Reducing Division in BRP Games

[Stan Shinn]

Let's say I have a skill of 50% in Drive. This means I'd get a Special Success on a roll of 10 or below (1/5th of skill) and a Critical Success on a roll of Special Success on a roll of 3 or below (1/20th of skill).

If a roll is then Difficult (your effective skill is 1/2 of what it normally is), then I believe everything adjusts: Drive skill is now 25%, so I'd get a Special Success on a roll of 5 or below (1/5th of skill) and a Critical Success only on a roll of 1 (1/20th of skill).

Is that correct? If so, this along with determining the normal 1/5th and 1/20th of your skill on the fly seems like a lot of division you have to do during the game.

Does anyone have house rules you use to reduce the amount of division in the game? Wondering if I should import some CoC 7e style Bonus/Penalty dice as an alternative or if there is some other way to simplify things.

Some house rules I'm mulling over (though I haven't run the math on the impact of these yet):

• Easy Special/Critical Success Calculation: Any roll of 1-20 is potentially a higher success level. On a roll of 1-5, roll again. If the second roll is a success, then it is a critical success. Likewise, on a roll of 6-20, roll again. If the second roll is a success, it is a special success. (sort of like rolling to confirm a crit in Pathfinder / D&D 3.5).
• Easy Fumble Calculation: If your skill is less than 100%, a roll of 99 or 00 is a fumble; if your skill is over 100%, only a 00 roll is a fumble.
• Easy Difficult/Easy Roll Calculation: Difficult rolls mean you’ll have to succeed twice (two rolls where both must succeed). Easy rolls mean you get two chances to do it (one of the two rolls must succeed). (I'm less certain about this rule).
• CoC Style Difficult/Easy Roll Calculation: Difficult rolls mean you’ll add an additional ten's digit die, and take the better of the two ten's digit rolls. Easy rolls mean you’ll add an additional ten's digit die, and take the worse of the two ten's digit rolls.

 

[Mugen]

Re-rolling dice when you use a die with such granularity as the d100 seems pointless.

As for myself, I prefer simpler ways to figure crits and specials, even if it makes those far more common. After all, those will also be more common for NPCd 

For instance, consider any roll under the 10s of the skill as a crit, or any roll under half the skill a crit.

A lot of people like to use doubles (11, 22, 33) as crits. I don't really like it, because it doesn't scale with skills over 100.

Similarly, multiplies of 5 (05, 10, 15) could be Specials.

You could also use the units of the die ; 11, 21, 31, etc are crits, and 12, 13, 22, 23, 32, 33 and so on are specials.

[Atgxtg]

On 5/8/2023 at 3:13 PM, Stan Shinn said:

Let's say I have a skill of 50% in Drive. This means I'd get a Special Success on a roll of 10 or below (1/5th of skill) and a Critical Success on a roll of Special Success on a roll of 3 or below (1/20th of skill).

If a roll is then Difficult (your effective skill is 1/2 of what it normally is), then I believe everything adjusts: Drive skill is now 25%, so I'd get a Special Success on a roll of 5 or below (1/5th of skill) and a Critical Success only on a roll of 1 (1/20th of skill).

Is that correct?

Yes. THat same would hold true if you applied some sort of modfier to a skill, such as for aiming, or darkness.

On 5/8/2023 at 3:13 PM, Stan Shinn said:

If so, this along with determining the normal 1/5th and 1/20th of your skill on the fly seems like a lot of division you have to do during the game.

It's not so bad.

• First off many people know the math and can do it on the fly pretty easily. For instance I know the 30/50/70/90% break points for critical successes, and skill/5% is easy. 
• Secondly, there is a table that can be  referenced, often on a printout or GM screen.
• Thirdly, you do not need to check every roll, you only check when the result looks close, especially when the success chance is low. For instance, if you have a 30% chance of success you could roll the dice and only bother to do the math or look at the table if you roll under 10%, or over 95%, and even then you can usually tell without checking. Keep in mind that as long as the success chance is under 100% any roll between 21 and 95 won't be a critical, special or fumble, and that covers the majority of rolls.

On 5/8/2023 at 3:13 PM, Stan Shinn said:

Does anyone have house rules you use to reduce the amount of division in the game? Wondering if I should import some CoC 7e style Bonus/Penalty dice as an alternative or if there is some other way to simplify things.

