I Wonder Why...

[tolen1]

I finally got my copy of Volume 1, and I'm working my way through. I have a couple of "Why?" questions...

Disclaimer: I haven't finished reading the core books yet, so maybe it gets explained somewhere...at least the attack question, anyway.

 

Why is it called "Bump of Direction?" There's gotta be a story there...

 

Why is an attack roll OCV +11? Why not set OCV higher by default instead of making more adding for players (not much, mind, and not difficult, but...)

[Duke Bushido]

39 minutes ago, tolen1 said:

I finally got my copy of Volume 1, and I'm working my way through. I have a couple of "Why?" questions...

Disclaimer: I haven't finished reading the core books yet, so maybe it gets explained somewhere...at least the attack question, anyway.

 

Why is it called "Bump of Direction?" There's gotta be a story there...

 

Not really.  Itia a real-world thinf: some people have an innate ability to know with reasonable accuracy where they are related to other locations (with which they are familiar).  That person is, traditionally, said to have a Bump of Direction.

 

The term itself-  that goes back to the pseudoacience of phrenology. 

 

 

39 minutes ago, tolen1 said:

Why is an attack roll OCV +11? Why not set OCV higher by default instead of making more adding for players (not much, mind, and not difficult, but...)

 

11 ia the most average roll on 3d6.  Essentially, the attack roll is a shortcut of sorts for a skill versus skill contest.

 

In this case, the "hit you" skill versus your "don't get hit" skill.

 

If the two skills are equal, the cobatants should have roughly a fifty-fifty shot of hitting each other, or 11 or less.

 

That is to say that if both people jave a skill level of, say, 9 or less, they must each roll 9 or less.   In a skill versus skill, the person who was most successful would typically win the contest, though some GMs play that a successful defend against instead is a modifier for the aggressor"s roll, but thia isnt that talk.

 

At any rate, if one person has a skill level that is, say, two pointa higher, then he is more likely to succeed.

 

That is what CV does: it assukes equally-skilled combatants face each other with an equal chance of success- doing it this way means that the scale of the power does not matter: id both players have Combat: 27 or less, so be it, but they face each other at 11 or less- they are equals.

 

The CV makes a direct adjustment to the contest by assing the aggressor'a value and subtracting the defender's value.

 

The upshot is that scales of power are now irrelevant- roll a 3 and you will succeed; roll an 18, and you will fail.

 

My favorite two benefits are that it reduces two opposing rolls to a single roll, and that it eliminates ties.

 

I use it foe skill v skill in lots of other ways, stealth v perception and concealement v concealment are very common uses in my games.

 

Besides, most players like having dice in their hands. 

 

 

[unclevlad]

Duke beat me to it.

 

With a big qualifier:  10- is 50%.  11- is 62.5%.

 

But 11- is the focal point for rolls.  Characteristic and characteristic-based skill rolls are computed as 9 + CHAR/5...so given a 10, the PC's baseline...that's 11-.

 

 

[tolen1]

As I said, I haven't absorbed all of it yet, so it was just something little that was sticking in my head.

 

As for Bump of Direction...I've never heard that phrase.

[Duke Bushido]

I grew up hearing it, but I grew up in Circle, Alaska in the sixties, where a "bump of direction" was a good thing if you wandered away from the river.

 

[Rich McGee]

On 7/31/2024 at 7:46 PM, tolen1 said:

As for Bump of Direction...I've never heard that phrase.

Much like Duke Bushido I can recall it from my youth a half-century ago, but even then it wasn't something my age peers used, more my parents and  grandparents.  It's borderline archaic at this point - which is pretty understandable given its close connection with a thoroughly debunked quack science discipline like phrenology.  I think the more prosaic "sense of direction" is the replacement these days.

[unclevlad]

"Sense of direction" might be better in a general context, but "sense" in Hero has additional meanings they may have wanted to avoid.  There's no roll involved, for example.

[Khymeria]

8 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

It's borderline archaic at this point - which is pretty understandable given its close connection with a thoroughly debunked quack science discipline like phrenology.  

When I was writing/researching Victorian Hero I struggled with what to include about phrenology. Stick to the facts or since I was mixing history with literature and myth, have some fun with it. In the end, I just couldn’t get past the silliness of it for some reason. 

