Paradox five: Giving the underdog a chance

A topic has come up on the Fudge List^W Community about dice
probabilities.	In Fudge, a Poor swordsman will beat a Great one about
one in 150 fights.  (I think I have the spread right, but no matter: 
it's a large skill gap.)

For some people, this is a feature:  it gives the underdog a chance to
win.  For others, this is a bug:  it gives the dice a chance to have a
"trivial" NPC kick the PC's butt unexpectedly, thereby throwing a
monkey wrench into Story, suspension of disbelief, or fun.

And yeah, 1 in 150 seems like a long shot... but probabilities aren't
predictable things (imagine that) and it's gonna happen two, three
times almost in a row to some people (especially those cursed with
green pickles), and not happen to others at all (which may explain the
disparity in opinions over yonder).

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Paradox five: Giving the underdog a chance

On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 09:00:03AM -0500, Karen Cravens wrote:

>For some people, this is a feature:  it gives the underdog a chance to
>win.  For others, this is a bug:  it gives the dice a chance to have a
>"trivial" NPC kick the PC's butt unexpectedly, thereby throwing a
>monkey wrench into Story, suspension of disbelief, or fun.

I think it's worth considering Amber as an extreme case. In that system,
the Great swordsman will win, full stop. What does the Poor swordsman do
in that case? Shift the fight into another realm - be sneaky, or
persuasive, or whatever, rather than just standing up and getting
skewered. So a non-probabilistic system can be made to work, though it's
not to everybody's taste.

Personally I like the possibility of a random result, because I'm not a
narrativist - the story arises from the desires of the PCs, the desires
of the NPCs, and pure chance, just as events do in the real world. That
may not produce such a "good" story as one with a single author where
everything goes the way it needs to go, but it depends on whose
benchmarks of "good" you're using; the conventional narrative ones don't
necessarily apply.

>And yeah, 1 in 150 seems like a long shot... but probabilities aren't
>predictable things (imagine that) and it's gonna happen two, three
>times almost in a row to some people (especially those cursed with
>green pickles), and not happen to others at all (which may explain the
>disparity in opinions over yonder).

The number of times we roll dice, even in combat-heavy games, is
generally far too small a sample to approach the average. And of course
the extreme numbers are always memorable; I still remember the night,
though it must be more than fifteen years ago, when the Call of Cthulhu
GM fumbled for all three of the bad guys in exactly the same way, which
was a 10^-10 probability...

There certainly do seem to be nights when the dice run a particular way.
I've seen far more fumbles with certain characters than the
probabilities would indicate...

-- 
Roger, gaming grognard
Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/
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Paradox five: Giving the underdog a chance

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karen Cravens" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 9:00 AM
Subject: GM: Paradox five: Giving the underdog a chance


>A topic has come up on the Fudge List^W Community about dice
> probabilities. In Fudge, a Poor swordsman will beat a Great one about
> one in 150 fights.  (I think I have the spread right, but no matter:
> it's a large skill gap.)
>
> For some people, this is a feature:  it gives the underdog a chance to
> win.  For others, this is a bug:  it gives the dice a chance to have a
> "trivial" NPC kick the PC's butt unexpectedly, thereby throwing a
> monkey wrench into Story, suspension of disbelief, or fun.
>
> And yeah, 1 in 150 seems like a long shot... but probabilities aren't
> predictable things (imagine that) and it's gonna happen two, three
> times almost in a row to some people (especially those cursed with
> green pickles), and not happen to others at all (which may explain the
> disparity in opinions over yonder).

Yeah, dice are funny like that.  The best way to handle it is to not worry 
about dice when it _shouldn't_ matter--some mook in an unimportant dustup, a 
cheap lock between you and a plot insignificance, etc.  Leave the dice in 
when it matters, though;  even if it's a small one, an element of risk--or 
chance for victory against great odds--can be an excellent tool for story or 
drama.  Even if the dice DO cause Farm Boy #2 to skewer the protagonist, at 
least this way it happens at a dramatically interesting point, instead of a 
random side event with no meaning.

Specifics will, of course, vary by granularity and mechanic.  (Old WoD... 
)  But even an old-school hack like me tries not to make story 
slave to dice.  Unless it's Paranoia or something, where it's sorta the 
point.

By the way, I hope you're cleared for those Green pickles.  Word is there's 
a crackdown on contraband foodstuffs...

        --T.M. Neeck 

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Paradox five: Giving the underdog a chance

On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 05:43:35PM -0500, T. M. Neeck wrote:

>Yeah, dice are funny like that.  The best way to handle it is to not worry 
>about dice when it _shouldn't_ matter--some mook in an unimportant dustup, a 
>cheap lock between you and a plot insignificance, etc.  Leave the dice in 
>when it matters, though;  even if it's a small one, an element of risk--or 
>chance for victory against great odds--can be an excellent tool for story or 
>drama.  Even if the dice DO cause Farm Boy #2 to skewer the protagonist, at 
>least this way it happens at a dramatically interesting point, instead of a 
>random side event with no meaning.

I certainly don't have a problem with that. I do tend to roll the dice
just to get a general sense of how well the NPCs are doing, without
particularly worrying about what their relevant stats or skills are...
this happens a lot in investigative adventures.

Interesting idea in this week's Pyramid: reverse all difficulty
modifiers for Dramatic Characters (e.g. your Jackie Chan types). So
leaping a motorcycle from a bridge onto a moving train is trivially
easy, but cooking a meal for his new girlfriend is practically
impossible...

-- 
Roger, gaming grognard
Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/
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