[Pocket Universe] Old serial killer procedural and new fantasy-adventure

[Ron Edwards]

I'm following up on Alessandro's interesting observation for his game in design ([Tactical Ops]Actual Play #01 - Just Like in CSI), that what he thought was basically designed for action-adventure turned out, in play, to be quite good for investigations. I wanted to write about how this has plagued me as an issue, and how I've seen it plague others.

PERVY APPROACH
Some time around 2001, people starting designing investigation=centric games which explicitly separated player-knowledge from character-knowledge entirely. Jared Sorensen pretty much blew the lid off this pot with InSpectres (possibly influenced by my Dumb Luck rules in Elfs, which is not an investigation game, perish the thought). in this game, the scenario starts only with a single reason to think that "something's wrong around here," and both more clues and ultimately their cause are provided through player narrations of successful rolls, throughout play. InSpectres has many direct heirs, whether known to the designers or not, as the principles underlying that game permeated the internet game-design scene like sodium ions in a glass of water.

It's definitely a switch, though. I pushed it too hard in [Air Patrol] Ronnies feedback) and effectively ambushed Patrick's design, which is too bad because it was a very strong runner-up for a Ronny in that round.

I won't go further into this kind of play here, except (i) it works, including much less aggressive applications of the principle than as found in InSpectres; and (ii) regarding the game I want to talk about here, I didn't really want to do it this time, being interested at least for the moment in whether the traditional approach could be fun for me.

So I'll spend more time talking about the ...

TRADITIONAL APPROACH
Without going into details, I played for solid decade, often with as many as four groups going at once, using games which at least partly included some kind of investigative activity on the character's parts, with the implication that the characters were effectively acting as player avatars in an actual process of discovery. Even in superhero games, which I played more than any other kind, scenarios typically included some kind of "investigation phase" which was modeled on the more infrastructural design found in Call of Cthulhu.

As I implied with my avatars phrasing, the baseline assumption for playing this way is that the players' and characters' minds are regarded as one thing, forcing two ways to play to strangely co-exist.

First, one might play with the character's own actions and successful rolls as a guide, such that the player doesn't have to realize anything but rather accepts what the character finds out. Playing this way often requires winking at the fact that the opposite can happen, i.e., if and when a player figures it out, the character is in fact considered to have done so in a reversal of the "he looks at book, I make the roll, he learns the secret, GM tells me the secret" model followed thus far.

Second, one might play with the player's curiosity and understanding driving the whole thing, with the character literally as an avatar for the player's determined and deductive processes. Playing this way doesn't mesh well with failing rolls for Library checks and similar, necessitating fudging the rolls or giving up the answers in some back-handed way ("You find nothing in the book, but then the ancient janitor appears and says ..."). It's also quite vulnerable to the GM thinking that X and Y are obvious but being, well, wrong about that. Similar to the above, too, when the character does make a roll and learns something the player hasn't figured out yet, that's considered OK despite its contradiction of the underlying logic to that point.

I might as well be not-nice about this: play of this kind can get really tedious and awful. It can succumb into the Bobby G technique, which is to say, wandering around getting nowhere until the GM throws the key information-NPC at you to open the door to the climactic confrontation. At least that can be done well; when it's done badly, though, it devolves into arrant railroading. The best pithy summary of that situation may be found in the Fantasy Heartbreaker post Not as I do: Organizing an RPG:

... existing gamers [are] usually looking for content and twists they can introduce into an existing gaming style. They already know if they're going to do a dungeon crawl,2 a railroad,3 or an investigation game.4 Because that's how they roll. They just need to know whether they're calling the magic user a Tremere.
....
2. A game in which an imaginary space filled with deathtraps is explored.
3. A game in which the sequence of events is predetermined and players must find their way between them.
4. Like a railroad, except the player characters go insane at the end.

Somewhat more kindly, I'd been finding that planned-adventure play had been more fun than I'd expected when everyone knew it was to be that way, so that Illusionism was abandoned in favor of Participationism. The concern at that point becomes how to accept player-initiated actions when they do arise (i.e. not stifle them) and how to keep the flow of information fun and logical/plausible in-game without making them entirely contingent on player-character actions. Not my top skill or preference as a GM, but at least something I could work on, right?

