Just now, GreenDragoon said:

because you all keep going without saying anything new. So I assumed it was either unclear or wrong. But maybe you guys also enjoy reaching the same conclusions from different angles

We call them supporting arguments in most places 😜

On 3/8/2020 at 12:57 PM, ForceSensitive said:

Consider too another game, Magic, and drawing too many cards. If it's caught, automatic game loss.

Note that in this game it's impossible to restore correct game state because you know what the next card is, and shuffling has other side effects/potential unintended consequences.

In this case, it is 100% possible to restore 100% correct game state, with no extra information and no extra advantage to anyone.

5 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Note that in this game it's impossible to restore correct game state because you know what the next card is, and shuffling has other side effects/potential unintended consequences.

I'm confused about this. What's the problem with shuffling to fix?

49 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

I'm confused about this. What's the problem with shuffling to fix?

IIRC, there are a lot of effects which do something like put cards on the bottom, or back on top of the deck in particular orders, or effects which allow someone to peak at the top X cards.

25 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

IIRC, there are a lot of effects which do something like put cards on the bottom, or back on top of the deck in particular orders, or effects which allow someone to peak at the top X cards.

Oh, so the assumption wasn't "before the game starts." Gotcha.

3 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Oh, so the assumption wasn't "before the game starts." Gotcha.

If the mistake is caught before the game starts, the penalty isn't quite as drastic: a judge will randomly remove cards from the offender's hand at random until he has 1 less than the number he should have.

The reason that shuffle and redraw is not used here, either, is that players could do it on purpose to sneak a free mulligan if their hand is poor (which is, funnily enough, almost the exact reasoning behind your proposed change to the too-many-dice rule).

So we'd need a d6, d8 and d10 to simulate randomly removing a die.

Ignoring the practicality, would this be seen better than giving the choice to the non-rolling player? If yes/no, why?

17 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

@Frimmel so we don't misstep again, could you please point us to where you thought we were actively looking for a way to call someone a cheat? I don't recall it in here is all.

The title of the thread contains the word "cheating" and the implication that rolling too many dice is willful cheating. So, I will concede that you aren't actively looking for a way to call someone a cheat as it has flat out been done already. The thread is very directed in finding a punishment for what in the majority of cases is simply genuine error. That to many of you simply doing the roll correctly is not sufficient and should be punished in all cases with the non-transgressor determining the results speaks far more ill of those advocating a punishment than it does of the few who are willfully cheating by making intentional errors in the number of dice they roll.

17 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

But your logic is extremely flawed. While prevention is the best medicine, we still have emergency rooms for a reason 🤣 By your logic of slow down and just don't make a mistake in the first place, well by golly we can just stop putting airbags in cars can't we? 😂 And we'll all live in perfect peace and Harmony. And by jove we can get rid of the current corrective rule too!

The current corrective rule of simply doing the roll correctly might be considered an emergency room for errors in gathering and rolling dice mightn't it? This conversation comes across as advocating euthanasia as the correct treatment option particularly for illness or injury that the patient might be considered to have brought on themselves with carelessness.

The corrections other than doing the roll correctly I have seen offered in this thread most certainly will not create a world of peace and harmony. I think it has been mentioned already but the sorts of punishments advocated seem to me to create more chances to cheat. If I get to decide my opponent's results on incorrect rolls, I have an increased motivation to obfuscate and flat out lie about the correct number of dice. "Fly casual" is right out the window with many of the things advocated here as punishment.

All those advocating some form of getting to choose the results and variously making sure the roll is unfavorable to the player in error come across as bullies, as small people, as petty tyrants. They come across worse than those making intentional errors.

5 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

So we'd need a d6, d8 and d10 to simulate randomly removing a die.

Ignoring the practicality, would this be seen better than giving the choice to the non-rolling player? If yes/no, why?

It could always be done with a d6, if you reroll "out of range" results on 4 or 5 dice.

In terms of accident, it seems like the least feelsbadman way. Blanks never become nattys, nattys never become blanks.

In terms of cheating, it's hard to abuse. Since a roll never becomes better for this, the only "benefit" to intentionally rolling more dice is the hope that an opponent doesn't realize it's too many dice (or that you can slight of hand a blank away).

//

Say... this dovetails interestingly with my odd experimental idea about using a deck* for "dice results" instead of actual dice. It'd be really easy to shuffle the "roll" and remove one random card.

