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Flips and you (or not you, depending)


LeperColony

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51 minutes ago, solkan said:

Why would a game with the premise "The Fatemaster doesn't flip cards" include a rule that, statistically speaking, just serves to double the variance of a random determination?

You seem to forget, it already includes such a rule.  I was just wondering why it only ever applied to combat. 

51 minutes ago, solkan said:

No, really.  Flip two cards in opposition and compare the values, statistically speaking all that accomplishes is doubling the variance, and create arbitrary situations where "Oh, sure, that card cheating mechanic exists, but it won't do you any good."

"All that does" (assuming that's true, which it isn't) is what it does.  Creating statistical variances creates options.  So not only does opposing flips retain the long run statistical reliability of Fixed TN, it also frees players from the prison of absolute mechanical determinism. 

But the thing is, creating uncertainty also creates options, even if the results remain the same.  The mere fact that you don't know what it is you'll need in every single instance reduces the ability of players to game the system.  It also means you won't know before hand if you can automatically succeed.  Say you know that the enemy has a lying TN of 17, and you have an AV of 4.  If you have the Red Joker (either flipped or, even better, in your Twist Hand), you know you can sniff him out.  You have an automatic success in an action where you should only succeed ~9% of the time.  Doing something because you know mechanically you'll automatically succeed (or not doing it because you know you'll fail) is gamey.

If you have an AV 6 vs TN 10, you know you have a ~77% chance of victory.  If you flip a 4, you win.  However, if you have an AV 6 and you're opposed flipping against an AV 2, you know you have a ~30% advantage, or to put it another way, you know you have a ~80 chance of winning.  However, you don't know if you've won just because you have flipped a 4.  Now, in combat this may be slightly less of a factor (after all, you know when you've punched someone), but in non-combat flips, like trying to tell if someone is lying, then it becomes about role-playing and in character interactions between the Fated and the Fate Master.  And isn't that a good thing?

You obviously prefer a lock step, mechanical world.  That's fine, it really is.  I note you didn't bother to address how mechanical and gamey your whole "knowing the importance of people by their TN is", but I don't blame you.

51 minutes ago, solkan said:

The game includes rules for using the characters in Malifaux style combat encounters at least in part because:

1.  There's this really popular wargame that the players may be fans of.

2.  "It would be really cool if I could customize my master/enforcer/henchman"

and

3.  The required rules were very simple.

All reasons to include flips for non-combat actions.  In reality, the entire system should have been based on Malifaux in the first place.  That it wasn't was a dubious philosophical choice, the reasons behind which are obscure and were the entire point of this thread to begin with.

51 minutes ago, solkan said:

P.S.  You've claimed "Fixed target numbers are easily gameable."  Yet fixed arbitary target numbers are used in essentially every RPG using dice for unopposed skill checks.

You're arguing Chocolate vs. Vanilla, and attempting to make objective arguments about it.

Unopposed skill checks don't involve interactions.  Even in the system I propose, I'd probably use Fixed TNs for climbing a wall.  Why?  Because it's a wall.  You don't interact with it, you either scale it or go around it (or through it, I suppose). 

Not even sure what your flavors argument is about.  I'm basing my points on systemic reasons.  And I'm having to field a bunch of "but I like the current system."  Which is, as I've said many times, entirely fine.  It's just not a reason to use it.

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17 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

Nowhere did I say that supporting Fixed TN is subjective.  I said Swiglitz's reason for supporting it was subjective, and it was.  He's very open about that.  He doesn't care about the math or the merits, he just likes it because he likes the feel. 

There's nothing pejorative about subjective preferences either.  Many of us make very important life decisions on subjective preferences.  But subjective preferences are not really debatable.  Swiglitz  says he likes it because it feels like Fate to him.  That's an entirely satisfactory answer as to why he likes it.  It's not an argument as to why I should like it.

I've said this before, but "you're not playing it the way you're supposed to" is no answer to a mechanical deficiency.  Arguments like this concede my point, and then go on to try to say why it shouldn't matter.

The issue here isn't that "you're not playing it the way you're supposed to."  It that you're not even bothering to give it a chance.  You read some stuff, do a bit of math, and decide it doesn't work.  I take the same issue with people who dismiss foods outright because they have an idea that they don't like certain ingredients.  True, it's a subjective judgement, and it's biased, especially if cajoling is used, but saying it needs fixed or isn't good without actually seeing it work is prejudicial.

2 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

I think it's a bit of an oversimplification to say all of it is subjective.

A preference is subjective.  I prefer flipping to fixed, that is subjective.

But a preference can be based on subjective and/or objective points.

I simply like flipping/rolling, so I want to do it.  That's a subjective reason.

Fixed TNs are easily gameable.  That's an objective reason.

Gaming variable numbers is also possible.  A character with an AV9 and :+fate:+fate ain't gonna sneeze too hard no matter what you throw at them (I have this character).

28 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, combat isn't even my greatest concern because, (as I've mentioned) I don't tend to run combat heavy games and because it seems much easier to get :+fate in social situations due to the talents being relatively stronger (no doubt because, as with most games, TtB tries to ensure combat gets the most rigorous mechanical examination).  If you have a :+fate, even actions that require a 10 flip are ~64% likely.  This provides a huge freedom of action to the Fated because there's no mystery to it.  I need a 10 to fool Lucius into telling me his secrets?  No problem.

That's one of the cool things about TTB, is that the mechanics work pretty much the same for combat and non-combat operations.  The only real difference is the damage flip and an arbitrary number.  In most of the Wyrd-official published games, trying to use social skills to obtain information or change somebody's mind is independent of their stats, and usually relates to the appropriate difficulty of an action (talking down a hostile, armed gunfighter is harder than talking down a mildly perturbed bureaucrat).  So trying to convince Lucius to take off his mask and sign a confession stating that he's working with the Neverborn might be as high as, say, a 23 or more, which a 10 probably won't hit.  Also that statistic is suspect at best as it involves a fresh deck with no cards out of it, which is likely to happen once or twice a game (not to say that it can't, just that it's not necessarily significant).

41 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

You say your players care about combat.  You then go on to say that combat isn't a challenge for them, and so you have to manipulate events to either avoid combat or make them pay for what they like to do.  What about that doesn't indicate the system isn't working like it should?

So when you're playing a game, do you just want to kind of walk through it?  Breeze past everything, never be challenged?  I don't.  My players don't.  At the start of our sessions, I presented them with a good distribution of fights, a few enforcers and several minions.  It worked then, they felt like they were accomplishing something just by surviving, and everyone was happy.  By about the midway point of the campaign, Fated had AVs of 7+ because the players wanted to perform in combat, even though 6s would have worked just fine (which I have informed them every step of the way).  There's a character who's never had a combat AV of higher than 2 that can hit all but the hardest of targets.  We're even further past that point (almost everyone has only one more Destiny Step).  One guy is doing it just for the lulz now (Mr. 9:+fate:+fate, in fact, who plans to go to 10 after his next Step).  Now when they get into the little fights that I'll pepper into the story, they end super-quickly.  Some people barely have a chance to show off (this is 90% of what the big AVs are for, I'm pretty sure).  Sure, I can put them up against 50 Terror Tots and let them flip cards for two hours, shuffle the Fate Deck four or five times, and they'll take some wounds from black blood, but that's about it.  They'll get bored after a while (and some much faster than others), and one will be bored the instant the fight starts knowing what it will entail.  There's only so much time for what's happening in the game.  In short, they don't just enjoy fighting.  They enjoy winning and accomplishing, which can be done without swinging a sword or firing a bullet.  Combat is just something that they can win at easily, which isn't necessarily an accomplishment.

Regardless, it's not about "making them pay."  It's about presenting them with choices.  The whole thing is a narrative, and I give the players opportunities to turn it into the story they want it to be.  None of the characters stayed to fight the mindless zombies, instead leaving a single NPC Death Marshal and a couple of NPC Guild Guards to do it (they all died, which mechanically the Death Marshal shouldn't have, but hey, story).  As a result, some of them got to have a fight with a henchmen and some more powerful minions in a burning building, which was way more cinematic and cooler.  And they then attacked a second Henchman they hated who was in the burning building, too (who was in fact targeted by the first henchman at the start).  Everyone else in the building died as the Fated fled from the blaze, which would have happened even if they hadn't run into the building, interestingly.  But they made the choice not to save those lives, they just took a more interesting path to get there.  The ones who didn't run in started a bucket brigade so the surrounding buildings wouldn't be caught up in it, which required no flips but was equally important to the story.  This session was one of the best of the campaign according to all of the players, and it created a lot of consequences and roleplaying opportunities in later sessions.

In short, it says nothing about the system, save that it does what it does.  Making it fun is on the Fatemaster and the players.

2 hours ago, LeperColony said:

I didn't make this thread to debate.  I stated up front I wasn't likely to use Fixed TN.  I only asked why they made TtB fixed.  Then you all tried to explain why fixed is better, only you haven't been able to make a case as to why that is. 

You've already admitted the system doesn't work as intended.  "So because combat isn't really a challenge for them" was your line, not mine.  I'm glad to hear your players are sufficiently entertained by hearing a (presumably) two digit number.

If you didn't make the thread to debate, why did you post it on the internet? :P People have said we'll never know why because none of us are the lead designer (who doesn't work for Wyrd anymore, either), and this is entirely accurate.  My interpretation is because it lends itself to a more consistent narrative (my Shaolin-trained wushu master isn't really going to get hit by some drunk in a barroom brawl), and thus I argue.

See the above for discussions about combat and difficulty.  Exalted is also a system that thrives on combat, although one of the pointers for storytellers there is that they shouldn't make it about the fight, but about the consequences of the fight.  I've tried to do that, to what degree I can, but not every problem is going to be solved by beating it to death (although my Fated have given it a good try).

3 hours ago, LeperColony said:

Sounds like a tough crowd to please.

You have no idea.  I have three people who prefer immersive roleplay, two of whom also want the big numbers for the fightings, two people who pretty much want to play it as an open-world adventure game, one of whom likes playing their character, too, and another one who does what he does because he finds it hilarious, and all this after I told them that the game I was planning would not be solely combat-based but that it would have investigative and social elements to it.  I've done what I can to morph it to their expectations.  Hindsight being 20/20, six Fated is probably too many, but I dug that hole for myself.  Critical strike and knuckledusters, too.  Stupid, stupid knuckledusters.

3 hours ago, LeperColony said:

All snark aside (and on re-reading, that one was a bit snarky), it's not like Fixed TN is necessarily going to make for boring fights.  After all, D&D uses Fixed TN systems, and it's been keeping people grinding for almost 40 years.  But you're trying so hard to argue on behalf of a system that doesn't even work for what your players are most interested in doing.  Think about that for a moment.

Did you miss it when Omenbringer said that the fixed TN system is as ineffective at higher ends as it is at the lower, because at the higher ends things become almost impossible for the Fated?  Being able to kill your party is not an achievement, and rendering people useless is not, at least to me, the hallmark of good mechanics.

You're right.  It doesn't make for boring fights.  What makes for boring fights is nothing happening at the end of the fight.  In the case of D&D, one that doesn't end in XP and loot.  In TTB, one that doesn't give anything to the players.  I feed my players minor combats to keep their winning need satisfied, but also because they're story-appropriate (if you walk into a cave infested with Nephilim, you're probably going to encounter a few before the boss/Macguffin room).  Black blood has really been a great equalizer to keep even smaller threats like these an actual threat, as only a few of the Fated have high wound totals, which can help with the achievement need when it comes to fighting.

And I suppose you missed the part where I said "A Master-level threat will kill most if not all of them despite everything I've said, especially the right Master (McMourning would be utterly lethal)."  And that's cool.  They may be tweaked to hell and back, but there are things out there that scare them, and from a story perspective, that's appropriate.  Masters are people who make things happen in the story of Malifaux, which is what you're playing in TTB.  They're on a different narrative playing field than the Fated, and Fate is definitely on their side.  Could my players kill a Master on static resolution?  I don't even know.  Flipping a 13 for every flip means they'd take a long, long time to go unconscious, and the ones that have vulnerabilities tabletop might not have them in TTB (it's much easier for Raspy to disengage in TTB, for example).  I'm thinking it's not impossible, but the consequences would be dire, as in dead-Fated-dire.  The Viktorias are almost too scary to think about in that context, so I'm going to stop now.  By the same caveat, I don't think that's wrong or a bad thing, primarily because I'm not going to subject my players to that.  They've encountered exactly one Master, and it was in a completely social setting which was more a cameo than anything else.  They knew not to step up, and they had no reason to.

3 hours ago, LeperColony said:

Having learned a long time ago to walk and chew gum, I'll be able to run a game with a mechanically sound system that doesn't reduce things to the feel of a video game.  I prefer to convey someone's importance using setting, description and interaction. 

Maybe you, like another Fixed supporter earlier, find it sufficient to announce he has a lying TN of 17.

But by all means, go with what works for you.

And that's really what it boils down to.  The system you propose isn't any more mechanically sound than the one that is in place.  Like @solkan said, you're just introducing a higher level of variability to results, which is something that can still be gamed (Mr. 9:+fate:+fate says hello again), and if you drive it to a point where the variability doesn't matter (Masters still receive a handicap to their flips to put some numbers out of reach, and Peons have no discernable AV to begin with), you just come right back to square one where some things are impossible, which as we've established is fun for no one, and some things only ever so rarely fail.  If you just leave AVs as they stand, anyone can hit Seamus on an 18 tops, which is pretty readily achievable, and that's only if the Hatter flips or cheats particularly well.