The easiest way to handle it is probably to just print off the skill results table (BRP P. 172) and have it on hand for reference in case someone rolls really low (or really high). But honestly, in play you don't have to check all that much. 

On 5/8/2023 at 3:13 PM, Stan Shinn said:

Some house rules I'm mulling over (though I haven't run the math on the impact of these yet):

• Easy Special/Critical Success Calculation: Any roll of 1-20 is potentially a higher success level. On a roll of 1-5, roll again. If the second roll is a success, then it is a critical success. Likewise, on a roll of 6-20, roll again. If the second roll is a success, it is a special success. (sort of like rolling to confirm a crit in Pathfinder / D&D 3.5).
• Easy Fumble Calculation: If your skill is less than 100%, a roll of 99 or 00 is a fumble; if your skill is over 100%, only a 00 roll is a fumble.
• Easy Difficult/Easy Roll Calculation: Difficult rolls mean you’ll have to succeed twice (two rolls where both must succeed). Easy rolls mean you get two chances to do it (one of the two rolls must succeed). (I'm less certain about this rule).
• CoC Style Difficult/Easy Roll Calculation: Difficult rolls mean you’ll add an additional ten's digit die, and take the better of the two ten's digit rolls. Easy rolls mean you’ll add an additional ten's digit die, and take the worse of the two ten's digit rolls.

 

Another way to handle that, IMO would be:

Special Success:  Any successful roll  than ends in 0 or 5. 

Critical Success: A successful roll with an odd tens digit than ends in 0.

Fumble: A failed die roll with an even tens digit than ends in 0.

 

That would mathematically be about the same as the normal method, and would not require doing any math, but would break the "lower is better" approach. 

 

Edited May 12, 2023 by Atgxtg

[deleriad]

11 hours ago, Mugen said:

Re-rolling dice when you use a die with such granularity as the d100 seems pointless.

As for myself, I prefer simpler ways to figure crits and specials, even if it makes those far more common. After all, those will also be more common for NPCd 

For instance, consider any roll under the 10s of the skill as a crit, or any roll under half the skill a crit.

A lot of people like to use doubles (11, 22, 33) as crits. I don't really like it, because it doesn't scale with skills over 100.

Similarly, multiplies of 5 (05, 10, 15) could be Specials.

You could also use the units of the die ; 11, 21, 31, etc are crits, and 12, 13, 22, 23, 32, 33 and so on are specials.

I thought the cleverest system I have seen is that if your units die is lower than your 10s and you succeed then you "special succeed" (likewise failure).

 

E.g. skill 41% then your possible range of special successes are 10, 20, 21, 30, 31, 32, 40, 41.

As with all these types of dice tricks though many things are impacted

1. How good is a "special". In this case it can't be as "good" as a traditional BRP critical. If it is then you have a game with a lot more criticals and everything that implies.

2. Awkwardness of checking a dice roll. Sounds odd but it is easy to forget to apply this. It's the sort of thing that tends to trip up players.

3. Skill progression is no longer equal. You get more benefit increasing your skill from 41-43% than you do for increasing it 46-48% because you get more specials.

4. Stops scaling at 100%. So you really have to decide that 01-100 is your skill range or come up with an alternative. 

In my BRP fantasy heartbreaker I would have skills that cap at 100, modifiers that affect the dice rolled (rather than the skill value) and a specially marked units die. (Or else an additional die that is rolled along with the d100.) 

 

[Ravenheart87]

Stormbringer uses the tenth of the skill for criticals, which is much simpler, but there you have only four success levels. For calculating fifths I start like that even today: I divide the number by ten and double it. Works faster for me somehow.

[RosenMcStern]

4 hours ago, deleriad said:

I thought the cleverest system I have seen is that if your units die is lower than your 10s and you succeed then you "special succeed" (likewise failure).

E.g. skill 41% then your possible range of special successes are 10, 20, 21, 30, 31, 32, 40, 41.

As the inventor of this method, I thank you for your appreciation 🙂

You can have it scale over 100 by adding extra conditions (ex. add double 1 for 110%, double 2 for 120%, etc.), but it becomes a bit clunky.

