rproll command

[Amoné Fayden]

Dice rolls for OOC decisions or RP gambling games would be fine since those are not affected by character skill.
(Kieran's example of Councilors choosing Initiate Lightsaber colours is a good one.)

Dice rolls to dictate your character's success/failure at doing things they probably could/couldn't do - No thanks.

Though the problem now is that since there is some obvious divide on what would be the proper use of this command, can we expect to see some people in the community using it for what they want? If the roll command were implemented, there would be no way to prevent people from using it in a D&D GM fashion to dictate player success/failure and I can foresee much arguing.

It would also be detrimental to RP immersion to see dice rolls spamming in the chat every time somebody tries something remotely open-ended. It would also be a mood killer to have to stop the flow of RP to perform some kind of dice roll agreement intermission.

In the end, Kieran sums up my feelings on it with this:

I don't like the idea of control being taken away from us (The players).

This has always been integral to JEDI and so many other suggestions that placed game-mechanics as the decision maker above player creativity have been snubbed in the past for this reason.

In summary:

I support but only if it is accompanied by a Council-enforced rule that prevented role play actions from being dictated via dice roll.

[Oberon]

Couldn't have tapped it out better myself.

[Motoko]

Let me pose something to you. Would you rather a situation be resolved in a RPG number crunch or your character actually SOLVING the problem based on their knowledge and experience?

The second demonstrates creative problem solving where you can actually prove yourself to be adept at your chosen field of study... instead of just being subjected to a game of chance. I think posing a set-back or a problem that a character has to react to (sometimes in ways that a DM won't expect and will have to improv to) is FAR better than a dice roll at testing a character's skill.

So in conclusion this whole rproll is gimmicky at best and ultimately superfluous. May as well live stream that http://www.roll-dice-online.com website to whoever decides to opt in for the lulz.

Moral of the entire story: Plair fair. Have fun. You'll have your day. Trust me.

I'm going to put this as flatly as I can, because you keep bringing up examples that are completely unrelated to how I want to use it, and that's the only reason I'm still going on about this.

I don't want to roll the dice to determine flat out success or failure. I completely agree that hashing it out through RP is a preferred method. I want to roll the dice to have some variation on a degree of success or failure depending on what I as a GM, or as a player for my own character, determine as the difficulty of completion, whether automatic or not, when I feel that such randomness won't derail the entire adventure or cause the highly improbable to happen. I want to use it to generate more interesting scenarios for RP, not remove it, as you keep suggesting in your examples. Again, I completely agree that hashing it out through RP is a preferred method for not just the community, but also for myself. I want to enhance things with a little bit of randomness, not replace them.

We're not looking at some pre-generated table with difficulty and skill level as the axes, with some hard formulatic method of determining to-hit numbers (THAC0! God I feel old). This is something that's generated on the fly, mentally, by a GM wishing to implement a light element of randomness into the story. For players, it's used similarly, but would obviously restricted to things isolated to their character. Using such a system to force results on others without a solid IC/RPed reason is a cardinal sin of RP.

I am not advocating that suddenly this become a requirement for everyone to use. It is completely optional, and everyone needs to understand that it's not going to be universally applied to all actions, nor should it be. This is supposed to add a little random flair, not dictate a situation.

I don't think there will be any more arguing than there already is the potential for when GM and player disagree about whether something should have succeeded or not, mostly because you're not rolling for things like that anyway.

If implemented as in the OP, it shouldn't spam chat as it can be isolated to those involved via tells. I'm also not suggesting this be used for anything and everything remotely open ended. Personally I'd get a bit tired if I had to roll dice just to see which side of the bed Mo rolls out of.

I also don't think that it would be a huge mood killer as I've already seen things come to a bit of a stop to hash out the same success/failure even while RPing the results.

*As for the point about the NPCs... I think with JEDI's tradition of long set up times you could probably have SOME time to think about how your temp. character would react to things. And if it IS a throwaway character... what makes you think he or she should get some sort of "dice roll" chance against a Jedi Knight or their student? You're an extra in their script. Granted, no one should be Boppin' you on the head once and knocking you out but people get caught way to far up trying to "win the game" against the JEDI characters when the play NPCs for some reason... spraying with alt fire or whatever

The same restriction would apply here, and I would roll for the reasons I just outlined. I refer to the example I gave in a previous post.

In the end, I think most of us agree on more points than we disagree.

[Oberon]

Ok, then I will say it simply.

