Winds of Fate needs to be tested in a non-D&D system.

[PhoneLobster]

If I recall the players didn't sound to keen on it but Frank remained confident and was oddly convinced that if only he had done exactly the same thing with printed out cards everyone would have loved it.

I mean he was very very brief about it, presumably in part of the effort to spin it's unpopularity, but that was the impression I got.

[violence in the media]

Even with all of this arguing, I still don't get what the inherent revulsion to WoF is rooted in. Yes, micro-managing battles by having total control over using your abilities round-by-round can be fun, but it doesn't seem to me to be meaningfully less tactical or fun to be forced to "make do" with a selection of certain powers on a given round. Then again, I enjoyed FFTA on the DS.

I'm genuinely curious here, but does the source objection to WoF apply also to groups that institute a time limit (usually 30-60 seconds, from what I've seen) for action declarations? Or is that okay because better players will just script more intelligently and worse players will just default? What about opponents that negate certain tactical options, either by accident or design?

Regarding the argument about missing the opportunity to use the perfect power in the perfect situation because of a bad roll, that sort of thing happens right now as it is. People forget about the scroll they stashed 2 game sessions ago, they fail SR checks, miss with attacks, the enemy saves with a 20, or whatever. There's a lot of times in 3.x where you've effectively stood there doing nothing because your action failed in some way. Now maybe it's because of my own personal perceptions of this mythical system, but I'm under the impression that you're going to have some sort of positive, if minor, impact with every action. If I need to roll a "4" to get my Hadouken, I'd want it to either auto-hit, do fixed damage if it hits, carry an unavoidable rider, or something. I wouldn't really want to have to roll the "4", roll the hit, and then be able to flub the damage roll with hydra eyes. The result of "no effect" or "nothing happens" shouldn't occur in WoF, in my mind.

As far as sacrificing player agency goes, I would much rather be told that I can't use my Ice Beam this round for arbitrarium reason X than that I can't try to rob the merchant caravan I'm supposed to be protecting for bullshittium reason Y.

[Koumei]

Then again, I enjoyed FFTA on the DS.

I recommend you seek treatment. Immediately.

I'm genuinely curious here, but does the source objection to WoF apply also to groups that institute a time limit (usually 30-60 seconds, from what I've seen) for action declarations? Or is that okay because better players will just script more intelligently and worse players will just default?

Never had this happen, and in my groups it's never been an issue either. I know some groups where they probably could benefit from it (and the worse players would presumably just get better). But things are really quick in my groups.

What about opponents that negate certain tactical options, either by accident or design?

Depends how central it is to the character (when there are classes like the Beguiler, immunity to [Mind Affecting] effects is just way too common - likewise if someone plays a Fire Mage, you deserve every complaint you get when you throw them against Fire Elementals), how often it happens ("Hmm, the Colour Spray -> Charm Person -> Diplomacy combo is too good... ALL UNDEAD, ALL THE TIME" is asking for a punch to the cock) and whether it seems reasonable or complete arbitrary bullshit (see: Shambling Mounds - last I checked, Lightning was Super Effective against Trees, it didn't make them stronger).

There's a lot of times in 3.x where you've effectively stood there doing nothing because your action failed in some way.

And that's really annoying, but at least you can fight against the RNG by effectively pushing yourself off the bloody thing. When a die roll marks the difference between "You do nothing but waste table time this turn" and "The fight is over!" then it shows the system isn't that great and could be improved by having some minimal effect on all actions, and it's justification for using system mastery to make your numbers so high that the die roll is basically a formality.

Now maybe it's because of my own personal perceptions of this mythical system, but I'm under the impression that you're going to have some sort of positive, if minor, impact with every action. If I need to roll a "4" to get my Hadouken, I'd want it to either auto-hit, do fixed damage if it hits, carry an unavoidable rider, or something. I wouldn't really want to have to roll the "4", roll the hit, and then be able to flub the damage roll with hydra eyes. The result of "no effect" or "nothing happens" shouldn't occur in WoF, in my mind.

I think that's pretty important here. If there isn't a special move you really really want, it's not so big a deal, but if there is, then you're fighting against the RNG to get it, and that's a 5/6 chance of not getting a good result, as opposed to the 1/20 chance of missing on your RTA.

The powers probably should have some baseline effect regardless how badly you roll once you roll "I can use this" and decide to do it. Especially seeing as apparently you want fights to last way too long.

[violence in the media]

The powers probably should have some baseline effect regardless how badly you roll once you roll "I can use this" and decide to do it. Especially seeing as apparently you want fights to last way too long.

I don't want fights to last any particular amount of time. Some fights will be over before you make it through a full initiative pass, and some will last long enough for minutes long buff timers to run out. I'm not arguing for some Platonic ideal of the perfect fight, regardless of whether that would be one that's over quickly so you can get back to whatever you're doing or one that involves a lot of back and forth, maneuvering and counters, and the sort. I'm saying both of those kinds of fights happen, and either is fine as long as they are entertaining. Though, I imagine I would miss the other type if all fights were of only one type.

As far as pushing yourself off the RNG goes, I don't see how that isn't the same sort of arms race mentality that's present in the ALL UNDEAD or ALL FIRE MONSTER situations you presented earlier. I've had MCs tell me before that 4 of 4 monsters made their 19+ saves vs. whatever I threw. Yeah, that's very likely total bullshit, but it's the same sort of situation when an MC screws the rogue with a SURPRISE! ALL CONSTRUCTS! adventure.

[Josh_Kablack]

- likewise if someone plays a Fire Mage, you deserve every complaint you get when you throw them against Fire Elementals),

This matchup isn't as bad as you think. At levels 1-2 the Fire Mage is reduced to using her axe on the elemental, but she has enough Fire Resistance to negate its added Fire Damage add. At level 3+ she gets Piercing Flames which lets her at least deal half damage through Fire Immunity. At 6th level the Fire Mage gets Mindfire to use Confusion against the elementals and/or Rage on any melee PCs.


