And the thing is, as a player, I'd be looking to maximize my chances of a vanilla success while minimizing my chances of Despair and largely ignoring any attempt for a Triumph.

But that's boring. I'd much rather leap off a tree onto a low flying TIE fighter, drop my thermal detonator, but have my long trenchcoat get sucked up in the Ion Thruster Intake crashing the ship anyway. That's way more cinematic and interesting than "I shoot him. They take 10 damage."

Not to mention ineffective. Ignoring a Triumph that counts as both a success, as well as a crit or weapon effect activation demonstrates a basic lack of understanding of how the game and combat function.

@whafrog: Just an FYI the rabid anti-math, anti-intellectual backlash above is exactly what I was talking about on the last page. It doesn't matter if I let it go, it's still here.

I think it's more a reaction to your "rabid"...(your term)...pro math-at-all-costs. You seem to forget that in the end it's the gaming experience that matters...and my experience has been most excellent with this system, far more useful to me than any other system I've played in the last 30+ years. If that's not been your experience, if the math isn't accurately enough reflected in the fluff text for your liking, then the game is not for you.

And...I wouldn't call that "letting go".

I don't known where you're getting "Math before all else" because no here has said anything even remotely like that, in fact if you bother to really read my comments or first linked article, it's very clear the math secondary. People playing the game find something wonky with the behavior of the mechanics (yes, talents and all), and only THEN do they use that horrible, boring math to figure out why.

This is the third time I've explained this in this thread alone. Problem is noticed by players first, and THEN they use math! The math doesn't come first!

Do you get that now?

No, probably not, because the community (or at least a vocal sub group thereof) just knee-jerk reacts to math and criticism. It's only matter of time before we hear "if you don't think the game is perfect, don't play."

Oh wait, we already got that.

So, again, this vocal, obnoxious subgroup tries to silence any productive conversation about game issues with pedantic rhetoric and condescension.

Devs said they wanted the dice to skew Success-Threat Advantage-Failure. That's what I see at my table with base rolls. Not sure about the wonky formula at other people's. Regardless worx for me. FFG has more dice on the boat so I'll just assume there aren't plans to change the dice.

My suggestion for the upset wonky folks would be Gambler, with Second Chances, Double or Nothing and SA Unmatched Fortune, it would be a statistical modifying happy place for you all...

I'm here for the Star Wars, not the system... I refrain from making about 90% of the system comments I might make, to the point of getting some half-typed and then saying "nah, there's no need for that".

It just seems that if the system is such an ill fit for you that either D6, D20, Saga or something generic like HERO would be a better choice for you.

The mechanics of a game should work, completely and without issue, from the core book alone, right out of the gate.

And I'd like a batmobile made out of winning lottery tickets. Both are unlikely to happen.

I have been playing role playing games since 1985. My gaming career is now old enough to smoke, drink and hang out with loose women (which, now that I think about it, explains a great deal). In all that time - in playing GURPS and Champions and D6 Star Wars and D20 Star Wars and Ghostbusters and Toon and Cyberpunk 2020 and Chill and Teenagers From Outer Space and Paranoia and Boot Hill and Call of Cthulhu - I have never encountered a system that wasn't in need of patching or wasn't improved by additional sourcebooks later down the line.

Holding FFG to an impossible standard when all other game companies fail isn't fair.

I don't think the FFG SW system is perfect (it has a lot of 'old school' design like tables for a 'new school' system for me) but I've found the dice work very well and have never seen a need to tamper with them.

Exactly. I've never claimed that the engine is perfect - vehicle combat is pretty weaksauce - but it's the best alternative out there that I've found.

And the thing is, as a player, I'd be looking to maximize my chances of a vanilla success while minimizing my chances of Despair and largely ignoring any attempt for a Triumph.

But that's boring. I'd much rather leap off a tree onto a low flying TIE fighter, drop my thermal detonator, but have my long trenchcoat get sucked up in the Ion Thruster Intake crashing the ship anyway. That's way more cinematic and interesting than "I shoot him. They take 10 damage."

Your gaming "career" sounds a lot like mine -- very long, many systems. I've found that "out of the box", some games work better than others, require far more or far less tweaking, etc. There's a difference between "this game gets richer and deeper with more sourcebooks" versus "you can't judge the basic mechanics of the game until $1000 "worth" of various sourcebooks books has been published for it".

