Quote from: Thondor on January 06, 2021, 11:26:19 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on January 05, 2021, 03:05:29 PM

Quote from: Thondor on January 04, 2021, 11:57:23 AM
Point #1
I had a very long thread on ENworld once about "why THAC0 rocks." I really do like it. While I can agree that ascending AC is more intuitive, there are some fundamental things that it does that ascending doesn't:
Bounded design -- AC 0 is around the natural maximum, while -10 is the magically enhanced maximum.
You can do the math once against a single foe (it's more intuitive to do so).
Designed so that GM can decide how "player facing" the mechanic is. (in 1e the attack tables were in the DMG!)

Frankly I find it easier with large groups of players and monsters, perhaps that is just because it encourages me to have all the info I need at hand, so I am not waiting for a player to tell me if the monster hit them, I already know.

My real point here is, assumptions that something is "obviously better" may just be overlooking somethings positive qualities.

Going up or going down does not change bounded design.

Thats not how maths works.

Technically true. But they can feel different. People sometimes suggest that subtraction is "harder" for instance.

Meanwhile, starting at 10 and going down to -10 feels more bounded than starting at 10 and going up to 30 (why not 40?). The first also has a self evident "center point" while it can be less obvious that a 20 is the center.

Math is math, but in games how you get there can have an impact on perceptions.

Rolling a d12 for a 50% chance  vs d100 vs flipping a coin has no meaningful difference, but it feels different at the table.

What are you talking about feeling?  If you convert AC -10 to AC 30 then you dont go up to 40 because you feel good or bad.  Its not a slippery slope, otherwise why stop at -10 AC when you can easily get lower then that.

Quote from: Two Crows on January 06, 2021, 02:51:08 PM
P.S. When did people start disagreeing over what the OSR was?

Probably around 2007 or so.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament on January 06, 2021, 04:46:59 PM

Quote from: Two Crows on January 06, 2021, 02:51:08 PM
P.S. When did people start disagreeing over what the OSR was?

Probably around 2007 or so.

Nah, I was still around back then.

It wasn't like this even in 2016.

Trust philotomy - there are dozens of wrought discussions in many different places about what qualified, and what didn't, for the term OSR - starting about 3 days after it was promoted

Aaahhh A good flame war, I missed those from my days in Linux forums...

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on January 03, 2021, 06:49:39 AM
This is something I'm having trouble understanding about people with a deific fondness for games that had rules but then you ignored them or made up your own. I won't lie and say that I haven't just fudged rules, or just rolled with whatever was happening to move the game along. But that was made on a foundation of rules I generally liked and could use as written most of the time. Because that was a product I paid for. Functional rules.

By your own admition you're guilty of that which you accuse others of, namelly not playing RAW.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on January 03, 2021, 06:49:39 AMWhen I hear some people reminisce about old school games, the fact that the rules were such vague and contradicting, unfinished, unrefined, clusterfuck is talked about with deep fondness. That somehow having bad rules, or non-existent rules made it better because if it was bad, then you can ignore them and make your own. Or just improv all the time.

So, everytime you have ignored, altered or otherwise houseruled a system it was because "the rules were such vague and contradicting, unfinished, unrefined, clusterfuck"?

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on January 03, 2021, 06:49:39 AMSo wouldn't the logical endpoint just be an improv night without any rules at all? If consistent rules and character-building gets in the way of the DM telling the story he wants, why have any rules at all? Why not just write up a short story with some people occasionally assisting with minor suggestions for individual characters?

Since we have established that you're guilty of the same sin wouldn't this also apply to you?

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on January 03, 2021, 06:49:39 AMFundamentally I believe everybody can have the fun they want. Really this is more conceptual confusion for me. Personally, I believe it's just nostalgia.

Nope, you believe some people are having wrongfun.

Quote from: EOTB on January 06, 2021, 08:34:39 PM
Trust philotomy - there are dozens of wrought discussions in many different places about what qualified, and what didn't, for the term OSR - starting about 3 days after it was promoted

I recall fairly acrimonious debates about what was OSR at least as far back as 2010, which was when I became aware of it. Though a lot of it was confined to blogs, or threads on /tg/.