Sure it's a fight that reduces the Fire Mage's effectiveness, but the Fire Mage has enough abilities which matter to make it not a complete hose.

Likewise, in constructing non-existent hypothetical ability sets, we should try to design things so that while even against puzzle monsters who render many ability choices useless, there will always be a couple of useful abilities for a player to select.

[Swordslinger]

Even with all of this arguing, I still don't get what the inherent revulsion to WoF is rooted in.

The main complaint against WoF is that it's mostly complexity for complexities sake.

Basically instead of playing one 4E character and his list of abilities, you're now playing 4-6. And there's a lot of extra effort. But the same issues you had playing that one 4E character exist in each row of the matrix. Whatever you used to determine Twin Strike was the best power for row 1 is going to be the same thing that you use to determine that Righteous Brand rules row 2.

There's this idea that WoF cures all those problems somehow, in that simply by the virtue of having random matrices that suddenly people are going to be considering all 6 of their options to be valid choices, even though from what we've seen of other RPGs, that's just not the case. Yet, the WoF guys keep going on about this perfect dream scenario where sometimes you want to use an area effect spell on a single target and sometimes you want to magic missile a group of goblins instead of fireballing them.

In reality, this is just a load of crap, because really if you could do this, you wouldn't need WoF in the first place. You'd hand people 8 or so equivalent useful options and they would pick the best one and defaulting wouldn't even be an issue.

But really WoF isn't about any of that. All it's about is hatred of hearing people say "Twin Strike" four rounds in a row. And that's all WoF really "fixes", because you now roll a d6 to see which row you have to play, but each of those separate rows still is going to have its default choice. Each of those rows is still going to be determined by some manner of heuristic.

[Koumei]

I totally forgot the Piercing Flames thing.

Anyway, when I said "you want fights to last too long", the I didn't mean you personally, I meant "If you're using WoF and not just playing 3.5, then you clearly want fights to be so long that people notice when every combat action you use is Finger Of Death". Is that a hypothetical you?

Because yeah. While, some stuff having been explained, I can sort of get behind the idea (although I see it working better for silly comedic games where the randomness doesn't represent finding a combat opening, it represents a capricious character going OKAY I'M DOING THIS, Criminal Girls style), the fact is I don't want to play a game where using WoF is necessary: I like my fights being over before anyone gets a second turn, and quickly enough (real time-wise) that you can't just duck out to use the lavatory.

That way you can have a brief explosion of reminding everyone how awesome the PCs are, then you can get back to doing interesting things.

And if that's how the game is, you don't need to spice combat up with new and interesting things, forcing them to take different actions. You only need that if combat is long enough that you need to stop for a cup of tea partway through.

And it's because of this that you want as few wasted actions as possible - the more turns there are in a fight, the bigger the problem it is for your turn to be "nothing", because it drags on even LONGER, and there are reasonable chances you'll have several rounds of this happening and get even more frustrated and decide you can contribute more by going off and doing something else (so your turn gets skipped and it goes faster).

As for setting up an arms race by fighting the RNG, not really:

The PCs are supposed to win. The more randomness gets in the way, the less your actual choices matter - a game with no randomness would be all about your decisions or it would be shit. And I'm sure there have been plenty of actual no-dice games that happily leapt into the second category there.

But you don't want to just go "It's cool, let's have some randomness here to fuck with things." You kick chance to the curb and seize victory by minimising the impact of the randomness. And if the MC decides the enemies all roll 20s for their saves, then he's fucked up, so you need to call him on the bullshit, calmly pour your drink in his lap, and walk out so he remembers he is not the king, his ability to make shit up extends as far as you're going to put up with.

[quanta]

A lot of the traditional ways and even some of your proposed methods rely on explicit DM or player input. Meaning that whether you intended it or not, you're blaming the group. Like right here.

And Lago moves to admitting he's just setting up a strawman because I clearly meant something besides what I said.

As Frank and DSM have told you, memorizing what your options do is easier than picking them. Of course you want players new to the game to be able to pick up and play which is why I proposed row scaling such that people get comfortable with their powers and the system before adding more.

NONETHELESS once people get a handle on their powers there's still option paralysis. For 4E characters who don't have a clear hierarchy of powers like wizards they're looking at 9-13 potential powers by level 12 or so. That's too many.

That's nice that they say that with absolutely no meaningful proof. That's not my fucking experience at all. I find options paralysis drastically decreasing as my players learn their powers and use them a few times.

And no, just no. A huge chunk of those powers in 4e are dailies. You can rule out using most of your dailies in most rounds without even engaging in conscious thought. Most of the time, you really only make a meaningful decision between your 2 at-wills and encounter powers. There are six of those at level twelve.

Hey, you know what system had those conditions you're talking about? 4th Edition D&D. There is not a single thing you listed with the exception of perhaps fatigue (depending on how you define it) that the game doesn't have. I'm sure that you can do a No True Scotsman and say that the game doesn't take it far enough, but seriously how much further did you want it without resorting to mathhammers?

4e doesn't have condition tracks. It has conditions. Different. And a lot of monsters don't have any significant ability that triggers on bloodied. If there was a monster manual where the designer made every monster transform at bloodied, obviously every single combat would have internal variance. Would that perhaps be thematically retarded? Yes. But that's not the point.

You know what else 4e doesn't have? A robust system that encourages goals of capturing and holding terrain. It encourages you to push people around and into zones and such, but that's hardly necessary, it's often more efficient to just one-shot or two-shot enemies. And although there are a few terrain features that may see occasional use that can encouraging holding certain areas, most groups don't use it, because it wasn't well integrated into core and once again, you can rapidly stab everything to death anyways.