* A deck of between 32 and 64 cards which represents all the sides on 4-8 dice. It'd be shuffled at the start of game, something like 4 cards discarded off the top so that it's not fully predictable, and "dice rolls" would be drawn off the top until none remain. Reshuffle, discard 4ish, and repeat. It'd mean that any crazy hot or cold streaks in dice would be mostly balanced out eventually (mostly not completely... all 4 burned cards off the top could be blanks, or hits, etc).

That'd certainly be more cumbersome, and not necessarily "better" but it seems like an interesting thought experiment.

6 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

["Dice Decks."]

That'd certainly be more cumbersome, and not necessarily "better" but it seems like an interesting thought experiment.

It would also be an excellent tool for both practice and playtesting. You'd need both attack and defense decks. Both players should have their own decks; otherwise you can easily get streaks in favor of a player, which of course you're trying to eliminate.

Really interesting idea for playtesting and practicing. Wish I'd thought of it (a long time ago).

Thanks @DR4CO for filling in that part. Exactly right. The only reason I had to take a game loss in my example was because I had passed the turn, which in the Magic rules we arbitrarily declare to be a point of no return for rewinding. Realistically it could have been done since nothing had happened since, but that's the line. And thanks for the parallel to our situation, beat me to it. 😁

Which had been my intent here to show, the exploit only works because it sees information, then decides if it wants to redo that information. So, contrary to what @ClassicalMoser shared, the game state can't be returned to correct via a reroll for the same reason. It's how the exploit works at all in the first place. The game has the necessary information, just with an overload. Some of the data isn't valid. The challenge is to get rid of the die or dice that aren't supposed to be there. That would be the correct state and unexploitable ideally, before mods anyway. That's the only catch to me is the mods. @Jeff Wilder mentioned earlier he didn't think it feasible to make a random determination. But I'm more with @GreenDragoon on this. You can, but you need an extra tool and more steps. Considering some of the other reasoning in the thread, I didn't think anyone would go for it, but it would work for me if that's what was decided. Gives me an excuse to have a buddy 3d print a chance cube with aurabesh numbers and keep it in my box! 😎 😄

I'm with @theBitterFig on this, he ninja'd the method I think correctly.

@Frimmel Having it be a punishment isn't even as new concept to the rules, as previously discussed the red-while-stressed rule from the games get go and for years was pretty darn harsh. And for good reason. It acts as punishment and warning together. Teaching the player making the mistake that they should be more cautious, while penalizing a hack attempt. It was in the core design that it should be a harsh sentence. That was until of course the game inflated to the point of it being, well, gamed. For a brief time it acted as a feature even.

But yes, your getting my point, the current rule is the 'emergency room'. But the current ER gives an exploit. Euthanasia is a bit of an extreme interpretation for the suggested rule, to continue the analogy I'd say an amputation or biobsy is more apt. Something needs removed. Euthanasia would be more like declaring the attack or defense completely cancelled. Which none had even mentioned.

Please do clarify something for me, how would canceling the best die arbitrarily create a situation to cheat more? From your comment it sounded like you would be lying to your opponent about how many dice they should roll, then call them out and cancel? Which clearly would be a D move. And be a sportsmanship call. At best. But now your getting into rocky territory, because your arguing basically that the current exploit that is harder to prove intent is better. Which is still confusing?

As it stands, a few have already chimed in that the current rule isn't peace and Harmony either as even in the common mistake it can take a sub-par safe roll that you don't worry about and turn it until something that costs you the game. Which is ironically the Salt that started this thread 🤔

30 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

It would also be an excellent tool for both practice and playtesting. You'd need both attack and defense decks. Both players should have their own decks; otherwise you can easily get streaks in favor of a player, which of course you're trying to eliminate.

Really interesting idea for playtesting and practicing. Wish I'd thought of it (a long time ago).

I want to say there was a game that actually did use one for in play testing. Settlers of Catan had one you could buy of the shelf for their 2d6 system

1 minute ago, ForceSensitive said:

I want to say there was a game that actually did use one for in play testing. Settlers of Catan had one you could buy of the shelf for their 2d6 system

Star Fleet Battles (which uses 2D6 and a matrix to allocate damage) also had an experimental replacement damage deck *cough*grumble*snort* years ago.

Isn't it like a core mechanic or something in Malifaux?

1 minute ago, ForceSensitive said:

Isn't it like a core mechanic or something in Malifaux?

I dunno. Just keep in mind that doing it for X-Wing (IMO, anyway) would have a different goal than "substituting cards for dice for normal gameplay." "Normal gameplay" would be the thing you don't want ... rather you'd want "jagged probability smoothed out gameplay."