As for boring, well -- first, your two examples strike me as a bit of a false dichotomy, especially if one is supposedly linked to the NDS and the other to old-school pass-fail dice systems; there's plenty of space between, and neither dice system is attached at the hip to either style. Players have been describing and embellishing their character's actions as more than "I roll to hit... hit... 10 damage..." for a long time.

Second... can I assume that this TIE is taking off or landing or otherwise moving slowly? My first thought was "how the heck do you even survive jumping onto a speeding TIE fighter from a tree..."

Not to mention ineffective. Ignoring a Triumph that counts as both a success, as well as a crit or weapon effect activation demonstrates a basic lack of understanding of how the game and combat function.

I hate relying on crits and activated specials. I'd rather up my chance to just hit and the reliability of my basic effect.

For my group, some of the most memorable sessions we've had have been when we've made creative use of triumphs and despairs. The really cool part is that it can take the adventure to places that nobody ever planned, including me, the GM. This is especially true for despairs which, despite how the players may view them, are great story-telling devices and really enrich the fun of the game. None of this would be possible without proficiency and challenge dice, so crunchy math aside, it can be rather short-sighted to dismiss them.

This is similar to the view that obligation is a negative mechanic that's there to screw the players. Nothing can be farther from the truth! Like triumphs and despairs, obligation can be great for adding opportunities for fun and excitement in the game, as well as inserting a lot of twists and turns to the story.

This is how I feel, too. It's not a system where you have to min-max it to hell to get mechanically the 'best' character. It's not a system where you're facing X amount of level-appropriate encounters to level up like Pathfinder or D&D 4E.

For me, it works very well for allowing us to recreate a pulp or sci-fi adventure, where twists of fate happen frequently and the heroes are always pulling off something crazy or falling into worse danger. The players love the ways I let them interpret the dice, and I love the ebb and flow of good and bad luck between us using Destiny Points. I'm never trying to 'screw them over', I'm making life more interesting for both of us.

Nobody here is saying the system is 'perfect'. Myself, I don't use numerical values for Obligation, Duty or Morality, but nonetheless incorporate these elements narratively into my games. It's a sub-system that can be cut out without harming the overall game. Frequently, I default to 'rule of cool' when doing vehicle or ship fights. I'm overall less concerned with the exact maths and more concerned with making it 'feel' like a fast-moving pulp adventure with lots of exciting and unexpected things cropping up

And I know when to use the dice, and know when not to use them. We don't spend every last advantage - sometimes 'Success with Advantage' or whatever is enough to go on.

It also gives me the power to make things harder or easier (by using blue or black dice) on the spot. That way we don't need lots of fiddly rules for what each species is good and bad at doing. Wookie wrestling Jawa? A few blue dice for the big guy and a few black dice for the little guy, to take account of size and weight. Twi'lek dancing? 2-3 blue dice. Trandoshan dancing? Half a dozen black ones.

If I feel the need for a red dice, the rules give me the power to do it, burning a Destiny Point. The players see what's happening and it never seems arbitrary.

At this point, I feel quite comfortable doing things on the fly, and I find the dice an excellent tool.

I hate relying on crits and activated specials. I'd rather up my chance to just hit and the reliability of my basic effect.

And some of us like the former. Your preference doesn't mean the game is poorly designed, or that the FFG developers didn't know what they were doing. With a few exceptions, the game works as advertised.

No, probably not, because the community (or at least a vocal sub group thereof) just knee-jerk reacts to math and criticism. It's only matter of time before we hear "if you don't think the game is perfect, don't play."

Oh wait, we already got that.

So, again, this vocal, obnoxious subgroup tries to silence any productive conversation about game issues with pedantic rhetoric and condescension.

You called a post "rabid" when it was anything but. You might want to tone down your own rhetoric.

The "you don't think the game is perfect" argument is fiction. There are quite a few things I've modified in the system to suit my needs, so I certainly don't think it's perfect...it's only the best as a whole that I've used for the type of game I run.

As for the "you're trying to shut me up" argument, that's more fiction. Speaking for myself, I simply don't agree you have a productive point, and think you're just tilting at windmills. Don't mistake disagreement with attempts to "silence" you.

I hate relying on crits and activated specials. I'd rather up my chance to just hit and the reliability of my basic effect.

