1 minute ago, LordBen said:

See, this is kind of my problem. At first glance I don't know if a result like that is a statistically average, really good, really bad?

Neither do I!!! I just plucked numbers out of thin air. It's probably a Ring 2 or 3 roll with some Skill dice. Blank sides are fairly rare, the spread of Opp and Success slightly favours Suc, but that's quite a reasonable roll to expect I would think. The player would have known they where likely to succeed (4 dice vs TN2), but the roll gave them a decision.

This system, unlike FFG's previous systems, really plays with your desires. There will probably always be a trade off. With Skill dice you end up rolling more than you can keep so there will be decisions about what you won't keep. Then the Strife mechanic will encourage you to push your characters Composure in order to get more done right now.

Thanks. Sounds a bit strange yet and I'll probably skip playing it unless something in the Lore appeals to me but I really appreciate everyone taking the time to explain it better.

I think doing custom dice completes the Roll & Keep system, and really makes it live up to its potential. Previously it was "do you have the right numbers to add up over the TN?" Now it's "You can succeed massively, but you'll get a lot of strife. Or you can barely succeed with some opportunity. Or fail with a bunch of opportunity." It turns it from binary pass/fail and gives players more control over the narrative.

Just now, Talandar said:

I think doing custom dice completes the Roll & Keep system, and really makes it live up to its potential. Previously it was "do you have the right numbers to add up over the TN?" Now it's "You can succeed massively, but you'll get a lot of strife. Or you can barely succeed with some opportunity. Or fail with a bunch of opportunity." It turns it from binary pass/fail and gives players more control over the narrative.

This is my sentiments too. Traditional R&K is two separate mechanics brought together, the addition of dice numbers and the choosing of which dice to add. This changes one of those elements and flips the whole system on its head. Very different, very cool (to me), and fresh in a world of RPG mechanics.

How long will the beta take? I'm curious to know if they'll keep this system or switch to something else.

They quoted 12-16 weeks. If the other Betas they have run for other RPG's is anything to go by then the core will drop around GenCon next year.

Usually they have a few alternate rules up their sleeves to share during the beta too.

Unfortunately for you considering how deeply baked in the dice are I can't see the dice going, only changes to their effects

Edit:

the way the book is laid out and the presentation of rules is absolutely atrocious at the moment. Stuff is everywhere, it's disjointed and unintuitive. If they fix that it would probably go a long way to fixing the system.

@LordBen your problems are not uncommon - but giving you the means to identify a statistical averages of success is exactly what FFG's various dice mechanics are meant to avoid. In my games, there's nothing I personally hate more than when players start going "I need to roll at least 12 to succeed". But there was also a point you made I'd like to address. You said people would always just pick the highest ring for any roll - but that's really not how it works. Due to the approach mechanic, sometimes your best ring isn't the most effective. You're trying to roll Fitness TN3 (for example) to cross the slippery log bridge. If it wasn't slippery or you weren't in a hurry, the GM is suggested not to even ask for a roll. If you try to rush into this with your Fire Ring (which could be your character's highest), the TN goes up to 4. If you cross cautiously, the TN will go down to 1.

tl;dr: FFG don't like the numbers game where the higher is the better. And I'm glad.

3 minutes ago, Darth Lectus said:

@LordBen In my games, there's nothing I personally hate more than when players start going "I need to roll at least 12 to succeed".

But there was also a point you made I'd like to address. You said people would always just pick the highest ring for any roll - but that's really not how it works. Due to the approach mechanic, sometimes your best ring isn't the most effective. You're trying to roll Fitness TN3 (for example) to cross the slippery log bridge. If it wasn't slippery or you weren't in a hurry, the GM is suggested not to even ask for a roll. If you try to rush into this with your Fire Ring (which could be your character's highest), the TN goes up to 4. If you cross cautiously, the TN will go down to 1.

But your characters have presumably done these types of things before while off screen in their "life". I, IRL, don't know my "stats" but I can look at a tree and think to myself "I can climb that easy!" and knowing the math on a character sheet is what represents that in RP.