As for avoiding to roll a third die, it is very easy:

• Easy roll (Advantage in D&D): you succeed if either your roll or your flipped roll is under your skill;
• Hard roll (Disadvantage in D&D): you succeed if both your roll and your flipped roll are under your skill.

Easy peasy.

[Al.]

My favourite that I haven't played (it's not my turn to run yet and a feature of being in a big group is that it won't be for a while)

 

Read the d100 both ways

If it is equal to or under in one direction then you have a partial success (i.e. roll damage)

If it is equal to or under in both directions then you have a full success (i.e. maximum rollable damage)

If it is a natural double and equal to or under you have a special success (i.e. roll and add maximum rollable)

If it is over in both direction it's a failure

If it is a natural double and over it's a fumble

As to skills over 100%? Pass. Probably something like HeroQuest's Masteries rule.

[Mugen]

21 hours ago, deleriad said:

So you really have to decide that 01-100 is your skill range (...)

That's a big no for me.

I could accept that skills above 100 are just there to "soak" negative modifiers and ensure a character with 150% still has 100% chance against a modifier that would nullify a 50% skill, but a 1-100 scale is just not enough to represent the difference between a complete newb and a World class expert.

Edit : appart from this, I agree with all of your points, especially #3.

Edited May 10, 2023 by Mugen

[Bill the barbarian]

9 hours ago, Ravenheart87 said:

Stormbringer uses the tenth of the skill for criticals, which is much simpler, but there you have only four success levels. For calculating fifths I start like that even today: I divide the number by ten and double it. Works faster for me somehow.

and for twentieths, half your original one tenth instead of doubling it... yeah, dividing by ten and either doubling or halving makes more sense for me as well rather than figuring 5% or 20% of skill level.

[deleriad]

22 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

As the inventor of this method, I thank you for your appreciation 🙂

You can have it scale over 100 by adding extra conditions (ex. add double 1 for 110%, double 2 for 120%, etc.), but it becomes a bit clunky.

As for avoiding to roll a third die, it is very easy:

• Easy roll (Advantage in D&D): you succeed if either your roll or your flipped roll is under your skill;
• Hard roll (Disadvantage in D&D): you succeed if both your roll and your flipped roll are under your skill.

Easy peasy.

I find in actual play, dice flipping works well around 50-80% but after around 90% it starts becoming trivial. Players do always start asking questions like if something is easy then what about a "very easy" option and so on. The advantage of numerical modifiers is that you can always make the modifier bigger. Also some (but not) all players love having skills of 200%, 300% and so on.

Personally, I like capped skill ranges and I don't like doing math during a game. In some ways I would like (as an example) the gap in ability between 80% and 90% to be a lot more significant than the gap between 20% and 30%. However that is not easy to achieve. The R100 method is an elegant way of doing that because there are a lot more special chances in the range between 80-90 than there is between 20-30. 

Not sure if it is still the case, but in Call of Cthulhu it used to be the case that you couldn't get above 100 in a skill without modifiers during a skill test. That was partly to keep player characters at risk of failure. Mastery in BRP was always pitched at 90%, not 100%. Personally, I would like to see skills over 80% to be rare and at 90% or over to be exceptional. That does mean playing with a capped range and some sort of accelerator which gives skills in that range some form of non-linear advantage over those below.

[Bren]

On 5/9/2023 at 5:31 AM, deleriad said:

I thought the cleverest system I have seen is that if your units die is lower than your 10s and you succeed then you "special succeed" (likewise failure).

 

E.g. skill 41% then your possible range of special successes are 10, 20, 21, 30, 31, 32, 40, 41.

It's interesting that people don't agree on ways to "simplify" a process. Just parsing this gives me a headache. Trying to remember to do this in play would add a lot to my handling time vs. realizing that most rolls* require no calculation to figure specials (or criticals).

* As Atgxtg mentioned, for rolls between 21-95 you don't need to determine anything other than success and failure. So no calculations are required..

23 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

and for twentieths, half your original one tenth instead of doubling it... yeah, dividing by ten and either doubling or halving makes more sense for me as well rather than figuring 5% or 20% of skill level.

