Inverted BRP?

[rust]

Now if climbing the mountain cliff is deemed a -20% modifier, then that mountain is straight up 20% more difficult than the 0 modifier task, regardless of who is trying to climb it.

The problem I see with this approach is that the mountain cliff becomes impossible

to climb for someone with a skill of 19 %, no matter how hard and how often he

tries.

With such a system the characters with low skill values often do not have a lower

chance of success than their comrades with high skill values, they have no chance

at all. Instead of taking a higher risk of failure and gaining the experience of a hard

won success, all they can do is stand back and watch Mr Highskill do his thing.

This is not just a problem of game mechanics, it is also a problem of roleplaying cha-

racters with low skill values, and almost every character has some low skill values.

I very much prefer my characters to be "heroic" in the sense that they attempt to

solve problems which would normally be "just a bit too big" for them, and therefore

would not like any system which creates situations where tasks become absolutely

impossible because the character lacks only a few skill points - as with the charac-

ter with Climbing skill 19 % who faces a -20 % cliff.

[RosenMcStern]

Hmm. In this variant and example you're talking about, which would be better in that example: Rolling a 25, or rolling a 30?

Rolling a 30. But there is no real advantage, as they are in the same range, and the number to beat is already known.

It would make a difference if the number to beat is still to be rolled. In that case, 25 beats any (non-critical) roll of 24 or less, while 30 beats any (non-critical) roll of 29 or less.

There are still some details that must be ironed out in this method, however. The most important is that your chance to critical against a low difficulty and a high difficulty is the same. But it might be a good idea, as it increases the odds in favour of competent characters.

[frogspawner]

The difficulty of the task varies depending on who is attempting it.

I don't see it that way. The task is still either Easy, or Normal, or Hard or whatever.

If that mountain cliff isn't changing itself depending on who approaches it, then multipliers dont make alot of sense to me as the mechanism to say how hard it is; they dont affect everyone evenly. Now if climbing the mountain cliff is deemed a -20% modifier, then that mountain is straight up 20% more difficult than the 0 modifier task, regardless of who is trying to climb it.

You're thinking in terms of +/- percentage modifiers, which I don't use because I don't like 'em (makes maths harder for calculating specials/crits/fumbles). But if you think in terms like "This cliff is twice as hard as usual" or "twice as easy", it feels fine.

I don't have a problem with people of different skill levels being affected differently. A non-climber, like me, wouldn't have a 20% greater chance of climbing that "+20%" cliff - I'd still have virtually Zero chance. A moderately skilled potter (say) could turn out decent easy-to-make pots routinely (50% skill, x2 for easy), but fancy ones (normal chance) would require a master (90%) and the jobber would fail half the time. But giving a +50% modifier for an easy pot isn't the same: me, the useless potter, should still have virtually NO chance - not 55%.

The problem I see with this approach is that the mountain cliff becomes impossible to climb for someone with a skill of 19 %, no matter how hard and how often he tries. ... I very much prefer my characters to be "heroic" ...

I can see that. And with multipliers, it's easy to see what IS heroic - you immediately know the number you're rolling for, and your chance to make it (because it's the same number). 'Roll and add' (to get a target number) is less clear and loses that immediacy.

Edited February 14, 2012 by frogspawner

[vagabond]

I don't see it that way. The task is still either Easy, or Normal, or Hard or whatever.

You're thinking in terms of +/- percentage modifiers, which I don't use because I don't like 'em (makes maths harder for calculating specials/crits/fumbles). But if you think in terms like "This cliff is twice as hard as usual" or "twice as easy", it feels fine.

I don't have a problem with people of different skill levels being affected differently. A non-climber, like me, wouldn't have a 20% greater chance of climbing that "+20%" cliff - I'd still have virtually Zero chance. A moderately skilled potter (say) could turn out decent easy-to-make pots routinely (50% skill, x2 for easy), but fancy ones (normal chance) would require a master (90%) and the jobber would fail half the time. But giving a +50% modifier for an easy pot isn't the same: me, the useless potter, should still have virtually NO chance - not 55%.

