Why so many dice tricks?

[Isator Levi]

You can't get perfect immunity from ever being lied to, only specific confirmations of statements that you found suspicious.

You have to use the charm for every statement you attempt to verify. Even if a Solar is suspicious of an individual, the new social system and charms means burning motes for every statement someone makes is going to be expensive.

Okay, even if it's relatively cheap, I'll admit that it's not really feasible to use it in response to every single statement made to you.

I don't think that really matters, to the statement of "lying is removed from the things that can challenge you", because I don't think you need to use it in response to every statement for it to be the kind of thing that still basically invalidates the lies that matter.

Anytime you hear a statement that is trying to convince you of something, or get you to do a thing, or change your perception of others and the world, I do not think it's difficult for a Solar to have a general policy of confirming any of them through the Charm.

It's like, look at one of the examples in the social system, about the person trying to convince the Solar that his Lunar Mate is untrustworthy; let's say the liar comes back with some reasonable evidence and some arguments that reframe things the Lunar actually did in a manner that imply treachery. It could all be convincing in a manner that at least leaves the Solar uncertain of who can be trusted...

Unless he has this Charm, in which case all of those efforts on the part of the liar are useless, because no amount of contrived evidence or framed situations can get past the infallibility of the Charm.

Or say somebody is trying to draw your attention to themselves rather than one of their other operations, and so they tell you that they're the one who killed your father in order to draw your anger... except you know that they didn't, and so direct your venageance elsewhere.

An allied warlord with not intent to aid you pledges a time and place when an army will show up. A Guild factor tries to protect himself by bluffing that there's a trap set to kill many innocent people if he should be killed.

I will fully admit that this is not yet something I've tried out in play, so maybe the practicality of it is different there, and maybe the degree to which it is obvious what statements really absolutely need to have their truth verified would be more ambiguous in the moment than it is when thinking about it from a distance.

But still, it looks so... absolute, it feels to me like something that can remove a lot of ambiguity from stories and social interactions.

That being said, these points do make me feel as though I might be very wrong about something, which I really would welcome. I've at least been put in a mindset that is forming scenarios in which things would be more ambiguous to balance it out (such as recognising a lie in a scenario you can't exactly call out, or being faced with somebody who keeps the most overt things true and lets the misdirection fall into statements a Solar might be less likely to Judge), so that's something.

And I suppose that at least some forms of manipulation are going to be things that, if one is playing the mindset of the character honestly, they're not really going to stop and think that it may be untrue.

I wonder... the Charm can see through half truths, but what about equivcations... no, that probably still falls within the spirit of what it means by half truths, so the investigator would probably still get the sense that the ambiguous word is being used in a misleading way.

What about... statements that intend to lead the Solar to a conclusion that the speaker knows to be false? Such as, you can't say Desdemona is cheating on Othello when you know that she isn't, but if you point out circumstantial evidence that may lead to that conclusion. Is it a lie to say that Cassio being in possession of her handkerchief is suspicious? Is it a lie to assert that something could have a certain meaning, which it could, even if you personally know that it doesn't?

Hmm, in this particular example, we're probably back in the arena of "impractically judging every statement that you hear"; if Othello already has reason enough to trust me that we're discussing the implications of missing handkerchiefs, he's probably not going to second guess every opinion I offer, not unless he thinks I have an agenda. Besides, even if he did, lying about my own opinion that a misplaced handkerchief is suspicious doesn't exactly make it not suspicious. At the very least, it might lead Othello to ask me why I'm not being honest, but his own suspicions are still being aroused and fed.

And assuming that a climax in which Desdemona continually asserts that she's been faithful and Othello has the clarity to listen for the honesty of it or really acknowledge it even if he does is probably back in the area of portraying characters sincerely.

That all at least seems like a collection of scenarios in which things are maintained organically rather than one character having to severely contrive themselves through statements intended to get past a Solar's sense for the truth.

Although I wonder... is convincing somebody who is not a Solar, but is close to them, that Desdemona is unfaithful, and then having that person be the mouthpiece of all the manipulative stuff, would that be too far in the direction of contrivance?

