Game Balance

[sparkletwist]

I think most designers do it in the reverse order, however, with the designers likeing the modeling of real life or within setting, and deciding they like the rule because of that.

Sure, but doing that without carefully considering how the rule affects the game is exactly the thing that I an cautioning against in my second example. It's not enough to just "like the modeling of real life," because that can lead to blindness. Someone has to actually write this rule and make sure that it's good and doesn't break the game, and decide just how far to take the desire for verisimilitude.

'Save or Die' is a Meme in the RPG world for a reason.

Yes, it's a meme associated with the same "crazy Tomb of Horrors adventure" style of play that I specifically discounted from my example. That was my point. With the number of times dice are rolled in a RPG session, most of these rolls have to be "safe" (i.e., a 0% chance of something utterly catastrophic, no matter what boon or setback the roll may impose) or the multiplication rule would lead to an absurdly deadly game even if the "chance of catastrophe" is a very low non-zero number. Or, at least, the number of times most groups I have played with roll dice. I do see how if you roll dice less often it would lead to each roll having a greater significance.

The probabilities of that group are entirely determined by whatever your character generation algorithm spits out.

This is not true, Because it can go the other direction.  And this is a very real, critical distinction.   In reality or in setting, I can decide or discover the actual probability curve OF THE GROUP IN QUESTION, and then model the dice used in the probability curve to model it.

No. It can't. "Player characters" is a group that has absolutely no in-setting relevance. There are no in-setting criteria that you can use to decide or determine the demographics of its group because it doesn't exist as a concept within the setting at all. When you are deciding the probability curve of the group, you are simply deciding the probabilities for player characters-- i.e., you are developing a player character creation algorithm, or, at least, the mathematical basis for one. Therefore, the demographics of the group will be exactly what your algorithm spits out.

I said this when I first came on board, I've said it for decades before...crunch models fluff.

Or the fluff reflects the results that the crunch generates. Neither approach is inherently correct.

[LordVreeg]

I think most designers do it in the reverse order, however, with the designers likeing the modeling of real life or within setting, and deciding they like the rule because of that.

Sure, but doing that without carefully considering how the rule affects the game is exactly the thing that I an cautioning against in my second example. It's not enough to just "like the modeling of real life," because that can lead to blindness. Someone has to actually write this rule and make sure that it's good and doesn't break the game, and decide just how far to take the desire for verisimilitude.

yes and as was said, you are cautioning agasint something no game designer would ever do, a null set.

'Save or Die' is a Meme in the RPG world for a reason.

Yes, it's a meme associated with the same "crazy Tomb of Horrors adventure" style of play that I specifically discounted from my example. That was my point. With the number of times dice are rolled in a RPG session, most of these rolls have to be "safe" (i.e., a 0% chance of something utterly catastrophic, no matter what boon or setback the roll may impose) or the multiplication rule would lead to an absurdly deadly game even if the "chance of catastrophe" is a very low non-zero number. Or, at least, the number of times most groups I have played with roll dice. I do see how if you roll dice less often it would lead to each roll having a greater significance.

Your point in contention was that I mentioned that we use dice to model in game things for a reason, including swinging to hit, and you said there was a big difference between rolls in game, like to hit rolls, and the permanence of the rolls at chargen.  And I have brought up many rolls in game that do have permanent or game changing effects.  And the Meme in question is actually such becuse it is present in many games.  Such as all OSR retroclones. It is Not uncommon in all games, though newer styles of games don't seem to understand what was tgrying to be accomplished by it.
You are not wrong that every roll in chargen is important and game changing, and nowhere near as many rolls in game are as important; but in many games, there can be a number of save or catastrophe rolls.  AS I said, i think the distinction is much less than you believe.
And every single roll to hit in most games with a critical hit systems have a chance of killing a PC.  Every. Single. Roll.  And while you may believe that leads to an absurdly deadly game, but other people seem to play them and stick with them.

The probabilities of that group are entirely determined by whatever your character generation algorithm spits out.

This is not true, Because it can go the other direction.  And this is a very real, critical distinction.   In reality or in setting, I can decide or discover the actual probability curve OF THE GROUP IN QUESTION, and then model the dice used in the probability curve to model it.

