I like the open-ended result concept. But I don't think it particularly fixes anything. Some tasks have a very band of success, someone with more training succeeds basically 100% of the time and someone without doesn't. Others are much more variable (eg. might one lucky blow fell a giant?). Picking either "bounded" or "open ended" and assuming that's always the case doesn't really fix any of the inconsistencies, what's missing is some standards for where on the spectrum to evaluate a particular task.
I might occasionally tack on an "unusually lucky result" or "an unusually bad result" if I wanted a particular test to allow extreme success or extreme failure by doing basically the same thing (roll d20, if you get 1 or 20. roll again and add/subtract 20). But you can also do that by having a couple of successive tests (for skill tests not combat):
P1: I flap my arms and try to fly! GM: *sigh* OK, roll. P1: Nat 20! GM: OK, one flap seems to maybe work. Roll again. P1: Another nat 20! GM: Oh my god it seems to be working. Roll again.
And basically to do something godly, you need to roll three nat 20 on the trot.
That's occasionally useful but if you're still rolling results, it doesn't seem to answer the question of "which rolls does it make sense to try again and which doesn't it".
Is there something other than "it's unbounded" which I should be paying attention to?
no subject
Date: 2017-05-03 02:58 pm (UTC)I like the open-ended result concept. But I don't think it particularly fixes anything. Some tasks have a very band of success, someone with more training succeeds basically 100% of the time and someone without doesn't. Others are much more variable (eg. might one lucky blow fell a giant?). Picking either "bounded" or "open ended" and assuming that's always the case doesn't really fix any of the inconsistencies, what's missing is some standards for where on the spectrum to evaluate a particular task.
I might occasionally tack on an "unusually lucky result" or "an unusually bad result" if I wanted a particular test to allow extreme success or extreme failure by doing basically the same thing (roll d20, if you get 1 or 20. roll again and add/subtract 20). But you can also do that by having a couple of successive tests (for skill tests not combat):
P1: I flap my arms and try to fly!
GM: *sigh* OK, roll.
P1: Nat 20!
GM: OK, one flap seems to maybe work. Roll again.
P1: Another nat 20!
GM: Oh my god it seems to be working. Roll again.
And basically to do something godly, you need to roll three nat 20 on the trot.
That's occasionally useful but if you're still rolling results, it doesn't seem to answer the question of "which rolls does it make sense to try again and which doesn't it".
Is there something other than "it's unbounded" which I should be paying attention to?