I didn't see anything like that in the rules, only a reference to deciding what approach you're using and rolling it and having all 5 options for each roll that I spent the time looking at.

4 hours ago, LordBen said:

See, this is kind of my problem. At first glance I don't know if a result like that is a statistically average, really good, really bad?

Ok...

a given ring die is 1/6 per face. So...
3 sides give 1S. one of those allows open ending; so add 1/2 of 1/6, which is 1/12, then 1/2 of 1/36, and so on... we'll cap at 3rd iteration so, 3/6=18/36, +3/36, +0.5/36=21.5/36, or 43/72 ... around 59%... expect 3 per 5 dice. 2/3 of rolled successes have strain.

Advantage is 1/3 per die, of which 1/2 include strain. so, for 3 ring dice, expect 1. Half the time, it's carrying strain, too.

Isolating for strain, it's 50/50, but always comes on a good face.

The skill die...
7/12 faces carry a success; 2 of those open end for 1/6 * 7/12, + 1/6 of 7/144 ... 68% of success per each skill die. about 2s per 3 skill dice. 3/7, just a hair over half, of the successes carry strain.
Opportunities are 1/4 skill die. So, for every 4 Skill dice, expect 1.

Note that the extras from explodes may be kept or dropped as desired, so, if you don't need that Su+St, you don't have to keep it, but open ending is useful...

4 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:

Opportunities are 1/4 skill die. So, for every 4 Skill dice, expect 1.

Wrong. 4 sides have opportunities. One of the Success sides is also an opportunity side.

I think the Keep mechanic messes with the Skill dice too. It gets very complex but at a base level you must have a Ring Dice to have a Skill dice, but you only get to keep 1 of those 2. The two things I can roughly see that causing is a reduced chance of no result (ie blank on both dice) from 1/6 to 1/12 (I think). The other thing it does is reduce the chance of Strife from 1/2 to 1/6. Again both are just me eyeballing since I'm useless at fractions.

2 hours ago, LordBen said:

I didn't see anything like that in the rules, only a reference to deciding what approach you're using and rolling it and having all 5 options for each roll that I spent the time looking at.

I don't have the book at hand but if I'm not wrong, page 178.

1 hour ago, Richardbuxton said:

I think the Keep mechanic messes with the Skill dice too. It gets very complex but at a base level you must have a Ring Dice to have a Skill dice, but you only get to keep 1 of those 2. The two things I can roughly see that causing is a reduced chance of no result (ie blank on both dice) from 1/6 to 1/12 (I think). The other thing it does is reduce the chance of Strife from 1/2 to 1/6. Again both are just me eyeballing since I'm useless at fractions.

You need a number of ring dice equal to the task difficulty to have a significant chance.

If you have as many ring dice as the difficulty, and total dice exceed 1.5 times the difficulty, you should be able to do it, with some accrued strife.

If you accept no strife, 1/3 +1/9+1/27 is roughly 48% expectation on ring, and 4/12 = 1/3... so 48% success on skill (ame iterative math)... So you need about twice as many total dice as the difficulty.

So, to expect to succeed: ring ≥ difficulty, Ring+Skill > 2x difficulty.
Below that, things get much harder. And I'm too lazy to calculate them right now.

@Ultimatecalibur I mistook an Opportunity for a Strife, so both numbers are off on the skill die. Thanks for catching it.

This brings up one issue, tho— the symbols are not distinct enough at small sizes for me.

I am beginning to feel that this version of the game is best going to be played like Apocalypse World and its derivatives. In other words fiction first, than mechanics. In other words describe what your doing, THAN pick the mechanics that best match the fiction described.

Not a bad thing, just very different.

Ok so I wanted to add a couple of probabilities here to show some very basic comparisons.

TN1 check, 1 Ring die vs 2 Ring dice vs 1Ring&1Skill

Probability of any success?

