Faster, Better, Cheaper: Pick Two

[xiombarg]

Yes, I finally have a beta of this game out. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

http://www.io.com/~xiombarg/fbc.html

Note that I've stolen a mechanic from Donjon for it. I'm particularly interested in knowing what people think of that change.

[Walt Freitag]

(This reply is Faster, Cheaper, and Arbitrary.)

First, let me say that I like the idea of the Faster, Cheaper, Better trade-off. (I'm sure that part is old news, but it's the first I'd seen it.)

My complaint is that the effects of the traits in play appear too limited, making the characters "mostly average." With such a limited number of Traits (and, at least in the examples, such narrowly applicable Traits), shouldn't the effect be larger? "Better" should allow an automatic success. "Cheaper" should guarantee no pool loss. "Faster..." I dunno. How often is acting first important? (How is it normally decided who acts first, if no one involved is "faster"?) Of course, then you couldn't usefully stack them multiple times (which already appears to be the case for "Faster.")

There's a slightly confusing redundancy between the "better" adjective and possessing the trait in the first place. You say the baseline for a Trait is average, but it seems like in your examples, having the trait already implies better than the average person, some of the time. "Lycanthropy, Cheaper" still means the character can turn into a wolf, which the average person cannot do at all, right? Yet if I have "cooking, Faster" it would apparently mean that I cook faster but no better than the average person. This is inconsistent.

Are traits supposed to be only one word? Or could I take "Feats of Incredibly Accurate Marksmanship, Faster" which sounds like it would put me in better stead than "Shooting, Faster" relative to the average person.

All these issues would be solved if the baseline for a trait was assumed to already be a notable unusual skill or quality rather than a merely average one. Then Faster, Cheaper, and Better would further modify it. A trait like Lycanthropy, Cheaper would no longer be a contradiction, and "Shooting, Faster" would mean what I would want it to mean in play: that the character is really good at shooting, and of those who are really good at shooting, he's faster than most.

If you bump the "average" difficulty up by one (that is, 4 on a d6 or 11 on a d20), OR change the Success rule from "meets or beats the target number" to "beats the target number," then the odds of success become the same in an average difficulty roll for a given number of dice regardless of the die size. As it is, using smaller dice not only makes the Better traits more effective, it increases the players' baseline competence as well.

In such a rules-light system, why not use fortune-in-the-middle resolution? You've gone halfway there by adopting the Donjon rule of narrating facts based on your successes, but failure is a simple whiff. Was that your intention?

- Walt

[xiombarg]

First, let me say that I like the idea of the Faster, Cheaper, Better trade-off. (I'm sure that part is old news, but it's the first I'd seen it.)

You may want to peruse the original thread.

My complaint is that the effects of the traits in play appear too limited, making the characters "mostly average." With such a limited number of Traits (and, at least in the examples, such narrowly applicable Traits), shouldn't the effect be larger? "Better" should allow an automatic success. "Cheaper" should guarantee no pool loss. "Faster..." I dunno. How often is acting first important? (How is it normally decided who acts first, if no one involved is "faster"?) Of course, then you couldn't usefully stack them multiple times (which already appears to be the case for "Faster.")

Being Faster twice means you're faster than someone who's Faster once. As for the "limitation", I'll note Traits can be as broad or narrow as the GM will allow. I'll be sure to add a note to that effect.

There's a slightly confusing redundancy between the "better" adjective and possessing the trait in the first place. You say the baseline for a Trait is average, but it seems like in your examples, having the trait already implies better than the average person, some of the time. "Lycanthropy, Cheaper" still means the character can turn into a wolf, which the average person cannot do at all, right? Yet if I have "cooking, Faster" it would apparently mean that I cook faster but no better than the average person. This is inconsistent.

You're confused, which is probably my fault. The baseline for NOT having a Trait is average -- when you have a Trait, it indicates how you're above average. I'll add a note to this effect.

And, yes. if you have "cooking, Faster" it means the character cooks faster but no better than the average person. This is a feature and not a bug.

Are traits supposed to be only one word? Or could I take "Feats of Incredibly Accurate Marksmanship, Faster" which sounds like it would put me in better stead than "Shooting, Faster" relative to the average person.

If the GM lets you, fine. But "Incredibly Accurate" implies "Better" -- you can't sneak an adjective in there by describing the Trait in a wierd way. I'll add a note about that as well.