OUR SERIAL KILLER PROCEDURAL GAME
A few years ago, I was pondering how trivializing and formulaic serial-killer procedurals had become. I was also perturbed at how romantic and "fascinating" such people were supposed to be, when my modest understanding of the issue pointed to a more mundane and rather upsetting image not only of the perpetrators, but of the culture and assumptions of the people they live in and hunt, i.e., the rest of us. I won't go into this much here, but sufice to say that I wanted to do some role-playing which would deal with this issue in a non-Hollywood way. No calling the cops to fence verbally, no oh-so-disturbing fixations between cop and killer, no "gee the two of us are a lot alike," blah blah.

At the same time, I wanted to try out Pocket Universe, and it struck me that we could do some solid Participationist play with it. You can get Pocket Universe at UNIgames, and I think you should, if you want to see solid point-buy mechanics for straight-up GM/player game design in their purest and most playable form to date. I consider it the successful apex of the game design history represented by The Fantasy Trip, Champions, and GURPS, and for a bonus, at exactly the length and physical format that I think is most appropriate.

What I had in mind was to prepare two things. (1) A thoroughly set-in-place history of the person's kills, with clues and corpses and NPCs for each one, there to be found when investigated. (2) A to-be-played timeline of kills and other actions for the person, which would be subject to change if he were interfered with, but otherwise would be played as planned along that timeline. The idea is that the player-characters would begin investigating, and I would let exactly what they found out and did affect what the killer did, when he was aware of it. The point was simply to let it ride on the rolls and actions whether they'd catch him or not, until we finished out the timeline (or its in-play equivalent given changing conditions) and not force it either way. I think that was a pretty good idea.

Pocket Universe is centered around skill checks, and all the aspects of making a character culminate in a list of stuff the character is and isn't good at. I told the players we'd be playing modern homicide detectives investigating a murder, and I planned to make the likelihood of a serial killer apparent to them quite quickly. The character creation rules do a very nice job of rounding out the usual attributes/skills with stuff like distinctive quirks and contacts, and the point structure for the latter actually let us build a usable and useful police department and a bunch of individualized contacts for each character.

Early play was really fun. I was using "let it ride" and "say yes or roll the dice" a lot, mainly because those are necessary to keep skill-roll-based play from getting Murky. The players busted out some good detectives, actually quite gritty and intense. I remember Julie's character was male, and a bit of a sexist pig despite being an effective cop. The system proved very good at what it purported to do: to make every point spent matter, both in terms of when you were good enough, and when you weren't. I can't recall a single roll which "made no sense" in terms of the image of the character we had.

The murders and investigation proceeded ... and man, that pacing and in-game plausibility started to break down. I needed more and more to strew and breadcrumbs and open doors, not because the players were dumb or anything, but because the fact is, what's "obvious" in a story is usually a matter of scene framing and can't-miss-it cinematography, standing in for deduction. Play really became less organic and more imposed as it went on, to the point where instead of the story cracking open into a myriad of possibilities, it narrowed down into basically me being director and scripter, with them being dialoguists by the final session.

This experience really clinched for me that I wasn't going to succeed in role-playing investigation scenarios straight as it were, with players working their way through clues and deductions exactly as their characters did in a genuine process, not merely as background context. Whatever it takes to achieve that without utter GM control at the end or (worse) railroading, and without shifting entirely to severing player-knowledge from character-knowledge (which works  fine but isn't what I was shooting for), if I couldn't do it with Pocket Universe, which offers absolutely zero inherent stumbling blocks for its mechanics, then I'm not the guy to do it at all, and I don't think I've ever found the person who is.

All comments, questions, and issues are welcome. There's quite a library of investigation/mystery threads at the old Forge too, so I might do a little hunting to post here.

EPILOGUE: SO NEVER MIND HANNIBAL, LET'S PLAY POCKET U!
My new thoughts about Pocket Universe came about recently, when I got the urge to play it again and determined that I was not going to make it carry any problematic how-to issues this time. I want to play it and have fun with it, full stop. Therefore, no player = character investigations, just action and adventures, with clues or insights to be delivered as Bangs. Thinking Color-first, I came up with rather gaudy, self-indulgent, driven adventurer types - sort of Heavy Metal Lankhmar. In fact, I'll go ahead and use the same image by James V. West I used all those years ago in my first and incomplete Color-first endeavor:



Yeah! I want to GM a few players with characters like that! With a certain unapologetic Howard-style "here we are" structure, plus color-driven threats and opportunities like this, dosed frequently with hallucinogens like this. I mean, sure, we could play Sorcerer & Sword with a twist toward the cartoony, or we could use Primetime Adventures to generate a TV show ... a cable animated adventure-show for grownups, say. But both of these are so Narrativist, full of questions and problematizing features. Let's stay with a more traditional approach to character construction and resolution, and keep themes nice and fixed because we like them just the way they are.

