[AEgypt] Are Per Centiles Still Fashionable?

[knicknevin]

I'm currently contemplating a pulp adventure game set in Egypt at the turn of the century: lots of mythology and action in the style of The Mummy and I'm considering how to describe the characters in a simple yet flexible way. Simple, because you don't want to be bogged down in too much detail for pulp adventures and flexible because I would like the system to be usable in other settings and I hate having to re-invent the wheel.

Currently, my thinking is settling towards a per centile system where characters have 6 attributes, each of which can score up to 40%; on a task, you combine two of these attribute to determine your target number. Skills are scored in the 1-20% range and add further to your target: you must roll under your target to succeed. If you roll 40 or more points under, you score a critical success; equally, a roll of 40 or more over is a critical failure. You can also purchase character advantages which reduce these ranges, so a crack shot gets a critical if he is only 20 or more under his target.

Looking about at other games, there don't seem to be many per centile based games emerging any more; there are still plenty of classics about that use that system, such as CoC but nobody seems to be making indy games that use it. So, have i just missed a whole bunch of games or are per centile really out of fashion and, if so, is it really just a fashion thing or is there a good, solid reason, in people's actual experience, for not using per centiles? Are they too mathematically clunky? Do players react adversely to them? Do they restrict the range of results or their detail? Whats the situation?

Thanks for any help here: I'd like to know what other people think before I go any further, so all constructive comments welcome.

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey James,

Unhelpfully, I don't think there is a single answer to your queries.  It all depends on what you want your game to do, right?  Percentiles are very granular and linear, so if those are features that support making your game kick ass, then that is the right decision.  There's certainly no empirical data about usability or handling time that would suggest one sort of randomizer over another - if it leads to compelling, fun play, I don't think anyone will reject it out of hand.  I'd just be careful about thinking too much about tricksy die mechanics before you really answer the core questions about your game, because other solutions may present themselves if you are not locked into a particular solution.  And the last thing you want to worry about is fashion! 

[David "Czar Fnord" Artman]

A few basic points about percentile dice:

o  Flat probability - There is an equal chance of rolling 1, 2, 3, 4... and 100, which engenders a sense that d% are uninteresting: failure is almost assured at low values, failure or success will often feel arbitrary (coin toss) at middle values, and success becomes almost assured at higher values.

o  Limited range - With only a range of 1 to 100, the scale is not very open, which leads to a Spinal Tap "these go to eleven" situation: nearly any long term play will lead to near-maximally competant characters, which will drive the GM to up the difficulties/penalties to rolls/whatever to maintain challenge (which is fiat, which pisses folks off). This is only made worse by "stacking" effects that give +X to someone's percental value.

o  Ambiguous handling - One has to always declare which dice is the "tens," or one must have a "d00": a d10 with 10, 20, 30... 00 on its faces. d100s (zoccihedron, hekahedron) never stop rolling, and so they are right out.

HTH;
David

[Valamir]

I'm currently contemplating a pulp adventure game set in Egypt at the turn of the century: lots of mythology and action in the style of The Mummy and I'm considering how to describe the characters in a simple yet flexible way. Simple, because you don't want to be bogged down in too much detail for pulp adventures and flexible because I would like the system to be usable in other settings and I hate having to re-invent the wheel.

Currently, my thinking is settling towards a per centile system where characters have 6 attributes, each of which can score up to 40%; on a task, you combine two of these attribute to determine your target number. Skills are scored in the 1-20% range and add further to your target: you must roll under your target to succeed. If you roll 40 or more points under, you score a critical success; equally, a roll of 40 or more over is a critical failure. You can also purchase character advantages which reduce these ranges, so a crack shot gets a critical if he is only 20 or more under his target.

I'll give you my initial gut reaction upon reading your question:

"what in the world does paragraph #2 have to do with paragraph #1?"

To expand on that:  "how do you get from pulp, egypt, action, mummy...to...6 attributes plus skills rolled with percentile?"

In other words:  "what do attributes and skills measured on a %ile have to do with pulp action against egyptian mummys?"

Or to put it another way "pulp action against egyptian mummys = sounds cool and exciting...when can we play? 6 attributes plus skills on percentiles = yawn"

My advice: list out in some detail exactly what pulp action egypt and mummies means to you...an essay titled "why playing a pulp adventure game set in Egypt at the turn of the century with lots of mythology and action in the style of The Mummy is a fun and exciting game to play" might be a place to start.  Then, using that essay as a design document, figure out mechanics that will deliver the things you decide are fun and exciting.

