Quote from: HappyDaze on June 19, 2021, 09:23:28 AM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on June 19, 2021, 08:58:50 AM

Quote from: Pat on June 19, 2021, 08:05:24 AM
d6's marked +, +, (blank), (blank), -, -. Which translates into equal chances of 1, 0, and -1.

Steffan O'Sullivan came up with them because he wanted a smoother bell curve. Fudge uses 4dF as its core mechanic.

I know about those (D3s effectively), but how do they translate into the charts that tenbones put up?

I too am curious to know how dice that have a 0 average result will adjust the probabilities of the results of the other dice. Are the chances of getting a 20 on 1d20 + 2dF any different than getting a 20 on just 1d20?

They are run through a simulation of thousands of rolls. Zadmar builds his own apps to test all the Savage Worlds rules (as he does his own design-work for the system).

I believe it's a probability aggregate based on the fact we're talking about literally splitting a 1.4% difference. Two Fudge dice apparently in his simulations make up that difference.

Like I said - it's totally optional at my table. And it gives me a chance to use the stack of Fudge dice I have *for once* LOL. On any given roll my players can choose to roll up to 2 Fudge dice with any Trait check. Or not. Ironically, even my players that say they don't care about that anomaly,  all choose to roll the extra Fudge dice.

Players just love rolling those extra dice.

Quote from: tenbones on June 19, 2021, 03:32:32 AM


I don't wanna come off like I'm attacking Jaeger (or anyone else) that is concerned with the Math. It's INSANELY small, and I know the abstractions of D&D are far worse simply by dint of the loosey-goosey use of Advantage. It's *fine*. Yet I have my own players who have come to love Savage Worlds, also be concerned with the d6 vs d8 issue simply because we've seen those crazy rolls which while statistically had nothing to do with the real issue. It appears that way most because it most happens due to the fact that d6 and d8s are rolled more typically over the procession of a campaign.

It's all headgames, baby.

Oh no worries.

After all, I'm the one who lead with: Savage Worlds Fucking Sucks!

SW just ain't for me.

It's the same with how some people bounce off of die pool systems where you count "successes".

Quote from: tenbones on June 19, 2021, 03:41:46 PM
They are run through a simulation of thousands of rolls. Zadmar builds his own apps to test all the Savage Worlds rules (as he does his own design-work for the system).

I believe it's a probability aggregate based on the fact we're talking about literally splitting a 1.4% difference. Two Fudge dice apparently in his simulations make up that difference.

Uhhh, "simulations" are completely statistically invalid (no matter how many times you run one).  The math of the fudge dice should be calculable, which will determine if there are any benefits to them.  But,  no matter how you program it, a result from a "simulation" is always an anecdote.

Quote from: Jaeger on June 18, 2021, 07:38:44 PM

Quote from: 234ne on June 18, 2021, 06:19:38 PM
...
I understand, I also have moments of love and hate with this system. As I said earlier, it becomes retarded when the dice keeps on rolling, I'm certain upgrading a skill to d6 from d4 is a downgrade till you reach d8, and sometimes it feels like a washed down version of the haydays of WEG; TORG and D6. But that's just an old grog's opinion.

I completely bounced off of the die mechanic and wounding mechanic when I played.

It literally has a glaring in-your-face design flaw in the die mechanic.

I had some SW apologist explain to me on another forum that it's not a big deal because Bennies blah, blah, blah...

Yeah, so your meta mechanic isn't there so much as a bonus to make PC's more heroic as it is to smooth out your whacked ass die and wounding mechanics...

But lots of people seem to like it anyway.

Quote from: 234ne on June 18, 2021, 06:19:38 PM
Add FFG to the hit-list suicide-list

FFG doomed themselves with their specialty dice.

They were focused on cashing in on certain IP.

They made a WHFRP and Star Wars games that had overly fiddly rules, with overly fiddly dice.

The money train ended when their licenses ended.