If your players aren't going to try to game the system, then I applaud your choice of associates and seethe with envy.  But you also don't need a variable resolution system, in that case.

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1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

The issue here isn't that "you're not playing it the way you're supposed to."  It that you're not even bothering to give it a chance.  You read some stuff, do a bit of math, and decide it doesn't work.  I take the same issue with people who dismiss foods outright because they have an idea that they don't like certain ingredients.  True, it's a subjective judgement, and it's biased, especially if cajoling is used, but saying it needs fixed or isn't good without actually seeing it work is prejudicial.

No, that's exactly the issue.  Every single Fixed TN supportive post has been the same:

1) An admission that the players can easily break the game if they want to. (your combat isn't challenging line, for instance)

2) that's okay because you're not supposed to want to.

The reality is Fixed TN is a Goldilocks game.  It has a spot where actions are trivial (low AV opponents) and a spot where actions are exceedingly difficult (high AV opponents), with only a sweet spot in the middle that correlates to the same values as the Fated.

Note that these are value independent.  A Fated could have an AV of 100 :+fate:+fate:+fate:+fate and there is still going to be a range where actions are trivial (TN 106.  Should be 104, but all the :+fate really whack things out) and where they are exceedingly difficult (TN say, 112 or so, just because of all the :+fate I gave.  They really throw off the math).   

Now, you could say that, in the long run, the odds of flip resolution would be the same, and you'd be correct.  However, in any given circumstance, RPG rolls/flips rarely have the sample size to reach long run certainty.  In every situation, you're looking at higher variability.  And two, since the TN is not set and is not the same every time, you don't know exactly what it is you need to do.

The idea that I need to play it to know if I'll like it is spurious.  We all agree on its characteristics.  Not a single person is claiming Fixed TN works differently than how I think it does.  Just some people are saying that's why it's good.

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

Gaming variable numbers is also possible.  A character with an AV9 and :+fate:+fate ain't gonna sneeze too hard no matter what you throw at them (I have this character).

He'll sneeze at AV 14 :+fate:+fate.  Values are relative (see my discussion of AV 100 above).  The problem isn't that AV 6 is so great.  The problem is the game isn't meant for you to have AV 6, when you can (and, for many people, likely will) at the start of the game.  That's what's meant by "it works if you play it like we meant you too," and it's what you meant when you said combat doesn't challenge the combat characters in your group.

What's more, he'll sneeze at Mr. Bad Ass Reputation and huge shiney gun because he doesn't know his exact TN and the exact statistical odds of beating him.

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

So when you're playing a game, do you just want to kind of walk through it?  Breeze past everything, never be challenged?  I don't.  My players don't.  At the start of our sessions, I presented them with a good distribution of fights, a few enforcers and several minions.  It worked then, they felt like they were accomplishing something just by surviving, and everyone was happy.  (-snip long explanation of the details LC)

Where did I say I don't challenge my players?  This entire thread has been predicated on the fact that opposed flips are more meaningful challenges than Fixed TNs, for all the reasons I and Omenbringer already established.

My critique was when you admitted up front that the system was unable to handle what they were most interested in doing, so you worked around it.  Now, that is what good Fate Masters do.  But that's hardly a selling point for the system.

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

You have no idea.  I have three people who prefer immersive roleplay, two of whom also want the big numbers for the fightings, two people who pretty much want to play it as an open-world adventure game, one of whom likes playing their character, too, and another one who does what he does because he finds it hilarious, and all this after I told them that the game I was planning would not be solely combat-based but that it would have investigative and social elements to it.  I've done what I can to morph it to their expectations.  Hindsight being 20/20, six Fated is probably too many, but I dug that hole for myself.  Critical strike and knuckledusters, too.  Stupid, stupid knuckledusters.

I definitely sympathize.  Trying to come up with challenges for characters with vastly different capabilities and interests is tough in any system.  But that's yet another advantage of the opposed flips.

Suppose your Fated run into a guild patrol.  You can adjust the difficulty by making it so-happen that the combat characters are fighting experienced guilders and the non-combat aren't, and nobody needs to know.

The minute you say one guard has a TN of 14 and the other a TN of 10, the jig is up.  Particularly tactically minded players will even take advantage of that, to preferentially target the TN 10 enemies.  But with opposing flips, your ability to manipulate the difficulty level behind the scenes is far more powerful (in that it exists at all), and less ruinous to immersion. 

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

And I suppose you missed the part where I said "A Master-level threat will kill most if not all of them despite everything I've said, especially the right Master (McMourning would be utterly lethal)."  And that's cool.

Not only did I not miss this, I specifically addressed this by pointing out (again) Omenbringer's analysis on high TNs being as much of an issue as low TNs, just on the other side.

Just like something shouldn't be trivial, it also shouldn't be virtually impossible, unless the idea is to communicate that it shouldn't be tried at all (I mean, in the end, if you want to charge the dragon, I guess you can...).  And this is where another problems with high TNs come into play.  If you communicate that the TN is "you need a Red Joker" because the action isn't supposed to succeed, and someone has a Red Joker, they know 100% that they can pull it off.

However, if you describe this virtually impossible thing in virtually impossible terms, the Fated may still decide to do it, and he may not, but his decision at that point is more meaningful.  Note that this is true even if the opposed flip virtually impossible thing is easier than the Fixed TN Red Joker, due to uncertainty.

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

The system you propose isn't any more mechanically sound than the one that is in place.  Like @solkan said, you're just introducing a higher level of variability to results, which is something that can still be gamed (Mr. 9:+fate:+fate says hello again), and if you drive it to a point where the variability doesn't matter (Masters still receive a handicap to their flips to put some numbers out of reach, and Peons have no discernable AV to begin with), you just come right back to square one where some things are impossible, which as we've established is fun for no one, and some things only ever so rarely fail. 

Except that it is.  I already dispensed with Mr. 9 earlier, when he met his big brother Mr. 14.  And, they both saw a glimpse of the future when I discussed Mr. 100.  Why would I ever drive it to a point where the variability doesn't matter?  They variability and the uncertainty are the entire point. 

It may very well be that statistically the "ideal challenge level," for lack of a better word, is exactly the same in fixed and opposed flip.  In fact, that is likely.  But that would still make flipping superior because the variability and the uncertainty make it less gamey. 

Think about it like this: 

Fixed TN is rock-paper-scissors, where you KNOW your opponent will pick rock.  The only question is whether or not you have paper.  If you have paper in your hand, or the math says you're very likely to get paper, then you KNOW you will win (or, more precisely, you know exactly how likely it is you'll win). 

Opposed flip is rock-paper-scissors where you suspect that there's a reasonably good chance that your opponent will pick rock, but he may not, and even if he does, the rock he picks may be too big for the paper in your hand, so even that won't automatically save you.

That's the difference.

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

If your players aren't going to try to game the system, then I applaud your choice of associates and seethe with envy.  But you also don't need a variable resolution system, in that case.

I never said my players weren't going to try to game the system.  I'm the one who says players are likely to figure out the math in the first place!

But I also object to the idea that maxing something is necessarily gaming the system.  Just because you have a 6 in what you want your character to be good at, it doesn't mean you're some crazy power gamer (there's also nothing wrong with power gaming, if that's your thing).  You can do it automatically if you want.  To put it another way, you have to intentionally avoid it if you don't want it.  That's an affectation.

You may very well say that the game works at AV 4.  That may even be true.  But then, if that's how the system is supposed to work, it's the system's fault if it doesn't work at AV 6.

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1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

So trying to convince Lucius to take off his mask and sign a confession stating that he's working with the Neverborn might be as high as, say, a 23 or more, which a 10 probably won't hit.  Also that statistic is suspect at best as it involves a fresh deck with no cards out of it, which is likely to happen once or twice a game (not to say that it can't, just that it's not necessarily significant).

I also wanted to point something out about the math here.  As cards are spent, it's possible to calculate the odds with increasing precision.  This is why casinos use multiple deck shoes for Blackjack (explaining the math here is impractical, but any internet guide on poker or blackjack odds will do the trick, if needed). 

Keep in mind, if we know exactly what Lucius' TN is, not only does it allow us the opportunity to tell how likely we are to flip what we need, it gives us an absolute ability to tell if we can do it with our Twist Hand.

10 isn't enough?  We need a 13?  Well, we have the Red Joker in hand.  Let's go expose Lucius, with a 100% success rate.

That's the way you want players to make their decisions? 

Really?

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Ok.  So now I finally have some time to put words to post.  I'm not going to quote or reply to anything in particular since this has been crazy active, and I honestly don't think a lot of the dialogue is actually moving further (rather, it's continuing sideways).

I've been thinking a lot on game systems because of this discussion, and honestly what we've been calling Static Resolution isn't at all new.  In fact, Through the Breach's only real revolution in the static system was to give the players all of the variability rather than the storyteller (which I think is very thematic and nice).  Because really, in Dungeons and Dragons you could just do some math to shift the "does the monster hit the player roll" over to the player instead and call it a "do you successfully avoid getting hit" roll.  All of the skills in DnD/GURPS/most-games-to-some-extent are static resolution systems with storyteller-defined Target Numbers.  So if these systems are still viewed as good mechanically, then what is it that truly makes TtB different, and so bad at maintaining encounter difficulties at lower/higher points?

Difference 1:  Cards instead of dice.  TtB uses pseudo-random RNG (think computer games where loot tables slowly shift in favor of the player until they get an epic and then reset) rather than true RNG found in dice.  This allows players to fish through the deck for cards.  It also means the game is fixed on a 1-13 random number scale, with a low instance of 0/14.  This tends to be overall lower than the variability found in other systems, but alone isn't enough to cause a problem.  Except for the next bit.

Difference 2:  Low skill/attribute values with high impact.  I think this is the true culprit when it comes to how black/white the system can get, and why changing static values to random ones feels like the true fix (that and because the skirmish game goes that route).  What I'm getting at is the fact that the difference between a 5 and a 6 in AV in this system is very different from 5 vs 6 in Pathfinder.  This combined with the fact that other games offer a multitude of ways to grow AVs outside of base stat + skill means characters are stuck at one setting, which is why the bigger enemies get impossible (literally, as a Rank 14 dude with 6AV will require players to both be maxed out and flipping the highest cards in the deck to succeed).

I take no issue with how easily small enemies are dispatched, because DnD characters slaughter kobolds and goblins relatively early on in the game (though also note that beginning characters in DnD are overall weaker than beginning characters in TtB).  I think they only seem like a problem because of how players can't really compete with the big bads ever since their stat growth quickly stagnates.

TL;DR:  Static resolution is everywhere, and isn't the actual problem.  The actual problem is low AV growth potential/caps.

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2 hours ago, LeperColony said:

I also wanted to point something out about the math here.  As cards are spent, it's possible to calculate the odds with increasing precision.  This is why casinos use multiple deck shoes for Blackjack (explaining the math here is impractical, but any internet guide on poker or blackjack odds will do the trick, if needed). 

Keep in mind, if we know exactly what Lucius' TN is, not only does it allow us the opportunity to tell how likely we are to flip what we need, it gives us an absolute ability to tell if we can do it with our Twist Hand.

10 isn't enough?  We need a 13?  Well, we have the Red Joker in hand.  Let's go expose Lucius, with a 100% success rate.

That's the way you want players to make their decisions? 

Really?

In countenance to that argument, what's your guarantee they'll be able to get up to Lucius, keeping that red joker in their hand? say they need to argue down a number of bureaucrats in order to even walk into his office, or fight against who knows how many guild guard, including (most probably) henchman like Queeg or Dashel? generally, a character gets that specialized in one thing, and if they're specialized in communication and argument, meeting the lord reagent punch to the face isn't going to be terribly conducive to their plans, especially because Lucius Matheson is going to know they're coming. 

So, assuming the particular fated character gets up to Lucius, red joker in hand, assuming it's not an argument with multiple TNs to convince the master of manipulation to do something utterly stupid, what do you think the chances are that there's not going to be able to even walk out, and that there's not going to be some gambit involved? the red joker is supposed to represent something incredible happening that would almost never occur, like getting the draw on Perdita, so it might be possible to get Lucius to think taking such an insane risk is a good idea.

But what occurs after that? so they used a red joker or king to convince the man, and once he realizes that confession is in hand, why are they going to be able to leave the building? what's stopped McMourning from planting evidence in the intervening time of their plot at the fated's safe-house "Exposing" them as necromancers, and when they open the door to leave, a very pissed off Lady Justice (and a few dozen death marshals) are there to meet them? Maybe he noticed a flaw in their affidavit, and signed it because he wanted to watch them squirm trying to establish it as being binding to any sort of law? maybe he just realizes he screwed up, goes avatar, and proceeds to lay the royal smack-down on them? if they planned for all these possible scenarios and more, then they deserved to expose Lucius.

To a point, having a high TN that's still beatable isn't going to be the end of the world, it ultimately depends on how it's handled.

my question would be what exactly does having directly opposed flips cause the game to gain, other than more statistical derivation? there's already a passage in the main book that mentioned that it might work to run combat as if it was Malifaux, but that's up to FM discretion. your arguments hinge on a lot more mechanical information than I'd personally reveal, the whole "Lying TN" argument from earlier in the thread hinges on the fact that the players know the number in the first place, why is it relevant to reveal that information? I let players do stuff like roll to discern if totally true things are a lie, having some hidden information (or more specifically in some cases, players who can separate character and player knowledge).

