Quote from: AsenRG;1026095Do you also see a problem with blackjack, then? I mean, 21 is best, 25 sucks:)

Non sequitur.  The rules of blackjack clearly state the upper limit.  Your example is more like "Get as high as you can.  Oh, too high, you lose your money."

At which point, Black Bart shoots you dead and no jury in the world convicts him.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1026110All this has nothing to do with players rolling 'too high'.  There's no logic in this statement.  What does having players rolling 'too high' when you roll too low or whatever?

Apparently you didn't understand my question.

Damn good question.  He's been unusually thick headed throughout this entire discussion, including ignoring most of what everyone else said.

Quote from: Skarg;10260991) Clearly (hopefully?) ... there is no material issue with the chances of results being mixed high/low if there is nothing in the math of the way the roll is done that assigns good/intentional results to high or low numbers.

Clearly, there is, though:).

QuoteBut there would be as soon as you did something that would make positive factors (like character ability level) increase the chance of negative outcomes, unless it's something like strength and the roll is for how much force you use, and there's no way around it being a problem to use too much force ... but in that case, the player should be able to say how much of their strength they use.

How much strength you use.
How clearly you copy a signature using painting skill.
You say tomahto, I say tomato.

Quote2) There's also an illusionary non-material issue with the whole "the player is trying to roll high (or low)" but some of the results are backwards thing, if there are no factors influencing the roll and it's a single-die roll. But even so, that upsets players because they tend to like the understanding of what their roll numbers should mean, and they like the illusion that they are doing something meaningful by rolling and reading the die themselves.

I've had players that think they can influence the throw.
I always make them roll with a cup, unlike everyone else;).
For everyone else, it should be a non-issue. If I give you "roll under or equal to 18 on 1d20+10*", what I'm saying is that you succeed in 40% of the cases, and unless you're cheating on the roll, there's no difference to me saying "roll 13-20 on the d20, but on 11 and 12 I narrate it slightly differently", or "roll 1d20+10 with a penalty of -2, TN 21, but if you fail due to the penalty, I'm going to narrate it a bit differently".
However, the first of those makes it clearer to me when the failure is due to your attempt not being good enough, and when it's "too good". Furthermore, it spends me from needing to double-check whether you failed due to the penalty. It's a GM-side help, but is immaterial to the player.

*Yes, my original example was from an actual play with a d6 dicepool system, but it's the same thing, you just need to play with the number of successes...so I'm just simplifying the math in my example.

Quote3) Also there is a possibility that a GM is doing something screwy (intentionally or not) by rolling dice without a solid idea what the results will mean, and then making up the interpretation in the moment, possibly creating a fiat "you're screwed despite your roll" situation, which is what it looks like when you think you should roll high and then you do and the GM says that it has a horrible result. Some GMs don't think through their mechanics, or are actually just being control-freaks forcing results. Some others may have actually thought through the results but given the players the wrong impression of what the roll numbers would mean.

Yeah, I'm the last kind (I had considered the results for no successes, 1-3, 4-5, and 6+ successes). But no, I don't believe I need to tell you what the roll numbers would mean...apart from whether you did well on your attempt.
Which might be an attempt to persuade the target in something that would make them hate you. Yes, I've done that, too.

...sigh. Let me try again. You're running from incorporeal undead in a dungeon, using a d20 system** where forceful actions are a d20+Str modifier check. Thinking mistakenly that it cannot cross a doorway uninvited, you close the door to a storeroom, which is the only exit, and nail it shut with iron spikes (intending to sit it out).
Do you see anything wrong with the GM asking you to roll for how quickly and efficiently you can hammer the spikes in (given that he knows the incorporeal undead will pass through the door in X rounds, since solid obstacles merely slow it down)? And would you say that in this case, if you roll a 19 on the check to hammer them in as fast as you can, you should have failed to hammer them, while a 1-7 would mean you've hammered them just fine, and are now trapped in the room with the hungry shade?

Or, might it be that you were working very hard at a self-defeating plan, and failing would have been to your advantage? Because that's what I'm talking about this whole thread. High rolls in a trad game mean only whether your performed your plan well.
If the plan was flawed from the get-go, rolling high on it means you just get to the complications part faster and with less chances to swerve;).

**Not you, as in "you Skarg", I know you don't play d20, but run with the example, OK:D?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1026106This seems to be conflating some portion of players choosing to do foolish endeavors in the first place with how the roll mechanism is supposed to work. The two seem to be equally valid but completely separate concerns.

No, they're not completely separate. When they do something foolish, and how good they are at doing it matters, sometimes I switch the mechanic around and the highest rolls bring the worst results. See above for the "incorporeal undead" explanation.

I really, really refuse to help PCs that roll their best to run from the police car chasing them, thinking it's a serial killer masquerading as a cop, and running towards the serial killer who was masquerading as their confidante. And yes, had that happen, too (it was an alien killer who could adopt different shapes...the thing is, the GM knew exactly which shape the alien had adopted at any given moment, but the players had guessed wrong).

QuoteRight, but in both those cases, you are using a mechanic that is not defined as "highest is best." Nor would anyone mistake a 25 in blackjack as a critical success.

You haven't played with enough newbies, I think.
"I have 18 skill! I rolled 20" - proudly announced in a Pendragon campaign (where 20 is the fumble result).

QuoteRandom generator results (dice, cards, or otherwise) do not have to have an ordinal direction, and "really bad" absolutely can be right next to "really good" or anywhere else. What I believe the thread consensus is discussing, on the other hand, is something pre-described by the agreed-upon resolution mechanic to be a 'critical success,' to end in a result less optimal than a standard success.