All these issues would be solved if the baseline for a trait was assumed to already be a notable unusual skill or quality rather than a merely average one. Then Faster, Cheaper, and Better would further modify it. A trait like Lycanthropy, Cheaper would no longer be a contradiction, and "Shooting, Faster" would mean what I would want it to mean in play: that the character is really good at shooting, and of those who are really good at shooting, he's faster than most.

Eh. Frankly, I don't like this idea. What do other people think?

If you bump the "average" difficulty up by one (that is, 4 on a d6 or 11 on a d20), OR change the Success rule from "meets or beats the target number" to "beats the target number," then the odds of success become the same in an average difficulty roll for a given number of dice regardless of the die size. As it is, using smaller dice not only makes the Better traits more effective, it increases the players' baseline competence as well.

Making Better more effective and increasing baseline competence as well was intentional. That's why I wrote it that way, so the GM has a lot of room for setting the "competence dial".

In such a rules-light system, why not use fortune-in-the-middle resolution? You've gone halfway there by adopting the Donjon rule of narrating facts based on your successes, but failure is a simple whiff. Was that your intention?

Okay, I have to admit, to my chagrin, that I've never really fully understood the concept of "fortune-in-the-middle" and how to explicitly put it into a ruleset. Can someone point me to a thread on this, preferredly with examples?

[Valamir]

Hey Walt, I may be misunderstanding your question but It sounds like you're missing the idea that the Trait is seperate from the Better Cheaper Faster Adjective.

Someone without Lycanathrope couldn't change into a wearwolf at all, while someone with Lycanathrope but no adjective can but is average in all ways.

Now the current rules assume that noone is average in all ways so you get to add a "specialty" to it the form of being Better, Faster, or Cheaper.

Not sure if I like that part or not.

This does raise the question of skills that are fairly routine and obvious needing to be distinguished from those that aren't.

For example:

Dick has Cooking, Better.
Jane doesn't have Cooking at all.

Does this mean that Jane CAN'T cook, that she's assumed to be terrible at it? or what.  I'd be hesitant to assume that a character is terrible at cooking if it isn't listed, because most people would be average at just throwing together something edible by following a recipe.  Where as in the game most people would be terrible cooks because few would bother to include this as a skill.


Conversely
Dick has Brain Surgeon, Better.
Jane doesn't have Brain Surgeon at all.

In this case its perfectly reasonable for Jane to be assumed to be terrible at Brain Surgury.


I suggest offering the following categories for the GM to decide when a skill fits in the category.

Average:  Even if the skill isn't listed on the character sheet the character is assumed to possess it, just without the benefit of a "better, faster, cheaper" specialty.  Skills like, cooking, jumping, coloring with crayons, etc.

Untrained:  This would be any skill that a desperate character could try but isn't likely to be any good at, let them roll but put a hefty modifier to the die roll (or adjust the difficulty).  Skills like brain surgery etc.

Impossible:  This would be any skill that the character can't perform without the appropriate Trait, like Lycanathrope.


Pretty obvious to a GM in play, but probably should be explicit.


[edited to delete the part where the goal is to equal or exceed the target number and not just exceed]

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I really like this (go figure), but here's my notes based on reading it, and the subsequent discussions:

- The target number/die size issue: As it's written, the lower die sizes make you vastly more competent, even if you don't have the skill written down. Getting a 2 or better on a d4 is a 75% chance, 3 or better on a d6 - 67% chance, 5 or better on a d10 - 60%, 10 or better on a d20 - 55%, etc. If you want it to be a 50% chance of success, use (die size/2 + 1) as your target number: d4 -3, d6 - 4, d10 - 6, d20 - 11.

- Better/cheaper - Better is great as it stands, allowing GMs to make it more powerful by lowering the die size. Cheaper, however (even if I inspired it), is a little underpowered. One solution is that you get to keep half of your failed dice (rounded down) - if you have 5 failures, you keep 2.

[xiombarg]

Okay, Walt, I've added a section titled "Complications" that might fix a lot of your objections. Check it out.