The problem is that there's one person who can answer your question, and he's no longer with wyrd, so the people in this thread are doing our best to answer. this is more directly reliant on design philosophy than anything, and I'm going to make my best guess.

In Malifaux, both parties can flip because it's a Competitive game. both players are doing what they do to win, and flipping with a hand to cheat gives them that statistical control. personally, I prefer cards to dice because you can't escape low numbers, only plan around them if you end up flipping through the deck. In the same vein, Flips in TtB are one sided because it's a Cooperative game. the Fatemaster isn't playing to win against the fated, he's merely there to take the fated on a journey, and thusly, the decision was probably made in the vein that the characters are the ones that do the interacting. with the world by doing, and the fatemaster interacts with the world by making.

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23 minutes ago, zeeblee said:

Cards instead of dice.  TtB uses pseudo-random RNG (think computer games where loot tables slowly shift in favor of the player until they get an epic and then reset) rather than true RNG found in dice.  This allows players to fish through the deck for cards.  It also means the game is fixed on a 1-13 random number scale, with a low instance of 0/14.  This tends to be overall lower than the variability found in other systems, but alone isn't enough to cause a problem.  Except for the next bit.

As I pointed out in my earlier post, this is a very big issue with the Static resolution system and a major, major difference between other systems.

Dice are true random number generators (having no memory of previous results), where as a deck of cards is not (it definitely has a memory of previous results). Sure at first a fresh deck can generate any number between 0 to 14, however once the first card is drawn the deck begins skewing results (this is why so many Malifaux players keep the Black Joker safely in their hand when able to, instead of allowing it to run free in the deck).

As LeperColony also points out, this creates situations where actions can be guarantied to either absolutely succeed or fail with 0 variability (and no way for players to change it unless they can get the deck to cycle). Again using the high end of the non-fated Rankings, if the players (or the combat specialist) need a 12 or higher to succeed in affecting the non-fated, then once the last 12+ has been drawn from the deck, the players absolutely (with 100% certainty) can not succeed from the deck until it has been reshuffled (if able they could potentially cheat, but again, once the 12+'s are gone from their twist deck they have to wait until it shuffles as well). The same can happen at the low end of the scale. As a Fate Master or Player, I dont want to know that no matter what I do I am guarantied to fail (no matter how trivial the task) or succeed (despite being normally impossible).

46 minutes ago, zeeblee said:

I take no issue with how easily small enemies are dispatched, because DnD characters slaughter kobolds and goblins relatively early on in the game (though also note that beginning characters in DnD are overall weaker than beginning characters in TtB).  I think they only seem like a problem because of how players can't really compete with the big bads ever since their stat growth quickly stagnates.

I will give you that Kobolds and goblins are not the most terrifying of monsters in D&D, but they can definitely present an issue for low level groups. Had a group of 4 consistently struggle to complete the very first portion of the narrated introductory adventure for D&D despite the main threats being goblins and kobolds. Now once a player gets above 3rd level it starts to shift much more into their favor (due to the likelihood of better armor, more wounds, the possibility of magical items, and improved THAC0), however even here, a larger group of kobolds (say 2 to 1) still has the potential to endanger characters. The dice are the difference, and that keeps all combats interesting.

What I find most interesting about this, is that the original designer freely admitted (in the interview I linked to earlier in the thread) that he rarely had an RPG character achieve even 5th level. This greatly influenced his design of TtB and is the source of so many of the systems idiosyncrasies In the end the game was built to satisfy only one person, despite significant input and debate from play testers. I wish I could say more but non-disclosures are a hell of a thing, and with the death of the old kickstarter backers forum difficult to substantiate anyway.

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51 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

No, that's exactly the issue.  Every single Fixed TN supportive post has been the same:

1) An admission that the players can easily break the game if they want to. (your combat isn't challenging line, for instance)

2) that's okay because you're not supposed to want to.

The reality is Fixed TN is a Goldilocks game.  It has a spot where actions are trivial (low AV opponents) and a spot where actions are exceedingly difficult (high AV opponents), with only a sweet spot in the middle that correlates to the same values as the Fated.

Note that these are value independent.  A Fated could have an AV of 100 :+fate:+fate:+fate:+fate and there is still going to be a range where actions are trivial (TN 106.  Should be 104, but all the :+fate really whack things out) and where they are exceedingly difficult (TN say, 112 or so, just because of all the :+fate I gave.  They really throw off the math).   

Now, you could say that, in the long run, the odds of flip resolution would be the same, and you'd be correct.  However, in any given circumstance, RPG rolls/flips rarely have the sample size to reach long run certainty.  In every situation, you're looking at higher variability.  And two, since the TN is not set and is not the same every time, you don't know exactly what it is you need to do.

You're really stuck on this "combat isn't challenging" thing.  It's not.  That's cool, we accept that.  Hell, I said it.  Every one of us agrees that the system is breakable.  Setting arbitrary difficulty is no less breakable without adjusting on a player-by-player basis to levels that players cannot attain.

It happened in my game because it kind of turned into an arms race.  And that's fine.  My players draw satisfaction or amusement from big numbers (the 9 guy is seriously doing it because he thinks it's funny in the context of Malifaux) or from tacit competition with the guy next to them by and large.  They also did it in preparation in case something nasty did come along (there's a big threat that's been around since the first session, but they haven't fought it yet, and they may never).  Personally, I don't think you should want an AV higher than 6 or 7, because there's a lot to do in the game that my players haven't explored, but if they don't want to, should I directly bar them from taking combat skills?  That's being pretty crappy to my players, not to mention it does break some of the rules of the game (Pursuits can often pick combat-related skills even if I don't offer them).  You suggest (and reinforce further on) a system where no matter how the players design their characters, they are slaves to the flip of a pair of cards, with only a nominal ability to cheat.

1 hour ago, LeperColony said:

He'll sneeze at AV 14 :+fate:+fate.  Values are relative (see my discussion of AV 100 above).  The problem isn't that AV 6 is so great.  The problem is the game isn't meant for you to have AV 6, when you can (and, for many people, likely will) at the start of the game.  That's what's meant by "it works if you play it like we meant you too," and it's what you meant when you said combat doesn't challenge the combat characters in your group.

What's more, he'll sneeze at Mr. Bad Ass Reputation and huge shiney gun because he doesn't know his exact TN and the exact statistical odds of beating him.

Values are relative, but you can't show me a Fated character that can arrive at an AV14 for anything.  The road stops at 11 (and that for social skills), unless that's also something you plan on changing.  AV 14 :+fate:+fate falls pretty close to the margin of impossible that you claim variable TNs do so much to negate.  Especially if you only have the one person who has 9 :+fate:+fate.  God forbid the other Fated try to gang up on the 14.  Sure, if you're hiding the flips, you can make a few attacks get by even if they miss, or fudge a few to not completely destroy the lesser Fated, but the numbers will tell in the end.  You're not fixing anything, you're just making the goalposts mobile.

Also, why shouldn't someone who has mastered mortal martial arts or multiple schools of swordplay or shooting the stem off an apple on the other side of the Breach be confident that he can whoop someone's ass?  Is every random guy with a shiny gun and a rep a master now?  Aren't the Fated supposed to be Fate's chosen?

1 hour ago, LeperColony said:

Not only did I not miss this, I specifically addressed this by pointing out (again) Omenbringer's analysis on high TNs being as much of an issue as low TNs, just on the other side.

Just like something shouldn't be trivial, it also shouldn't be virtually impossible, unless the idea is to communicate that it shouldn't be tried at all (I mean, in the end, if you want to charge the dragon, I guess you can...).  And this is where another problems with high TNs come into play.  If you communicate that the TN is "you need a Red Joker" because the action isn't supposed to succeed, and someone has a Red Joker, they know 100% that they can pull it off.

However, if you describe this virtually impossible thing in virtually impossible terms, the Fated may still decide to do it, and he may not, but his decision at that point is more meaningful.  Note that this is true even if the opposed flip virtually impossible thing is easier than the Fixed TN Red Joker, due to uncertainty.

So you didn't miss it, but you just chose to ignore my acknowledgement of it?  Seriously.  I've said twice now that a Master-level threat would probably result in death.  Possibly for all of them, but definitely for at least a few.  This is the third time I will say that.  No Masters to fight.  Masters are plot devices, not combat challenges.  If a player genuinely wants to fight a Master, I won't stop them if they can arrive at that situation.  But that's on them.  Consequences happen.

If foreknowledge of the TN of a check is really that bothersome, a Fatemaster isn't really under any contractual obligation to say what that TN is.  Sure, it's a step of duel resolution, but I don't think Mack Martin is going to appear in my house and knife me because I use the categorical descriptions instead of the number.  And that's what I do.  Again, not a huge step away from it (especially since those values aren't subjective), but enough to cause some of my players to cheat higher than strictly needed, especially on one-time checks.  When I ran some pregenerated adventures I accidentally said "TN 10 duel" a few times, and I hated myself a little.  This is a point we can agree on.  Things are more fun if they are uncertain.  But I would argue that things are a bit less fun if they're not quantifiable.  I personally like to know where I stand, if only a little (I also tell my players the AC of the monsters they've fought in D&D).

1 hour ago, LeperColony said:

My critique was when you admitted up front that the system was unable to handle what they were most interested in doing, so you worked around it.  Now, that is what good Fate Masters do.  But that's hardly a selling point for the system.

As far as some of my players are concerned, there is nothing wrong with beefing up and going out and kicking the tar out of every bad guy and monster in the Badlands.  Honestly, some kind of Hong Kong Action Theater TTB where everyone went in with the knowledge that they would end up facing Henchman-and-Master-level threats could be super-fun.  It could be a selling point.

The issue is that it was not how I had originally designed the game, which I made clear to the players before we even laid out the tarot.  Now that a few of them have changed the paradigm, others are left behind if I include hard-to-fight threats, while the people who developed into combat characters mow down the enemies that are appropriate for the lower level folk and will do so strategically to reduce AP expended against them (they played Malifaux first, so AP efficiency and activation control are important to them).  My players broke the social contract we established, but I can't just call it quitsies because they did.  I can make my displeasure known (and I do), but these are my friends and family and the people I preferentially play other games with, not just a group of random jerks from the LGS.

47 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

Where did I say I don't challenge my players?  This entire thread has been predicated on the fact that opposed flips are more meaningful challenges than Fixed TNs, for all the reasons I and Omenbringer already established.

37 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

Suppose your Fated run into a guild patrol.  You can adjust the difficulty by making it so-happen that the combat characters are fighting experienced guilders and the non-combat aren't, and nobody needs to know.

The minute you say one guard has a TN of 14 and the other a TN of 10, the jig is up.  Particularly tactically minded players will even take advantage of that, to preferentially target the TN 10 enemies.  But with opposing flips, your ability to manipulate the difficulty level behind the scenes is far more powerful (in that it exists at all), and less ruinous to immersion.

Sounds challenging, since everyone has a level-appropriate enemy to fight.

So you think that players won't intuit, instinctively that something is going on when a character with an AV 2 is hitting as much or nearly as often as another character with AV 7?  This is playing by fiat.  You are introducing variation within base archetypes, something that nothing outside of level-scaling video games do.  Your opponent magically being on your level (and they just so happened to single you out of everyone else in this fight), making fights fair for everyone diminishes the way some people want to play the game.  Why should a small woman who's held little more than a kitchen knife in her life be on par with my aforementioned wushu master?  Why have stats or AVs at all if all we're gonna do is flip two cards and see who winds up higher?

1 hour ago, LeperColony said:

Except that it is.  I already dispensed with Mr. 9 earlier, when he met his big brother Mr. 14.  And, they both saw a glimpse of the future when I discussed Mr. 100.  Why would I ever drive it to a point where the variability doesn't matter?  They variability and the uncertainty are the entire point. 

It may very well be that statistically the "ideal challenge level," for lack of a better word, is exactly the same in fixed and opposed flip.  In fact, that is likely.  But that would still make flipping superior because the variability and the uncertainty make it less gamey.

Numbers are only arbitrary if you ignore the bounds of the system.  Show me a Fated character with an AV above 11.  It's possible, I guess, if a Manifested Power comes into play that increases someone's AV, or if someone does a physical or mental enhancement spell, and maybe there's something in Into the Steam I haven't read yet, but that's not going to be a default on their character sheet.  9 to a 14 is a pretty huge jump in terms of likelihood of success, even with randomly determined values for both parties, and it's even more huge to players that are at a 6 or a 2.  If you isolate a single "problem child" with people or challenges they always have trouble fighting (or doing whatever), you are generating an adversarial game where the players can trust that, no matter what they do, they will always be below your creations.  If everything I encounter beats me 7 or 8 tiimes out of 10, I'm going to consider whether or not I ever want to encounter anything, ever.  It makes victory bitter, torn from a capricious hand.  I guess you could call it fun, if you wanted to.

2 hours ago, LeperColony said:

Think about it like this: 

Fixed TN is rock-paper-scissors, where you KNOW your opponent will pick rock.  The only question is whether or not you have paper.  If you have paper in your hand, or the math says you're very likely to get paper, then you KNOW you will win (or, more precisely, you know exactly how likely it is you'll win). 

Opposed flip is rock-paper-scissors where you suspect that there's a reasonably good chance that your opponent will pick rock, but he may not, and even if he does, the rock he picks may be too big for the paper in your hand, so even that won't automatically save you.

That's the difference.

