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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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 Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 11:45 am Post subject: |
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| atgxtg wrote: | | might be what Garhal meant, but it wasn't what the phase means. It is like using the term astrology instead of astronomy. |
 So invent a new name for it. The Bell Curve Rule, the Law of Mediocrity, whatever. The point still stands, and arguing about what to call it is beside the point.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Bren
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Joined: 19 Aug 2010
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | atgxtg wrote: | | might be what Garhal meant, but it wasn't what the phase means. It is like using the term astrology instead of astronomy. |
So invent a new name for it. The Bell Curve Rule, the Law of Mediocrity, whatever. The point still stands, and arguing about what to call it is beside the point. |
I agree the name for it is not that important. More concerning was that it never clear to me what it was, since near as I can tell garhkal was assuming more than half of the commanders in a chain would make their roll and that this fact by some vague and nameless law somehow implied that most of the chains of command would all succeed in making their roll. In fact most of the chains will have at least one member who fails to make the command roll, thereby breaking the chain. Therefore most of the chains fail. So whatever the law is called it doesn't mean what you think it means. |
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atgxtg
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Joined: 22 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 2:42 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | atgxtg wrote: | | might be what Garhal meant, but it wasn't what the phase means. It is like using the term astrology instead of astronomy. |
So invent a new name for it. The Bell Curve Rule, the Law of Mediocrity, whatever. The point still stands, and arguing about what to call it is beside the point. |
The thing is, I can't read someone's mind to know what he/she/it intended. If someone calls something a cat, I assume that they mean cat, not dog, mouse, or moose. Those other things all ha ve understood meanings. Ditto the "law of averages".
As for his "probability chain".
1) You can't do it (because the guy getting the bonus has to be commanded by all those giving him the bonus).
2) Even if you could do it, it probably wouldn't work, as the more commanders arein the chain, the higher the probability that someone would blow the roll. At least eventually.
3) Even if you could do it, and everyone rolled good, it wouldn't make any sense, since having a half dozen commanders ordering a guy to shoot isn't going to make him more effective (quite the opposite).
4) If you could do it, not worry about the probabilities, and could somehow justify multiple commanders, whay would you stop at 5 or 6 commanders? Why not have a few guys in the chain up other people's Command skill, riase the probability of success and pile more guys onto the pile.
Frankly, we could end up with an infinite number of monkeys manning the guns here.
5) Assuming any or all of the above, do we want to go through this procedure for each shot from each capital ship? Wouldn't it be better to just adjust the cap on Command skill and bypass all this die rolling? After all, that is what combined actions are for in the first place.
Why not combine all these combined actions into one combined action in the first place? |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | I agree the name for it is not that important. More concerning was that it never clear to me what it was, since near as I can tell garhkal was assuming more than half of the commanders in a chain would make their roll and that this fact by some vague and nameless law somehow implied that most of the chains of command would all succeed in making their roll. In fact most of the chains will have at least one member who fails to make the command roll, thereby breaking the chain. Therefore most of the chains fail. So whatever the law is called it doesn't mean what you think it means. |
It is a dice rolling phenomenon whereby, if multiple dice are used in a roll, the odds of a rolling a given numerical result increase the closer that result is to the median value in the set of possible results. Perhaps the "Rolling a 3" rule would be better applied to NPCs only, especially in a combat setting. That way, any mishaps would be the result of the player's roll, not the roll of an NPC.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Bren
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:47 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | It is a dice rolling phenomenon whereby, if multiple dice are used in a roll, the odds of a rolling a given numerical result increase the closer that result is to the median value in the set of possible results. Perhaps the "Rolling a 3" rule would be better applied to NPCs only, especially in a combat setting. That way, any mishaps would be the result of the player's roll, not the roll of an NPC. |
It's been many years since my last math class but iir, the term you are struggling for is normal distribution. When rolling a large number of D6s the results fall in a normal distribution. This is due to the Central Limit Theorem, which states conditions under which the mean of a sufficiently large number of independent random variables, each with finite mean and variance, will be approximately normally distributed. Fair D6's are independent, with finite mean and variance.