Randomness is better introduced by posing a problem and seeing if or how the player is able to react to it. If the player not as good at <insert skill here> as they claim, they'll not know how to address the problem. If they are, then it should be no issue and there's hardly ever one way to address a problem. If it takes time sure things can come to a stop but only if the character/player is initially unsure on how to deal with the problem. Eventually I'm sure they'll find a solution and since they learned something new (like how to keep circuitry from overheating or whatever) they'll have less of a problem with similar situations in the future and OOCly, it would make more sense for the mission direction to grant/recommend XP for that instance at the end of the role playing session.

[Motoko]

Randomness is better introduced by posing a problem and seeing if or how the player is able to react to it.

The way you describe it in all your examples, I agree. Under certain circumstances, and used in a certain way, I completely disagree.

I believe that is why we should have the /rproll command.

[Oberon]

Agree to disagree, I guess. Like I said, may as well just someday stream that dice rolling site to someone who wants to participate.

[Motoko]

We both care passionately about gameplay and RP on the server, and going back and forth about changes makes sure that in the end, whatever the outcome, the community is better off.

This whole exercise is really just a cost/benefit analysis... and in the spirit of that....

You know there's nothing keeping me from having a set of dice on the desk next to me, and no one would probably ever notice when I'm using them, whether as a player or a GM?

Really just wanted to share the experience of rolling with other players plus the added convenience of having it built into the game.

Still though, +1 for the gambling and other incidental aspects.

[Oberon]

There's nothing wrong with using outside applications to enhance the RPmod experience. Alehk and I use the Pazaak Cantina client to play a few hands ICly.

[Sai Akiada]

I'd really like to see this added, although mostly just for my own entertainment. I'd not recommend it in a DnD fashion for the reasons stated before, but what we all need to keep in mind is that this would be for RPMod first, JEDI second.

The mod will be released publically one day. We may not make use of it in a DnD way but others may wish to. That said, having a dice roll system would be welcome, If possible.

For JEDI use as an alternative to RP'd choices, pass. For satisfying my need to /roll something, aye! (y)

[Soh Raun]

I think this kind of command would be a useful addition to RPMod. How it is used (or not used) is then a matter of clan policy, like many other features of the mod (e.g. XP, character classes, etc.)

Proposed syntax: /rpdice <target> <min> <max>

• target would allow to share the result with:
  • all: all players in the vicinity (public chat)
  • player: one player identified by name or client num (and yourself)
• min is the minimum value (inclusive)
• max is the maximum value (inclusive)

[Amoné Fayden]

I think this kind of command would be a useful addition to RPMod. How it is used (or not used) is then a matter of clan policy, like many other features of the mod (e.g. XP, character classes, etc.)

Proposed syntax: /rpdice <target> <min> <max>

• target would allow to share the result with:
  • all: all players in the vicinity (public chat)
  • player: one player identified by name or client num (and yourself)
• min is the minimum value (inclusive)
• max is the maximum value (inclusive)

This is good.

Could there be multiple targets specified? Say the server had 15 people on but you wanted the same result to be shared privately between 3 people without broadcasting it server-wide.

Would this work for example:

Code: Select all

/rpdice <target>;<target>;<target> <min> <max>

Or can the semi-colon only be used after the last entry of a command?

Also, how would the roll results be displayed?
At the top like /rpnotify?
In the middle like /rpcentersay?
In the chat in a specific colour?

I'm just worried about how intrusive the text will be when used globally.

[Soh Raun]

The semicolon could be used if contained within a quoted argument ("player1;player2") but a simple comma could be enough (player1,player2). Now that I think of it, this multi-target feature could be applied to pretty much all commands of the mod...

As for the display aspects, I'm hesitating between normal chat (like /me) and /rpnotify. Usually, chat is for RP'ed actions and rpnotify for GM information, so rpnotify might be more logical...

[Sai Akiada]

I'd think notify would work best yeh.

[Oberon]

The semicolon could be used if contained within a quoted argument ("player1;player2") but a simple comma could be enough (player1,player2). Now that I think of it, this multi-target feature could be applied to pretty much all commands of the mod.

Multi targets for rpnotify would definitely be a plus, savings having to do the command over twice with a semicolon, same action, just different target names.

[Skrassk]

In the past I've noticed that using a Semicolon at the end of a command actually allowed for a secondary/tertiary string of commands which at first was annoying but eventually came in handy as it would let me do something like this:

/emcrossarms;say I wasn't aware he was looking for me.

It would sit me down in the designated emote AND at the same time produce the text in chat.

Altering it to allow for multiple targets would be useful though, so I support this.