The numbers themselves don't have an intrinsic value, either. They just denote the likelihood of something happening.
The "critical success" result might well be the worst result in another game. Think of it as "adapting a mechanic that fits better the current situation".
If that means I'm breaking the rules and running by fiat, or something...well, so be it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1026115Non sequitur.  The rules of blackjack clearly state the upper limit.  Your example is more like "Get as high as you can.  Oh, too high, you lose your money."

No, my example is "get as high as you can...on the roll to execute flawlessly the detail that would spoil your plan". If she hadn't rolled so high, I'd have rolled for the guards to miss the fake signature being the one of a guy who can't have signed it.
The way she rolled, they couldn't miss that detail.

QuoteAt which point, Black Bart shoots you dead and no jury in the world convicts him.

Non sequitur. I'm not playing blackjack. I'm talking about a blackjack-style mechanic in RPGs. You know, like the basic mechanic of Pendragon, Unknown Armies and Mythras, to name a few.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1026116Damn good question.  He's been unusually thick headed throughout this entire discussion, including ignoring most of what everyone else said.

If by "most of what everyone else said" you mean "what Brady said", here's a free hint: I don't even see most of his posts. Consequently, I can't reply to them, unless I took the pains to read that specific post.
Does wonders for my nerves;).

And since you're talking about me, it seems, let me return the question: what happened to the Frei Kriegspeil logic that you profess, where the dice are only used to help the Referee, and they mean what the Referee think they should mean?
Why am I not allowed to change the meaning of the dice, all of a sudden, especially since I would have honoured the better result if she had rolled less successes, too?
(Admittedly, that example is from a decade ago, when I didn't know what Frei Kriegspiel means, but my Refereeing style had already morphed to its current shape, more or less).

Free Kriegsspiel is based on impeachable referee honesty above all else.  If you tell your players "Rolling high is good" with the unspoken proviso "Unless I decide it's bad," that's not "free Kriegsspiel," that's "being a really awful referee."  The fictional world must above all be CONSISTENT.  Any Free Kriegsspiel umpire who decided that infantry marched 100 yards one turn and 800 yards the next would be hung up by his sabretaches.

The players depend on the referee to give them the information they need to make coherent decisions.  If you keep pulling shit like that the players will realize the information is useless.

Quote from: AsenRG;1026138How much strength you use.
How clearly you copy a signature using painting skill.
You say tomahto, I say tomato.

Strength is different because too much can often break things you don't mean to break.
Using too much painting skill would just produce a very accurate copy, causing no unintended side-effects.

Quote from: AsenRG;1026138If I give you "roll under or equal to 18 on 1d20+10*", what I'm saying is that you succeed in 40% of the cases, and unless you're cheating on the roll, there's no difference to me saying "roll 13-20 on the d20, but on 11 and 12 I narrate it slightly differently", or "roll 1d20+10 with a penalty of -2, TN 21, but if you fail due to the penalty, I'm going to narrate it a bit differently".
However, the first of those makes it clearer to me when the failure is due to your attempt not being good enough, and when it's "too good". Furthermore, it spends me from needing to double-check whether you failed due to the penalty. It's a GM-side help, but is immaterial to the player.

Right, assuming you tell them and they understand and don't have an intractable attachment to certain rolling conventions.

Quote from: AsenRG;1026138You're running from incorporeal undead in a dungeon, using a d20 system** where forceful actions are a d20+Str modifier check. Thinking mistakenly that it cannot cross a doorway uninvited, you close the door to a storeroom, which is the only exit, and nail it shut with iron spikes (intending to sit it out).
Do you see anything wrong with the GM asking you to roll for how quickly and efficiently you can hammer the spikes in (given that he knows the incorporeal undead will pass through the door in X rounds, since solid obstacles merely slow it down)? And would you say that in this case, if you roll a 19 on the check to hammer them in as fast as you can, you should have failed to hammer them, while a 1-7 would mean you've hammered them just fine, and are now trapped in the room with the hungry shade?

Or, might it be that you were working very hard at a self-defeating plan, and failing would have been to your advantage? Because that's what I'm talking about this whole thread. High rolls in a trad game mean only whether your performed your plan well.
If the plan was flawed from the get-go, rolling high on it means you just get to the complications part faster and with less chances to swerve;).

**Not you, as in "you Skarg", I know you don't play d20, but run with the example, OK:D?

Ok.
I think it makes sense to determine how well and quickly the PCs nail themselves in the room.
But no, naturally I would use the game's usual mechanic to see how well they do that, without reversing the numbers due to the folly of the plan that they don't realize yet.
Clearly, they aren't trying to nail the door shut in any different way than usual.

I may have missed some tangent of this thread, but the core examples were all subdual attacks and the "too good" backfires were all about the attack doing strong deadly damage instead of non-lethal damage.

In subdual using a lethal weapon, it's like an attack but trying to do damage but avoid lethal damage. That's two partially-conflicting goals in one action. If you want to combine them into one die-roll, and you want to include the possibility of accidentally killing the target, but not remove the usual crit-fail results for an attack, then I expect usually you either need to use a carefully-considered roll with at least one more than the usual number of possible results (without unintentionally messing up the odds in dumb ways), or use two rolls (one to see if you manage to attack non-lethally, and the other for how effective the attack is).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1026145Free Kriegsspiel is based on impeachable referee honesty above all else.  If you tell your players "Rolling high is good" with the unspoken proviso "Unless I decide it's bad," that's not "free Kriegsspiel," that's "being a really awful referee."  The fictional world must above all be CONSISTENT.  Any Free Kriegsspiel umpire who decided that infantry marched 100 yards one turn and 800 yards the next would be hung up by his sabretaches.

The players depend on the referee to give them the information they need to make coherent decisions.  If you keep pulling shit like that the players will realize the information is useless.

Yeah, I have to agree.  The hidden proviso just makes that person into dick.