No. It can't. "Player characters" is a group that has absolutely no in-setting relevance. There are no in-setting criteria that you can use to decide or determine the demographics of its group because it doesn't exist as a concept within the setting at all. When you are deciding the probability curve of the group, you are simply deciding the probabilities for player characters-- i.e., you are developing a player character creation algorithm, or, at least, the mathematical basis for one. Therefore, the demographics of the group will be exactly what your algorithm spits out.

Not everyone plays superheroic games or games where the PCs are a completely different subset from every other in-game population.
For example, in the Collegium Arcana game, I am modeling the frequency distribution for the members of the undergraduate class of the Collegium Arcana of 898RON in Stenron.  The PCs are all going to be members of that class, and are not going to be special or superior or different from that curve.  It's a diffferent curve from the general population, but the PC subset exists within this class of the CA set and uses the same frequency distribution.
So, yes it can, or so it seems to me.

I said this when I first came on board, I've said it for decades before...crunch models fluff.

Or the fluff reflects the results that the crunch generates. Neither approach is inherently correct.

It is not impossible for one to create a ruleset first, with a complete blank mind, with no concept or idea of what kind of game and fluff you want and then, after one finds a bunch of rules they like and that will play the way they want to, try to see what it spits out.  
But I cite Vreeg's first rule for a reason.  Most of the time, designers decide they are doing an 'Amber ' game, or a 'supers' game, and get a general idea of what the genre and setting, then start working with rulesets.   But if I am wrong about this, since I have not asked a ton of designers how they do stuff, I'd love to learn differently.
Honestly, Vreeg's First rule is more about the issue that is near and dear to you; making sure the ramifications of the ruleset are understood.

[sparkletwist]

yes and as was said, you are cautioning agasint something no game designer would ever do, a null set.

Well, no good game designer, sure, but that's completely different. My cautionary statement was more thinking about the ones that weren't so good.

I almost hate to even mention it, but... let's talk about FATAL. It is a terrible game. It was, however, designed by a game designer. It has a system, rules, and a skill for urination. Real people urinate, and its presence in a game is more "realistic." It is also a terrible game mechanic on multiple levels (aside from being nothing most people want to talk about, the system is completely broken) and its presence does absolutely nothing to enhance the game. However, it was put in there for the sake of "realism," and was put in by a game designer, thus providing a counterexample to your assertion.

It is Not uncommon in all games, though newer styles of games don't seem to understand what was tgrying to be accomplished by it.

It's also possible they do understand, and just don't like the result.

i think the distinction is much less than you believe.

And I think the distinction is much more than you believe.  :grin:
For example...

And every single roll to hit in most games with a critical hit systems have a chance of killing a PC.  Every. Single. Roll.

This is incorrect.

Let's talk about Pathfinder. Pathfinder is so popular and ubiquitous that no claim can be made about "most games" that is quite provably false for Pathfinder. So, let's look at its numbers.

At level 1, a decent fighter will probably have a +3 con bonus and around 14 hp. If a goblin, skeleton, or other level 1 mook doing a d6 of damage (which is about right for level 1) attacks that fighter and scores a critical hit, that's 2d6. The most 2d6 will ever roll is 12. So, if that fighter goes into combat with full HP, there is no way that roll will ever kill that fighter. It'll set him back, and make him damn careful, and probably necessitate a change in tactics, but it is mathematically impossible for a 12 hp hit to take out a 14 hp character. At higher level, let's say level 8, that fighter (assuming he rolls average hit dice, and puts half of his favored class bonuses into HP) will have 77 hp or so. So let's fight him against some "level appropriate" CR 8 monsters. A stone giant does 2d8+12. A crit is 4d8+24, or, maxed out, 56. Again, a big setback, but mathematically impossible to kill him. An Efreeti is swinging a 2d6+9 falchion, inflicting 42 damage on a crit with full damage, again, a large setback, but not lethal. A dimensional shambler gets two attacks of 2d6+5, so assuming both crit and are maxed out, that's 68 damage; also less than 77. Of course, by picking different monsters and varying the numbers, it's possible to end up with things more or less lethal, but this is more than enough to counter the assertion that every single roll has a chance of killing a PC, as there are plenty of rolls where things can go 100% the monster's way (critical hit, maximum damage) and the PC is still standing no matter what, and the majority of rolls are not going to be nearly this one-sided against the PC.