For specials I multiply by 2 and divide by 10. (Multiplying by 2 is pretty easy. Dividing by 10 just shifts the decimal one place.) So for a 41% chance to succeed, take 41*2 (82) then 82/10 = 8.2. So 8 or less is at least a special success. Since I'm lazy, I memorize the critical probabilities so I don't need to do that arithmetic. 

[deleriad]

On 5/10/2023 at 10:10 PM, Bren said:

It's interesting that people don't agree on ways to "simplify" a process. Just parsing this gives me a headache. Trying to remember to do this in play would add a lot to my handling time vs. realizing that most rolls* require no calculation to figure specials (or criticals).

* As Atgxtg mentioned, for rolls between 21-95 you don't need to determine anything other than success and failure. So no calculations are required..

For specials I multiply by 2 and divide by 10. (Multiplying by 2 is pretty easy. Dividing by 10 just shifts the decimal one place.) So for a 41% chance to succeed, take 41*2 (82) then 82/10 = 8.2. So 8 or less is at least a special success. Since I'm lazy, I memorize the critical probabilities so I don't need to do that arithmetic. 

*I* can do this stuff easily. *I* don't have a problem with it. A surprising number of people I have played with, can't. I've also seen way too many sessions get bogged down by someone doing a skill roll, getting + something or other, - something or other, making a roll and trying to figure out whether they have succeeded yet alone whether it is a critical, special or something else. 

Given that the name of the game is *Basic*... you don't really expect to be hit by having to consult a page full of numbers to see if you succeeded at something. 

If I am just running a one-off for people who don't usually play and/or are unfamiliar with the system I usually keep skills under 100 and tell them if you roll a double it's twice as good if you succeed and twice as bad if you fail. If it's a hard test then they have to roll twice and succeed twice (keep the worst roll). If it's easy and they fail, they get a second chance for free.  Though it may seem like a time sink, the second roll mechanic is surprisingly dramatic and engaging. 

"Almost impossible" - if you roll 01-05 you succeed through some form of blind luck otherwise you fail. "Very easy" - if you roll 96+ something goes wrong otherwise you succeed.

Skill vs skill - best roll wins. (high roll breaks tie)

Mechanically it's not robust enough for a full rpg system but as an intro it works perfectly well.

[Nerval]

If I roll low I multiply the result of the dice by 5 to see if it's at or under the skill level for a Special. If I roll less than 5 I multiply by 20 to see if it's a critical.

After years of calculating Luck and Idea rolls, I barely have to think of my x5 tables. 

[Atgxtg]

13 hours ago, deleriad said:

*I* can do this stuff easily. *I* don't have a problem with it. A surprising number of people I have played with, can't. I've also seen way too many sessions get bogged down by someone doing a skill roll, getting + something or other, - something or other, making a roll and trying to figure out whether they have succeeded yet alone whether it is a critical, special or something else. 

I think that is probably more of a statement against modern schools and less against old style games. Doing the math wasn't a problem in the RPG community until the mid 2000s when suddenly everyone went anti-math. 

 

13 hours ago, deleriad said:

Given that the name of the game is *Basic*... you don't really expect to be hit by having to consult a page full of numbers to see if you succeeded at something. 

Just what is considered "basic" has changed over the years. Not only with BRP but will all RPGs. Look how big the rulebook gas gotten. It used to be 16 pages.

Most RPGs tend to have some chart or tables that you refer to. It's why most games have a GM screen, and consulting a page full of numbers is pretty much what all the skill modifiers are. 

 

13 hours ago, deleriad said:

If I am just running a one-off for people who don't usually play and/or are unfamiliar with the system I usually keep skills under 100 and tell them if you roll a double it's twice as good if you succeed and twice as bad if you fail. If it's a hard test then they have to roll twice and succeed twice (keep the worst roll). If it's easy and they fail, they get a second chance for free.  Though it may seem like a time sink, the second roll mechanic is surprisingly dramatic and engaging. 

If I'm running a one off for people who don't usually play,. I usually run something else, that is simpler to pick up. Prince Valiant was designed precisely for that purpose.

 

Edited May 12, 2023 by Atgxtg

[Stan Shinn]

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think that is probably more of a statement against modern schools and less against old style games. Doing the math wasn't a problem in the RPG community until the mid 2000s when suddenly everyone went anti-math. 

