The problem with failure isn't the 1 in 20 chance of failure for d20.

It's the 20 sided-dice that have a much greater chance of failure becuase they are manufactured incorrectly... or by the player that doesn't know how to roll dice.

In the first case a good set of Gamescience dice will eliminate or mitigate the skewing of the odds against failure.

And in the second case a good dice tower will take even a bad roll and eliminate the lack of randomness to produce an even bell curve of results that typically see the distribution of odds in a fumble or failure somewhere to 400-1.

Even if you are failing only once every 200 attempts you are doing much better than real life where some of the best professionals in every field (not just combat) only see success in four out of five attempts, and the bulk of the population define success as consistently beating a 50/50 attempt by a few points.

Cw, in what ruleset is a 1 on d20 always a critical fumble?

'cause I can't tell what game you're talking about.

Quote from: The Shaman;363732Cw, in what ruleset is a 1 on d20 always a critical fumble?

'cause I can't tell what game you're talking about.

I'm not talking about a particular rules set. Dayton Ohio and beyond, Gaming Cons from here to there, and most gamers I've known on line, consider a Natural 1 on a d20 in Palladium or Dungeons and Dragons, or a 5% or lower (or higher) in a % based game to be a critical failure. It is in the culture of roll playing games. It doesn't have to be in the book. That's how most people play.

Quote from: GameDaddy;363731Even if you are failing only once every 200 attempts you are doing much better than real life where some of the best professionals in every field (not just combat) only see success in four out of five attempts, and the bulk of the population define success as consistently beating a 50/50 attempt by a few points.

What fields. NASA lands most of their space shuttles. Anesthesiologists wake up most of their patients. Professional musicians usually get standing ovations.

I'll agree that most people are happy with a 51% rate. Other than GURPS and Dark Heresy, I can hardly think of a major game system I made a character in that wasn't peak human or better.

Heh, though I'm better in real life than most Dark Heresy characters. I fucking hate that game system.

Quote from: Cranewings;363737Heh, though I'm better in real life than most Dark Heresy characters. I fucking hate that game system.

If your GM isn't giving out conditional bonuses like candy, they fucking suck.  It's pretty easy to get a +20% on nearly any roll if you play smart and your GM knows when to apply bonuses.

It's still not my favorite system, but you cannot play it without taking conditional modifiers into account.  It won't work.

Quote from: Cranewings;363735I'm not talking about a particular rules set. Dayton Ohio and beyond, Gaming Cons from here to there, and most gamers I've known on line, consider a Natural 1 on a d20 in Palladium or Dungeons and Dragons, or a 5% or lower (or higher) in a % based game to be a critical failure. It is in the culture of roll playing games. It doesn't have to be in the book. That's how most people play.

If you say so. I've rarely encountered one-on-d20-is-a-fumble unless it was specifically codified by the rules of the game.

Then again, I don't play much D&D and never played anything by Palladium, so maybe that explains it.

Quote from: Cranewings;363726Soldiers in battle miss the enemy an awful fucking lot. But 1 in 20 times they do not drop their grenade in their own fox hole, shoot their buddy, miss identify a friendly, or stab a comrade in the back.

Well here's where we need not no fumble results, but plausible fumble results. Part of the plausibility is the rate of occurrence. 1/20 is probably too much, but unless we're rolling buckets of dice we can't go below probably 1/100.

The other part of the plausibility is what actually happens with the fumble. Friendly fire officially counts for about 1% of the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, unofficially about 10%. It's been 25% or so in earlier conflicts, it tends to be higher in large combined arms battles than in infantry patrols during peacekeeping or occupation.

From what I hear, the fumbles in combat tend to be things which are not instantly fatal, but which make the soldier completely ineffective at the time, and put them at some risk. They freeze in panic and indecision, they step around a corner and see an enemy and get a stoppage in their weapon, they go to reload and when they pull out their mag the other mags fly out and scatter across a few metres, they go to bayonet someone and the bayonet breaks, they crawl along and their webbing comes open and gets tangled up and they have to spend some time untangling it, their helmet falls off, the grenade they tossed only goes two metres and then rolls on another two, and so on.

