There were three in the bed and the little one said...

[Latreya Sena]

...Roll over, roll under...

Do you like the idea of rolling over the resistence/opponent rather than rolling under your ability score as per rules?

[Vaxalon]

That isn't a zero-sum proposition.  It changes the probabilities.  Can you be more specific about the implementation?

[Mike Holmes]

I thought that it went,

I want to be an Airborn Ranger
I want to live a life of danger
I want to go to Vee-et-nam
etc.

Sounds like the Narrator rolls to get over the player's TN, and the Player rolls to get over the Resistance? Or players swap resistances? Uncancelled masteries having the same effect they have now?

Mike

[Latreya Sena]

Sounds like the Narrator rolls to get over the player's TN, and the Player rolls to get over the Resistance?

Yep.

Uncancelled masteries having the same effect they have now?

Yep.

Isn't it the same dif really? Much of muchness? Only I find it a little more condusive to the situation of a contest, that is: try to beat (roll higher) the resistance. The odds are the same aren't they?

[Ron Edwards]

Some time in the early 1990s, someone said "It makes more sense to roll over than to roll under," and people have been repeating it uncritically ever since.

In terms of pure practice, I have never, not once, seen a person fail to grasp or fail to enjoy a game mechanic on this basis. Nor has it ever come up as an issue in the actual play discussions at the Forge, which as far as I'm concerned are the sole reliable archive of real-play critique.

I'm convinced that the phrase quoted above has the status of an urban legend of game design, rather than a meaningful principle.

Best, Ron

[Latreya Sena]

Some time in the early 1990s, someone said "It makes more sense to roll over than to roll under," and people have been repeating it uncritically ever since.

That's interesting. I don't have a problem with it either. There are a lot of games where lower rolls are better.

The other argument is not that you are rolling under but that you are competing against yourself, rather than the opposition. And once again it's not something I will lose sleep over, but it strikes me that if there is no difference probability-wise then couldn't a simple thing like this be changed for personal taste?

I guess I'm wondering why Robin Laws chose to do it this way, which suggests to me there may be a real difference that I am missing.

[Joel P. Shempert]

In terms of pure practice, I have never, not once, seen a person fail to grasp or fail to enjoy a game mechanic on this basis.

I wouldn't say "fail to grasp" (though consistency is good, to avoid mid-game "wait, is low good or high for this roll?" confusion), but "fail to enjoy?" Sure. I've always like "high is good" for reasons both subjective (it just FEELS cooler to roll high to succeed) and concrete (in a low-is-good system, the possible range of values is limited). In a high-is good system, it's open-ended; there's always somewhere to go--values can just increase, as well as the difficulties that they roll against, or whatever. But in low-is-good, onc ethe upper limit is reached, that's it. You can't roll lower than 1 (or 2, or 3, depending on how many dice rolled), so that's that. I olay a lot of Big Eyes Small Mouth, which is 2D6 low is good, and it's very easy to build a character (especially if the player in question has a combat monster in mind) who can only fail on a roll of 12. Ironically, this is actually deflating for the player, because there's nowhere left to go; additional ranks in the skill have no effect.

HQ's saving grace in this regard is the Masteries, where the 1-20 range of die rolling isn't the be-all, end all--it's actually open-ended in disguise. So in this case you're really left with the emotional reasons--it "feels cool" to roll high, it's no fun to roll against your own ability, etc.--for emplying a "roll high" mechanic.

Which is, to each his own, I guess. With Heroquest I don't personally feel the need to monkey with it, though in a lesser system it's frustrating for the above reasons.

Peace,
-Joel

[Mike Holmes]

I think that the first really visible design effort to promote "up is good" was Rolemaster. That is, D&D and other games had up is good just as it happened, with the TN to hit being determined by table. With RM, the idea was to base it off of skills, and instead of going the way that BRP had gone, rolling under a percentile score (which, I think, people have a belief is good because it's very transparent in terms of odds), they decided to add the score and the percentile dice with a set TN of 100, or thereabouts. The odds are precisely the same, but they made a conscious decision that up is good here, note, adding an entire addition step to the process just to make sure that up was always good. Basically this math step replaced the table look up in D&D. While BRP said to heck with it, and just said rolling low is good, because it's less math heavy.

So people definitely go out of their way to provide up is good. And I think it's because it just seems intuitive to some people. That's what I think Joel is talking about, to a person like this it's just a tiny bit more exciting for some reason when there's a high roll matching a great success. And he's right about the consistency thing...abilities are better if they're higher, why shouldn't die rolls also be better if they're higher (not that it's terribly difficult to remember the one exception)? I think that, all else being equal, when designing a system I'd go with up is good. Again if it's truely a case of all else being equal. But it's about the last consideration.

That all said, the whole "open-ended" thing, Joel, is simply not true. In Rolemaster, where the term open-ended was coined, you can, in fact, roll lower than 1 (if the roll is not "open-ended high," but truely open-ended). Second, Hero Quest is in no way open-ended. The masteries just make it possible for a wide range of abilities to be compared to each other meaningfully. But not an open-ended range. If there are more than 5 masteries difference, the result of the roll will always be complete victory for the party with the higher value.

