Table Top Games the D20

[attevil]

As I have considered improving Cyber Run, a table top science fiction RPG set in the future, I?ve struggled with the idea of changing many of the systems to not include the twenty sided die. Table top game dice are mostly used in two ways, the face value of the die representing a number to be used, such as when damage is determined, the other is a pass or fail check, such as when an attack is made. You could imagine that this would require a coin toss instead of a die roll, but what is at the core of gaming mechanics are modifiers, modifying the player?s die roll value up or down depending on the ability of a character and the given situation. To include these modifiers we need something with more sides than a coin. A pass or fail check is easier to conceptualize if it is expressed in terms of a percentage of success.

The obvious choice for a percentile roll would be two ten sided dice. Palladium games like using percentile dice for pass or fail skill checks, but switch to a d20 when doing combat. The disadvantage to a percentile roll is the use of two dice and the bonus increments need to be greater than one for them to be meaningful.

The advantage of a twenty sided die is that each number on the die represents five percent. The combined bonuses from a character?s ability and the situation would give a meaningful range, from a slight advantage of a plus one, five percent bonus, to a significant advantage of a plus five, a twenty five percent bonus.

Multiple Dice for a Success Check

Some game systems, White Wolf especially, use multiple dice to determine a success or failure checks. Instead of the player adding bonuses to a single die roll, for character ability, he or she gets more dice to roll. The number on the die that the player needs to roll is determined by the GM. The number of passed checks determines the degree of success.

For example, a player rolling three dice, because of his or her character ability score with a difficulty of five for a ten sided die, determined by the GM, would have a fifty percent chance of success for each die roll. The total number of passed checks would then determine the degree of success.

The probability of two pass checks out of three die rolls each with a fifty percent chance of success is 4/8 or 50%. Therefore, this situation requiring two pass checks to get the degree of success the player desired would still have the same percentage chance as flipping a coin, which would be much easier then rolling 3 dice.

The disadvantages of rolling multiple dice for success or failure checks is more math, complicating a binary check with two pass conditions, the number on the dice rolled and then the number of successful die rolls. The worst part is that all of this dice rolling and success checking can actually be boiled down to a single probability, which is easier to understand and could be accomplished with a single roll.

5th Edition

Dungeons and Dragons came up with a new way of rolling their D20 success or failure checks. The DM decides if the character has an advantage or a disadvantage, an advantage allows the player to roll two D20s requiring only one of the die rolls to pass for a success. A character with a disadvantage rolls two D20s and only gets a success when both dice pass the check.

The probability of a single success for two rolls with a fifty percent chance of success is seventy five percent. The probability of both rolls being successful is only twenty five percent. Therefore a player with an advantage has a twenty five percent greater chance of success and a player with a disadvantage has a twenty five percent less chance of success.

The advantage to this system is reducing the math and time required from adding up the character ability modifiers and the situation bonuses, the player simply rolls another die, but at the same time the disadvantage to this system is the strength of the modifier in either direction. The modifiers have gone from an adjustable increment of 5% to a flat 25%. This system with such a large bonus in either direction is undermining the whole use of a twenty sided die, which could reduce both the D20s into a four sided die.

Cyber Run

After writing this article I?ve decided for Cyber Run to use a single d20 for pass and fail checks, adding modifiers for character ability and situational bonuses. I?m considering more about the fumble roll of a one and the critical roll of twenty as well as degree of success and rolling the target number on the die. There does seem to be a loss of momentum in a game when a roll simply doesn?t do anything.

- See more at: http://grumpogames.com/blog/#sthash.iYY4o4BI.dpuf

 

[Tamayo]

Your statement seems fairly opaque to me, so I will quote you, then paraphrase you in hopes I am understanding what you are getting at.

Cyber Run, a table top science fiction RPG

I don't recognize it and Google didn't help me much. Is this game based on the OGL d20 system? That is, are its mechanics strongly reminiscent of third-edition D&D?

A pass or fail check is easier to conceptualize if it is expressed in terms of a percentage of success.

Yes, it is. Is that actually a virtue, however?

The advantage of a twenty sided die is that each number on the die represents five percent.

I interpret this to mean, "icosahedra are the Platonic solids with the largest number of sides, therefore making them into random generators gives the largest range of distribution". You contrast using d20s to using 2d10 as digits and units to produce rolls of 0-99 or possibly 1-100; you apparently dislike the necessity of using two dice.