[xiombarg]

- The target number/die size issue: As it's written, the lower die sizes make you vastly more competent, even if you don't have the skill written down. Getting a 2 or better on a d4 is a 75% chance, 3 or better on a d6 - 67% chance, 5 or better on a d10 - 60%, 10 or better on a d20 - 55%, etc. If you want it to be a 50% chance of success, use (die size/2 + 1) as your target number: d4 -3, d6 - 4, d10 - 6, d20 - 11.

For now, I'm considering this a feature, not a bug. I don't want a 50% chance of success.

- Better/cheaper - Better is great as it stands, allowing GMs to make it more powerful by lowering the die size. Cheaper, however (even if I inspired it), is a little underpowered. One solution is that you get to keep half of your failed dice (rounded down) - if you have 5 failures, you keep 2.

Okay, but then how would I stack the "Cheaper" adjective? Perhaps it should be "one or more" failures are kept, according to GM discresion. Then you'd have the following dials to twist:

* die size
* starting pool
* number added to dice per "Better"
* number of failed dice kept per "Cheaper"
* what optional rules, if any, to use

[Walt Freitag]

Great! Although I was sincere about my quibbles, when I read some of the proposed fixes I started to wish I had left well enough alone. Putting it all in a Complications section is the perfect solution.

Um, I guess I wasn't clear that on the whole I like the system (in its previous form, and even more so now). I only said I liked one specific thing before launching into complaints. I meant, I like the whole system especially that basic foundational mechanism.

"The GM may feel it is unfair..." Ouch! You're right, that's exactly what I was feeling when I made my complaints. The trouble is, in principle I don't believe in fairness in RPGs. In fact, I believe fairness is the most useless and crippling (yet subtly pervasive) design principle in RPGs. So, to the extent that my complaints related to fairness they should be ignored (nay, condemned!) and only paid attention to to the extent that they relate to consistency.

Here's another idea for the Cheaper mechanism: make it the complement of Better. One unit of Better reduces the success threshold by one (or some GM-specified increment) without affecting the die loss threshold. One unit of Cheaper could reduce the die loss threshold by one (or one increment) without affecting the success threshold. [I haven't read the old thread yet, so if this just goes full circle back to some earlier version, then never mind.]

Another possibility: with Cheaper, each failed die gets rerolled. Only those that roll failure again are lost. That makes Cheaper somewhat self-adjusting for die size and difficulty. Stacked Cheaper would allow more re-rolls. (Re-rolls don't affect the actual success of the action one way or the other.)

Here's one thread about Fortune in the Middle I found helpful recently.

- Walt

[xiombarg]

Um, I guess I wasn't clear that on the whole I like the system (in its previous form, and even more so now). I only said I liked one specific thing before launching into complaints. I meant, I like the whole system especially that basic foundational mechanism.

Yes, I understood that, and thank you. ;-)

"The GM may feel it is unfair..." Ouch! You're right, that's exactly what I was feeling when I made my complaints. The trouble is, in principle I don't believe in fairness in RPGs. In fact, I believe fairness is the most useless and crippling (yet subtly pervasive) design principle in RPGs. So, to the extent that my complaints related to fairness they should be ignored (nay, condemned!) and only paid attention to to the extent that they relate to consistency.

Noted. I've changed the phrasing in the Complications section to "The GM may feel it is unfair or inconsistent..."

Here's another idea for the Cheaper mechanism: make it the complement of Better. One unit of Better reduces the success threshold by one (or some GM-specified increment) without affecting the die loss threshold. One unit of Cheaper could reduce the die loss threshold by one (or one increment) without affecting the success threshold. [I haven't read the old thread yet, so if this just goes full circle back to some earlier version, then never mind.]

Hmmmmm. That could be interesting. At first I thought it was the same as a previous version, but then I re-read it and realized your'e reducing the threshold at which dice are lost without changing the success. Hmmmm. What do people think? Clinton, what do you think, in particular?

Another possibility: with Cheaper, each failed die gets rerolled. Only those that roll failure again are lost. That makes Cheaper somewhat self-adjusting for die size and difficulty. Stacked Cheaper would allow more re-rolls. (Re-rolls don't affect the actual success of the action one way or the other.)

Hmmmm. That's interesting as well. What does the peanut gallery think?

Here's one thread about Fortune in the Middle I found helpful recently.

Yes, that thread is very helpful. I think I was groping for Fortune-in-the-Middle. I've added a paragraph to the Conflict Resolution section to reflect this.