As a generality, I agree with this. The advent of the pocket calculator (and calculator on your smartphone) being something you could use routinely during math classes has also worsened the issue.

That being said, I've got an older adult in my group who has dyslexia, and somehow related to that, division is very difficult for him. Which is one reason I'm customizing my 'Mystique' house rules to avoid division.

Generally, it seems like addition and subtraction are easier than multiplication and division. We'll always have to deal with math, but I strive to simplify things when possible for my occasional struggles-with-math adult player, and also the 'math is hard' kids (I run a group with 10 to 14 year olds who can add and subtract just fine, but division take a glacially long time to resolve for them).

[Al.]

17 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think that is probably more of a statement against modern schools and less against old style games. Doing the math wasn't a problem in the RPG community until the mid 2000s when suddenly everyone went anti-math.

Caveat: I am a teacher and probably prickly about this.

 

Are you comparing current kids with young you or young everyone else?

It's a trap many of my colleagues fall into ('Kids of today have no respect for education/for teachers/for learning/for society/for.... when I was that age I would never have done ......' yes but you are now a professional educator and have successfully navigated compulsory education then at lest three levels of optional education which suggests that you have a view of education and learning which is very different to child y who comes from three+ generations of educational disengagement)

 

You are numerate

There are kids today who are numerate (they are your comparison)

You had peers who were not numerate

There are kids today who are not numerate

 

That said the GERM* is shit, must be resisted and we should all follow the Finnish model (although even Finland has started to fall prey to some of the GERM nonsense sadly)

*Global Education 'Reform' Movement. If you are internet savvy enough to use this forum you are internet savvy enough to research this rather than just listen to me rant about it.

[Atgxtg]

10 hours ago, Stan Shinn said:

As a generality, I agree with this. The advent of the pocket calculator (and calculator on your smartphone) being something you could use routinely during math classes has also worsened the issue.

Somewhat. I think it is more of a shift in attitude, that a reduction in ability. Players used to look at math as a necessary evil, and understood that like it or not, it determined the chances of success at various endeavors. Not a lot of them just hate math and try to avoid it at all costs, despite the fact that most RPGs are still games of chance are use some sort of random generator (dice, cards, coins) to determine outcomes and that such generators are subject to the laws of mathematics. 

10 hours ago, Stan Shinn said:

That being said, I've got an older adult in my group who has dyslexia, and somehow related to that, division is very difficult for him. Which is one reason I'm customizing my 'Mystique' house rules to avoid division.

Dealing with any special restriction or requirements is something left to each GM and group to deal with. I used to game with a guy who was legally blind and sometimes we'd have to back up a encounter when he didn't understand the layout of the battlefield and did something that didn't make sense in the circumstances, but would have made sense if things were the way he though they were. Stuff like hiding on the wrong side of a door or some such. We usually had to be a little more descriptive than normal and allow for a bit more Q&A with him that would otherwise be the case. 

One way to avoid division would be to alter the dice size. Rolling 1d200 instead of 1d100 would halve the success chance. I actually did up something like this for a similar game to eliminate the tables. Critical and special numbers were fixed according to skill, and then modifiers just shifted the size of the dice. Something easier would roll 1D80, 1D60, 1D40 or even 1D20, while something harder would roll 1D120 or 1D200. Since the crit and special numbers don't change but the dice do,  the odds change, but you don't have to do any math.

 

10 hours ago, Stan Shinn said:

Generally, it seems like addition and subtraction are easier than multiplication and division.

Generally they are, assuming the adds are in simple 5% or 10% increments. 

10 hours ago, Stan Shinn said:

 

We'll always have to deal with math, but I strive to simplify things when possible for my occasional struggles-with-math adult player, and also the 'math is hard' kids (I run a group with 10 to 14 year olds who can add and subtract just fine, but division take a glacially long time to resolve for them).

Yeah, there are other ways to handle it. Still, in most of the groups I've played in we had at least one person on hand who could do it in thier head (*ahem*), usually had two or three, and the majority of the group could usually work out most rolls just be looking. I mean, someone has to have an awfully high chance of success for a 58 to be anything special. 

