Since the post was deleted I made a multiple choice in the hopes it might broadly cover the questions...

• Yes, system matters.
• No, system does not matter.
• Yes, theory is a useful tool for designing games.
• No, theory is what people wank about that can't design games.
• Yes, it's possible to make a fortune in the RPG business.
• No, you're going to go broke and your lame excuses about "just doing this for fun" are not disguising your anguish.
• Yes, everyone is going to stop playing their favorite game and start playing yours.
• No, you couldn't compete with D&D if you were the Commissar of the People's Republic of America and outlawed it.
• Yes, you are a genius and our collective adoption of your superior game is proof of such.
• No, people think your game is derivative drivel of the basest sort that an 8 year old could have penned between recess and lunch.
• Yes, of course you should determine your dice mechanic before anything else, what else can you use for part of the game title?
• No, the amount of dice and how you roll them or the method you roll them should not be the starting point of your design.
• Yes, you should probably put in the parts of a game that - in your mind you think - "that's a lot of work, I'll just skip that part".
• No, you don't need monsters, spells, magic, powers, vehicle rules, or other nonsense, people make that stuff up all the time.
• Yes, you should be able to explain what characters do in your game.
• No, you don't really need to explain that as long as you have dinosaurs, zombies, and/or katanas.
• Yes, you probably should read or know more than one game system before you design a game system.
• No, prior system knowledge will just get in the way of your brilliant game's purity.
• Yes, of course the way you want to fix your favorite game is brilliant.
• No, only a meth poisoned squirrel would come up with such lame ideas. Can you spell RAW?  Good.  Now play your favorite game the way we tell you in the book WORM!

Please choose any answers that a) help you b) offend you c) inspire you or (preferably) d) all of the above.

Good Luck!

Quote from: Cole;454555I see where you are coming from but degree of success can set up interesting consequences later. The party builds a makeshift bridge :maybe it can support the weight of the party, but won't support the weight of the angry ogre who comes chasing them as they flee. Can you lift the guards keys, but can you also lift them without him noticing?

Yeah I get this, and the two ideas are hardly mutually incompatible. Degrees of success can add nice colour, and are a part of the reason I like dice pools.

Quote from: two_fishes;454578Yeah I get this, and the two ideas are hardly mutually incompatible. Degrees of success can add nice colour, and are a part of the reason I like dice pools.

I can see the advantage; really what I would welcome is a system that handles degree of success well but isn't as much of a pain in the ass as a dicepool system. I have given some thought to a tack-on system where you just roll for success/failure as normal, then just make a secondary check (either of the same kind, or a simplified one) for degree of success along a certain axis if relevant, but I haven't actually tried it out since I haven't done much DMing in a while.

Quote from: Cole;454583I can see the advantage; really what I would welcome is a system that handles degree of success well but isn't as much of a pain in the ass as a dicepool system. I have given some thought to a tack-on system where you just roll for success/failure as normal, then just make a secondary check (either of the same kind, or a simplified one) for degree of success along a certain axis if relevant, but I haven't actually tried it out since I haven't done much DMing in a while.

Buy or make some Fudge dice, maybe and roll one alongside each die roll? It's still a die pool, technically, but a very small one.

Quote from: Spinachcat;454566What was the original post penis?

1. He referred to the old Ron Edwards article "System Matters".
2. He invoked GNS.
3. He called Amber "Narrativist".

Quote from: Cole;454583I can see the advantage; really what I would welcome is a system that handles degree of success well but isn't as much of a pain in the ass as a dicepool system. I have given some thought to a tack-on system where you just roll for success/failure as normal, then just make a secondary check (either of the same kind, or a simplified one) for degree of success along a certain axis if relevant, but I haven't actually tried it out since I haven't done much DMing in a while.

Roll to hit. Roll damage. There you are! Chance of success, quality of success.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;454595Roll to hit. Roll damage. There you are! Chance of success, quality of success.

-clash

That's a pretty good analogy.

I'm not sure that's an analogy. More like an example?

Quote from: two_fishes;454599I'm not sure that's an analogy. More like an example?

Fair enough, a pretty instructive example, too.

Quote from: Benoist;454544I'm guessin Stormy differenciates between:

(1) A roll with an outcome of "success" or "failure". Period. Rolling 1-2 on d6 to find a secret passage is an example. Either you do, or you don't.

(2) A roll with an outcome that not only determines whether the action is a success or failure, but also how much of a success or failure it actually is. "You succeed your d20 roll by 5 so that's a brilliant success" or "you've only got one success in your Melee pool roll so you almost failed, but did hit nonetheless" are examples of this.

Exactly.  I didn't want to put it in terms of 'storygames' and 'trad games', because I know there are examples of each in both of those styles, I am just drawing a blank on the examples at the moment.

I took down the original question after I ran a search for posts referriong to Ron Edwards. I didn't have time to properly change the question to avoid conflict, so I deleted it until I did have the time.

