suggestion on attribute notation: 7+M3 instead of 7M3

[jajagappa]

17 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

am not really fond of the 'M' notation

I use the Mastery Rune if available since it indicates mastery or "W" if not since that is the closest in appearance. But "M" does not cause me any headaches or aesthetic issues.

[AndreasDavour]

On 6/28/2023 at 11:17 PM, mfbrandi said:

Hmm … 191 versus 119, or even 12. So which is “more important”, the number before or after the ? 😉

Well, that's when I've sold them on the game and they are ready to learn how to fold, spindle and mutilate. 😎

[soltakss]

On 6/24/2023 at 9:51 AM, David Scott said:

I'd be interested to hear of anyone else who has had a problem with this at their table.

No, we have never had any issues at the table, and our group had some maths-averse players.

 

[el_octogono]

It's not a math issue it's a reading one for me. If I read 14M2 I read fourteen Mastery two which is pretty odd...

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, el_octogono said:

14M2 I read fourteen Mastery two which is pretty odd...

How would you read 14^2? It's the same principle. 14 raised to the 2nd; 14 mastered to the 2nd.

[Mugen]

On 6/27/2023 at 1:21 PM, narsilion said:

A single number would work great if you dropped d20 in favor of d10. Then 36 would simply mean 3 masteries and 6 points to test, or 67 would mean 6 masteries and 7 points.

Using the single number when you use d20 forces you to do unnecesary calculations, just like 7M3 forces you to recall this strange form of notation. Either way you absorb some part of your RAM = distract yourself a bit. I just proposed small fix to avoid this small bit of distraction

I agree using a d10 would make the Masteries clearer. My own version of HQ would use it, and no Bumps either : your tens is your base success number, and if your d10 is under your units you gain another success. A 0 is a re-roll under the units to gain another success.

You could also use a base 20 notation : 1,2,3...9, A, B, C,... I, J. So, a score of 14 and 2 masteries would be written 2E.

Or you could put a sign before or after the digit, a + for instance : 23 would be 3 and 2 Masteries, and 23+ would be 13 and 2 masteries.

 

Edited July 3, 2023 by Mugen

[Atgxtg]

Since they have separated thie game mechanics from Glorantha, maybe they should just drop the mastery rune. Instead of 7M3 it could just be 67 (or 37 if using Murgen's D10 variant). THat would make it much easier to follow. 

Or dice and add notated could be separate the way they are in most D6 based games, so 3d+7 instead of 7M3

22 hours ago, Mugen said:

You could also use a base 20 notation : 1,2,3...9, A, B, C,... I, J. So, a score of 14 and 2 masteries would be written 2E.

I was working on a base10 game mechanic where the average die roll would be approximately the same as the rating. So a value of 10 would roll 1d20 (average result approx 10)., a 20 would mean 2d20 and so forth. The core ideas were that: 

1. Any number could  could be turned into a game stat by taking a base10 log and multiplying it by 10.
2. Anything could be rolled in an opposed roll as the stat was the die roll. 
3. Passive resistances didn't have to be rolled but could use the default rating. Thus a 100 kg rock (Mass of 20 ) would have a 20 resistance to be lifted instead of the GM needing to roll dice, a 50,000 ton Battleship would have a Mass (SIZ) of about 77 and so on.  
4. If desired, NPCs could be treated like a passive resistance so that only players would need to roll things. For instace is a guard had Sword 25 a PC would need to beat a 25 to hit the guard (and get hit by the guard if they got less than a 25). 

Some of that might be useful for QuestWorlds. 

[SDLeary]

That would be a different game though, not QuestWorlds, whose lineage is HeroWars and HeroQuest. It would be eliminating the concept of Masteries, whether denoted with an M or a or something else like E (Expertise), which allow you to modify a roll, not simply modify it in your favor (or you should be, it appears that option may have been removed; I'd still allow it).

SDLeary

 

[Stan Shinn]

When I first started playing QuestWorlds, I used a '.' delimiter -- so 3M1 would read 3.M1. This doesn't take a lot of space but get's the delineation across.

After playing QuestWorlds for a while and getting used to the Masteries concept, I dropped it,  and just do 3M1, rules as written.

[Steve]

I'll add myself to the list of people who intuitively read 7M3 as being 7 Masteries. In English we don't talk about having "Masteries three", we refer to "three Masteries".

Yes, I understand what the rules mean here but it's always seemed very awkward to me.

[SDLeary]

Odd, English is my native language, and I’ve always read it as skill 7 with three levels of mastery.

perhaps, if changed it could be 7M^3 (sorry, on a phone right now, but that should be a superscript).

SDLeary

Edited July 8, 2023 by SDLeary
Clarification, spelling

[Metalzoic]

On 6/23/2023 at 11:50 PM, narsilion said:

Attribute notation is very counterintuitive. We are used to decimal counting system, so we instinctually read 7M3 as "7 masteries and 3 points". It is very inconvinient when you have some new players in your group.

Adding plus sign to the notation would solve this problem completely. Moreover, you can write "7+3M" or "3M+7", whatever you prefer.

This would be 1000% better and a huge improvement in my opinion. We've always hated the way this was written. 

[Ian Cooper]

From the Core book:

Mastery Notation

QuestWorlds' notation for masteries runs right-to-left: number of masteries then target number. Where there are no masteries, we can simply omit the mastery symbol and just record the target number, so 17M0 is just 17. Where there is just one mastery we can omit the number, so 17M1 is just 17M.

When speaking out loud, we usually swap back to left-to-right and say target number and then number of masteries. So 17M is 17 and one mastery and 17M2 is 17 and two masteries. Some folks like to remember this by thinking about the way that we represent an exponent in mathematics. So 17M2 is 17 to the power of two masteries.

Some find this notation a little confusing because we read them right-to-left, and not the conventional English left-to-right, particularly as it swaps when spoken out loud.

For anyone who finds the default way confusing, we recommend an alternative notation—the mastery dot notation.

Under this approach write the target number, followed by a dot for each mastery.

17 is 17 and no masteries.

17● is 17 and one mastery.

17●● is 17 and two masteries, and so on.

For a given genre, you may want to use a more evocative symbol than ●. A SF setting might use ☆ to represent a mastery, and a setting like Chaosium’s Glorantha may use an in-world symbol like the mastery rune W to represent a mastery.