Right. I'm not advocating it as an option, I like rolling my dice, and a deck can be gamed unless you shuffle it every draw and discard. Like in Catan, you can roughly plan on the likelihood of the next bandit when it's in deck form. I was just sharing a few other places to look for those interested.

3 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Which had been my intent here to show, the exploit only works because it sees information, then decides if it wants to redo that information. So, contrary to what @ClassicalMoser shared, the game state can't be returned to correct via a reroll for the same reason.

Why not? As long as

3 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Some of the data isn't valid,

they haven’t learned anything that is?

It’s cheating like changing your dial is cheating: if it’s an accident, don’t punish them. If it’s not, DQ them. Making rolling the wrong number suboptimal seems like the wrong approach, especially because of mods.

3 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

The challenge is to get rid of the die or dice that aren't supposed to be there. That would be the correct state and unexploitable ideally, before mods anyway. That's the only catch to me is the mods. @Jeff Wilder mentioned earlier he didn't think it feasible to make a random determination.

Re-rolling all the dice is exactly what a random determination is. And I’m sure that’s why the devs chose it. It’s random just the way dice are supposed to be. Any way of playing with them after rolled will always skew in someone’s favor and affect gameplay.

Think of it this way: white 2-straight is a dial-changing strategy now and is famed as such. Any way you let the bad dice get kept, it WILL get gamed. That’s why you throw them out and start again. The first random determination was invalid, so there was no information obtained. The game state is 100% restored to the right way.

The argument is that if it isn’t caught, you have a bad game state. That’s true of any type of cheating. How do you propose punishing slipped ships or bumped dials?

3 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Isn't it like a core mechanic or something in Malifaux?

Yes, Malifaux uses a deck of cards instead of dice. I know of other tabletop games and RPGs that use decks instead of cards for randomization.

4 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

I want to say there was a game that actually did use one for in play testing. Settlers of Catan had one you could buy of the shelf for their 2d6 system

That's where I stole the idea from!

Settlers with a 36 card deck of all the 2d6 possibilities. That's how I always have the digital game handle the dice: using the deck, with the "burn 5 cards" option. It creates an overall fair distribution of results, without being precisely countable.

I can't really stand doing it any other way, since I can check the histogram for the dice distribution in the end. When you see, say, the 6 show up 30% more often than the 8, that's just really frustrating.

8 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Please do clarify something for me, how would canceling the best die arbitrarily create a situation to cheat more? From your comment it sounded like you would be lying to your opponent about how many dice they should roll, then call them out and cancel? Which clearly would be a D move. And be a sportsmanship call. At best. But now your getting into rocky territory, because your arguing basically that the current exploit that is harder to prove intent is better. Which is still confusing?

There are at least two ways it can be gamed:

• Trying to trick your opponent into rolling the wrong number of dice, e.g. by obfuscating something that modifies the roll, distracting them, or handing them the wrong number of dice.
• Deliberately rolling too many dice when you want to roll low, and then calling out your "mistake". This is less common than wanting to roll high, but there are several scenarios where it could occur. If this happens, what recourse does your opponent have? With the "roll it again" method the exploit can be prevented if the opponent is alert and catches the bad roll, but there's not much they can do about this one.

A blatantly obvious example of gaming the "always remove the highest" rule is to fly over a proxy mine, roll three dice, and go "Whoops! Thought it was first edition. The fix is to always remove the highest result, right?"

In that case I assume you'd say the lowest should be removed instead, but there are a bunch of less obvious ones like "I want Laetin A'shera's attack to miss so I get an evade token" or "The attack roll only has one hit, I want Quickdraw to blank out so I can do the return shot." or "I would quite like this generic TIE that I'm flying in my Sloane swarm to die so the enemy ace is double stressed, instead of the generic that's going to kill it if it survives the first shot."

15 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

As it stands, a few have already chimed in that the current rule isn't peace and Harmony either as even in the common mistake it can take a sub-par safe roll that you don't worry about and turn it until something that costs you the game.

It was an incorrect roll. It never worked out in your favor because it was the wrong number of dice. It did not turn into something that cost you the game because it wouldn't have cost you the game if it didn't work in your favor in the first place. If you can't lose by it, you can't win by it either. No one got away with anything. Sorry, sometimes the scummy "Get away" with being scummy but only to those who do not have a proper understanding of probability and proper self-control over their feelings.

All these posts seem about trying to control others. What really needs controlled is feeling ill-done by things that were wrong being put right.