And the potential for combos in 4e does lead to variation in my experience but if you know what your doing, the battle is over on turn two or three because the good combos are really good.

Also... do you even understand what a No True Scotsman is?

I said "these things A,B, and C contribute to X, Y, and Z."

You said "this game has A, B, and C." (when it totally doesn't).

And then You said "furthermore this proves A,B, and C can't do X, Y, and Z." (um... what? you didn't even show the game lacked that).

And even if you could conclusively show 4e generally lacked internal combat variation, your counterargument is logically equivalent to this.

Me: "A good bridge will be built so that it doesn't have any resonant frequencies that match those of the wind."

You: "But this one bridge did that and it broke."

Me: "And that bridge broke because it wasn't designed properly to bear the necessary load."

It does, actually.

1) If the player has a situationally unfitting or suboptimal tactical setup (melee combatant with ranged fire powers against elder fire elementals) it gives them a chance to go through a power that might have an effect all along. People notice bad runs more than good runs and having rounds when the best power is only slightly better than the worst one you have available is more tolerable than having combats like this.

Yes, they have a 1 in n chance of getting whatever row will make them not screwed on a given round. Or are your proposing that clearly most of their rows will be viable so really the odds of a streak of suckage aren't that high?

2) It's boring when people find out the 'best' power and they spam it repeatedly. Determining that Spell F is super-effective against these skeletons is nice and all, but it's very likely that it'll be super-effective again and again, especially if you have a small suite of powers to look through. Spells X, R, and H might not be as game-changingly crushing as Spell F but they're still better than the other 22+ powers. They do deserve a prize for figuring out the best power. The first time. After that they should really be using something else. An array of XRFH is just more interesting and engaging for the other players than FFFF. Various methods have been tried to get people to use XRFH when FFFF was an option without using WoF but they've never worked.

This is one of the most sweeping and retarded generalizations I've ever seen. "No one has ever written any system ever that does this, but my totally untested system clearly and obviously wipes away this problem [implicit: without introducing any new problems which are as bad or worse]."

"AND THERE ARE NO TRADE OFFS WHATSOEVER AND WINDS OF FATE IS THE BEST THING SINCE SEX".

Stop making masturbation threads about how awesome WoF is and how it solves all these totally terrible problems no one ever solved before and how it's also so robust to shit design, and instead go fucking implement it and get back to us.

Because I think you could make a good game with WoF or at least an interesting playtest skeleton or at least an interesting initial game concept and outline of all relevant systems with concrete examples. And that would be a lot more interesting to talk about than the umpteenth fucking thread where you argue how WoF is totally awesome so everybody should use it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

And Lago moves to admitting he's just setting up a strawman because I clearly meant something besides what I said.

You may not have wanted to imply that, but you did. DMs create battlefields. DMs decide what monsters to plop down. DMs decide whether any special script goes off. If you're wanting tactical depth from these things, you're saying that it's the DM's responsibility to ensure that it happens. Meaning that when it doesn't happen it's either the DM's fault or something else is amiss.

That's nice that they say that with absolutely no meaningful proof. That's not my fucking experience at all. I find options paralysis drastically decreasing as my players learn their powers and use them a few times.

Thanks for not understanding the difference between option paralysis and power familiarization. Let me try explaining this again:

People can become familiar with very large sets of options through various memory exercises (chunking, mnenomics, etc.). The fact that anyone can do the plays Hernani or Lucky's speech in Waiting For Godot at all means that human beings have an impressive memory. Repeating the task helps recall.

Nonetheless no matter how familiar people are with their options choosing them is another thing. Psychology studies indicate that there is a hard limit people reach before not only do they have to resort to elimination methods but just the act of having to sort through them demotivates them. I can give you 30 pizza toppings right now, but if my three favorites were taken away I would have a beast of a time deciding what I want. Or to put it in terms of a strategy game, consider Grandmaster plays. Grandmasters spend a lot less time in the opening phases off the game than above-average players (who will probably spend more time than amateurs). This isn't because they're better at choosing options but because they stick to a script called openings and are aware of how the openings will play out. Their memorization cuts down a 200+ move branching path to like 6.

HOWEVER when Grandmasters move out of the opening phases into the unstudied middle game, that's when they start taking a lot more time to decide what to do because it's impossible for human beings to memorize the results of branching paths past X number of moves. They aren't confused as to what a queen does or what king side castling is. The only way they are going to manage large sets of moves is through looking through each one, which leads to option paralysis and 30+ minute turns.

And no, just no. A huge chunk of those powers in 4e are dailies. You can rule out using most of your dailies in most rounds without even engaging in conscious thought. Most of the time, you really only make a meaningful decision between your 2 at-wills and encounter powers. There are six of those at level twelve.

If you're retarded then yes, you do that. If you're not retarded then you realize that you're actually supposed to be budgeting your daily powers to get through the workday. Of course if you're in a bad situation you might use an extra power or if you're in a easy encounter you ignore them, but that doesn't charge the fact that unless you're on a loooong workday you're going to be looking from 8-12 powers. The generic optimal sequence of moves is Rationed Daily + Encounter Powers + At-Will with an optional branch of 'oh shit are we in trouble' back to a daily if something happens like a monster with High Crit actually gets off a crit and one-shots a character or if the monsters are caught in some immobilization effect and you have Stinking Cloud to 'seal the deal' or if you burned through too many healing surges and need to go through this encounter quickly to avoid bleeding more. This doesn't happen often, but you still need to check. Actually, you probably don't have to because 4E isn't very difficult, but if it was more difficult then you definitely would be.

4e doesn't have condition tracks. It has conditions. Different. And a lot of monsters don't have any significant ability that triggers on bloodied. If there was a monster manual where the designer made every monster transform at bloodied, obviously every single combat would have internal variance. Would that perhaps be thematically retarded? Yes. But that's not the point.

