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Author Topic: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?  (Read 7314 times)

Chris24601

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #45 on: May 11, 2021, 09:39:17 AM »
Frankly, the death by house cat issue is why I always preferred Palladium’s HP = PE attribute (rolled on 3D6) + 1D6/level approach as it put an ordinary person’s HP at about 14.

Actually their approach in general with skills starting at a moderate percentage when first acquired and then slowly improving from there (30%+5%/level being exceptionally common) matching their approach to HP was one I largely prefer and might best be summed up as “Higher Floor/Lower Ceiling.”

I certainly took that approach to heart in designing my own system; skill training starts with a +3 and then over 15 levels rises to +8. The HP analogue starts at 25, but is only 50 at level 6, 75 at level 11 and caps at 95 at level 15.

Come to think of it, just about every system I actually enjoy using has a comparable approach; you’re not typically the best ever to start, but you’re solidly competent and then slowly improve from there.

Steven Mitchell

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #46 on: May 11, 2021, 10:10:37 AM »
Frankly, the death by house cat issue is why I always preferred Palladium’s HP = PE attribute (rolled on 3D6) + 1D6/level approach as it put an ordinary person’s HP at about 14.

Actually their approach in general with skills starting at a moderate percentage when first acquired and then slowly improving from there (30%+5%/level being exceptionally common) matching their approach to HP was one I largely prefer and might best be summed up as “Higher Floor/Lower Ceiling.”

I certainly took that approach to heart in designing my own system; skill training starts with a +3 and then over 15 levels rises to +8. The HP analogue starts at 25, but is only 50 at level 6, 75 at level 11 and caps at 95 at level 15.

Come to think of it, just about every system I actually enjoy using has a comparable approach; you’re not typically the best ever to start, but you’re solidly competent and then slowly improve from there.

Or alternately, if using the D&D style, I think it makes a lot of sense to design it with level 1 (or even level zero) characters as kind of incompetent, but with no intention of starting PCs there.  For one thing, it leaves a little wiggle room for generic commoners, kids, etc. without having to play tricks with the main design.  That's more or less how I'm designing:  Levels running from zero to 24, but play expected to be between 3 and 20.  Not coincidentally to this discussion, a level 3 character averages about 13 "hit points".

Jam The MF

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #47 on: May 11, 2021, 12:43:07 PM »
If two swordsman are in a duel and both are "good" but one is significantly better than the other, then that difference will be very important to the outcome of the duel.
These differences will be indistinguishable from chance. If my skill is 62% and yours is 65%, and we must roll d100 to hit, and d100 to parry, the variation due to the dice roll is far, far greater than the variation due to our skills. Now, if each hit did 1 hit point of damage and we each had 1,000 hit points, we could perhaps notice our skill differences over the course of the combat. But if we each have 6 hit points then no, we won't notice - and even 40% to 60% will often be missed.

That is not my experience.  I'm not a swordsman, but I do have a good decade of martial arts experience.  That doesn't make me an expert or an authority, but I think it does give me some relevant insight.  I'm pretty good, and I know a lot of other people that are pretty good, some a bit better than me and some a bit worse.  The guys that are a bit better can beat me about 3 out of 4 times.  A relatively small difference in skill makes a big difference in who wins the fight.  Maybe it's because real life doesn't use dice, aside from the rare environmental factor it's pretty deterministic.

So the assumptions we make about a skill system, and skills in use, also tie into the assumptions we make about results of combat. And that's tricky, because while we like to imagine skills as continuous (having many small increments), combats are discrete - you only have four possible results, you are okay, injured, injured badly, or dead. D&D resolves this by having hit points, so that combat results can be continuous, too.

But again, we must decide whether we are speaking of what is realistic, what is reasonable, or what makes a fun game. In Conflict I hope I've found the overlap in that Venn diagram, but they are nonetheless three distinct qualities, and you can have one without the other two, or two without the third.

So that's the question in game design: do you want realistic, reasonable or fun? Or some combination of the three? Commonly people who find some particular subsystem of a game to be not fun will complain it's not realistic. But they are different things. Chess is fun, but it is not realistic. The 1d6 combat resolution I suggested in the firearms thread is realistic, but would not be fun.

