Take 10?  Take 20?

No?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;592770Is there any point to having players make rolls for actions that aren't technically opposed?

Is there any point to having players make rolls for actions that are opposed?

Quote from: RPGPundit;593969Yes, this as well! Something certain Swine seem never to understand; or more specifically they don't understand that failing AGAINST YOUR WILL can be interesting and fun.

Odd. I have find that "letting the dice fall where they may" and "embracing failure" is a prevalent characteristic of story-gaming. Without a GM having the primary right to interpret the dice results, most story-games treat the mechanics themselves as having that primary right.

I think fudging success is characteristic of conventional RPGs, which hit its peak in the 1990s where White Wolf and the like used conventional RPGs to try and run games heavy in character drama.

Quote from: Blackhand;594000Take 10?  Take 20?

That's a pretty close analogy of MHR's approach in this instance. If the result of the dice will have little impact either way then the GM can elect to simply adjudicate the PC's ability to determine what happens. This is an extension of an idea that has been around for years i.e. don't call for rolls unless its important.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;592770Is there any point to having players make rolls for actions that aren't technically opposed?

Some cases come to mind (one of which I was ninja'd on by just about everybody.)

Knowledge skills, if applicable. When recalling general information about "The Duchy of Kentain", how high you roll is how much you recall/how correct the info is.

Artistic skills (which come up in, say, a historical Japan campaign and in Torg, oddly enough): how high you roll is how moving, impressive, or otherwise well done the image is. We're talking playing an instrument, composing a symphony, painting, sculpting, writing, a Samurai's calligraphy, whatever.

(Good for those "your soul for a fiddle of gold" deals. Or beating out a rival at a fair, in front of the King, whatever. Lots of uses for artistic talent, especially for spies or assassins.)

Computer programming, crafting, carpentry, jury-rigging (basically artistic skills, but with a more practical bent). How high you roll is how good you do.

Forging a document. How high you roll is how convincing a counterfeit you make.

Open-ended, non-opposed rolls have their place, depending on the system.

Quote from: Blackhand;594000Take 10?  Take 20?

No?

There's a difference between the idea that a minimum level of competence should guarantee certain minimum levels of automatic success (which I think is a good thing), and the idea that you should just always succeed.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Skywalker;594030Odd. I have find that "letting the dice fall where they may" and "embracing failure" is a prevalent characteristic of story-gaming. Without a GM having the primary right to interpret the dice results, most story-games treat the mechanics themselves as having that primary right.

I think fudging success is characteristic of conventional RPGs, which hit its peak in the 1990s where White Wolf and the like used conventional RPGs to try and run games heavy in character drama.

Storygames only "embrace failure" in the sense that this is what players want for "dramatic" (or if you will, "narrative") purposes.  You can agree with the idea that a player character (that you're not immersing in anyways, because its a storygame) having something terrible happen to him (so you can do some good old-fashioned misery tourism), but you won't agree with the idea of a character being killed by a random hit from a 3hp orc.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;594407Storygames only "embrace failure" in the sense that this is what players want for "dramatic" (or if you will, "narrative") purposes.  You can agree with the idea that a player character (that you're not immersing in anyways, because its a storygame) having something terrible happen to him (so you can do some good old-fashioned misery tourism), but you won't agree with the idea of a character being killed by a random hit from a 3hp orc.

That's not what I have seen across the story-games I have played in. I remember feeling failure being more frequent and unavoidable in my early days of playing story-games. Story-games seem generally hard keyed to the idea that the results of the dice are sacrosanct, mostly from necessity of adjudicating success/failure in a definitive fashion without a GM. So, if death is the result of failed dice roll and you fail, your PC is dead. I am sure that there are instances of story-games that are an exception to that (for example, in a game where death isn't even possible under the system or a player may have some right to set stakes on a failure) but the same can be said of RPGs too.