A few points:

1. I had no idea who Ron Edwards was until I perused the PDF. I still don't know much about him. From what I gather, he disparages D&D style gameplay in favor of "storytelling." So that right there turns me off of his personal beliefs (Moldvay B/X is my single favorite RPG system), but I still think the PDF I looked at raised some interesting questions about resolution inside RPGs.

2. I have never been to the Forge and I'm not familiar with what they're about, except that apparantly they produce "indie RPGs". I was aware of the opposition many on this board have towards RPGnet (an opposition I somewhat agree with) but was unaware of the Forge.

3. While I am familiar in general with the ideas surrounding "Swine" and such things, I was completely unaware of the level of vitriol that Pundit (whom I have always liked, and continue to do so) had for Edwards... had I been aware of that, I would have presented this thread in a completely different manner.

So let me start over.

I come from a roleplaying background of D&D and D&D-like products... all dice-based for conflict resolution. I had never seen Amber until recently, and some of the ideas, for a mechanics standpoint, seemed very interesting to me. The idea of using fixed numbers for combat, magic and so on. I wanted to know:

1. Are you aware of any games that combine fixed numbers for resolutions with a randomizing element, such as dice? I am referring to a system where the basic mechanic is fixed but radomization is used sparingly or in specific circumstances.

2. If you are aware of such a thing, have you ever seen it in practice and how did it work out?

3. If you haven't seen such a system in practice, do you think it could work wihtin the framework of a more traditional, D&D-type setting?

Quote from: Zalmoxis;454634I took down the original question after I ran a search for posts referriong
I come from a roleplaying background of D&D and D&D-like products... all dice-based for conflict resolution. I had never seen Amber until recently, and some of the ideas, for a mechanics standpoint, seemed very interesting to me. The idea of using fixed numbers for combat, magic and so on. I wanted to know:

1. Are you aware of any games that combine fixed numbers for resolutions with a randomizing element, such as dice? I am referring to a system where the basic mechanic is fixed but radomization is used sparingly or in specific circumstances.

I can't immediately think of any that use an Amber style straight comparison as the explicit primary mechanic with limited randomization added, but D&D/AD&D do historically make some use of straight-comparison mechanics, for example adventures will often state a total combined strength score is needed to move a heavy object, or creatures above a fixed amount of hit dice will not be affected by a spell.

Quote from: Cole;454583I can see the advantage; really what I would welcome is a system that handles degree of success well but isn't as much of a pain in the ass as a dicepool system. I have given some thought to a tack-on system where you just roll for success/failure as normal, then just make a secondary check (either of the same kind, or a simplified one) for degree of success along a certain axis if relevant, but I haven't actually tried it out since I haven't done much DMing in a while.

CP2020 uses an open ended roll, so it's a 'latent' dice pool, but it does incorporate the quantity and quality fairly well.  There are other limitations, of course.  Without cybergear, the absolute limit on abilities is 10, as I recall, and a DR of 20 is "difficult".  So with maximum ability, you would hit 20 (obviously) 10% of the time, barring other modifiers.  For attacks, this makes a difference when firing full auto; each point above the attack roll is another hit on a full auto burst.  It is easy enough to add the extra points as damage for other weapons, however, giving the resolution roll a quality aspect as well.

This wouldn't work for AD&D, 1st or 2nd, because of the delimited armour class.  For 3.x and 4e, however, the excess could be added in to damage, if you felt like working out some kind of open ended roll as in Cyberpunk.  The odds would be quite different, of course, so that would have to be considered.

Doesn't ORE, the One Roll Engine, attempt to do the 'quantity and quality' thing in one pass? Using the height and breadth of the results from the dice pool?
It's been a while since I paid attention to it.
It seems like people were wild for it at first but then I started to here grumbles that it gave some odd results, was too limited... or something. Either way I haven't heard much about it lately.

Quote from: Zalmoxis;4546341. Are you aware of any games that combine fixed numbers for resolutions with a randomizing element, such as dice? I am referring to a system where the basic mechanic is fixed but radomization is used sparingly or in specific circumstances.

Not specifically aware of any, though there are systems which can be optionally run dicelessly - which could be used to do that. FUDGE or many of Clash's games, for instance.

Quote from: Simlasa;454641Doesn't ORE, the One Roll Engine, attempt to do the 'quantity and quality' thing in one pass? Using the height and breadth of the results from the dice pool?
It's been a while since I paid attention to it.
It seems like people were wild for it at first but then I started to here grumbles that it gave some odd results, was too limited... or something. Either way I haven't heard much about it lately.

ORE is something like that. Looks interesting but only attempted to play this very very briefly - never got as far as an actual combat ....from what I've seen most of the time the 'height' (the actual number being matched) isn't used much. I've heard it said that the odds of success are difficult to adjust by situation - the likelihood of passing something is more about your dice pool than how hard a task is. Also it can't do critical misses since 1s represent shots to your left foot or something.