Marketing a non-D20 RPG

Well it looks like ForeSight Second Edition might just be published soon, and my thoughts are turning to the, perhaps unenviable, job of marketing a game firmly based on percentile dice (also known as D100): i.e. a pair of dice which when rolled give you a random number from 1 to 100.

The D20 juggernaut is basically a D&D thing. It's not clear whether it's an effort to keep third-party dice manufacturers happy, or a plot to convince people that the morasse of special cases, tables, and bizarre rules that constitute D&D is in fact a "system". In any event, my reasons for eschewing D20s are technical, much as my reasons for eschewing 3D6 (as discussed earlier).

In any role-playing game there tend to die roll ranges for which exceptional outcomes are assigned. For D20-games these are rolls of 1 and 20. In other words, 10% of all resolution rolls (cases where a die is cast to determine what happens in a situation) result in something outlandish occurring (e.g. an automatic success or failure regardless of the odds).

Shit happens. But should it happen 10% of the time?

Now, in action movies and similar genres from which RPGs tend to take their cures, shit does indeed happen 10% of the time. But unfortunately, the 10% of the time we're talking about is actually a gross understatement.

For example, a mid-level warrior in D&D will swing his/her sword three times in a single round of combat, which means he/she has three chances to have shit happen. If he/she is fighting a similarly capable opponent, that's another three chances to have shit happen.

(For the statistically inclined, that's a 1 - (0.9 ^ 6) probability of shit occurring in a single round -- a few seconds -- of combat, or roughly 47%. Most fights last several rounds. If this were a movie, this would be like half of fights having something ridiculous happen, such as someone trip over their feet or hit someone in the eye with a lucky shot, the moment a fight started.)

In RuneQuest 2nd Edition, a D100-based system, there were various tiny percentage chances of shit -- things like a warrior slicing his own head off -- happening every time someone did something. Of course when you did the math (and an article along these lines was posted to Murphy's rules) you ended up with ridiculous results: in a battle of 1000 warriors lasting five minutes, some insane number would decapitate themselves, some far larger number would chop off their own limb, and so on. In each case the results were simply constructed by taking (1 - probability of ridiculous outcome) and raising it to the power of the number of times the dice would be rolled (50 for ten minutes of RuneQuest combat) -- and that's the probability that you will escape that ridiculous outcome.

When the probability of an extraordinary outcome is 10%, you know you're in big trouble.

Of course, the extraordinary outcomes in D20 can't be too ridiculous or the system would seem obviously broken. Instead they're just low key enough to have lots of silly effects (e.g. because armor does not block damage but instead reduces hit probability, and because a roll of 20 is always a hit, a huge number of tiny attacks will automatically kill someone in plate armor) while not giving the feel of "critical hits" (the finest archer cannot kill a healthy 10th level paladin with a single ordinary shot) while neither implementing any concept of "degree of success" nor producing genuinely unexpected results to create drama.

Before I start rambling too far, I will mention one funny thing. D20 system is in fact D20 + D12 + D10 + D8 + D6 + D4 system. The D20 games rely on a ridiculous set of dice and use them to achieve an unnecessary level of granularity (a weapon either does D6 or D8 damage, nothing in-between).

Anyway, here are two possible slogans for D100 System games.

D100 System. Shit happens, but not 10% of the time.

D100 System. You already have the dice.

Software: The Disservice Model

Note: the author's copy of Adobe Illustrator 10.0.3 hung twice while being launchd during the writing of this piece, which may explain a few things.

A friend of mine has a theory that if Microsoft ever produced a version of Word that actually worked, it would go out of business. (A lot of Macintosh users think that as of version 5.1 they did, and have never upgraded since, hence the theory.)

New versions of Word are usually notable for additional "functionality" that most users don't want and can't figure out how to turn off which slow it down to the speed of the previous version on much faster hardware. Recent versions do "helpful" things like prevent you from making points (a), (b), and (c) ... because (c) must be a copyright symbol, or superscripting the "th" in "4th" whether you want it to or not. By far the majority of Word users do not want these features and cannot switch them off.

Meanwhile, Adobe has incorporated some kind of dynamic update service for its various flagship programs (such as Photoshop and Illustrator) which is presumably intended to make sure that if Adobe finds and fixes a bug, it can be seamlessly fixed before you necessarily notice it. Of course, the dynamic update service is the single worst bug in their software, and they don't seem to be interested in fixing it.

Beyond this, there is a general trend towards switching from software licenses (which work kind of like ownership) to software subscriptions (which don't). It all started going "pear-shaped" when Microsoft (for example) decided to refer to versions of its software by model year (like cars and evening gowns) rather than significant revision.

The software "service" model wanted to make software products less like appliances (such as your telephone) and more like services (such as your telephone service). Most people I know are happy with most or all of their appliances and loath and despise most or all of their services. E.g. wireless phone services and cable TV services are the two most despised classes of business in the USA (according to consumerreports.com).

It may not seem so bad to only have to pay for Word when you want to use it (which is probably what Microsoft realised when it stepped back from the brink). After all, most people get a version of Office with their computer and then don't use most of it (how many businesses pay to put a copy of Access on every PC?), and forget they own it when they give the computer away or drop it into landfill. But imagine getting a monthly "Office Service" bill and having all your documents deleted (or just inaccessible) should you fail to pay it; this is the kind of "service" such companies would like to provide.

It's funny how language evolves. Imagine what the word "service" will mean in a few decades.

The March of Folly, continued

The government policy which immediately sprang to my mind as I read "The March of Folly" was (obviously, I think) the US invasion (or, if you prefer, liberation) of Iraq. In fact, I often felt as I read the section on Vietnam that entire paragraphs and pages might be taken as accurately describing Iraq if only the word Vietnam were replaced with Iraq throughout.

After finishing the book, however, I second-guessed myself. Was the invasion so clearly a folly in hindsight? Was not the war justified solely on the grounds of removing Saddam from power? Were we clearly going to fail? (After all, a correct policy incompetently pursued is not a folly at all, either by Tuchman's definition or in common parlance.)

I was quite staggered, however, to read the latest Atlantic Monthly feature story, "Blind into Baghdad". The upshot: almost every problem encountered by the US in its occupation of Iraq was predicted (and in many cases workable solutions proposed) by organisations inside the US government (e.g. the State Department, USAID) and NGOs before the invasion took place. Their advice was wilfully ignored by the Office of the Secretary of Defence, which went so far as to forbid the participation of Pentagon officials in crucial meetings.

It is important to point out that critics of the war -- especially politicians -- have focussed almost solely on (a) the way the US went into it alone without gathering allies, and (b) the fact that Weapons of Mass Destruction (the ostensible justification for the war) were not found. The first is not an argument of justification but of means -- if the war was just then the US's lack of allies does not make it unjust and vice versa. (French and German participation in a war are hardly indicators of its being just, and yet almost all such criticism would have been squelched had they been involved.) The second is not as important as you think: many wars are not fought for their stated reason. E.g. we did not fight WWII simply because of Pearl Harbour or the Civil War simply because of Fort Sumter.

Neither of these criticisms (if they were accurate) would qualify this war as folly. The real questions we should be asking are: (a) was the war in our interest? and (b) has the war been conducted competently? Unless the occupation turns into an absolute fiaco of Vietnam proportions or another vicious tyrant takes over Iraq as soon as the US leaves it may never be possible to answer the first question definitively. As to the second, it seems quite clear that the rift between the Bush II administration and the State Department (or indeed any sources of information not wholly in agreement with its wishful thinking) has seriously degraded the quality of US policy.