The thing is though is that Basic Role Playing  isn't really Basic. Originally the 16 page booklet was a trimmed down streamlined version of the RuneQuest rules, and BRP was a good name for it. Now it's a 400+ page book of assorted rules, variants options, etc. etc, and is more of a toolkit to let a GM customize the game to suit thie own needs. A case could be made for bringing back a short 16ish page booklet again and a sort of Introductory Role Playing . 

 

 

[Atgxtg]

7 hours ago, Al. said:

Caveat: I am a teacher and probably prickly about this.

Maybe if the education system were better you wouldn't be so prickly about it. 

7 hours ago, Al. said:

 

Are you comparing current kids with young you or young everyone else?

I'm comparing gamers from the past to gamers since 2005 or so. 

It used to be that players would accept math as a necessary evil of playing a game - which it is. However in recent years I've noticed a lot of players who hate math and go into some sort of denial whenever someone bring up the math involved in gaming. Now, like it or not, any game that uses some sort of randomizer to determine the outcome of tasks is going to be subject to the laws of probability. For instance, players in BRP should be able to  figure out that a weapon that does 1D6 damage isn't going to penetrate 12 point armor without a critical hit.

It probably doesn't help that some educators treat mathematics as a societal issue.

7 hours ago, Al. said:

It's a trap many of my colleagues fall into ('Kids of today have no respect for education/for teachers/for learning/for society/for.... when I was that age I would never have done ......' y

It's not a trap. Whatever education they have gone through now doesn't change what they would have done back when they were younger. The present doesn't change the past. 

7 hours ago, Al. said:

es but you are now a professional educator and have successfully navigated compulsory education then at lest three levels of optional education which suggests that you have a view of education and learning which is very different to child y who comes from three+ generations of educational disengagement)

So by that reasoning a police officer would have a different view of the stealing that they didn't do when they were a teenager?

 

7 hours ago, Al. said:

You are numerate

There are kids today who are numerate (they are your comparison)

You had peers who were not numerate

There are kids today who are not numerate

Yes, and in a gaming context I gamed with all sorts of people over the years and it's only in the past 15-20 years or so that "math is bad" has taken hold with some gamers. People used to just admit there were bad at some things and work around them, but not it's like they get angry if a game requires them to do any math. 

7 hours ago, Al. said:

 

That said the GERM* is shit, must be resisted and we should all follow the Finnish model (although even Finland has started to fall prey to some of the GERM nonsense sadly)

*Global Education 'Reform' Movement. If you are internet savvy enough to use this forum you are internet savvy enough to research this rather than just listen to me rant about it.

If everyone followed the Finnish model them it wouldn't be all that much different that GERM, since one model for everyone is still global standardization. 

Personally, I think we probably need more parental involvement in schools, and each community set their own goals and standards. Yes there is bound to be some sort of standardization just because there are bound to be certain requirements to function successfully in a given environment, interact with other people and perform certain tasks, but everyplace isn't the same and not everyone needs to know the exact same things. 

[Al.]

7 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

If everyone followed the Finnish model them it wouldn't be all that much different that GERM, since one model for everyone is still global standardization. 

 

The rest of our disagreement is merely disagreement and I think we can happily disagree agreeably. (And your first retort was genuinely amusing).

But that one: no. It is not standardisation I have issue with. It's the point that standardisation is converging on. (on? to? my literacy fails me).

[Questbird]

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

One way to avoid division would be to alter the dice size. Rolling 1d200 instead of 1d100 would halve the success chance. I actually did up something like this for a similar game to eliminate the tables. Critical and special numbers were fixed according to skill, and then modifiers just shifted the size of the dice. Something easier would roll 1D80, 1D60, 1D40 or even 1D20, while something harder would roll 1D120 or 1D200. Since the crit and special numbers don't change but the dice do,  the odds change, but you don't have to do any math.

 

Fire and Sword (rules available on this site) took this approach. It uses d20 roll-under instead of d100, but for easy skills you would roll 1d10 and for hard skill checks you'd use a d30.

[soltakss]

On 5/8/2023 at 8:13 PM, Stan Shinn said:

Is that correct? If so, this along with determining the normal 1/5th and 1/20th of your skill on the fly seems like a lot of division you have to do during the game.

