Well, another poll was posted and voting has come to an end, and I have to say that I am more than a little surprised by the results. I was curious what resolution system most Labyrinth-heads are using for thieving skills, with the choices ranging from percentile dice to d6, d20 and of course "Other". Here are the final results of this poll:
I do not know why it surprises me as much as it does, but 59% of the voters use the thieving rules as written in the Labyrinth Lord rules. Only 22% use a d6, d20 and "Other" tied with 8% each. Keep in mind that outside of the attention this poll may have gotten due to Blogger's blog-roll I advertised this on the Goblinoid Games forums and Facebook page.
I guess I assumed the results would be a lot closer than what the poll shows. And I thought that d6 would have been a lot more popular in the end. I blame my assumptions on my blog reading habits. It seems that converting thieving skills over to a d6 resolution system has been very popular lately, or at least it seems that way from the blogs I read on a regular basis. I am sure this is because most bloggers who talk about roleplaying games have the impulse to tinker with the games they love hardwired into their system.
I think it is safe for me to make the assumption that the results point to the fact that the vast majority of people probably use the rules as written. I think this says a lot about a game system that clones a game published in 1981. But this doesn't stop me from wanting to tinker with it a bit more... :-)
5 comments:
This is interesting. On the one hand I would expect that for most games, in general, the vast majority of players would use the RAW, in which case the number of people using the percentile system would be surprisingly low. On the other hand, one might assume that the majority of people playing Labyrinth Lord are 'do it yourself' types and inclined to tinker, in which case the number of percentile users are surprisingly high, especially how punitive this system is to low-mid level thieves.
Mind you, the sample size is too small to draw any meaningful conclusions, but it is suggestive nonetheless.
I think this says a lot about a game system that clones a game published in 1981.
Amen to that. I'm running my first rpg campaign in 15 years and one of the things that amazes me is how much I still love the system. Do I still make little tweaks? Heck yeah. But I love how the simple rules blend into the background so well that my players and I rarely crack a rulebook during play, and the actual gameplay flows with constant interruptions for rules referencing.
Actually, come to think of it, maybe that's the real reason I don't follow through on half of my rule changing ideas: even if it's imperfect, I'd rather go with the rule that feels natural from repetition and keep the game going.
After we switched to my exploding d6 system we saw a substantial increase of number of thieves in the group. Now we hear more often "we can't leave without a thief" than "we can't leave without a cleric". This might also be due to the increased game knowledge that players have acquired :)
Oh, thanks for the kind words :)
Tinker away... once you publish your book, then that will also be "the rules as written" and we can all use d6 instead of percentiles and have a clear conscience. :)
I have to say I love the d6 exploding die system for one simple reason. It's just cool.
With that said, I too generally resort to percents, partly due to the extremely fine grain of modifiers, instantly applied with nary a thought about math.
Also, I constantly grab my percents anytime I need to make a random decision not covered by a rule, so I'm very comfortable with them. (I run across the odd pattern of trigger stones and leap the chasm.. did I step on any? How many?)
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