Proposal: RP dice!

[derula]

Hello!

I had an idea.

In RP, there is often the problem of who should decide whether an action would take effect. There can be a thin line between godmodding (/me strikes Character down, killing them instantly) and being overly careful (/me attempts to approach Character carefully).

In the end, it always comes down to human judgment; and whether the attacker or the attacked decides the outcome, it will always be biased.

I have a proposal that could help fix that. Using the /roll command in PS and some simple rules, we could establish a system where an outcome of an RP action is decided by fair chance.

Here's the concept: http://stuff.incertitu.de/planeshift/rp%20dice

Any opinions?

[Illysia]

It seems well thought out but I think it might be a bit too complicated for most applications. But I do get what you mean about balance between godmodding and being overly cautious in your statement. What about simplifying the system down so that it determines who gets preference in deciding the outcome rather than decide the outcome?

For instance, Player 1 wants to stab Player 2. Player 1 emotes an attempt to stab so that everyone knows what action is being decided on, they they both roll to see who's idea about how the stabbing progressed gets preference. Player one might decide that if they win the roll they attempt the stab but slightly miss and have to try and again and Player 2 decides that if they win the Roll they get stabbed and stumble before launching a counter attack. The story that progresses would be determined by who wins the roll with maybe a more simple advantage/counter modifier.

However, in the end, it will depend on player maturity and courtesy regardless of whether or not dice or players decide the outcome.

[derula]

Hm, yes, I thought my system was really simple; but then, I've majored in math, so my view may not be representative ^^

However, I think mine could also be used to determine who can decide the outcome in the way you described. I just think it gives a bit of an aid with handicaps. Like if you're a strong character but a nice guy, and you don't wanna godmod them too much, you might accidentally end up being too weak; but the dice don't lie once you've decided who's strong and who's weak.

I really think it's not too complicated once you get used to it. Maybe it would be better though to implement it rules-wise so you can /roll <character-name> and you can set your character's "RP rank" somewhere... I dunno.

Thanks for the ideas

[Illysia]

I really think it's not too complicated once you get used to it. Maybe it would be better though to implement it rules-wise so you can /roll <character-name> and you can set your character's "RP rank" somewhere... I dunno.

Yeah, I try to do less math when playing games... But making it a /roll would be really useful.

[Zalya]

Normally in these types of situations I find a /tell works just as well. If both players are OOCly on the same page it makes things run smoother. There was talk of a universal rolling system before, but not everyone could agree with it. I find that just talking to the other player makes it far easier to come up with a compromise to fit the situation. 

[Rigwyn]

tl;dr

We actually just when through a huge thread about this recently. By the time the discussion ended, I kind of lost steam on this idea. Dude, try it... see if it works.

[derula]

Yeah, I try to do less math when playing games...

The only math you need to do is to compare two numbers a few times. I'm not even sure if that qualifies as math.

tl;dr

You don't really need to read all that. Mostly it's obvious stuff I just wanted to put there as a reference. The tables are what matters, and the notion that characters would be marked weak, medium or strong, and which die to use would be determined by the difference in two characters' strengths.

Normally in these types of situations I find a /tell works just as well. If both players are OOCly on the same page it makes things run smoother.

I didn't write that up 'cause I want to annoy everyone with math - at least not primarily  - but because I found that /tells often didn't do it for me. Often I found that other people were telling a story, and I didn't wanna mess it up. I was too, er... scared to /tell them, and I didn't really know what to say anyway. So sometimes I took too long to figure out a compromise by myself, and then other things happened, and I ended up feeling helpless and unable to tell my story like I've envisioned it because others kept messing it up.

...but maybe that's just me, in which case I apologize for suggesting a solution that might help solve my problem which nobody else shares.

[derula]

I made a little demo of how this could work as chat commands. This demo deviates from my original idea slightly, as the defense command does not take into consideration the actual throw value from the corresponding attack. However, it is pretty interesting in itself.

Here's the demo: http://ps.incertitu.de/rpdice-demo.html

As you can see, there are two chatboxes, one belonging to Alice and one belonging to Bob. They can talk to each other, use /me and /my, and also my proposed commands /attack and /defend. To get started, you can use the drop-down menu under the chat text field to generate these commands. You can experiment with character ranks to see how they affect the outcome of an action.

I'd love to get some more feedback on this!

[Illysia]

Hehe after first I had no clue what was going on. As it turns out the demo doesn't do anything if you bring it up in Chrome, but I was able to get it working in Firefox.

It's nice to have this as as command but is there feature that lets the demo also apply the mechanics to /me too? If not, could you perhaps add a command /meattempt or something like that to distinguish it from /me?

[derula]

Hehe after first I had no clue what was going on. As it turns out the demo doesn't do anything if you bring it up in Chrome, but I was able to get it working in Firefox.

Oops. I'll try to see if I can get it to work in Chrome.
Edit: Should now work in Chromium-based browsers, too.