Fixed TN is knowing that your opponent will throw rock, sure.  No argument there.  However, there is still no guarantee that you can throw Paper, because it's not Rock-Paper-Scissors.  It's an arbitrary system with a range of values that either beat or fail to meet Rock (let's say tree, timber, lumber, pulp all fail against Rock and paper, note, essay, and journal all succeed).  If a Fated draws 1, 2, and 3 from their Twist Deck (which I've seen), they are beholden to the cruel whims of the Fate Deck, which is every bit as variable as any other deck of cards, no matter the TN.

Variable TN is however just Rock-Paper-Scissors.  You don't know what your opponent is doing until it's done, and you still might not be able to do anything about it anyway, but you'll never know no matter what.  I mean, eventually I hope you tell your player if they're failing or succeeding, and hopefully before they have to cheat Fate.  But if they cheat a 13 and fail, that's gonna be a mightily sour note (again, I've seen it happen and I'm not proud of it), unless you just tell them "don't bother" in no uncertain terms, which you seem to be against.  Also, number-smart players will be able to figure out AVs by the differences in cards if you do show your flips, so to keep the other arbitrary values of enemies safe, they can't even know that.

That's the actual difference.

2 hours ago, LeperColony said:

I never said my players weren't going to try to game the system.  I'm the one who says players are likely to figure out the math in the first place!

But I also object to the idea that maxing something is necessary gaming the system.  Just because you have a 6 in what you want your character to be good at, it doesn't mean you're some crazy power gamer (there's also nothing wrong with power gaming, if that's your thing).  You can do it automatically if you want.  To put it another way, you have to intentionally avoid it if you don't want it.  That's an affectation.

You may very well say that the game works at AV 4.  That may even be true.  But then, if that's how the system is supposed to work, it's the system's fault if it doesn't work at AV 6.

Most of my players' Fated started at AV 6, and honestly, things were just fine then.  Then they went to 7, which didn't bother me.  Then 8.  Now 9, and soon 10.  There are two characters now that don't have at least an AV 7 attack, and not a single one doesn't have an AV 7 in some skill (a consequence of a long game, but many of them are characterful and unique to the Fated (only one Deceive 7 and Track 7, for example)).  Again, the 7s don't really bother me, because that means that player dedicated a good amount of time into getting to that (both of those only happened in the last five sessions), and their odds of success at Routine tasks is pretty much automatic, but some flipping is still required for more difficult things.  And honestly?  If they took most of the game to get there, they've earned it.  Hell, accruing the experience needed to hit Rank 5 in a skill is pretty amazing in and of itself, especially if it isn't offered every time, and I still made people tie that into the story somehow (usually through an objective in an adventure).

The game works, wherever it is.  What fails is expectations of players (Fatemasters included).  Is the system not working if a Master flips a 13 every time?  Maybe, or maybe Masters are supposed to win direct confrontations, and the system works just fine to represent that.  It even allows for characters to obtain enough power to challenge Masters, if only briefly.  But maybe that's all you need, since a three-round distraction will keep Lady Justice's attention so your Graverobber buddy - who also is the only person who knows the way to a secret chamber beneath Malifaux - can make off with his lab and "friends" he's built over the past few years.  And is it such a bad thing for the player to know what they're walking into in that case, even if they know exactly what that is?

9 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

I also wanted to point something out about the math here.  As cards are spent, it's possible to calculate the odds with increasing precision.  This is why casinos use multiple deck shoes for Blackjack (explaining the math here is impractical, but any internet guide on poker or blackjack odds will do the trick, if needed). 

Keep in mind, if we know exactly what Lucius' TN is, not only does it allow us the opportunity to tell how likely we are to flip what we need, it gives us an absolute ability to tell if we can do it with our Twist Hand.

10 isn't enough?  We need a 13?  Well, we have the Red Joker in hand.  Let's go expose Lucius, with a 100% success rate.

That's the way you want players to make their decisions? 

Really?

@Sunspotter answered this pretty elegantly, so I'll just posit this, instead.

Why not?

If someone is as smart as a human can be and can argue so well that most lawyers will just throw up their hands and drop the charges as soon as they step into the courtroom, why shouldn't they be able to obtain that signed confession by Fate or a Twist of Fate?  This is a moment you design a campaign around, not something you wake up in the morning and decide to do.  I want to shake that party's hand.  That's an achievement.  That's a goal.  And even if the Black Joker shows up, or the character has to discard that last 13 due to a discard effect and fails, I still want to shake that party's hand.  It's not easy to force a hostile confrontation with the Secretary to the Governor General of Malifaux, and it's harder still to fail and have to accept that.  Because sometimes there are no winners.  Because sometimes, bad things happen, and sometimes, you go in with an 11 in hand thinking it will be enough, and it turns out that it's not, and all you can do is flip the top card of the Fate Deck and hope.  And that, to me, is better than never knowing at all, or never having a shot and not knowing it.

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57 minutes ago, Omenbringer said:

As I pointed out in my earlier post, this is a very big issue with the Static resolution system and a major, major difference between other systems.

Dice are true random number generators (having no memory of previous results), where as a deck of cards is not (it definitely has a memory of previous results). Sure at first a fresh deck can generate any number between 0 to 14, however once the first card is drawn the deck begins skewing results (this is why so many Malifaux players keep the Black Joker safely in their hand when able to, instead of allowing it to run free in the deck).

As LeperColony also points out, this creates situations where actions can be guarantied to either absolutely succeed or fail with 0 variability (and no way for players to change it unless they can get the deck to cycle). Again using the high end of the non-fated Rankings, if the players (or the combat specialist) need a 12 or higher to succeed in affecting the non-fated, then once the last 12+ has been drawn from the deck, the players absolutely (with 100% certainty) can not succeed from the deck until it has been reshuffled (if able they could potentially cheat, but again, once the 12+'s are gone from their twist deck they have to wait until it shuffles as well). The same can happen at the low end of the scale. As a Fate Master or Player, I dont want to know that no matter what I do I am guarantied to fail (no matter how trivial the task) or succeed (despite being normally impossible).

I will give you that Kobolds and goblins are not the most terrifying of monsters in D&D, but they can definitely present an issue for low level groups. Had a group of 4 consistently struggle to complete the very first portion of the narrated introductory adventure for D&D despite the main threats being goblins and kobolds. Now once a player gets above 3rd level it starts to shift much more into their favor (due to the likelihood of better armor, more wounds, the possibility of magical items, and improved THAC0), however even here, a larger group of kobolds (say 2 to 1) still has the potential to endanger characters. The dice are the difference, and that keeps all combats interesting.

What I find most interesting about this, is that the original designer freely admitted (in the interview I linked to earlier in the thread) that he rarely had an RPG character achieve even 5th level. This greatly influenced his design of TtB and is the source of so many of the systems idiosyncrasies In the end the game was built to satisfy only one person, despite significant input and debate from play testers. I wish I could say more but non-disclosures are a hell of a thing, and with the death of the old kickstarter backers forum difficult to substantiate anyway.

I can totally get behind not wanting to know if an action (or set thereof) was guaranteed to fail.  Though I again don't think that is a unique problem to TtB as DnD can also pull the same shenanigans (save for the nat 20 = guaranteed hit in combat scenario).

Admittedly when it comes to DnD/Pathfinder I have only rarely gotten characters beyond level 5 unless the campaign started beyond it.  Though I've also played extended campaigns in other systems (such as my current 2-year Warhammer Fantasy RP 3rd game with a 47 experience character).  Though knowing that I can definitely see how one might say level 5 is the typical character max despite reading through a monster manual which contains CR 20 enemies.

Either way, I still don't think we can condemn TtB's static antagonist system unless we condemn all static antagonist systems (which I am fully willing to do as Dogs in the Vineyard is by far my favorite resolution system).  Given TtB's current form I think the inability to influence AVs beyond base stats is a big part of what makes big enemies NPE.  Similarly I think there is also a perception problem in the TtB bestiary.  I for one imagine Witchling Stalkers being far more frightening due to their visual aesthetic and the reputation of the Witch Hunters, but as minions in TtB they are pretty damn easy to dispatch.

TtB characters for the most part feel like they start out at Enforcer level, but they only barely get to be Henchman equivalents (barring some crazy madness).

But after that critique I also must say I have been having a blast as a Fatemaster, and my players have been enjoying the game as well.  It's just a puzzle to craft encounters that will be significant without being unfair (usually a pack of minions and/or enforcers).

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1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

You're really stuck on this "combat isn't challenging" thing.  It's not.  That's cool, we accept that.  Hell, I said it.  Every one of us agrees that the system is breakable.  Setting arbitrary difficulty is no less breakable without adjusting on a player-by-player basis to levels that players cannot attain.

It happened in my game because it kind of turned into an arms race.  And that's fine.  My players draw satisfaction or amusement from big numbers (the 9 guy is seriously doing it because he thinks it's funny in the context of Malifaux) or from tacit competition with the guy next to them by and large.  They also did it in preparation in case something nasty did come along (there's a big threat that's been around since the first session, but they haven't fought it yet, and they may never).  Personally, I don't think you should want an AV higher than 6 or 7, because there's a lot to do in the game that my players haven't explored, but if they don't want to, should I directly bar them from taking combat skills?  That's being pretty crappy to my players, not to mention it does break some of the rules of the game (Pursuits can often pick combat-related skills even if I don't offer them).  You suggest (and reinforce further on) a system where no matter how the players design their characters, they are slaves to the flip of a pair of cards, with only a nominal ability to cheat.

 

You mean I'm stuck on your admission that Fixed TNs don't work?  In a discussion about whether or not they work? 

Yeah... 

Why you continue to argue in the face of this I don't understand.  Like I said, every single post on how great fixed TNs are are the same:

1)  They don't work.

2)  I love that.

How about we just both agree to let this point go now, since it's not moving anywhere.  Fixed TNs are easily gameable.  If you agree to not game them (your "social contract" then you produce a consistent range of expected values that are workable. 

So, again, if you "play the way we mean you to" it's fine.  

As for the Fated being slaves to flips, first of all I'm not sure you, or those with the same preference for Fixed, like to pretend there isn't a random element to it.  You can get just as screwed using Fixed.  The cards can fail to come just as often. 

What's more, it's telling that producing a game that scales with the capabilities of the Fated and presents a constant challenge level while the Fated advance is, to you, somehow troubling.

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

Values are relative, but you can't show me a Fated character that can arrive at an AV14 for anything.  The road stops at 11 (and that for social skills), unless that's also something you plan on changing.  AV 14 :+fate:+fate falls pretty close to the margin of impossible that you claim variable TNs do so much to negate.  Especially if you only have the one person who has 9 :+fate:+fate.  God forbid the other Fated try to gang up on the 14.  Sure, if you're hiding the flips, you can make a few attacks get by even if they miss, or fudge a few to not completely destroy the lesser Fated, but the numbers will tell in the end.  You're not fixing anything, you're just making the goalposts mobile.

The values for Fated may stop at 11.  But as the Fate Master, values can be arbitrarily high (or low).  Now, you may exhibit total devotion to the rules as written that you're unable to conceive of abandoning or altering them in even the slightest regard, but I personally place the integrity of the rules beneath the enjoyment of the players.

That's just me.

As for making goalposts mobile, that is fixing something.  It is, in fact, the oldest solution in GMing (aside from hand waving, I suppose).  It's even the solution in the TtB rule book, and it's the solution Mason mentioned earlier when he talked about how subsequent books produced enemies with varying levels of (set) AVs. 

What I do is make the goal post mobile, provide a consistent challenge level to my players that scales as they grow so that things that are meant to be easy are always easy, things that are meant to be tough are always tough and things that are meant to be very difficult are always very difficult.  But while I move the goal posts, I also manage to repaint all the lines and rescale the entire stadium so the players feel like they're still playing at the old one.

The SCALE of the game changes, but the challenges remain CONSTANTLY APPROPRIATE.  In D&D terms:

At level 1, giant rats are easy, kolbolds are tough and orcs are murderous.

At level 6, giant rats are pointless, kolbolds are trivial, orcs are easy, trolls are tough and giants are murderous.

At level 11 orcs are trivial, trolls are easy, giants are tough and vampires are murderous.

The characters advance in the world.  Their capabilities improve.  But the game is able to provide a constant level of meaningful challenges.

Again, I concede it's possible your games are simply a race to reach the end stage of whatever advancement mechanic there is, and then destroy everything with printed stats.  That's a perfectly valid method of play.

But my games are about providing players with meaningful and appropriate challenges.

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

So you didn't miss it, but you just chose to ignore my acknowledgement of it?  Seriously.  I've said twice now that a Master-level threat would probably result in death.  Possibly for all of them, but definitely for at least a few.  This is the third time I will say that.  No Masters to fight.  Masters are plot devices, not combat challenges.  If a player genuinely wants to fight a Master, I won't stop them if they can arrive at that situation.  But that's on them.  Consequences happen.

Didn't miss it, resolved it several times.  We know Master level threats result in death.  What part of high TNs are equally broken as low ones? 

In the interest of reducing post lengths, I'm just going to ignore this particular part of the discussion going forward since, for what ever reason, there doesn't seem to be any movement on it.

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

Sounds challenging, since everyone has a level-appropriate enemy to fight.

So you think that players won't intuit, instinctively that something is going on when a character with an AV 2 is hitting as much or nearly as often as another character with AV 7?  This is playing by fiat.  You are introducing variation within base archetypes, something that nothing outside of level-scaling video games do.  Your opponent magically being on your level (and they just so happened to single you out of everyone else in this fight), making fights fair for everyone diminishes the way some people want to play the game.  Why should a small woman who's held little more than a kitchen knife in her life be on par with my aforementioned wushu master?  Why have stats or AVs at all if all we're gonna do is flip two cards and see who winds up higher?