Nobody gave a fuck about their whacked ass specialty die mechanic.

The same thing will happen with legend of the 5 rings. A game that they easily could have used normal dice on. But nooooo....

Played SW:Deadlands and SWADE with my regular group for almost 9 months (maybe a little more) when we were taking a break from D&D.  The funny thing is that, despite assertions that SW isn't "bullet spongy," it played out the same way as D&D.  In D&D combats drag when you have to ablate HP with "hit, hit, hit, hit, target dies;" in SW it drags when you have "hit, no damage - didn't get through toughness; hit, no damage - didn't get through toughness; hit, no damage - didn't get through toughness; hit, no damage - didn't get through toughness; hit, a bunch of dice ace, monster killed."  Sure, the mechanic is different, but the play felt like there was no real difference.  And anyone who says bennies don't exist to balance the swingy-ness is being disingenuous at best.  It would be like playing an RPG where you flipped a coin to see which combatant died.  You'd die every other combat (on average).  Likewise, with no bennies, the first good damage roll would kill or cripple a character, no matter how powerful.  So bennies absolutely exist to give Wild Cards more survivability than ordinary enemies.  Honestly, that's basically all we used them for, because if you used all your bennies on anything else, you were risking sudden death.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 19, 2021, 09:03:37 PM

Quote from: tenbones on June 19, 2021, 03:41:46 PM
They are run through a simulation of thousands of rolls. Zadmar builds his own apps to test all the Savage Worlds rules (as he does his own design-work for the system).

I believe it's a probability aggregate based on the fact we're talking about literally splitting a 1.4% difference. Two Fudge dice apparently in his simulations make up that difference.

Uhhh, "simulations" are completely statistically invalid (no matter how many times you run one).  The math of the fudge dice should be calculable, which will determine if there are any benefits to them.  But,  no matter how you program it, a result from a "simulation" is always an anecdote.

You might want to double check the definitions of "statistics" and "anecdote".

Simulations don't give you exact probabilities. But if the simulation doesn't contain any errors, and we can discount any weirdness with the pseudo-random number generator, both of which are fairly safe bets, for something as trivial as simulating dice rolls, they generate approximations based on a large sample set, i.e. statistics, not anecdotes.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 19, 2021, 09:03:37 PM
Uhhh, "simulations" are completely statistically invalid (no matter how many times you run one).

Unless its a probability calculation, which is also a thing. Unlike a simulation, a probability calculation is 100% accurate.

I could put this through a probability calculator to see the odds.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 19, 2021, 09:15:47 PMIt would be like playing an RPG where you flipped a coin to see which combatant died.

Well unlike a coin flip, the SW rate of success and damage is actually a calculable thing. Just your experience has not been mine at all. Combat happened pretty fast.

Id say your definition of swingyness is different then mine as well. To me swingy is something reliably variant. A d20 system is pretty swingy because it has no curve. Explosive systems are pretty reliable, with moments of extreme spike. Thats different then swingy to me at least.
Anyway, your entitled to your own experience.

Quote from: Pat on June 19, 2021, 09:48:39 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 19, 2021, 09:03:37 PM

Quote from: tenbones on June 19, 2021, 03:41:46 PM
They are run through a simulation of thousands of rolls. Zadmar builds his own apps to test all the Savage Worlds rules (as he does his own design-work for the system).

I believe it's a probability aggregate based on the fact we're talking about literally splitting a 1.4% difference. Two Fudge dice apparently in his simulations make up that difference.

Uhhh, "simulations" are completely statistically invalid (no matter how many times you run one).  The math of the fudge dice should be calculable, which will determine if there are any benefits to them.  But,  no matter how you program it, a result from a "simulation" is always an anecdote.

You might want to double check the definitions of "statistics" and "anecdote".

Simulations don't give you exact probabilities. But if the simulation doesn't contain any errors, and we can discount any weirdness with the pseudo-random number generator, both of which are fairly safe bets, for something as trivial as simulating dice rolls, they generate approximations based on a large sample set, i.e. statistics, not anecdotes.