1/2 vs 3/4 vs 57/72

or

12/24 vs 18/24 vs 19/24

Probability of success without Strife?

1/6 vs 11/36 vs 13/18

or

6/36 vs 11/36 vs 26/36

Probability of 2 or more success:

6/72 vs 18/72 vs 11/72

So increasing Ring increases Success, but at the cost of Strife. Increasing Skill reduces Strife while increasing Success.

6 hours ago, mortthepirate said:

I am beginning to feel that this version of the game is best going to be played like Apocalypse World and its derivatives. In other words fiction first, than mechanics. In other words describe what your doing, THAN pick the mechanics that best match the fiction described.

Not a bad thing, just very different.

Now that you mention it, the skill group chart is kinda of like a broadened form of the individual moves in AW. Instead of the player narrating and the GM says, "That sounds like a Discern Realities move," the player narrates, and then the GM says, "You're being polite but trying to provoke the other courtier? Sounds like Fire + Courtesy."

From this perspective, mechanical form follows the fiction. Savvy players will then try to approach issues in a way that favors their best Ring, reversing this into fiction follows form, but I'm OK with that. It gives more life and personality to a munchkin's character than I've ever seen in an RPG. Rollplayers will instantly get hung up on the fact that they can't try to provoke a courtier or create a brand new "Katana of +5" using Earth, or some other situation that ties their hands. This is borderline non-existent in other RPGs - if the D&D face has high Charisma and high Persuade, they can do whatever they want socially and be amazing at it. Yet this new design, merging AW, FATE Accelerated, and the custom dice, this system strikes an amazing balance of crunch for the rollplayers and evocative narrative for the roleplayers.

20 hours ago, MuttonchopMac said:

From this perspective, mechanical form follows the fiction. Savvy players will then try to approach issues in a way that favors their best Ring, reversing this into fiction follows form, but I'm OK with that. It gives more life and personality to a munchkin's character than I've ever seen in an RPG.

That's what I really like, it incentivises you playing in-character and utilising strengths. In a sense that is always the case, however when traditional attributes are used and 'Strength' is your strength, well that just means you're strong. As rings are broad and cover every interaction, it means that your characters will generally act in a manner consistent with their character. This also means that inconsistent acting only becomes desirable in real niche cases and are outside of the comfort zone of the character due to greater risks.

In all I think that Rings replacing 'hard attributes' have opened up a great blend of narrative game play sympathetic to mechanics elements. Even better: as approaches carry mechanical benefit, it isn't just fluff that resorts to 'if you can explain how you're doing it, you can do it'.

On ‎09‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 0:25 AM, LordBen said:

See, this is kind of my problem. At first glance I don't know if a result like that is a statistically average, really good, really bad?

Short version: any die you roll has about a 50% chance of coming up success. you know how many successes you need and how many (total) dice you get to roll.

So purely for success/failure it's not massively different from any 'roll a pool of dice to assemble successes'

Where you get the difference is opportunities, which are 'good things irrelevant of success at the basic task' - not whether you hit or miss, but whether you take the opportunity of the blow to outmanoeuvre your opponent, provide an opening for your allies, spot the other attacker coming, and so on.

Taking the above example

On 10/9/2017 at 3:39 AM, Richardbuxton said:

Ok so I wanted to add a couple of probabilities here to show some very basic comparisons.

TN1 check, 1 Ring die vs 2 Ring dice vs 1Ring&1Skill

Probability of any success?

correcting my prior error, caught by someone else...
ring = 2/3=4/6 = 8/12
Skill = 7/12

TN1
1 R: 2/3 (66%) (recursion matters not here)
2 R: 8/9 (88%)
. . . 1-(1-Ps(r))ⁿ=1-(1-[2/3])⁲=1-([1/3]⁲)=1-[1/9]=8/9

1R+1S: 31/36
Permutation A: Make it on the ring die 2/3 * 5/12 =10/36
Permutation B: make it on the skill die: 7/12 * 1/3 = 7/36
Permutation C: both would make it: 7/12 * 2/3 = 14/36
Permutation D: neither would make it 5/12 * 1/3 = 5/36
Sanity check 10+7+14+5 = 16
Sum of successful permutations (10+7+14)/36 = 31/36

TN2
1R: 1/9
Chance X * chance SX: 1/6 * 2/3
Working out 2D+ is headache city.
1R+1S is, however... 11/27

My brain hurts. I hate permutations.

