FS3

[faraday]

@The-Sands Thank you for doing that. I just ran like a few thousand samples so yeah, there's probably some weird random-randomness in there.

[Thenomain]

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in FS3:

FS3 dice are very forgiving until they're...randomly not

Like that time you run into a door for no particular reason, no matter how good you are at door-opening. Tell me that it's never happened. Or missing that step on those stairs you've taken one million times. Or when your life was on the line and you missed the turn by a mere foot, sending you careening off the motorcycle and ended up hospitalized for months.

...

Just a little context shift can change a lot of perceptions. I recognize and will call out that Faraday said that she didn't know how to stop it from happening, and then WTFE offered some statistical recommendations.

...

The bit about people seeing that a game is FS3 and will immediately say "no" seems to me, a complete outsider, nothing to do with statistical probability curves. I mean, seriously, how many math nerds do you think there are analyzing game systems before deciding where to play? I'd put some money down that it's something else, tho making the expectation of skill vs. result more consistent probably wouldn't hurt.

Unless, I mean, the "trusting your life to the statistical edge of a knife doesn't always end nice" is intended.

[The Sands]

@faraday Yeah. Running samples and looking at the data is the 'Monte Carlo' method for generating probability curves. It's good for a quick and dirty way to draw your image but occasionally you'll get hiccups like that. However, calculating the exact probabilities can be a massive headache. I'm just lucky because I've got a really good head for probability mathematics.

[faraday]

@Thenomain said in FS3:

Just a little context shift can change a lot of perceptions. I recognize and will call out that Faraday said that she didn't know how to stop it from happening, and then WTFE offered some statistical recommendations.

Well, yeah, except 1.5 of the things (don't roll for trivial stuff and luck points) are already in FS3 I only counted the 'trivial stuff' as 0.5 because I realize that WTFE's way of doing it is different. But it's trying to address the same basic problem.

The bit about people seeing that a game is FS3 and will immediately say "no" seems to me, a complete outsider, nothing to do with statistical probability curves.

The three big complaints I get about FS3 are:

1. Die results (perplexing, but maybe they just haven't played on other dice-using MU*s to realize that you fail just as often/more often there?)

2. The Chargen/XP balance thing that comes up on pretty much every FS3 thread here. I get why people don't like it. I don't care. I like it and it's my system. I respect their right to hate it just as much as I hate starting off at level 1 when my friends twist my arm into playing D20.

3. Having had a bad experience on a game. As @Three-Eyed-Crow pointed out, there have been some pretty weird FS3 setups out there. Giant "Action Skill" lists, bizarrely low chargen point limits, befuddling rating limits, imbalanced combats, trying to graft on superpowers... the list goes on. Some of that is on me for not providing good enough guidance on how to use the system effectively. But even the guidance I did provide was often ignored. So. Meh. Perils of making an open toolkit I guess.

[Seraphim73]

@Lotherio I love the idea of using vehicles as units. Very creative. I think the reason so many people say that FS3 isn't really great for Fantasy is that its focus is on ranged combat rather than melee combat. The inability to have your defense skill based on the weapon you're wielding is a pretty heavy downside for balanced melee combat (unless you only have a single Melee skill, like most Sci-Fi uses of FS3 do, along with every (I think) FS3 game that @faraday has run).

You end up with not-quite-satisfactory solutions such as a Defense skill (@faraday hates this one in particular, I know) or having your weapon skill count as your ability to defend against that weapon as well as to attack with it (which is clumsy and hard for people to wrap their heads around), or just having a single melee skill for all weapons (nice and simple, but... really simple).

Combat magic works fine, it's just those magical applications that don't directly deal damage that are more complicated to work out (they can be done, they just require a bunch of passing and oversight by the GM).

On another topic, it's important to remember that in combat, you're not (as far as I recall) rolling against another skill, you're rolling against a set defense number, so the probabilities in the chart work for versus rolls, but not for combat (although the Skill X vs 3 line works neatly for combat).

@WTFE said in FS3:

Apparently I was playing earlier versions of the game that were more prone to failures.
Nope. I am reporting on my experiences with the FS3 system and why it is that "we use FS3" is a mark against a game as a result.

So you're complaining about a past version of the game, based on your perception on a situation where (I think) we all admit that our perceptions are biased to remember failures over successes, and you don't think that you might be protesting too much? Really?

