Alternate Die Resolution

Evan,

Ah, you exapmle definately helped to illustrate the differences in own gaming styles. IF I were running your adventure I'd have no compunctions about players being killed by ordinary guards. While that result does it does have a negative impact on the game (killing off PCs usually does), so does the other method. I find the sense of danger and risk neceassary to keep the game interesting drops off if the GM is fudging things. Or, to be more precise, if the GM is known to be fudging things. That's what I was referring to by working "under the hood". I'd probably set the situation up to make the guard killing the PCs very unlikely, and trust to the PCs (and thier courage points) for the proper outcome. Likewise, I'd run things about the same as you if the group decides to do something suicidal.

What I wouldn't do is force them towards a specfic resolsutuon becuase of the story. For instance, if the players came up with another way to solve the adventure, I'd allow it as long as it would work and be approriate (i.e. not violate the Prime Directive or some such).

BTW, I agree with you that if you hit a good middleground rule loopholes become less important. In fact, if a game is running well, the rules become transparant and completely unimportant. I've run and played a few advenutres where the group enjoyed a great adventure in a system that was pretty much junk.

Also, how well the rules work depend somewhat on what you are tying to do with them. All RPGs are designed for certain things, and tend to "break down" as you move out of the focus for which it was designed. For example, ICON combat rules don't work well for running an african safari (the elephants are bullet proof). Not a problem since most Trek advenutres don't invlove big game hunting. But, if a GM has an adventure where the PCs do get into such a situation, it helps to be aware of things so he won't be suprised.

If I look for imperfections in any rules system, I can easily find many.

Lots in specific systems.

The biggest flaws I've seen with ICON so far were in the proofreading and final edit of the Next Gen (Black) Rules book. I had to rewrite a lot of it, to be clear, fill in skills descriptions, fix charts and tables. In fact, I didn't like ICON FOR THAT REASON (i.e. Sloppy) until the TOS (White) book came out. To me that book was near perfect, except for the Ranger class pic.

That being said, I'd MUCH rather spend my time running my games, doing maps, and crew pictures, along with writing plots, as at least one player in the LUGTrek game I launched Thu night can most certainly attest to, RATHER than picking apart the rules for a game, looking for flaws. If it's so flawed that I have to do major work on it, I won't bother playing it.

Expanding skills choices for subskills, or specializations is one thing. And if there are ship construction rules, I'll work on designs, or planetary systems, I'll take time to design those.

Rewriting core game procedures... not worth my time.

If it's that broken, I'll sell it off on eBay for a few bucks, to whoever wants it.

ICON is not broken. It has flaws, for those seeking them. The same is true of any game system, depending on how critical the observer wishes to be, judged by their own scale of "Game Perfection."

I see it as a losing battle, and a total waste of time, but of course, there are whole Forums full of "Traveller" players who like to bitch and moan left and right about how Traveller 4, or Classic Traveller or 2300 AD is so utterly, totally flawed, despite the fact that many tens of thousands of others have enjoyed those games.

Most of the people hating those rules, or any rules set are analytical engineering types, who run a game as a set of rules mechanics, in the same way that they work on thier rockets, cars, or aircraft. That's not wrong, it's just not my preference.

I left the Traveller Forums community some months ago, when I came here, to try to find story-minded players and GMs.

I love LUG as a setting, and I really loved what the CODA Narrator's guide had to say about writing scenarios for games. Far and away the best book in the gaming industry for dramatic structure, based on a screenwriting format.

Anything can be as flawed as a specific observer decides it is. I am a fan of the big picture (pun intended).

Welcome to the community, from one of it's newer members.

LUGTrekGM,

We have a very different outlook on gaming. If you don't conisder game mechanics to be that important, why are you posting in a forum that is about the system and mechanics? That is what this forum is supposed to be about. There are areas to discuss story and setting. This forum is supposedly the one where peole can discuss the ICON RP, System & Mechanics. At least it used to be.

I for one, don't consider Silverback's thought of changing the core die rolling mechanic in the game to be major work. Certainly not nearly as much work as the stuff you have done with the charts and tables.

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Originally Posted by tonyg

Evan,

Ah, you exapmle definately helped to illustrate the differences in own gaming styles. IF I were running your adventure I'd have no compunctions about players being killed by ordinary guards. While that result does it does have a negative impact on the game (killing off PCs usually does), so does the other method.

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Not if done right ;) Usually my players can't tell when I intervene or not. In such a case intervention could possibly be a more lenient approach on difficulties for healing, etc.

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I find the sense of danger and risk neceassary to keep the game interesting drops off if the GM is fudging things.