Well, that is the trick isn't it?  To make the design process even more fun, everyone has their own ideas about what is realistic, reasonable, and fun.  It's absolutely impossible to please everyone.  If you've managed to get all 3 for even a moderate sized group of people, then that's impressive.

  I am an expert.  I ask you, what is the relative difference in skill level?  5 percent?  10 percent?  etc.  Real life "small" difference is not the same as statistic probabilities in my experience.  I also think the person who is coming up a bit short sparring is not always understanding (especially in striking) that a real fight is different, and one or two solid shots quickly "demote" their dance partners in a real altercation.


I am not an expert.  I have avoided a lot of fights.  I am old and worn out, and I have minimal interest in actually fighting; but I do know that a couple of solid shots to the face are momentum changing, for sure.  That will not stop a really tough guy, but it will cause a wannabe tough guy to question his ability to win.  It takes actual damage to stop a really tough guy.  In real life, there are no rules in a fight. 

How should we model that, in an RPG?
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Brad

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #48 on: May 11, 2021, 01:30:46 PM »
I am not an expert.  I have avoided a lot of fights.  I am old and worn out, and I have minimal interest in actually fighting; but I do know that a couple of solid shots to the face are momentum changing, for sure.  That will not stop a really tough guy, but it will cause a wannabe tough guy to question his ability to win.  It takes actual damage to stop a really tough guy.  In real life, there are no rules in a fight. 

How should we model that, in an RPG?

Hit points do a pretty good job of that; high-level fighters have a lot of hit points.
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Zelen

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #49 on: May 11, 2021, 02:30:12 PM »
The level treadmill and its lack of connection to fiction is one of my bigger gripes when it comes to D&D. I understand why developers/publishers want to provide this content, but at my actual gaming table there's no reason it has to be this way.

In future campaigns I run I might try to tie character progression to more meaningful story beats. If the player characters defeat a goblin tribe, slay a dragon, or banish a demon-prince, then based on what they actually accomplished give them some benefits. Of course negotiating with players on what they want and how to handle it is a lot more work, but personalizing the game is pretty much the point of running TTRPGs.

Personally, I hate these kinds of milestone xp systems. I like xp and levels and I like the system to have some granularity so the GM can modulate the xp awards.

YMMV. I've never felt like highly granular XP rewards were very good. XP has never motivated me as a player, and as a GM I just don't care to fiddle with it with all of the hassles it can entail. My group has been using "milestone" experience for the better part of this last decade. What I'm imagining is actually a lot more finely-grained than what we currently do, since I would be actually rewarding players for significant events, not just level-up at the end of a particular subplot. Though obviously subplots wrapping up is part of that greater set.

Kyle Aaron

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #50 on: May 11, 2021, 08:34:46 PM »
   If that does not qualify me as an expert in martial arts (at least when it comes to hitting, choking and joint locking),  well then let me know what would.
I think it does. But don't get shirty, you're posting on an rpg board under a pseudonym and none of us have any clue who you actually are. It would of course be obvious in person. And in any case, I said, "how is this assessed?" I meant, what's the objective standard? Obviously a guy comes into your gym and you move together you'll know in ten minutes - but what's the ISO9000 standard, here? Objectively?

I do know that a couple of solid shots to the face are momentum changing, for sure.  That will not stop a really tough guy, but it will cause a wannabe tough guy to question his ability to win.  It takes actual damage to stop a really tough guy.  In real life, there are no rules in a fight. 

How should we model that, in an RPG?
As Brad said, hit points do fairly well for that. Aside from that, it's the good old morale check. Fighting requires that you be willing and able to do others harm. Game systems tend to focus on the able part, skills and toughness and so on. The willing part is either assumed or left up to roleplaying, decisions not systems.

Most people are going to choose to leave a fight, if they are able to, before they physically can no longer fight - indeed, often before they're hurt at all. This is typically forgotten by players, since if your character takes a jab with a sword, you are not feeling the pain, and if you are playing a computer game, squatting down behind cover and/or bandaging your arm for thirty seconds heals all wounds - for you, though not the enemy, of course. And almost all computer games and too many GMs have the enemy all fight to the last man, no matter what.

But in reality normal people will do their best to avoid a fight, and if they do fight do their best to avoid injury, and if they do get injured, do their best to get the fuck out of there ASAP.

