often fails to win the tournament. This is why some pro sports play seven-game playoff series, in the hope that luck “evens out” and the better team will win.</p><p></p><p><strong>Translate This into RPGs</strong></p><p></p><p>Extrapolate that into RPG sessions with perhaps one big battle per session, or maybe more! Practically speaking, either you need really astute players willing to run away from almost any encounter, in order to avoid taking chances, or you need to arrange a huge bias in favor of the players in a typical encounter. Or they're going to lose and possibly die pretty soon.</p><p></p><p>Go back to the tournament example. If the players are 90% likely to win, after six encounters there will be around a 47% chance that they will have lost one of those encounters.</p><p></p><p>The whole notion of RPG combat as "sport", as something that's "fair", is nonsense in light of these calculations.</p><p></p><p><strong>Playing Styles</strong></p><p></p><p>Some play for "the rush", for glory, and like Han Solo don't want to know the odds before they do something. If you accommodate them, then the bias in favor of the players must be even greater, or you'll have dead characters in no time. (This brings up the question of "fudging" dice rolls in favor of characters, which I may address another time. Some GMs do it routinely, others never.)</p><p></p><p>Is it fun to play to survive, to “win”, instead of for glory? Depends on the person. It is for me, when I expand it to include survival for the entire group, not just my character(s). In contrast, in the late 70s I played in a game that was supposed to act as the stimulus for someone to write a story. I tried to do something "heroic". My character got dead.</p><p></p><p>Many gamers don't understand probability, and so over- (or under-) estimate their chances of success. Some don't understand the scope of the chances. 1 in a thousand vs 1 in a million is a massive difference, but people often don't see it that way. It's yet another case of perception not matching reality.</p><p></p><p>That's where we get those who don't understand odds, who think that anything (no matter how outlandish) ought to be possible once in 20 (a 20 on a d20) or at worst once in a hundred (100 on percentage dice). No, the chance of most anything happening in a given situation are astronomically against. (And "astronomically" is practically the same as "impossible".)</p><p></p><p>Recently I talked with a gamer who is very skeptical of probabilities, but doesn't understand them. He thought it was terribly unlikely that a player could roll five dice in a row and get at least a 4 on every roll. The chances, 50% to the fifth power, amount to better than 3%. For some reason he thought that rolling the dice successively rather than altogether made a difference - nope, what's come before has no bearing on what comes after, in odds. And what about five 1's in a row? That's 16.66% (a 1 on a d6) to the fifth, .000129 or .0129%. One tenth of one percent (one chance in a thousand) is .01%. So slightly better than one chance in a thousand. Rolling seven 1's in a row is about 3.5 chances in a million. Or perhaps more easily, rolling a 1 on every one of six 10-sided dice is a one-in-a-million chance.</p><p></p><p>To summarize: For designers, fudging the dice (or the quality of the opposition) is inevitable. For players, it helps to understand probabilities in games</p><p></p><p><strong>Reference</strong>: James Ernest (Cheapass Games) - <a href="http://t.co/2Aish6hac0" target="_blank">Probability for Game Designers | League of Gamemakers</a></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="lewpuls, post: 7931342, member: 30518"] If GMs (and game designers, and gamers) understand “the odds” they will be able to make better choices and understand why some things happen in their games - and some don’t. [CENTER][ATTACH type="full" alt="diceluck.jpg"]119006[/ATTACH] [URL='https://pixabay.com/photos/dice-luck-hand-chance-gamble-risk-1209417/']Picture courtesy of Pixabay.[/URL][/CENTER] [excerpt][I]Never tell me the odds![/I] [RIGHT]--Han Solo ([I]Star Wars[/I])[/RIGHT] [/excerpt] [excerpt][I]Most people don't understand odds and randomness in the most simple dimensions, especially when you're talking about dynamic odds.[/I] [RIGHT]--Keith S. Whyte. Executive Director. National Council on Problem Gambling[/RIGHT] [/excerpt] We often hear about “the percentages” and “the odds” in sports. For example, the odds for the home team winning (regular season: NBA 59.9%, NFL 57.1, NHL 55.1, MLB 54.0, MLS soccer (where there are draws) home win ratio of 49.4 percent over a 15 year period, compared to just 26.5 percent away wins). Though game design does not require higher math, game designers need to know simple arithmetic and probability. There are some odds we can talk about in RPGs, as well, and about how people react to those odds. The notion that it can be a "fair fight" in an RPG? 50/50? Nope. How much is a fight biased toward the adventurers? Let’s consider the NCAA Basketball tournament. Let’s say