Quote from: Shasarak on January 06, 2021, 02:58:33 PM

Quote from: Thondor on January 06, 2021, 11:26:19 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on January 05, 2021, 03:05:29 PM

Quote from: Thondor on January 04, 2021, 11:57:23 AM
Point #1
I had a very long thread on ENworld once about "why THAC0 rocks." I really do like it. While I can agree that ascending AC is more intuitive, there are some fundamental things that it does that ascending doesn't:
Bounded design -- AC 0 is around the natural maximum, while -10 is the magically enhanced maximum.
You can do the math once against a single foe (it's more intuitive to do so).
Designed so that GM can decide how "player facing" the mechanic is. (in 1e the attack tables were in the DMG!)

Frankly I find it easier with large groups of players and monsters, perhaps that is just because it encourages me to have all the info I need at hand, so I am not waiting for a player to tell me if the monster hit them, I already know.

My real point here is, assumptions that something is "obviously better" may just be overlooking somethings positive qualities.

Going up or going down does not change bounded design.

Thats not how maths works.

Technically true. But they can feel different. People sometimes suggest that subtraction is "harder" for instance.

Meanwhile, starting at 10 and going down to -10 feels more bounded than starting at 10 and going up to 30 (why not 40?). The first also has a self evident "center point" while it can be less obvious that a 20 is the center.

Math is math, but in games how you get there can have an impact on perceptions.

Rolling a d12 for a 50% chance  vs d100 vs flipping a coin has no meaningful difference, but it feels different at the table.

What are you talking about feeling?  If you convert AC -10 to AC 30 then you dont go up to 40 because you feel good or bad.  Its not a slippery slope, otherwise why stop at -10 AC when you can easily get lower then that.

Why not set your bounded design between 57 - 79 or 57 and 77 if you prefer to have a 20 point range. We can all just do the math right?

It is easier to intuit a range of 10 to -10 as absolute limits, because it mirrors itself and we use a base 10 number system.

I never said you'd can't bound your design between 10 and 30, rather that it is not as self-evident, or as self reinforcing.

Quote from: Thondor on January 07, 2021, 11:32:44 AM
It is easier to intuit a range of 10 to -10 as absolute limits, because it mirrors itself and we use a base 10 number system.

Is 10 the actual upper limit? What about the poor fellow with Dex 3 (AC modifier +4) and no armor (AC 10)? Wouldn't they actually be AC 14?

AC 14 to -10 doesn't seem any more intuitive than AC 1-30 (because, yes, you can get ACs MUCH lower than 10... the range in 3e actually got down to -3... (i.e. base AC 10, -5 for stationary/0 Dex, -8 for colossal size).

What actually makes ascending AC more intuitive is that its always the target number, not part of the calculation. 1d20+mods vs. TN is super easy to explain and works regardless of where you place the limits on modifiers and target numbers.

By contrast... the formula with descending AC is THAC0 - AC score = target number for die roll + combat modifiers (because Strength, magic weapons and the like are listed as positive bonuses, not as negative THAC0 adjustments). There's a whole extra step; "determine target number, then roll and add bonuses, then compare result" relative to just "roll, add bonuses and compare to target number."

Frankly, the only way AC on the 14 to -10 scale approaches the simplicity of ascending AC is the "Everything is TN 20" version where the check is 1d20 + mods (where the target's AC is one of the mods) and if the total result is 20+ you hit and even that still has the added step of adding the target's AC each time.

Quote from: VisionStorm on January 06, 2021, 02:06:28 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 06, 2021, 12:48:15 PM
One thing about "unified mechanics" is that it is a bit of a fallacy in current D&D.

Rolling d20+mods once to see who "wins" a skill contest is different than rolling d20+mods then 1d8+5 for damage, then rolling again until you run out of HP (or rolling initiative etc.), and also different form rolling nothing but MAYBE letting your enemy roll a saving throw.

D&D has three types of checks: attacks, saves and ability rolls. Not to mention spells. They all work slightly differently. A "natural 20" only matters in combat, for example; this isn't unified.

Also... there are very few games that resolve a 10-minute combat with a single roll, but many will resolve other 10-minute tasks with a single roll.