Here let me interject a comparison of three relatively crunchy games systems: fourth-edition GURPS[footnote]All editions of GURPS use this same mechanic; the differences in the rules between the editions are mostly in character generation[/footnote], third-edition D&D[footnote]and other d20 games such as Pathfinder and d20 Modern[/footnote], and sixth-edition[footnote]Actually, RQ rules proper didn't change much after the second edition; only the fluff did.[/footnote] RuneQuest. In all three of these systems, the difficulty of a test is arrived at by applying modifiers to a basic value. If I want to throw a rock at you, each of these systems would ask me how far away you are from me, whether you are under cover from my rock, how heavy the rock I selected was, and so on. After all these modifiers were specified, I would roll dice to see if I hit you.

In GURPS, the dice I roll will be 3d6, and I will be trying to total the pips on the dice equal to or under the modified target number. That means that modifiers to the target value are most significant when my success chance is moderate, rather than if it is high or low.

In third-edition and later D&D, the die I roll will be 1d20 and I will be trying to roll at least as high as the modified target number. The distribution used is flat, unlike the multinomial distribution of GURPS, so modifiers are equally valid throughout the range of target numbers.

In RuneQuest, the target number is a percentile, and I will roll 2d10 for 1-100, trying to roll that value or less. Modifiers to the target number can add or subtract to it, but unlike in the previous two examples, they can also multiply by it. Thus, if you are hiding behind soft cover like a tree branch, the gamemaster may multiply my target number by the cover modifier rather than using a second roll to beat the cover (as in third-edition D&D) or having a constant numerical modifier to my target to hit (as in GURPS).

The success test mechanic in each of these games was very carefully integrated with the way characters are advanced in power. In GURPS, the first few advancements in any skill cost 1, 2, and then 4 character points, but it's always 4 per advancement step thereafter. Beginning characters will have to specialize in order to be able to do much of anything, but because increases in skill are far less valuable when chances of success are high, experienced characters will want to broaden their abilities instead. GMs give character points as reward for successful adventuring, for interesting role-playing, and so on, and sometimes the GM will specify that those character points must be spent on particular benefits; as a GM I would be unhappy if the cowardly rogue who hid behind cover the whole adventure long and didn't fire a shot spent all her CP reward on the Guns(SMG)/TL8 skill.

In D&D, monster ACs and saving throw DCs and so on are very carefully chosen so that representative characters of any given level will have a reasonable challenge when facing a given enemy of similar level. All characters are specialized to some degree; D&D was the first RPG, and the first class-and-level RPG, and its soul is `fighters fight and rogues sneak and wizards blast and clerics rule the world'. (Just kidding.) In third-edition D&D, a high-level fighter can't expect ever to miss a low-level opponent, though in fifth-edition D&D that has changed quite significantly.

In RuneQuest, a character has a chance (!) of advancing in a skill if he or she succeeds in using that skill in a meaningful way during an adventure or if he or she trains that skill in down-time. If I hit you with my rock, then that means that at the end of the session, I can roll 1d100 against my rock-throwing skill hoping to [em]exceed[/em] my current skill value. (There are a few quirks in this process that I'm overlooking.) If I essentially fail my skill check, then, I can add the value of 1d6 to my current skill to get a new skill value. As such, skills advance most rapidly by experience in this fashion when they are nearer 50% than when at either extreme. RuneQuest characters thus mostly specialize in a few skills until they are high, then spend down-time learning important other skills to levels where they are possible to increase by experience, then repeat.

Each game's success test mechanic is intimately tied with the rest of the rules. Switching out the mechanic would require much revision in many other areas.

Some game systems, White Wolf especially, use multiple dice to determine a success or failure checks. Instead of the player adding bonuses to a single die roll, for character ability, he or she gets more dice to roll. The number on the die that the player needs to roll is determined by the GM. The number of passed checks determines the degree of success.

You go on to describe a situation where a success test involving 3d10 has a 50% chance of success. Yes, sometimes you can end up rolling lots of dice to test a very simple situation. Sometimes in D&D, I am a first-level wizard with Dex 14 throwing a rock at an AC 13 enemy in the open fifteen feet away. That's a 50% check, too.

I think a stronger criticism of White Wolf's system is the necessity of specifying two different targets: both the value that must be rolled and the number of successes required. Now, whether the players can accurately determine their chances of success on any given test is immaterial to me, but the GM who is setting the test must be able to predict how difficult that test will be for the players in his or her game. The math is just more complicated than D&D's add-the-modifiers-and-roll-dammit.

Which brings us to ...

5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons

which has squashed almost all the modifiers used in the third and fourth editions of that game into "advantage" and "disadvantage". If I have advantage on a check, I get to roll 2d20 and choose the better one; if I have disadvantage, I have to roll 2d20 and choose the worse one; if I have both, neither applies and I just roll 1d20.

You analyze that advantage amounts to a +5 bonus against a DC of 11; but, as in RuneQuest, D&D5's advantage is a multiplicative modifier rather than the additive ones we have been used to. Against a DC of 17, for example, advantage amounts to only about a +3 bonus.