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True, however you can destroy a character and by that a campaign if heroes who mabe spoiled a Romulan invasion, kicked Borg back, where they came from, etc. if they are killed by a drunk Ferengi ;) Of course this can be real, but still it can destroy the picture the players have of their characters and the story.

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Or, to be more precise, if the GM is known to be fudging things. That's what I was referring to by working "under the hood". I'd probably set the situation up to make the guard killing the PCs very unlikely, and trust to the PCs (and thier courage points) for the proper outcome.

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Which would be the same way I'd try to arrange it. Usually experienced characters are good enough anyway to overcome such obstacles.
Another option could be to create a story/ episode where it is revealed that a presumed dead character is not dead, etc.

Of course that depends on the players as well, as I said before it is a question of personal taste.


However to come back to the actual question, I am not sure if this rule change would work - I think it does not as it is. First of all the large impact attributes than have complete turns over the system. ICON is not so much of an "overkill"-system, meaning even experienced characters with good attributes are not superman. Granted in case of Data this may be not suitable, but in most others it is. Even somebody extremely strong can fail to break open a door and sometimes even somebody weak hits just the right spot to knock somebody out.
One essential element of ICON is that even "weak" character have a - if small though - chance to achieve a goal and no matter how good you are it is possible to fail in a task as well. Taking the drama die would be taking away this major element, so I would say that the drama die has to remain.
Additionally if you consider to add attributes instead of rolling dice, I would suggest you significantly raise the costs to increase attributes. Maybe double or tripple them, because an attribute of 5 now means you always get a +4 Bonus on your rolls on all skills. That is a tremendous advantage - granted an Attribute of is an exception anyway. In the ordinary way this would only mean you get to roll more dice, but in your way the dice roll would be added additionally.
I also think you would have to change the difficulty ratings. In the original version, the die result usually adds far more than the skill. Skills can have a maximum rating of 6, an averagy-experienced character would probably get only a 4 for a specialization. But you can roll a 6 on a die as well. So in average ( average on a d6 being a result of 3-4 ) you would add the same value as your skill value to the test-result. Having a result of the above 8, would be a moderate difficulty.
In your case the die-roll becomes far less prominent, adding only around one third of the complete test.
Say you ad an average of +2 for the attribute and the +4 like above for the specialization, you still roll only a 3-4 on the die. Adding the result would be a challenging difficulty. But since this would be an average value, it cannot be challenging, but moderate.
So you might actually consider changing the die from d6 to d10 - which would of course turnover the whole difficulty levels, even more, but get more influence on the die again. So you would roll a 5-6, adding another 6 would give you 12 for an average result - so you could choose 12 as your new "moderate"-difficulty level, adjusting the others as well.

However with so many changes, you might also consider changing the system to CODA, since it has a d10 system and attributes give a bonus and not extra dice - eradicating your problem alltogether.

Hope I made things not too difficult :)

Evan,

I suspect we have a lot more similarities in how we end up running despite different philosophies and styles on running. I've had this crop up with a couple other people around here where we ended up taking almost diametrically opposed postions at the beginning bound wound up agreeing on what our final goals were. For instance, while you are more willing to overrule the dice than I am, we both seem to agree that it is important for the players not to know that the GM is overuling the dice. I've seen few thing mess up a game a badly as when players start to feel that their characters are indestructable. They usually make it a quest to prove themselves wrong.

On a similar note, I try to avoid setting up situations where the player characters can get killed through no fault of their own. It's one of the reasons why I don't run ambushes that often. Generally when a PC died in one of my campaigns it is usually due to stupidity. Normally their own, sometimes one of the other players. Occasionally they die through bad luck (like when a player just can't roll decent all night long. Once had our "master swordsman" fumble every attack roll all night long-not much anyone could do about it. In very rare circumstances a character dies through a heroic act of self sacrifice.

It's funny. I have the reputation as being the toughest GM in my area, but I've actually killed off about a tenth of the characters that most the other GMs have. I just shown the players than they can't game on "cruise control".


RE: Back to the Topic. Yeah, I don't think that Silverback's option of changing the attribute part of the dice mechanic is better. In fact, my first post about it pointed that out and reccommended a different idea-the resolution system from Silloutte. In that system you take the highest result, but bump it up one for each die that ties the highest result. For example, rolling 3 sixes gives an 8. All in all a decent way to do things, although it would require some slight ajustment to the ICON difficulty scale to reflect the different probability curve.