In practice, this means a 5th-level wizard can never, in a million years, beat a 5th-level fighter in a sword fight, but the fighter will beat the wizard's arcana check about 10% of the time (or something like that).

Many times, "unified mechanics" are a illusion.

With that said, the more truthful feeling of "I like to use the same dice for everything (except damage because we are used to that)" is okay too.

Also, IMO, in practice, a bell curve works best for skills, but it is very boring for combat. I noticed that playing lots of GURPS and D&D. Ultimately, I chose to play modern D&D as written, just distributing lots of automatic successes to circumvent the obvious flaws in using a d20 as outlined above.

The thing is that even the idea that in unified mechanics every single roll in the game has to be made in 100% the exact identical way 100% of the time is itself a fallacy. It places an extreme standard on what can be discussed as "unified mechanics" and I've never seen anyone argue in favor of that, other than people arguing against unified mechanics or making some criticism of them. So it's basically a sort of straw man and reductio ad absurdum, because it argues against something nobody is arguing in favor of and attempts to dismiss or at least find flaws in the method by appealing to extremes rather refute the mechanics on their merits.

And in all of the types of checks used in D&D, the resolution method is still basically identical (at least in 5e), and all of the differences are superficial and either D&D conceits (D&D has used different damage dice for weapons and critical hits for most of its history, and saving throws in response to spells, and critical skill rolls do exist in other games--the designers simply opted to not include them in D&D) or circumstantial differences that arise naturally in the situations they're implemented (you don't need to hack away at an enemy's HP or "life meter" or whatever in a crafting skill check--because they deal with completely different circumstances that have different end goals and obstacles). But because I'm not hacking away at an enemy's HP when making non-combat skill rolls I can't talk about how attack rolls and skill checks are rolled in 100% the same way anymore?

In D&D 3e they introduced the idea of handling all rolls involving some type of ability tests using a d20 + Modifier mechanic, but they used different methods to determine the modifier for different resolution rolls (combat vs saving throws vs skills) and kept weapon damage rolls, rather than ditching that staple of D&D in favor of automatically determining damage based on your attack roll result. Does that mean I can no longer recognize the elements of mechanical unification that are there compared to earlier D&D?

Even if you want to argue that unified mechanics exist only in degrees the elements of unification are still there.

I agree with most of what you're saying.

Would you agree that there are "degrees" of unification then?

On one hand, you've got OD&D - roll high, roll low, roll 2d6, roll 1d00, roll damage.

OTOH you've got WotC D&D - roll 1d20 for almost everything, but occasionally add bless, bard inspiration, roll damage, consider critical hits, etc.

Then you have games that are MORE EXTREME than modern D&D - like Robin Law's Heroquest, where everything actually uses d20s and no other dice are used. Or Fate, which uses nothing but fate dice.

My question is: do you think unified mechanics are always good, or are good in general but can be left aside for various reasons?

(such as "D&D has used this for most of its history", or "they deal with completely different circumstances that have different end goals and obstacle").

From your post, your answer seem to be, obviously, that they are good in general. I agree. But there are exceptions - and these exceptions deserve to be analyzed on their own merits.

I don't think "D&D always used damage die" is a great reason, but I see your point (I, personally, do not use damage dice in my game anymore, so in this sense my game is more "unified" than mainstream D&D in this regard).

Here is another obvious one: combat is completely different from skills, why should a skill be decided with a single d20 roll?

2d10 works best in practice (for example, the fighter beats the wizard in Arcana about 1% of the time instead of 10% of the time).

Again, in practice, I decide in favor of unified mechanics here too - but I would understand if someone decides otherwise becasue they want results to make more sense.

In short: "unified mechanics" (which I prefer to call "multipurpose mechanics") are also just a tool at your disposal. A tool I love, but not always the best tool for the job.

EDIT: BTW, here is a fun example from 5e: thirst and hunger are treated in different ways (for no discernible reason)... So, "unified mechanics" is not necessarily a top priority here, "using the d20" might be.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 07, 2021, 03:12:16 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on January 06, 2021, 02:06:28 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 06, 2021, 12:48:15 PM
One thing about "unified mechanics" is that it is a bit of a fallacy in current D&D.