For example, in the Collegium Arcana game, I am modeling the frequency distribution for the members of the undergraduate class of the Collegium Arcana of 898RON in Stenron.  The PCs are all going to be members of that class, and are not going to be special or superior or different from that curve.  It's a diffferent curve from the general population, but the PC subset exists within this class of the CA set and uses the same frequency distribution.
So, yes it can, or so it seems to me.

The "undergraduate class of CA" is a demographic that exists within the setting, but "player character" is not. There is currently a 100% correspondence between these two groups, but there is nothing requiring it. If, at some point, you decide to allow a player character that is not a member of the undergraduate class of the Collegium Arcana, the demographics and probability distribution of "player characters" will have changed even though absolutely nothing about the in-setting demographics has changed. In other words, as I've been saying, the probability distribution of this group is solely determined by the output of your player character creation rules.

It is not impossible for one to create a ruleset first, with a complete blank mind, with no concept or idea of what kind of game and fluff you want and then, after one finds a bunch of rules they like and that will play the way they want to, try to see what it spits out. 
But I cite Vreeg's first rule for a reason.  Most of the time, designers decide they are doing an 'Amber ' game, or a 'supers' game, and get a general idea of what the genre and setting, then start working with rulesets.

It's probably a mutual, reciprocal thing. Good ideas lead to mechanics, game mechanics that are fun necessitate changes in the setting, newly discovered fun things in the setting need to be modeled by mechanics, and so on. I think it often goes both ways and it's not possible to make a blanket statement of "fluff inspires crunch" or "crunch inspires fluff." I know that I personally have been inspired in both directions!

[LordVreeg]

yes and as was said, you are cautioning agasint something no game designer would ever do, a null set.

Well, no good game designer, sure, but that's completely different. My cautionary statement was more thinking about the ones that weren't so good.

I almost hate to even mention it, but... let's talk about FATAL. It is a terrible game. It was, however, designed by a game designer. It has a system, rules, and a skill for urination. Real people urinate, and its presence in a game is more "realistic." It is also a terrible game mechanic on multiple levels (aside from being nothing most people want to talk about, the system is completely broken) and its presence does absolutely nothing to enhance the game. However, it was put in there for the sake of "realism," and was put in by a game designer, thus providing a counterexample to your assertion.

No, it would be an effective counter example if you could prove that the designer did not, "carefully consider how the rule affects the game", not whether they succeeded or not.  You stated that , " Sure, but doing that without carefully considering how the rule affects the game is exactly the thing that I an cautioning against in my second example.",
And my point is exactly that every want-to-be game deisgner THINKs they do this and tries to forsee the outcomes of their rules.  No one puts out a ruleset without this attempt, which is why I said you were cautioning aginst somehting no one would ever do.  Their success at said attempt is a completely different matter, but since it is impossible to say that every designer must succesfully test their rules vs ever conceivable situation, the best one could say was that they must look at the rules this way.
Even the designer of FATAL probably thought he got it right. no one puts out a ruleset without the attempt, which is why you were cautioning against a nullset.

It is Not uncommon in all games, though newer styles of games don't seem to understand what was trying to be accomplished by it.

It's also possible they do understand, and just don't like the result.

Well, I've read a lot about this theory and how it started and what was done with it through the earlier games, but I certainly have to say that my opinion that a lot of game designers have little understanding of this is exactly that, an opinion.  Not statistically or empirically provable.

i think the distinction is much less than you believe.

And I think the distinction is much more than you believe.  :grin:
For example...

And every single roll to hit in most games with a critical hit systems have a chance of killing a PC.  Every. Single. Roll.

This is incorrect.

Let's talk about Pathfinder. Pathfinder is so popular and ubiquitous that no claim can be made about "most games" that is quite provably false for Pathfinder. So, let's look at its numbers.

I said most games.  As in, the amount of games.  Pathfinder is one game.  it's pervasiveness and popularity are commendable and encouraging to me, always, but irrelevant in proving my comment right or wrong.  So it could be one of a hundred games and despite it's popularity it would still constitute 1%.  It would be like saying in 1985 that since D&D used Vancian casting, and D&D was the most popular ruelset of that time, most systems therefor used Vancian casting.  That would have also been incorrect.

