From: Trent Lange <lange@CS.UCLA.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 00:19:53 GMT


Ks. Jim writes:
>But in a case where I (as GM) do not believe that the character can make an
>accurate estimate on how difficult something is (like combat) I just don't
>tell them.  It is up to the player to decide if the value he's generated is
>good enough or if he needs to make it better with a card or PP.

This is good, but one should be careful not to underestimate a
character's ability to guess the difficulty of something.  In combat,
for example, I would think in most cases a character would be able to
make an *approximate* guess of how difficult something is.  For
example, if there is some, big, slow guy just standing there waiting
to be hit, versus a dexterous guy hiding behind a rock and just
occassionally popping his head out to take aim.

Characters should even be able to make relatively fine-grained judgements
about this -- e.g. the quick guy just popping his head out from
behind cover, versus the same guy popping his head and part of his torso
out, or some other guy doing it a little more slowly.

So even if characters can't make accurate estimates (down to the DN),
they should *usually* be able to get it pretty close (+/- a couple DN),
unless something strange is going on that they can't see (the big, slow
guy is actually Charles Barkley, and not so slow after all).


>> [Knowing the difficulty of a door?]
>
>As I said, I wouldn't tell them.  If they assume a DN lower than what it 
>actually is they'll probably fail on the first try, maybe the first couple
>of tries.  Eventually someone will either roll well enough to succeed or
>someone will get tired of failure and make a great effort (cards and/or PP)
>at it.

Even if the door is innocuous-looking, but really strong, what about a
person's ability to sometimes judge, while they're doing something, how
much extra effort they need?  This wouldn't happen with something
instantaneous (like shooting a gun), but opening a door is a perfect
example.  Presumably one is trying to open that door for a couple seconds
(yanking on the handle, say).  Often one can tell *while pulling* that
it was harder than they thought it would be -- or that it's starting to
budge but needs just a little more force -- and in the same motion
therefore decide to pull harder (spend?).  The same with picking a
lock -- for example, while picking, our 18 skilled ninja says to himself
"this isn't as easy as I thought, better concentrate!".

So maybe the character shouldn't know the exact DN beforehand.  But
if it's appropriate, the GM should say "a 13's not going to do it,
but you seem close...", whereupon the player could quickly decide to
"try harder".  This wouldn't, of course, work for something like shooting
somebody, where the character might be able to tell after the shot that
he "just missed", but wouldn't be able to do anything about it until the
next action.

>> (This also relates to them making rolls for stuff they didn't perceive-- if
>> they know theres a DN at all, then they know if they failed to catch something
>> and can look more closely for it.  How do you handle that?
>
>Well, if they aren't trying to perceive something I frequently use their base
>Perception to determine if they see whatever it is they might see.  I also
>use the 'frequent rolls' method where I require lots of Perception rolls
>when it isn't necessary (keeps them paranoid, as Rick pointed out!).  I'm
>not as cruel as I used to be (noticing untied shoelaces for example) but I
>do still throw in red herrings from time to time:

As a player, I never have my character spend on normal perception checks,
precisely because it isn't something a character would be able to judge.
If you don't even know what's happening...  On the other hand, if the
character is in a nasty place and on edge and attempting to hear
anything and everything...

- Trent Lange

Newsgroups: alt.games.torg