Still not sure there's any way for Rankar VII to effectively bluff that he's got all of Gem ready to blow should something happen to him, but... maybe that's the price to pay. Maybe, in the grand scheme of things, being able to effectiely shut down that particular avenue of defence for him matters more than rounding out his options (it's not as if he can't still defend himself with things like elite, firewand wielding bodyguards or guardian statues or magic rings or, hell, actually making pacts with deep elementals to reactivate the volcano).

And I suppose, thinking of an example like, say, Jet from Avatar... even assuming a character who is disinclined to trust anybody that they encounter, I suppose that's a scenario in which the lies are subtle enough that a person wouldn't strictly know which ones are worth Judging.

I'm not entirely convinced, but I'll at least give it more of a chance.

What it does give you is a Batman moment where if you're interrogating someone, you can ask them a few specific questions and be sure they're telling the truth.

Now this... this seems more like the intended and practical function of the Charm, and... maybe it's just because I like so many of the better procedural shows, but I feel a certain stronger connection to the idea of an investigator's uncertainty being removed by the evidence. I get the value in not being misled by a witness or suspect, or having a punchy moment of being able to know that somebody is lying about their innocence, and I know that there could be scenarios in which even a Solar would still need to back something up with convincing evidence, but... I still have an attachment to the ambiguity experienced by the actual investigator.

I mean, certainly, you can't really create tension for such a Solar in a And Then There Were None kind of scenario; after the first body drops, just listen out for everybody inevitably declaring their innocence, and you'll have your culprit. It's like if in The Thing, they figured out that thing with testing the blood at the very start.

But I'll admit, that's one that's a fair bit more based on personal taste, and maybe not every situation of that type is really a suitable narrative for Solar anyway. Not unless it actually does incorporate more elements of The Thing, such as the culprit being a shapeshifter with some deception magic.

[The Wizard of Oz]

I'm seeing a tide of people who are super-happy with how 3e plays and are aggressively recruiting people to play.

We made a new edition that is very, very different than what came before, which set particular design goals and met them. We knew we'd be shedding potential customers from the moment we started making decisions like "runs on FATE" or "does not run on FATE" or "is a super-light" or "is super-heavy." It has enough range to play for 10 years out of just the corebook. It hangs together and works far better than anything else of comparable complexity and scope that I've ever seen. It cannot be all things to all people and still be any good. I am fine with this.

Past that, I think the fact that once you hit the table, a lot of the apparent on-paper complexity melts away serves it well. One thing we've seen over and over and over and over again throughout the playtest feedback and the backer release was people going "I was pretty iffy about how this was going to work, but then we played it and everything clicked and it was a blast."

Having run a bunch of games now, I'm still not 100% happy with everything, but generally I'm pretty pleased with it. And yes, it is mostly (except Craft) less complex in play than you'd expect (combat and movement in particular). I can't say everything about it is wonderful, but the problems are not generally the ones people complain about on the internet.
(Saying this, obviously I haven't read a ton of games, and there's only been a few fights, none of which were very stretching for the PCs; they've yet to face any Celestials for example)

On the dice-tricks particularly, people don't seem bothered by them, except for the ones that rely on how many 1s the other person rolls, because asking them slows things down a little. Other than that they seem fine.

Of course, my players all have 260xp characters, so they're not having to buy dice-tricks instead of the charms they want. Everyone could play the character they wanted except the guy who wanted to play a Solar Sorcerer.

[The Wizard of Oz]

Isator, you said you haven't actually seen Judge's Ear in play. I have, and... basically you're right.
The PCs grab someone and interrogate and every couple of sentences the Twilight's player asks me "was that a lie?" I generally err on technically lies or technically truth for interpreting that.
It is a little awkward to decide exactly what is and isn't true though. They kept asking people if they were loyal to the King. Most of the people asked were... a little loyal. So, technically yes. Also whether their answers were true or false often varied by how loyal they were feeling at that moment.
They did get led on a little bit of a goose chase, because a lot of people on both sides of the intrigue they were investigating genuinely believed that members of the other faction were evil demon-worshipping adulterers while they had the best interests of the kingdom at heart.

