Re: [GZG] Opposed roll randomness (Was: [SG3]: What if?)

["John Lerchey" <lerchey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wasn't going to chime in on this, especially regarding the Close Combat Weapons issue, but I have to now.  

I agree with OA.

Played a game this Monday using a modified 5150/All Things Zombie/Whatever system where for MOST actions you roll under your troopers "rep" value.  We were using D10s and most of my guys were rated at Rep 5.  My buddy Tom was running guys who were mostly rated at Rep 4.  In short, I kicked the crap out of him.  Figuratively, or perhaps miniaturatively speaking.

My unit was only 10% better than his.

My die rolls rocked.
His die rolls sucked.

It happens.  I've seen units with very heavy armor in DS3 get slammed by something that should never have hurt them with a good impact roll vs a "1" on the armor die.  Shit happens.  One hopes that the law of averages works itself out and that *in general* you can, over a long period of time, predict outcomes of battles based on die sizes.  Within that average outcome, however, there will be outliers - exceptions to the rules - which explains a lot of "individual accounts" throughout history.

:)

John


> Robert Bryett replied to Samuel Penn:
> 
>>> Which brings me to my peeve of the randomness of the die mechanic. 
>>> Good troops are less predictable in their results than poor troops.
>> 
>> I don't understand this comment. The random "mechanic" in SGII is an 
>> *opposed* roll, so isn't the result the *difference* between the rolls,
>> not the rolls themselves? In this context, I don't see how the 
>> performance of either set of troops involved in an opposed roll can be
>> called more predictable than the other. Is the theory simply that more
>> sides on the die automatically equals less predictability?
> 
> I've been wondering this for years...
> 
> I suspect that at least part of it is a refusal to accept that having the
>  better quality (ie. bigger die) does not absolutely guarantee that
> you'll win the opposed die roll. To me, comments like Samuel's (and I've
> seen quite a few of them over the years) always give an impression of "My
> D10 rolled a 1 while his D6 rolled a 5, so my Veteran lost to his Greenie
> - that's not fair! My troops are better, they're not *supposed* to lose!
> :-(" - ie., they seem very much based on feelings, not on analysis of the
> actual odds.
> 
> (Now, JA will undoubtedly tell me that good quality troops *don't* lose
> to poor ones - but even in the situations he's been in, which I'd describe
> in game terms as D10+ quality troops with D8+ armour fighting D4 quality 
> troops with D4 armour, the high-quality guys still take casualties
> occasionally - IOW, in game terms they still lose the occasional opposed
> die roll.)
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Oerjan orjan.ariander1@xxxxxxxxx
> 
> "Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it, depends on what you put
> into it." -Hen3ry
> 
> 
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> 


John K. Lerchey
Assistant Director for Incident Response
Information Security Office
Carnegie Mellon University


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