The fifth edition of D&D is less crunchy than its third- and fourth-edition predecessors, but then, it's easier to play and certainly easier to gamemaster. I do not think that that is entirely a bad choice.

 

[DoPo]

The advantage of a twenty sided die is that each number on the die represents five percent. The combined bonuses from a character?s ability and the situation would give a meaningful range, from a slight advantage of a plus one, five percent bonus, to a significant advantage of a plus five, a twenty five percent bonus.

The disadvantage is that 5% "chunks" of increment are clunky in practice and lead to really odd situations, like in D&D, where the best swordsmen in the world would break their weapons the most often. Compare and contrast that with GURPS, where the best swordsman in the world actually mechanically looks like they are the best in the world don't really go through swords like toothpicks.

For example, a player rolling three dice, because of his or her character ability score with a difficulty of five for a ten sided die, determined by the GM, would have a fifty percent chance of success for each die roll.

No, this is 60% chance of success on each dice, because 6 out of the 10 numbers yield success (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0/10). I'm only mentioning this, since it seems like a glaring omission for somebody talking so much about probability.

The probability of two pass checks out of three die rolls each with a fifty percent chance of success is 4/8 or 50%. Therefore, this situation requiring two pass checks to get the degree of success the player desired would still have the same percentage chance as flipping a coin, which would be much easier then rolling 3 dice.

Oh gods, so much wrong in just this one paragraph.
1. You are not even specifying which system you are talking about. There are a bunch of variations on the Storyteller system (which is used in oWoD) and there is also the Storytelling system (used in nWoD). All of them being White Wolf, of course. Seems you are using oWoD as your basis, since you have the target number different than 8.
2. That example is rather contrived. It's rare that a person would need to roll exactly 2 successes in oWoD. In general, the more successes you get, the better you are, with 3 being average. So an action that gets 2 successes it works but to a below average degree. Most often, a roll which requires a set number of successes is going to be extended...and by definition you don't need to roll 2 successes on it. Not at the same time, anyway, as you have to accumulate successes over several rolls until you reach the target number of them (e.g. 2).
3. If talking 50% chance per die, the probability to get two successes out of a dicepool of 3 is 3/8 which is 37.5%, not 50%. Actually, my bad, re-ran the calculations: it's 50% with a binary choice of success/failure per die.
4. Even then, it's not even that. Even assuming you did legitimately come up with 50% chance, you would still be incorrect. The actual chance is different, because of the existence of the fumbles - each 1 rolled on a die, subtracts a success, so while your calculation treats 1, 8, 9 and 1, 7, 7 as two successes, they are, in fact, 1 success each.
5. Sure, we could assume that yes rolling 3 dice at diff 6 does indeed have 50% chance of yielding 2 successes, but even then this still can't be changed to a simple coin flip as then you can't account for 1 success, 3 successes or a critical failure.

That's all before taking into account 10s rolled. Depending on which iteration of oWoD you use, they can be 2 successes or exploding, depending on the circumstances. Which further skew the probability results.

The disadvantages of rolling multiple dice for success or failure checks is more math, complicating a binary check with two pass conditions, the number on the dice rolled and then the number of successful die rolls. The worst part is that all of this dice rolling and success checking can actually be boiled down to a single probability, which is easier to understand and could be accomplished with a single roll.

No, not really. The dice roll in oWoD has a wide range of effects - by rolling 5 dice, you could get a pass (1+ successes), you could do a satisfactory job (3 successes), you could do excellent (5 successes), or you could fail miserably (1+ fumbles). Each die added or subtracted changes each of these probabilities, as does each difficulty added or subtracted. So, yes, it is hard to understand, I completely agree. I don't really like oWoD mechanically. Which is why the Golden Rule exists. Moreover, that's why nWoD exists. And with the God-Machine Chronicle update, I'd say, it works even better than before.

You contrast using d20s to using 2d10 as digits and units to produce rolls of 0-99 or possibly 1-100; you apparently dislike the necessity of using two dice.

I think Dark Heresy is one of my favourite RPGs in terms of mechanics. Well, to be honest, my favourite as a whole package. But anyway, the dice roll mechanics are so simple and so elegant it blows my mind: it uses percentile dice (2d10) for pretty much all checks. Damage is done in d10 and occasionally in d5s (so, d10 divide the result by 2, if you don't have a d5). All the checks are "roll under attribute", so if you try to do something with Strength, and you Str is 51, you've got 51% chance of success. Any modifiers add/subtract to the target number - for example, something easy (lifting a can of Coke) would have, say, +20 for a total of 71% chance, something hard (lifting a case of Coke bottles) may give you -10 for a total of 41% chance. Yes, it works like D&D, pretty much, but combat is the beauty of it - if you need to know where a hit lands, then your attack roll is also shows where the hit lands.