Players should not, I think, have morale checks imposed on them. If you want to be a suicidal idiot, great - we need a player to go do the pizza run anyway.

Rory Miller expressed it well in A Writer's Guide To Violence, where he described people's levels of being willing to use violence to achieve their ends. The ranking of people, in descending order of frequency in the population, was: nice, manipulative, assertive, aggressive, assaultive and murderous. Most people default to one level, are scared of and uncomprehending of people a level above, and have some degree of contempt for people a level below.

Assertive is probably the right level for most fighter types. Nice people don't want to hurt anyone. Manipulative people become magic-users or thieves. The aggressive ones will get themselves into more trouble than they planned for when they become aggressive towards someone who is assaultive, and the murderous one ends up in prison, shot by police, lynched by the village, etc.
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Pat
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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #51 on: May 11, 2021, 09:15:57 PM »
Disagree. This is all a cop out to sidestep the fact that a single rat bite can still be an excruciatingly painful and potentially serious injury, with longer lasting effects than merely being an annoyance.

It also conveniently leaves out the part of my post where I bring up a 1hp peasant being instantly killed by any hit with a stick large enough to cause damage. Not a critical hit or a hard hit to the back of the head, or whatever, but just ANY random hit that causes ANY amount of damage. A rock would have the same effect. Yet neither of these items would instantly kill anyone (even an out of shape couch potato or a child) in real life, unless the attack involved an extremely lucky hit to the head. But they can instantly kill a peasant who rolled 1hp on their single HD in traditional D&D.

But make that peasant a level 10 PC, and it suddenly becomes almost impossible to kill them with a stick or a rock, even on a critical hit to the head, David vs Goliath style.

The problem isn't small animal bites causing HP damage. The problem is that D&D SUCKS at handling damage all around.
Painful != 25% of the population dies.

And sure, you can make an argument that there should be nonlethal damage (oh wait there is), or that weapons do too much damage. Or that 0- and 1st level character have too few hp. But that's also not what the combat system is about. It's not about randomly walking up to a peasant and smacking them with a stick. It's about combat. It's about a healthy person using a weapon to actively try to kill someone else. And guess what? If someone swings a baseball at your head with the intent to kill, there's a good chance you'll die.

The rest seems to be your subjective dispreference for a system that works quite well for other people. <insert a quote from the Dude>

Rats do 0 points of damage.

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #52 on: May 11, 2021, 09:27:27 PM »
Frankly, the death by house cat issue is why I always preferred Palladium’s HP = PE attribute (rolled on 3D6) + 1D6/level approach as it put an ordinary person’s HP at about 14.
In 1e someone doesn't croak until -10 hp, especially if the common misreading of that rule is used. Which works out to 13 to 14 hp. Coincidentally, that 10 extra hit points also works out to roughly 3d6. So you can make an argument that the default character in AD&D has the equivalent of 3 HD, with their class HD on top. Stretching it even further, you can argue that the class hit points on top are a character's heroism or staying power. After all, in a real fight, most people go down after one hit, regardless of the severity. The class hp on top are just your chance to keep fight. Plus, didn't Gygax start characters at 3rd level, at least in his later years? 3 HD also roughly corresponds with the expected HD for a natural animal of roughly human-size, like a hyena, wolf, or leopard. Overall, there's a decent argument that a capable adult human should have 3 HD.

Which might put weapon damage in context, a bit.

oggsmash

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #53 on: May 12, 2021, 06:35:34 AM »
   If that does not qualify me as an expert in martial arts (at least when it comes to hitting, choking and joint locking),  well then let me know what would.
I think it does. But don't get shirty, you're posting on an rpg board under a pseudonym and none of us have any clue who you actually are. It would of course be obvious in person. And in any case, I said, "how is this assessed?" I meant, what's the objective standard? Obviously a guy comes into your gym and you move together you'll know in ten minutes - but what's the ISO9000 standard, here? Objectively?

I do know that a couple of solid shots to the face are momentum changing, for sure.  That will not stop a really tough guy, but it will cause a wannabe tough guy to question his ability to win.  It takes actual damage to stop a really tough guy.  In real life, there are no rules in a fight. 

How should we model that, in an RPG?
As Brad said, hit points do fairly well for that. Aside from that, it's the good old morale check. Fighting requires that you be willing and able to do others harm. Game systems tend to focus on the able part, skills and toughness and so on. The willing part is either assumed or left up to roleplaying, decisions not systems.