There is never a forest so thick that you can't miss it for the trees, is there?  Your linguistic pendantism aside (which is incorrect, anyway), I'll try to frame the point for you as simply as possible.  First, as the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data.  An anecdote is a single experience.  Data is information about a representative sample.  Hence my statement.  Multiple runs of a simulation of dice are multiple single experiences.  If the dice (or computerized representations of them) are actually fair, then by definition, and throw of the dice is truly random and disconnected from any other throw.  The key term there is "disconnected."  One throw, ten throws, ten thousand throws, it doesn't matter.  We assume, as the number of throws approaches an infinite number, the mean of those throws will approach some number, but... and pay close attention here... that is not necessarily true for ANY number of throws less than infinite.  So, while we can expect that our average will regress towards the mean with many throws of dice, that is NOT guaranteed, because each throw is disconnected from the others (see "gambler's fallacy").  So, you cannot make meaningful assertions from a "simulation" of a thousand, or ten thousand, or one million dice throws, because there is always the possibility that your sample is skewed.  Hence your throws are not "data" (part of the definition of "statistic"), they are anecdotes.  They would need to be connected to be data, which they cannot be for fair dice.

So, as I said above, the only way to determine the accurate statistics for this combination of dice is via mathematics (the limit of the mean as the number of throws approaches infinity, etc.).  So, I am not convinced by someone's "simulation" that the issues discussed above are ameliorated by the addition of fudge dice.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on June 20, 2021, 04:24:04 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 19, 2021, 09:03:37 PM
Uhhh, "simulations" are completely statistically invalid (no matter how many times you run one).

Unless its a probability calculation, which is also a thing. Unlike a simulation, a probability calculation is 100% accurate.

I could put this through a probability calculator to see the odds.

Yeah, since my very next sentence said:

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 19, 2021, 09:03:37 PM
The math of the fudge dice should be calculable, which will determine if there are any benefits to them.

So your approach was exactly what I suggested.  Please let us know what you find.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 20, 2021, 10:13:37 AM

Quote from: Pat on June 19, 2021, 09:48:39 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 19, 2021, 09:03:37 PM

Quote from: tenbones on June 19, 2021, 03:41:46 PM
They are run through a simulation of thousands of rolls. Zadmar builds his own apps to test all the Savage Worlds rules (as he does his own design-work for the system).

I believe it's a probability aggregate based on the fact we're talking about literally splitting a 1.4% difference. Two Fudge dice apparently in his simulations make up that difference.

Uhhh, "simulations" are completely statistically invalid (no matter how many times you run one).  The math of the fudge dice should be calculable, which will determine if there are any benefits to them.  But,  no matter how you program it, a result from a "simulation" is always an anecdote.

You might want to double check the definitions of "statistics" and "anecdote".

Simulations don't give you exact probabilities. But if the simulation doesn't contain any errors, and we can discount any weirdness with the pseudo-random number generator, both of which are fairly safe bets, for something as trivial as simulating dice rolls, they generate approximations based on a large sample set, i.e. statistics, not anecdotes.

There is never a forest so thick that you can't miss it for the trees, is there?  Your linguistic pendantism aside (which is incorrect, anyway), I'll try to frame the point for you as simply as possible.  First, as the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data.  An anecdote is a single experience.  Data is information about a representative sample.  Hence my statement.  Multiple runs of a simulation of dice are multiple single experiences.  If the dice (or computerized representations of them) are actually fair, then by definition, and throw of the dice is truly random and disconnected from any other throw.  The key term there is "disconnected."  One throw, ten throws, ten thousand throws, it doesn't matter.  We assume, as the number of throws approaches an infinite number, the mean of those throws will approach some number, but... and pay close attention here... that is not necessarily true for ANY number of throws less than infinite.  So, while we can expect that our average will regress towards the mean with many throws of dice, that is NOT guaranteed, because each throw is disconnected from the others (see "gambler's fallacy").  So, you cannot make meaningful assertions from a "simulation" of a thousand, or ten thousand, or one million dice throws, because there is always the possibility that your sample is skewed.  Hence your throws are not "data" (part of the definition of "statistic"), they are anecdotes.  They would need to be connected to be data, which they cannot be for fair dice.

