Re: "Quantity" and "Contest" Ratings

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 18:46:02 +0100

On Thu, Jul 17, 2003 at 10:44:56PM +0100, Kevin Blackburn wrote:
> The first type is a ???quantity??? rating. Some base quantity is set to
> a value of 12. Each doubling of the underlying quantity is worth a +5 to
> the rating, in a logarithmic manner ??? thus multiplying the quantity by
> eight is only a +15, not, for instance +20 for a linear relationship
> between multiplier and bonus. This is reasonably explicit in the rules.
> A classic example of a ???quantity??? rating is Wealth.

There's certainly to a great deal of logic to what you say about a log. progression, but I don't think it's necessarily as cut and dried as you suggest (or indeed as I might prefer). I wouldn't take it as a given that that all abilities that might bear such an interpretation would do so; nor that the ones that do (more or less...) necessarily have the _same_ logarithmic progression.

It's in one place implied that a mastery's difference is supposed to correspond to 'odd' of 4 or 5 to 1, for example, if I'm recalling correctly...  

> The second type is a ???contest??? rating. Again, there is a base rating
> of 12. However, the +5 comes if a given contestant is twice as likely to
> win over someone with a base rating. That is, if you arranged a sequence
> of one-on-one contests, the 17 rating would win twice as many as their
> 12 rating opponents. A rating of 2W would win four times as many, and so
> forth. There is an assumption that a 2W rating would win twice as often
> over a 17 rating ??? which is an assumption about the rating scale
> rather than a property of probability.

You mean that, these may not be the actual odds of such a (simple) contest, but that conceptually they ought to be, is that the gist of what you're saying here?

> A major point of the HeroWars system is to avoid anyone having to worry
> about detailed arithmetic. Perhaps the appropriate advice to a games
> master is to let players know whether their abilities are ???contest???
> or ???quantity??? ratings, and to be aware there treasured multiple
> masteries will suddenly collapse into a more meagre rating if the
> contest is suddenly against a quantity. The game master might also want
> to have some idea of the translation for any ratings that seem crucial.
> This translation should take into account any magical nature of the game
> world ??? perhaps you want a good Orlanthi to be able to outrun a horse.

I think actual conversion between two different numeric ratings might be over-egging things. I'm not really unhappy with the idea of a person being able to outrun a horse (in theory true, actually, over sufficiently long distances...), though going by the Anaxial's numbers, there's certainly issues with this happening at a narratively appropriate-seeming point of the ability scale. But that aside, sit-mods hide a multitude of sins...  

> (If you like this sort of nonsense, then I could follow up with related
> stuff on how to run a Many-onto-one combat)

I would indeed.

Cheers,
Alex.