And some of us like the former. Your preference doesn't mean the game is poorly designed, or that the FFG developers didn't know what they were doing. With a few exceptions, the game works as advertised.

My statement of preference wasn't a declaration of something that made the game good or bad, it followed on from an ongoing subexchange on preference -- the context has been lost in trimmed quotes.

I said that as a player in this system, I'd be most concerned with maximizing my vanilla success rate/magnitude, while disregarding Triumphs and absolutely minimizing the chance of Despairs coming up. The response this received was "you don't get crits and specials that way", and my reply was basically "that's fine by me, I don't care about those things". I said this because I don't like relying on luck and wild swings, I want reliable effect.

I said that as a player in this system, I'd be most concerned with maximizing my vanilla success rate/magnitude, while disregarding Triumphs and absolutely minimizing the chance of Despairs coming up. The response this received was "you don't get crits and specials that way", and my reply was basically "that's fine by me, I don't care about those things". I said this because I don't like relying on luck and wild swings, I want reliable effect.

Have you played the system at all, or more than once or twice? Or is this an academic argument? I only ask because if you've played you would know that the dice are pretty reliable in their effect. The path to simple success is clear: maximize your stat, or build up your skill ranks past your stat so you're adding green dice...or both, which gives you the best of both worlds.

Granted, it's not as reliable as something like D20, but that's about the *most* linear system around. WEG was far more random, as is Savage Worlds. The main difference is that D20 difficulties are a fixed variable , not a pool that also fluctuates. Also, the D20 roll takes fixed bonuses and adds them to a random component...so if the difficulty value is lower than the bonus, you're guaranteed success; and if not, you also know to a 5% degree what your chances are (if you know what the difficulty value is). Basically you have two fixed pillars with a single random component.

I can't think of a good way to replicate something like that with this system. But maybe, rather than a fluctuating pool of negative dice, just guarantee a failure symbol or a threat given how difficult the task is, or map part of the pool to fixed values and part to dice, e.g. (and these are only structural examples, not well thought out and balanced ones):

P = one random die

PP = one random die + 1 threat

PPP = one random die + 1 threat + 1 failure

You'd have to map reds as well, and if you wanted to reduce the variability of positive dice you'd need a map for them as well. So you could get your predictability...at a huge expense of fun, IMHO.

I hate relying on crits and activated specials. I'd rather up my chance to just hit and the reliability of my basic effect.

In which case, it seems to me that you’re playing the wrong game.

… And complaining on the wrong forum.

I'm confused also. This whole the dice aren't behaving as advertised notion or whatever? The devs comments on how they wanted them to work seem in line with how they do work. Is there some brochure or pamphlet that advertised free chix and beer with every roll of the dice! Because if there is, I am jumping ship to the 'these dice f*ckin suck!' team right now....

I hate relying on crits and activated specials. I'd rather up my chance to just hit and the reliability of my basic effect.

And some of us like the former. Your preference doesn't mean the game is poorly designed, or that the FFG developers didn't know what they were doing. With a few exceptions, the game works as advertised.

No, probably not, because the community (or at least a vocal sub group thereof) just knee-jerk reacts to math and criticism. It's only matter of time before we hear "if you don't think the game is perfect, don't play."

Oh wait, we already got that.

So, again, this vocal, obnoxious subgroup tries to silence any productive conversation about game issues with pedantic rhetoric and condescension.

You called a post "rabid" when it was anything but. You might want to tone down your own rhetoric.

The "you don't think the game is perfect" argument is fiction. There are quite a few things I've modified in the system to suit my needs, so I certainly don't think it's perfect...it's only the best as a whole that I've used for the type of game I run.

As for the "you're trying to shut me up" argument, that's more fiction. Speaking for myself, I simply don't agree you have a productive point, and think you're just tilting at windmills. Don't mistake disagreement with attempts to "silence" you.

Maybe you weren't the only one I was responding to. But I'm done wasting my time on this thread.

I hate relying on crits and activated specials. I'd rather up my chance to just hit and the reliability of my basic effect.

And some of us like the former. Your preference doesn't mean the game is poorly designed, or that the FFG developers didn't know what they were doing. With a few exceptions, the game works as advertised.

No, probably not, because the community (or at least a vocal sub group thereof) just knee-jerk reacts to math and criticism. It's only matter of time before we hear "if you don't think the game is perfect, don't play."

