Nuts and bolts preview

[Skyman]

Nuts and bolts preview

Looks cool, nice and simple but with some depth. I like that language ability is worked right into the system instead of just having you pick up languages separately from ranked skills.

I know specializing will allow you to get a character with abilities that don't quite fit into the broader mold of the skills, but I do wonder whether the bonus dice mechanic will make those specialties less effective (since you are limited to counting a number of dice equal to your ability). For example, will a noble with status 5 be better at recognizing heraldry than a poor but knowledgeable maester with status 2 + specialty: heraldry 3B? Or is there a way to make a maester with heraldry knowledge equal to a high status character but without the status?

I also do kind of wish there was another rank between deficient and average, to simulate people who are a bit weak or a bit slow (mentally) compared to those who have severe disabilities. Though I guess that might be handled in other traits. It's not a huge deal anyway.

And I'm still wondering how this all works with combat! Looking forward to those quickstart rules...

Overall looking good so far. I like the skill list. I guess I'll hold off on coming up with skill guesses for the book characters until we have more info.

[Ser Imp]

I like what I'm seeing. Am I right in thinking that ASoIaF stats and skills are merged into one big list? That is, what are traditionally a character's "core stats" (eg. Strength, Dex, you know the drill) and what we usually think of as "skills" (eg. Animal Handling) are not distinct for game system purposes? If so, nifty.

The system appears to have an almost Call of Cthulhu straightforwardness, even moreso if I'm not off about stats vs. abilities. Nice.

[Steve Kenson]

Am I right in thinking that ASoIaF stats and skills are merged into one big list? That is, what are traditionally a character's "core stats" (eg. Strength, Dex, you know the drill) and what we usually think of as "skills" (eg. Animal Handling) are not distinct for game system purposes?

You are indeed correct, Ser Imp.

[Patchface]

I like it.

Judging from the short descriptions in the preview, some of the abilities seem to overlap to a certain extent (e. g. Agility/Athletics, Agility/Awareness as far as the reacting to surroundings part is concerned, or Knowledge/Status), but that might sort itself out as soon as we get more information.

I know specializing will allow you to get a character with abilities that don't quite fit into the broader mold of the skills, but I do wonder whether the bonus dice mechanic will make those specialties less effective (since you are limited to counting a number of dice equal to your ability).

It seems to me that the bonus dice mechanic can be quite effective. Example:

Ser Jamie has (or once had) the ability Fighting 6 (Specialty: Longsword 6B). Fighting with a warhammer, he gets to roll 6D6 and adds the results. With his longsword, however, he gets to roll 12D6 and adds the best six results. That's essentially the same as re-rolling his base 6D and getting to keep the better rolls (I think). So fighting with a longsword should improve his chances of success dramatically...

Then of course, the relative effectiveness of specialties depends on what system you want to compare them with.

[Zapp]

It seems to me that the bonus dice mechanic can be quite effective. Example:

Ser Jamie has (or once had) the ability Fighting 6 (Specialty: Longsword 6B). Fighting with a warhammer, he gets to roll 6D6 and adds the results. With his longsword, however, he gets to roll 12D6 and adds the best six results. That's essentially the same as re-rolling his base 6D and getting to keep the better rolls (I think). So fighting with a longsword should improve his chances of success dramatically...

Warhammer average result: 21 (3.5*6)
Longsword average result: 28.3

I'll leave it up to you to decide whether a 35% increase is good or not

Regardless, tis a lot of dice...

[Zapp]

I'll leave it up to you to decide whether a 35% increase is good or not

Which may actually be not trivial at all.

If the combat system only requires us to reach a predetermined difficulty, then the interesting stat isn't the average roll. It would be "what percentage of my rolls reach that particular number?".

Which means you need to know the shape of the bell curve of your roll. Plotting that is beyond the scope of this post, but I can give an example.

Say the fighter in our example needs to reach 20. (In the real game, I wouldn't be surprised if this number fluctuates with the skill and actions of your opponent).

Using a warhammer, we would expect this number to be slightly above 50% (because the average is 21, and indeed "average" means "where half the results are higher, half are lower"). The number is actually 63.6% which might stretch your definition of "slightly" slightly but the bell curve is very flat in the middle, throwing six dice.

Using the longsword, what do we get?

We get 99.1%!

Or, in other words, the risk of failing to reach 20 drops from 36.4% to less than 1% when we switch from warhammer to longsword!

Yes, the average score is 7 points higher, but more importantly, the bell shape of the distribution curve shifts along upwards, to the point where not reaching 20 is almost impossible!

This is the true power of getting those six bonus dice, not the increase in average score!

[Patchface]

Interesting. I gotta admit: When I wrote the above, I was really acting on a hunch; I hadn't done the math myself.

Warhammer average result: 21 (3.5*6)
Longsword average result: 28.3

I'll leave it up to you to decide whether a 35% increase is good or not

I think it is. Granted, 35% doesn't sound like much, but increasing your average by 7 does seem like a rather substantial improvement.

Consider this: A legendary character with the Ability Fighting 7 would only have an average result of 24.5. Even a godlike character with Fighting 8 (not possible in this system, I know) would only score a flat 28 in average. (That's assuming those two characters don't get to use their specialties, of course.)

Or, in other words, the risk of failing to reach 20 drops from 36.4% to less than 1% when we switch from warhammer to longsword!

Good to know that my hunch wasn't all wrong...

Thanks for doing the math and for sharing, Zapp!

(BTW, is there any program/website available that lets you calculate dice probabilities with the option of dropping the lowest [n] results?)

[Zapp]

(BTW, is there any program/website available that lets you calculate dice probabilities with the option of dropping the lowest [n] results?)

I don't know. However, here's my simple program for those of you with access to a program code compiler/interpreter (this is written in BlitzMax BASIC, but should port easily to any language with a Sort() routine, less super easy if your PL doesn't have a predefined sort. Or arrays ):

Code: Select all

Global roll[12]
SeedRnd MilliSecs()
success = 0
failure = 0
For Local y = 1 To 1000000
  For Local z = 1 To 12
    roll[z] = Rand (1,6)
  Next
  roll.Sort
  rollresult = roll[7] + roll[8] + roll[9] + roll[10] + roll[11] + roll[12]
  If rollresult > 19 Then success = success +1 Else failure = failure + 1
Next
Print "Success= " + success + ", failures= " + failure


(Yes, it's one ugly hack.)

This particular routine displays the success rate of "roll 12 dice, drop six lowest, reach 20+" (you should get approx 992 000 successes for every million tries assuming my RNG isn't broken). It's an easy tweak to make it roll other Tests...

[_x_]

Hmm, I do see some 4e references in there (paragon skill level, Thievery skill )

Also, it also seems GR plan to release a basic edition of the ruleset (i.e. ruleset without ASOIAF flavoring) if its possible. I just get the vibes, especially seeing as how it seems to have a built in sanity mechanic.

Only thing putting me off is the seeming bucketload of dice, I HATE that. Its IMO the antithesis of roleplaying and one of the reasons I hate the Storyteller system, and basically anything by white wolf.

But hey, I wont rag it till I play it. I will certainly buy the core rulebook no matter what! (I still have my original, GoO limited edition 580+ page AGoT rpg. and will be using it in my next asoiaf game )