Edited August 5 by Khymeria

[Duke Bushido]

10 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

Much like Duke Bushido I can recall it from my youth a half-century ago, but even then it wasn't something my age peers used, more my parents and  grandparents.  It's borderline archaic at this point

 

True, and thank you.  It hadn't occurred to mw to mention the anachronistic nature of the term itself, possibly because there are still a few people I encounter who use it, myself included (though I would have preferred a Bump of Finance, honestly).  Granted, I have had more than one person tell me I talk like my grandfather, so hey-  you get what you get. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8 hours ago, unclevlad said:

"Sense of direction" might be better in a general context, but "sense" in Hero has additional meanings they may have wanted to avoid.  

 

 

That had never actually occurrred to me; thank you!  Having grown up with the term Bump of Direction, I just assumed it was more commonly-known than it may have actually been.

 

5 hours ago, Khymeria said:

, I just couldn’t get past the silliness of it for some reason. 

 

 

Phrenology is a real and valid science!  You'll see!  One day you will be willing to trade all of your phlogiston to take back those words!

 

 

[Rich McGee]

5 hours ago, Khymeria said:

In the end, I just couldn’t get past the silliness of it for some reason. 

Phrenology was also used to justify quite a bit of racism and some ugly mental health beliefs back in the day.  It takes the fun of it for me in the same way knowing how con artists operate (even today) ruins the inherent humor in Victorian spiritualism - which hasn't been as effectively debunked as Lumpy Head Science by a long shot.  Scams originating back then still work, and there are real people still being hurt by them.  I'm not quite ruthless enough to say stupidity is its own reward and just leave it at that.  Too much like victim-blaming.

 

33 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Granted, I have had more than one person tell me I talk like my grandfather, so hey-  you get what you get. 

I hear that myself now and then.  It's actually kind of insulting.  Gramps had me topped when it came to specialized engineering and aviation terms but in ever other regard his vocabulary was rather narrow, where I've been a word nerd since I learned to read.   

[Lord Liaden]

Well, speech can be about a great deal more than just vocabulary. Tone, pitch, cadence, pace, pronunciation, are all part of a person's distinctive way of speaking. Those also are affected by our attitude, emotions, and responses to various stimuli.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Rich McGee, evolution was also used to justify racism too. And speaking of terms, race used to not be a bad word.

[Duke Bushido]

At the risk of further hijacking this thread, I offer, in the same vein as Ninja-Bear's comments, I believe, a friendly reminder that these games,and the adventures we have within their structure, are ultimately works of fiction, and as such, we are at liberty to do what has always been done within fiction:

 

Pick and choose.  Want some fun set dressing for a pulp-era adventure?  An evil scientist is using his phrenological skills to determine which of his patients is most susceptible to mind-controlling mesmerization!  Oh, no!  He will soon have cops, armored car drivers, and key city officials completely under his control!

 

And ignore the unpleasantries of what might have historically been-  in your world, nothing about skull bumps could possibly suggest any sort of racial advantage or disadvantage-  you know: just like we actually know to be true.

 

You aren't taking phrenology as a whole; you are taking some of the flavor aspects.

 

The unpleasant truth is that _all_ reality has a downside:

 

Woo-hoo!  We killed a hundred enemy soldiers!  A large portion of which were probably conscripted, and most of which likely had spouses, children, siblings, and parents who not only thought they were the good guys, but are anxiously waiting for the return of their wonderful hero.

 

Alchemy is a popular fantasy trope, but mostly it resulted in long cons and poisonings and the ingestion of metals.  Unpleasant.  But in fiction, we don't use a whole entire alchemy.  We use bubbling cauldrons and flashing, smoking powders and incredible transformations and strange elixirs whose side effects may include levitation.

 

Still-  I totally understand that everything has an uncanny valley-esque point of "nope; that's too far, and stirs something unpleasant in me."

 

Just realize that this threshold not only varies from person to person, it varies _a lot_:  one man's heroic founding father is another man's ignorant hillbilly mass murderer.  So feel free to take bits and pieces of something without using the whole cloth.  That is the very essence of all cultural lore, after all.

 

But on the other side, don't let anyone tell you that the connotations that something stirs within you  "shouldn't bother you, since you aren't using the whole thing."  Frankly, some of it- like the Uncanny Valley- finds its roots in your survival instincts.  That isn't a thing you want to teach yourself to ignore (unless your normal reaction is 'stand there like a target,' of course).

 

I would like to think that no one here will give you grief over what you do or do not feel is okay in your games, even if we disagree with you.  I know I won't.