Oh wait, we already got that.

So, again, this vocal, obnoxious subgroup tries to silence any productive conversation about game issues with pedantic rhetoric and condescension.

You called a post "rabid" when it was anything but. You might want to tone down your own rhetoric.

The "you don't think the game is perfect" argument is fiction. There are quite a few things I've modified in the system to suit my needs, so I certainly don't think it's perfect...it's only the best as a whole that I've used for the type of game I run.

As for the "you're trying to shut me up" argument, that's more fiction. Speaking for myself, I simply don't agree you have a productive point, and think you're just tilting at windmills. Don't mistake disagreement with attempts to "silence" you.

Maybe you weren't the only one I was responding to. But I'm done wasting my time on this thread.

Bye

I said that as a player in this system, I'd be most concerned with maximizing my vanilla success rate/magnitude, while disregarding Triumphs and absolutely minimizing the chance of Despairs coming up. The response this received was "you don't get crits and specials that way", and my reply was basically "that's fine by me, I don't care about those things". I said this because I don't like relying on luck and wild swings, I want reliable effect.

Have you played the system at all, or more than once or twice? Or is this an academic argument? I only ask because if you've played you would know that the dice are pretty reliable in their effect. The path to simple success is clear: maximize your stat, or build up your skill ranks past your stat so you're adding green dice...or both, which gives you the best of both worlds.

Granted, it's not as reliable as something like D20, but that's about the *most* linear system around. WEG was far more random, as is Savage Worlds. The main difference is that D20 difficulties are a fixed variable , not a pool that also fluctuates. Also, the D20 roll takes fixed bonuses and adds them to a random component...so if the difficulty value is lower than the bonus, you're guaranteed success; and if not, you also know to a 5% degree what your chances are (if you know what the difficulty value is). Basically you have two fixed pillars with a single random component.

I can't think of a good way to replicate something like that with this system. But maybe, rather than a fluctuating pool of negative dice, just guarantee a failure symbol or a threat given how difficult the task is, or map part of the pool to fixed values and part to dice, e.g. (and these are only structural examples, not well thought out and balanced ones):

P = one random die

PP = one random die + 1 threat

PPP = one random die + 1 threat + 1 failure

You'd have to map reds as well, and if you wanted to reduce the variability of positive dice you'd need a map for them as well. So you could get your predictability...at a huge expense of fun, IMHO.

Honestly, I've been trying to refrain from commenting on the specifics of the system in most threads because I feel that it would be like going to a concert for a band I don't like and spending the whole time griping about how I don't like their music. I've been trying to stick with comments on Star Wars as a setting and stories set therein.

But... game design is a VERY hard topic for me to resist, and I made a comment on a theoretical level about the role of math and analysis in game design and GMing, and from there let myself get into a discussion of specifics for this system, not entirely something I originally intended to do with that one post.

An even more reliable system than d20 would be anything that uses multiple dice in a fixed range, say the 3d6 of HERO -- you get a curve from 3 to 18, peaking at 10.5. Default "target number" is typically 11, so you're just a bit more than 50% likely to succeed. Results are very predictable, especially for difficulty numbers at the ends of the curve, where failure or success are almost guaranteed barring special circumstances.

An even more reliable system than d20 would be anything that uses multiple dice in a fixed range, say the 3d6 of HERO -- you get a curve from 3 to 18, peaking at 10.5. Default "target number" is typically 11, so you're just a bit more than 50% likely to succeed. Results are very predictable, especially for difficulty numbers at the ends of the curve, where failure or success are almost guaranteed barring special circumstances.

In which case, I would suggest that you are more than welcome to go play HERO WARS, and on the official HERO WARS forum site, you are more than welcome to complain about how they are doing everything wrong except the dice.

An even more reliable system than d20 would be anything that uses multiple dice in a fixed range, say the 3d6 of HERO -- you get a curve from 3 to 18, peaking at 10.5. Default "target number" is typically 11, so you're just a bit more than 50% likely to succeed. Results are very predictable, especially for difficulty numbers at the ends of the curve, where failure or success are almost guaranteed barring special circumstances.

In which case, I would suggest that you are more than welcome to go play HERO WARS, and on the official HERO WARS forum site, you are more than welcome to complain about how they are doing everything wrong except the dice.