@faraday said in FS3:

I hate starting off at level 1 when my friends twist my arm into playing D20.

Well they're just doing it wrong, unless they like playing schlubs. I've always found level 1-3 to be pretty dang boring, you generally have one "trick," and everything hangs on a knife's edge because you have relatively tiny amounts of HP.

[faraday]

@Seraphim73 said in FS3:

You end up with not-quite-satisfactory solutions such as a Defense skill (@faraday hates this one in particular, I know) or having your weapon skill count as your ability to defend against that weapon as well as to attack with it (which is clumsy and hard for people to wrap their heads around), or just having a single melee skill for all weapons (nice and simple, but... really simple).

Actually in 3rd Ed melee combat defends with the melee weapon skill of the defender.

So if Bob(Sword) is attacking Harvey(Axe), Bob attacks with his Sword skill and Harvey defends with his Axe skill.

Personally I still favor just having a Melee skill because of the "lean skill list" thing... and it really bugs me when a master swordsman can't fight worth a darn with a knife. Or at least have broad categories like "Blades". Anyway, YMMV but the options aren't as weird in 3rd Ed.

[WTFE]

@Thenomain said in FS3:

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in FS3:

FS3 dice are very forgiving until they're...randomly not

Like that time you run into a door for no particular reason, no matter how good you are at door-opening. Tell me that it's never happened. Or missing that step on those stairs you've taken one million times. Or when your life was on the line and you missed the turn by a mere foot, sending you careening off the motorcycle and ended up hospitalized for months.

More relevantly, tell me that's never happened in the fiction that most MUSHes are trying to emulate. Stupid random shit happens all the time in real life. In, say, Arnie flicks ... not so much.

Setbacks happen in heroic fiction (and related subgenres) all the time ... but they do not happen at random. They happen for a purpose that furthers the story. Obviously this ideal cannot be reached 100% in a game, but it is something games should at least strive for, and one of the first tools in the toolbox for accomplishing this is various means to mitigate the randomness. Not eliminate it, note. mitigate it.

The bit about people seeing that a game is FS3 and will immediately say "no" seems to me, a complete outsider, nothing to do with statistical probability curves.

Yeah, I don't give a shit about the "probability curves". I give a shit about the feet-on-the-ground experience. And my experience with (previous versions of) FS3 has been almost, but not quite, uniformly negative and specifically in the realm of "the sheet writes cheques the system can't cash". Use of FS3 isn't an "autonope" but it's a fairly thick black mark against a game. Maybe the new system will fix this. (Almost certainly improved documentation will help too.) But I've had too many bad experiences with the system across several games now for me to just forget it all and try again with cleared preconceptions.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@faraday said in FS3:

3. Having had a bad experience on a game. As @Three-Eyed-Crow pointed out, there have been some pretty weird FS3 setups out there. Giant "Action Skill" lists, bizarrely low chargen point limits, befuddling rating limits, imbalanced combats, trying to graft on superpowers... the list goes on. Some of that is on me for not providing good enough guidance on how to use the system effectively. But even the guidance I did provide was often ignored. So. Meh. Perils of making an open toolkit I guess.

On the other hand, this customization can also be rather great. @Tat at X-Factor really dug into the code, streamlined a lot of the commands, and made it workable for a mutant/super-powered setting. AresMUSH being more coder-newb friendly presents more opportunities for stuff like this. And more opportunities for randos with bizarre 50-long lists of action skills, but the internet is full of bizarre randos who'd probably f up any system. I view the malleability of it as a feature, not a bug.

[WTFE]

@Seraphim73 said in FS3:

@WTFE said in FS3:

Apparently I was playing earlier versions of the game that were more prone to failures.
Nope. I am reporting on my experiences with the FS3 system and why it is that "we use FS3" is a mark against a game as a result.

So you're complaining about a past version of the game, based on your perception on a situation where (I think) we all admit that our perceptions are biased to remember failures over successes, and you don't think that you might be protesting too much? Really?

Yes. The question I always have when people say "but have you tried X version?" is "how many fucking times do I have to ram my head into a brick wall before I'm allowed to conclude that brick walls fucking HURT no matter what colour they're painted!?" I didn't play on one game with FS3. I've played on at least a half-dozen. FS3 is now, confusingly, on its third major version (and were there minor versions in between?). This is the third version made by the same person who seems to have the same specific goals in mind (very narrow subset of genres, an insistence on low numbers of rolls while at the same time relying on purely stochastic processes, etc.). MAYBE the things I found so off-putting are fixed ... but I'm really not in that big a hurry to ram my head into the brick wall again.