 

[attevil]

Hi Tamayo,

Thanks for your feedback!
You can find more information on Cyber Run here, http://cyberrun.grumpogames.com, but the information is still limited since we are only releasing bits and pieces till June of next year. Yes the writers used the OGL d20 system as a starting point, but we are going back through the game mechanics with the possibility of changing the system entirely.

I wanted to conceptualize rolls in terms of a percentage of success to make it easier for the readers to understand. I should have stated my goals at the beginning of the article, which are to simplify pass / fail checks without loosing their flexibility for modifications. It seems easier to express everything as percentiles and have the players roll 2d10 for checks, but I think that modifying a percentile will almost always have more than a bonus of 1, 2 or 3, otherwise the modification really isn't meaningful to the roll. We could just add more modifiers for things we currently aren't taking into account and those combined modifiers could be more than 5 or 10 which is more meaningful to a die roll. That was considered, but the additional math and more detailed game mechanics was not the direction we wanted to go in. To simplify the pass / fail check, there should be less math and even less dice. With 5% increments on the d20, we could keep a few core modifiers that would have a meaningful effect on the roll.

I totally agree that the pass fail system is important part of these game mechanics and have implications in other areas of the game. We took the feedback from this post and another one and made changes to the system to include range of success or failure on the die roll, creating at least another dimension for a single roll.

The appeal of the White Wolf system was at how easy for players to understand that their skills and abilities translated to dice. though actually rolling the dice and doing the math in the two step process slowed game play and we couldn't think it was simplifying the process when compared to the ease and understanding of a single die with a single target number.

I used the 5th edition as an example of the simplifying the pass / fail check. I think they are doing it better then other game systems that have simplified the check, but we hesitated to accept that when its using two dice and it is changing the modifiers into bigger chunks. This goes the opposite direction of 2d10s. When your lowest modifier is at least a plus 10% then you no longer need to roll a d20 you should just roll a d10.

 

[attevil]

Hi DoPo,

Thanks for your feedback.
There probably are math errors and I certainly didn't go into the depth of fumbles and criticals, the degree of success or how the the rolls relate to the rest of the core game mechanics. What was appealing about the oWoD system was how the attributes and skills directly translate into dice, which is easy to understand how your skill works in the game, but when I ran vampire games compared to d20 games the rolls became difficult for new players. Where as with d20 games the rolls weren't difficult for new players the modifiers were. In both game systems combat slowed down for new players. Simpler system games, made my Guardians of the Order or like kobolds ate my baby, the combat is fast paced and easy to understand, but the depth of character customization and character strategies are limited. We are hoping to find a balance between character depth and fast paced action.
I do like the Dark Heresy reference the way they use percentiles sounds intuitive and I like how your attributes correlate directly to the die roll. Your explanation gives us something to think about when we revisit our attributes system.

 

[Schadrach]

When talking about dice and probability, I feel it's worth bringing up a system that does it wildly different than any other -- FUDGE (www.fudgerpg.com).

FUDGE uses a similar basic mechanic to d20 (roll+bonus vs a target value), with a major notable exception -- you roll 4dF, where a dF is a six sided die with 2 blank sides, 2 +s and 2 -s. This means that rolls tend to be more of a bell curve (this happens in any situation where you increase the number of dice, for example the 3d6 rolling variant in Unearthed Arcana for 3e D&D), where one mostly rolls in the -1 through +1 range, and +4s and -4s are comparatively rare. It also uses a system of words that map to skill/stat numbers, but that's literally just to obscure the math for the number-phobic.

This means that performing wildly out of line with one's competence is much less likely, and thus makes character stats/skills more relevant.

So, while in d20 one might roll d20+3 to hit a target AC of 15 (succeeding if you roll 12+ on that d20) in FUDGE you might look at your "Average" (0) combat skill, roll 4dF to modify it, and be trying to hit a target of "Good" (+1) (succeeding if you roll a net of +1).

As for character customization, using Gifts and such you can go pretty far, but it's designed to be a fairly rules-light system.

 

[Tamayo]

When talking about dice and probability, I feel it's worth bringing up a system that does it wildly different than any other -- FUDGE (www.fudgerpg.com).

FUDGE uses a similar basic mechanic to d20 (roll+bonus vs a target value), with a major notable exception -- you roll 4dF, where a dF is a six sided die with 2 blank sides, 2 +s and 2 -s. This means that rolls tend to be more of a bell curve (this happens in any situation where you increase the number of dice, for example the 3d6 rolling variant in Unearthed Arcana for 3e D&D), where one mostly rolls in the -1 through +1 range, and +4s and -4s are comparatively rare. It also uses a system of words that map to skill/stat numbers, but that's literally just to obscure the math for the number-phobic.