Why is it that I keep responding to theoretical comments / questions on game design with equally theoretical responses, or to questions about my preferences in gaming with answers that are clearly meant only to speak for myself...

... and some of you keep reacting as if I'm just here to piss all over FFG?

If I wanted to actually be a killjoy about FFG's system... you'd know it .

The comment I made about HERO's dice mechanics was clearly a broader theoretical response to an observation about d20's reliability.

From talking with Jay Little face-to-face at a prior GenCon, as well as conversations he's had with other folks in other places, the dice system for this game is working exactly as intended. It's very much meant to be a stark contrast to the mechanics behind crunchier systems like d20 and HERO, where you can build a character to succeed at given tasks almost automatically.

Thus, why the dice were designed as they were, so that anytime the player or GM picks up the dice to roll them, they don't know what the end result is going to be. I've seen cases where PCs have succeeded with advantages when the laws of probability say the should have failed horrifically with leftover threat as well. And I've seen instances where the PCs have bombed out on rolls that per the laws of probability they should have aced with ease. Every time those dice are rolled, no matter how large or small the number of positive or negative dice, there's no telling what the result will be, as there is always the element of chance. The proficiency die and challenge die each strongly reflect that element of chance, as there's that 1 in 12 chance per die that something really awesome or really bad is going to happen as a result of your roll.

I've lost track of the sessions playing d20-based games (and there's a lot of them) where rolling the d20 was very much a "rinse and repeat" process without much excitement or interest from the other players, and sometimes barely of interest to the player themselves. This occurred quite a bit with 4e in encounters vs. Solo monsters (who were often little more than bloated bags of hit points that the PCs just walloped on until they dropped), especially in the early days before WotC did a re-balance of how Elite and Solo monsters worked.

However, I've very rarely seen a table of players under this system be totally disinterested in the results of a dice roll no matter who's making it, mostly because I follow the suggested (though not really spelled out) guideline of "every roll should do something to advance the story and so have importance." I don't require the PCs in any game I run just to roll for the sake of rolling, and when a friend tried to do a conversion of an old WEG module, my top suggestion was to cut down on the number of rolls she was asking for, simply as what she had us make five separate rolls for could have been done with one roll, two at the most.

As this thread shows, that sort of mindset, where you can't build a character that can 100% reliably succeed on a given type of skill check, isn't a thing that some gamers are comfortable with. Granted, I've seen this occur more often with gamers that came into the hobby via D&D 3rd edition and haven't really branched out much past d20-based systems, while at the same time seeing gamers who'd only played d20-based games fall in love with the utter randomness of this system's dice pools. Some gamers like that security blanket of knowing that with the right build, they can optimize their character to pretty much auto-succeed at the things their character is meant to be good at. And for those gamers, the general inability to achieve that auto-success in this system is a deal breaker.

In a way, it's not unlike a person that's lactose intolerant avoiding having ice cream. It's not that the ice cream is bad in and of itself, it's just not suitable for that person. In spite of GURPS' absurd claims to the contrary, there's no truly universal RPG system that's going to work for everybody.

Honestly, I think the whole topic of Probabilities and how the dice may or may not be practically balanced is sort of counter-intuitive to why the designers chose to design them the way they did. I may be the only one here... but I am sick to death of crunching numbers. I'm tired of maximizing the potential of character versus the dice. I'm tired of playing against the dice.

I just want a cool story with adventure. I don't want to look at spreadsheets. As a GM, I want to focus on the narrative and the relationship I'm building with my players. I don't care about the challenge, so long as it is represented in the dice. If it's at least represented, then I'm okay with that.

My point is, maybe the designers really did just go on feeling. And so what if they did? You roll the dice, most of the time you achieve your goal. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes things go really well in your favor. Sometimes, things go really bad against you.

I think contemplating the dice pool frequency of failures, threats, successes, etc. is simply not conducive with this game for the specific reason that... it really doesn't matter. It's a mentality carried over from D&D and other RPG's where people are trying to game the system, rather than playing the narrative and being the character. It's drama, folks. You're the hero. Most of the time, you advance in plot. Sometimes you get your hand chopped off and fall down garbage chute. Those are rare occurrances, but they do happen.