Rolling d20+mods once to see who "wins" a skill contest is different than rolling d20+mods then 1d8+5 for damage, then rolling again until you run out of HP (or rolling initiative etc.), and also different form rolling nothing but MAYBE letting your enemy roll a saving throw.

D&D has three types of checks: attacks, saves and ability rolls. Not to mention spells. They all work slightly differently. A "natural 20" only matters in combat, for example; this isn't unified.

Also... there are very few games that resolve a 10-minute combat with a single roll, but many will resolve other 10-minute tasks with a single roll.

In practice, this means a 5th-level wizard can never, in a million years, beat a 5th-level fighter in a sword fight, but the fighter will beat the wizard's arcana check about 10% of the time (or something like that).

Many times, "unified mechanics" are a illusion.

With that said, the more truthful feeling of "I like to use the same dice for everything (except damage because we are used to that)" is okay too.

Also, IMO, in practice, a bell curve works best for skills, but it is very boring for combat. I noticed that playing lots of GURPS and D&D. Ultimately, I chose to play modern D&D as written, just distributing lots of automatic successes to circumvent the obvious flaws in using a d20 as outlined above.

The thing is that even the idea that in unified mechanics every single roll in the game has to be made in 100% the exact identical way 100% of the time is itself a fallacy. It places an extreme standard on what can be discussed as "unified mechanics" and I've never seen anyone argue in favor of that, other than people arguing against unified mechanics or making some criticism of them. So it's basically a sort of straw man and reductio ad absurdum, because it argues against something nobody is arguing in favor of and attempts to dismiss or at least find flaws in the method by appealing to extremes rather refute the mechanics on their merits.

And in all of the types of checks used in D&D, the resolution method is still basically identical (at least in 5e), and all of the differences are superficial and either D&D conceits (D&D has used different damage dice for weapons and critical hits for most of its history, and saving throws in response to spells, and critical skill rolls do exist in other games--the designers simply opted to not include them in D&D) or circumstantial differences that arise naturally in the situations they're implemented (you don't need to hack away at an enemy's HP or "life meter" or whatever in a crafting skill check--because they deal with completely different circumstances that have different end goals and obstacles). But because I'm not hacking away at an enemy's HP when making non-combat skill rolls I can't talk about how attack rolls and skill checks are rolled in 100% the same way anymore?

In D&D 3e they introduced the idea of handling all rolls involving some type of ability tests using a d20 + Modifier mechanic, but they used different methods to determine the modifier for different resolution rolls (combat vs saving throws vs skills) and kept weapon damage rolls, rather than ditching that staple of D&D in favor of automatically determining damage based on your attack roll result. Does that mean I can no longer recognize the elements of mechanical unification that are there compared to earlier D&D?

Even if you want to argue that unified mechanics exist only in degrees the elements of unification are still there.

I agree with most of what you're saying.

Would you agree that there are "degrees" of unification then?

On one hand, you've got OD&D - roll high, roll low, roll 2d6, roll 1d00, roll damage.

OTOH you've got WotC D&D - roll 1d20 for almost everything, but occasionally add bless, bard inspiration, roll damage, consider critical hits, etc.

Then you have games that are MORE EXTREME than modern D&D - like Robin Law's Heroquest, where everything actually uses d20s and no other dice are used. Or Fate, which uses nothing but fate dice.

My question is: do you think unified mechanics are always good, or are good in general but can be left aside for various reasons?

(such as "D&D has used this for most of its history", or "they deal with completely different circumstances that have different end goals and obstacle").

From your post, your answer seem to be, obviously, that they are good in general. I agree. But there are exceptions - and these exceptions deserve to be analyzed on their own merits.

I don't think "D&D always used damage die" is a great reason, but I see your point (I, personally, do not use damage dice in my game anymore, so in this sense my game is more "unified" than mainstream D&D in this regard).

Here is another obvious one: combat is completely different from skills, why should a skill be decided with a single d20 roll?

2d10 works best in practice (for example, the fighter beats the wizard in Arcana about 1% of the time instead of 10% of the time).

