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 Statistical Information to Consider

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Roach
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Roach


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PostSubject: Statistical Information to Consider   Statistical Information to Consider EmptySun Jan 09, 2011 7:58 pm

The Most Common Human Attribute is 2

Quote :
Some people say that the average is 3, perhaps because they are used to systems where that is true, or because they are used to thinking in terms of dice rolls. Average is not a fixed mathematical term and can actually be used to describe the Mean, the Median and the Mode of a set of numbers.

Mean is where you add up all the numbers and divide by how many there are. Median is the half-way point of the range and Mode is the most common value. None of these are the same as each other.

There needs to be more room at the top of the scale than there is at the bottom because most people don't reach their maximum potential. It's pretty clear that the average person is not half as strong as the strongest person. They aren't normally even close to half as strong. Same with other areas of ability. If you have a ninety people who can run the 100m in 12 seconds, and ten people who can run it in 10seconds, then 90% of people are below average. Make sense?

The average score is higher than the most common score.

In play and during character creation, making this clear has had a very positive effect in my experience. Players are a lot more willing to have characters with scores of 3, or even 2 once they realise that 3 is still not bad. Consider 2 to be the strength of the average man, 3 to be the strength of a dock worker. Consider 2 to be the average Logic of most people, 3 to be the Logic of your typical computer programmer.

None of this applies to skills which have a clearly defined scale already.

This information was originally compiled by knasser and posted on Shadowrun Resources.

This is good information to consider when designing a new character. We're all used to the idea that if you don't have a certain level of score then "oooh...that's not good" and generally we say this when we're dealing with scores of 2. The game even supports this mode. If you're rolling a task with a target number of 4 using 2 dice, of the 36 possibilities of the roll, 27 of those are successes. That means the average person has a better than average chance of completing the task. It's only when tasks become more difficult or require more successes that you become less likely to succeed (as it should be).

So next time you're looking at your character and thinking that your Charisma of 2 means you've got the personality of the walking dead, dismiss that notion. You're just Mr. John Q. Average. Of course, if you've got a 1, you may technically be on the bottom of the scale but, statistically speaking, there's gotta be someone out there with a score of .5 so don't let it get you too far down.


Last edited by Roach on Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:23 am; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : 27 successes, not 21)
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Logan
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PostSubject: Re: Statistical Information to Consider   Statistical Information to Consider EmptySun Jan 09, 2011 11:17 pm

The logic is sound, though I would have come to it from a different angle personally.

"Average," in mathematics can mean a wide range of things. In a game system like this, average simply refers to what average people manage in an attribute, not the median average that an individual could have developed during thier lifetime. For instance, the average person in our society applies very little of themselves into what we would call attributes. For characters in a game system like this, 2 is literally below average, but the point given is true that, when considering everyone, chances are, a 2 really would be average.

Good article.
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Roach
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Roach


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PostSubject: Re: Statistical Information to Consider   Statistical Information to Consider EmptyTue Jan 11, 2011 9:29 pm

Where this article will really come into play is in SR4. Most chars have a 2 or even a few 3s in their profile because of the limits of point expenditures on stats.
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lysander




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PostSubject: Re: Statistical Information to Consider   Statistical Information to Consider EmptySun Jan 23, 2011 9:07 pm

Skills and Stats in SR4 are linked, so running with a quickness of 6 and a pistols at 1= 7 friggin dice to roll.


I personally do that whole skewed thing. I pick 1-2 attributes that the character is REALLY good at, let's face it... they've spent their ENTIRE life building their reputation and career on those stats. Then my other stats are... meh.

But yeah, I'm just rambling now.
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Roach
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Roach


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PostSubject: Re: Statistical Information to Consider   Statistical Information to Consider EmptyMon Jan 24, 2011 12:29 am

They do the same thing in Cyberpunk. Stat + Skill. Just a bit different of a system. CP2020 is stat+skill+1d10 vs TN. But same base concept. I prefer that way than Stat or Skill.
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Logan
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PostSubject: Re: Statistical Information to Consider   Statistical Information to Consider EmptyMon Jan 24, 2011 12:37 am

That concept is actually quite popular in roleplaying games (the well thought-out ones anyway).
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Roach
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PostSubject: Re: Statistical Information to Consider   Statistical Information to Consider EmptyMon Jan 24, 2011 6:41 pm

Yeah, many of the non-level type RPGs use that system. The other version are the few RPGs that use the Pinnacle system where the stat is equal to a number and type of die and the skills are equal to a number of die but take their die type from the stat. The new BSG RPG as well as the Serenity RPG use this format. I believe the new Supernatural RPG also does.
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Logan
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PostSubject: Re: Statistical Information to Consider   Statistical Information to Consider EmptyMon Jan 24, 2011 7:32 pm

I also used this concept in Realmsaga. Remind me sometime to show you how we do it; it's quite unique.
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