If the game rules mandate particular fumble results from a chart, it's the rules' fault when fumbles are stupid. If not, it's the GM's fault for having not enough imagination to say more than, "um... you stab your mate."

Quote from: CranewingsWhat fields. NASA lands most of their space shuttles. Anesthesiologists wake up most of their patients. Professional musicians usually get standing ovations.

The issue here is that while most game systems tell the GM that PCs should get situational bonuses and maluses to their skill checks, most GMs only ever think of the maluses.

If you do things like take extra time, consult a manual, have other qualified people around to make suggestions and check your work, practice the task before doing the final performance, do an easier task rather than a hard one, you are going to have a big lot of bonuses on that dice roll.

Unfortunately most GMs don't give those bonuses. You just roll against your skill. So this is not a rules issue, but a GMing issue.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;363871- Information -

Unfortunately most GMs don't give those bonuses. You just roll against your skill. So this is not a rules issue, but a GMing issue.

I hear ya. I agree.

Quote from: Cranewings;363897I hear ya. I agree.

Agreed.  We assume in our games that 'dungeon circumstances/semi-hostile' are normal (unadjusted).  The anesthesiologist, in safety, with help, and his own instruments?  +50%, probably.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;363871The other part of the plausibility is what actually happens with the fumble. Friendly fire officially counts for about 1% of the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, unofficially about 10%. It's been 25% or so in earlier conflicts, it tends to be higher in large combined arms battles than in infantry patrols during peacekeeping or occupation.

Unless you want to count blowing up Afghan wedding parties or primary schools full of kids in which case fumbles run at about 30% {US Military of course the Brits and Australians never committ a fumble}.

Quote from: jibbajibba;363982{US Military of course the Brits and Australians never committ a fumble}.

Because the Australians are all hundreds of kilometers away from the fighting.

The role of the Oz army in Afghanistan is to look busy when the Prime Minister visits for a photo shoot, and keep dinner warm for the SAS when it returns from some actual combat.

I mentioned friendly fire, attacking armed forces of your own side. Uniformed guy with a rifle at range or in the dark, easy to make a mistake, though rather unprofessional.

Attacking unarmed forces is a different matter. As GM I would give a malus to correctly identifying a target, basing it on range.
"A milk powder factory? It could be. But maybe it's really a chemical weapons factory, a bit hard to tell from 10,000 feet."

During the initial invasion of Iraq, the RAAF worked with the USAF. Each pilot had the right to scrub the mission if they believed the target was not properly identified, or if it was too close to an illegal target. The USAF pilots had a scrub rate of about 2%, the RAAF about 25%. So either the RAAF got the dodgy targets and the USAF the more certain ones, or they have difference tolerances for risk of inappropriate targets, one is overly cautious and/or the other relatively indiscriminate.

You can be really good or bad at hitting targets, and really lucky or unlucky. But caring what you hit and don't hit is something different again. In game terms, there's character skill, player dice rolls, and then roleplaying.

This then drifts into a different area, not the importance of failure, but the importance of roleplaying. In the real world we don't get to blame the dice when we fuck up

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;363989Attacking unarmed forces is a different matter. As GM I would give a malus to correctly identifying a target, basing it on range.

The first Rolemaster GM I played with gave out XP for kills without any context.  Spraying peacetime cafes with machinegun fire garnered us levels, but we began to wonder if we were really missing the point of the exercise.

I don't see any point in using mechanics to train either GMs or players.  Every GM sucks the first time, then you learn and get better.  All you get with this "mechanics can fix everything" crap is a new player saying "Oh, I can't play Call of Cthulhu, a player might miss a skill roll and ruin the whole adventure when they miss a clue.  I'll have to play Trail of Cthulhu so that doesn't happen."

Or...you could learn how to fucking GM.

Gumshoe is one of those systems that really emphasizes the "Game designer needs to lead the poor knuckle-dragging GM around by his nose" philosophy.  An entire system built around codifying a GM best practice.  I still can't believe it.

Quote from: CRKrueger;364247Gumshoe is one of those systems that really emphasizes the "Game designer needs to lead the poor knuckle-dragging GM around by his nose" philosophy.  An entire system built around codifying a GM best practice.  I still can't believe it.

You know, it quite doesn't work this way.