No shit, and there's a reason for that. Because tracking 2-4 condition tracks for 4-12 monsters would be impractical, especially if they have move transformation. 4E D&D is about the best you're going to get unless you're willing to cut out other large sections of the game or have everything computerized. Shadowrun does use a condition track, but A) it's just a mathhammer B) it has the effect of making critters less able to fight, putting them on a death spiral rather than giving them a second win and C) combat is not as frequent.

I'd like a condition track in D&D, but just to get rid of critical existence failure and focus firing. Any tactical variation other than bloodied/unbloodied and only for a select population of monsters is too complicated.

You know what else 4e doesn't have? A robust system that encourages goals of capturing and holding terrain. It encourages you to push people around and into zones and such, but that's hardly necessary, it's often more efficient to just one-shot or two-shot enemies.

Terrain is a meaningless feature in of itself. It's the object, not the process of tactical positioning. Or in other words, even if there isn't super special terrain in 4E (which there is, just that few use it because it's extra work for the DM check the DMG and DMG2 if you don't believe me) what's more important is that it gives you some benny for having your character in the right place at the right time. So does it? Yes, 4E cares very much about relative positioning. Now 4E is easy enough so that you can play very suboptimally and still have a good chance of beating the opposition, but if you really want to rock face then you definitely care where your character is. Well-optimized warlords and wizards and warlocks and fighters and battleminds and rangers and other controllers micromanage every square.

Also... do you even understand what a No True Scotsman is?

Yes, I do know what it is and you just pulled that by stating that something that doesn't exactly fit your criteria doesn't count.

Yes, they have a 1 in n chance of getting whatever row will make them not screwed on a given round. Or are your proposing that clearly most of their rows will be viable so really the odds of a streak of suckage aren't that high?

Over the course of a campaign rather than individual combat, the number of rounds that someone had a 'suck' or a 'win' streak will be the same for WoF or At-Wills all things being equal. But with At-Wills the suck streak will involve consecutive rounds rather than being spread out. Yes, it does suck to sometimes roll a row full of fire + grappling + stun powers against a flying gargantuan flaming wheel, especially when your other 2-5 rows would work just fine. I still believe that it's less frustrating than having to sit out an entire combat because it requires less patience for the player to get out of a 'bad' groove.

"No one has ever written any system ever that does this, but my totally untested system clearly and obviously wipes away this problem [implicit: without introducing any new problems which are as bad or worse]."

While my particular proposed system has never been tested before, a randomized resource management system has been in use in various forms for other systems. Like CCGs.

This is one of the most sweeping and retarded generalizations I've ever seen. "No one has ever written any system ever that does this, but my totally untested system clearly and obviously wipes away this problem [implicit: without introducing any new problems which are as bad or worse]."

C'mon, quanta, that's twice now you tried to make an argument out of imaginary parameters. 'I can't think of anything to support my thesis/undermine your position, but it's there, trust me!'

In all seriousness, though, unless you have some kind of external hard limit (spell charges, random rows), it's damn near impossible in practice to get someone's finger off of the 'Super Effective Power' button once they know what button this is. The only way you can really do it is to throw up some kind of fuck-off mechanic (the treant's magical nests suddenly activates and they get fire resist 20!) -- which is a waste of space and time if actually implemented pre-roleplaying group for more than a token amount and causes at-table resentment and butthurt if the DM has to insert it more than once or twice. It's just common sense.

"AND THERE ARE NO TRADE OFFS WHATSOEVER AND WINDS OF FATE IS THE BEST THING SINCE SEX".

Stop making masturbation threads about how awesome WoF is and how it solves all these totally terrible problems no one ever solved before and how it's also so robust to shit design, and instead go fucking implement it and get back to us.

What's the points of even showing the benefits of the system if people don't even understand the old flaws and what it's supposed to do? I mean, yes, the 'get your Government hands off of my Medicare' problem is pretty much impossible to avoid so the solution is to ram it down peoples' throats anyway and watch them pretend like they never objected to this thing they like better.

But just this once I'd like to skip that stupid and deceptive step and get people onboard beforehand. I don't think this is going to happen, though, so time to stealthily relabel all of the 'New Coke' cans to 'Coke Classic'.

[RobbyPants]

But just this once I'd like to skip that stupid and deceptive step and get people onboard beforehand. I don't think this is going to happen, though, so time to stealthily relabel all of the 'New Coke' cans to 'Coke Classic'.

You'll have better luck pulling that off once you've developed your first batch of New Coke. This all seems like Coke/New Coke marketing to me. I'd like a taste test. v

[Username17]

Yeah, I don't see any point in even reading PL's tirades anymore. They simply take up too much time and have nothing to add. If he ever happens to get close to making a real point instead of weirdly pulling random quotes completely out of context and then making completely batshit pronouncements about them, someone give me a head's up. Because when I'm on a pay-for-your-wireless plan I just can't be fucked to read things which have a coherency index that low.

Anyway, I think talking about different goals is a pretty decent thing to talk about at this point, because people are so thoroughly talking past each other that it isn't even funny. Let's do this in the form of a Q&A, because different people wanting different things are going to be handled differently by the system.

I want to win fights by using a super move that makes me feel like a tactical genius. WoF sounds like it would make my super move less likely to come up, how is that addressed?

• First of all: Puzzle Monsters and Battle Enders are not everyone's cup of tea. A lot of games probably will at least endeavor to avoid their inclusion entirely. But if you did want super special moves that were Battle Enders or Puzzle Monsters that required specific moves to get off, then the WoF character would actually be able to pull that kind of thing off more often than an At-Will sort of character because he has a different set of moves every round. That means that the At-Will character sometimes has an appropriate Battle Ender on turn one and sometimes doesn't, and the WoF character has the same chance of having an appropriate Battle Ender on turn one, and infinity times more of a chance of having an appropriate Battle Ender on turn two.