[faraday]

@WTFE said in FS3:

More relevantly, tell me that's never happened in the fiction that most MUSHes are trying to emulate. Stupid random shit happens all the time in real life. In, say, Arnie flicks ... not so much.

I actually agree with you, but that comes down to the age-old question of: How much are MUSHes a game and how much are they a story?

In a story, setbacks happen, like you say, to further the story. In a RPG, setbacks happen just because you rolled snakeyes.

Personally I favor a heavier emphasis on story, which is why my games always have the rule: Players are always free to skip rolls and negotiate a resolution as befits the story, as long as everyone agrees. Other people like the "game-y" ness of random rolls. They're not wrong, but you can't have both. If you're going to roll for silly stuff, then sometimes you're going to walk into a door.

@WTFE said in FS3:

S3 is now, confusingly, on its third major version (and were there minor versions in between?).

Geez, I'm so sorry that making three versions in ten years was such a cardinal sin. I guess next time I won't bother making any improvements ever?

[Thenomain]

@faraday said in FS3:

1. Die results (perplexing, but maybe they just haven't played on other dice-using MU*s to realize that you fail just as often/more often there?)

Thinking about this: It is so easy to manipulate the advantages in World of Darkness games that it's probably us WoDers.

3. [..] But even the guidance I did provide was often ignored.

This is more what I was aiming at. It's been a while, so drawing out that your toolkit is a toolkit and not meant to be a completed RPG system means that you don't have an ultimate control over how people experience the game, yet things that aren't about the dice roller, as interesting as they are, are not under much your control.

--

@Seraphim73 said in FS3:

@faraday said in FS3:

I hate starting off at level 1 when my friends twist my arm into playing D20.

Well they're just doing it wrong, unless they like playing schlubs. I've always found level 1-3 to be pretty dang boring, you generally have one "trick," and everything hangs on a knife's edge because you have relatively tiny amounts of HP.

I fucking love 1-3, but I love low fantasy. I love games where "how can I eat?" is an honest question, because it builds my perception of the character, and when they survive to level 16 I feel like I've done something epic.

My last D&D character, many many years ago, started as a completely green schlub who lived in the part of the country where many world-famous adventurers came from (Forgotten Realms, The Dales). But he wanted to go out and Be An Adventurer And Do Good For The World!!!! Worse, his family was a very well-off middle-class merchant family, so his entire story was about him learning the hardships of choosing to be essentially lower-class and spurning his father's trade was challenging. Sure you can do that starting at level 3, too, but I don't see D&D as a wargame simulation, even though that's how it was designed, but as a toolkit to tell stories in a particular setting.

This isn't relevant, but I loved that character. Our adventuring party had done a crap-ton of Good(tm) by the end of the campaign. I like to think that my Generic Fighter character retired after a scant five years of adventuring a mature and stable man, and husband, to help expand his father's business. I may never know. (Though he probably got into politics, to be honest. By the time we were done, running a successful horse breeding merchant business probably was too small a world to him. His wife, on the other hand, probably would've done while her husband was out playing Hero. Neutral Good. It was fucking awesome.)

(another edit):

His wife was one of a pair of Damsels In Distress that our group rescued in a situation so cliche that I was fully expecting them to be polymorphed demons or something -- thus breaking cliche by following a different cliche! They were practically strong-armed into getting married by a crazy hermit dude who worshiped the absentee First God, Ao. During an adventure. She was an NPC who the DM thought it would be interesting to make her the daughter of a somewhat powerful merchant trader, too. I think this was one of the ways that our DM rewarded us instead of yet another boring "you discover 100 gold pieces". 500gp for returning the man's eldest daughter? Nice. Introducing a reoccurring character? Priceless.

Oh yeah, and she was wicked practical. Pairing up with a kind of ditzy goodie-goodie Adventurer was a funny and meaningful balance.

I like getting XP, but things like this are why I RP. You can't make a stat or rewards system that does this.

[mietze]

Uhhhh why is a developer who shares their system being criticized for making improvements or changes and making them available to people 3 times in 10 years?

Like...wow. It's ok to not like something, but man.

