Christ Centered Gamer

This has become a place for gaming rants to go. I welcome this.

Today's rant is about dice.

I play with a lot of different gamers, some fun, some not so much. Everybody approaches their gaming differently, but one thing is sure, we all game using some sort of random number generator. In most games, that's dice. In Malifaux, it's cards. We understand, intellectually, that if I'm rolling a 20 sided die and I need at least a 15 to succeed, that's a little better than a 1 in 4 chance. Not great odds, right?

And yet, on the table, people are astonished when they aren't rolling crits every single round.

"Man that sucks! I only made, like, a third of my ward saves! These dice frickin' hate me." Well, Einstein, your ward save is a 5+ on 6 sided dice. A third is exactly what you should expect. Probability of rolling a 5 or 6 on a d6 is exactly 1/3. So yeah, the dice are doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Here's one I got last night:
"The spell landed? But I have a 65% magic resistance!" Yep, it landed. Saving throw, please. "Even with my magic resistance?" Yes, even with your magic resistance. 65% odds do favor you, but it should still not be such a major surprise when it doesn't go your way. 2/3 of the time you'll make it, the rest of the time you won't. It really irritates me when player regards 65% as being about as reliable as 100%, and then questions whether I'm DMming fairly.

Same player:
"What? He saved against my spell?" Yep. "Well you know how the saving throw works, right?" Yep. "Are you sure?" Yep.

He'd cast a spell at an enemy and the enemy, who needed a 16 or less on a d20 to save, made the roll. Spell had no effect. "Sheesh, I can't believe he made that." Another lesson in probability, boys and girls... If you need a 16 or less on a d20 to make a save, that's 80% likely to succeed. Good odds, definitely in the target's favor and far from a huge shock when it's made. Certainly not enough to start a rules lawyering session in mid game over it.

Same player (AGAIN):
"He hit me? But my Armor Class is -1!" (In AD&D, low AC is good. a -1 AC in 2nd Edition is equivalent to a 21 AC in 3rd Edition.) In the case I'm thinking of, the enemy monster was a 9 HD beast with a THAC0 of 12. That means on a d20 it needed a 13 to hit an AC -1. Adding its bonus for Strength and the magical weapon, it only needed 9. It was likely to hit. I always fail to understand why people are surprised to be hit when their attacker has better than average odds of making that hit.

We assemble our characters, our armies, our whatever for gaming and we have to think about the odds when the time comes for the dice to hit the table. You've got to be realistic about this. When the odds don't favor you (or even when they do) and the dice don't roll your way, complaining about it and registering shock actually drains the fun away from others, because it sounds too much like whining. We're playing games that use random number generators. That means a certain amount of gameplay is simply outside of your control. This is meant to account for all the little factors that can't be covered by the rules. Sometimes even when the odds are in your favor bad things can still happen.

I remember a game once in Warhammer where my Bretonnian knights charged an enemy Dwarf unit and scored 4 hits. Each hit only needed a 2+ to cause damage. I rolled 4 '1's. Behold, the photo I took to commemorate the hilarity:

(Taken on 8 August, 2009)

(Note, these are Chessex dice in use. This was before I learned about them...)

Frustrating? Kind of, but what can you do? Sometimes you'll roll all crits. Sometimes they'll all fail no matter how good your odds are. Now mind you, this example is one in which I had a reasonable expectation of getting 3 - 4 successes. This is why I find it so silly for people to be surprised when the dice provide exactly the results the math expects.

I don't want to jump to conclusions, but computer games might be to blame for this.

Interesting thought... Can you elaborate?

Generally with computer games, hit and skill chance probabilities are very high. When's the last time you played an RPG where you swung and miss 3 times in a row? I can't recall, unless I was in an area way past my level. Now, I remember that several times in my limited DnD experience.

Well yeah...A video game is made to beat. To win...With the exception of masochistic games for a niche group, most games are made to beat with a medium to minimum amount of adversity. Which is great I like games that don't hold me down and bash my head in. However the things left to chance are usually a lot less than you're led to believe. Whereas it seems table top rpgs are more of an experience and less of a challenge to win, and because of this is designed with more random events. Example: How often in a game if you die do you simply have to make a new character and continue the story from there? Most games that do are considered masochistic. Whereas it seems to be relatively normal within a table top rpg.

That makes sense... But I suppose my problem is that in these cases, the people are fully aware of the odds, or at least have a general idea, and somehow expect to beat the odds all the time anyway, and get pouty when they don't.

That again goes back to comparing video games to table top games. How many games have you beating "impossible odds" You know? Sonic vs all the robot armies? Solid snake vs the genome army? Not to mention extra lives check points weak enemies, hint systems. games are designed to make you feel like you're the hero..you beat the odds because you are just that good. How many stories say "You're the only one who can blah blah blah." And that not bad because I love me some Zelda! But these rpg's (while still obviously slightly in the players odds) are a lot more fair...and coming out of a video game to this is probably jarring.

Thing is, we're not really talking about people who were all about video games and then transitioned over to tabletop. We're talking about people who have been playing for years and years. None of this is new to them.

Oh well then they may just be complainers..or had a rough day...every time you play...

I think on some level when a player is creating a character for D&D, or building an army for Warhammer, or whatever it is, they have these dreams of how awesome it's gonna be. They get skills or abilities that do lots of damage or avoid lots of damage or whatever it is and they daydream (we all do this) about how awesome it's going to be when those things get used... But I think on some level it's easy to get caught up in it and forget that a power that only works 1/3 of the time is going to work... 1/3 of the time. Or a defensive gizmo won't stop all incoming hurt.

It's hard to keep perspective I think... I guess my rant was just triggered by the fact that some of the people who struggle with this are people who have been playing these games for years and years and haven't quite figured that part out yet.

Maybe they're just tired of they're abilities never working or something..I mean 1/3 isn't a lot and maybe it gets tiresome.

That would be different. That would be more of a case of "Man I gotta find a way to get this number higher... 1/3 just isn't good enough." That's fine. It's registering surprise when the odds run exactly as they should, and then looking at me like it's my fault.

ArcticFox wrote:I guess my rant was just triggered by the fact that some of the people who struggle with this are people who have been playing these games for years and years and haven't quite figured that part out yet.

There is no excuse at that point. The numbers are apparent for everyone, and they know how these games play.

On the other hand, I played a game of Yahtzee last week in which my cousin rolled Yahtzee 3 times. All of them were fives. I just about cried.

There's just no predicting what's going to happen with dice, in reality.

On the other hand, it's not your fault in anyway. Blaming you is like blaming the wind for being cold. O_o

You know, on a similar vein, I'd ranted on here before about times when I'd won a game and my opponent started to whine about how the dice screwed him over... Like my skill had nothing whatsoever to do with my victory.

We always perceive that the dice are against us... even when they're rolling exactly as statistics would predict. It's the mature gamer who can see past the perception and understand what's happening.