But yeah, I'd say the only real change with JET is it's massively more expensive and sometimes the investigator doesn't think to use it on seemingly innocuous statements. Which is, somewhat of a change, I'll admit. But not massively.

[Zelbinnean]

I found during playtesting that Roll20's dice roller makes all the various dice-shenanigans of EX3 extremely easy to parse, actually much easier than rolling physical dice on a table. The same would be true of any roller that displays results in a sequential array (f'r example, 1 1 2 4 4 5 7 7 7 9 10). I can pick out my successes, my 1s, my 6s, and any straight-sequence from that almost instantly.

Hm, I need to play around with roll20's roll logic in that case.

[Elkovash]

*snip*

My Take on the situation is thus; If Keen-Worldly Cobalt, the Solar Investigator, knows unfailingly that Dastardly Devlin is lying to The Sword Prince Gensuji in an attempt to force him to go to war in the Hundred Kingdoms, it does not follow that Cobalt has an easier time convincing said Sword Prince to do the opposite. It's a starting point, but there are a lot more people Creation than the Player characters that manipulators can target (with a significantly higher chance of success) that can have as dramatic and terrible consequences. It doesn't negate the cool charm by having everyone important in creation always using double-speak, and acts rather as a tool to open more stories. Especially if Dastardly Devlin has gone toe-to-toe with Cobalt in the past and has picked his moment of victory in the full knowledge that Cobalt knows, but is in no better position to stop it.


More On topic;

I personally Like the dice-tricks. It's a flavor I'm not used to, it lets my players form satisfyingly effective combinations of charm effects, it makes the game feel more urgent without straying into the path of paranoia and often leads to those 'ah hah! you activated my trap card!' moments of gaming that I love so much.

[DrLoveMonkey]

My Take on the situation is thus; If Keen-Worldly Cobalt, the Solar Investigator, knows unfailingly that Dastardly Devlin is lying to The Sword Prince Gensuji in an attempt to force him to go to war in the Hundred Kingdoms, it does not follow that Cobalt has an easier time convincing said Sword Prince to do the opposite. It's a starting point, but there are a lot more people Creation than the Player characters that manipulators can target (with a significantly higher chance of success) that can have as dramatic and terrible consequences. It doesn't negate the cool charm by having everyone important in creation always using double-speak, and acts rather as a tool to open more stories. Especially if Dastardly Devlin has gone toe-to-toe with Cobalt in the past and has picked his moment of victory in the full knowledge that Cobalt knows, but is in no better position to stop it.


More On topic;

I personally Like the dice-tricks. It's a flavor I'm not used to, it lets my players form satisfyingly effective combinations of charm effects, it makes the game feel more urgent without straying into the path of paranoia and often leads to those 'ah hah! you activated my trap card!' moments of gaming that I love so much.

I agree with isator, but another fun way to get around JET is to use cats paws who all themselves believe what they say 100%, leaving your KET player to question things I'd he assumes JET gives him objective fact instead of subjective truth.

[Totentanz]

I'm seeing a tide of people who are super-happy with how 3e plays and are aggressively recruiting people to play.

We made a new edition that is very, very different than what came before, which set particular design goals and met them. We knew we'd be shedding potential customers from the moment we started making decisions like "runs on FATE" or "does not run on FATE" or "is a super-light" or "is super-heavy." It has enough range to play for 10 years out of just the corebook. It hangs together and works far better than anything else of comparable complexity and scope that I've ever seen. It cannot be all things to all people and still be any good. I am fine with this.

Past that, I think the fact that once you hit the table, a lot of the apparent on-paper complexity melts away serves it well. One thing we've seen over and over and over and over again throughout the playtest feedback and the backer release was people going "I was pretty iffy about how this was going to work, but then we played it and everything clicked and it was a blast."

Thanks. I've mostly been running the social influence system for my noobs (as in, noobs to RPGs as a whole). Combat is this Friday.

[BrilliantRain]

My only issues with the dice tricks are that I think the reroll effects could use a note or two of explanation and that I have no idea what the statistical model of a Solar Crafter looks like, once you start climbing the Power tree.