So, as I said above, the only way to determine the accurate statistics for this combination of dice is via mathematics (the limit of the mean as the number of throws approaches infinity, etc.).  So, I am not convinced by someone's "simulation" that the issues discussed above are ameliorated by the addition of fudge dice.

A pendant (with a second n) is something you wear around your neck. That's an example of being pedantic (one n). Which is the one word you probably don't want to misspell when you're trying to be pedantic.

The rest of your post is based on a misunderstanding of statistics. The whole point of a representative sample is each element is independent, not dependent. When they're dependent -- say a pseudo random number generator that's seeded based on a timestamp, and is run at the same time every day, leading to the same strings of numbers being repeated -- you end up with an unrepresentative sample. A human example is asking someone to remember how many 20s they rolled over a session instead of recording them as they're made, which will tend to result in selection bias, where people remember vividly the natural 20s made in important situations, and tend to forget them when the result didn't matter much. If you have a broad selection of unbiased results, then due to the law of large numbers, we can draw conclusions from the dataset. Sure, it's possible to roll 100 ones in a roll, or a googolplex of 1s in a row. But that's really unlikely, which is the point of statistics.

Monte Carlo methods are widely used. They don't give exact answers, but, well, nobody claimed that.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 20, 2021, 10:13:37 AM
First, as the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data.  An anecdote is a single experience.  Data is information about a representative sample.

Thats the opposite of the saying.

The plural of anecdote is data - thats how you get data, by adding up all the anecdotes.

Quote from: Shasarak on June 20, 2021, 08:56:38 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 20, 2021, 10:13:37 AM
First, as the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data.  An anecdote is a single experience.  Data is information about a representative sample.

Thats the opposite of the saying.

The plural of anecdote is data - thats how you get data, by adding up all the anecdotes.

Nope.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 19, 2021, 09:03:37 PM

Quote from: tenbones on June 19, 2021, 03:41:46 PM
They are run through a simulation of thousands of rolls. Zadmar builds his own apps to test all the Savage Worlds rules (as he does his own design-work for the system).

I believe it's a probability aggregate based on the fact we're talking about literally splitting a 1.4% difference. Two Fudge dice apparently in his simulations make up that difference.

Uhhh, "simulations" are completely statistically invalid (no matter how many times you run one).  The math of the fudge dice should be calculable, which will determine if there are any benefits to them.  But,  no matter how you program it, a result from a "simulation" is always an anecdote.

(Why do people have to spell out "uhhh" in a post?)

My response is simple: I don't care. Its there for a reason: because people have repeated the "math discrepency" for years. It really is less of an issue than the host of possible statistical glitches from the tons of +1's/-1's one can get from D&D. It's 1.4% on specific target number.

If you want to be reductionist about Fudge Dice being a net-zero on any given statistical curve - then why do they even exist? Heh. I'm not sure what to say? Don't use them? Like I said - it's an option to make people feel good.

If your point to hang on your participation in the discussion on some petty semantic thing that isn't even an issue... it says more about you than me. Carry on.

I mean... if we want we can discuss how astrophysics is just fantasy since their statistical calculations based on slivers of data with far more granularity than the probabilities of Fudge dice must be hocus-pocus too. This seems like a silly hill to die on in a Savage Pathfinder thread.

Quote from: tenbones on June 20, 2021, 11:25:33 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 19, 2021, 09:03:37 PM

Quote from: tenbones on June 19, 2021, 03:41:46 PM
They are run through a simulation of thousands of rolls. Zadmar builds his own apps to test all the Savage Worlds rules (as he does his own design-work for the system).

