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RPG Faff Metric

Some RPG systems are obviously more of a faff than they need to be, and some take more time than others. This feels obvious, but I want a better way to measure it than using my gut. I want to give a little flesh, with a Maths-flavoured guesstimate, similar to ‘Big-O notation’ (a method for guessing how fast a sorting algorithm works).

faff noun: An unnecessary or over-complicated task, especially one perceived as a waste of time. verb: To waste time on an unproductive activity.

Broad Aims

The system should prioritize meaningful metrics across different RPGs above accuracy.
The steps to measure a system should highlight the parts of the system which generate faff, even if the exact results don’t tell you much.

Perhaps this works less like ‘Big-O notation’ and more like a Bechdel-Wallace[a] test. Anyone who says ‘that game “Portal” fails the Bechdel test, so the test is stupid”, hasn’t understood the idea, just like anyone who says that everything which fails the test must be sexist. The notation should provide a nice place to start, not a final word.

[a]

Methodology

Walk along each step to resolve an action. What sounds like ‘just a roll’ probably has quite a few parts (find Attribute Bonus, add the Attribute Bonus, et c.). We give each step a faff-rating, with 1 for simple tasks (e.g. ‘add that same number that you always add’) and more for tasks which always take longer (e.g. roll a dice-pool and record the results on a sheet of paper).

Type (Abrev.)            | Rating | Example                                                           
-------------------------|--------|--------------------------------------------------------------------
Compare a roll to the TN |   0    | Check if 14 + 4 beats TN 15                                       
Standard Addition (A)    |   1    | Add Initiative Bonus                                              
Unique Addition (U)      |   2    | Add Initiative Bonus with Fatigue Penalty                         
Dice roll (D)            |   2    | Roll 1D10 for Initiative                                          
Count success margin ©   |   2    | Take your roll of 18, minus the DC of 15, to reveal a margin of 3.
Dice pool (P)            |   3    | Roll 4D10 and count how many are over ‘6’                         
Keep the middle die (K)  |   3    | Roll 3D6 and select the median result                             
Exploding Dice (E)       |   +1   | …and reroll any dice which land on a ‘10’                         
Record information ®     |   3    | Note 3 HP lost                                                    
Tactical Decisions (T)   |   ?    | Deciding which spell to use

Measuring these actions in seconds demands resources nobody has, and raises questions nobody cares about. Instead of doing those things, I want to just give numbers with the right relation. If one action takes longer than another, then the first action should have a higher rating, even if nobody can see exactly how much higher it should be than the other.

Standard Additions mean those additions which always come out the same. If Initiative = Dexterity + Combat at all times, then the player can just remember a single number to add.
Unique Additions have a higher cost, because the player has to recalculate the roll constantly.
Dice rolls have a cost of 2, because I can’t tell what takes longer - rolling a die, or adding a number in your head.
Dice pools clearly take longer to resolve than a single roll, so they get a higher number still.
Tactical Information I can’t begin to estimate. I don’t want to give it a high number, because a high ‘faff number’ is a bad thing, so if player decisions add to this number then it means that players making decisions ‘is a faff’, and is therefore bad. I’m going to cheat and miss this one out.

Basic Actions

Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Ed.

Let’s start slow. In Pathfi…er, D&D 3.0, an action might go like this:

Roll to navigate through the forest without getting lost. You can use your navigation skill.

1. (A: 1) The player looks down their sheet and adds their navigation Skill to their Intelligence Bonus.

2. (D: 2) They roll a D20 and succeed.

Total Steps: 2

Faff Score: 3

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Time for another navigation roll. I can’t remember the exact roll, but I remember the rules for ‘Non-Weapon Proficiencies’, which is what we called ‘Skills’ back in the day, while wearing onions on our belts.

1. (A) The tries to remember where the ‘Non-Weapon Proficiencies’ go on their character sheet, and find that they must roll equal to, or under, their Wisdom score +2.

2. (D) Roll 1D20.

Despite the character having no Skill rating (just the arbitrary Bonus which Gygax or someone at TSR stuck into the rules), this system gets exactly the same rating as the last one.

Total Steps: 2

Faff Score: 3

White Wolf

1. (U: 2) The player adds the character’s Intelligence + Survival.

2. (P: 3) The player rolls that many dice, and counts the successes.

Total Steps: 2

Faff Score: 5

This result means almost twice the faff that D&D entails, but on the other hand, we get a more detailed result, and (more importantly) something to interpret. 1 success could mean the characters are ‘waylaid by a couple of days, as they try to figure out where they went wrong’, or it could mean that they ‘get off-track, and have to roll again to find a new path from this new location’.