[Larry L.]

If the percentile dice are in black, they're always fashionable!

Um... I mean, listen to Ralph. Sidedness of dice seems like a red herring here.

[Josh Roby]

I'm with Ralph on this one.

Also, consider this: is the two-digit thing really that important to you?  You can implement the same thing, almost whole cloth, by rating attributes from 1-4 and skills from 0-2, and then rolling a single d10.  But really, what does any of this have to do with pulp adventures in Egypt?  Can you do something using d4s (pyramids!) or spending beads (sand between your fingers!) or something that will back up the particular flavor of pulpiness that you want to create?

[Valamir]

After that little rant, I'll try and give something constructive for what I mean.

To me, pulp adventure means brightly colored archetypes for whom the STYLE they use to overcome obstacles is far more important than any sort of skill set.  Riffing off pulp in general and The Mummy I come up with the following brainstorm.

Style:
Lantern Jawed Toughguy - Trumps Mr. Lucky is Trumped by Smart Babe
Mr. Lucky - Trumps Domineering Tyrant is Trumped by Toughguy
Domineering Tyrant - Trumps Bumbling Lackey is Trumped by Mr Lucky
Suave and Sophisticated - Trumps Smart Babe is Trumped by Bumbling Lackey

In any contest roll 2dX and keep the high roll
In any contest where you trump your opponent you roll 3dX your opponent rolls 1dX
In any contest where you're trumped you roll 1dX while your opponent rolls 3dX

X = d6 for mooks and extras, d8 for supporting casts and ordinaries, d10 for heroes and henchmen, d12 for the big bad.

Add 1 to your high roll for any applicable trait or skill
Opponent adds 1 to their high roll for any applicable weakness or vulnerability you have

go.


Now that's just 5 minutes of brain dumping, but to me...that begins to capture pulp action where the super skilled guy and the bumbling fool can both manage to fly the biplane to the escaping blimp...the only difference is that the first one will land neatly on the flight hook while the second one will crash into the gondola.  Its all about the image and sytle.

Point being, decide what cool pulp action means to you and make that the basis of your mechanics.

[Mike Holmes]

To follow up on what Jason and Ralph are saying here, it's not that percentiles are out of fashion (check out Unknown Armies, for instance), it's that generic Skill/Attribute systems are out of fashion. Because they've been done to death. If I was forced to use such a system, I'd select the one from Unknown Armies over yours. There is, very simply, no way that the combination of elements that you're toying with is going to be better than the literally dozens of such systems that already exist out there. It might be as good...but then why not simply steal one that already exists? Mechanics aren't patentable or copywriteable.

If you do so, however, realize that your game isn't going to sell because it's not going to say to anyone that it's better than, say, Adventure! Or GURPS Pulp. Or Pulp Hero. Or Pulp Fuzion, if you want a lighter version. Or pulp played with FUDGE if you want really light. Again, it might be as good as these...but we already have these. Why should we buy your game if it isn't better.

What Ralph and Jason are telling you is that there is a way to make your game superior to these, or at the very least substantively different in play. So that people might be interested in playing it. And that method is to find mechanics that focus on what's fun about pulp from some different angle than the standard Generic Attribute/Skill method.

If you're only making this for your own consumption, then...well I'm not sure what it is that you're going to get out of the system you've described that you can't get from using FUDGE, say. If you want simple, fast, and generic, then FUDGE will suit just fine, I'm sure (or, even better for pulp, I'd argue, FATE - or it's upcoming Pulp version Spirit of the Century). If percentile dice are somehow particularly attractive to you...well, if it's just some personal preference you can't explain, then go ahead and make your system, but we won't be able to help you with it.

If, on the other hand, you're thinking of publishing, then figure out your own particular angle on how to present a pulp game. Or I can just about garuntee that you'll fail to meet any standard of publishing success.

Mike

[knicknevin]

Thanks to Jason, David, Larry, Joshua and Mike for your helpful comments: it was definitely a case of having the idea for the setting and then going for the first system that popped into my head! David's post neatly sums up the concerns I had about using d100, only rather more cogently expressed than I could manage.

To me, a pulp system with an early 20th century Egyptian setting suggests colourful and competent characters with their own packages of neat tricks, e.g. the gunman is not only a better shot than any other character, he can perform tricks with his guns that no-one else can even attempt! That is what would make ME want to play it anyway: knowing that my character had a very particular role and could do Really Cool Things! In order to make Really Cool Things work, you need to have some restrictions or limitations that the RLTs let you ignore or circumvent, so that's probably why I went for a per centile system as my gut instinct: in-built restrictions! I prefer open ended systems though, so I'm off to look at how it can be done with one of those. Thanks again folks!

