I've been playing this for a while, and I'm confused about the GE rolls. I've gotten several 28 GE rolls, but no 5 GE rolls. Statistically, 28 and 5 are equally likely. In fact, the best GE roll I have ever gotten is a 7, and I only got one one time. A roll of 6 would be statistically far more likely than a 28, but I have never gotten a 6 either. I've gotten 4 or 5 28 rolls that I remember, but only one 7. Statistically, a 7 is a lot more likely than a 28 roll. Why have I only gotten one? Why have I never gotten a 5 or a 6, which are just as, and more likely than a 28, respectively. I'm not quite sure what I am asking, but it just seems very unlikely to me that I could get so many 28 rolls, with no 5 or 6 rolls on the other end, and so few 7 rolls. Any thoughts?
Until you've gotten a thousand rolls (or a few thousand), you can't really expect the probabilities to match up with the actual results. Try a little experiment: roll a die twelve times and write down what you get. If you end up with two ones, two twos, two threes, two fours, two fives, and two sixes, I'll be mildly surprised. And that's a spread of only six possibilities, compared to a GE roll's one thousand.
In-game, your GE rolls so far indicate that your character has been unlucky. That's fine; people get lucky or unlucky, sometimes for weeks or months at a time. On average, the lucky times balance with the unlucky, but not always, and it can take a long time to really average out. That's what GE rolls are meant to do - represent the role of luck, happenstance and circumstance in a game otherwise entirely run by attribute- and skill-dependent probabilities mixed with referee fiat.
(Note that the discrepancies you see in the single-die test are roughly what you'd see over the course of two thousand GE rolls. Well, a little greater, really, since we don't keep track of the difference between a 12 that came up 1,1,10 and a 12 that came up 5,3,4, but you get the idea. Since you haven't had even a hundred GE rolls yet, I wouldn't worry.)
As an aside, I recall having had two fives, two sevens, and no roll worse than the one that brought Godzilla. My players have been getting an awful lot of twenty-fives and not a single twenty-two. It's little comfort when you're on the unlucky end, I know, but take what heart you can from the knowledge that it's not just you.
That does make sense Scott, as your replies usually do. The thing is though that I got the 28 rolls all at times when I could get severely hurt by the bad roll, and the 7 at a time when a bad roll probably wouldn't matter as much. I got 2 28 rolls on the effects of different botches (BAD BOTCHES!!!) and the 7 on whether or not someone would play catch with me in the backyard. I can't imagine that asking someone to play catch with me could have majorly disastrous consequences, even on a roll of 28. I do remember reading a game you were running, where someone got a 4 roll on how they woke up in the morning. That would have made me mad, such a great roll wasted on something so trivial.
How are the GE rolls done with a stopwatch? My understanding is that you use seconds, 1/10 seconds, and 1/100 seconds as the three 10 sided dice. Is that correct? If that is the case, for the roll to be completely fair, the referee would have to start the stopwatch face down, wait for at least a minute, and stop it face down once again. Someone with good reflexes could stop the watch so the first two numbers were 0 (10) every time if they wanted to.
Let's hit the stopwatch first. You're right about the three digits, but there's a simpler way to make sure the roll is fair - coincidentally, it's the way MJ does it (which is why I know what it is). Here's what I remember of what he said the last time someone raised the issue (Oak, I think):
When he sits down to do the forums, he starts the stopwatch. The he opens all the threads in separate windows, etc., and the first time he needs a roll (at least a minute or two after he started it, obviously), he hits Lap Time. From then on, the number displayed on the watch is static - it always shows what the time was when he last hit the button. It's still tracking time in the background, though, so every time he hits the button, it shows a new time. Thus, there's no need to hide the watch between rolls.
As for waiting between rolls, a few seconds is sufficient for anything but a GE roll. I imagine that a referee would rarely need to roll more than one GE in a minute, and even if he did, he could always just "roll" twice and to avoid using the one's place.
Back to your first paragraph. Yes, some GE rolls are more important than others. The thing is, you're just as likely to burn a 28 on playing catch as you are to waste a five. The only difference is whether you call it a waste or a lucky break. (The truth of course is that both ways of looking at it are wrong - every roll, no matter how trivial, is a fresh chance; every low roll is good, and every high roll is bad, and you're not any less likely to get a 28 on your next roll just because you "burned" one just now. There's an infinite supply of every number; it's not like you can use up potential. Anyway.)