It's nice to have this as as command but is there feature that lets the demo also apply the mechanics to /me too? If not, could you perhaps add a command /meattempt or something like that to distinguish it from /me?

Hm, you can write something like /attack hug Bob, and it will say "Alice attempts to hug Bob, and succeeds." Is that what you're looking for, or would you want /meattempt to do something different? Maybe the command could be called /attempt instead of /attack and /defend, because they do the same thing anyway.

[Illysia]

Hm, you can write something like /attack hug Bob, and it will say "Alice attempts to hug Bob, and succeeds."

That was what I was looking for. But perhaps changing the command to /attempt would help make it clear that it has more applications than just attacking. And it now the demo works in Chrome as well, thank you.



However, I think it would prompt a change in how you set up an RP since it would be a little redundant to have:

Alice walks up to Bob and attempts to slap slap him.
Alice attempts to slap Bob, and succeeds.

But I think it would work well for a scenario like:

Alice walks in close to Bob obviously angry and raises her hand as if to slap him.
Alice attempts to slap Bob, and succeeds.



I wonder if it, were it added to the game, could use a prompt like trading to let the target of the attempt choose their rank?

For example, Alice does /attempt slap Bob and it brings up a prompt for them both to select their rank and it would display the attempted action, in this case the slap. Then both choose their rank in the prompt so can calculate. Another idea would be for it to work the same as above, but before calculating, it would display the rank chosen by both parties then both parties have to agree to proceed, like with trade, before it will calculate. If they can't agree then the action cancels, the prompts are closed, and nothing is calculated.

My thoughts on that last one is that it gives players time to work out any differences of opinion on the ranks and it forces a pause if there is the first sign of trouble, disagreement. If they disagree enough the whole thing cancels before any OOC drama spills into IC drama or grows due to someone feeling they've been cheated because the other person wasn't playing fair with the ranks.

[derula]

I was also thinking of a prompt, though for a different purpose. As I mentioned, in this demo my defense throw isn't incorporated as envisioned. But a prompt could ask whether you want to defend against an action, and calculate as proposed in my concept.

For example, if the attempt was successful, it would look like this:
Alice attempts to slap Bob.

Then, Bob would get the prompt whether or not to defend. If he chooses not to, this would show:
Bob does not attempt to deflect Alice's action, and it succeeds.

If Bob chooses to defend, he might either succeed at defending, or fail at it.
If succeeds: Bob manages to deflect Alice's action, and it fails.
If fails: Bob cannot deflect Alice's action, and it succeeds.

I do not dislike your idea; both could be incorporated in the same prompt. But I think it makes sense to always print failed attempts and to print the attempt if it would succeed before the prompt shows. Not sure what would happen then if you deny the throw in the prompt.

Oh btw, I think the rank should be a setting of your character that would be publicly visible and freely changeable. So you would review your opponent's and your own rank before using /attempt; therefore only the opponent needs to get a prompt.

I will update my demo later and try to incorporate that. Thanks!

[Illysia]

You're welcome.

The reason I said cancel the prompt was that sometimes it has to be made very obvious for RPers that they need to try again on coming to an agreement. So, that is why I suggested the prompt canceling and maybe even a message popping up that says, "You did not agree on the terms of the attempt" or something like that.

However, it would be better your way with the ranks set somewhere else and visible. But, I think that this would easily be a very large project as any number of factors could contribute to the success or failure of even a small action such as strength, speed, perception, tiredness, etc. I would think though that it would help if they were tied to existing stats.

It might work well if you had the three presets and an option to use existing stats numbers. For those people who don't care about training, the three presets could be set numbers that are based on specific percentages of the stat cap, something like 30% 66% and 80%. For the people who do care about it, the stat setting would convert their current stat value into its percentage of the cap and would use that for the roll. That might finally be a solution to the problem between players who don't want to spend all day training and players who care about their characters stats reflecting their IC story.

However, I'm not sure I get what you mean about showing the attempt "if it would succeed before the prompt shows". The only reason to cancel the whole thing is to make players come to a consensus if they are picking ranks at that moment. If it is based on something else like stats or settings in like the options window there is no need for it to cancel as they don't need to agree. All they would need on the prompt is to chose whether or not to defend.

[derula]

An option to set it according to stats would be cool.

Finally finished my new Demo! Check it out:
http://ps.incertitu.de/rpdice-demo2.html

Other characters' ranks are calculated from their names. The color of the names in the dropdown determines the rank. (Colors are the same as in the dropdown for your own rank)

And yes, that's a live character list XD

[Illysia]

Hehe...

*Plays around with the demo*

Alice attempts to hug Jekkar.
Jekkar cannot deflect Alice's action, and it succeeds.

Alice is a Legendary rank hugger.

For the character list, is it just randomly assigning ranks to players online? If you don't tie the rank to stats you can probably add another rank between normal and legendary. But it looks good right now.