I wouldn't use magic rules, not because they aren't good, but because I think we'd get all the magic we needed by simply imbuing a lot of stuff in the basic rules with magical content, especially advantages, disadvantages, and contacts.

I'm posting this part mainly to geek out and also to promote the system, which would be very fun toward these ends.

Best, Ron

[Pat Gamblin]

Bought a copy of Pocket Universe to check out later. I'm certain I'll never be able to read all of the interesting games that have been/are being/will be published. I can think of worse situations to be in, however. 

I'm currently working on a game idea that sprouted from Air Patrol, so I haven't given up on it, though it is probably more action-oriented and less investigation-focussed. I have a few questions about investigations and similar situations, but I wanted first to make sure I wasn't broadening this thread's topic more than you wanted. In particular, I was thinking about the 'less aggressive applications of the principle than as found in InSpectres' that you mentioned. If that's okay for this thread, I'll continue on. If you'd prefer a separate thread for non-traditional investigation systems, I can start a new one.

Pat

[Ron Edwards]

Continue here! Excellent idea.

Best, Ron

[Pat Gamblin]

I just read the forum sticky (which I should have done earlier) and saw the request for a link to a design document, which I don't quite have ready yet. I'll see if I can get a quick version done this weekend, then I'll post my questions.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Pat,

Go ahead and post anyway. You can include the link whenever you think the content's ready.

Best, Ron

[Pat Gamblin]

Looking at what happens in a traditional investigation game (The GM comes up with the villains, what they're doing, and what they have to throw at the PCs; the players know about as much as their characters do and need to figure out clues given by the GM; whether or not the even get a clue is limited by the system's randomizing element, if it has one) and what seems to happen in InSpectres (The GM doesn't do any of that; the players come up with ideas that, if proven right, their characters then find out; the dice roll doesn't determine if a clue is found, it determines if the idea turns into the truth or not), I can see them being opposite ends of the spectrum (at least within my experience). A few other games I've seen, such as Houses of the Blooded, have a similar element of players rolling to be able to decide/control what the truth is, though it happens in the reverse of the way InSpectres does it.

I've been thinking about what might lie between the two extremes. I have a couple ideas, but I may just be  missing something that would show me why these aren't in that middle ground.

1) The players and the GM together make up the villains, their intentions/activities, and their resources (minions, wealth, and such), before the game starts, possibly during a group setting creation session, similar to Smallville/Dresden Files. The characters don't necessarily know all of this information, but the players do, so when something happens, the players already know what the events mean (barring obfuscation from the GM). There isn't a stage where the players need to roll to find clues, or one where they need to figure out what the clues mean. They already have the information, they just roleplay 'figuring it out' scenes (if they want to), and then move on to confronting the villains minions/plans, convincing allies to help, whatever scenes they're interested in playing through. Maybe there's something that only lets them go after the villain once they have interfered enough with the villain's plans or reduced the villain's resources enough. I'm not sure of the system at the moment, I'm just thinking it would follow:

Start with no secrets from the players >>> Roleplay dramatic scenes, usually confrontations, leading toward the villain >>> The confrontation with the villain.

2) The same as above, but the players only know the villain (including the villain's personality) and their resources, but not their specific actions. This would possibly still have problems with players having to figure out what a specific event/clue means, but might work out since the players would still know all about the villains of the area and what they can do. A murder by the North Siders gang probably means Big Al Strombowski is the one behind it, since the players know he's their boss, even if the characters are in the dark.

3) bit closer to the InSpectres end of the spectrum would be to go with either of the options I mentioned above, but add an ability for the players to decide on facts that don't run counter to the facts already established (in play or in setting creation). Maybe the players only know that Big Al and the North Siders exist, but it was never determined that there is a connection. Someone decides there is, and by whatever mechanism the system has, makes the connection factual. As with InSpectres, the GM must then alter their thoughts on what was happening to fit any changes this causes. In this case the GM would know as much about the world as the players do, and would have to keep things a bit open or loose so the setting can adapt as new facts are created. Maybe the GM can establish facts in the same way the players do. Facts, I'm thinking, would be setting stuff, not the results of combat rolls. You don't use that part of the system to declare you shot the villain, but it could, at a certain point, declare who the villain actually is.

