Characters have never been stated to have to be better than the person playing them.

Even then what does that have to do with DH2 you freely admit that it was a different gaming system.

So in your opinion, the numbers are OK.

Yes, and I would like to think in the opinion of anyone that can perform algebra as well would agree that the numbers factually work.

Okay, but we are kinda' past this. There is a good example somewhere in one of the previous pages about how you can take 2-3+ cheap/mid-costed advancements from the XP of a single not-very-impressive expensive advancement.

Which proves beyond all doubt that the system is built in such a way that same advancements have a different cost of acquisition for different characters... and absolutely nothing beyond that (which, by the way, makes it as useless as mathematical proofs can get, seeing how the system is very open about doing exactly that). Whether that fact makes the system work or not is 100% subjective.

The real problem is when characters function notably worse than the people at my gaming table.

Characters have never been stated to have to be better than the person playing them.

I think it comes down to characters functioning notably worse than the people at the gaming table think they should. And this I can understand perfectly, as I and some of my friends have suffered from spectacularly bad rolls and hilarious results as well.

In DH1, I've seen a Psyker who kept throwing grenades against a wall a few meters in front of him just to have them roll back to the party. Several times. In DW, I've seen a Techmarine fail his auspex tests in such a spectacular way that the GM decided to set the device on fire. The list goes on.

But here it comes down to asking the GM not to demand so many dicerolls but rather just letting things happen - or at least to describe "failures" in a way that they don't ruin the character's image in an anticlimatic way, turning a grimdark story into the Laurel & Hardy show where the assassin keeps stumbling over their own feet, where the cleric constantly fails to evoke any sort of reaction from the crowd, or where the experienced doctor accidentally amputates your leg whilst trying to bandage it. Not every failure must actually be terribad, after all - perhaps it just wasn't as successful as planned. Unless you want to have these kinds of laughs at your table. The game is what you make of it.

But this is a problem we have in any and all RPGs that demand dice rolls for various tasks.

I'm actually the GM in this case, and I don't demand rolls for trivial things I feel the characters should be reasonably capable of. But it does bug me that I have to, technically, fudge over a 40% fail chance in some instances. I'd much, much rather not have to do that and have it be close to 100% from the get go.

But it does bug me that I have to, technically, fudge over a 40% fail chance in some instances. I'd much, much rather not have to do that and have it be close to 100% from the get go.

So don't. Again, any rpg is a toolbox, you have to pick the tools you want to use to build the game you think you and your group will enjoy. No one, literally no one, is stopping you from not just doing away with certain parts of the system.

That doesn't mean the system is broken or flawed as a whole, it means it has a few tools you don't want to use.

I'm actually the GM in this case, and I don't demand rolls for trivial things I feel the characters should be reasonably capable of. But it does bug me that I have to, technically, fudge over a 40% fail chance in some instances. I'd much, much rather not have to do that and have it be close to 100% from the get go.

Close to a 100% for a character that has no clue what they're doing, though?

I'm actually the GM in this case, and I don't demand rolls for trivial things I feel the characters should be reasonably capable of. But it does bug me that I have to, technically, fudge over a 40% fail chance in some instances. I'd much, much rather not have to do that and have it be close to 100% from the get go.

Close to a 100% for a character that has no clue what they're doing, though?

Here's the thing: Most people do have a rudimentary idea how to interact with another person. Sure, things like social interaction can be trained, to a degree, but a lot of it you learn while growing up into an adult. Dito on athletics and other things humans do naturally. I'll buy "no clue" for something like tech use, but not for something someone does normally, like talk to people, run around for a while, climb a tree or lift something heavy.

You can talk to people just fine. If you need to get something through social interaction and the other side has no problems with it, then just don't do any test.

The moment you start to manipulate/charm to get your way, or deceive through lies or intimidate through sheer force or social standing then a check might be in order. And I'm stressing the MIGHT part.

Page 94 of the DH2 core rulebook:

but a lot of it you learn while growing up into an adult. Dito on athletics and other things humans do naturally.

That's what the character creation system and initial xp are for no? To show where your character grew up, what they learned, and a little of what they've been through up to this point?

Just because one had a rudimentary idea of how to perform athletics does not mean they're physically capable of doing such a thing.

