The Delta Theory of Meaningfulness

[gbaji]

I mentioned in my post how it would be beneficial to the players if they know what the DC and AC they are targeting is. If I were to use this in a TTRPG, I would not tell people the AC of anything, but I would definitely describe what they are wearing and how they move in an attempt to give an idea of roughly what the AC would be. I would not tell them exactly what the DC of something would be, but I would attempt to get across a general level of difficulty - something like, "The ground is firm, and the distance across the chasm is only a little bit longer than a standard jump, so you think you should be able to make it" for a low DC jump, vs "The chasm is wide enough that it would be the farthest jump you've ever made if you succeed, and the moisture in the cave has made the ground slick in places" for a high DC jump. And, yes, an obvious thing to do would be to use trivial things to blow through the low cards. But, if the DM takes the advice of many and only call for a roll if there is a possibility of failure that has a meaningful effect on the game, then they would still be making a choice to fail some things.

Yeah. I get that approach too. Again though, the problem is that this becomes the game, rather than the one I'm playing. And to be honest, this somewhat as a side effect, ups the stakes for not playing this mini-game well. If I roll a die, and the GM says "you miss", I'm not super upset. Maybe I'll roll better next time. Or, if I did roll well, and still missed, maybe I should try something different. So it kinda has a natural feel to it as you get a sense of what your probabilities are.

Using a high(ish) card, but still missing (maybe just by one) would feel like a real blow. Because it actually cost you something more than just "I have X chance, and still have that same chance next round". You've hurt your capabilities going foward as a result of misplaying that card. I just feel like using cards for this would produce really "swingy" results. Either the players have a good handle on things, and are more or less batting out of the park, or things don't align, and the find themselves overplaying high cards when not needed (which has a "real" effect on them), or just underplaying, and also missing out.

I think that a better approach, if people are concerned about the "bad roll means I die" aspect of things, is to reduce the dependency of death/failure on single die rolls in the first place (or single card uses). The use of cards doesn't change that problem, it just changes the specifics of how it manifests. Now, I'm not worried about dying because I rolled poorly, but because I run into a "save or die" situation, right when I already used up the cards that would have saved me. And it has the added problem (which I touched on before) of potential gaming by the GM in that both parties probably know which cards that PC has already played. Players already sometimes feel like they were targettted when/if the GM has something really bad happen and they have to roll to avoid it. That's going to be doubled down on, when the player knows that the GM knows that he already used the cards he needs to save his character, and then hits him with the "save or <bad thing>" anyway.

Which would seem to only maximize the pressure on the GM to fudge things to avoid such things *or* risk the players being upset at the GM for putting them in a known impossible situation.

As I said, this was purely about showing how luck can be taken off the table. There are trade-offs. The people I played with that didn't like it gave their reason as not wanting to have no shot at a lucky streak - there are other possible reasons, of course, like your concern (although your concern and theirs are closer than you may think - wanting to always have that possibility, no matter how small, of getting the roll you need is not that different from wanting the possibility of a lucky streak). But I don't think it can be argued that it doesn't create a lot of meaningful choices in relation to the thread topic. Every roll becomes a meaningful choice - you are choosing what to get for that roll, knowing that this choice will further constrain future choices. If you go into a fight with nothing but low cards, you had to have used your high cards for something else before. You knew when you did that that it would mean that later on you would have the equivalent of low rolls, but you made a choice that it would be better to have the high results at that time and the low results later.

And do you think that knowledge will make the player feel better, or worse, than if each time, he's just rolling dice?

And it does highlight a problem that always exists between GMs and players. How much do the players expect the GM to "cover for them" if/when they make poor decisions? Imagine, you have a player who just likes it when his player "wins" (cause don't they all?). So this player just always usees his best cards as early as possible, to do as well as he can. We can objectively say that he "used up his luck" already, so when you hit him with something after that point, and he epically fails (due to not having any good cards left), it's his own choice. But IME, that's *never* how that kind of player will see it.

He's going to see it as the GM being unfair for hitting him with something when the GM knows he's out of good cards. He's going to come to expect that the GM should provide a fluff encounter, and skill rolls, or minor things, so he can use up his low cards, and then get a new set of high cards to "kick some butt!" again. While we can certainly say that this is bad playing on the part of the player, that isn't going to change that this may create some conflicts and unhappiness as a result. You just make it about die rolls, and the problem is eliminated.

And yeah. This is setting aside that not every scene is the same. Not all require high skill rolls to succeed, nor is the importance of a given success or failure the same. But the weight on each is treated the same based on the card use. A 17 card used to succeed in spotting some minor thing is a lot different than the same 17 used to evade a fireball. This kind a loops back to "you're playing a mini-game here", where the players are trying to guess how many different die rolls may exist between "right now" and "when it's going to be really important", and adjust their behavior and card use accordingly. If I know that we're going to spend the next few days sitting around town, I'm going to be more confident using high cards for social skills, perception skills, bargaining for a good sale price for loot, etc. But if I know that we're about to be attacked by the mercs sent by our number one enemy, I'm going to want to fail those things, so I can save my "good cards" for that.

Dunno. It just seems like it would make that guessing game more important than the stats and whatnot on the character sheet itself. And that's before getting into the real fact that "dice don't have memory". The fact that you were just really lucky (or unlucky) does not actually change the probabilities of being really lucky or unlucky again one bit. Your odds of drawing a straight flush this hand, is exactly the same if you drew one last hand as if you didn't. But this mechanic somehow imposes some sort of "conservation of luck" in the game universe. I just find that... odd.


Again. Better to just make luck less of a facor for the major stuff in the first place IMO. Details along the way? Sure. But big "live or die" stuff? Luck should have very very little to do with it.


EDIT: Oh. There's another reason why I think I dislike this idea. It will make characters with low skills in some things, much more hesitant to try them. If I have like 1 skill point assigned to some skill, and a situation comes up where I could use it (let's assume this is some minor social skill maybe), the card system effectively requires that I use up one of my higher cards to have a shot at succeeding with the skill. So I now become less capable later because I did this one thing now. That just doesn't sit well with me. I like to encourage my players to try things, even if they aren't that good at it. That character who just put one point in sense motive? Go ahead and try it. You might get lucky and get something useful. Or not. But it costs you zero to use that skill whenever a situation comes up to use it. In the card system? There now is a cost . And it kinda reinforces bad play IMO. The honest player, who honestly wants to attempt to use that sense motive skill, is going to want to (need to?) use a high card to have a chance to succeed. Which hurts him. The dishonest player, will just walk around using sense motive, as often as possible, and playing low cards, so as to burn through them and get more high cards in his hand.

You've turned "luck" into a game resource that the player has control over. I'm not sure I agree with that.