Most people are going to choose to leave a fight, if they are able to, before they physically can no longer fight - indeed, often before they're hurt at all. This is typically forgotten by players, since if your character takes a jab with a sword, you are not feeling the pain, and if you are playing a computer game, squatting down behind cover and/or bandaging your arm for thirty seconds heals all wounds - for you, though not the enemy, of course. And almost all computer games and too many GMs have the enemy all fight to the last man, no matter what.

But in reality normal people will do their best to avoid a fight, and if they do fight do their best to avoid injury, and if they do get injured, do their best to get the fuck out of there ASAP.

Players should not, I think, have morale checks imposed on them. If you want to be a suicidal idiot, great - we need a player to go do the pizza run anyway.

Rory Miller expressed it well in A Writer's Guide To Violence, where he described people's levels of being willing to use violence to achieve their ends. The ranking of people, in descending order of frequency in the population, was: nice, manipulative, assertive, aggressive, assaultive and murderous. Most people default to one level, are scared of and uncomprehending of people a level above, and have some degree of contempt for people a level below.

Assertive is probably the right level for most fighter types. Nice people don't want to hurt anyone. Manipulative people become magic-users or thieves. The aggressive ones will get themselves into more trouble than they planned for when they become aggressive towards someone who is assaultive, and the murderous one ends up in prison, shot by police, lynched by the village, etc.

  Sorry about the tone, I guess I do not understand why anyone would lie about spending almost all their adult life developing Cauliflower ear, sore elbows, cracked sinuses, torn hamstrings, scar tissue filled knees, a sore back, a brain that likely has a level of CTE,  and sinuses that drain for a while every time the climate goes through a drastic shift (from humid to dry).  If I said I was a lawyer or had a master's in computer science no one would even raise an eyebrow.  I think I might not spend enough time online, is it that common to hear this sort of thing lied about?  In my day I guess the lie in the bar was everyone said they were former "special forces" and almost always SEALs.   I think I also likely have a very different point of view of the decision making process of people who decide to fight in a cage or a ring, as in it is generally a bad idea, especially in the long run.

   GURPS has a pain and shock penalty to skills when you take damage (thus demoting that skilled fighter after he gets hit), this is largely compensated for by dedicated fighters in taking high pain threshold.  I would say hit points to represent being tougher fairly well, but are also abstracted in the sense they are a whittling away of "luck" in as much as an erosion of physical durability.  Here again I like that the "tough" guys in GURPS are the guys with advantages towards that as well as high health, allowing them to stay up and fighting while below 0 hitpoints and simulating a person with serious injuries continuing to fight.  It is also heavily suggested for running GURPS that most NPCs of the mook variety will play dead or flee after taking a wound, and will never attempt health checks when taking damage to get HP to 0, and collapse and "play dead" or surrender no moral checks needed.   I prefer GURPS to D&D like rules for something a bit more human centric (meaning human in the sense of not super heros, and D&D adventurers are not human level, they are super heros) and especially prefer it in modern or high tech settings with firearms.   It also models incremental gains and skill differences, and allows for techniques and situations where high skills can be over come or overwhelmed.

Kyle Aaron

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #54 on: May 12, 2021, 07:16:40 AM »
I guess I do not understand why anyone would lie about spending almost all their adult life developing Cauliflower ear, sore elbows, cracked sinuses, torn hamstrings, scar tissue filled knees, a sore back, a brain that likely has a level of CTE,  and sinuses that drain for a while every time the climate goes through a drastic shift (from humid to dry).
You hadn't mentioned those things before, at least not in a thread I've seen. If you'd mentioned how fucked-up you were then I would have taken that as indicating at least some expertise ;) Again remember we can't see you. You just said you're an expert. You should have led with the ears.

In any case, with or without these things, the more general question remains: how do we assess "expertise" in this or that?

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If I said I was a lawyer or had a master's in computer science no one would even raise an eyebrow.
Ah, but if you said you were an expert lawyer or the best computer science guy then some people might ask questions.