And from a game design standpoint, I would agree that "take 3" makes the most sense for NPCs. And I've always said that for both PCs and NPCs take 3 has the advantage of speeding up play by reducing rolling a lot of dice to fairly simple multiplication. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | And from a game design standpoint, I would agree that "take 3" makes the most sense for NPCs. And I've always said that for both PCs and NPCs take 3 has the advantage of speeding up play by reducing rolling a lot of dice to fairly simple multiplication. |
Maybe that would be a solution to atgxtg's original question. The current stats for starship design do not easily take into account the possibility of characters being in command. Maybe what is needed is a table of some kind to give base command difficulties to command a large group or a starship. Rather than trying to calculate the number of persons involved, the ship or unit would just have a base difficulty number, with modifiers based on circumstances (such as damage or communications disruption).
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Bren
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 5:06 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | And from a game design standpoint, I would agree that "take 3" makes the most sense for NPCs. And I've always said that for both PCs and NPCs take 3 has the advantage of speeding up play by reducing rolling a lot of dice to fairly simple multiplication. |
Maybe that would be a solution to atgxtg's original question. The current stats for starship design do not easily take into account the possibility of characters being in command. Maybe what is needed is a table of some kind to give base command difficulties to command a large group or a starship. Rather than trying to calculate the number of persons involved, the ship or unit would just have a base difficulty number, with modifiers based on circumstances (such as damage or communications disruption). |
Interesting. So ships would have a command difficulty. The difficulty would be based on various factors including training professionalism, and morale of crew (e.g. civilian, militia, regular recruit, veteran, elite, etc.), number of crew, crew casualties, damage to the vessel (which may make communication difficult or provide conflicting priorities like mere survival to the crew), etc.
I like the idea that some commanders may have a sufficient command skill to command a corvette but not have a good enough command to effectively command a Star Destroyer. Or they may have sufficient command to control their ship outside of combat, but in combat - especially after taking casualties and damage - their skill may not be good enough to get the job done.
Is this what you are thinking? |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 5:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Is this what you are thinking? |
Exactly.
I have even played around with the idea of creating stat blocks for individual ground units, so that an infantry unit would have stats of its own that would enable a commander of ground units to recreate a large scale surface battle in similar fashion to how a battle would be played out between two starships or two characters. I haven't put a lot of work into it, but the way I figure, it would be based on three steps: 1). Generic unit type (infantry, armor, mobile, airborne, etc.), 2). Specific unit type (stormtroopers, alliance regulars, wookiees, etc.), and 3). Unit size (played like a scale system, where a squad or platoon would be the equivalent of Character scale, while a Corps or Army would be Death Star scale).
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Bren
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Interesting. I recall you mentioning that. Sounds something like miniatures combat. If it was a simple resolution system I'd like it. If it was more like a miniatures battle that would be too much work to resolve combat for my purposes. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Interesting. I recall you mentioning that. Sounds something like miniatures combat. If it was a simple resolution system I'd like it. If it was more like a miniatures battle that would be too much work to resolve combat for my purposes. |
I wouldn't want it to be miniatures-based. IMO, that would depend too much on the player's tactical and strategic ability, not the character's. Right now, it's little more than an idea, as there are a lot of factors to consider.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Bren
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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Looking back, what I wrote could have been more clear. I meant stat blocks for units sounded like the rules for unit type and strenght in miniatures combat not that the resolution system would be a miniatures battle.
I agree with you that I would like the SW large scale combat system to be a faster resolution system that requires little tactical skill from the players. I know you are not a Pendragon fan, but IIR it had a fairly simple system that had different unit strengths based on the average stats for the units (avg. knights, superior knights, etc.) and used Battle Skill as a surrogate for Tactics. It also used Battle Skill for a character's abilty to succeed, survive, and remain uninjured in a large battle. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 8:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | Looking back, what I wrote could have been more clear. I meant stat blocks for units sounded like the rules for unit type and strenght in miniatures combat not that the resolution system would be a miniatures battle.
I agree with you that I would like the SW large scale combat system to be a faster resolution system that requires little tactical skill from the players. I know you are not a Pendragon fan, but IIR it had a fairly simple system that had different unit strengths based on the average stats for the units (avg. knights, superior knights, etc.) and used Battle Skill as a surrogate for Tactics. It also used Battle Skill for a character's abilty to succeed, survive, and remain uninjured in a large battle. |
Hmm. That sounds like an interesting read... I don't have the funds to spare to go looking for a copy now, but there is always the future...
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 1:30 pm Post subject: Oops |
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I posted an idea on the command and big ships idea, but I messed up and made a new topic. Sorry.  |
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