As for Graham's four, the roll was actually for "what happens while Graham is sleeping?" On the other end of the spectrum, a 29, he'd probably have been eaten by a giant clam, waking up just as the shell was closing over him. With the four, he got a good night's rest in only six hours (not that he had any way of knowing it was only six hours) and woke up to a show - he learned about a new predator and got to see how the nerf-creatures responded to stimuli (specifically, to predation and constriction). Yeah, I felt a little bad for him, but I did the best I could. At the time, information was something he really needed.
Also, one of the fives I got was for "is there a clock around so I can figure out what time it is?" (The other was for the duration of my brainburn, though, so I'm definitely not complaining.) My point is: you win some, you lose some, you aren't guaranteed to lose the same number as you win. In essence, the varying importance of the rolls isn't any less fair than the varying results the dice show.
It's late and I'm tired, but I hope I'm still communicating clearly. If not, I won't be offended when you tell me so.
Murphy hates you John, m'kay?
Eric
Scott, you're communicating clearly. You always do.
Eric, are you referring to Murphy, of Murphy's Law? Whatever can go wrong will? I prefer Murphy's Laws of Combat.
1) You are not Superman (Marines and Fighter Pilots take note.)
2) Anything you do can get you killed, including doing nothing.
3) When in doubt, start shooting.
4) There are no Atheists in a foxhole.
And my personal favorite.
5) If it is stupid, but it works, it isn't stupid.
Last night, after I posted this, something occurred to me, and it just came back to me. A 28 is just as likely as a 5. If I had gotten all 5 GE rolls, and no 28s, instead of the other way around, I wouldn't have said anything. This is despite that it would be just as unlikely. You only complain when things are not going your way, it's human nature.
Well said, and I like the Murphy's Laws of Combat list (and yes, thats the Murphy I meant.)
There are hundreds of those Murphy's Laws of Combat. Do a Google search for it, I think you will like what you find.
Something else about GE rolls has me confused. I do intend to buy the Referee's Rules, as soon as I can save up some $$$$$$, so I might need to know this. As I said, one of the 28 rolls was for a botch. The botch caused a car crash, in which I was a passenger. The 28 meant that I broke both arms and assorted other bones in the wreck. I'm assuming that on the other end, a 5 would have meant that the car came to a nice, easy stop, and I could get out unscathed. A neutral roll would mean that the car crashed, and I was minorly injured. That I can understand.
Your search for a clock, and my desire to play catch kind of have me confused though. How could even a 30 GE roll have bad consequences when looking for a clock? You're not paying attention, and step into an open manhole? A 5 I'm assuming meant that you found a clock, or person wearing a watch immediately, but how could a bad roll go against you there? With my playing catch, I could see that a bad roll would mean that the person I asked got upset and yelled at me for it. I was asking to play catch so I could practice the martial arts "Missile Catch" The 7 meant that one of the guys was a former professional baseball player, and loved to throw a ball around. Would a roll of 3 or 4 or 5 mean that when they saw what I was doing, they knew how to do it, and could teach me to do it better, thus giving me a trainer bonus? How do things like this work? As I said, I hope to have the Referee's Rules shortly, so I will need to know these things. Let me know.
I think its a matter of judgment with no fixed rules other than the terms on the GE roll scale.
So...'3' --one chance in a thousand good fortune
'4'--Well beyond hopes or expectations.
'15'--middle
'29'--Beyond worst nightmares
'30' --one chance in a thousand disaster
Now, lets do that for a clock asking...the GM asks himself what he thinks the player wants, and then ....
15-I, as GM expect that most people would be a tiny bit testy, and provide the info requested.
'4'--hmmm, the guy feels sorry for you, and gives you his quite nice watch.
'3'--its the radio announcer wandering the streets waiting to give a thousand dollars as part of an On-air Promotional Giveaway to the first person to ask him for the time. So you get a watch, a thousand dollars, and two minutes later watch a herd of people come down the street looking for him, but you got their first.
'29' His boss just fired him, and his dog got run over by the mailman, and some jerk keyed his car. He's ticked. You're talking to him. He REAALLY does't like your face. Kerplow...a big left hook sails in out of nowhere.