I want to have Non-Combat utility powers that I can use in combat, how does WoF address that?

• WoF is indeed strictly superior to the At-Will system in providing Utility Powers. In the At-Will system, every combat ability you convert into a Utility Power gives you one power that can be used outside of combat. In WoF, every column you convert into a Utility column gives you a number of Utility Powers equal to the number of rows. So for example: the AW6 character gives up one combat option each round for one utility power and now has 5 combat options each round and one Utility option out of combat. The WoF 6x6 character gives up one combat option each round for one utility power option each round, and now has 5 combat options each round and six Utility option out of combat. If you don't want to hand out that many Utility Powers, you could double, triple, or even hexuple up the Utility Powers on the chart - having the same Utility Power on every row would map to the same option exchange rate as AW6, with every lesser level of repetition being a better option exchange rate for non-combat utility.

I want to set up buffs, can WoF handle that?

• Like At-Will ability use, buffs are problematic. Without some kind of limits it just ends up like the Warlock's +1440 to Diplomacy ability. However, many buff limit setups work especially well in a WoF setup, more so than they do in an At-Will setup. Let's take for example the "buff slot" idea, where by taking an action you can replace whatever you have slotted in the buff slot with a different buff that is presumably more appropriate. In the At-Will setup, this takes up a lot of potential actions and leads to a fair amount of option paralysis even though the buff reset is generally only going to happen once a battle (if that), making it a terrible conceptual space exchange. For the WoF character, the various buff reset actions can be divided between rows, meaning that they aren't using a lot of list space on any given turn despite allowing the character to have a lot of different buff setups available.
  
  But that's not the only potential setup. There's also the "Disarm" setup, where characters are assumed to have their buffs up all the time, and during battle you may get your buffs turned off, allowing you to spend an action to turn them back on. In the At Will scenario, this usually results in putting buffs back up being "not worth it", because the alternative is a situation where debuffing is the best action and then rebuffing is the best action for the other guy and the Nash Equilibrium never ends because both parties just sit there flipping states on and off. WoF allows rebuffing and debuffing to both be "worth it" during combat, because rebuffing isn't always going to be an option next round. Thus you could expect your opponent to go buffless for some number of turns even if turning their buffs back on was the logical choice for the enemy.

The basic thing that WoF does is it increases the number of total abilities that players can ever use while keeping the number of abilities to choose between during a single combat round down. This keeps option paralysis at bay while keeping variety high. It really does that. With math. People who claim it doesn't do that are wrong. With math. Now there's the entirely separate question of whether that is a good thing. Psychological studies say it is and personal experience backs it up.

But probably the biggest question is going to be this:
That's Great and all, but what are you going to actually do with it?

• Probably the first thing on the conveyor belt is Fantastic!, a 4 color comic book setup. Characters would be based on a series of power and attribute choices that would fill in a number of slots on their wheel. So getting a "power" would normally fill in a column, while getting an "attribute" would just fill in a pair of cells in a column. Characters would have "utility powers" and "utility attributes" that would go into specific columns, meaning that the player would be confronted by 2 Utility Options 4 Combat options each turn. This involves the player selecting a total of 4 powers and 6 attributes to make their character and result in them having 6 options each combat round and 12 utility options out of combat.
  
  The basic setup allows there to be a lot of different powers that could collectively be called "Magnetism Control" or something, so some characters would seriously be able to be described as having one real power like an X-Men Mutant, but they'd still have a full range of options each round. Leveling would involve adding columns, but you'd never get more than 9, because that would be frustrating and annoying.

-Username17

[Orion]

So what's the deal with the whole "Variability via Salamander" Thing?

My understanding is this: Let's say you have a character who uses Scorching Ray every turn. You bring out a Salamander. Now he uses Snowball Swarm every turn. You've added some variety between fights and doubled the number of abilities you get to see. Winds of Fate proponents have two, mutually compatible responses. First, they assert that Variability via Salamander constitute an Oberoni cop-out. Because some DMs won't have the system familiarity or the time and energy to bring out the Salamander, some characters will get away with using Scorching Ray every round forever. Second, and at the same time, they assert that even when the salamander comes down, Winds of Fate will still produce more variety. In a normal fight, your mage alternates between Scorching Ray, Lightning Bolt, and Acid Arrow. When the Salamander comes out, he now alternates between Magic Missile, Lightning Bolt, and Snowball Swarm.

In other words, Variation a la Salamader does not replace or prevent the effect of Winds of Fate, which is to see more moves within a combat and between combats.

[Ravengm]

The thing I don't understand is that Variation a la Salamander only solves the lack of variance for a single battle. For the other 10 battles that level, that guy's still gonna spam the crap out of Scorching Ray, unless the MC makes 25-50% of the encounters heavily fire resistant or immune. Which is just dickery in action.

How is that not MC Fiat to force Dr. Fireball to do something different?

[Orion]

I dunno. If your AW6 kit were

Fireball
Lightning Bolt
Polar Ray
Glitterdust
Web
Stinking Cloud

It wouldn't really be very hard to make sure that they all came out as some point in a 4-encounter workday. If you Salamander every battle, that's fine.

EDIT:

Everyone angrily demanding that someone post an example has mysteriously failed to comment on my example. If someone can clarify what I need to add to my example, please tell me.

[Ravengm]

Well, sure, if your player is apt to use the Best Power for the situation, then that's a-given. I understand the thought process of "Here are your 6 powers, GO!" if the guy playing the wizard doesn't have such a massive hard-on for Fireball that it's all he uses.