If you're focusing on the right things, these other issues simply don't matter. I think this is exactly why my player had a hard time with my decisions to upgrade to a Challenge. He was looking at the numbers and not the narrative possibilities.

In short, these negatives are not in the game to stop you from doing what you want to do. Sure, that is a possible side-effect. But really, they're just there to make your actions interesting.

In order to make any tabletop RPG work correctly and well, someone had to have "looked at the spreadsheets".

The game has to be, or at least feel, fair and balanced. In a game loaded with so many special talents, a lot of work needs to go into making sure they're balanced in availability, cost, effectiveness, etc.

Results cannot be wonky, cannot constantly push people out of character, out of gaming "mode", and into "What the hell was that?" mode.

The system needs the map the territory you're trying to represent. A high-lethality system with strict limits on character success does not do a good job of mapping for a game/setting that is supposed to be, for example, comedy-action. If all your flavor text and artwork for the setting makes it clear that characters are "supposed to be" using swords, and your system makes swords worthless or tedious to use, then you've failed to map the territory.

Etc.

There's a sort of stereotypical "artsy" disdain for the technical, mathematical side of game design and GMing -- and it has gone well past its expiration date, and stinks. This whole "but I want an interesting story" thing falls kinda flat when people have been doing interesting stories using all sorts of RPG systems for decades now -- no system will force "good story", it has to come from the gamers themselves, no matter what.

And frankly, I find that too much "you succeed but..." gets tedious, and is frustrating for players. Too many "wow you really blew that one" results gets old after a while.

As an example, the WoD system has 1s cancel successes, and used to have ANY roll in which more 1s came up than successes result in a "botch", a very bad result. Long before WW did it officially, many groups house-ruled this so that only a roll with 1s and no successes at all resulted in a botch, because they were coming up too often otherwise.

And that's "in the math" of game design -- how often do you want these different sorts of results to come up? What rate of success vs failure are you looking for in the outcomes, when people are actually playing the game?

There's a lot of stuff in here that is simply... I mean no offense, but it's entirely elitist and misinformed.

For one, house rules exist whether the math is perfect or not. So that isn't even a relevant argument.

For two, I never said I was against the math in games. I just said I'm sick of playing those games where they are the focus. Every game does that. They are all concerned with the math being perfect. And what happens? Stuff gets house ruled anyway because people want things the way they want them. That's fine. But if it was really that great... you wouldn't need to house rule it in the first place.

For three, I'm not worried about the math taking precedent for the GM's sake, at least not primarily. I'm worried for the players' sake. And the reason why is because there is a monumental trend amongst players, that the only thing that's important are the numbers. This grew out of video game culture and table top culture colliding, as well as other things like Magic the Gathering. I also blame D&D 3.5 for having a huge hand in this, because even with all its intricate math and subsystems and all that $hit... it still managed to create clearly apparent, yet "unofficial" class tiers. It's even in the core classes. Put a Paladin and a Cleric in the same group, and someone's going to go home feeling very underwhelmed - because their numbers actually do suck. Yet this fact is glossed over like it's expected for these two classes to play together with no one being the wiser, "No, Choir Boy - it's all in your head."

Everyone took these expectations from all of these popular games, and they force them into other games where they don't belong.

EotE is a prime example of this. You're trying to do it right now. Except, the game doesn't allow you to force your expectations for Magic the Gathering into it. And thus you think it "needs improvement" or "it's flawed" or "it should have been designed this way." When none of that is true. It's just different. It carries with it an entirely different anthem, divorced entirely from the number crunching mindset. Don't take that literally or personally.

But this says nothing about number crunching in general. Those types of games are fine. I enjoy them as much as the next guy. But I'm also sick of them. And again, I've also noticed how players approach games as a result, and it's not good.

They don't care about the fact that they just saved the princess. They care that they did 123 points of Crit damage. They don't care that an ecosystem on some distant realm is being threatened by an ultimate evil. They care about how many levels in Rogue they have to take before they dip into Sorcerer so that they can do this really neat one trick pony. They don't care about story. They care about gaming the system. This mentality is carried over in every game I've ever participated in - Table Top RPG's, Online RPG's, Online Dota's, Board Games that have built in narrative, Card Games - it's the same thing in every scenario.