[Thenomain]

@mietze said in FS3:

Uhhhh why is a developer who shares their system being criticized for making improvements or changes and making them available to people 3 times in 10 years?

As long as it's constructive, and mostly has been. WTFE is just being a jerk about it because I think he doesn't know how not to be, but his points were taken by Faraday, who is amazingly patient with us. We're probably not as bad as corporate management.

[mietze]

@Thenomain

Yeah specific issues were, which is pretty cool. Just seems weird to also bitch about someone updating their free thing 3 times in 10 years like that's just excessive or something.

But, judging from the comments my developer spouse has to deal with on his company page, I suppose not super out of the realm of weird gamer whining.

[Thenomain]

@mietze said in FS3:

weird gamer whining

Gamers are usually both:

1. Math geeks, or sensitive to math or the results of math. In "Indie Gaming" terms, they're gameists, looking for how to win, how to use the system to get the result that they, as players, want. This makes a lot of sense since D&D began its life as a series of war-game simulations for the armed forces.

2. Privileged. This is a hobby, this is how we spend our free time, and the term "power fantasy" doesn't begin to cover it. Whether or not you treat the game as a recreation of your favorite TV show or movie (ignoring that these characters fail all the time) or as something else.

I don't find this weird, I find this tired. You have no idea how long I've watched @WTFE try to play Alpha Nerd on these boards, shouting people down rather than working with them to unveil issues. But I can't blame him, since I've seen people on games yell each other down for decades.

Faraday isn't a yelling kind of person. I mistakenly tried to defend her in threads; she is not stupid or cruel and while I get that way when people yell at her, it's mostly because I'm afraid that she will do what all adults do in the face of people acting like complete dicks and leave.

Maybe that's the goal. People telling her that she's wrong want her to leave. I don't know if this classification of people is a "troll", but I do, like you, think it's a dick move.

[mietze]

Hubby develops war game simulators (and for a few years it was used by a branch of the US military and NATO). LOL. I always thought those people would be less crazy than mushers. But......nooooooope.

[WTFE]

@mietze said in FS3:

Uhhhh why is a developer who shares their system being criticized for making improvements or changes and making them available to people 3 times in 10 years?

Point me to where I criticized for making improvements or changes please? (Hint: this isn't possible.)

The confusion stems from several things:

1. The name FS3 already looks like it has a version number in it. For example I use the programming language "Logtalk". The current version of it is called "Logtalk3". There is no confusion here because Logtalk3 is just shorthand for Logtalk 3.x.y: it is the third major revision of Logtalk which has itself had several minor revisions and several more bug fix releases. On the other hand I also use the programming language "SNOBOL4". This is confusing because there never was really a publicly released SNOBOL1, SNOBOL2, SNOBOL3, etc. SNOBOL4 is the only version of SNOBOL anybody alive is likely to have ever used. (There's an extreme outside chance someone is alive who once saw SNOBOL3 if they worked with Ralph Griswold back when he was making the language.) The confusion is further magnified by the fact that there were several versions of SNOBOL4 proper. When you have a number in the name of the language the issue of version numbers gets muddled. FS3 is more like SNOBOL4 than Logtalk3 in terms of generating potential confusion. This, however, is a minor source of confusion. The remaining two are the big ones.
2. The fact that there are multiple versions isn't all that clear. Pick a game, any game, that uses some version of FS3. Look for the mentioning of versions in the various +help/+whatever commands. (Hint: This may not actually be possible in a lot of games.) This leads to problems like two people on two different games "using FS3" talking past each other because they don't realize that each game is using a completely different engine underneath. It also leads to disorientation when moving from one "FS3" game to another "FS3" game and having ... an entirely different experience. (This aside from the fact that apparently some games customized FS3 to be unrecognizable on top of this; that's on them, though, not on the system or its developer.)
3. Even if the fact that there are multiple versions is made clear in a game, and the version identified is also made clear, the documentation that can be found is for the latest version. So I may be playing on an FS32 game and when I go to the docs for how the system and its commands are supposed to work I read ... FS33 docs. So I'm told commands exist that don't, or I see sample output that isn't.

So the confusion isn't because "ZOMG THREE VERSIONS IN TEN YEARS!" it's because the versioning isn't communicated well, and the docs aren't kept around for those poor schmucks on games using old versions. (And, as a minor addition, because the name itself looks like it has a version number built in which obfuscates the existence of multiple versions.)