I thought the Salamander thing came up because of the laziness of players and lack of willingness to change tactics (i.e. "Fireball works just fine, why should I use something else?"). At that point, it's the MC changing up the monsters to force some sort of variance into the game because he's tired of "Oh, a group of orcs? Fireball. And a giant crab behind them? Fireball. And we need to get through that door? Fireball."

Unless I'm missing something, that is.

[PhoneLobster]

When I was dredging the WoF threads for quotes the other day I stumbled upon a particular gem. I'll first quote Frank's latest content free "Imma gonna ignore everyone who disagrees with me and so should everyone else!" rant.

But if you did want super special moves that were Battle Enders or Puzzle Monsters that required specific moves to get off, then the WoF character would actually be able to pull that kind of thing off more often than an At-Will sort of character

The die rolls can fuck you. Not as badly as outright missing with an attack can, but yes it can fuck you. I honestly would rather be told ahead of time that I wasn't going to be able land a firelance next round so that I could at least abort to something productive like moving to a better position or quaffing a healing potion than waiting for my turn to come up and get my 1 then.

At some point in the past Frank was more honest about WoF fucking you over.

These days he makes up strawmen about "battle enders" and pretends that WoF is actually BETTER at things he USED to admit it actually fucked you over on.

That pretty much sums up the argument of WoF fans right there.

[Orion]

Those quotes are non-contradictory because one is from the level of the system and one is from the level of the character. If you're trying to design a game where characters have enemy-specific supermoves like "ghostbusting strike" and "dragonbane arrow," then Winds of Fate allows you to give more of those moves to each character, increasing the odds of them knowing an appropriate bane move for a random enemy. (You could also increase the odds by keeping abilities at-will and reducing the number of different kinds of enemy). So Winds of Fate is "better" at letting characters win fights with bane moves.

On the other hand, if you *are* a WoF character, and you have a bane move on one of your rows, the dice have a chance of "screwing you" on any given round by not giving it to you.

[Ravengm]

Yeah, from what I got it's that you had access to a greater variety of banes than an all at-will character, even though you may not necessarily get access to the one you want right now. If one of your matrix columns is:

Demonslayer Strike
Ghostbusting Ray
Death to Undeath
Shatter Construct
Dominate Animal
Banish Elemental

and the all at-will guy takes

Fireball
Lightning Bolt
Polar Ray
Glitterdust
Ghostbusting Ray
Stinking Cloud

Then, sure, against an incorporeal thing the all at-will guy has access to the bane 100% of the time, while the WoF guy only gets in 1/6 of the time. But if you go against a golem or a bear, the all at-will guy will have a 0% chance of having a bane, while the WoF guy still has that 1/6 chance.

I agree that it's frustrating to want to use a particular power and you can't, which is why I'm still a little skeptical of the WoF system, but I want to see a fully-fleshed out example (including actual power writeups) before I make a hard decision.

[fectin]

...they assert that Variability via Salamander constitute an Oberoni cop-out.

"Oberoni Fallacy" isn't a set of magic words you can use to win arguements every time someone says anything about adventure design.
Despite Oberoni's initial characterization of it as a distinct fallacy, it's really a variety of Red Herring, which is a well established and defined variety of non sequiter, and only applies in specific ways.

So, if the original arguement is, "X, therefore the printed rules are bad", saying "if you change the rules, X is no longer true" is a non-sequiter. That is the only situation where Oberoni applies. If you instead start with "X makes games be not fun", it is totally sequiter to say "if you change the rules, X is no longer true".

Because encounter design and player ability selection are not part of the printed rules, you are solidly outside of the territory where Oberoni can even apply. If you say "it's not fun when players spam the same move", you have set up a situation where Oberoni cannot even apply, and trying to hide behind it later is weaksauce.

[Previn]

So, was looking around today for some of the studies that WoF is supposed to be based off of and I found Lago had posted : http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/articles ... vating.pdf

I did some searching, and it seems that the vast, vast, vast majority of the time (out of 37 sites, 34 of them directly or clearly) referenced that paper.

Now, that had me wonder why that that paper is apparently only source for this sweeping "more choices are bad." So I looked around some more and I found this: http://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jconrs/v37 ... 9-425.html

Abstract from that paper:

The choice overload hypothesis states that an increase in the number of options to choose from may lead to adverse consequences such as a decrease in the motivation to choose or the satisfaction with the finally chosen option. A number of studies found strong instances of choice overload in the lab and in the field, but others found no such effects or found that more choices may instead facilitate choice and increase satisfaction. In a meta-analysis of 63 conditions from 50 published and unpublished experiments (N = 5,036), we found a mean effect size of virtually zero but considerable variance between studies. While further analyses indicated several potentially important preconditions for choice overload, no sufficient conditions could be identified. However, some idiosyncratic moderators proposed in single studies may still explain when and why choice overload reliably occurs; we review these studies and identify possible directions for future research. (c) 2010 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Some relevant quotes from the paper:

A number of studies in the past found strong instances of choice overload based on experiments in laboratories and in the field. While these results attracted a lot of attention in academia as well as in the media, a number of experiments found no empirical evidence for choice overload and sometimes even found that more choices instead facilitate choice and increase satisfaction

Across the 50 experiments, which depict the choices of 5,036 individual participants, the authors found that the overall effect of choice overload was virtually zero. "This suggests that adverse consequences do not necessarily follow from increases in the number of options.... In fact, contrary to the notion of choice overload, these results suggest that having many options to choose from will, on average, not lead to a decrease in satisfaction or motivation to make a choice."

This paper is also in almost direct response to the on Lago posted (including it's data), from a much larger sample size, and was defended a year later with the following at the end:

As we conclude in our original publication, "it is certainly possible, however, that choice overload does reliably occur depending on particular moderator variables and researchers may profitably continue to search for such moderators" (p. 421). To move the field along toward this goal, it is paramount to continue with constructive discussions and investigations and to focus on empirical evidence.

