From: Jeff Sullivan <jas@ISI.EDU>
Subject: Re: unknown difficulty 
X-Gated-By: The Black Marble Wombat@morticia.cnns.unt.edu
X-Gated-From: torg mailing list
Organization: University of North Texas
X-Gatemail-Version: 1.0b
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 20:06:02 GMT


Trent mentions:
> 
> Kansas Jim writes:
>>You do have a point about players who don't know the system well enough being
>>disadvantaged though - in that situation, what I do is give them a vague
>>idea of how difficult the task seems.  For example, if their skill is higher
>>than the difficulty I tell them that its an "easy task".  If their skill is
>>much less than the difficulty I tell them that its "an almost impossible
>>task" or something similar.
> 
> But shouldn't you do that, in most cases, for all players?  For example,
> I played paintball for the first time last Saturday.  I am not what one
> would call experienced in Fire Combat or Dodge in any sense of the word.
> However, it didn't take very long at all to get a quick guage for how
> dfficult a shot was and how likely I was to be able to hit somebody
> (or, in my case, come anywhere within a mile of hitting them).
> 
> You could *tell* when somebody had good cover, and when they didn't.
> You could *tell* when they were using that cover well by dodging quickly
> behind it after their shots, and when they weren't dodging so quickly
> (therefore giving you a better shot).
>

This stuff *is* obvious, and I'd say when a guy had partial
concealment and soft cover, since it's obvious.  (But concealed armor
is not as obvious.  If you kept pumping 18 points of damage intoa guy
and he wasn't fazed, you'd get a little nervous, but not know what it
was happening.)

Trent actually chose a bad example, because most of the modifiers for
combat are pretty obvious.  Didoge ability is obvious (afteroneshot),
but not precisely so... can you tell the difference between a 10 and
11?  Between a 12 and 15?  I'd say maybe and yes, respectively.

> Now, sometimes one's estimate of the difficulty might be wrong -- maybe
> they were moving slowly because they hadn't seen you, but could quickly
> dodge when they did, or maybe their cover was greater than you could
> tell from your angle.  But, in general, you could tell with pretty
> good accuracy how difficult a maneuver or shot was that you had to
> pull off.  Maybe not down to the exact DN, but pretty close.

Agreed... AFTER THE FIRST SHOT.  Until you're actually in combat,
you're not going to have much of an idea.
 
> So given that, I would imagine that *most* cases in Real Life (tm)
> you have a pretty good guess as to how difficult something is (you can
> see how long the jump is, you can see how tough the mathematical problem
> looks, you can judge whether a person is susceptible to a quick talker,
> and so on).  Your estimates may be wrong, of course, though they'll
> usually be pretty close.  And sometimes you can't tell at all (like on
> a perception check, where you don't even know what's happening).  But to
> be "fair" to the characters and give them the knowledge that they would
> have, a GM should either (a) explain in full detail what the character
> sees ("the shocktrooper is behind a rock that's covering about
> two thirds of his body, and every couple of seconds he's peeping his
> head out, but just for a split second"), or (b) sum all that information
> up by giving the player a rough estimate as to how difficult the action
> is ("it looks to be about a difficulty of 15 or so to hit that
> shocktrooper behind the rock").
> 
> As a player I'd prefer the first method, as long as it gives the
> information the character would have.  I'd understand, however, if
> a GM sometimes wanted to save time and just give out an estimated DN.
> But, in general, *one* of the two should be done, except for those
> (relatively rare) cases the character wouldn't be able to tell at all.
> 

Yeah, yeah yeah.  I agree thatthe first method is desired, and
probably would be in play most of the time.  Sometime the secondis
needed to keep play from bogging, but we'll see how it plays if we
decide to move this way.

jas