So that example does not make it incorrect.  But on the otherhand, If I am going to say Most games with critical hit systems have a chance of killing a character with one shot (however remote), I am also speaking in terms of older knowledge, so if I am taking you to task for the statistical fallacy included in your statement above; I can hardly sit here without being correct myself.

I can say many systems, my own included, have critical hit systems where one roll can kill any pc.  But I cannot say Most systems without more research.  Let me amend my statement to that.  
(and this grouping of statements was based on the idea that no amount/some amount/a large amount of rolls in game were heavily game affecting as chargen always is, just to ground it.  How many sessions do you think have at least one event where one roll can be as permanent as chargen rolls, i.e.m SAve or Die, critical damage or maiming, or other long-term affect?)

For example, in the Collegium Arcana game, I am modeling the frequency distribution for the members of the undergraduate class of the Collegium Arcana of 898RON in Stenron.  The PCs are all going to be members of that class, and are not going to be special or superior or different from that curve.  It's a diffferent curve from the general population, but the PC subset exists within this class of the CA set and uses the same frequency distribution.
So, yes it can, or so it seems to me.

The "undergraduate class of CA" is a demographic that exists within the setting, but "player character" is not. There is currently a 100% correspondence between these two groups, but there is nothing requiring it. If, at some point, you decide to allow a player character that is not a member of the undergraduate class of the Collegium Arcana, the demographics and probability distribution of "player characters" will have changed even though absolutely nothing about the in-setting demographics has changed. In other words, as I've been saying, the probability distribution of this group is solely determined by the output of your player character creation rules.

Your point is one of primacy; and I have never saId it cannot be done the way you suggest.  
But your contention that GMs never do or cannot do what I contend is interesting.  In your example above; The CA subset does have different character creation rules, modified from what we normally use ( a more generalized subset of the population).  And if I was to add in a new player from a different subset without switching to a different chargen, you'd be right.  But since that is not the way I would do it (I would use the more generalized Chargen for people who are in the 30 odd schools in Stenron, probably), then all the characters are still being built along the frequency distributions attributed to the in-setting group.

This particular conversation has borne some intersting intellectual fruit, making more more aware of how i do things and where I have changed to from where I started.  It is probably going to make more even more individualistic in the social aquisition charts.

It is not impossible for one to create a ruleset first, with a complete blank mind, with no concept or idea of what kind of game and fluff you want and then, after one finds a bunch of rules they like and that will play the way they want to, try to see what it spits out.  
But I cite Vreeg's first rule for a reason.  Most of the time, designers decide they are doing an 'Amber ' game, or a 'supers' game, and get a general idea of what the genre and setting, then start working with rulesets.

It's probably a mutual, reciprocal thing. Good ideas lead to mechanics, game mechanics that are fun necessitate changes in the setting, newly discovered fun things in the setting need to be modeled by mechanics, and so on. I think it often goes both ways and it's not possible to make a blanket statement of "fluff inspires crunch" or "crunch inspires fluff." I know that I personally have been inspired in both directions!

BAsed on the fact that I am still changing mechanics, there is something here.   There is a need to continually change and model.  Sometimes it is just more fun.  
However, I rarely see myself, or anyone, changing the set up of the setting based on a mechanic; almost always the opposite.  I have been part of hundereds of discussions where mechanics are discraded or modified based on their ability to model the game setting; I am honestly wracking my brain and memory for even one time that I was part of a GM changing their setting to better match up with a rulechange.  
I suppose I have seen anumber of GMs using canned rules being told or discoving that the fluff that they wrote did not match up to the rules as written; but it has always been my contention that in this case, this is the reason we homebrew rules and create houserules, specifically because the crunch is there to be the physics engine of the world, to model the setting.    I might need to keep working this more.  Maybe Xeviat's mindset is alien enough to help me out here.

[sparkletwist]

I feel like we've somewhat degenerated into a few nitpicky, intractable, pedantic disagreements and lost the main points we were even trying to discuss-- an all-too-common result of internet debates, I think. Let me try to get back to the points I was originally trying to make, instead.