'30'--"Sure thing, Marcus. Pick up the package at the usual location. Remember get it to the right locale. The Big Boss don't like mess-ups." Guy wanders off thinking you're his contact in the drug trade, and when the cocaine doesn't arrive where its supposed to...Al 'Bloody Scissors' Dumachio, noted gangster, is going to come find you and ask for his hundred kilos of coke. He's going to be a bit agitated as well.
Now, I'm a bit wild and crazy so maybe those extremes are a bit extreme, but I think they're fun.
At least for me, the GM anyways.
Eric
Tad's talking sense (except that 16 and 17 are the middle of the range, not 15). To some degree, the consequences of the GE roll are scaled to its importance. A 30 rolled for "what happens when I push this big red button in the alien mastermind's control room?" is going to be a lot worse than a thirty for "are there any ads in the newspaper for baby-sitting jobs?" Both will be bad, but they'll be bad within the context of the situation. When you ask, "how bad can it get?", that's the 30 - regardless of how bad that actually is. The worse it can get, the worse a 30 is (and the better a 3, by the same token).
Edit: Although you could take Tad's approach, if I were running a game and I rolled a 28 for "is there a clock around so I can check the time?", I would say, yes, there is a clock - it just happens to be wrong. Since the player would have no way of knowing the time wasn't correct, this would be worse than no clock at all. Seeing as even a good roll only means "you know what time it is now," I think that's a balanced (if fairly unspectacular) spectrum for a GE roll.
Thanks Wodium,
However to pick a nit back...28 is beyond worst fears....having someone give me the wrong time due to their watch being set wrong is not 'beyond worst fears' for me. That would be a '26'--worse than anticipated, or '25' remarkably bad but not totally surprising to me.
Beyond worst fears is something horrible that goes past what you think is possible its so bad.
Eric
Yeah, well, I wasn't asking people, actually. I was glancing around a diner looking for a clock. No human interaction and no movement really limits the possible negative consequences. I said you were talking sense earlier - if I were walking down the street intending to ask someone the time, I think your suggestions would be good ones.
I worked on a nit plantation as a child; I wouldn't suggest trying to start a competition in that area. Nyah thppppp.
Good answers.
It is one of the things I often ask myself when I'm about to roll a GE roll: what are the good and bad outcomes, from the character's perspective?
So you're handcuffed in the back of the jeep, and your telekinetic antics cause an accident, and the GE roll is 30. What happens?
I should inject at this point that I do not know whether Adam was using a straight GE roll or a modified GE roll. It was, after all, a botch situation, and in a botch situation a GE roll is used for "how bad is it really?" and it can't be very good, because it is a botch. In that case, Adam might have decided that one of the three dice is fixed at 10, and only the other two matter--which gives you a range from 12 good enough to 30 one in a thousand chance disaster. There is a corresponding modified roll in which one die is fixed at 1 and only the other two matter, which gives you a range from 3 to 21, one in a thousand chance good fortune to bad enough. It also shifts the odds, since there are only one hundred possible outcomes--but that's not unfair, given that a botch only happens in a few percent of instances anyway, so you've already got that decimal place fixed and you might get a good outcome from bad.
Let us suppose that there's a car accident from your antics, and Adam decides that this is the end of the botch, but he needs to know how you are affected, so he rolls a GE and you get a 3. What happens on a three? Probably something like this:
- The driver is knocked unconscious and thrown from the car.
- The damage to the car is minimal.
- Your handcuffs got caught on something, so your wrists are a bit sore but the cuffs broke.
- The vehicle is a bit banged up in the front, but completely functional, with a full tank of gas.
- The M.P. had a bag with him in which is his spare uniform, which is just about your size.
It sometimes takes some creative thought to think of these things. What could have gone wrong with your "play catch" scenario? Well, as Kyler demonstrated, it was always possible that one of the guards was a spy. He agrees to play catch with you, but has already confirmed with his people that you are not working for them, and thus that you are probably exactly who you claim to be, someone with knowledge of the future that could be very useful to Washington if they realized it and so very dangerous to Germany and Japan. He decides he is going to play catch with you, catch you off guard, and attempt to kill you claiming you were attempting to escape.
Bad things can happen. You can trip over your shoelace walking down the sidewalk and break your neck. They do not happen often--which is why chance is included.
--M. J. Young