I can see that. And with multipliers, it's easy to see what IS heroic - you immediately know the number you're rolling for, and your chance to make it (because it's the same number). 'Roll and add' (to get a target number) is less clear and loses that immediacy.

I'll just add that the Jams Bond RPG did quite well with multiplicative modifiers. Yes, it impacts higher skilled characters more, but it all works out, especially when you deal with degrees of success and if you use skills over 100.

Ian

[Zit]

There is no truth is this matter. It is just a question of how everyone perceives things. It is easier for Darkholme to visualize difficulties with bonus/penalties to a basic 100, and easier for Frogspanner with multipliers. I guess it is a matter of taste (a little) and of previous experience (a lot).

Now how can we help Darkhome using the BRP ? The question is "is it easier for him to adapt the d100 to his perception or is it easier for him to change his perception to use the d100 ?". I think both are as easy, it is up to him to chose which one he prefers according to his sensibility:

- adapt d100 by inverting the special success and fumble tables as I wrote earlier and play the "roll over 100" mechanics while keeping the same skill rating, or

- adapt his perception by intuitively integrating that roll over 100 is statistically exactly the same than roll under skill, and play the d100 system. Ex: skill 60%, difficulty 20: roll over 100+20=120 with 1d100 + 60, or roll under 60-20=40 with 1d100, both 40% chances of success.

[rust]

... Frogspanner ...

I guess you better begin to improve your Dodge skill ...

[Darkholme]

As Zit Pointed out, static modifiers to roll-under are equivalent to static modifiers to roll-over in terms of chance of success. Its really just a matter of which of the ways you choose to represent it. I suppose roll-over would complicate criticals and specials and fumbles, which would have to be adjusted. I dont think I like the multipliers, but I think the modifiers in Legend would work for me.

I could really use a "difficulty chart" though. Something with a decent list of tasks covering each difficulty modifier (in either multipliers or modifiers) would help alot. Like, one example per skill per difficulty. Then when a situation comes up its easy to be consistent. Just choose the one that matches in difficulty. Is there anything like that available?

[rust]

I could really use a "difficulty chart" though. Something with a decent list of tasks covering each difficulty modifier (in either multipliers or modifiers) would help alot. Like, one example per skill per difficulty. Then when a situation comes up its easy to be consistent. Just choose the one that matches in difficulty. Is there anything like that available?

I have not yet seen one, and in my view the difficulty levels of many skills would

be too setting specific to create a general table for all settings anyway. For ex-

ample, the difficulty scale from automatic success to impossible task in Survival

for the arctic hunters of my Asornok setting would be different from the one for

the Renaissance nobles of my Malita setting, what would be an easy task for an

arctic hunter could be a difficult task for the noble from the Mediterranean.

[Darkholme]

Wouldnt that difference in difficulty be easy to approach in terms of the different professions and races/cultures that the people in those two games would have?

Having a standardized table to compare against would be a good way to keep my GMing consistent (something I consider pretty important), as inconsistent application of difficulties is very subjective or subject to favoritism, or can easily be interpreted as such by players. (I've been on the receiving end of that in World of Darkness, and I didn't enjoy it).

I can agree in some really unusual settings, different charts may be needed (like for a superheroes game, or if you want to model thundercats where Jumping 30 feet into the air is something athletic people can do, and falling does negligible damage); but for a "Human Powered" game, I think standardized charts would be a great help.

Nothing currently exists like that though, eh?

Looks like I've got a chart to make before I run the game.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Darkholme

[rust]

Wouldnt that difference in difficulty be easy to approach in terms of the different professions and races/cultures that the people in those two games would have?

I doubt it, in my experience I get the more plausible results when I design

different difficulty scales for the different settings, based upon what I can

research about the people of comparable real world cultures.