that a team is so good, it can win 90% of its games against the better teams, the ones in the tournament. This is unlikely: how many teams have a season record as good as 27-3 (90%) though they’re playing weak as well as strong teams? When you’re playing the stronger teams, 90% is quite unlikely. But let’s use that anyway. So what are the chances of winning the tournament (six games in a row) even with that 90% (beyond-likelihood) capability? [TABLE] [TR] [TD][CENTER]90%[/CENTER][/TD] [TD][CENTER]win 1 in a row[/CENTER][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][CENTER]81.00%[/CENTER][/TD] [TD][CENTER]win 2 in a row[/CENTER][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][CENTER]72.90%[/CENTER][/TD] [TD][CENTER]win 3 in a row[/CENTER][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][CENTER]65.61%[/CENTER][/TD] [TD][CENTER]win 4 in a row[/CENTER][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][CENTER]59.05%[/CENTER][/TD] [TD][CENTER]win 5 in a row[/CENTER][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][CENTER]53.14%[/CENTER][/TD] [TD][CENTER]win 6 in a row[/CENTER][/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] Even that most unlikely team that can win 90% of games against tournament-quality opposition, only has a 53.14% chance of winning the tournament. Even a team with a 99% win likelihood wins the six-game tournament only 94.15% of the time (“fail on a roll of 1 on d20"). (How is this calculated? You multiply, you don't add. So to win three games in a row, it’s 90% times 90% times 90%.) This is why the “best team” often fails to win the tournament. This is why some pro sports play seven-game playoff series, in the hope that luck “evens out” and the better team will win. [B]Translate This into RPGs[/B] Extrapolate that into RPG sessions with perhaps one big battle per session, or maybe more! Practically speaking, either you need really astute players willing to run away from almost any encounter, in order to avoid taking chances, or you need to arrange a huge bias in favor of the players in a typical encounter. Or they're going to lose and possibly die pretty soon. Go back to the tournament example. If the players are 90% likely to win, after six encounters there will be around a 47% chance that they will have lost one of those encounters. The whole notion of RPG combat as "sport", as something that's "fair", is nonsense in light of these calculations. [B]Playing Styles[/B] Some play for "the rush", for glory, and like Han Solo don't want to know the odds before they do something. If you accommodate them, then the bias in favor of the players must be even greater, or you'll have dead characters in no time. (This brings up the question of "fudging" dice rolls in favor of characters, which I may address another time. Some GMs do it routinely, others never.) Is it fun to play to survive, to “win”, instead of for glory? Depends on the person. It is for me, when I expand it to include survival for the entire group, not just my character(s). In contrast, in the late 70s I played in a game that was supposed to act as the stimulus for someone to write a story. I tried to do something "heroic". My character got dead. Many gamers don't understand probability, and so over- (or under-) estimate their chances of success. Some don't understand the scope of the chances. 1 in a thousand vs 1 in a million is a massive difference, but people often don't see it that way. It's yet another case of perception not matching reality. That's where we get those who don't understand odds, who think that anything (no matter how outlandish) ought to be possible once in 20 (a 20 on a d20) or at worst once in a hundred (100 on percentage dice). No, the chance of most anything happening in a given situation are astronomically against. (And "astronomically" is practically the same as "impossible".) Recently I talked with a gamer who is very skeptical of probabilities, but doesn't understand them. He thought it was terribly unlikely that a player could roll five dice in a row and get at least a 4 on every roll. The chances, 50% to the fifth power, amount to better than 3%. For some reason he thought that rolling the dice successively rather than altogether made a difference - nope, what's come before has no bearing on what comes after, in odds. And what about five 1's in a row? That's 16.66% (a 1 on a d6) to the fifth, .000129 or .0129%. One tenth of one percent (one chance in a thousand) is .01%. So slightly better than one chance in a thousand. Rolling seven 1's in a row is about 3.5 chances in a million. Or perhaps more easily, rolling a 1 on every one of six 10-sided dice is a one-in-a-million chance. To summarize: For designers, fudging the dice (or the quality of the opposition) is inevitable. For players, it helps to understand probabilities in games [B]Reference[/B]: James Ernest (Cheapass Games) - [URL='http://t.co/2Aish6hac0']Probability for Game Designers | League of Gamemakers[/URL] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Worlds of Design: Always Tell Me the Odds
Top