Dice code
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MU dice commands ought to show every individual die's results.
They ought to also allow players to change the colours of their dice so you can do something of a virtual version of flinging a recalcitrant one away and digging out another.
"... you'll find the story doesn’t end how you think, and the most important characters aren’t who you expect.” - Penny 40 to Derek, The Magicians S04E07 ‘The Side Effect’
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“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@Ganymede Because players throw fits and cry foul when their McAwesomePants character fails at something if they can't "see" the actual die results.
(They sometimes throw fits anyway, but slightly less often.)
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Because players throw fits and cry foul when their McAwesomePants character fails at something if they can't "see" the actual die results.
Constructively speaking, I prefer not knowing the die results and playing through.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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I can function either way but the dork in me loves seeing how all my dice rolls came out. THE NUMBERS. THE NUMBERS BETRAYING ME. It's fascinating.
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Dice are magical things that are unknowable. Regardless if you can see every number or not.
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MU dice commands ought to show every individual die's results.
This part I agree with, if for no other reason than I have seen dice code malfunction in weird ways. Having an extra layer of 'make sure all the moving parts are moving correctly' is good, and some systems have special rules based on how the dice come out. If you're going to generate the numbers, there really isn't a reason not to show the numbers generated.
They ought to also allow players to change the colours of their dice so you can do something of a virtual version of flinging a recalcitrant one away and digging out another.
This part I am not with you on. Jesus, players already get wild with eye-searing ansi in names and comtitles and stuff, can you imagine what kind of painful rainbow vomit we'd see if they could change the colors of everything and make other people see that shit too?
Better to just do this in your client.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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Constructively speaking, I prefer not knowing the die results and playing through.
Everyone's different of course. I can only speak to the generalities of feedback I've received in the dozen years of working on FS3.
1st edition took advantage of the fact that it's a computer system to have an opaque, non-dice-based roll mechanic, and OMG the resistance was staggering.
2nd edition used a (virtual) dice-based resolution system, but the actual die results weren't shown, only the summary (Good Success, etc.). The sheer volume of "that can't possibly be right" skepticism over bad rolls was still pretty crazy.
Later 2nd ed. patches and 3rd edition prints the dice right there next to the summary. You still get some folks doing a facepalm or whining or whatnot when they roll 15 dice and get no successes, but at least they're (usually) no longer crying foul at the system itself.
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Later 2nd ed. patches and 3rd edition prints the dice right there next to the summary. You still get some folks doing a facepalm or whining or whatnot when they roll 15 dice and get no successes, but at least they're (usually) no longer crying foul at the system itself.
I was admittedly a little baffled by the combat system until @Seraphim73 walked me through a combat log.
And now I am gleefully learning how tactical combat in FS3 can be and it's kind of amazing. You can be a hyper-badass sniper and miss a lot. I love it.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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@Derp Well the combat system is a different animal because it's still opaque. (a lot of the mechanics are complex so it's not really possible to "show the dice" in a meaningful way in the main display.) I was referring to plain rolls.
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Having an extra layer of 'make sure all the moving parts are moving correctly' is good, and some systems have special rules based on how the dice come out.
If a game has special rules about results, such as exploding dice, then I concur.
If you're going to generate the numbers, there really isn't a reason not to show the numbers generated.
Sure there is: in many systems, whether you succeed by a factor of 1 or 10 is irrelevant -- all that matters is that you succeed. On such games, the actual result is irrelevant.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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Sure there is: in many systems, whether you succeed by a factor of 1 or 10 is irrelevant -- all that matters is that you succeed. On such games, the actual result is irrelevant.
Which doesn't rule out things like code malfunctions.
I mean, sure, you don't necessarily have to display the raw results by default, but there is no reason why they should not be able to be pulled up in a log. If you're generating a number, and saving it to an array of some kind (presumably) then it's a very small step to save the array results somewhere for the curious.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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Aside from people whinging it's because if you do +roll dexterity+basketwarping and the system isn't set up to say "You don't have a skill called basketwarping" then you probably won't know that your points in basketweaving were not applied. This is pretty much inevitable when you get to skills with more than one word names, as players forget if it's space, dash, or underscore on this particular game.
Now, colours...
"... you'll find the story doesn’t end how you think, and the most important characters aren’t who you expect.” - Penny 40 to Derek, The Magicians S04E07 ‘The Side Effect’
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and the system isn't set up to say "You don't have a skill called basketwarping"
Then it should be setup to say that.
He/Him
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@Tinuviel This is an inferior solution, as it doesn't solve the whinging and it take away the player's silly toy of +rolling butt-slapping and other non-existent things that amuse them.
"... you'll find the story doesn’t end how you think, and the most important characters aren’t who you expect.” - Penny 40 to Derek, The Magicians S04E07 ‘The Side Effect’
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@il-volpe Then write your own dice code if you want it to do pointless things.
He/Him
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I don't know about everyone else but having the actual dice math can be an aid for RP. As a writer if I succeed at something I shouldn't succeed at and do so by a wide margin I might describe that differently than if I scrap by with a just enough roll to succeed.
Likewise if I fail by a huge amount vs a small amount on something I should be a master in that might alter how I describe the situation and what led to the failure.
Maybe I'm just a lazy writer and like to lean on RNG as a way to give me ideas but I certainly find value in knowing the # or a more gradient success/failure would achieve the same thing. I guess =(
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@Jeshin Lots of dice code has that baked in though. It might say "Jeshin rolls Athletics - Great Success" or "Jeshin rolls Melee and gets 2 successes" or something like that based on the system. You don't have to provide the raw dice results to provide meaningful output. But many players still want to see the dice.