The woman with the kitchen knife is not on par with your wushu master.  If your wushu master wants to murder domestic housekeepers, he can.  The goal is not to make every fight challenging.  The goal is to make challenging opposition challenging, and that's what you've already admitted you're unable to do.

As for whether the players figure it out or not, they very well may.  Or at least they may think they do.  Remember, as Fate Master I decide not only the difficulty of the encounter, but also its purpose.  If the purpose of the fight is to provide a meaningful challenge to the players from a mechanical standpoint, I will structure the enemies statistics and tactics in a different manner than if the purpose of the fight is to imply danger or gum up the works (say by slowing the pacing).  This is the value of uncertainty. 

If I decide a combat is supposed to be a certain challenge level, there's no reason why I can't craft mechanical solutions to meet that requirement.  Your inability to consider the game outside its set textual limits is really quite curious.

In your world, perhaps, it makes sense that Bayou Gremlins are always TN 10, because the book says so.  If that works for you, great.  But I prefer a more fluid and living dynamic.

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

Fixed TN is knowing that your opponent will throw rock, sure.  No argument there.  However, there is still no guarantee that you can throw Paper, because it's not Rock-Paper-Scissors.  It's an arbitrary system with a range of values that either beat or fail to meet Rock (let's say tree, timber, lumber, pulp all fail against Rock and paper, note, essay, and journal all succeed).  If a Fated draws 1, 2, and 3 from their Twist Deck (which I've seen), they are beholden to the cruel whims of the Fate Deck, which is every bit as variable as any other deck of cards, no matter the TN.

My argument is just as strong if you know you can't throw paper.  Certainty is the enemy.  Not success.  I'm also glad you've finally acknowledged that Fixed TNs include random elements.  I was beginning to really wonder.

The problem with Fixed TN is that because you know a rock is coming, you know 100% whether or not you'll have paper.  Either you have it in your Twist Hand to cheat or you know the likelihood that you'll have it in the deck.

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

Variable TN is however just Rock-Paper-Scissors.  You don't know what your opponent is doing until it's done, and you still might not be able to do anything about it anyway, but you'll never know no matter what.  I mean, eventually I hope you tell your player if they're failing or succeeding, and hopefully before they have to cheat Fate.  But if they cheat a 13 and fail, that's gonna be a mightily sour note (again, I've seen it happen and I'm not proud of it), unless you just tell them "don't bother" in no uncertain terms, which you seem to be against.  Also, number-smart players will be able to figure out AVs by the differences in cards if you do show your flips, so to keep the other arbitrary values of enemies safe, they can't even know that.

Eventually I tell them whether they're failing or succeeding?  Why, in your mind, does it take me so long to tell them it didn't work and to offer them the chance to cheat fate?  I'm really curious about this one.

The irony here is you've conceded everything about the difference between the two dynamics.  Why do we need to discuss it further?  I mean, I know we will, but why?

We both AGREE on that the difference in our great game of R-P-S is that in Fixed you KNOW your opponent has rock and so all you need to do is have paper and win, whereas in opposed you don't know what your opponent has, so you have to make a decision based on your capabilities, what you know about his, what you have in your Twist Hand, how important the circumstance is, what happens if you fail, what you stand to gain if you succeed... you know, role-playing.

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

The game works, wherever it is.  What fails is expectations of players (Fatemasters included).

In other words, play it like we mean you to, and it's fine.  I get it, that's your defense.  That's fine.  But do we really have to keep arguing about it?

1 hour ago, hippodruid said:

@Sunspotter answered this pretty elegantly, so I'll just posit this, instead.

Why not?

If someone is as smart as a human can be and can argue so well that most lawyers will just throw up their hands and drop the charges as soon as they step into the courtroom, why shouldn't they be able to obtain that signed confession by Fate or a Twist of Fate?  This is a moment you design a campaign around, not something you wake up in the morning and decide to do.  I want to shake that party's hand.  That's an achievement.  That's a goal.  And even if the Black Joker shows up, or the character has to discard that last 13 due to a discard effect and fails, I still want to shake that party's hand.  It's not easy to force a hostile confrontation with the Secretary to the Governor General of Malifaux, and it's harder still to fail and have to accept that.  Because sometimes there are no winners.  Because sometimes, bad things happen, and sometimes, you go in with an 11 in hand thinking it will be enough, and it turns out that it's not, and all you can do is flip the top card of the Fate Deck and hope.  And that, to me, is better than never knowing at all, or never having a shot and not knowing it.

This is elegance to you?  What Sunspotter did was respond to an entirely different question.  The point of the entire thread was about the problems with high TNs, and how certainty is one of the issues.  See Omenbringer's great post on that, because that's the issue.

However, because I don't mind, I'll also address Sunspotter's point.

If I've designed the whole campaign around a moment, I don't then make that moment dependent on having the Red Joker.  I mean, seriously, does the climax of your entire campaign rise or fall on a 1.8% flip?  Or having it in your hand?

The issue is not that the players can defeat and expose Lucius.  If that's the spine of the game, that's something that will likely happen.  That's something the campaign is built around.  It is TN INDEPENDENT, or at least it can be, depending on your play style.  If the group and the play style is "let the dice fall where they may," then you can shoot it out straight up.  If they are narrative and want to tell a happy ending, you can accommodate that, and if they are narrative and are telling a tragedy, that works too. 

This whole "you go in with an 11 in hand thinking it will be enough" is curious, because you KNOW if it will be enough.  At this point I don't know what we have to gain by further discussion.

There isn't a single element of Fixed TN that doesn't work exactly like I've said it does.  You're just saying you're fine with that.  And that's great.  It really, really is, and I mean that 100% unsarcastically. 

But it's not fine for me.

What I don't get is you keep talking about how much you love storytelling, and how TtB is a storytelling game, then you defend TNs because they're gamey and you like that. 

You've already said you like knowing someone is important because their TN is high.  Not because of how they are described, or the position they hold in the world, or how the Fated meet them.  But because their TN is high.

Then above, you've just said that you want your entire campaign to rise or fall on having an 11.  In a system where the Fated KNOW 100% the odds of having an 11.

Seriously, how many of these examples will it take before you're willing to admit you just want the comfort of mechanical determinism?

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1 hour ago, Omenbringer said:

As I pointed out in my earlier post, this is a very big issue with the Static resolution system and a major, major difference between other systems.

Dice are true random number generators (having no memory of previous results), where as a deck of cards is not (it definitely has a memory of previous results). Sure at first a fresh deck can generate any number between 0 to 14, however once the first card is drawn the deck begins skewing results (this is why so many Malifaux players keep the Black Joker safely in their hand when able to, instead of allowing it to run free in the deck).

As LeperColony also points out, this creates situations where actions can be guarantied to either absolutely succeed or fail with 0 variability (and no way for players to change it unless they can get the deck to cycle). Again using the high end of the non-fated Rankings, if the players (or the combat specialist) need a 12 or higher to succeed in affecting the non-fated, then once the last 12+ has been drawn from the deck, the players absolutely (with 100% certainty) can not succeed from the deck until it has been reshuffled (if able they could potentially cheat, but again, once the 12+'s are gone from their twist deck they have to wait until it shuffles as well). The same can happen at the low end of the scale. As a Fate Master or Player, I dont want to know that no matter what I do I am guarantied to fail (no matter how trivial the task) or succeed (despite being normally impossible).

The thing is, no matter how many times we point this out, none of the Fixed TN supporters bother to address it.

If certainty is desirable to you, then Fixed TN is your game.  But if it's not, then let's hear why it's wrong to use a system that circumvents it.

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33 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

The thing is, no matter how many times we point this out, none of the Fixed TN supporters bother to address it.

Let's be fair, before reading Omenbringer's post I would have never gleaned this from your post.  You have consistently argued that certainty is evil, but Omenbringer presented it in a way that make the mechanics feel poor (e.g. needing a 12+ when all 12/13s are out of the Fate or Twist deck means certain failure).  Every argument you have presented is simply the antithesis of wanting players to be allowed the knowledge of when they can or can not fail.

Omenbringer informed me of the issue in reference purely to the mechanics.  Your arguments only impart the knowledge that you dislike knowing the odds (Thank you Han).

And random TNs do not fully eliminate this issue, as any player with an AV 2 will find it it impossible to combat an AV 17.  At some point, certainty will exist.  Even in D&D // Pathfinder you are certain you hit on a 20 or miss on a 1 (Assuming you play by either of those rules) no matter your value or the opponents and between those extremes you have a range of possibilities. 

All the same, I don't find the statistical variance to be more or less compelling.  Like Hippodruid said, if uncertainty is key, simply keeping information concealed creates uncertainty.  Even with your idea to create more variance, if you do not keep the results hidden players can derive the information of what the AVs are, and their theoretical potential to achieve goals.  But assuming you are not hiding results from players by simply relating to them if they miss or hit, then you allow them the chance to understand the values of the encounter well enough to "game" the system.  In D&D, if a person with a +4 attack hits on a 13, and another with +7 misses when they roll 9, they players have all the knowledge required to know the AC.  Granted AC uses a fixed value, in assuming to take 10 on defense.  But changing things to randomization does not enhance the game, IMO.  If you had a +5 Defense score vs a +10 Attack and add a random element to either, it doesn't necessarily mean the results are better for it.  If it were D&D, you could roll a 1 vs anything over a 6 and miss, but that hardly makes a combat more fun.  In TtB you could flip a 1 vs a 6+ and miss all the same, and all you're doing is muddling the players' ability to determine their expected results.  They could fight a failure of a Master who flips only Black Joker to 4s, and they may face a Peon that exclusively flips 12+ and, depending on how much information you reveal as Fate Master about the flips being played out, they may never understand the difference or what happened.  You say you prefer immersion, but short of hiding all non-player flips, the players will be able to glean the information that makes every other set of events "gamey".

But then you're no longer discussing why TtB needs randomization on both sides, and you're discussing preferred play style of GMing and how to build the game in a way you find palatable.  Especially in reference to the following quote:

7 hours ago, LeperColony said:

Suppose your Fated run into a guild patrol.  You can adjust the difficulty by making it so-happen that the combat characters are fighting experienced guilders and the non-combat aren't, and nobody needs to know.

The minute you say one guard has a TN of 14 and the other a TN of 10, the jig is up.  Particularly tactically minded players will even take advantage of that, to preferentially target the TN 10 enemies.  But with opposing flips, your ability to manipulate the difficulty level behind the scenes is far more powerful (in that it exists at all), and less ruinous to immersion. 

The only way this situation can exist is if you keep all information hidden from the players, such that they can't find out when their "Average combatants" and "Superior combatants" are fighting different power level of foes.  Even without revealing any numbers, after a few rounds the players will be able to tell that if someone with a +2 AV is hitting their opponent as often as a character with a +6 AV that the opponent fighting the AV +2 is weaker.  Plus, even without knowledge of the numbers there is no reason to suspect the players would not change their targets to take advantage of such a seemingly obvious trend (Assuming chance isn't given fickle cues to confuse players).  But relying on the capricious nature of randomization to "enhance" the play experience is a far cry from "solving Fixed TNs".  Especially when, considering the lengths required to keep such information truly hidden, you could just as well be lying to the players to stage the results you desire as GM.  But the take away here is, once the game has gotten to this point, the players have no way of identifying their success vs GM Fiat, or anything in between. 

Did they succeed at picking the lock?  Or was the lock made of candy in the first place and left open for them to steal from?

Did they actually dodge that last attack when they only flipped a 4?  Or were numbers flubbed so the campaign didn't end?

Why is the non-combatant Graverobber fending off his foe with near the same results as the resident combat master Bully?

More over, with a clear advantage over some of the Party's characters, I feel it would come across as more "gamey" that the "Superior combatants" were not targeting the "Average combatants" to eliminate targets and potential threats, if able.  Even most wild animals fight with some measure of cunning, even if only picking off targets when vulnerable.  Sentient creatures, I would expect, to almost always behave in a way that is the most advantageous to themselves, merely tying up or distracting stronger players while killing the weaker ones to their best ability.  Assuming that all opponents you face are not honor bound by an unwritten Code of Villainy or otherwise Overconfident to always face their equal when encountering the party.

 

1 hour ago, LeperColony said:

What I do is make the goal post mobile, provide a consistent challenge level to my players that scales as they grow so that things that are meant to be easy are always easy, things that are meant to be tough are always tough and things that are meant to be very difficult are always very difficult.  But while I move the goal posts, I also manage to repaint all the lines and rescale the entire stadium so the players feel like they're still playing at the old one.

See, now this is something I would argue is a severe flaw with most d20 Systems, and certainly a big issue in 4th Ed. D&D.  If you're a level 1 fighting a level 1 creature, perhaps it should feel even, but once you get to level 20 if fighting level 20 monsters feels the same, just with more flashing lights and bangs, is that a good thing?  If you trade blow-for-blow on the same scale, is that really good?  Certainly some people may enjoy it, and I rather much expect you do not, but that is what I take away from your argument.

At least, IMO, this is a very faulty design concept.  Inequity should be a concern for everyone, and very seldom are things going to be on terms that both parties (The opponents and players) would like to agree to.  But scaling games to fixed % chances based on difficulty just results in something that, IMO, is as bad of an offense as you take Fixed TN to be, it simply makes the game fall into rote mechanics that exist less to drive a story, and more to implement consequences which feel devoid of meaning.