On the topic of careful consideration and a null set: I really don't think you can be said to "carefully consider" a game mechanic while totally ignoring the preferences of most of your target audience, completely failing to produce workable math, and writing the actual description of the mechanic incoherently and badly. It just doesn't seem to be a particularly reasonable definition of "careful consideration," to me. Sure, sitting around and thinking for a few minutes about something and thinking "yeah this is good" and scribbling the first thing that comes to mind down is easy and every game designer can do it, but that's not what I meant at all; careful consideration means a certain amount of work and effort that not every game designer puts forth, unfortunately. I wish more would!

On the topic of Pathfinder being one game: Well, yes. But, without weighing the game systems for ubiquity and popularity, at least to some degree, the analysis becomes meaningless because every single game system gets one "vote" even if it's totally obscure, utterly broken, and even its own designer hates it. I thought the point was to talk about what's really out there and what one roll means in actual play to people who are actually playing. I guess this is extra-pedantic since you amended your statement... so anyway, with the popularity of D&D 3e, D&D 4e, and Pathfinder-- all of which use roughly similar math-- in mind, I stand by my opinion that in the typical game experience of today (by proportion of actual sessions played, at least) that any one single isolated die roll has far greater permanent consequences at character generation than in play.

On the topic of character generation: I've rethought and broadened my view on this, somewhat. It's occurred to me that the situation I've been seeing for player characters is true for any individual character in a setting. In real life, demographics are made up of individuals, but in a game setting, demographics are essentially constructs, and individuals are usually created after, as members of those demographics, and can be assigned traits according to their demographic. Characters also all belong to a certain dissociated category without in-setting meaning or relevance: "player character", "big bad evil guy", "random henchman", and so on, but this is separate and distinct from any in-setting demographic they may belong to, and retains its distinctiveness even if there is a 100% correspondence between a dissociated group and an in-setting demographic. What this means is that while you may decide on the general trends of an in-setting demographic, whatever method you choose for character generation of members of that demographic is a game mechanics choice and nothing but. The average trends of members of any dissociated category (as opposed to in-setting demographic) are simply the results of whatever character generation system you use, because some sort of character generation algorithm is the only way anyone ever exists in the setting anyway. If you want correspondence with some in-setting demographic, as long as your method results in blips that fit (within whatever your decided margin of error is) along the curve of whatever in-setting graph you've decided to use-- whether you got those blips through rolling, a point buy, giving everyone arbitrary numbers you decide, or whatever-- it is valid and no more "immersive" than any other method, because we're talking about procedures associated with completely dissociated categories anyway.

On the topic of fluff before crunch or crunch before fluff: I do think, in some ways, it really is an issue of "alien mindsets." As to your question, I can tell you that a little while ago a game group on IRC essentially used the following logic: "We want to play nWoD (new world of darkness) --> nWoD's mechanics really are only good for low-powered survival horror games --> ok, so a zombie apocalypse it is." Speaking of nWoD, I'd also put forth the idea that we have to consider a third category. Rather than simply "fluff productively influencing crunch" or "crunch productively influencing fluff," there is a third and most unfortunate state: cognitive dissonance where crunch and fluff that are entirely unsupportive of one another both just exist. (nWoD made me think of this because Vampire: the Requiem has this problem severely) In these cases, it's likely that in actual play the GM tweaks the nonfunctional crunch on the fly to match what the group expects from the fluff-- but, really, this means there really isn't any crunch, because the GM is just making it all up on the fly anyway. Fluff exists on its own without anything to model it, because the crunch that is supposed to isn't doing its job. I think this situation is more common than a lot of designers like to admit, which is why I am somewhat crunch-focused in my own designs-- to ensure that the fluff is well-supported.

[LordVreeg]

Dude, before I bother to replay in full, since I am at work, please look at you third category and cognitive dissonance and read Vreegs First rule again...

[sparkletwist]

Your "first rule," if I understand it correctly, is basically asserting that your crunch should accurately model your fluff or eventually your fluff will be twisted into whatever situation the output of your crunch reflects. This is reasonable and has merit, and I partially agree with it-- but I don't think it's quite a rule. It's likely to hold more true for "simulationist" gaming styles with a reliance on their "physics engine." On the other hand, a more "narrativist" GM in the cognitive dissonance situation would probably throw the crunch out the window (which I guess sort of makes it work in a half-assed way because now there is no crunch) and do what the fluff suggests, preferring to maintain the integrity of the narrative than worry about what the numbers say. World of Darkness games, both old and new, had a tendency to end up this way.