Yes, and this little paragraph (p. 94) is a -good thing-. What I am saying, though, is that the actual chance of successfully completing a routine task, as per the numbers, is far lower than I'm comfortable with, which is why I would tweak them, accordingly. Not necessarily by much, but, basic things like athletics, charm, intimidate, I'd toss every character for free, because I encourage people to play their stats and their sheets, and I like to provide that opportunity, because some of the things I've been saying in this thread regarding success chances come directly from my gaming table, where players looked at the numbers and said "wait a sec, this is just weird".

As far as physically capable, that's a bit oddball for athletics. Not being able to do one task, like for example, running for several kilometers, doesn't mean you aren't able to lift a heavy object, for example. It's admittedly something I prefer rolling off base characteristics than using a skill in the first place, because it is, essentially, the focused use of...I don't know the correct english words: Burst strength, coordination and stamina?

I think the thing with athletics is that you're trying to push yourself beyond normal (untrained) physical limits.

Also on page 99:

Some people just aren't athletic, or convincing, or coercive. The system is supposed to represent all of them in a consistent manner.

Consider that people are generally horrible at accurately assessing their competence level, be they idiots or geniuses. You obviously play with relatively athletic and socially apt people, so your group considers these tasks easy. Had your group consisted of stereotypical asthmatic nerds, you'd probably be convinced Logic and Tech-Use should be available for every character, because c'mon, everyone knows how to do math and use a computer!

You may have a point there. There's a lot of things I'd consider completely trivial I've heard people ask rolls for, such as, say, swimming across a river in full kit. Which is why I went online and googled the average doctors/fitness experts consider the norm for a person and went with that for test difficulties instead of using my own scale of reference. It is notably harder to measure social competence, though. I wouldn't know where to start looking because it's really not my field, so that was a gut decision for our round more than anything else.

It's true that athletics is one of those umbrella skills. It can be a bit unrealistic if you start to think about a character who is able to run for miles without breaking a sweat, also being automatically adept at lifting heavy weights according to the system.

That said, I do like how they combined a lot of separate skills ever since Black Crusade to these umbrella skills. Sometimes simplicity is just clearly better than the complexity introduced by realism (in my opinion at least). As a bonus, you get more for your XP invested in these skills.

If something is truly off for your character in particular, you can still separate certain aspects of the skills as suggested in the book.

1) I never said it broken, just that it gives limited choices.

2) According to game theory, not my opinion but actual academic study, the game limits viable choices.

3) It would be more correct to say that it is your opinion that game theory should be ignored when designing a game (or more specifically when designing a cost/reward system in the game). It is my opinion that this is a dumb opinion for you to have.

I'd like to start off by saying while it wasn't directed at you I'm not surprised in the least you took it that way.

1. Never said you didn't say that, other people have. It does indeed give limited choices in the sense that everyone can take everything but at a price, if you call that limiting.

2. I want to see some actual citation from now on from these game theorists and academic studies before I take them under consideration.

3. It is my opinion that I don't really care what you think of my opinion on really well anything at this point. You've proven time and time again on these boards that you only like to be argumentative and negative really for the sake of it and have been entirely negative to people or at least goaded them for no reason than your own amusement.

You directed it generally to people arguing one side, so I explained my personal position, rather than speaking for others.

And I won't lie and say that I don't like arguing on here, but I've posted up my thoughts on house rules and given people advice on running certain parts of the game. I just enjoy arguing with people and presenting an alternate opinion.

And here's a lovely basic guide to game theory with helpful videos.http://www.gametheory101.com/#2915

I assume that when you comment on how people feel about a topic you will now be directly citing them or a summarizing study, correct?

Aside from having both having "game" in the name, I don't much see how game theory - which is a fairly lofty subject - has particularly much to do with role playing games, primarily because RPGs aren't a strict mathematical or strategic exercise. It's one thing to apply game theory to a game of pure strategy like chess, it's another to try and apply it to a genre of games that is wildly inconsistent in design, concept, and even purpose, and which primarily use mechanics to add a degree of variability to narrative outcomes (that is, the otherwise-entirely-abstract circumstances determined by the narrative side of the game). RPGs are in a lot of ways to a storytelling (and story-creation) medium as much as a game, and have as much in common with novels and movies as they do with the strategy games that their mechanical elements evolved from. Consequently, there is a lot about RPGs in general that is inherently irrational, driven more by emotion and creative impulse than by analysis and reason.

