To respect KjetilKverndokken thread on the player aids I have started a new post on dice pools/d100.

Amketch said:
The d100 roll is just success or failure, yes you can interpret why you succeed or fail during roleplay but you only have the two basic results.
I will not go into the dice pool is better/worse, we will see how it will be.
But I have to disagree with the quoted statement.
d100 roll is:
1. yes/no - success/failure
2. degree of success/failure
3. doubles (can happen on either side success and failure)
So you can not only tell if you succeded, or not. You can tell how much you succeded, and if something special happened.
This may not bring the same amount of info as proposed dice pool mechanics, but it is more than just flat yes/no.

But apart from the success fail you have no mechanical effect, the degrees of success or failure can be interesting from a role-play point of view, I know that if I began to arbitrary tell my players that a particular action has tired them or lost time they would not be happy. The d100 roll to succeed/fail roll degree is irrelevant in the system same with doubles. Note I am basing this on first edition, I do not have 2nd, did that introduce critical fumbles on doubles?

I agree that we have yet to see the dice pool in any real action, but I am optimistic

Amketch said:

*I believe that was the book anyway, and it may have been taken from elsewhere.

Normal numerical dices have normally one resulution, succsess or failure, even if its a critical succsess or failure. But there is no mechanic in it that gives off that shows how long it will take (numercals do that if there is extended throws, but then you have to roll dice more), if you have more gains and less gains (not the same as success and failure as this iis more of extra happenings).

The point being to give it all a pure mechanical affect and not something houseruled in.

Ok. Warhammer in its original rules does not utilize d100 in its full capacity.
But that does not mean d100 has only 2 possible outcomes, and can not be used to expand the normal rules. It is not true.
Even if the system has no rules for the additional outcomes, that does not mean the results are flat.
Thinking like that I can tell that dice pool mechanics also has only yes/no outcome, and it will be true if the system (or the person that plays it) will not use any additional info they bring.

Luckily houseruling is in.

To get you the idea of what can be done when using simple numerical dice like d100, d10 and d6 you can check for example my homemade critical hits rules in my topic in the 2-nd ed forums (there are a 2-3 posts on that subject):
www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

or Liber Fanatica corruption rules (volume 2, if I remember right): www.liberfanatica.net/

You can use normal yes/no outcomes as usual.
You can use doubles to provide some special effects triggering.
You can use success level to provide additional info to the action you make, and also additional mechanic like:
- more succesess mean that you make something faster
- if you roll 2 successes for example your opponent will have to roll the same amount of successes, or he fails, even if he would normally succed
- you roll successes, then you add an additional modifier to your opponents roll

There are many ways you can utilize simple d100 (and NO, not all of them require additional rolls, or additional tables).
Saying that it can give you just flat yes/no its like saying you can only make pushups with both hands, and legs on the ground (You will be very suppraised if I would tell you on how many different ways you can make pushups, and how much parts of your body you need to have on the ground to make them ).

In the end, it is not about the dice, its about your imagination, and how you use the dice.

But is it intuitive, thats the point for me.
For a GM its easy enough to decide a result based on degrees of that and this - but sharing the fiction creating prosess with the players in an enviroment you are not completly removing the GM, I think this is and more fluid way of doing it.
And again, it is often important, escpecially for those people who are designers (I'm one) to see in game rules what it is ment to do. I dont houserule (if there is not a rue thats unclear), then I can rather make my own system - I use them rather for the intent they are ment to. Mechanics is part of the feeling of the game. Playing version 1 or 2 are very different actually, and Warhammer 3 will give another game feeling.

So one more time, are numericals as intuitive?

With my comments I was considering both systems as written and the d100 as it is used in WFRP, I agree d100 systems can be much more versatile than as used in WFRP, even simple things like the impale rolls in Call of Cuthulu can make a considerable difference to the results.

To compare like to like, you can really only use the RAW.

I've seen a lot of people house rule 1 as crit success and 100 as crit failure, and some use the things happening on doubles. The 1-100 rule I particularly dislike, since a character's chance of critically succeeding/failing stays the same no matter how skilled he is. The doubles brings with it some complications, too. What if you get one degree of success, but on doubles; is this better than two degrees of success? three?

KjetilKverndokken said:

The reason this guy keeps asking the same questions over and over and hates it when we ignore them and discuss what we want to, is because he is a Dutch games designer looking to see if it is worth cloning the WFRPv3 system .

Suggested course of action: DO NOT ANSWER HIM. Let him think of his own ideas, if he can!!!!!!

Silent Star - I do answer it, but I ask it back.

This just got weird. Dutch game cloners are amongst us! Ahem.

I find d100 very easy and intuitive for new players - by which I mean players new to the concept of RPGs and RPG mechanics. And yes, I always used the 1 = Critical success and 100 = Critical failure, never used the doubles thing though. d100 is definitely more flexible than yes/no and since everyone is familiar with statistical probability, it is initially more intuitive. However, I suspect that once the dice pool system featured in WFRP 3 has been grasped, it will allow us to pay less attention to 'the man behind the curtain.' I'm no mathematician - though I do play one on TV - but I get the impression that a pleasant, adjustable bell curve will be the equivalent of a jog round the Jackie Onassis reservoir in Central Park for the WFRP players, many of whom have developed a significant layer of belly-fat in the past few decades. I think I stopped making complete sense a few sentences ago, but you get the jist.

Ye Ancient One said:

This is what I'm hoping it is going to achieve more easily, then numericals.

Ye Ancient One said:

If you meant easy learning curve I did, if not, I'm still standing by Central Park...

No offense, Ye Ancient One, but the jogging metaphor completely lost me

I think the dice pool mechanic will be pretty easy for people to learn as well - you have "good dice" and "bad dice." The more good dice than bad dice you have, the better your chance of success.

My friend asked me to figure the odds on his Tomb Scorpion in WFB never reaching the table - it was 1/216. Naturally, if happened the very first game. He said, "Well at least it won't happen for a long time now." In my experience that's how most people think about probabilities, and of course it's totally wrong. It's the same in WFRP, people with a 3x% WS would expect to hit every three swings. I think the v3 system is better than hard numbers, because people don't use their [wrong] intuition about probability so much.

Or at least, that's what I think will happen...

KjetilKverndokken said:

I houserule everything that I feel, that don't meet my expectations. I never played a game in my entire life that was strictly "by the book".

KjetilKverndokken said:

Mechanics is something you can always change or ignore.
Good GM, and players that cooperate together to create a story, thats what is important to create the feel of the game, and produce FUN.

The best game with best mechanics can be dull and unplayable if not lead wisely.
Tha same is for the poor game with poor mechanics, you just throw the mechanics, and catch the wind in your face.

The only things you need is to want, to improvise, and put a bit of work into it.

KjetilKverndokken said:

I'm a computer programmer. For me numbers are my second nature. I can count them fast. They just talk to me, and are more intuitive.
Looks like it depends on the person.

Sunatet said:

This is basically the heart of a good GM, to imagine and to improvise. And I also believe that some are better with number and some see in images it's very person dependent. SO it's diffucult to say if one is better than the other...

I also use several house rules as a GM. No matter how good a game is made, there will always be parts of the rules/mechanics that takes joy out of a game, if they are stricly followed