Pure Probabilty mechanic

[DevP]

(Just an idea, no game attached.)

Imagine if you just had a big index of probabilities for lots and lots of stuff that might just randomly happen, and whenever something in-game occurs you look up the probabilty and play it straight?

Perhaps even no character stats; *maybe* if the player has certain (stat-less) traits that are relevant, allow re-rolls or fudge the result here or there. This would all be a bit simulationist, I guess.

The downside is the difficulty of compiling this (necessarily comprehensive) appendix into the back. For some reason, it sounds quirkly interesting, and you could tack on the 50/50 rule ("There is a 50/50 chance of anything happening. Either it happens, or it doesn't.")

[MachMoth]

Yeah, that's definitely left-winged (or right.. er, screw it).  I'm imagining this being percentile based.  It's much too table based for my taste.  The two hurdles it faces is:

1.  Making the hassle worth while, compared to exsisting play styles.
2.  Handling issues not listed.  Or maybe that's the advantage, players can't do anything not listed.  No scamming the system.

It's not something I see myself ever knowingly playing, but that doesn't say it's not possible

[DevP]

First, about unlisted issues: either shoe-horn in something similar, or go with the 50/50 rule. Perhaps shlep off the effort of lookups to the players: if they find something better than 50/50, they can use it. If they find something worse, they get a "reroll chip" for their honesty.

Or perhaps, the character creation is the taking of probabilities from the book, and putting them on the sheet. For each >50% success case, you must find a <50% success case on the other side. Also, for a given genre the GM would come up with many frequently used stats - chance to be hit, to surive, etc.

If they have no relevant things listed, then either they  get a 50/50 chance for stuff they are competent at, or a 1 in 10 chance at stuff they are unskilled at, a 9 in 10 chance at stuff that's routine, and 1% chance at stuff that's nigh-impossible. Those are all just shortcuts.

I prefer rules-light loose-reality table-free gaming, but... I mean, what if I just created a message-board and a Wiki for people to look up and post random probabilities they find out, would people just do it for shits & giggles? (I'm almost thinking about the growth of Nomic.)

[M. J. Young]

Yeah, this would be strong support for simulationist games of all types; but it probably would be too difficult to compile with any real accuracy, and too difficult to use in play.

I knew a guy who used the 50/50 rule entirely too much. "We took seven swords from the goblins; are any of them magical?" "Well, either they are or they aren't, so 50/50 for each of them." Obviously, we had a lot more magic gadgets than most games had.

It's not just gamers who do this. I read a brief thing on Biblical prophecy which suggested that the odds of each prediction being fulfilled was 50/50, and you could thus multiply that out to find out what the odds were against all of them being fulfilled (and so show how wonderful it was that they all were). Even then I saw that it was nonsense. The odds that "a virgin will conceive and bear a son" are pretty slim, particularly without artificial insemination. That's a bad example, perhaps; but what about the odds that he would be born in Bethlehem? The odds in any given year that anyone at all would be born in a city the size of Bethlehem are pretty high; there's a good chance there are babies born there every day, and certainly there would be quite a few every month. On the other hand, the odds of any specific person being born in Bethlehem are very much against, as there are too many other places to be born, and too many people born in those other places.

What are the odds that you were born in the same city as a classmate? In Salem County, New Jersey, odds are pretty good--probably more than half were born in the county hospital, another third at the big hospital over the bridge in Delaware, and only a sixth somewhere else. Leave the county and go to college in Texas, and the odds drop precipitously. The odds strongly favor on any random list of twenty-one people that two have the same birthday; but the odds don't favor you being one of those two, and if you are, the odds still don't favor the other one being that cute girl on whom you've got your eye.

What are the odds that the light will be green when you get there? It's not actually 50/50, or at least quite rarely so. Most lights are timed such that they will stay green in the direction of the road with more traffic longer. Most also have sensors in the roads to detect both when traffic is waiting at the cross street and when it's no longer crossing. I know lights around here where the answer is, unless someone happens to be waiting at it before I get there, it will be red; I know others which will be green, unless someone is waiting at the cross street. At the shore, long strings of traffic lights on roads that parallel the beach are timed such that you have to stop every few blocks, to discourage you from speeding; on some highways, they're timed such that if you make one and are traveling at the speed limit, you'll make them all.

Either your name is Mark, or it isn't; but I'd be very surprised to discover that half the people on The Forge were named Mark.

50/50 is not a very useful probability for simulating anything real, when it comes down to it.

Just some input.

--M. J. Young

[DevP]

As I've mentioned on my blog, that was one of the most enjoyable rebuttals I've had in a while. I think I'm done with this idea.