Further, trotting out a field of scientific study in order to tell people that they're having fun wrong comes across - to me at least - as being rude and more than a little bit condescending.

I'm sure you'll come along in a minute with a reason for why I'm wrong as well. Fundamentally, I don't care - I see RPGs as more akin to art than science, and while statistical and logical analysis have an important place in game design and development, they are far too frequently overstated, particularly on the internet in the service of people trying to win arguments.

Years of experience have taught me that, in practice, the 'feel' of a game is often a greater concern than basically anything else - a game can be incredibly well-designed, but if it doesn't 'feel' right, it won't work. Epic 40,000 and D&D 4th edition are both good examples of this - Epic 40k was derided and dismissed as being too abstract, losing the 'flavour' of previous editions. D&D4, according to many detractors, didn't "feel like D&D", yet remains the most balanced and mathematically stable version of that game to date (in practice, the differences between "underpowered" and "overpowered" characters in a given D&D4 game are tiny compared to the power discrepancies between classes found in previous editions).

To an issue of personal experience, when devising the autofire rules for Mutant Chronicles 3rd edition, a choice had to be made between two versions of the rule, both of which were statistically identical, but one of which involved the rolling of more dice, adding uncertainty to the situation, while the other was an automatic bonus. The majority of playtesters asked about this responded in favour of the dice-based version of the rule, even though it slowed down play slightly more and contained a non-trivial chance to give no benefit or even impose negative consequences. compared to the flat bonus. The dice felt better. than the bonus. Similar can be seen in the response to D&D5 - the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic (roll twice and pick the highest/lowest, respectively) is hailed as being an excellent development, when equivalent rules (giving a bonus to tests in favourable circumstances, imposing a penalty in negative circumstances) have been part of versions of D&D for nearly fifteen years. The end results of Advantage/Disadvantage are less important here than the feel of the mechanic - it's a straightforward, simple, visceral way of reflecting circumstances rather than giving a +2 bonus or a -2 penalty on a d20 roll (on average, the effect of Advantage/Disadvantage is about +/-3.325, though its actual impact varies based on the actual target number required).

Long story short... human beings don't make sense, and we certainly don't always choose the optimal solutions (indeed, sometimes, we may deliberately avoid the optimal solution). In RPGs, where we have no 'win condition', and no way to 'solve' the game, the optimal solution may be subjective, impacted by fictional factors determined by the narrative.

1) Game theory is actually a science applied to psychology, economics, and politics. It's essentially a way of modeling human behavior by reducing it down to discrete decision points among strategies. I'm pretty sure that playing an RPG has less moving parts than geo-politics with nuclear weapons (which game theory was used for), so it can be safely applied to people's decisions on what to spend xp on.

In addition to that, I would argue that the system used for a game should encourage actual game play rather than just randomizing outcomes, but that's more of an opinion thing. Mutant Chronicles has several elements that are more focused on gameplay than randomization (e g the dark symmetry points) so I think you would agree that having strategic gameplay elements in an rpg can be fun. If you don't address that aspect of an rpg, you're left with a game that isn't fun To engage in and you'd see most people turning to the vastly more popular freeform roleplaying available online.

I don't think game design is the most important thing, but it should be held in equal measure as the story and feel. In addition, these two things should conpliment each other as much as possible.

2) I didn't tell people that they're having fun wrong. I said that the game limits choices and when people claimed that TRUE ROLEPLAYERS wouldn't care about xp costs, I brought up the science of decision making and how some variables are discarded due to certain assumptions.

Maybe the reason why I'm not the height of diplomacy when arguing with people is that I feel they're arguing in bad faith by accusing me of being a bad GM/player, saying I have failed the game, ignoring the points I've made, trotting out decades old arguments about game design being the GMs responsibility and not the person writing the game? Maybe because if the suggestion is made that FFG could have designed their game a bit better, the same group of people keeps coming out and declaring that any game be great and fun with a good GM?