Let me know if I'm way off-base with this. The people I play with, who are mostly the ones I'm designing for, are fairly traditional in their preferences, though I have started to broaden their horizons with games like Lady Blackbird. I don't think a system like InSpectres is what they would be interested in, yet, so I'm trying to work out something in the middle. We liked the setting creation parts of Smallville, so I'm looking at that to begin with.

I should have the other parts of the system done up and linked to soon, if life doesn't interfere.

Pat G.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Pat!

Whoa! Whoa! I can't believe I went this long without referencing Chthonian from the inimitable Zak Arntson - the essential early-Forge "Cthulhu my funky way" game.

I am looking forward to this discussion. First, regarding the spectrum you've presented, let's make sure we're clear that it's not a single-variable dial, like a spectrum from white to black. It's more like a multivariate chart and principal-components analysis. I think your post is already OK with that, but I also think we should break down variables even further into independent pieces.

1. Knowledge/facts origin: prior vs. improvised; who can create them; under what constraints they are created

2. Knowledge/facts acquisition for characters: who can make them known; under what constraints they are made known

3. Relevance of knowledge/facts to revelation of the big picture: the revelation will eventually occur, so missing facts only changes the degree of surprise, vs. it won't occur unless you garner enough facts.

4. Relevance of knowledge/facts to Reward: in-game consequences vs. not (e.g. advantage vs. villain at end); reward mechanic consequences vs. not

5. Relevance of revelation to successful play: the revelation has to happen, even as a late-term surprise, or else play is a wash; play is successful with or without it (and by which I mean they never figure it out)

6. Whose knowledge (assuming no prior knowledge): if the character figures it out, the player is told vs. if the player figures it out, the character does too (you can have both, actually)

7. Situational context of facts and events: imposed regardless of actions vs. discovered through actions; note various levels (e.g. you can do X or Y, but you have to get through both before you can do Z)

I'm saying every single thing separated by semicolons can be spun independently, with the exception of #6 which is conditional on #1. I think that's important so we avoid thinking of bundles of Techniques as if their components were glued together. For example, in Call of Cthulhu, facts are created prior by the GM, whereas in InSpectres, facts are improvised during play by players - but that doesn't mean that GM vs. player component always has to line up with prior vs. improvised component in that way.

Other relevant games: A Dirty World, Dirty Secrets

So, applying this taxonomy to your #1: prior knowledge; everyone jointly creates them as part of prep. Revelation has to happen, so situationally determined/imposed eventually. Relevance of knowledge/facts to Reward: unknown. Prior knowledge obviates character/player item. Assuming pure discovery based on character actions, but not sure - maybe intrusions or attacks of coincidences are imposed as well.

Your #2 alters a sector of the information to meet a different profile and should be pretty easy to type out this way.

A big question that looms for both your ideas, though, is wheher it's OK for the characters not to discover something. So the player might say, "Damn, I wish he'd figured out that McGillicuddy is crooked, but he didn't, so here we go into the final scenes with my guy vulnerable to getting stabbed in the back." Which could be fun, actually. If you did this, then your perceived problem in #2 wouldn't be a problem after all, but a feature.

In your #3, the idea will be a mere gimmick - unless you make established facts relevant to Reward, in either or both of the ways I described above. If they're not, then who gives a fuck who invents them? But if they are, then your "anyone can make a connection/fact as long as it fits so far" method, with whatever mechanics involved, seem like fun.

Best, Ron

* 2011 blog; Old games page, mostly from 2001 or so (recommended)

[Pat Gamblin]

Took a look at Chthonian. It's pretty nifty. It does a couple things I was thinking about doing with my pulp sci fi game, so I think I may be moving in a good direction with it. I'll take a look at A Dirty World and Dirty Secrets as soon as I can get copies.

Yeah, my thoughts on the spectrum fit that. You've added 4 or 5 factors I wasn't considering, which is really cool. I can see how they fit together, for the most part, and it means I'll be giving these a good thinking as I figure out how I want to proceed with my game. I do have a couple of questions, mostly just trying to clarify things.