[faraday]

@Thenomain said in FS3:

People telling her that she's wrong want her to leave.

Appreciate the support. Though I don't mind being told I'm wrong. I'm wrong a lot. I don't mind if people don't like my system. There are lots of RPG systems out there I don't like. (Though it irks me a little when they hate the toolkit for the way people chose to use the tools. If you played on my game and still hate it, though - fair play.) What I do mind is hostility and insults. I just don't need that crap in my pretendy funtime games.

[Seraphim73]

@faraday said in FS3:

Actually in 3rd Ed melee combat defends with the melee weapon skill of the defender.

Wonderful! I think that this was my number one complaint with FS3 (that you were even slightly likely to change). Between that, variable armor, and 'open' vehicles, it's suddenly much, much easier to make a fantasy game with FS3 3.0. I tend to agree on weapon skills though, back on t5W, we used Blades, Bludgeons, and Spears.

@Thenomain said in FS3:

I fucking love 1-3, but I love low fantasy.

I'm totally down for levels 1-3 so long as the expectation is schlubs. If the point of the game is "can I survive long enough to not suck at everything but my one trick," then I'm good with that. Most of the low-level games that I've played in have basically treated levels 1-5ish as painful prerequisites to epic fantasy. I totally understand that that is my own experience with the GMs that I've had, but... eh. Unless I knew the GM was going to be playing an "gritty, tense, survival" sort of low-level game, I probably wouldn't be particularly interested... or I'd see those levels as the painful prerequisites to an actual character with options.

[faraday]

@WTFE said in FS3:

2. The fact that there are multiple versions isn't all that clear. Pick a game, any game, that uses some version of FS3. Look for the mentioning of versions in the various +help/+whatever commands.

You mean like BSGU where it has blurbs like this in the in-game help and the wiki?

This game uses the FS3 skills system, Third Edition. The complete rulebook can be found online: FS3 Player's Guide.

Or perhaps WiWi?

Witchcraft & Wizardry uses a modified version of the FS3 system (Second Edition), developed by Faraday.

BSG:Orion didn't link to the docs or reference a specific version, but it contained the complete docs on their wiki. So did The 100 and Game of Bones and BSG: Cerberus and Star Wars Omens.

First Ed was short-lived and Third Ed is still in beta and exists on exactly one game at the moment. For the past seven or so years, Second Ed has been the only version out there, so fixating on whether games call out the version number explicitly feels a bit pedantic.

It's like when Windows was technically "Windows 2" but nobody cared until people began switching over and it was important to distinguish Windows from Windows 3.

It also leads to disorientation when moving from one "FS3" game to another "FS3" game and having ... an entirely different experience.

Like, say, playing Shadowrun 2nd Edition is very different from playing Shadowrun 4th Edition? Or oWoD is very different from nWoD? I don't know what your point is here. RPG systems change over time. Hopefully for the better, though that's a matter of opinion.

But as I said, pretty much every game in recent memory (except BSGU) was running 2nd Ed. So I think the variances are due to customization, not mechanics.

3. Even if the fact that there are multiple versions is made clear in a game, and the version identified is also made clear, the documentation that can be found is for the latest version.

The documentation has always been available. It is not the system's fault if people running games with FS3 do not link to or utilize it. Though as we saw from the links above, a lot of games actually do.

First Ed had a PDF Player's Guide. People didn't like that format, so for for Second Ed I created wikidot docs that people could copy to their game wikis and customize (which many games did). All the versions come with in-game help that give you info on the commands and the basics of the system.

Could this documentation have been better? Absolutely, and that's one of the things I've tried to improve with Third Ed by creating centralized online docs.

Now buried in your diatribe was a valid point that the old edition documents were probably too hard to find on the aresmush website. That took me about 5 minutes to fix by making a more prominent link to the archive page.

1. The name FS3 already looks like it has a version number in it.

Seriously? You're going to nitpick the name of my ten-year-old RPG system?

If you don't like the system, if the very mention of a game running FS3 is a turn-off to you, that's fine. I don't mind. But if you hate it so much and you're not willing to give it another chance, then why are you here ranting about it? Is it just cathartic? Are you trying to warn people off? Have I somehow offended you by letting other people use the system I designed for my own game? Or are you just, as @Thenomain suggested, trying to be a jerk? Seriously, I would like to know.