I just was surprised by how others attacked Silverback for bringing this up. I figure we all have the right to question game mechanics and propose alternatives. I mean I don't think he considered am arm wrestling match between Troi and Data to be a important part of his game or anything-he was just pointing out a spot that the ICON rules don't cover too well. If you want to see where things get messed up consdier that a human with Ftiness 2 and Strength+2, does more damage in hand to hand combat than Data. Also, consider the Captain Kirk vs. the Gorn situation from the TOS episode "Arena". By the ICON rules, Kirk should have been able to hold his own against the Gorn.


As for CODA-No CODA doesn't use a D10. It uses 2d6. Skill values and a modifer for attribute score is applied. In some cases characters get to roll 3 dice and keep the best 2. Yeah CODA does avoid the problems of the ICON die mechanic as well as the ICON specialty problem and Strength vs. Fitness issue (i.e. a character with a 5 Fitness is considered stronger than a character with 2 Fitsness Strength +1, even though the latter does more damage in hand to hand combat). That's no suprise. The folks who wrote CODA deliberately made changes to adress these problems. At least one of the designers for CODA is noted for hating the way attributes worked in ICON.

In the party I'm playing we played the first half of the campaign with the standard rules... Then we decided that having a single die decide the result of the roll (you know... you have a 1 in 6 of doing great and 5 in 6 of doing normal) we changed... No "destiny" die. You take the highest roll. If you score multiple 6 each 6 after the first gives a +2 (so one 6 = 6, two 6 = 8, three 6 = 10 etc). This makes high attributes useful (if you have 5 in an attribute you have good chances of rolling two 6). We are pretty happy (ok... it has the problem that now, having high attributes, we roll between 5 and 8 costantly... but it's ok)

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Originally Posted by Evan van Eyk

So in average ( average on a d6 being a result of 3-4 )

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I don't think that's really how probability with d6s work...

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Originally Posted by C. Huth

I don't think that's really how probability with d6s work...

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Care to explain? I am pretty sure it is and asked my brother who studies mathematics and computer sciences and he agreed, so any insight you have might help. Of course you should not trust too much to statistics, but to calculate probabilities to set difficulty levels I think you should use that one.

I'll chime in here too.

The 3-4 average only applies if you are rolling mutiple dice and adding them in the tradtioanl manner (a bell curve). If you are rolling 1 die, any number (from 1-6) is equally likely to show up. But ICON uses a roll and drop method, that will shift the curve.


As far a LUG/ICON's system of rolling several dice and taking the highest, the probablilty curve increases the chances of getting higher results (like a 6) , and reduces the chances of getting low results (like a 1) as the number of dice increase.

Dice % of a Six/%5 or 6
1 die = 16.7%/33.3%
2 dice= 30.5%/55.5%
3 dice= 42.1%/70.4%
4 dice= 51.8%/80.2%
5 dice= 59.8%/86.8%
6 dice= 66.5%/91.2%
7 dice= 72.1%/94.1%
8 dice= 76.7%/96.1%


So with a typical Starfleet character rolling 2 dice, they have 30.1% chance of getting a six, and a 55.5% chance of getting better than a 4-a lot different that the 3.5 average we would get if we were rolling 2d6 and adding them together.

THat is without factoring in for the "wild die"-something that would actually make the percentages higher. In fact, the "wild die" is the thing that is most responisble for the "it's broken" complaints. Adding it in gives anyone and everyone a 1-6 chance of getting a result better than what anyone can get without rolling a "6" on the wild die.

Ah, ok, that was the part I did not get when my brother told me ;) Something with "counting" and not "counting", whatever, I guess I had the wrong preconditions. Thanks for the elaboration. However I think my example still stands, as I wanted to point the importance of the die roll relative to the complete result. Since rolling a six is even more probable than I thought the die roll is more important than the skill value. Changing it the way as described here would turn that around.

No, the SKILL value is more important than the Die roll. The reason being that as the system uses a roll and drop method, the results start to "stabilize" a bit more. A typical character can reasonably expect a 5 or 6 for any roll, so the dice rolls tend to cancel each other out. This means there is only about a 1 point difference in the result (on average, the "all ones" result is still possible, but less ans less likely as you throw more dice), from an average character's stat roll in comparision to a character with a maxed out stat roll. That makes the difference in attribute scores worth less than a point or two of skill.

Example:
Conselor's Troi (Fitness 3): would have the following %
6: 42.1%, 5: 28.3%, 4: 17.1%, 3: 8.8%, 2: 3.24%, 1: 0.46%
for an mean (average) result of 5.56 signifinantly better than 3.5


Data (Fitness 6, Strength +1) has the following%
6: 72.1%, 5: 22%, 4: 5.1%, 3: 0.75%, 2: 0.04996%, 1: 0.00036%
for a mean (aveage) result of 5.65.