4. Relevance of knowledge/facts to Reward: in-game consequences vs. not (e.g. advantage vs. villain at end); reward mechanic consequences vs. not

I'm trying to think of a couple examples to make sure I'm not missing any subtleties. An example of the first part might be if a system let a player declare a fact (using whatever system) to negate a villain's ability to escape a scene ("We figured out where your tunnel was. You're not getting away."). An example of the second might be if a declaration of fact gave the player's character an experience point (or whatever the reward mechanics do in the game).

7. Situational context of facts and events: imposed regardless of actions vs. discovered through actions; note various levels (e.g. you can do X or Y, but you have to get through both before you can do Z)

Having a hard time wrapping my brain around this one, but I may be over-analyzing it. The first part sounds like the 'prior vs. improvised' part of #1. Is it applying the situational context as a limiter to what can actually be said by improvised facts, and applying prior facts as a limiter on the current situation? I'm pretty sure I'm missing something there.

A big question that looms for both your ideas, though, is wheher it's OK for the characters not to discover something. So the player might say, "Damn, I wish he'd figured out that McGillicuddy is crooked, but he didn't, so here we go into the final scenes with my guy vulnerable to getting stabbed in the back." Which could be fun, actually. If you did this, then your perceived problem in #2 wouldn't be a problem after all, but a feature.

I'm thinking that's exactly the sort of thing I'd want to allow in the game. Possibly even reward it, actually. A player does something they know is going to create problems now and they get a reward (either right then, or later, when the trouble happens).

In your #3, the idea will be a mere gimmick - unless you make established facts relevant to Reward, in either or both of the ways I described above. If they're not, then who gives a fuck who invents them? But if they are, then your "anyone can make a connection/fact as long as it fits so far" method, with whatever mechanics involved, seem like fun.

Good point. What game would be an example of a declaration of fact affecting reward mechanics? I have a feeling that InSpectres might do that, with a successful fact declaration leading (maybe) to um, franchise dice, I think. Something for me to go over again tonight.

Thanks, Ron. I think I'm getting a much better grasp on it than I did last year.

Pat

[Pat Gamblin]

An example of the second might be if a declaration of fact gave the player's character an experience point (or whatever the reward mechanics do in the game).

Whups, meant to add 'Am I understanding this right?' after that.


Pat

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Pat,

For future post-reading, I think I have to do quotes within quotes.

4. Relevance of knowledge/facts to Reward: in-game consequences vs. not (e.g. advantage vs. villain at end); reward mechanic consequences vs. not

I'm trying to think of a couple examples to make sure I'm not missing any subtleties. An example of the first part might be if a system let a player declare a fact (using whatever system) to negate a villain's ability to escape a scene ("We figured out where your tunnel was. You're not getting away."). An example of the second might be if a declaration of fact gave the player's character an experience point (or whatever the reward mechanics do in the game).

That was a pretty dense-packed bit of information for two phrases with nary a full clause between them. Let me summarize it in outline form and then give examples..

I. We're talking about what happens because a specific piece of information (a clue, e.g., or more importantly, a fact) has become known to the characters (for simplicity's sake).

i) In some games, there are fictional consequences, or more specifically uses in later scenes: you can use it as a weapon or a defense in a fight, or convince someone to act in your favor because you tell them you know, or clarify their misunderstanding. Without having found out X, you wouldn't be able to have or do these things.

ii) Whereas in others, it doesn't matter to the fiction, perhaps because the final confrontation is pre-set. Finding out that the polite butler is really a disguised demon might at most mean that you have to fight him now instead of later, or maybe not even that much, if the GM is really set on that set-piece he has all planned. If I thought about it for a bit, I'd probably be able to come up with non-railroady examples too.

II. Here, we're talking about what happens to the numbers and similar materials on character sheets, or token pools in front of the players, or a tick-mark counter shared by everyone, or whatever of that kind.

i) In some games, learning some clue or fact gets you a bennie. It might be the skill improvement system in BRP which waxes upon success, or it might be gaining a franchise die in InSpectres.

ii) In others, no such thing.

Is there such a thing as no and no? Impossible to imagine? I'm thinking about all those games which have reward point-systems "at the end of the adventure" which look like this.