GROW. UP.

It all boils down to preference of error types, and estimation of the amount of cheaters.

It is very clear who here had little to no exposure, and who encountered them. I have a (at least partially irrational) dislike for magnetized ships facing the wrong direction - because I have witnessed some where it "happened" consistently over several games. I concluded intent, and as result I put an unfair burden on everyone who magnetizes their ships.

My unholy trinity consists of magnetized ships, handwritten lists, and gamesmanship outside of the table. They are all based on repeated, negative personal experiences. I understand that those who experienced cheating through rolling too many dice have a good reason for their stronger opinions.

@GreenDragoon I feel ya on the magnetized thing. It drives me nuts too! Like, as a hobbyist it's sweet and all, but man does it throw me off my angles game. Even the from the factory tilted ones. I low key blame the one obstacle I hit at last week's SC on the factory tilt lol 😐 😫

@Ysenhal Okay. The first one we already hit. I don't think you should be the one telling your opponent what they should be rolling in any other capacity then the aforementioned public knowledge tracking. Let alone handing them a specific number of dice. Isn't it in the rules already that "game components must be in easy reach of each player" anyway? I'll give you this though, that's pretty shiesty if you're pulling it. But that still to me falls more clearly on sportsmanship and is a little easier to prove as an attempted cheat, kinda .

Your second though is definitely a good catch. At this point we should probably clarify that 3 alternate to the current rules have been introduced.

-Always drop the highest. (Arbitrary, flat penalty)

-Opponent cancels the best (Self correcting according to the situation, sister to older red-while-stressed fix)

-Randomly determine which result will be the 'extra' and cancel it. (Requires tool and extra step, but it's probably the most accurate)

I think your example is to me the one that kills the first option, putting it back to the second Opponent-Pick which many are against. But as you point out the second option would still correct and penalize the mistake. And the third would successfully rewind it with random in, random out logic. So we've eliminated the one at least.

@ClassicalMoser I think we're at one of those points where text is letting us type past each other. So please let's just check in on a state of play in this conversation. Are you still of the opinion that there isn't a exploit to the current rule via a reroll of the batch? If so maybe I can try and explain it better, or Jeff's previous explanation may do that better. I can answer your last question though. We already have that. It's in the rules that the opponent gets to adjust the ship back as best as possible. And all my experience is acceptable with that rule. I'm sure we've rarely got it 100% right, but with a good fly casual attitude and partner we have managed to get it as right as we care to agree. Since we don't have quantified measures from before the mistake, we have nothing to check it against after. In dice, we do have an instruction, so we should be able to get back to it.

6 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Are you still of the opinion that there isn't a exploit to the current rule via a reroll of the batch?

No, not exactly. There’s certainly a way to deliberately break the rules. That’s the case for many other aspects of this game that we hold dear, though. I was just trying to say that enforcement should run in a similar vein rather than being universally punishing:

7 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

We already have that. It's in the rules that the opponent gets to adjust the ship back as best as possible. And all my experience is acceptable with that rule. I'm sure we've rarely got it 100% right, but with a good fly casual attitude and partner we have managed to get it as right as we care to agree. Since we don't have quantified measures from before the mistake, we have nothing to check it against after. In dice, we do have an instruction, so we should be able to get back to it.

This is precisely what I don’t understand: how is rerolling all of the dice not getting back to it? You’ve considered before that it restores a perfectly accurate game state, right? Because the bad roll was never valid just like the bad position it was never valid.

Except in this case we know 100% that we can get back to a perfect game state, since there’s no fudge factor.

Of course, the problem remains of people exploiting other peoples’ inattention for their own gain, but that’s no less cheating in this instance than any other. Why punish it more?

As you said, when a ship is bumped it gets put back, so game state is restored. What makes this case any different? Other than the imagination that people could be cheating with it all the time...

I guess these are the questions I’m left with:

1. Do you agree that re-rolling the dice restores a perfect game state?

2. If so, why is that not the goal in this case?

3. If not, how does it not? If it is caught, there was no effect. If it wasn’t caught, then either it was someone’s mistake, or someone was cheating and would have gotten away with it anyway.

The cases where extra dice give you a favorable result are way more common than extra dice giving you an unfavorable result anyway. Rolling the extra die was cheating if he ever intended to use that role on purpose. The problem isn’t what to do when it does get caught. The problem is what to do when it doesn’t. And the answer is that that is impossible, but it isn’t a major problem in our game because there aren’t that many cheaters