Notice that a 4 point different in Stat results in about a 1.5% increase in the average result (5-6).

This makes a +1 Skill level much more important than an increase in an attribute-at least once you are rolling more than 1 die.

ICON's system is not broken.

It's a problem for people that don't like it, in the same way that some people do not like Spinach, Mushrooms, Liver or Asparagus. None of those are broken, it's a matter of preference.

If it is broken, it is broken in the same exact way that all rules systems are inherently flawed in their inability to model every little thing that a system of rules tries to simulate.

If Icon is so broken, let's see an all new design that outdoes FASA, ICON, and CODA Trek, in ease of use, simplicity of resolution, and still carrying the detail that so many players of All of Those Games have enjoyed, for years.

Any attempt to do so will be an improvement of a very slight degree, so minor as to not be worth it, after all is said and done.

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Originally Posted by LUGTrekGM

ICON's system is not broken.

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Of course it's broken. All game systems are broken. That's a byproduct of any RPG design. In order to make something usable every system has gross simplifications that result in the system "breaking down" when used outside of a certain range. All RPGs have this.

GURPS for example, break down when handling beings with very high attributes and skill scores (the game was designed for "normal" people with "normal" skill scores. The 3d6 bell curve used there wasn't designed to handle stats in the 20+ range).


All systems break down. The important thing is how well a game system can handle the things it was designed for. LUGTrek works reasonably well for handling conflict between humans and nearhumans. It's lousy for handling something like big game hunting. Fortunealty, no one was expected to use ICON for a 1930s big game hunter campaign.


HOWEVER...

...the recent topic on this threat was about d6 rolls and probabilities. Something that can be provene statistically and isn't a matter of prefernce.

Now, statistically, the difference in attribute scores in the ICON system is realtivly minor as far as die rolls go. Going from 3 dice to 7 dice only improves the average result by around 1% (from 5.56 to 5.65).

The wild die is far more statstically significant that the actual attribute score, since it has a 1 in 6 chance of popping up and greating increasing a test result.

That's the math. From a statistical standpoint, attribute scores have very little impact on the results of die tests. Much less of an effect than the wild die (excpet for attribute scores of 1).

If a GM or gaming group is happy with these results in another matter.


THE PROBLEMS...

Are those situation that arise due to the game mechanics that the GM didn't anticipate. For example, in ICON, a character's chance to lift a heavy object off of a trapped crewman is a situation where STRENGTH isn't going to make much of a difference. OR in ICON, if you have the PCs involed in a time travel aventure where they pick up a rifle to defend themselves form a charging bull elephant only or everyone to discover that the elephant is, in game terms, "bulletproof".

I think the 'best' and simplest suggestion made so far is to utilise the Silhouette game system mechanic where each additional 6 rolled after the first gives you a +1 bonus to your score. The only ammendment I'd make to the suggestion is that, because the probability of rolling additional 6's is a diminishing return, the difficulty target numbers are not adjusted at all. I'd also retain the drama die too.

This system is far less dramatic than one of my other solutions which would have been to just roll one d6 and the drama die and then add 1 for each die of skill and attribute above one that the character possess. i.e. a character with a Skill of 4 would roll 2d6, one resolution roll and one drama roll. To this they would add a bonus of 3 (Skill of 4 - 1 die) to the total result giving a range of 4 to 9 plus any modifiers from the drama die result.

The first (Silhouette) option would give you a range of 1 to 6 but with the potential of scoring 4 to 9 (plus the results from the drama die roll).

I'm one of those who didn't like the drama die much - especially after I noticed that increasing the difficulty of a task by one meant that the player needed to roll a 6 on the drama die in order to succeed.
Basically, this meant that, if Worf and Quark were in a lifting competition, Quark could win just by rolling a 6 on the drama die while Worf doesn't. So in the end, it comes down to the result of one die for each of them.

I think the ICON system didn't handle well characters who were too far from the average. I had one player in a one shot game who designed a Klingon who, without too much minmaxing, could deck any other character with one punch while at the same time whitstanding the impact of a phaser at setting 8 or 9 IIRC.

However, I never came up with a resolution for what I considered one of the biggest flaws in ICON, mainly since I knew CODA was coming when I started to be annoyed by the flaws of the system.

And as far as the die resolution is concerned, I like to let die decide important things as well, if only to have the players sweat a bit over critical actions. However, I don't think I would ever allow a player to die on a bad roll, unless he was doing something very stupid. Losing a limb, on the other hand, is an interesting alternative, but the case never presented itself so far.