So unless someone has something else to point me to, it seems most of the underlying assumptions of WoF are wrong.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Now, that had me wonder why that that paper is apparently only source for this sweeping "more choices are bad."

Uh, no, it's not. For FFS, look at your own link you posted; it's a meta-analysis of 50+ other choice overload papers. Meaning that if you really wanted we could've pointed you to ten other papers. We just posted you that so you wouldn't think we were just pulling the choice overload hypothesis out of our asses, but the assertion that our argument rested on one paper is laughable.

Some relevant quotes from the paper:

Previn, did you read the abstract or did you look at the actual article? That link you posted only gives an abstract. Now I'm not a statistics guy so the vast majority of the meta-analysis flew over my head, but I feel like I was able to understand the conclusions.

Here's a link to the full .pdf:

http://citrixweb.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/mon ... 2010-1.pdf

This is important because the paper does not say that choice overload does not exist. Rather that choice overload is possibly the effect of several variables that researchers have not reliably identified. Here's the key quote.

While this suggests that adverse consequences due
to having too much choice are not a robust phenomenon,
there are also still a number of studies that report effect sizes
indicating choice overload.

What are some of these effects?

Information Overload.
Reutskaja and Hogarth (2009)
elicited reduced choice satisfaction by increasing the complexity
of the offered options. In line with Mogilner et al.
(2008), they hypothesized that choice overload is due to the
increased cognitive effort needed to make a choice. This
argument bears similarity to the information overload hypothesis
that predicts a negative impact on decision making
if the total amount of information concerning the choice
assortment grows too large (Jacoby, Speller, and Kohn 1974;
Jacoby, Speller, and Kohn Berning 1974). In its original
formulation, the amount of information was calculated as
the number of options within an assortment multiplied by
the number of attributes on which the options are described.
From this perspective, choice overload (where only the number
of options is large) is a special case of information
overload.

Empirical evidence suggests that consumers are less likely
to prefer large assortments over smaller ones if they assume
that the options in both assortments are mostly attractive
and of high quality (Chernev 2008). If instead the options
are variable but on average of low quality, a large assortment
increases the chance that at least one somewhat attractive
option will be found. While the options used in the choice
experiments in the meta-analysis were certainly not similar,
it could still be that participants differed in the degree to
which they perceived them as similar or as having high or
low mean quality, which could moderate the presence of
choice overload.

Classic examples
of such heuristics are the satisficing heuristic that guides
individuals to choose the first option that exceeds their aspiration
level (Simon 1955), the elimination-by-aspects
strategy that quickly screens out unattractive options (Davey,
Olson, and Wallenius 1994; Huber and Klein 1991; Tversky
1972), the choice of a default option (Johnson 2008; Johnson
and Goldstein 2003), and the consideration-set model that
balances search costs and expected outcomes (Hauser and
Wernerfelt 1990). There is ample evidence showing that
decision makers adaptively apply such heuristic strategies
across a wide range of situations (Gigerenzer et al. 1999).
In line with this, Jacoby (1984), the original proponent of
information overload, concluded that in most real situations
decision makers will stop far short of overloading themselves.
Consequently, a potential moderator of choice overload
is the degree to which decision makers make use of
simplifying decision heuristics. This calls for assessing more
than just final choice outcomes in studies on choice overload
by adding measures of decision processes (see Scheibehenne
and Todd [2009b] for a first step in this direction).

Time Pressure.
Inbar et al. (2008) found that more
options decreased satisfaction with the choice outcome and
increased regret only when decision makers felt rushed because
of experimentally induced time pressure. To the degree
that time pressure kept participants from processing all the
information they needed to make a satisfactory choice, they
might have suffered from too much information relative to
the amount of time they had to consider it. Similar results
were reported by Haynes (2009), who found evidence for
choice overload only if he constrained the decision makers’
time to make a decision. Time pressure must be considered
420 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH
relative to the amount of information being presented to
decision makers, so that this moderator and the previous
one are intertwined.

The researcher has a point in that large selections of lists in of itself may not have choice overload. The paper does not disprove that the conditions don't exist, merely that they don't always apply which is why the 'choice overload' threshold is ephemeral. Your link does show that extra choice in of itself isn't demotivating--rather it says that choice conditionals like time pressure cause the demotivation. The problem is that well-designed tabletop games are pretty much a perfect storm of choice fuckery. IOW your paper actually did the exact opposite of what you thought it did and only reinforced our assertions.

[Previn]

Uh, no, it's not. For FFS, look at your own link you posted; it's a meta-analysis of 50+ other choice overload papers. Meaning that if you really wanted we could've pointed you to ten other papers. We just posted you that so you wouldn't think we were just pulling the choice overload hypothesis out of our asses, but the assertion that our argument rested on one paper is laughable.

The paper I posted is an analysis of many different papers which refutes that option paralysis is a common phenomenon, or that having many choices leads to it. If you were to point to 10 other papers, supporting your position, I'd point out that this paper studied 63 cases and came to conclusions that don't agree with you, including cases that were specifically looking for the phenomena of option paralysis and couldn't find it as well as a second trail of your paper's experiments with opposite results.

The point being that more options are not a significant factor in 'option paralysis.' And that more options more often have no negative effects, or positive effects. WoF therefor doesn't solve option paralysis by making lists shorter because the size of the list doesn't have a real effect on casing option paralysis.

This is important because the paper does not say that choice overload does not exist. Rather that choice overload is possibly the effect of several variables that researchers have not reliably identified. Here's the key quote.

Actually, it says that choice overload is most typically NOT related to set sizes, but that it does happen and researches should be looking at other factors. Again, that is a key part of the foundation of WoF, and you're deliberately overlooking it just because it doesn't agree with you.