[Darkholme]

Hmm.

But that means it just doesnt work to take your 17th century pirate and have them from a country neighboring your 4th century picts, with 11th century vikings next to them on the other side. (This is the sort of thing I think I'd like to do.) Youd be using different difficulty scales for each skill for each culture.

Can you give me some examples of the setting-specific stuff you've come up with?

[rust]

Can you give me some examples of the setting-specific stuff you've come up with?

An example could be the Track skill. While it is an Easy task for a member

of a hunter culture under average conditions to spot the two days old tra-

ces of a caribou, the noble from Florence with the same skill value would

find it a Difficult task. Another example could be the Bow skill. While it is

an Average task for a Mongolian horse archer to hit a man sized target at

a distance of 100 meters from the back of a galloping horse, his European

contemporary counterpart would see this as an at least Difficult task.

[Darkholme]

Aren't both of those things the way they are because of differences in skill?

The Mongolian has more experience and better training with a bow, and the hunter has experience tracking.

the mongolian "Culture Package" could include a bonus to firing a bow that would basically equate to that difficult task being an average task +20 to his skill governing archery, and the hunter a +60 to track the caribou.

I'm a little confused as to why that wouldn't work, it sounds easy to define.

So shooting a man from 100 meters would have a -20 modifier associated with it(Task Modifiers via Legenr), and tracking a caribou from 2-day old tracks would also have a -20 associated with it (theyd be the same difficulty), but the hunter has such an advance to hunting that he can effectively cancel out the -20 and still get to add 40 (making it an easy task for him) and the mongolian would be good enough to cancel out the penalties of that shot making it an average task for him.

Maybe I'm missing a piece of the picture. That seems like it should work, to me anyways.

If using multipliers, it might be a little harder to define, but I imagine using the bonuses from the example above for culture/profession might still work pretty well.

Edited February 15, 2012 by Darkholme

[rust]

Aren't both of those things the way they are because of differences in skill?

You could handle it this way, but it tends to run into the problem that

the upper limit of the characters is different. To use the Track exam-

ple, I would see the upper limit / 100 % success of the arctic hunter

at the task to follow traces which are one week old, but the upper li-

mit / 100 % success of the noble at the task to follow traces which

are five days old. For the hunter Easy ends on day two and Impossi-

ble begins on day eight, for the noble Easy ends on day one and Im-

possible begins on day six. Under average conditions no skill value en-

ables the hunter to follow traces more than seven days old or the no-

ble to follow traces more than five days old.

[Darkholme]

Both of the characters can get their skill above 100, though, which means either one has the same *potential* to get any level of skill, its just easier for one of them than the other to get there.

You'd certainly have different upper limits for starting characters based on their racial package though. And you can always get a critical.

I'm very new to this system; but I have lots of Experience with D&D 2 & 3, and Both versions of World of Darkness, and some experience with Unisystem, so I can wrap my head around RPG Mechanics.

I guess what I'm confused about is "Am I missing something crucial that's in the way of setting standardized difficulty numbers according to tasks?" "What complications would arise from setting standardized difficulties? What complications do you get by *NOT* Having standardized difficulties?", and since you seem to be saying that the difficulties should not be the same for characters with different fluff backgrounds, I'd like to better understand why you say that.

[vagabond]

Both of the characters can get their skill above 100, though, which means either one has the same *potential* to get any level of skill, its just easier for one of them than the other to get there.

You'd certainly have different upper limits for starting characters based on their racial package though. And you can always get a critical.

I'm very new to this system; but I have lots of Experience with D&D 2 & 3, and Both versions of World of Darkness, and some experience with Unisystem, so I can wrap my head around RPG Mechanics.

I guess what I'm confused about is "Am I missing something crucial that's in the way of setting standardized difficulty numbers according to tasks?" "What complications would arise from setting standardized difficulties? What complications do you get by *NOT* Having standardized difficulties?", and since you seem to be saying that the difficulties should not be the same for characters with different fluff backgrounds, I'd like to better understand why you say that.