In fact, that's a multinomial system like the one in GURPS. It just uses different dice, though smaller ones and more of them. GURPS actually implicitly admits that the number of dice being rolled ought to be 6 instead of 3[footnote]The multinomial distribution of 6dX very closely models a Gaussian distribution with sigma = X and mu = 6(X+1)/2.[/footnote] but 3 is entrenched since Steve Jackson's previous game---and 6 is admittedly rather unwieldy.

 

[Schadrach]

When talking about dice and probability, I feel it's worth bringing up a system that does it wildly different than any other -- FUDGE (www.fudgerpg.com).

FUDGE uses a similar basic mechanic to d20 (roll+bonus vs a target value), with a major notable exception -- you roll 4dF, where a dF is a six sided die with 2 blank sides, 2 +s and 2 -s. This means that rolls tend to be more of a bell curve (this happens in any situation where you increase the number of dice, for example the 3d6 rolling variant in Unearthed Arcana for 3e D&D), where one mostly rolls in the -1 through +1 range, and +4s and -4s are comparatively rare. It also uses a system of words that map to skill/stat numbers, but that's literally just to obscure the math for the number-phobic.

In fact, that's a multinomial system like the one in GURPS. It just uses different dice, though smaller ones and more of them. GURPS actually implicitly admits that the number of dice being rolled ought to be 6 instead of 3[footnote]The multinomial distribution of 6dX very closely models a Gaussian distribution with sigma = X and mu = 6(X+1)/2.[/footnote] but 3 is entrenched since Steve Jackson's previous game---and 6 is admittedly rather unwieldy.

Honestly, I'm not that familiar with GURPS, given that D&D is about as rules-heavy as I'm willing to go and GURPS has a *lot* of crunchy bits (it's notorious for that).

 

[DoPo]

I wanted to conceptualize rolls in terms of a percentage of success to make it easier for the readers to understand.

I don't think this is a correct design goal. The system definitely needs to be simple - that doesn't even mean "simple maths" as D&D 3.X (for example) uses basic 1st grade maths but the sheer number of it (the actual number is low but enough) tends to overwhelm people and bog down the game. So even though subtraction and addition of single digit numbers (or really low two digit ones) is simple by itself, an expression such as d20 +5 +3 -2 +1 (-2) (+2) (where the things in the brackets would be factored in only under certain conditions) are not resolved quickly enough. Moreover, that's a simple but normal example, you can easily have something ever so slightly complex that can easily double or triple the time to process, for example d20 +5 +3 -2 +1 (-2) (+2) < 16 +2 (+2)

So, yes, the dice rolls need to be kept simple, however, this should not be the design goal when making a TT RPG. The more important part is the system expands on the game, as that should tie in with the setting and the feel you want from the game. It's as much part of the setting as the fluff itself, and in many ways, the mechanics should be viewed as an extension of the setting. It compliments the game, it isn't just something to slap on without regard. It's similar to video game mechanics, in a way - the game works way better if they are used to support the rest of the game. I'll examine modelling chance as an example how that works:

In D&D the d20 roll fits well with the high fantasy feel - heroes are equally likely to succeed magnificently or fail horribly (both have 5% chance). Fate is fickle - sometimes it favours you, other times it doesn't. It also means that given enough time, a hero could do any relatively mundane task - on average, one of your twenty chances to unlock a door would succeed and D&D embraces that with the take 20 rule. Because you play as the hero, a locked door is an obstacle you should be able to overcome.

In oWoD, however, the model of the chance is different entirely - the world, cruel and unforgiving, as would be your character's very existence, and each dice roll reaffirms it. Any roll can turn sour in just a moment due to botches, and it seems that the bigger your ambitions are, the harder they fall as well - roll three dice (something you could do on absolutely mundane proficiency) and you could roll 1, 8, 8 - only two successes but one gets cancelled out - but hey, you at least got one left. But what if you roll 1, 2, 8 - one success that gets cancelled out and you are left with nothing - eh, your character isn't that good at it. But the more dice you roll, the bigger your chance of something catastrophically wrong happening - roll nine dice and you could easily end up with a result like 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8, 9, 9 barely managing to get a successful outcome. But it could be much worse, a big dicepool can also easily net you a failure or a botch on the roll itself due to one too many 1s rolled. This mirrors the reality of the World of Darkness. In fact, this property of the probability is embraced by Mage: the Ascension where hubris is a main theme of the game: mages use the Arete stat to cast magic and they can choose how much dice to roll[footnote]up to their maximum, of course[/footnote]. But the more dice you roll, the higher the chance of a dramatic failure, and with it, Paradox striking at the mage, punishing them for their audacity to reshape the universe. The more 1s you get on the roll, the bigger the backlash, as well. Thus the hubris of a mage, daring to use their power to strong-arm reality itself into submission, is their downfall as well.