I'm not saying option paralysis doesn't happen. I'm specifically calling out the reasons you cite for WoF to fix option paralysis as not being the cause of option paralysis, and thus WoF doing exactly nothing to fix the 'problem.'

The researcher has a point in that large selections of lists in of itself may not have choice overload. The paper does not disprove that the conditions don't exist, merely that they don't always apply which is why the 'choice overload' threshold is ephemeral. Your link does show that extra choice in of itself isn't demotivating--rather it says that choice conditionals like time pressure cause the demotivation. The problem is that well-designed tabletop games are pretty much a perfect storm of choice fuckery. IOW your paper actually did the exact opposite of what you thought it did and only reinforced our assertions.

The fact that the paper is impartial in pointing out that option paralysis exists and that you can cherry pick quotes stating that in some cases it happens, doesn't change the fact the point of the paper is that it isn't the size of the sets that's the cause. And that's directly counter to the core of WoF.

So basically you're being intellectually dishonest by quoting the sections that only favor your position as if they are major points for you while ignoring all other data which shows your position as basically factually wrong, and then implicitly ignoring the final conclusions:

The meta- analysis further confirmed that “more choice is better” with regard to consumption quantity and if decision makers had well-defined preferences prior to choice. There was also a slight publication bias such that unpublished and more recent experiments were somewhat less likely to support the choice overload hypothesis. .... At least within the analyzed set of experiments, there was also no linear or curvilinear relationship between the effect size and the number of options in the large set.

But, whatever.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, I'll be nice just this once. Just this once.

If you were to point to 10 other papers, supporting your position, I'd point out that this paper studied 63 cases and came to conclusions that don't agree with you, including cases that were specifically looking for the phenomena of option paralysis and couldn't find it as well as a second trail of your paper's experiments with opposite results.

Okay, but that doesn't change the fact that we didn't just pull it out of our asses. You can say that we had outdated knowledge or didn't research the situation well enough, but acting like our entire argument hinged on one paper is being mendacious.

The paper I posted is an analysis of many different papers which refutes that option paralysis is a common phenomenon, or that having many choices leads to it.

Nope. It said that option paralysis is a multi-faceted dependent that doesn't just depend on more options. Choice dismotivation/paralysis happens in conjunction with large lists and other parameters. The parameters were consistent when judged internally (complex choices dismotivates people) but the largest problem is that the variable in common with all of the experiments--large lists--ran their experiments with other variables that might be suspected to cause option paralysis. Since the experiments were not run with all of the same parameters, this caused inconsistent results. Not surprising, since it's a frickin' psychology experiment, but whatever. This was noted in the frickin' conclusion, which you had the audacity to say that I was quote mining and being intellectually dishonest with. Variables such as:

• Whether there was a large distinction between quality of various options.
• Whether the choice maker was on a time limit.
• Whether the decision was complex.
• Whether the choice-maker used a simple heuristic (pick the first satisfactory option rather than search for the best).

The paper does not believe that these variables don't exist. Indeed, they said that this was causing the 'more choices = more perceived option paralysis'. This is relevant because while it suggests that large suggestion lists don't in of itself cause choice dismotivation/option paralysis, having large lists of options with these factors will produce it. The conclusions at the end state this is what is actually causing choice paralysis rather than just having large lists. Now while this actually seems to be disproving our position, you need to take it a bit further. For example: if you were claiming that having 30 different kinds of chocolates with wildly varying flavors and people had a large amount of time to decide which chocolate they wanted didn't create option paralysis you may be on to something. Because in that case you avoid the 'true option paralysis creating options'.

But you know what? This isn't as devastating as you might think. In fact, it's actually supportive of what we've been saying all along. While you could dispute the methodology or meta-analysis, frankly it's just easier to accept all of their premises and show that in the context of TTRPGS option paralysis will still come from large lists. In TTRPGs, Choices are complex (even in relatively simple games), relatively balanced with one another unless you're playing a shitty game, on a practical time limit since no one will tolerate you regularly taking 10 minute or even 4 minute turns, and punish suboptimal heuristics as we've seen in this thread. There's probably more, but I feel that it's enough to have made my point.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The thing I don't understand is that Variation a la Salamander only solves the lack of variance for a single battle. For the other 10 battles that level, that guy's still gonna spam the crap out of Scorching Ray, unless the MC makes 25-50% of the encounters heavily fire resistant or immune.

Not only that, but PC parties are composed of 3 to 7 people. I mean if you throw up an air elemental to counter the super-grappler teamed up with a salamander to counter the fire mage teamed up with a stone golem to counter the beguiler teamed up with a death knight to counter the anti-paladin all that does is just result in players switching off unless you go yet another extra mile. So except for Legion of Doom style events where the goal is to match up combatants to their best opponents and avoid foes who they're bad at fighting, you can only really counter one or two party members at a time.

[Orion]

What I'm getting from the paper is that it's simplistic to say that a particular number of choices is "too many" without context. So Frank can't really say that you should never have more than 9 options ever in any game, because that's not enough information.

The reason you can't specify how many choices are "too many" is that it depends on how complicated each choice is, how much time you have, etc. But, and here is the important bit, it sounds as though if you hold the time limit and the complexity of each choice the same, then increasing the number of options would indeed increase the risk of overload.

I'd like to add further that the WoF sales pitch has always acknowledged this. After all, you were never *actually* limited to 6 choices per turn. You had your six WoF powers, but in many proposed version you have some at-will defaults, whether it's activating a magic item, making a "basic attack", or interacting with your environment. You also have options regarding whom to target and the like. The actual number of options available to you every turn is VERY LARGE.

But as the meta-study says, having a huge number of options isn't a problem if most of them are obviously terrible. And that's the point of Winds of Fate--that you should have a limited number of complicated, powerful abilities on tap at once. Not a strictly limited number of branches on your decision-tree.