I mean, all of the posts after yours have turned to talking about how unimportant balance is (maybe balance and feel could BOTH be addressed, though?). The original argument was people saying that the aptitudes system is much more freeform and myself and others saying that it really acts like a different class system from DH1 with concrete rules for xp costs of everything. And people have to bring up all this "telling people they're having fun wrong" business. If people have fun playing a class system, that's great. I like them too. I personally would have preferred that DH2 used a more blatant class system that eliminated problems from the old one. The thing is, whether someone ( who is invested enough in the system to post on a message board) has fun or not is meaningless to discussion of the rules. That kind of thing only really matters in the houserules section where people on here are posing rules for others to have fun with.

3) I won't get into the whole D&D 4e thing again other than to say that in spite of how much people seemed to hate it it sure did sell incredibly well and do huge numbers while books were published for it. For the advantage/disadvantage thing, I don't think you mentioned that the major selling point of it was that it replaced static modifiers to keep track of as an all or nothing thing. This was one of the big lessons learned from people actually playing 4e, that tracking a bunch of fiddly modifiers isn't fun or at least takes up too much time (hmmm).

So yeah, humans are irrational beings who don't always do the optimal thing, but that argument can be taken to the natural conclusion that Dh2e could have just been a republished John Galt speech from Atlas Shrugged and some people would have bought it. The majority of decisions that people make are rational, and ALL decisions are done to either get a reward or avoid punishment. Just because irrational people exist doesn't mean you should throw up your hands when it comes to designing gameplay or that balance should be avoided. If you know that a system is going to lead to bad outcomes for some people, it's probably worth changing, rather than expecting that some people will actually enjoy these bad outcomes.

Another thing worth considering: environment and upbringing both play a pivotal role in the human development, and few people in the Imperium of Man have developed in conditions even remotely similar to those of the contemporary developed countries (where most research on matters of human competence will be conducted). A Hiver living in a world of metal and concrete buildings connected via an intricate web of trains, lifts, escalators and ladders, who has never seen a tree or a body of water bigger than a bathtub, will probably suck at climbing and swimming. And don't even get me started on Void-born...

It's even harder to predict anything about social competencies of the people of the Imperium, seeing how we're still figuring these things out for our own world. The human mind is a mystery we're only beginning to solve, and all RPG rules concerning that are highly abstracted by necessity.

And to everyone else: hugs and kisses. I hope that you all have "the nimsim treatment" deep in your hearts.

The problem with applying game theory to roleplaying games is, roleplaying games have no quantifiable win conditions and failure states - in the end, any game session where everyone had fun was successful, and fun is neither rational nor quantifiable.

I already gave a quantifiable win condition: being able to impose your idea onto the game-determined part of the story eg succeeding at a roll or using a special skill. That is your win state and that is your reinforcer. The game gives you dozens of ways to make this more likely and it is very obviously portrayed and assumed to be what the player wants.

There is a win condition in "don't have a gimped character" or "have the most narrative control" or "be the best at <task>" all of which are determined by player decisions.

You're confusing the goal of playing the game (fun) with the goals laid out by the system (get the most bang for your XP buck).

Maybe the reason why I'm not the height of diplomacy when arguing with people is that I feel they're arguing in bad faith by accusing me of being a bad GM/player, saying I have failed the game, ignoring the points I've made, trotting out decades old arguments about game design being the GMs responsibility and not the person writing the game? Maybe because if the suggestion is made that FFG could have designed their game a bit better, the same group of people keeps coming out and declaring that any game be great and fun with a good GM?

I don't have anything against you personally Nimsim, but maybe the reason why you're not at the height of diplomacy is just because... you're not being diplomatic, at all.

At least that's how it feels to me. You put people on the defensive because you're being too aggressive in spreading your point of view.

I don't think you do that intentionally, perhaps you're just misinterpreting other people's posts and vice versa.

Everybody's opinion has merit, yours and also the ones you think are dumb.

Everybody's opinion has merit

I vehemently disagree with this statement.

Do explain why you disagree then.

*Enters while rubbing his hands *

So, what's today themed chit-chat all about today??

Oh geez, 2 more pages....