1-3 points for the difficulty of the adventure. (Everyone gets the same amount)
0-2 points for good decisions. (This is supposed to be individual)
0-2 points for staying in-character. (This is supposed to be individual)

I've played in dozens of games, as player or GM, and to this day I know of no example in which the GM did not give the same number of points per player.

7. Situational context of facts and events: imposed regardless of actions vs. discovered through actions; note various levels (e.g. you can do X or Y, but you have to get through both before you can do Z)

Having a hard time wrapping my brain around this one, but I may be over-analyzing it. The first part sounds like the 'prior vs. improvised' part of #1. Is it applying the situational context as a limiter to what can actually be said by improvised facts, and applying prior facts as a limiter on the current situation? I'm pretty sure I'm missing something there.

And again, but using actual English this time ...

III. Here, we're talking about whether the characters are going to get the facts at all.

i) In this case, play is going to get those facts and events into the characters' hands, no matter what. In a bad railroaded game, you could add the phrase "... no matter how many Idiot Balls the NPCs have to carry to do it." But there is such a thing as delivering this kind of material in timely and in-game plausible ways, or in more quirky games, providing mechanics which permit everyone to do so.

ii) Whereas in this case, getting a fact or event "known" is strictly a matter of achievement. If you don't investigate that closet at all, or fail to mention Grandpa Bob while interviewing a crucial NPC, or if you fail that roll, then forget it - you don't discover it.

The distinction between the two is easy in the extreme cases, but I think they do overlap. For instance, in InSpectres, facts are established only through successful rolls, but given that you're calling for multiple rolls for multiple characters, some facts are going to get known, for sure.

A big question that looms for both your ideas, though, is wheher it's OK for the characters not to discover something. So the player might say, "Damn, I wish he'd figured out that McGillicuddy is crooked, but he didn't, so here we go into the final scenes with my guy vulnerable to getting stabbed in the back." Which could be fun, actually. If you did this, then your perceived problem in #2 wouldn't be a problem after all, but a feature.

I'm thinking that's exactly the sort of thing I'd want to allow in the game. Possibly even reward it, actually. A player does something they know is going to create problems now and they get a reward (either right then, or later, when the trouble happens).

That's not actually what I was trying to describe. The player (as I saw him) was not establishing that his character didn't know something, or that McGillicuddy was crooked. The player was merely commenting that his character had never learned something, whether the player knew it or not., and that it doesn't destroy the game because he hadn't.

As opposed to those scenarios I used to play in where the GM said, afterwards, "Man, you guys never figured out XYZ. It would have been so much more fun if you had!"

So I'm not describing some funky thing about backstory-empowered players, but rather thinking in terms of later events, that events are still fun (albeit perhaps less advantageous) even if X or Y or Z didn't get discovered.

In your #3, the idea will be a mere gimmick - unless you make established facts relevant to Reward, in either or both of the ways I described above. If they're not, then who gives a fuck who invents them? But if they are, then your "anyone can make a connection/fact as long as it fits so far" method, with whatever mechanics involved, seem like fun.

Good point. What game would be an example of a declaration of fact affecting reward mechanics? I have a feeling that InSpectres might do that, with a successful fact declaration leading (maybe) to um, franchise dice, I think.

Well, it's tricky because I hate to talk about reward mechanics in isolation. Too many games have nasty little gimmicky reward mechanics which actually don't connect to observable reward. You get a token for narrating, and spend tokens to alter other people's narrations, that sort of nonsense. Or if you include one of the listed relationships on your sheet in a narration, then you get +1 to your roll ... this sort of crap started to proliferate in independent game design sometime around 2005 and it's still all too present.

So I'll reference one of the very best games that does work in these terms: The Mountain Witch. Periodically, you alter the Trust your character holds for each of the other characters. You do so on the basis of anything that's happened, which could have nothing to do with prior mechanics or events, but more typically, is affected by previous actions or especially, player-introduced material concerning one's own character's Dark Secret.

Having higher Trust in a given character doesn't mean you have to play your character in a specific way, but they can draw upon it for bonuses, and ... if they betray you, it's a bonus for you. And in this game, even single-unit modifications to the dice rolls are statistically noticeable.

What do you think?

Best, Ron

[Pat Gamblin]

Thanks, Ron. I think I have a decent understanding of the different pieces, now. It's pretty exciting, actually. Now I need to go and think about how to apply it to the game.

Thanks very much for helping me out.

Pat