I believe it's a probability aggregate based on the fact we're talking about literally splitting a 1.4% difference. Two Fudge dice apparently in his simulations make up that difference.

Uhhh, "simulations" are completely statistically invalid (no matter how many times you run one).  The math of the fudge dice should be calculable, which will determine if there are any benefits to them.  But,  no matter how you program it, a result from a "simulation" is always an anecdote.

(Why do people have to spell out "uhhh" in a post?)

My response is simple: I don't care. Its there for a reason: because people have repeated the "math discrepency" for years. It really is less of an issue than the host of possible statistical glitches from the tons of +1's/-1's one can get from D&D. It's 1.4% on specific target number.

If you want to be reductionist about Fudge Dice being a net-zero on any given statistical curve - then why do they even exist? Heh. I'm not sure what to say? Don't use them? Like I said - it's an option to make people feel good.

If your point to hang on your participation in the discussion on some petty semantic thing that isn't even an issue... it says more about you than me. Carry on.

I mean... if we want we can discuss how astrophysics is just fantasy since their statistical calculations based on slivers of data with far more granularity than the probabilities of Fudge dice must be hocus-pocus too. This seems like a silly hill to die on in a Savage Pathfinder thread.

Whether or not you care is totally your prerogative.  I don't care that you don't care.  A poster pointed out that the math behind the dice in SW is a bit wonky.  You disagreed, using an unreliable methodology as your evidence of why the dice wonkiness doesn't matter.  I don't understand why any of this is a big deal.  There are far more substantial reasons to dislike SW than small statistical anomalies.  But you seem to be very invested in those statistics as some validation of the game system.  Are you sure that's the hill you want to die on?

Apparently you do care about my prerogative since you chose to quote *me*, not the actual poster.

I literally said it doesn't matter at my table. Twice. So clearly my investment in the "numbers" isn't what you think it is.

Do you even read? Or is it a comprehension issue? The fact that you started with "uhhhh" in a post, speaks volumes.

That you believe "simulations" are not reliable for statistical modeling... is one of the most stupid generalizations I've ever seen. It's so stupid, heh I'm actually laughing that it's quite a brilliant troll if I didn't think you meant it.

Edit: I'm remiss in my posting etiquette if I don't put something constructive. Eirikrautha - you did post something cogent that I see a LOT and experienced myself about the Bullet Sponge phenomenon. That experience happens with new SW GM's because they haven't learned how to balance their ability to reward Bennies to their players. PC's shouldn't be hoarding Bennies for combat with whatever Big Bad or encounter that may happen in that session. Bennies should flow to incentivize PC's to do crazy shit. If you choke the flow of Bennies, you'll get hoarding. It's not intuitive for new GM's. This is one of the oldest complaints that come up with new SW GM's that is totally solvable and changes the entire way the game is played once that balance is established.

There. The Forms have been followed.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 19, 2021, 09:03:37 PM

Quote from: tenbones on June 19, 2021, 03:41:46 PM
They are run through a simulation of thousands of rolls. Zadmar builds his own apps to test all the Savage Worlds rules (as he does his own design-work for the system).

I believe it's a probability aggregate based on the fact we're talking about literally splitting a 1.4% difference. Two Fudge dice apparently in his simulations make up that difference.

Uhhh, "simulations" are completely statistically invalid (no matter how many times you run one).  The math of the fudge dice should be calculable, which will determine if there are any benefits to them.  But,  no matter how you program it, a result from a "simulation" is always an anecdote.

!!!

In a properly done simulation, the odds of the simulated result being more than infinitesimaly different than a calculated difference is, well, infinitesimal.  The explanation is lengthy - I'd suggest a course in probability and statistics if you want a full understanding.  And simulations get used more than calculations because they are often a lot less work.  I use "Monte Carlo" simulations all the time in issues a lot more important than an RPG, and we have great confidence in them.