Now we could look at GURPS - the dice mechanics mostly work the simply, as D&D -roll dice, add modifiers and you're done. But unlike D&D, it uses 3d6 instead of d20 - the full spectrum of results is only barely reduced - 3-18, rather than 1-20, but that's negligable, what's more interesting is that GURPS' modelling of chance. It's the complete opposite of D&D in many respects - mainly, the results are not all equally likely - you are the most likely to get the average result of the roll, and the extremes are very unlikely. So a character who is not good at lockpicking is not going to (easily) be able to open a lock. In fact, a sufficient disparity between the character's skill and the lock's strength could render it completely out of the reach of the character, even though this is a relatively mundane task, at least by D&D standard. On the other hand, a character who excels at something can show it easily without automatically failing once every twenty attempts[footnote]on average[/footnote].

These are all different applications of the probability and all work towards a theme that makes the games distinct. Depending on your purposes, any of them could be more suitable than the other, though they all have advantages and disadvantages. If there was a system which did everything correct for each and every game imaginable, then all games would have probably be using that one. But the different systems do fulfill different criteria, based on what they are useful for.

Again, that's not to say that simplicity shouldn't be strived for - it should, but it shouldn't be the single focus.

The appeal of the White Wolf system was at how easy for players to understand that their skills and abilities translated to dice. though actually rolling the dice and doing the math in the two step process slowed game play and we couldn't think it was simplifying the process when compared to the ease and understanding of a single die with a single target number.

I completely agree that the oWoD can be slow. Combat is a particularly good (or bad) example of that. Here are the steps you have to go through to resolve one attack, let's take the example where Bob (B) wants to attack Eve (E):

0. (not discussed but worth mentioning - all combatants need to roll for initiative at the start of the combat, to determine in which order they take their actions)
1. Bob rolls his attack pool. If he gets successes, we continue.
2. Eve rolls her defence pool. Each success negates one of Bob's successes. If Bob does still have successes, continue.
3. Bob rolls his damage pool[footnote]depends on the weapon used[/footnote]. If he gets successes, continue.
4. Now, depending on whether the damage is bashing, lethal or aggravated[footnote]depends on the attack, but as a guide, blunt trauma that doesn't leave open wounds is bashing, attacks that leave wounds are lethal, some severe supernatural attacks are aggravated[/footnote] and what kind of creature the defender (in this case, Eve) is, they could or could not soak it. Mortals can soak bashind damage, for example, while vampires can also soak lethal. If applicable, roll the soak pool and subtract from the damage successes.
5. Apply the damage and mark it on Eve's character sheet.

That was one action in combat. You would have more than one, by virtue of there usually not being only two people and also, each of them can split their dicepool, so they could (quite sensibly) both attack and also defend themselves in a single round. So, yes, combat does move slow. However, luckily, nWoD does make the dice rolls smoother. Here is how you resolve the same situation as above, but in nWoD:

1. Bob gets his attack pool, subtracts, Eve's defence from it, and he rolls. If there are any successes, proceed.
2. Eve suffers damage equal to the successes. Mark that on the sheet.

The God-Machine Chronicle rules update does help out slightly, as well, introducing things like the surrender rule (you don't need to kill your opponents, or they to kill you, which cuts the number of rounds in combat) and the down and dirty combat (used for fighting mooks or otherwise resoling combat quickly - the entire combat consists of two rolls).

Simpler system games, made my Guardians of the Order or like kobolds ate my baby, the combat is fast paced and easy to understand, but the depth of character customization and character strategies are limited.

Just as a side note KAMB! thrives on its simplicity. It's another good example of the system supporting the game itself: the BEER system[footnote]named after the only four attributes in the game: Brawn, Ego, Extraneous, and Reflexes[/footnote] mimics the kobolds themselves - they are simple creatures. They cannot do much - they are literally constrained to Brawn (strength related stuff), Ego (mind related stuff), Reflexes (as it suggests - agility related stuff), and Extraneous (anything else). Moreover, they are constrained to only one skill tied to each of these - one kobold may have the skill to hide (Ego), while another may be able to lay traps (also under Ego) but the latter literally doesn't know how to duck behind a rock.