[Tiresias]

Power Crafting grabs Probability Theory and Chaos Theory and smashes their heads together until their skulls explode into confetti of dice successes. And then the confetti explodes into more dice successes.

[Joker]

I'm seeing a tide of people who are super-happy with how 3e plays and are aggressively recruiting people to play.

We made a new edition that is very, very different than what came before, which set particular design goals and met them. We knew we'd be shedding potential customers from the moment we started making decisions like "runs on FATE" or "does not run on FATE" or "is a super-light" or "is super-heavy.

I definitely don't think you did anything wrong, sticking to your design goals is exactly what you should be doing.
But being one of those that end up "getting shed" feels miserable anyway. If there is even a microscopic chance that there is a way of doing charms that doesn't conflict with your vision but makes it playable for me I would feel even more terrible if I didn't at least try to find it. 98% of what I have seen of E3 looks really good and I'd really like to be able to play it.

[Segev]

I definitely don't think you did anything wrong, sticking to your design goals is exactly what you should be doing.
But being one of those that end up "getting shed" feels miserable anyway. If there is even a microscopic chance that there is a way of doing charms that doesn't conflict with your vision but makes it playable for me I would feel even more terrible if I didn't at least try to find it. 98% of what I have seen of E3 looks really good and I'd really like to be able to play it.

I haven't had a chance to try 3E out. However, if I read your earlier post right, your big problem is that the dicetrick charms bore you and your group in terms of reading them, and are a lot of clutter that makes it hard to find the "fun" Charms. Is that accurate?

If it is, I would suggest that you try playing a session or few without having chosen Charms, and just have the section open. See what your PCs do, and where you wish you had some better dice mechanics or wish you could do something you don't think you can. Then, look at the Charms when you have some time to see if they can help with any of that.

If somebody thinks of something on the fly, let him take that Charm right away; he'll have fewer Charms to pick later. Rejigger prerequisites and minima as needed after the session.

It might help focus where you and your players are looking, and give a bit of a feel for what really is clunky vs. what actually "clicks," as Holden has suggested it will.

[Holden]

It won't click for everyone. It'd be great if it did, but taste being what it is, it won't.

I would definitely recommend giving it a whirl before throwing in the towel, though. I have seen quite a few 'this looks awful' to 'this is AWESOME' turn-arounds, once people got some actual play in.

[TheCountAlucard]

It won't click for everyone. It'd be great if it did, but taste being what it is, it won't.

I would definitely recommend giving it a whirl before throwing in the towel, though. I have seen quite a few 'this looks awful' to 'this is AWESOME' turn-arounds, once people got some actual play in.

My minmaxing player has made such a transformation, so you know.

[TalosX]

I definitely don't think you did anything wrong, sticking to your design goals is exactly what you should be doing.
But being one of those that end up "getting shed" feels miserable anyway. If there is even a microscopic chance that there is a way of doing charms that doesn't conflict with your vision but makes it playable for me I would feel even more terrible if I didn't at least try to find it. 98% of what I have seen of E3 looks really good and I'd really like to be able to play it.

I might have taken what you're saying the wrong way, but it seems to me that you're not really asking as much for a removal of dice-tricks. Rather you want them to be less "fluff wordy"?
Meaning you don't want a charm to say: "The Solars ride the supernal winds of excellence, allowing it to carry them higher then those around them. This charm provides allows all 9s to be counted as double, similar to double 10s."
You'd rather the charm said something like: "This charm provides allows all 9s to be counted as double, similar to double 10s."
Is this what you're asking for?

[sotmh]

Some of the dice tricks are fine; double 7s, 8s, 9s are no big deal. But when I see stuff like "Reroll 6s until 6s fail to appear" I think this charm is the answer to the question "My players aren't spending enough time administering the system instead of interacting with the world, how can I change that?". Because having to make sure I count specific numbers on my dice and my opponents dice and then rerolling them an indeterminate amount of times such that a single roll of 10-20 dice which normally would take 2-3 seconds to manage now takes 15-20 seconds to manage isn't my idea of an improvement to an already slow resolution mechanic.