More over, group dynamic demands that even among an individual party, AVs will vary, and short of the "An on level Guild Guard for everyone!" scheme, it can be nearly impossible to cater to individual character needs simply by increasing randomness or altering the mode of opposition (Fixed TN or Fluctuating TN).  All that guarantees is that characters that excel in certain aspects will either have to carry the weight of their party in situations they choose to specialize in (Which isn't unreasonable for social scenes, although for Combats this can be deadly), or will actually have an edge which is typically what an overspecialized character will be want to have (Either the player enjoys Min-Max or the character is made to be unequaled in an aspect for whatever reason).

And all of this is meaningless, because at the end of the day, a group is going to play how they want to play (Or at least how their GM wants to play, in more tyrannical led groups).

My GM abhors everything about hidden dice results.  If you can not see the results of your opponent, you have no way of knowing they just rolled 3x 20s in a row, which can only mean the gods of fate want your character to die instantly.  Or the inverse, that never will a dragon pull it's punches if you so choose to anger it, so even when you almost manage to dodge it's fireball when you're on your last 1HP, you know the GM isn't flubbing dice to keep you standing.

But as arguing over preferences is, as an absolute, completely a waste of time, there is little more to be said.

 

You originally asked why?  Which is a fine question, and I don't think the majority of people responded quite how you suggested (Simply lavishing you with why Fixed TN is the best), but it is clearly not an answer anyone here is in a position to provide.

What I can tell you is that I don't think a Fate Deck is a suitable mechanic at all for the types of games you seem to be interested in.  As Zeeblee said, the randomization is less of a "point of fact" issue as the difficulty of advancement for AV // Stats. 

Obviously two Fate Decks opposing each other works, as evidenced by Malifaux.  What I doubt is the resource management aspect of the game if you tried to implement a similar design.  With each player controlling a single Character, the need for cards from a Control hand (Or Twist deck) is greatly reduced, and understanding when to allow players to draw a new hand or shuffle their personal deck is highly suspect.  Eventually they will have to deal with the consequences of low card values, potentially against a deck with a higher current average (One that has already seen it's low cards flipped).

Especially considering that no ability or talent in the game was designed around the intent to interact with a player having their own Fate Deck (Or Control Hand), this means there will be a severe lack of interacting with said randomization, which is one of the strengths of Malifaux, in letting players manipulate the deck via Soulstones (Draw 2 discard 2 at start of turn), or potentially to simply stop damage if no other option is present (Soulstone Prevention), or any number of abilities that draw cards or otherwise interact with the deck.  There is also no concept of Discard outlets, such as Defensive or Flurry, which normally account for the use of low cards such that the decks values are not the exclusive use they provide (Simply having cards in Hand is sometimes enough of a benefit).

Basically, the game wasn't designed around the same mechanics as Malifaux.  And it certainly doesn't contain nearly the same sort of resource management or variety of resources and outlets to validate the change.

IMO, if randomization is the key to your enjoyment, you're way better off mounting a Malifaux skin onto an existing RPG system you enjoy, and depending on the system, I doubt there would me more work to drum up some appropriate "talents" and "paths" to play in it, as oppose to trying to overhaul the mechanical system of TtB.

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1 hour ago, Tawg said:

Let's be fair, before reading Omenbringer's post I would have never gleaned this from your post.  You have consistently argued that certainty is evil, but Omenbringer presented it in a way that make the mechanics feel poor (e.g. needing a 12+ when all 12/13s are out of the Fate or Twist deck means certain failure).  Every argument you have presented is simply the antithesis of wanting players to be allowed the knowledge of when they can or can not fail.

Omenbringer informed me of the issue in reference purely to the mechanics.  Your arguments only impart the knowledge that you dislike knowing the odds (Thank you Han).

If you missed the several times where I discussed the pure math, there's nothing I can do.  Omenbringer's post even says "As LeperColony also points out...".  I think this is because, to you and the Fixed TN people, I've simply become an oppositional force, so disagreeing with me is reflexive at this point.

1 hour ago, Tawg said:

And random TNs do not fully eliminate this issue, as any player with an AV 2 will find it it impossible to combat an AV 17.  At some point, certainty will exist.  Even in D&D // Pathfinder you are certain you hit on a 20 or miss on a 1 (Assuming you play by either of those rules) no matter your value or the opponents and between those extremes you have a range of possibilities. 

First of all, mechanical certainty and known certainty are not the same.  I've already covered that several times, especially in regard to High TN/Low Probability actions that are known to be automatic, so I won't elaborate further, but feel free to find one of those discussions if you can find fault with them.

1 hour ago, Tawg said:

All the same, I don't find the statistical variance to be more or less compelling.  Like Hippodruid said, if uncertainty is key, simply keeping information concealed creates uncertainty.  Even with your idea to create more variance, if you do not keep the results hidden players can derive the information of what the AVs are, and their theoretical potential to achieve goals.  But assuming you are not hiding results from players by simply relating to them if they miss or hit, then you allow them the chance to understand the values of the encounter well enough to "game" the system. 

You support Fixed TNs.  Variance is obviously not of interest to you.  But I want a less static system, which is why variance is valuable to me.  Also, it's important not to conflate variance and uncertainty, which you do in your quote. 

And it is equally important to understand the difference between statistical uncertainty and informational uncertainty.  If you don't know you'll succeed, that's statistical uncertainty.  If you don't know the result you're competing against (either fixed or variable), that's informational uncertainty.  You can have one without the other, and they're not the same (though, to be sure, they may on occasion follow each other or follow from each other).

Hippodruid derives value from the fact that known TNs communicate the importance of people.  He wants to know someone is important because their Lying TN is high.  That's the opposite of uncertainty.

1 hour ago, Tawg said:

Did they succeed at picking the lock?  Or was the lock made of candy in the first place and left open for them to steal from?

This is called role-playing.

Players can derive expectations from descriptions.  To you and the Fixed TN people, saying "the lock is TN 15" is how you want to communicate qualities.  To me, describing the lock and/or the container, answering players' questions (including does it look solid or made out of candy, is it even locked in the first place) are all ways of communicating a range of expected values that conform to a broad sense of how likely the action is

1 hour ago, Tawg said:

Did they actually dodge that last attack when they only flipped a 4?  Or were numbers flubbed so the campaign didn't end?

They'll never be sure.  That's one of the advantages.  Suppose the alternate, in a fixed TN system.  A particular fated has a miserable day and loses every flip.  It's possible, even when you know the TN (Not sure why Fixed TN people keep pretending like the luck fluctuations aren't possible).  And so the Fated dies to what was supposed to be an insignificant skirmish with speedbump Bayou Gremlins. 

I suppose you just let them die to maintain mechanical rigor?

Glad I have the tools that allow me to circumvent that.

1 hour ago, Tawg said:

Why is the non-combatant Graverobber fending off his foe with near the same results as the resident combat master Bully?

Why is the Graverobber's foe necessarily the same as the resident combat master?  Do you imagine that every police officer is the same?  That they are all equally fit, all spend the same amount of time at the shooting range, all possessed of the same devotion to the laws and their duties?  These natural variations are enough to justify fluctuations.  And, because the scale in Ttb/Malifaux is so small, a point in one direction or the other is a big difference mechanically, but need not be readily apparent.

Also, why do you imagine that every fight is a trial of strength to the death?  Before I begin a combat as the Fate Master, I determine what the point of the combat is.

Is it wading through mooks who are only meant to delay?

Is it a challenging battle?

Is it a battle I expect the Fated to potentially lose?

Then, based on those story elements I can craft appropriate challenge difficulties for all players.

Honestly, you guys talk and talk about how much you love story, and about how hard it is to run combats RAW and how difficult it is to include combat and non-combat characters, then you complain about a mechanic that is already an option in the rule book that can solve the issue.

Just admit you simply want Fixed TNs because you want them.  As I've said many, many times, that's perfectly valid and in fact something I can't possibly argue against.  But don't pretend it gives you all the options of opposing flips, because we've already seen many, many times that it doesn't.

1 hour ago, Tawg said:

More over, with a clear advantage over some of the Party's characters, I feel it would come across as more "gamey" that the "Superior combatants" were not targeting the "Average combatants" to eliminate targets and potential threats, if able.

This again is because you live in this restrictive world where someone's Fixed TN is their value in the world, so it's difficult for you to conceive of a resolution system that is based on fulfilling the story goals.

"Gamey" mechanics are where players make their decisions based on the system.  It's where they confront Lucius because they know they have the Red Joker, and they know Lucius's lying TN.  That's gamey.  The Fate Master adjusting enemies' values to present the Fated with the difficulty level they are led to expect already from other story factors is not gamey.  That's just providing opposition at the expected level, something we've already seen TtB has problems with.

1 hour ago, Tawg said:

At least, IMO, this is a very faulty design concept.  Inequity should be a concern for everyone, and very seldom are things going to be on terms that both parties (The opponents and players) would like to agree to.  But scaling games to fixed % chances based on difficulty just results in something that, IMO, is as bad of an offense as you take Fixed TN to be, it simply makes the game fall into rote mechanics that exist less to drive a story, and more to implement consequences which feel devoid of meaning.

You are 100% correct that inequality should be an important concern.  But it should be a concern in terms of the level of challenge you should expect, not in terms of the actual mechanical effectiveness of that challenge (or, more specifically, the failure of the challenge to correlate to the expected level, either by being too hard or too easy).

Put another way, as I've said many times, not all fights serve the same purpose.  To simplify things, let's pretend you can put all fights into three categories.

1- simple

2- challenging

3- severe

The goal in scaling is to ensure that at any stage in character advancement, these levels represent a similar level of effort, risk and reward to the players.  Not to ensure that the same enemies are always the same level or that fights are always the same.  What's challenging earlier shouldn't necessarily be challenging later.  Enemies can be statistically stronger, and they can also be tactically stronger (in that they can make better decisions). 

When you base the difficulty of combats on the level of challenge the players expect it to be, you're responding by providing a world that broadly conforms to their expectations.  That's how people make decisions.  It's a good thing.

By the way, this philosophy of combat is actually system independent.  Where opposed flips has the advantage over Fixed is in all the variability and uncertainty arguments we've already covered, along with the Fate Master's ability to more believably manipulate or control results as desired.

1 hour ago, Tawg said:

More over, group dynamic demands that even among an individual party, AVs will vary, and short of the "An on level Guild Guard for everyone!" scheme, it can be nearly impossible to cater to individual character needs simply by increasing randomness or altering the mode of opposition (Fixed TN or Fluctuating TN).  All that guarantees is that characters that excel in certain aspects will either have to carry the weight of their party in situations they choose to specialize in (Which isn't unreasonable for social scenes, although for Combats this can be deadly), or will actually have an edge which is typically what an overspecialized character will be want to have (Either the player enjoys Min-Max or the character is made to be unequaled in an aspect for whatever reason).

I think everyone agrees that providing fair content for asymmetrical groups has a certain difficulty associated with it.  But the irony is that, instead of simply admitting, "yeah, if you use opposing flips and you rely on the value of uncertainty you can manage it a little better than a constant and inflexible TN", you go on to say that because it's a problem, it doesn't make sense to bother applying any remedies.

1 hour ago, Tawg said:

Obviously two Fate Decks opposing each other works, as evidenced by Malifaux.  What I doubt is the resource management aspect of the game if you tried to implement a similar design.  With each player controlling a single Character, the need for cards from a Control hand (Or Twist deck) is greatly reduced, and understanding when to allow players to draw a new hand or shuffle their personal deck is highly suspect.  Eventually they will have to deal with the consequences of low card values, potentially against a deck with a higher current average (One that has already seen it's low cards flipped).

Especially considering that no ability or talent in the game was designed around the intent to interact with a player having their own Fate Deck (Or Control Hand), this means there will be a severe lack of interacting with said randomization, which is one of the strengths of Malifaux, in letting players manipulate the deck via Soulstones (Draw 2 discard 2 at start of turn), or potentially to simply stop damage if no other option is present (Soulstone Prevention), or any number of abilities that draw cards or otherwise interact with the deck.  There is also no concept of Discard outlets, such as Defensive or Flurry, which normally account for the use of low cards such that the decks values are not the exclusive use they provide (Simply having cards in Hand is sometimes enough of a benefit).

I don't see any problems with one Fate Deck for the Fated, one for the Fate Master, and the same refresh/redraw rules that currently exist (minus the Fate Master touching the deck, for all the silly reasons Mason mentioned already).  

The fact that the Fated have to deal with low values is not a problem, and I'm not sure why you think it is.  Failure is an assumed part of the game -- you can't succeed at everything.  What I'm doing is introducing a slightly (and I think when the math is all said and done, it probably is slight in the long run, though potentially impactful in short term situations like individual combats/flips) higher degree of volatility, and combining that with the removal of absolute mechanical certainty.  

I've yet to hear a single reason why that's not less gamey.

1 hour ago, Tawg said:

IMO, if randomization is the key to your enjoyment, you're way better off mounting a Malifaux skin onto an existing RPG system you enjoy, and depending on the system, I doubt there would me more work to drum up some appropriate "talents" and "paths" to play in it, as oppose to trying to overhaul the mechanical system of TtB.

Randomization is not the key to my enjoyment, and again, this statement follows in a long line of bizarre assertions that Fixed TN does not involve randomizing.  Avoiding deterministic certainty is something I prefer, however, which is why Fixed TNs are not for me.