This is a learned behavior, and it is entirely not conducive to a great social experience. This isn't just "what they like." I'm sure they do like it - and it's fine if they do. But they would also like the story if they actually participated in it... which they actually don't, because the stories are usually throw away, because the developers didn't actually develop it. They developed the numbers. Same goes for most GM's. Most of them suck. Hard.

I want something different. I don't just WANT something different, I recognize when something IS different. I think a lot of people want something different, too. I think a lot of people want something different, and they don't even know that they want it. But I don't think a lot of people recognize it when they see it. Likely, because they aren't looking for it, because they don't know anything but the numbers. And they're already socially ignorant - they just want to be in their little bubble of safety where they can just present the GM their numbers, roll the dice, and they don't actually have to engage in anything else.

The main reason why players aren't actually into a story, is because the game is so rigid, they don't actually have any freedom. They stay in this mentality because there's no real danger. It's all predictable. As long as they roll higher than a 2, "They got this!"

However, players would be interested in saving the princess, as long as they got to do something cool along the way. With rigid numbers, you don't spend your time developing the idea of what to do. You spend your time calculating the math and the risk. Every now and again, you might roll exactly what you need. And those times are great. But usually, you fail. And that's because every time you want to do something really awesome - the difficulty of it is usually astronomically ridiculous. And when you fail, all you're left with is the notion that it would be cool to do a thing that you apparently can't do. Unless you min-maxed. But, oh... you weren't focused on that?

See? The numbers game encourages it. The games are actually designed expecting it. They reward you for doing it. And they just kind of don't care about players who don't. I've been playing in a group of Min-Maxers and number crunchers for 6 years, and it's only been in the past few months they actually start to see the value of not caring about that crap. It's boring. There's nothing exciting and social and memorable about numbers. Characters are more than a stack of numbers. Stories are more than a stack of numbers. Life is not a stack of numbers.

GM's suffer as well. Instead of building an actually great story, instead of actually building the drama, they're building encounters designed to challenge the players' combined numbers. They're looking over spreadsheets of monsters and traps vs the numbers of their players. It's a lot of unnecessary, unfruitful homework. Parties never split up, because the encounters would overwhelm the party if one or two were missing. It creates unneeded stress on the GM. Even when there's no combat, Parties don't split up - even when it makes entire sense for them to do so. Friends aren't always around when you go do your thing. In all the great stories, the core group of heroes were always separated by some means or another.

EotE allows players to be heroes in principle - not in theory. And it's precisely because the numbers came second to everything that ACTUALLY matters.

Overall, you're free to think what you want. I'm not trying to convince you. I'm not even saying you're wrong about what you're saying. I'm saying that EotE is doing something different for a reason, and that there's simply nothing wrong with it from a practical view point. The problem is not that EotE or other games like it need to change in some way. The problem is that you WON'T change to meet ITS expectations.

ADDITION::

Let me clarify. It's fine if you don't want to change. You don't have to like the game. But it's not a reasonable or realistic expectation for you to think the GAME should change to suit you.

That would be like going into a game of Monopoly expecting it to somehow change to be Life. You have to meet each game based on the merits it presents. If the game is overall enjoyable, it's probably a good game.

EotE is an overall enjoyable game. It would stand to reason that a participant should strive to meet it halfway.

You have me pegged for entirely the wrong kind of player... and my comments for the wrong sort of comments...

You have me pegged for entirely the wrong kind of player... and my comments for the wrong sort of comments...

My apologies.

For my group, some of the most memorable sessions we've had have been when we've made creative use of triumphs and despairs. The really cool part is that it can take the adventure to places that nobody ever planned, including me, the GM. This is especially true for despairs which, despite how the players may view them, are great story-telling devices and really enrich the fun of the game. None of this would be possible without proficiency and challenge dice, so crunchy math aside, it can be rather short-sighted to dismiss them.

This is similar to the view that obligation is a negative mechanic that's there to screw the players. Nothing can be farther from the truth! Like triumphs and despairs, obligation can be great for adding opportunities for fun and excitement in the game, as well as inserting a lot of twists and turns to the story.

Though my original thread was not about discussing about the dice mechanics in general, since I am happy with the earlier answers I got, I jump too into the new turn this thread has taken.

I take OggDude text just because it summarizes some of the opinions stated here, nothing personal.