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I think I might not spend enough time online, is it that common to hear this sort of thing lied about?
We've no way of knowing. But it is human nature for us to overestimate our level of competence. Almost every person I have ever met has told me that, "Basically I'm the one doing all the work at the office, half the other guys are idiots, especially the manager, I have to tell them everything, they're useless." Nobody has ever said to me, "Look, I'm pretty mediocre," still less have they said, "I'm the dumbest guy in the room, fuck knows why they hired me." Perhaps I'm fortunate and only meet the hardworking smart people? But not likely. Much more likely is that it's hard to assess your own level of competence in things.

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I think I also likely have a very different point of view of the decision making process of people who decide to fight in a cage or a ring, as in it is generally a bad idea, especially in the long run.
Yes. That's the benefit of areas like yours or mine (I'm a barbell-focused trainer) - there are distinct measurable outcomes that are pretty hard to argue with. If I can pick up 300lbs and you can pick up 400lbs, you're better. If we get in the cage and eleven seconds later I'm face-down with one arm bent back and the other arm tapping out, you're better. When people walk into our facilities any cockiness lasts ten minutes, tops.

Other skills are a lot fuzzier, though. And of course, a lot of guys who would never walk into one of our places have a lot to say about it. "Yeah in high school I used to bench about tree-fiddy."

If you ever want an hour or two of shaking your head sadly at the world, watch out for a Statting Yourself As A Character thread on an rpg forum. It's... embarrassing. The GURPS forum had one about 2006, I'm still getting over it.

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I prefer GURPS to D&D like rules for something a bit more human centric (meaning human in the sense of not super heros, and D&D adventurers are not human level, they are super heros) and especially prefer it in modern or high tech settings with firearms.   It also models incremental gains and skill differences, and allows for techniques and situations where high skills can be over come or overwhelmed.
I can see that. I just think the execution in GURPS is needlessly complicated. In our society it's common for people to mistake precision (how many decimal points a measurement has) with accuracy (whether it's right). If I say that someone is 152.21lb people are more likely to believe me than if I say "he's about 155" - though he's actually 156, so the second one is more accurate.

Likewise, if an rpg system set has a lot of detail (precision), people will assume it's realistic (accurate). So much so that they believe all that detail is actually necessary. I don't think it is.
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VisionStorm

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #55 on: May 12, 2021, 07:46:00 AM »
Disagree. This is all a cop out to sidestep the fact that a single rat bite can still be an excruciatingly painful and potentially serious injury, with longer lasting effects than merely being an annoyance.

It also conveniently leaves out the part of my post where I bring up a 1hp peasant being instantly killed by any hit with a stick large enough to cause damage. Not a critical hit or a hard hit to the back of the head, or whatever, but just ANY random hit that causes ANY amount of damage. A rock would have the same effect. Yet neither of these items would instantly kill anyone (even an out of shape couch potato or a child) in real life, unless the attack involved an extremely lucky hit to the head. But they can instantly kill a peasant who rolled 1hp on their single HD in traditional D&D.

But make that peasant a level 10 PC, and it suddenly becomes almost impossible to kill them with a stick or a rock, even on a critical hit to the head, David vs Goliath style.

The problem isn't small animal bites causing HP damage. The problem is that D&D SUCKS at handling damage all around.
Painful != 25% of the population dies.

And sure, you can make an argument that there should be nonlethal damage (oh wait there is), or that weapons do too much damage. Or that 0- and 1st level character have too few hp. But that's also not what the combat system is about. It's not about randomly walking up to a peasant and smacking them with a stick. It's about combat. It's about a healthy person using a weapon to actively try to kill someone else. And guess what? If someone swings a baseball at your head with the intent to kill, there's a good chance you'll die.

The rest seems to be your subjective dispreference for a system that works quite well for other people. <insert a quote from the Dude>

Rats do 0 points of damage.

Whatever dude. I addressed the attacks to the head thing since post 1 on this side topic. A random successful hit does not represent a strike to the head. That would be more in line with a critical hit. If we go by your assumption that means a 1hp peasant ALWAYS get struct in the head whenever hit with a low damage weapon, just so you can bend yourself into a pretzel to try to justify why level 0-1 characters have such ridiculously low HP. Working backwards from the assumption that D&D can do no wrong.