 

I will offer you two things you will _never_ find in my games: 

 

kidnapped children.  Yes, it happens.  Yes; the heroes can possibly save the children before a bad thing happens.  But because of the staggeringly awful things that happen to such kids in the real world, I want not even a reminder of it in my games, period.

 

Religion.  Or rather, "...

 

Crap.  What is a good way to say this?

 

Ah!  Extant modern religions.  Ancient religions that _may_still have a follower or two but who are unlikely to be sitting at my table?  No problem.  Extant religions, members of whom are likely to be sitting at my table?  Nope.

 

My very first GM-  not my first Champions GM, but my first GM ever, who taught us Tunnels and Trolls and Traveller- had a small playgroup that consisted of ardent adherents to four different religions-  two Christian protestant (sorry,but some of those are far enough apart in individual conciets that regardless of shared texts, I see them as different religions), one Jewish, and one follower of Hinduism.

 

Any _mention_ in-game of religion as a motivator of _any_ kind of action, good or ill, always drew complaints from someone, and once in a while, actual offense.

 

So, yeah-  no extant religions as anything other than set dressing: here is a Catholic church, here is a mosque....  No; they will never come up as vital locations in-game, but the temple of Hermes just might....

 

 

There you go.

 

 

Edited August 10 by Duke Bushido

[LoneWolf]

The way I calculate the attack roll is 11 + (OCV –DCV) instead of 11 + OCV – DCV.  Most of the time Your OCV and your opponent's DCV are fairly close.  By doing it this way you are working with smaller numbers which is usually easier than working with larger numbers.   The values work out exactly the same.  

 

As to the usage of the phrase bump of direction I suspect that one of the reasons it has fallen out of use is that with the use of GPS and the urbanization of our society having a good sense of direction is less important.  With most people living in urban or suburban areas being able to navigate by compass direction is less important. 
 

[Gauntlet]

1 hour ago, LoneWolf said:

The way I calculate the attack roll is 11 + (OCV –DCV) instead of 11 + OCV – DCV.

 

You do realize that mathematically both of these are exactly the same.

[Duke Bushido]

51 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

 

You do realize that mathematically both of these are exactly the same.

 

That fact is expressly spelled out in the 6e rules,where the method mentiined is listed as an optional way to handle attack rolls.

 

Some folks prefer "roll high"to "roll low"for whatever reason, and some folks find utility in being able to look at a die roll and say "I hit a DCV of X or less."  I don't, personally, but I won't deny that some folks find it helpful, and if it helps you, go for it.

[unclevlad]

The point of (OCV+11) - 3d6 is that the defender's DCV remains unknown.  Many times that's not really relevant, but it can be...and it's not info the PCs should always have in advance.

[Gauntlet]

10 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

The point of (OCV+11) - 3d6 is that the defender's DCV remains unknown.  Many times that's not really relevant, but it can be...and it's not info the PCs should always have in advance.

 

I like this way to do it, at least in some games, especially horror based. This means you can give the players even less information.

[LoneWolf]

5 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

 

You do realize that mathematically both of these are exactly the same.

Yes, but by changing the order it usually results in smaller numbers that most people will find easier to deal with.  Most of the time this will result in single digit number, that can be added (or subtracted if negative) to 11.  Compare doing 9 - 5 = 4, 11 + 4 =15 is usually easier to do in your head than 11 +9 =20, 20 – 5 = 15.  

Edited August 7 by LoneWolf

[Christopher R Taylor]

As I recall, "Bump of Direction" first showed up in Justice, Inc as an old timey term for an unerring sense of direction like my brother had.  Always knew where he was and what direction he was facing.  It just was carried over from edition to edition.

[Chris Goodwin]

I find it's easier overall to just tell them the DCV and let them know what they're rolling against.

[unclevlad]

3 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I find it's easier overall to just tell them the DCV and let them know what they're rolling against.

 

Mostly, so do I.  Like telling then AC for D&D.  There are exceptions, tho.  Sometimes you want to leave some surprise intact.

[Gauntlet]

I only use the "do not tell anyone the opponents DCV" action in horror games as I like to make things as scary as possible and not knowing what you are up against assists that.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Players can usually figure it out pretty fast anyway, I just prefer it to be unclear because how the heck would a warrior know how well his opponent is skilled in dodging until they match up?

[Chris Goodwin]

Once the first exchange of blows occurs, they'll have a good idea... and the numeric DCV is a player level abstraction of what the character sees in-universe.