Again, in practice, I decide in favor of unified mechanics here too - but I would understand if someone decides otherwise becasue they want results to make more sense.

In short: "unified mechanics" (which I prefer to call "multipurpose mechanics") are also just a tool at your disposal. A tool I love, but not always the best tool for the job.

EDIT: BTW, here is a fun example from 5e: thirst and hunger are treated in different ways (for no discernible reason)... So, "unified mechanics" is not necessarily a top priority here, "using the d20" might be.

Yeah, I tend to think that unified mechanics are generally superior (particularly when handling action resolution), but design goals and the type of "feel" that you're trying to achieve in the system ultimately trumps their use. A lot of things in game design depend on what you're trying to achieve rather than applying certain mechanical elements prescriptively. Certain subsystems, such as damage, may not always work well with unified mechanics--particularly if you're going for a more D&D "feel" in combat--so you can certainly have a mix of unified core mechanics with variable mechanics for subsystems. Although, I can certainly think of effective ways of handling damage as an expression of your ability check, which would flow from unified mechanics and allow you to inflict damage proportional to how well you roll.

I'm not entirely sure combat needs to be handled differently from skills, though. I tend to think of combat as just another skill, and people with actual combat training, conditioning and experience tend to be more consistently good at landing or blocking a hit than someone who lacks ability in those areas. Though, I suppose that you could say misses (even from experienced combatants) and lucky hits (even when people have no combat training) tend to be more likely in combat than say, a skilled artist failing to draw a cat or an unskilled artist drawing a perfect kitty. But that could also be handled by gating the ability to perform certain tasks behind specific training, so that anyone could try to draw a stick figure that kinda sorta resembles a cat, but only a skilled artist would be able to draw one that looks good.

However, I would tend to use the same mechanic across the board to avoid confusion and streamline things, since telling someone that all action resolution is "roll 1d20+Mod", "3d6, roll under" or "a number of d6s equal to your ability", etc. is easier to explain than rolling out a different mechanic to handle different eventualities. And in the case of 1d20+Mod in particular, I would tend to use 1d20+Mod for all action resolution because I prefer the feel of the d20, and it has other advantages, like speed of play (vs adding up multiple dice).

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 07, 2021, 03:12:16 PM
My question is: do you think unified mechanics are always good, or are good in general but can be left aside for various reasons?

I'm also in the camp of "unified mechanics are good in general, but best practices are best practices and sometimes best isn't a unified element."

For example, I very much prefer 4E's unification of spell attacks and defenses to match weapon attacks instead of spells being "autohit" but with a roll to resist. That felt like a good use of unified mechanics. It also added flexibility to weapon attacks by allow certain moves to target Fort (ex. a blow that batters you right through your armor), Reflex (ex. bypasses armor through precision) or Will (ex. a feint) so it was a net gain.

By contrast, I think 4E's saving throws (i.e. it's duration mechanic) would have been better if they hadn't used a d20 so they'd be less confused with actions. They were slightly better than 50% at 10+, but I think a 4+ on a d6 would have better associated saves with the "effect" half of powers (i.e. action checks are d20s, but damage and other effects from a hit or miss were rolled on variable dice... making the save/duration end rolls a d6 or d8 would better align it with the effects).

I'm not against unified mechanics, in general. For example, I think highly of Chaosium's BRP (which uses d% for everything, and where combat and weapons skill is just another skill, etc). I also enjoy I.C.E. RM2, which is also d100 based, and while it has classes (professions) and levels, they're used more as a matrix for determining skill costs and spending skill points than anything else.

With D&D, I haven't found unified mechanics to be beneficial, though. Not sure exactly why (I never had much urge to analyze it). Some of it may be that prefer a very class/level based D&D game. I don't use general skills or "non-weapon proficiencies" or any of that. With D&D, my "unified mechanic" is that the DM determines a probability and some dice are rolled to see how it goes. That can take various forms, of course, with some more defined than others, and I'm fine with that -- and I guess I even prefer it. I remember that one of my issues with C&C was the use of SIEGE engine for everything (other than combat), and how that, logically applied, created side-effects that I didn't like (and that undermined the class/level approach that I prefer).