It's more accurate to say in HQ that the die mechanics are such that they can address all ranges of ability differences which are suitable to compare. And that's the only really important criteria. Should HQ allow an unskilled peasant to defeat a god of war in combat? Why, what would that accomplish? The fact is that said peasant has a chance to defeat humans who are near peak human ability, which is quite as wide as the range needs to be. The system is actually simultaneously quite forgiving while also setting limits. I think that's a superior design.


But our original problem with analyzing this idea still remains. That is, there is more than one theoretical solution being proposed here, I think, and each has it's own ramifications. I'm holding off on doing any real analysis, until I hear what's actually being proposed. Latreya, could you tell us what alterations to the current mechanics exist? What you have so far doesn't tell us quite how what you're proposing works. If you could lay out the steps, we could check to see if, in fact, it changes the odds or not, and how.

Mike

[Joel P. Shempert]

Mike,

You're right, of course. I was being terribly imprecise, and I apologize. What I was really getting at is generalities, not an absolute dichotomy of low-good=closed-ended, high-good=open-ended. I was unfamiliar with the Rolemaster mechanic of rolling less than 1, but I am familiar with D&D2E where AC drops into the negative. Anyway, low-good systems, specifically systems like BESM, can paint you into a corner pretty quickly in terms of how high an ability rating can meaningfully go. And regarding HQ, I guess my point was really that there is enough "breathing room" to avoid this problem.

Though in one way, HQ IS open-ended. . .in that characters can advance in masteries indefinitely. Sure, once you hit the W6 mark, you're out of the rance of comparison with a no-mastery character, but there can always be aW7, or W11 character to try yor mettle against. There's no "I can only fail--against ANYBODY--if I roll a botch" ceiling like in BESM. Sure, in a way you're just sliding the meaningful-comparison range farther up the numerical scale, but it IS useful in making the statement that some oponents(i.e. stormtroopers) are now excluded from meaningful competition with your character, while others (Darth Vader) are still viable.

Peace,
-Joel

[Latreya Sena]

Latreya, could you tell us what alterations to the current mechanics exist?

It's pretty a straightforward proposition, everything works the same, the only difference being that which you stated: "the Narrator rolls to get over the player's TN, and the Player rolls to get over the Resistance."

Critical: Roll a 20
Success: Roll equal to or over the Resistance
Failure: Roll under the Resistance
Fumble Roll a 1

Example (Paraphrased with the roll over method) from Galan Loses a Bison, HQ p.61 :

Kathy: Bill, one of Galan's bison wandered off in the night.
Bill: I'll have Bison Brain call for it. He has Speak to Bison, so I'll have him tell it to get back in the herd. His ability is 17, what's the resistance?
Kathy: 14.

Bill rolls to beat 14 and gets 16, a success. Kathy rolls to beat 17 and gets 19, a success.

Kathy: I rolled a success, and you? A success? But I rolled higher than you – Bison Brain calls, but nothing happens. All you hear is echoes of his mooing.

It's as simple as that. Now, ignoring the fact that you are not rolling lower, you are also competing directly against the Resistance, rather than your own ability.

Masteries and bumps and everything else still work the same. I personally don't see any real difference, except for personal taste. Is this clear?

[Mike Holmes]

You know, I used to have some system that was intended to avoid what seemed to me to be a problem with the HQ curve. I gave it up shortly after starting to use it. Because I discovered that the normal system works better. But one of the features was that it was a high roll is good system.

I don't think this is it. Because this system doesn't change the odds as much as mine did. But it does change the odds, as it happens. It some minor ways. First, it changes the distrubution of failures and successes. Comparison-wise, the end output is the same. But what if you want to bump? In the old system you might have gotten a success, bumped up to a critical success because of a mastery, and not be allowed to bump. In this new system, you may in fact, have a failure instead, bumped to a success, which you can now bump to a critical success. Or vice versa.

Some people use the success/failure thing for color too: a failure wins against a crit fail, but both are described as having done poorly. These effects go on a curve with respect to where you are in a mastery. With this new system, this curve upends essentially. And you're ability to bump, instead of being linked to your ability rating, is now liked to your opponent's.

None of this is fatal, it's just slight differences. There might be others that I haven't thought of, either. But I doubt it's anything major.

So would I change this just to get up is good? Probably not. The gain in intuitiveness is probably offset by the non-intuitive nature of rolling against your opponent's TN. Oh, and from a handling persepctive, I often don't take the time to stat the TN (sometimes I'm working it up as I roll). With this system I'd have to do that.

Mike

[Latreya Sena]

In the old system you might have gotten a success, bumped up to a critical success because of a mastery, and not be allowed to bump. In this new system, you may in fact, have a failure instead, bumped to a success, which you can now bump to a critical success. Or vice versa.

Yep. With often used default TN's of 14 there will be more failures for the Hero, whereas rolling against your own ability rating should be 50/50 for an adept character. But - that's one side of the story - you also have to factor in the Resistances TN which would also have the same affect, that's why it's the same diff, only bumped down a notch. You could reverse the TN's, effectively making the default Resistance a 6, but why bother?

The gain in intuitiveness is probably offset by the non-intuitive nature of rolling against your opponent's TN

Hhhmmm... This is what prompted me to the idea in the first place, not the fact that you are rolling lower but that you are rolling against yourself. I think the opposite: Rolling against the Resistance seems more intuitive to me, though I can see it work either way. It's a matter of perspective I guess.

None of this is fatal, it's just slight differences.

That's the conclusion I was counting on.