Because, using tracking as an example, while the Inuit hunter would be much better at tracking caribou through the tundra, he would find tracking a person in the busy streets of Florence difficult. Conversely, a "PI" type in Florence could track a suspect in the busy streets, but struggle to track caribou in the tundra. However, both might be expert trackers with the same skill level.

Ian

[Darkholme]

Ah. In essence, they would be different track skills, that wouldnt have much overlap.

So how would you handle a game that included both?

Make them separate skills?

Make them like D&D's "Craft" skill, and have you specify an environment type, and make environment types you haven't got have a penalty (or different difficulties, or what have you)?

You could "assume" the terrain by their culture, and go with that, but what if your inuit has been living in venice for a while and wants to learn to track humans like the PI does?

Edited February 15, 2012 by Darkholme

[deleriad]

This is all getting rather convoluted. Generally the way you handle characters trying to use a skill outside of their usual context is to give the skill use a penalty rather than generating a whole list of environmentally dependent skills.

E.g.rather than having a tracking in the snow and a tracking in the sand and a tracking in the grass skill you have someone with a tracking skill. If they grew up in the arctic but find themselves in the Sahara trying to track a camel you would give them a penalty to the to skill roll. This represents the unfamiliarity with the context. After a while living in the desert the Inuit hunter might work off the penalty. The details of how long are really best left to emerge in play than being hard-coded in the rules.

"tracking in an urban environment" is a confusing example because it's getting confused with a PI trying to *follow* someone covertly. Tracking is usually about following physical signs until you can see the quarry at which point you then try and follow covertly. Now there is always going to be some confusion about how broad skills are and where the boundaries between different skills lie. For example, Legend has one Perception skill while basic BRP has several. Different folks prefer different levels of granularity and the system can accommodate most of them. So, in a campaign that's all about hunting and tracking then you can focus in on those skills and make them far more granular (track by spoor, track by scent, track [environment], scan, search, listen, touch, identify by taste, follow, hide [environment], sneak, disguise etc) while if that's not the focus you might just have Perception, track and streetwise.

[rust]

Both of the characters can get their skill above 100, though, which means either one has the same *potential* to get any level of skill, its just easier for one of them than the other to get there.

Okay, it was a few hours after midnight when I made my last post, perhaps

I can express what I mean a bit better after some sleep ...

When you look at the description of the Track skill in the BRP core rules, the

degree of success with the skill determines how fast the character can fol-

low the creature, for example 1/2 normal movement with a Success and 75 %

of normal movement with a Special.

The way I handle it (there are certainly other ways), the Difficulty additional-

ly determines what kind of traces (how old, size of the animal, etc.) the cha-

racter can follow under normal circumstances (other circumstances have mo-

difiers), and how good his chance to do so is.

Using the example of the arctic hunter and the caribou:

Automatic - fresh or less than one day old

Easy - one day to two days old

Average - three days to four days old

Difficult - five days to seven days old

Impossible - more than seven days old

These times are based upon what I could research about the hunter of a com-

parable real world culture, they would be different for other cultures.

A beginning character with a Track skill of 20 % would have a 40 % chance to

follow Easy traces (success in 4 of 10 hunts), a 20 % chance to follow Avera-

ge traces (success in 1 of 5 hunts) and only a 10 % chance to follow Difficult

traces (success in 1 of 10 hunts).

A highly skilled character with a Track skill of 100 % would have an Automatic

success with Easy traces and Average traces, too, but only a 50 % chance

to follow Difficult traces (success in every second hunt).

A higher skill than 100 % would not influence this, a 50 % chance to follow Dif-

ficult traces is the best one can get, and traces more than seven days old re-

main Impossible. It is a matter of plausibility / reality check, I do not have su-

perhuman or superhumanly skilled characters in my setting.

