Posts made by faraday

@The-Sands I pay attention, I just decided to emphasize fun and familiarity over complex algorithms. You, @Seraphim73 and other system geeks might find the success chart for FS3 First Ed interesting:

0, -1, -2 were varying degrees of failure, and 1-4 were success. The Y axis is the percent chance of getting each degree of success/failure. Notice how the expert (palest blue line) was skewed to have a huge chance of getting a big success, and almost no chance of a spectacular failure, whereas the rookie (maroon line) was the opposite.

Now you could quibble over these how these curves "should" be, but that's not really the point. The point is that the general reaction to this system (not the curves, just the system overall) was: "WTF? What does this even mean? How good am I really?" You can say that it's fine to hide the results behind the curtain and just expect people to trust that the system spit out "Bob rolls Firearms - Great success" but the reality is more like what @Thenomain said earlier - people want to know how the system works, and something weird is not going to get much traction.

ETA: So for 2nd ed I changed it to use the same basic mechanic as my favorite RPG - Shadowrun 4. And wouldn't you know it, people started using it more.

@The-Sands While I appreciate the effort on the detailed analysis, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. FS3 deliberately uses a familiar dice mechanic because people didn't trust a system they didn't understand, not because of any technical obstacle. In fact, first edition used computer generated probabilities exactly as you described and the feedback was universally negative. I'm perfectly fine if there are small statistical aberrations like what you describe, because they're exactly what you'd find in a tabletop RPG. People can relate to what +3 dice means, even if it doesn't give them as much of a boost against an opponent who also spends luck (which, incidentally, doesn't happen in the sort of PvE combat hat FS3 is designed for.)

@Ganymede said in FS3:

I still like it. But what I'm working on is simpler still, and I'm happy for that.

That's cool. The FS3 skill mechanic is pretty simple. You could make it simpler by ditching attributes (like FATE, basically), but I like the way they add another dimension to characters.

The FS3 Combat system is more complex because it's designed for a war game. It's designed to do the sorts of epic battle scenes @Seraphim73 is talking about, and to do them quickly. It's also designed to give players options so it's not just "attack Cylon1" all the time. That requires a lot of automation and a fair amount of complexity.

All that isn't necessary, though, on a lot of games. Technically I did use +combat on Sweetwater (my western) for a few big gunfights, but that was only once in a blue moon. Most stuff was resolved with simple opposed rolls.

@Seraphim73 You know for a moment I was like: "Dude you COUNTED them?!?!" Because it was plausible that you might have.

But actually - yeah, having played a metric ton of FS3 myself (both on my own games and on others'), maybe I've also generated enough of a sample size to see the wider curve.

@kitteh No I was just trying to explain the ideal of how the system worked in my head. Ideal met reality though and it didn't work out as I intended. Hence: 3rd ed.

@kitteh Each bump in level gives you an extra die to roll. But that die becomes progressively more meaningless the more your die pool grows, unless you're going up against an equally-skilled opponent. For example, the difference between skill 1 and skill 2 (assuming average attr) is 57%/68%. Between 11 and 12 is 97/98%.

@Thenomain said in FS3:

So you're saying that 6 to 12 is relatively equal in overall performance. I believe that people are so used to min-maxing while trusting the rule-set that sure, Person A will take something at 12, and sure Person B will look at Person A as the epitome of that ability.

Actually I said 9 to 12. Though I probably should have more correctly said 10-12. FS3 2nd Ed breaks the ratings up into four brackets:

1-3 = Novice
4-6 = Proficient/Professional
7-9 = Veteran
10-12 = Master

The idea was that really only the "bracket" matters. Either you're Novice/Prof/Vet/Master. That's it. Pretty simple right? Pick what description best fits your character.

But there were three sub-ratings in each bracket, so you could be a really beginner Novice, or a pretty advanced student Novice, or a junior professional or a pretty senior professional on the cusp of veteran, etc.

In practice it got muddled. People saw some huge difference between 10 and 12 even though stat-wise there isn't one. The bracket idea was either never made clear, or so obtuse that people didn't get it... dang if I know. Some games refused to let you start above 9 at all ever. One BSG game refused to let you have a piloting skill below 4 or above 9, so instead of a 1-12 system, it became a 4-8 system, and then they wondered why there was so little differentiation between the characters.

So I changed it. 3rd ed now has a simplified ratings system that people tend to grok much more easily.

@Thenomain Because you can start that high.

Argh enter. Like starting with a 5 in WoD. Although I dunno, maybe that's not a thing WoD MU*s do?