Again, not a single person has been able to identify why Fixed TNs don't work exactly like I think they do, for the simple reason that they do work exactly like I think they do.

You and the people who like Fixed TNs derive value from knowing the Bayou Gremlin with a 10 is always a 10.

You and the people who like Fixed TNs derive value from knowing that Shifty Guy with Evidence is important because his lying TN is 17.

You and the people who like Fixed TN derive value from playing TtB "the way it is meant to be played," where Fixed TNs are relatively workable.

All that is fine.  But they are reasons why I don't like Fixed TN.

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9 hours ago, LeperColony said:

If you missed the several times where I discussed the pure math, there's nothing I can do.  Omenbringer's post even says "As LeperColony also points out...".  I think this is because, to you and the Fixed TN people, I've simply become an oppositional force, so disagreeing with me is reflexive at this point.

I have seen you discuss the math, but Omenbringer's post is the only one that really puts the perspective on it that I was missing.  Saying a given TN has a 1.8% chance to succeed is not the same as pointing out that once that RJ has been flipped it is a guaranteed 0% chance if RJ is required.  That's where your arguments failed to convey, and honestly I think a lot of this thread contains clashing nomenclature.  You, as well as others and myself, may feel we are discussing something, but I have a strong feeling that much of the debate is less desire to bring points to bear against the other and misunderstandings that result in us needing to feel out the other person.  If I had responded sooner in the thread, I would not have understood half of your view points.

9 hours ago, LeperColony said:

You support Fixed TNs.  Variance is obviously not of interest to you.  But I want a less static system, which is why variance is valuable to me.  Also, it's important not to conflate variance and uncertainty, which you do in your quote. 

And it is equally important to understand the difference between statistical uncertainty and informational uncertainty.  If you don't know you'll succeed, that's statistical uncertainty.  If you don't know the result you're competing against (either fixed or variable), that's informational uncertainty.  You can have one without the other, and they're not the same (though, to be sure, they may on occasion follow each other or follow from each other).

Hippodruid derives value from the fact that known TNs communicate the importance of people.  He wants to know someone is important because their Lying TN is high.  That's the opposite of uncertainty.

I never said I prefer fixed TN.  Your original question was "Why would they bother", I suggested reasons it might be a good thing.  Everything else I've argued is simply trying to elaborate on your arguments, which seem misguided to me.

We're all operating under assumptions, and many of them are not being clarified.  For instance, I did not learn if you plan to tell your players that their opponent has a Combat AV of 7 vs their 4 (Allowing Mechanical Uncertainty, as you put it, to do the work of persuading the players), or if you will be a GM who is going to simply describe a character in depth and expect that to drive the player's motives rather than numbers.  Well, I can be rather certain that you will be telling them descriptions not values, but I do not know if you will ever allow them to know values, of if you are simply trying to eliminate their ability to "learn" the values and subsequently make the choices trivial because they know the opponent's AV is 7 so they can only hit on a 8+ (In the Fixed TN world), or like in D&D when players learn that their opponent has a +10 to hit because the dice are not hidden from the players, but the results are unknown until rolled.

So there's two ways this can play out.  If you allow them open knowledge of their chances (Statistical Uncertainty is known), then players can just as well base their actions on such.  If they know the opponent has that 30% advantage you stated earlier, is it even worth their time to risk a 20% chance?  If they're holding a RJ in hand, does that change their decision making skills any less?  If that RJ gives them 100% certainty, or simply the confidence that they will likely be able to beat the opponent (full deck granting a 10 or less will fail against it, or roughly a 83% chance to succeed.).  But has anyone gained or loss from this?  The only thing that is being alleviated is that there is a slight margin that allows them to not spend their RJ to hit if the opponent flips a 2 and they flip a 7+.  So the structure of resource is being altered, but hardly the odds or choice scheme.  A player holding a RJ ought to have near perfect odds of succeeding, lest the card represent nothing outside of it's value.  But IMO, the card should represent near absolute success, short of trying to perform heart surgery with a fork on a train going off a cliff.  In most situations, I as player or GM would expect expending those resources of 12+ to be close to guaranteeing they will succeed. 

Allowing the uncertainty of the opponent flipping a king and opposing the player is not a good thing in this case, and not because Fixed TN is a ultimate savior.  I disfavor this idea because it can turn a series of otherwise measured risk into a woodchipper that simply grinds players to death on the whims of fate.  Again though, this assumes you adhere to your own rigorous mechanical inclinations more strictly than your desire to fulfill the story.

Just as well you could choose to say the players hit even if you flipped a high enough card to stop it.  Although that only works if you are hiding the information of what you flip against the players.  Because if it's open information, players will be savvy enough to derive estimated values of AV which would tell them flipping equal to their opponent is failure, and telling them otherwise would ruin those expectations.

Meanwhile, if you choose to hide the information of the flips, you are gaining nothing on the side of dueling decks.  If you choose to allow the players no information of their opposition's mechanical workings (The cards flipped or their AVs), then it is as meaningless as Fixed TN.  You're simply taking the certainty out of YOUR side of the element.  If the players can only see their own flip and the result, then a Fixed TN serves exactly the same purpose (Providing them with a TN).  You could just as easily play the game based on Fixed TN's and your own whims if you want to hide information, because you can set the TN of anything without telling the players, and even have it be different for characters with different AVs, such that their odds are the same (The challenge is equal for either).  Putting a Fate Deck on the Fate Master's side only serves to add uncertainty to your events.

Which isn't a bad thing.  In most cases, it gives the GM a chance to roll with things and craft the story around the events playing out, which may not be what they planned to have happen, if a Minion ends up resisting the players for 5 rounds, allowing the bomb in the building to go off that was meant to be disarmed easily.  What is a bad thing, IMO, either way, is relying on mechanics solely to determine outcomes.

10 hours ago, LeperColony said:

This is called role-playing.

Players can derive expectations from descriptions.  To you and the Fixed TN people, saying "the lock is TN 15" is how you want to communicate qualities.  To me, describing the lock and/or the container, answering players' questions (including does it look solid or made out of candy, is it even locked in the first place) are all ways of communicating a range of expected values that conform to a broad sense of how likely the action is

This is an extremely confusing point to me.  Because nothing about Hippodruid's arguments have displayed his desire to state TNs (Rather the opposite, he said he uses generic terms for difficulty), and I have never said this either.  Perhaps you feel that the game suggest you must tell players the TN when they are fixed, and you must adhere to this rule, but none other?

I can, within Fixed TNs, just as well describe a lock to full detail without revealing any TN's before players flip.  And once they flip, the only thing they can be certain of is success or failure after the fact, if I simply choose not to tell them the TN at all (I am not sure if telling the players the TN is a required action or just an assumption on your part).  Certainly you are never forced to tell players what is going on behind the curtains.  And at that point, TN's set a % of success, the same as any other system might, randomized on both sides or not.

10 hours ago, LeperColony said:

They'll never be sure.  That's one of the advantages.  Suppose the alternate, in a fixed TN system.  A particular fated has a miserable day and loses every flip.  It's possible, even when you know the TN (Not sure why Fixed TN people keep pretending like the luck fluctuations aren't possible).  And so the Fated dies to what was supposed to be an insignificant skirmish with speedbump Bayou Gremlins. 

I suppose you just let them die to maintain mechanical rigor?

Glad I have the tools that allow me to circumvent that.

I don't see the tools you are gaining over Fixed TN by dueling Fate Decks.  Unless, and I can only assume, you hide all information such that you may flub numbers.  But you can do that with Fixed TN as well, if you're just altering numbers to preserve players when they are suffering bad luck.

And the uncertainty of knowing you can expect the mechanics of the game to mean something, vs the expectation that the numbers won't matter and the GM can alter all results to fit what they need, is not an advantage in my eyes.  Sure, you may not have to in all cases, but if you build the expectation that the players won't be murdered when they are hard up on luck, it can easily result in them making poor decisions based on the fact that you have allowed them to skim by before, and why would you randomly kill them now?

 

There is no fight to win in this argument, because we're not arguing about TtB.  We're presenting how we enjoy playing games under the guise of debating mechanics.  But the mechanics are not being debated, and hardly being touched at all.

The Fate Deck has a unique randomization in it's ability to have outcomes that build towards one side or there other depending on what has been flipped.  And that is very different from dice in general.  Whether you used a Fixed TN or opposed outcomes, you're setting % based success rates.  Revealing to the players information about what is going on in the background is entirely a different mater, and seems to be wholly your affront against Fixed TNs.  When players can guarantee results by holding cards.

But if you played d20, and allowed the players to roll 10d20 before the game, and use those results in substitution during the session, you would get similar decisions being skewed based on players knowing they are holding high or low results (Cards or dice), regardless of their knowledge of the opponent's result or Fixed TN.  If they knew the result in advance, they could simply play into those "gamed" knowledge by knowing they won't fail.  But altering the method to derive their success (Randomizing the TN or not), does not change that they will be holding some of the highest results. 

The problem becomes when a system like TtB then, has less variance between active values, to the point that with a +6 AV you can know not much can oppose you.  But you can just as easily set TN's outside of their range of values, and raise or lower them based on the players "power level" so that, if they are meant to be "Challenged" by Lucious, they need a 10+ rather than only a RJ, or if they are meant to not have a chance at all, they simply can not obtain results against him.

Fixed TN or dueling Fate Decks, the GM is the one setting the encounters up.  It's just a matter of if you will know the outcomes in advance, or have to roll with it in game as GM.

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15 hours ago, zeeblee said:

TtB characters for the most part feel like they start out at Enforcer level, but they only barely get to be Henchman equivalents (barring some crazy madness).

But after that critique I also must say I have been having a blast as a Fatemaster, and my players have been enjoying the game as well.  It's just a puzzle to craft encounters that will be significant without being unfair (usually a pack of minions and/or enforcers).

Zeeblee

Man I love how elegant and succinct you stated this. Players definitely start around Enforcer level (typical Fated AV's are above the average Minion ranked non-fated and the average card Flip is around the same as the static value Enforcers recieve). Definitely agree that no matter what the players really do to their characters (maxing stats to +3, maxing skills to +5, and stacking talents) they will never really feel like anything more than a Henchman. Again the culprit is the static rank value which never deviates, while the players does (with memory). Despite Henchman typically not having maxed AV's (though they often do get close) they always essentially flip a 9 and they never worry about their deck being depleted of values that will succeed (unlike the fated). This 2 point difference skews the advantage for Henchman and above Non-fated substantially more than a true random number generator would. Enforcers (and perhaps "senior" minions) are really the sweet spot for Encounters. I agree that this makes crafting encounters a challenge because you do want them to "be significant without being unfair".

16 hours ago, zeeblee said:

Admittedly when it comes to DnD/Pathfinder I have only rarely gotten characters beyond level 5 unless the campaign started beyond it.  Though I've also played extended campaigns in other systems (such as my current 2-year Warhammer Fantasy RP 3rd game with a 47 experience character).  Though knowing that I can definitely see how one might say level 5 is the typical character max despite reading through a monster manual which contains CR 20 enemies.

I am sure a lot of players fall into this category (hell my favorite D&D character barely attained 5th level after substantial play). The big difference with those systems though, is they at least account for the possibility of attaining those lofty heights. My other primary critique of TtB is the expiration date. Unfortunately that expiration date (for me anyway) is just as players are becoming world shapers (read as their actions affect more than their small area of operations). While this is arguably a very easy thing for the fate Master to alter, coupled with the above issue of players never really feeling like anything more than a Henchman ranked non-fated, it gives the entire game a very short term feel. Perhaps it is just my experiences, but when I have played "one shots", it seemed to encourage players to be more reckless as they think of them as only distractions. In the attempt to say this a bit more elegantly, TtB is a short story (say a single H.P. Lovecraft story) , where as a lot of other RPG's are multi-volume novels (like the Wheel of Time series). This is one of the challenges I am most interested in seeing the Wyrd crew tackle as more books for TtB are published, specifically the continuation of the campaign presented in Into the Steam.

 

By the way, this thread might be setting the record for most individual posts in a thread with more than 250 words per post in each :PThough there is an awful lot of good discussion from both sides in them. This could really benefit the developers as they move forward with the product line.

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Dropping in a quick response (so if this has been covered, my apologies):

the set value that players have to "fight" represents a fundamental style of interaction between players and storyteller that sets the rules of the type of game you're getting into. What it also does is change the fundamental social contract between player and story teller as well. In your traditional "DnD" game, the result of a players actions in game is generally "smaller" because rules and tables dictate what players can and can't do. In games where the rules are a bit looser (such as this one), the results of players actions are generally "bigger" because they have to sell the Storyteller on what they're doing, not match a series of numbers.

all pen and paper games fall on the "RolLplaying" to "RolEplaying" spectrum, and the type of system plays to different styles. The initial TtB is designed with RolEplaying in mind. Mechanics are kept loose and fast because it's not about rolling that Nat 20, it's about "describe the scene that's happening." The mechanics aren't about appropriate CR value, they're about what makes for the most interesting collaborative story. The issues that arise are where you have mechanically minded responses to story-based questions. D20 Star Wars has a good example of this. Mechanically speaking the Jedi class is BROKEN. The limitations and balances on it are RolEplaying in nature. 

I'm not saying that RolL or RolEplaying is better though. I'm just saying that this system lends itself to a particular style of game play that has different conventions than others.