In general, if you give authority to players to make decisions on a story level, then this necessitates that there are times where the player will lose story control (when those players come into conflict). This often makes failure hit even harder than a conventional RPG as there is no safety blanket of the GM able to manage and facilitate the situation as a whole. All you have are the hard rules and cold dice results. In fact, this is one of the main reasons I dislike story-gaming as a whole, as it often leaves a player feeling like they are the target of lynch mob style justice

So, I don't think a lack of failing against your will is a defining characteristic of story-gaming. IME its the opposite if you are talking about letting dice fall where they may.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;594053Artistic skills (which come up in, say, a historical Japan campaign and in Torg, oddly enough): how high you roll is how moving, impressive, or otherwise well done the image is. We're talking playing an instrument, composing a symphony, painting, sculpting, writing, a Samurai's calligraphy, whatever.

(Good for those "your soul for a fiddle of gold" deals. Or beating out a rival at a fair, in front of the King, whatever. Lots of uses for artistic talent, especially for spies or assassins.)

A competition like that totally isn't an unopposed roll! It's pretty much the exact opposite.

But delayed opposed rolls can be tricky, if you don't record your result, and aren't expecting it to become a delayed roll...

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Take x is a rubbish mechanic, though. If it's an obviously trivial task for the character and their skills, and failure wouldn't push the game in an interesting direction, no need to even interact with the skill check mechanics, just say "yeah fine" and move on. A bit of GM common sense is what's called for.

Quote from: Ladybird;594531A competition like that totally isn't an unopposed roll!

Depends on what you mean by Opposed Roll. An Opposed Roll, in my mind, means that success on one side hurts the other side.

Like arm wrestling or fencing. The better one side does, the worse the other does. Zero Sum.

If I paint a picture, and you do, your success doesn't make my work suck more. I may have done superbly, you just did better. Or maybe I did poorly, and you did moderately well.

That's not an Opposed Roll, that's two Open Rolls in parallell.

Making a painting or other piece of art (and equivalent activities) is definitely an Open Roll. Roll low = crap. Roll high = great. Higher = work of genius. Supremely high = Something for the ages. (The Mona Lisa.) All that matters is the skill roll.

I was just pointing out that the exact same roll, "how high you roll is how well you do" can be used in a competition, to see who does the best.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;594549Depends on what you mean by Opposed Roll. An Opposed Roll, in my mind, means that success on one side hurts the other side.

...

Making a painting or other piece of art (and equivalent activities) is definitely an Open Roll. Roll low = crap. Roll high = great. Higher = work of genius. Supremely high = Something for the ages. (The Mona Lisa.) All that matters is the skill roll.

I was just pointing out that the exact same roll, "how high you roll is how well you do" can be used in a competition, to see who does the best.

For me, it's a roll where two (Or more!) actors are in opposition, and you need to know who does better - so I'd class a race as an opposed roll, for example, as well as arm wrestling or the like. Even though each actor is only competing "against themselves", the skill check tells you how well they did, and you can compare that to how well everyone else did.

I think we're basically both in agreement though, other than a slight difference in terminology.

In the case of something like an art-making contest, I'd have everyone concerned tell me what sort of thing they wanted to go for, make a skill check (With modifiers for time, materials, and how well it matches the organizer's tastes, etc), with the result showing just how good their project was, highest being the best. Individual works could still be great works of art in their own right, of course, but... just not as good.

I'm left wondering if any of you play golf.
It's a game full of "unopposed checks" (albeit, still competitive).

Quote from: RPGPundit;594405There's a difference between the idea that a minimum level of competence should guarantee certain minimum levels of automatic success (which I think is a good thing), and the idea that you should just always succeed.

That's not how MHR operates though, assuming that is what you are referring to with your later reference. When not opposed by an NPC, the GM has a call to make. Does he have the PC roll against the Doom Pool or simply adjudicate success/failure based on the PCs abilities and the task at hand.

He chooses the later when the result of the task is a given, taking into account all the circumstances. Pretty much the same as Take 10/20 exactly. The only real differences in MHR are that there is no hard line where this happens (it relies on the GM's judgement) and you never roll against a static number.

Quote from: Novastar;594642I'm left wondering if any of you play golf.
It's a game full of "unopposed checks" (albeit, still competitive).

That's not exactly "unopposed".  The difficulty of the hole is what you're rolling against, and you can totally fail every single time.

Insert pun about RPG'rs and women.

Quote from: Blackhand;594773That's not exactly "unopposed".  The difficulty of the hole is what you're rolling against, and you can totally fail every single time.

Which, incidentally, would be an opposed in MHR too, though by a roll and not a difficulty.