So, the way I handle it, the Skill roll determines how fast the character can fol-

low the traces, and the Difficulty independently determines what his chance of

success with his skill is, with a ceiling based upon real world data.

I hope this is easier to understand now. And please consider that this is just

my way of doing it for my settings, not in any way an official method.

[Zit]

Rules cannot do everything and entirely cover the reality: improvisation with good sense helps also a lot.

I guess you better begin to improve your Dodge skill ...

do you know somebody who could sell me an invisibility spell potion, or befuddle, or speed...

[rust]

Rules cannot do everything and entirely cover the reality: improvisation with good sense helps also a lot.

Very true, and despite the impression probably created by my example above,

I usually try to work with as few rules as possible. I only design detailed rules

when the players want them to be able to better understand and calculate the

chances and risks of their characters' actions - in the case of the arctic hun-

ters they wanted details because a character's decision which animal to track

and hunt can be a decision about an entire clan's life or death ("You only have

a chance of 20 % to get this caribou, and it will take you at least three days

to try, so you better go to the coast and look for seals ...").

[Darkholme]

@Zit: I suppose. But then, I may want the guideline of having an example of each difficulty for each skill, but I have no problems with "track is track" and just allow it to work without penalties for anyone based on the environment they were raised in (unless the campaign is all about hunters, then I may need the granularity). I dont mind improvising, but I'd like to have a measuring stick to compare against to make sure my improv is consistent.

[rust]

Perhaps another example how I determine difficulty, from the same Asornok

setting, this time for the skill Pilot (Boat).

The players had an unpleasant tendency to treat their characters like win-

ners of boating competitions of the Olympic Games, with ridiculously high

distances covered in ridiculously short times, and so we decided that we

needed some rules for this.

In order to find out what could be expected of well trained boatsmen, I

looked up the famous Canadian Voyageurs in different online sources, and

found informations like this one from Wikipedia:

Voyageurs were expected to work 14 hours per day and paddle at a rate of 55 strokes per minute.

The article also mentioned that the boatsmen paused for some minutes of

each hour, so 12 hours of actual boating per day seemed an acceptable

Average difficulty level for experienced, skilled boatsmen of a comparable

culture.

Working from there, I decided that more than 16 hours would be Impossible

under normal circumstances, 12 to 16 hours would be Difficult, 8 to 12 hours

would be Average, 4 to 8 hours would be Easy, and less than 4 hours would

not require a skill roll.

And by multiplying the known average speed of a boat (in this case an umiak

instead of a canoe) with the number of hours I could determine which distan-

ces per day were plausible and which difficulty level it would have to try to

go further.

[RosenMcStern]

Generally, the familiarity or unfamiliarity with the environment is treated as a modifier to the rolled skill, not as an "it would be impossible to" matter.

I would give a robust -50% to Tracking in an environment you are very unfamiliar with. But a specialised character may be able to find the trail in any case. Of course, if you add also a -30 for a "cold track"...

I think a Florentine noble would simply not have a Track skill above 10% in any case, and use Knowledge(Streetwise) to track people in the streets.

In general, having an "objective" table of modifiers is a chimaera. There will always be a component of GM ruling in their determination. Use background / profession modifiers sparingly, or you will end up with character classes, and this game does not support them.

I introduced the concept of "Trait" in my own BRP variant to make these rulings objective, but the ruleset is not developed enough to use yet.

[Darkholme]

I see. Well, when you finish your "Trait" system, I'd love to see it. I know you can't make it completely objective, but the less subjective the difficulty rulings are, the better.

@Rust: I think you have a good method of determining difficulties in general, though I disagree with having to redo it for every campaign. I'd rather look at a couple cultures, and look at the olympic experts, and get a "maximum" and work down from there, and then generalize it across many campaigns.

I'm perfectly okay with olympic speeds; but they would be when your skill is 80-100.