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On 1/2/2016 at 4:52 PM, LeperColony said:

Out of curiosity, I was wondering if anyone could speak as to why it was so important to the developers to eliminate contested flipping.  This seems somewhat odd, given the system's derivation from Malifaux, where almost all duels are contested by flips from both sides.  In TtB they've gone to great, and sometimes awkward lengths (Fated contesting Fated, for instance) to eliminate opposing flips.  Clearly this was an important goal to the TtB writers.  But why?

In all likelihood I'll be disposing of those rules and instead using contested Flips were appropriate, and probably during combat have a Fatemaster deck for flips, in a fashion more similar to Malifaux (without using the TtB translate to Malifaux rules), so the issue isn't terribly important from a gameplay standpoint to me.  After all, I can just run the game how I want.

But I was curious why it seems so very important to the TtB writers to make duels one-sided flips.

This was your original post.
 

On 1/7/2016 at 10:07 PM, Sunspotter said:

The problem is that there's one person who can answer your question, and he's no longer with wyrd, so the people in this thread are doing our best to answer. this is more directly reliant on design philosophy than anything, and I'm going to make my best guess.

In Malifaux, both parties can flip because it's a Competitive game. both players are doing what they do to win, and flipping with a hand to cheat gives them that statistical control. personally, I prefer cards to dice because you can't escape low numbers, only plan around them if you end up flipping through the deck. In the same vein, Flips in TtB are one sided because it's a Cooperative game. the Fatemaster isn't playing to win against the fated, he's merely there to take the fated on a journey, and thusly, the decision was probably made in the vein that the characters are the ones that do the interacting. with the world by doing, and the fatemaster interacts with the world by making.

This was my response to your original post.

If anything this what I think @hippodruid was referring to.

I'd like to also restate my question with a caveat, disregarding the rest of the earlier portion that wasn't relevant to the central argument of the thread.

What, in your opinion, would TtB gain if in the next supplement, the rules for contested flipping were introduced? if I'm understanding correctly, you believe it gives the individual NPCs more agency in the setting, or am I misunderstanding, and you believe the amount of statistical derivation created by having opposed flips is the central point. in the subsequent pages of debate, I believe a portion of the conflict is that your thesis has gotten muddled in the debate over various aspects and scenarios, so I wouldn't think it would be beyond the pale to ask for, so both sides could be brought to mutual understanding



Also, this may be a total aside but @Omenbringer, I think that the biggest thing that keeps the fated from "feeling like a henchman" is that they don't get to do quite as much "weird stuff" that henchmen seem to have in game, such as having cool :aura effects like Worker's Champion, or just having the ability to just LOLNOPE out of combat. I really don't think it's down to raw numbers, because in converting the rules of some 20th step fated to the big game, I ended up making up a new term, "Engines of War" for just how crazy devastating they can be, I'd be legitimately afraid to throw my master at some of them.

 

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8 hours ago, Sunspotter said:

What, in your opinion, would TtB gain if in the next supplement, the rules for contested flipping were introduced?

Though not specifically addressed to me, I will take a crack at answering this. What TtB gains from contested flips is more potential for the system to offer meaningful challenges at the non-Enforcer ranks. Combats become more interesting than simple number plods as there is more potential risk and success. I have a few ideas on how to do this without introducing a ton of complication to the system (i.e. still keeping it fairly simple and quick).

8 hours ago, Sunspotter said:

Also, this may be a total aside but @Omenbringer, I think that the biggest thing that keeps the fated from "feeling like a henchman" is that they don't get to do quite as much "weird stuff" that henchmen seem to have in game, such as having cool :aura effects like Worker's Champion, or just having the ability to just LOLNOPE out of combat. I really don't think it's down to raw numbers, because in converting the rules of some 20th step fated to the big game, I ended up making up a new term, "Engines of War" for just how crazy devastating they can be, I'd be legitimately afraid to throw my master at some of them.

Not sure I agree, players do have access to these types of things via the systems "Manifested Powers". I will say that until the publication of Into the Steam (which fills a lot of the magic systems holes) this was sort of a tongue in cheek inclusion.

I would be curious to see one of your "Engines of War"; since within the confines of the systems mechanics, it doesn't matter if the Fated have completed every single pursuit and maxed all their AV, they still can not change the dynamics of the card deck and its "memory" versus the static  "always flipping 12+" of a Master ranked Non-fated. Again there are only so many cards in the single communal deck (or the players individual twists decks) that will allow success.

A fated character can get to a max AV of 8 via stats and skills. Added to the card deck draw this can produce values for the Fated between 8 and 22 (a single value of 22, a single value of 8, 4 instances of 21, 4 instances of 20, etc). Let's suppose the Fated are facing Som'er Teeth Jones (a fairly normal stat'ed Malifaux Master). To hit Som'er they need to produce values of 18+ each time (incurring a :-fate:-fate on the damage flip on a tied margin of success, or :-fate for no margin of success, or an even flip on damage with the absolutely impossible value of 23). Once all the 10+'s are drawn from the communal deck (and twist decks) the players can do absolutely nothing to successfully hit him until the random number generator is reset to its initial fresh state (i.e. reshuffled). Som'er on the other hand does not suffer from this deficiency, he essentially draws an unlimited number of 12's with his actions. Let's suppose a fated with a Df of 8, Som'er's Boomer (the lower of his two damage producing attack actions) is always resisted against an AV of 17. The Fated again need 10+'s to keep him from successfully hitting them. Much like the players attacking him, once the 10+'s are drawn from the deck, the Fated can do nothing to resist his attacks until the deck is reset to initial state with a shuffle.

This is a major issue as a Master is unlikely to appear alone (especially Som'er who is a bit of a coward) and all actions are drawn from the same deck. Though this (and all those :-fate modifiers on damage flips) increases the speed with which the deck depletes and resets;:-fate modifiers on actions are going to deny the use of at least a few high value cards (as they are drawn during :-fate damage flips and are unusable). Considering a more combat oriented Master, like say Perdita the situation gets much worse for the Fated. They would need 11+'s to hit her (again incurring at least 1 :-fate flip on damage due to low Margin of Success), with every failure having the risk of triggering her Quick Draw trigger, and 12+'s to avoid being hit by her Peacebringer's. Much like how the Fated can largely ignore the Minion and below non-fated (in this situation of considering maxed Fated, a Minion has almost 0 chance of ever affecting a Fated (and never significantly on the margin of success, so at least 1 :-fate modifier on the damage flip) unless one of those extremely low value cards (2-) are drawn by the Fated (who can still likely cheat in a 4+ to deny success), the Non-fated Master can ignore the non-maxed fated and focus on the biggest threat (i.e. the maxed valued, combat oriented fated). If every member of your party are not kitted for combat (or what ever method of engagement the Players are utilizing) then most will be unable to affect the Master at all.

Lets consider a more balanced approach to the above scenario utilizing a group of players that didn't work toward maxed out Fated. A normal beginning Fated typically ends up with at least an AV of 5 in his chosen attack method and a value of 4 on Df and/or Wp. For our purposes lets say the players ended up with less than typical values for their resist stats (i.e. Df and Wp of 2). Against a Master the Fated can never resist their Actions (max random value for the Fated of 16, where as even low end Masters typically are base 5 plus their rank modifier of 12 on their attack actions producing a 17 resist), and will only ever successfully attack the Master on a 12+ draw (typical Master Df/ Wp value of 5 plus the 12+ rank modifier producing a Tn of 17 and never with a straight flip Margin of Success). Notice this is only a marginally worse situation for the Fated than the maxed out character used in the first example.

Masters should be difficult encounters, but this level of difficulty (which still largely exists even when fated are maxed out and Kit'ed for the encounter) is more likely to result in groups always running away from anyone they even think might be of this caliber (especially once they have seen just how ineffective they are against them). This can be anathema to the progression of a Fate Masters otherwise well crafted story. The only way to really offset this (within the confines of the current system) is for the Fate Master to limit encounters to an acceptable level of challenge (notice what Mason stated they did with the Nythera Campaign) by keeping virtually all encounters around the Enforcer level (where average stats plus their static rank modifier are around the average value the Fated would generate via a card flip). While this is somewhat workable within the intended "expiration date" design of the game, eventually players are likely to get really board with combat encounters with in the system (hell I get fairly board running them).

What does all this mean for the game? Well I have already stated it several times in this thread (and many, many others), however perhaps from some one else (and stated a bit differently) it will hold more significance (this is just the most recent post, so no offense to the others within the thread that have also stated something similar);

18 hours ago, Brewmaster said:

I'm not saying that RolL or RolEplaying is better though. I'm just saying that this system lends itself to a particular style of game play that has different conventions than others.

The system was primarily designed for the story (RolEplaying as Brewmaster states) and not combat (despite an expressed desire for a system that would support it better). Playing it as intended does soften the deficiencies of the resolution system a bit, but definitely doesn't get rid of them.

It appeals to a segment of the RPG community but definitely not all (especially those that may come with an expectation from the Malifaux TTG). In my opinion this is the biggest deficiency within the game (which could still be addressed via future publications, the way Into the Steam did with the Magic system). A better resolution system could have broadened the appeal without adding a whole lot more (as I mentioned earlier I have two in mind that would be very simple to implement without changing a whole lot).

Lastly, as this thread has likely reached the saturation point (probably reached that awhile ago honestly) where the main opinions have each dug in, I may be bowing out of further discussion. To be clear though, I do think the discussion has been valuable for the current developers as they plan the future path of the game.

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On 1/2/2016 at 9:52 AM, LeperColony said:

Out of curiosity, I was wondering if anyone could speak as to why it was so important to the developers to eliminate contested flipping.  This seems somewhat odd, given the system's derivation from Malifaux, where almost all duels are contested by flips from both sides.  In TtB they've gone to great, and sometimes awkward lengths (Fated contesting Fated, for instance) to eliminate opposing flips.  Clearly this was an important goal to the TtB writers.  But why?

...

But I was curious why it seems so very important to the TtB writers to make duels one-sided flips.

Coming in late here but how's this for an answer to the original question. Why not because they wanted the players to control the fate more than the fatemaster?? 

I've read all the posts about the math and I agree that there is more variance in contested flips vs fixed TN's but then the whole essence of the game is shifted from being fated and having a glimpse of your fate and choosing to accept or deny it to not really having that choice. In the long run be it through combat or other skill checks there is a point where a way of determining if the attack/action/skill was successful or not, there needs to be some form of TN.

As has been pointed out not everyone is the same. Not all gremlins from the bayou are going to be a whitewash for whatever reason. That's for you as the fatemaster to decide when creating your story that you are telling. 

I am not saying that I am for or against fixed TN's. The math is irrelevant. It's your choice to make things meaningful or not as the fatemaster, the rules set out are a framework to work from.

I do say though that a fated character should probably always run from a master in a straight up duel. I mean who are the fated as individuals to named characters in the world of malifaux. The game is called "Through the Breach" for a reason and not "Been living on the otherside for a while and have managed to overpower all my other enemies and live a life full of riches through my countless deeds of deceit and brutality" for a reason, and I don't think it's because the name is more catchy. 

The game is meant to be people that have caught a glimpse of their fate and are pursuing or denying it one step at a time. They are getting stronger. But the life of the character in this framework means that they will never be a master. I feel that was the whole point of the game. That being said there is nothing to say that you cannot make things more of a challenge or less of a whitewash. Yes there are fixed TN's. But why can't that particular deathmarshall be having a particularly bad day (as decided by you the Fatemaster at the time of dropping him into a combat) or good day as it were and adjust the TN's accordingly. It's still Fixed, but then not all deathmarshalls are the same. 

Other systems use dice to determine randomness but there are average die rolls. I play a lot of Warmachine (including the Iron Kingdoms RPG which is basically a straight rules port as you suggest) and the double ones are a plague to both sides, but you know that on average you will roll 7 on 2 die and work to make that number better through skills and other attributes. Sure the fatemaster doesn't touch the deck. Maybe that combat against the master where the players drop the RJ on the first hit catches the master off guard and trips on a loose stone and that book filled with paper isn't going to save him as he falls to the ground in what is an uncharacteristic display of clumsiness. Maybe it doesn't. That is for you to decide at that time and to make the encounter more meaningful is the way you implement the framework.

Once again I am not saying it's a perfect system. And yes the math does make sense if you take it as pure math. I just don't see that as a reason to change the way the framework was written to add something that is really already there as all sides have conceded that you as the fatemaster can essentially control anyway, yes its more random but what does that actually bring that you cannot do otherwise (ie Change the Fixed TN based on what's happening).

Once again Gremlins from the bayou generally easy to kill... but thugzac over there has a magical lucky charm which means he is harder to hit, or Fred the fated comes along and runs into the guy that has the Lying TN of 17 but doesn't think to actually check and see if he is lying, then it doesn't matter what cards are in his hand he may have a 100% chance of success ... but does he think to check and see? do you as the fatemaster make the fated flip anyway and not tell them why or just see if they make a notice flip? this might encourage them to attempt notice flips of everyone, but what if the guy wasn't lying. Basically there are plenty of opportunities to randomize the game and I wonder why another is needed? 

The people that have responded here have given many reasons why the system works to a point and I have read through all the others that say that statistically it doesn't work as well as it should. I neither supporting it or not and after playing a few games the flips/dice rolls all become irrelevant as the story is the important thing. The fated have flipped well for something and you have in your mind what kind of a challenge it should be (Simple, Challenging, Hard) have they met the category enough? maybe play on the actual fate deck levels if thats what suits as well (needing weak, moderate or severe to actually succeed, then sorting out level of success from there).

I don't necessarily agree with fixed TN's. But then I don't agree that the Fatemaster needs to be flipping either.

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