You have done well though, the final numbers show a lot to a new player. It's great to be able to say:

If Ring = TN then 66% chance success.

Add Skill to improve, also reduce Strife.

5 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

You have done well though, the final numbers show a lot to a new player. It's great to be able to say:

If Ring = TN then 66% chance success.

Add Skill to improve, also reduce Strife.

Actually, Not quite so flat.

1R alone is indeed 4/6, or about 66.7%

2R vs TN 2 has about 11/27

3R vs TN 3 has a bunch of permutations (S = success, X = Exploding, F = Opportunity or Blank
1 pA: v=3 S S S 1-((1-[1/2])^3)=1/8
1 pB: V≥3 X X X 1-((1-[1/6])^3)=1-([5/6]^3)=1-125/216=91/216
3 pC: V≥3 X X S ([1/6]*[1/6]*[1/2])= [1/72]
3 pD: V≥2 X X F ([1/6]*[1/6]*[1/3] = [1/108]
3 pE: V≥3 X S S ([1/6]*[1/2]*[1/2])= [1/24]
6 pF: V≥2 X S F ([1/6]*[1/2]*[1/3])= [1/36]
3 pG: V=2 S S F ([1/2]*[1/2]*[1/3])= [1/12]
3 pH: V≥1 X F F ([1/6]*[1/3]*[1/3])= [1/72]
3 pI: V=1 S F F ([1/2]*[1/3]*[1/3])= [1/18]
1 pJ: V=0 F F F ([1/3]^3)=[1/27]
So, for TN 3
All the Initial Value "=3" or "≥3": pA+pB+(3*pC)+(3*pE)
. . . = [1/8]+[91/216]+[1/24]+[1/8]=[91/216]+[(3+3+1)/24] = [91/216]+[7/24]
. . . = [91/(6^3)]+[7/(6*4)] = [{(91*4)+(7*(6^2))}/(4*6^3) = [(364+252)/864]
. . . = 616/864 = 308/432 = 154/216=76/108= 38/54=19/27
Plus 4/6 of the value "≥2" for the open end: [4/6]*3*{pD+pF} = [4]*{[1/108]+[1/36]}=4*[(2+6)/216] = 8/216
. . . Some simplification via prime factor in exponential = [(2^2)*(2^3)/((2^3)*(3^3)] = [(2^2)*1/(1*(3^3)] = 4/9
plus [1/6]*[2/3] = [1/9] of "≥1": thus [1/9]*3*pH = [1/3]* 1/72 = 1/216

Summing those (216 looks like the best common denominator)
. . . pA+pB+(3*pC)+(3*pE) = 154/216
. . . [4/6]*3*{pD+pF} = 8/216
. . . [1/9]*3*pH = 1/216
. . . ∑=(154+8+1)/216 = 163/216 ... about 75%, thanks to the recursions on pD, pF, and pH

Add a couple skill dice, and TN3 is almost assured with 3 Ring.
it really gets much much much uglier as the number of dice increases, and once you have to account for rolled vs kept.

There ARE formulaic shortcuts, but I can't remember them, as Stats class was in 1992... and I only ever taught math on the elementary level, so this is above what I had to demo in class for students.

On ‎09‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 3:50 AM, LordBen said:

How long will the beta take? I'm curious to know if they'll keep this system or switch to something else.

I would fully expect that they are locked into this system and rather than look for a better system, the Beta testing is to make sure we get the best version of THIS system we can. I'm cool with this however as I think they have the kernel of a really great game here and I'm keen to get the best out of it.