Here is a quick, and often accurate, trick:

• Take your skill and divide by ten, knocking off the last digit
• Double it for a Special
• Halve it for a Critical

It works for most instances, unless you roll within 1 or 2 of the calculated result, but in that case I'd just use the calculation as it is easier.

So, in your example of 50% skill, dividing it by ten gives you 5, knocking off the last digit of 0, doubling it gives a Special chance of 10 and halving it gives a Critical chance of 2.5 that rounds to 3. With the Difficult Drive, your skill is 25, so dividing by 10 gives you 2, doubled to 4 and halved to 1. If you want to be more exact, dividing by 10 gives you 2.5, doubled to 5 and halved to 1..25 that becomes 1.

 

 

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Questbird said:

Fire and Sword (rules available on this site) took this approach. It uses d20 roll-under instead of d100, but for easy skills you would roll 1d10 and for hard skill checks you'd use a d30.

There are a few other RPGs that do something similar but with d4s-d20 die range.. Some games even do something similar for damage bonus. The demon ability table from Elric! is similar.

In my case I was trying to bypass the Multiplication Table and Quality Rating Table from the James Bond RPG and did so by putting stats and skills on a 1-6 scale and rolling against primary chance on 1d8 with modifiers shifting the die size, thus altering the chances of success as well as the chances of getting a particular quality rating. It worked, but it condensed the range of stats and skills to do so. 

[Bren]

On 5/12/2023 at 6:12 AM, deleriad said:

*I* can do this stuff easily. *I* don't have a problem with it.

I didn't intend to suggest that you were innumerate. My point was that I found your suggested simplification way more complicated for me (to the point that I would never want to use it) than any of the possible arithmetical solutions and I find it interesting that different people find different things to be simple or complex.

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

Here is a quick, and often accurate, trick:

• Take your skill and divide by ten, knocking off the last digit
• Double it for a Special
• Halve it for a Critical

It works for most instances, unless you roll within 1 or 2 of the calculated result, but in that case I'd just use the calculation as it is easier.

So, in your example of 50% skill, dividing it by ten gives you 5, knocking off the last digit of 0, doubling it gives a Special chance of 10 and halving it gives a Critical chance of 2.5 that rounds to 3. With the Difficult Drive, your skill is 25, so dividing by 10 gives you 2, doubled to 4 and halved to 1. If you want to be more exact, dividing by 10 gives you 2.5, doubled to 5 and halved to 1..25 that becomes 1.

That's the method I was trying to describe. I think you described it better.

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, Al. said:

The rest of our disagreement is merely disagreement and I think we can happily disagree agreeably. (And your first retort was genuinely amusing).

But that one: no. It is not standardisation I have issue with. It's the point that standardisation is converging on. (on? to? my literacy fails me).

Ah, I assumed your problem was with apply a global standard to everyone, regardless of goals and needs of specific communities. Instead it's that you do not like someone elses standard and don't want to be forced to follow it - which to me seems to be the same argument, with the  difference being that it is being applied to you. 

[Bren]

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I'm comparing gamers from the past to gamers since 2005 or so. 

Way back when in the days before and shortly after RQ1, most people I knew who roleplayed were what we called "nerds." And nerds tended to be good at arithmetic and math in general. Many of the initial players in my high school were involved in the Wargame Club where various board games were played. I think that was a second filter that tended to weed out people who were poor at arithmetic or math-phobic. I think the gamer population is more diverse or generalized than it used to be. You aren't really comparing the same types of populations.

That said, it certainly seems like kids these days, when they aren't standing around on my lawn, are not as facile or adept at arithmetical operations. The elementary math lessons I've looked at (and admittedly I haven't spent a lot of time looking) use a method that seems to compare stacks of things (beads, apples, groups of 1s, 10s, 100s, etc.) rather than focusing on rote memorization and multiplication drills e.g., using flashcards. I vaguely recall from when I was a young lad, that I spent some time in the kitchen doing flashcards and multiplication table drills with my parents. The new method seems to focus more on the meaning of numbers and arithmetical operations and less time drilling a functional rote knowledge of how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. I've met high school graduates who can't really multiply numbers. I don't recall ever encountering anyone like that way back in the Jurassic when I was in school.