@The-Sands said in FS3:

XP progression is nearly always problematic and may, in fact, be one of the most substantial problems game designers face. In short you are trying to balance the opposing forces of 'feeling of accomplishment' on the part of the dinos with 'feeling of contribution' on the part of the new players.

You're totally right in general, but I made that decision long ago with FS3. The default setup (and what I use on my games) favors new people over dinos. Full stop. If people leave the game because they can't advance with XP, I'm okay with that. But as I said, the XP costs in FS3 are configurable so other games can do whatever they like.

@kitteh said in FS3:

The big scale makes that number hard to gauge, whereas in a standard WoD-esque system the answer is almost always 4

Fair enough In 3rd Ed I consider that number 6, for what it's worth.

@kitteh I really truly don't mean to sound defensive of a system that obviously I myself disliked enough to change for 3rd edition But at the same time, I think it's worth noting that the difference between 9 and 12 in 2nd Ed is pretty small. By that point you're already rolling so many darn dice that the difference between the two just doesn't matter.

Now one can make the converse argument... yo, Fara, why even bother having the scale go to 12 if it doesn't make much of a difference past 9? I dunno Bragging rights? Symmetry? The off chance that you'll have a level 12 bad guy sometime and those extra few dice will matter? :helpless shrug:

@Thenomain With the FS3 defaults, you can start high, but you're not likely to raise your skills high after chargen because of the high XP costs. It takes almost a year to go from 8-12 in just one skill, even if you dump every XP you earn into it.

It's done that way precisely to avoid the dino problem, which was always one of my pet peeves... I mean, let's say the game's been open for 6 months. ICly, the newbie hasn't come out of suspended animation right? They were doing stuff during those 6 months too. I'm all right with giving veteran players a small advantage considering they devoted time to the game, but I don't like giving them a significant leg up. New players should start out on more-or-less even footing. That's why the XP system is the way it is.

But again, that's the default. A game can tweak those numbers and give themselves a dino problem if they really want to.

@Ganymede said in FS3:

Apparently, @faraday fixed this in FS3 3E, which @WTFE has no experience with. But he'll still knock a game with FS3 because of his experience with 2E.

But that's the weird thing... I really didn't change the dice mechanic appreciably in 3rd Ed. I mean, yeah, a bit? I think overall it shifted percentages like 10%? But that doesn't feel like that's enough to explain such a dramatic shift between the experience WTFE describes and what you've described. It also doesn't match up with what I've personally experienced in FS3 games - even ones I haven't run personally. So... I'm kinda at a loss?

@kitteh said in FS3:

12-point skills in 4 tiers still kind of give me anxiety. Love Faraday but no idea what she was smoking there

:grins and shrugs: It seemed like a good idea at the time? I mean all I really did for 3rd Ed was collapse two ratings into one.

2nd Ed     3rd Ed
1-2     -> Amateur
3-4     -> Fair
5-6     -> Good
7-8     -> Great
9-10    -> Expert
 11     -> Elite
 12     -> Legendary

I've already had some folks lament that there isn't more differentiation between character skill levels in 3rd Ed. Almost everyone's at Good/Great/Expert in their relevant combat skills. But when there were more levels, people lamented that it was too confusing and unclear what each level meant. (Despite my attempt at making detailed skill ratings.) Kinda feels like a darned if you do darned if you don't situation

@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.

@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.

@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?

@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.

@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.

@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.

@Three-Eyed-Crow You can always use a luck point to re-roll when that happens though in a straight-up roll. Luck works a little differently in combat of course.

@Ganymede said in FS3:

Like, I literally kicked the crap out of someone in Pyramid over whom I had a 2-dice edge. Blanked him on opposed rolls, so the score ended up being 5-0.

But I think that's exactly the problem that some folks are complaining about. He "should have" beat you. He certainly "shouldn't have" lost 5-0. Just as @Auspice's char "should've" cleaned my char's clock in the marksmanship contest.

And yet... extreme upsets like that happen with reasonable frequency in real sports and real combats. How many Olympic underdogs have there been? How many medal winners have done something amazing?

@WTFE said the same thing I was saying: That the perception of failures is magnified over a small sample size.

Personally I have no problem with a Expert char missing one time out of three in a single combat, as long as he's not missing one time out of three in every combat. I remember one of the top pilots on BSGU commenting about how she couldn't hit crap in the first few combats, but now that we've played 40-some combat scenes, she's one of the top aces. Which is as it should be.

Edit to clarify: That's 40 scenes total, not 40 scenes where she was in