[Valamir]

competent characters with their own packages of neat tricks, e.g. the gunman is not only a better shot than any other character, he can perform tricks with his guns that no-one else can even attempt! That is what would make ME want to play it anyway: knowing that my character had a very particular role and could do Really Cool Things!

The best system I've seen that does this was in Brave New World, a quirky superhero setting.

IIRC the actual die roll was a pool of dice that got summed and compared to a degree of difficulty, but that specific mechanic isn't the cool part (and is easily swapped with something else).  The cool part was that beating the degree of difficulty allowed you to activate additional tricks.  i.e. you could purchase special effects with your extra successes and those special effects were unique to whatever broad power or skill you were using.

The gun-fu guy could not only shoot someone but by spending an extra success could knock them back across the room Hong Kong action style.

The flame power guy could not only do damage but by spending an extra success light things on fire.

Point being that these Tricks or Stunts could easily be translated into your Really Cool Things.

Anybody can get into a fist fight, but only "Two Fisted Tough Guy" can actually knock someone out with a single punch because only he has the Trick that lets him spend successes to do that.

Anybody can fly an airplane, but only "Ace Pilot" can actually spend a success to perform crazy logic defying barnstorming stunts.

Anybody can try and persuade someone to help them out, but only the "Good Looking Dame" can spend success to actually take control of an NPC and get them to do what she wants.

If that sounds of any interest, you can probably get a copy of BNW pretty cheap.  Its been OOP for a while now.

[Gasten]

Another reason to think before you use a d%: Are you using the numbers between the tenths? If not: use a normal d10, it's much more easy to count.

[Mike Holmes]

You're still lunging at die mechanics, when you still need more idea of how the game will play:

I prefer open ended systems though, so I'm off to look at how it can be done with one of those.

This is skipping all sorts of steps. What are some sample RCTs you want to implement. How often can they be brought into play? That is, can a trick shooter use his ability to trick shoot to intimidate people? Or is it only about hitting people behind cover? Are these things defined as part of the ability? Or is there some general system that limits introducing their use? Do you want conflict resolution, or task resolution? How does a player or the GM initiate contests?

These are just a few questions that come off the top of my head. Don't start in with a die mechanic until you find yourself saying, Aha, here's where the player rolls some dice, and this is what it determines." Then make a mechanic that fits your specific needs at that point.

Put another way, the dice mechanic should be about the last thing you design. Grabbing one first means that you have adopted a ton of assumptions that may not be very good for your design. Go through those assumptions first, figure out how the system is going to work, and then and only then figure out what sort of dice mechanic fits in there.

Ralph is showing you an example of how one system works in terms of turning Kewl Powers into something functional in play. The dice mechanics are the afterthought that makes it all hang together. In BNW, it's the idea of exceptional successes being used to fuel the RCTs that lead to the need for a system that produces a feedback on this number. They didn't come up with the dice mechanic first, and then figure out that they could use the extra successes to fuel something.

Mike

[knicknevin]

The best system I've seen that does this was in Brave New World, a quirky superhero setting.

If that sounds of any interest, you can probably get a copy of BNW pretty cheap.  Its been OOP for a while now.

Thanks Ralph; I've had BNW and each of its available sourcebooks since the day it came out and have used it successfully in several other settings, including supernatural investigators in the modern day and demon-fighting superheros in Regency England.

You're still lunging at die mechanics, when you still need more idea of how the game will play:

I prefer open ended systems though, so I'm off to look at how it can be done with one of those.

This is skipping all sorts of steps. What are some sample RCTs you want to implement.

Mike

Well, I think you've jumped the gun a bit there yourself Mike :-) By saying I was going to look at an open ended system, I meant just that: in other words, I'm going to ditch the per centile idea and look at how my goals can be accomplished in a different way, without the per centile restrictions. There was no decision on a dice system at that point and I've actually setlled towards more of a fate point system where you can buy your way to success, as this fits some of the RCTs i had in mind as part of a Pulp Egyptian setting, such as firing 2 gun at once fo double damage, femme fatales who can distarct the villain with their wiles and comedy relief characters who can achieve things by accident.

As you put it, I'm certainly not 'coming up with my die system first' and once I'd halted my 'crush' on the per centile idea, there was no intent to do so. Your points are well made but you're already preaching to the choir! :-)