D&D is trash.

oggsmash

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #56 on: May 12, 2021, 09:00:33 AM »
I guess I do not understand why anyone would lie about spending almost all their adult life developing Cauliflower ear, sore elbows, cracked sinuses, torn hamstrings, scar tissue filled knees, a sore back, a brain that likely has a level of CTE,  and sinuses that drain for a while every time the climate goes through a drastic shift (from humid to dry).
You hadn't mentioned those things before, at least not in a thread I've seen. If you'd mentioned how fucked-up you were then I would have taken that as indicating at least some expertise ;) Again remember we can't see you. You just said you're an expert. You should have led with the ears.

In any case, with or without these things, the more general question remains: how do we assess "expertise" in this or that?

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If I said I was a lawyer or had a master's in computer science no one would even raise an eyebrow.
Ah, but if you said you were an expert lawyer or the best computer science guy then some people might ask questions.

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I think I might not spend enough time online, is it that common to hear this sort of thing lied about?
We've no way of knowing. But it is human nature for us to overestimate our level of competence. Almost every person I have ever met has told me that, "Basically I'm the one doing all the work at the office, half the other guys are idiots, especially the manager, I have to tell them everything, they're useless." Nobody has ever said to me, "Look, I'm pretty mediocre," still less have they said, "I'm the dumbest guy in the room, fuck knows why they hired me." Perhaps I'm fortunate and only meet the hardworking smart people? But not likely. Much more likely is that it's hard to assess your own level of competence in things.

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I think I also likely have a very different point of view of the decision making process of people who decide to fight in a cage or a ring, as in it is generally a bad idea, especially in the long run.
Yes. That's the benefit of areas like yours or mine (I'm a barbell-focused trainer) - there are distinct measurable outcomes that are pretty hard to argue with. If I can pick up 300lbs and you can pick up 400lbs, you're better. If we get in the cage and eleven seconds later I'm face-down with one arm bent back and the other arm tapping out, you're better. When people walk into our facilities any cockiness lasts ten minutes, tops.

Other skills are a lot fuzzier, though. And of course, a lot of guys who would never walk into one of our places have a lot to say about it. "Yeah in high school I used to bench about tree-fiddy."

If you ever want an hour or two of shaking your head sadly at the world, watch out for a Statting Yourself As A Character thread on an rpg forum. It's... embarrassing. The GURPS forum had one about 2006, I'm still getting over it.

Quote
I prefer GURPS to D&D like rules for something a bit more human centric (meaning human in the sense of not super heros, and D&D adventurers are not human level, they are super heros) and especially prefer it in modern or high tech settings with firearms.   It also models incremental gains and skill differences, and allows for techniques and situations where high skills can be over come or overwhelmed.
I can see that. I just think the execution in GURPS is needlessly complicated. In our society it's common for people to mistake precision (how many decimal points a measurement has) with accuracy (whether it's right). If I say that someone is 152.21lb people are more likely to believe me than if I say "he's about 155" - though he's actually 156, so the second one is more accurate.

Likewise, if an rpg system set has a lot of detail (precision), people will assume it's realistic (accurate). So much so that they believe all that detail is actually necessary. I don't think it is.

     regarding GURPS, and self statting, is it ever settled as to what the 8x basic lift was supposed to be?  I always assumed it meant a standing press, with a clean, given the amount of time it took to get up.  I have seen it argued as a snatch, clean and jerk, and even a deadlift as well.

  I have mentioned being a BJJ BB on the forum before, but I think it was passing and likely not on this forum (probably off topic) in that it really has no bearing usually here.
« Last Edit: May 12, 2021, 09:03:37 AM by oggsmash »

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #57 on: May 12, 2021, 09:15:36 AM »
I really want to try out Savage Worlds because it seems to have an in-between of levels and Point buy.
You get 1-2 points a level, and some abilities are gated off until you reach a high enough level.

In lethality, there is always a chance (even a low one) for a one-hit kill, no matter the level because of exploding dice.

mightybrain

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #58 on: May 12, 2021, 09:17:43 AM »
In my day I guess the lie in the bar was everyone said they were former "special forces" and almost always SEALs.

The copypasta
https://genius.com/Copypasta-navy-seal-copypasta-annotated

Brad

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Re: Incremental Success Improvement, as Characters Progress in RPGs?
« Reply #59 on: May 12, 2021, 09:20:31 AM »
D&D is trash.

Nahh, you're just too dumb to understand it.
It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.