And then we have Ninja Burger! created by the same company. NB! uses the SAKE[footnote]Strength, Agility, Ki (read: intelligence), Extraneous[/footnote] system where which is virtually the same system as Kobolds Ate My Baby! but with very minor alterations, which manage to turn the entire premise on its head. Where kobolds are inept and can barely function, the ninjas are pretty much omnipotent and can do anything. Each ninja has all the skills but also excels at one per attribute. With this minor tweak, the players are immediately pushed to play kobolds and ninjas quite differently, to each other, in fact, in opposing manners: kobolds can do only 4 things in total and barely at that, so they are prone to failure but the main source of enjoyment is at how funny it is they bumble around, fail and die when faced with mundane everyday tasks. Ninjas, on the other hand, are pushed towards attempting the impossible. The premise there is that while achieving the impossible can be funny, failing at it is also quite funny: a ninja who has to move unseen through a large office, could attempt to mask like a printer or swing from lamp to lamp, or perhaps throw a smoke bomb and dash through. All are equally valid and all are quite funny whether they succeed or fail.

FUDGE uses a similar basic mechanic to d20 (roll+bonus vs a target value), with a major notable exception -- you roll 4dF, where a dF is a six sided die with 2 blank sides, 2 +s and 2 -s. This means that rolls tend to be more of a bell curve (this happens in any situation where you increase the number of dice, for example the 3d6 rolling variant in Unearthed Arcana for 3e D&D), where one mostly rolls in the -1 through +1 range, and +4s and -4s are comparatively rare. It also uses a system of words that map to skill/stat numbers, but that's literally just to obscure the math for the number-phobic.[/footnote]

It's as good as excuse as any to bring up FATE. I love FATE. It uses FUDGE as a basis but it has a number of other interesting features - most importantly, if there ever was a system that "promoted roleplaying" it's that. Any edition of D&D can go fuck itself by comparison, thus my ever continuing bewilderment over D&D edition wars which use "roleplaying" as an argument. FATE not only allows you, but encourages you to use less dice and more roleplaying. It's an intrinsic part of the system. Coupled with a simple and well behaved system, which doesn't sacrifice much, if anything, it is an absolute beauty of an RPG.

Honestly, I'm not that familiar with GURPS, given that D&D is about as rules-heavy as I'm willing to go and GURPS has a *lot* of crunchy bits (it's notorious for that).

While it's true GURPS has a lot of crunchy rules, it's important, nay, vital to point out that you don't need to use them. GURPS is designed to be modular, so you can pick and choose what to have in your game or not. You can pick and choose rules, as well as settings, characters, powers, etc. It's a really important distinction between being crunchy for the sake of it (D&D) and having crunchy rules. It's mostly done so for balance, if that is important to you and your group. The difference between the two is that D&D...well, frankly sucks at Maths and design and balance (the three are connected to each other, of course), while GURPS doesn't. Well, or not as much, at least - I have not delved into it enough to find glaring flaws. The balance, however, does come with a price of crunch...which is offset by modularity - if you don't want to care about driving tanks in Mars gravity, or how to build a character who is a floating sentient cybernetic jellyfish, then ignore the rules for that. I suppose, however, the trouble is that the game needs to contain those rules so you can choose to pick them, if you wish.

I'd really suggest giving GURPS a quick, look, at least - it's worth that much. And there is GURPS Lite [http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/] which gives you the rules and some skills/advantages/disadvantages/etc. The full game is...well, mostly more skills/advantages/disadvantages/etc, so GURPS Lite should show you most of what you need.

 

[Schadrach]

While it's true GURPS has a lot of crunchy rules, it's important, nay, vital to point out that you don't need to use them. GURPS is designed to be modular, so you can pick and choose what to have in your game or not. You can pick and choose rules, as well as settings, characters, powers, etc. It's a really important distinction between being crunchy for the sake of it (D&D) and having crunchy rules. It's mostly done so for balance, if that is important to you and your group. The difference between the two is that D&D...well, frankly sucks at Maths and design and balance (the three are connected to each other, of course), while GURPS doesn't. Well, or not as much, at least - I have not delved into it enough to find glaring flaws. The balance, however, does come with a price of crunch...which is offset by modularity - if you don't want to care about driving tanks in Mars gravity, or how to build a character who is a floating sentient cybernetic jellyfish, then ignore the rules for that. I suppose, however, the trouble is that the game needs to contain those rules so you can choose to pick them, if you wish.

I'd really suggest giving GURPS a quick, look, at least - it's worth that much. And there is GURPS Lite [http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/] which gives you the rules and some skills/advantages/disadvantages/etc. The full game is...well, mostly more skills/advantages/disadvantages/etc, so GURPS Lite should show you most of what you need.

Another system I'm personally familiar with that's interesting is HERO. It's got a lot of complicated, crunchy mathy bits but they're almost entirely in character creation and relies on DM approval of every aspect of your character to prevent the sillier things that the rules technically allow.