I have to agree but also to disagree. I agree the dice help / force players and GMs to think of alternative outcomes beyond success / failure, and that it may be interesting and funny sometimes, but.... In my opinion the dice system sometimes just interferes too much into the game, especially when you play with more than 4 players and their PCs are experienced. There are situations where I, as a GM, have to think twice in my games before calling for them. For example, the classic "Ok! everybody roll for perception!" or "Ok!, in order to climb this wall all of you roll for Athletics" etc. It gives me stress, six players rolling with one, two, three and even four yellow dice, plus set back dice, plus difficulty, challenge dice... I really don't know how you guys deal with these sort of situations.

Besides, what OggDude states " The really cool part is that it can take the adventure to places that nobody ever planned, including me, the GM. " while being true, it is nothing new. I have played games like Rune Quest with a very simple BRP system where the adventure took turns not planned or expected by anyone. How? Because that is all about what a "role play game" is and not "roll play game". A role play game is everything about people sitting at a table and interacting, and nobody can predict the outcome of the interactions between a bunch of people, players and a game master. These interactions are the ones that really drive the plot. We play regularly Star Wars FFG, Call of Cthulhu and the One Ring. Three games with three very different systems. I cannot say in which ones we have the most crazy turns of events in the least unexpected moments!

To summarize, I think the dice were a good idea to help driving the story, but in my opinion they interfere / force too much the situations. I prefer a system that offers the possibility to put twists into the story (The One Ring, Burning Wheel...) when the Player and / or the GM decide to, instead of being there every single roll.

For example, the classic "Ok! everybody roll for perception!" or "Ok!, in order to climb this wall all of you roll for Athletics" etc. It gives me stress, six players rolling with one, two, three and even four yellow dice, plus set back dice, plus difficulty, challenge dice... I really don't know how you guys deal with these sort of situations.

Well, that would be a challenge to deal with all those results at once, so don't put yourself in that position If you're going to ask for those kinds of rolls you need some kind of sequence and structure so you're not overloaded.

For Perception, I rarely let the whole group roll, I just ask for one Perception roll, and someone else can assist. The only time I'd allow a roll for everybody is if they're all looking in different areas, and each one has something potentially different about their results. And if that is the case, there is going to be some tension about each roll/location that makes it worth the narrative, and I can deal with each one in turn, not as a mass of results.

You can handle Athletics similarly to combat. Don't just ask everybody to roll, ask for it in measured chunks. From a recent game, the characters were in a cavern and had to scramble up the side of the cave to a ledge above. The Diplomat was a bit concerned, having a Brawn of 2 and no training, so the more athletic PCs went first, charting the way. Their advantages/triumphs were passed on as upgrades and boost dice (just like combat), narrated as finding handholds and good footing, and the first PC also set up a rope for another boost die. Because I didn't want the check to be a roadblock, failures were treated as Wounds (1:1), threat as Strain. By the time the Diplomat rolled I had flipped a DP, and the Diplomat caught a Despair, so I rolled a crit - 20 which he managed to avoid. The point was every roll had consequence with the goal of moving past the obstacle and keeping the least capable member alive.

There is no doubt running this game requires a different approach to dice roll requests and encounter structure, but personally that's what I find so great about it.

I kind of like the barely contained chaos of multiple dice pools. I also like giving the Athletics mountain climber guy the opportunity to shine and letting them be the one that does the climbing in order to lay the rope and pitons for everyone else to use and make it a hand wave for them. The flip side is also true, a group is only as stealthy as clubfoot Doug and how well his Stealth check goes.

I like how skills are relevant across the board, and that I don't have to use the results of a dice pool as a straight go/no-go plot choker. I find the extremely non linear nature of how the dice can be used to be far more fun than just checking to see if a number tally achieves the requisite score on a roll.

You might think 3 ranks of Piloting gives you some niche protection in that area; but it does not, someone with 4 Agility is basically as good as you.

No, actually they are not. My 3 yellow dice may not generate much more successes than someone with raw ability, but I could potentially get three Triumphs. You cant do that with just four greens.

But spending points to upgrade checks and difficulty is fiddly and low-impact.

Again, the author is totally ignoring Despairs. Yeah, if you just want failures, a Red die is not that much more devastating than a purple. But, as we see in the Awesome Triumph and Despairs thread, getting a despair is way more interesting than just failing.

Could you point me to the awesome Triumphs and Despairs thread? I did some searches but apparently my search-fu is not good today.