We had a player playing a sentient warmech who got angry that an RPG stunned him, we also had a fallen angel and a shapeshifting and weather manipulating fae. We were dubbed "super-neutrals", and ended up getting some weird plotlines once that concept took hold in the DMs mind. Like we had an adventure that involved a super-villain stealing the remains of his old nemesis for some unknown nefarious purpose, we fought hard to stop him and after we succeeded we learned that his plan was to resurrect his old enemy because he missed the challenge of having to outwit him. Thus the mighty heroes? stopped the evil? villain from using the remains of one of the greatest heroes Earth had ever known to bring him back from the dead. That was us in a nutshell.

 

[Tamayo]

The difference between the two is that D&D...well, frankly sucks at Maths and design and balance (the three are connected to each other, of course), while GURPS doesn't. Well, or not as much, at least - I have not delved into it enough to find glaring flaws.

Fourth-edition GURPS has fewer absolutely game-breaking flaws in it than previous editions, but they're still there if you do the munchkin-ing. They're mostly gone. Really. At the price, unfortunately, of reducing the game's elegance and orthogonality.

Still, any really clever munchkin player can break any system. Pun-Pun the kobold exarch demigod rivals the 100-point third-edition GURPS wizard who could open a portal to the heart of the sun and thereby cook the world. Your first-edition AD&D player who yelled, "Hastur, Hastur, Hastur!" just before the dragon was going to eat his character, however, needed the least imagination of all.

Another system I'm personally familiar with that's interesting is HERO. It's got a lot of complicated, crunchy mathy bits but they're almost entirely in character creation and relies on DM approval of every aspect of your character to prevent the sillier things that the rules technically allow.

From my perspective as a GURPS GM manquée, the Hero System is a dialect of GURPS, in the same way that Swedish and Norwegian are dialects of the same language: in that a monoglot Swede can make herself understood to a monoglot Norwegian if she shouts, slowly. As with Scandinavian countries, players of each of these game systems are loth to accept the other system's variant of the basic idea. Hero System, pshaw. ;-)

 

[attevil]

FUDGE and other games using a bell curve system do sound nice in fixing some probability issues that come up with character advancement.
I see what you are saying DoPo, using a top down approach to the game mechanics is a better way then using a bottom up approach based around dice rolling. As we make further changes to our game we will revisit the dice rolls to see if we need to change the system, usually play testing can expose those problems pretty quickly.

Honestly, I'm not that familiar with GURPS, given that D&D is about as rules-heavy as I'm willing to go and GURPS has a *lot* of crunchy bits (it's notorious for that).

Often players don't read the books or know the rules for the games they are playing, much less other games they never played. New players ask senior players to explain to the rules to them because it is easier than reading. I've noticed role players often stay in the games they know since they don't want to take the time to learn a new system, they would rather take that time to play a game. With this in mind several games switched to the OGL d20 system or simplified their rules, there is a balance that is hard to find. Thanks for everyone's input, it was very thought provoking.

 

[Fasckira]

I like the way Tavern Tales [http://taverntalesrpg.com/] runs it; you roll your d20 3 times and take the middle number, which makes for a lovely curve [http://anydice.com/program/43c4].

 

[Schadrach]

Honestly, I'm not that familiar with GURPS, given that D&D is about as rules-heavy as I'm willing to go and GURPS has a *lot* of crunchy bits (it's notorious for that).

Often players don't read the books or know the rules for the games they are playing, much less other games they never played. New players ask senior players to explain to the rules to them because it is easier than reading. I've noticed role players often stay in the games they know since they don't want to take the time to learn a new system, they would rather take that time to play a game. With this in mind several games switched to the OGL d20 system or simplified their rules, there is a balance that is hard to find. Thanks for everyone's input, it was very thought provoking.

I've run into this a lot myself, with a group that tend to be very anti-things that aren't 3-3.5D&D/Pathfinder, even when the systems are comparably very simple (like FUDGE or Numenera or tremulus [which is essentially Apocalypse World adapted to Call of Cthulhu, character creation is literally grabbing the next character sheet from the pile, writing in a name, and picking a few choices from lists of options (which are short enough that they're on the character sheet in their entirety, including what they do)]).

 

[DoPo]

(like FUDGE or Numenera or tremulus [which is essentially Apocalypse World adapted to Call of Cthulhu, character creation is literally grabbing the next character sheet from the pile, writing in a name, and picking a few choices from lists of options (which are short enough that they're on the character sheet in their entirety, including what they do)]).

I just wanted to say, that this is the first time I've seen somebody use nested quotes properly in a message. Of the very, very few times I've even seen somebody use nested quotes in the first place.

 

[attevil]

I like the 3d20s for Tavern Tales, because there isn't math involved, like Dopo said most game math is elementary school level, but still tends to slow the game down.