And rolling 4 successes could mean some kind of bonus. If the characters wanted to get somewhere quickly, they may have found a shortcut, or circumnavigated some difficult terrain.

Combat

…in which we enter a horrifying den of Maths snakes, and I try to convince you that I can still salvage this idea.

Complications

Till Death Do Us Faff

The action of ‘combat’ doesn’t have a clear resolution. Resolving a single round doesn’t really help, because that doesn’t resolve the general combat, and some systems demand we take more rounds than others.

However, drawing an average should be easy. We simply replace all dice rolls with their average expected result (I will spare you another acronym and just say ‘average damage’).

If a fighter has a 45% chance of hitting, and deals 1D8+2 Damage, then their average Damage is 5.5 x 0.45 = 2.475.

Let’s say their opponent has 4 Hit Dice (meaning ‘4D8 worth of HP’). This gives them an average of 18 HP. We can simply take the HP, and divide them by the average Damage to get the average number of rounds:

For the final score, take whatever faff rating we have for 1 round, and multiply the results:

Which Characters?

I don’t have a great answer here. I kind-of want to select the first 10 levels from D&D, then average over the results. And I kinda of want to move through the White Wolf system, going from a dice-pool of 1 to a dice-pool of 10, and then average over those results. But then I also don’t, because it sounds dull, and won’t say much.

So instead, I’m going to go with ‘1st level fighter’, and ‘dice pool of 5’, and just see what that says.

Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Ed.

One Round

Let’s start a single round:

(D: 2) Roll for Initiative
(A: 1) Add your Initiative bonus
(R: 3) The DM writes down the Initiative (this is not part of the rules, but multiple Youtube videos discuss how to accomplish this step)
(D: 2) Roll to attack
(A: 1) Add your attack bonus

(D: 2) Roll Damage
(A: 1) Add Damage Bonus
(R: 3) GM Rolls Damage

These last two steps (figuring Damage) won’t always happen, so I’m going to half the score.

Total Steps: 5 or 8

Faff Score: 12

…but that’s just a single round.

Two Average Fighters with Longswords

My D&D books currently sit in a friend’s attic in another country, and I’m too lazy to torrent the pdf, so to make a full round, I’m going to go by memory.

Let’s assume two level 1 fighters (+1 to hit), with longswords (1D8 Damage), with a good Strength Bonus (+2), and chainmail (+4 AC).

Average Damage: 5.5
Chance to hit: 13+ (e.g. 40%)
40% of 5.5 = 2.2

That means 2.2 Damage per turn, on average.

1D10 HP means 5.5 HP on average (and likely +1 for something or other, but let’s be kind).
5.5/ 2.2 = 2.5 rounds until someone dies.

With 2.2 rounds at a faff score of 12 per round, that’s a total faff score of 26.

This becomes far worse when we reach level 2.

Fighters with 2D10 HP will have 11 HP on average, which will double the number of rounds of combat.
They also hit more often, but only by 5%, which is not great.
Fighters purchasing better armour makes this problem worse, at about the same rate as fighters gaining more ‘to-hit’ bonuses.

White Wolf

Next up, World of Darkness, with two people fighting with 5 dice, because why not?

(D: 2) Roll 1D10 for Initiative
(A: 1) Add your Initiative bonus (Dexterity + Wits)
(R: 3) Record the result
(S: 0) According to the books, players state their actions in order of lowest-to-highest initiative, then players resolve their actions in highest-to-lowest order, but can spend a Willpower point to change the situation. Nobody uses this rule so I’m going to ignore it.
(A: 1) Add Dexterity + Whatever
(P: 3) Roll to attack (nobody rolls Dodge because it’s pointless)
(A: 1) Add your Strength to your extra successes (and +1 for weapon)
(P: 3) Roll the Damage dice-pool (you can hardly fail to hit)
(P: 3) The opponent rolls their Soak
(R: 3) Any remaining successes are recorded as Damage

Total Steps: 10

Faff Score: 20

Average successes at a dice pool of 5: 1.5 (let’s call that ‘2’)
Average Damage with a Damage pool of 4 (+1 for weapon): 1.2
Average Soak at Stamina 2: 0.6
Total Damage is 1.2 - 0.6 = 0.6

Original World of Darkness rules use about 5 HP (the last two basically mean the fight is over, so we can ignore those boxes).

I’m going to ignore the rules of wound penalties, because as soon as someone receive a wound penalty, they enter a death spiral which results in their opponent beating them to death slowly.

With 5 HP divided by 2.2, we have:

…and this is a total faff, and we can see exactly why. Try adding a couple of points of Celerity, then running a game where a Cainite coterie of 4, face off three Sabbat members, along with their 8 ghouls. It can’t be done! At a conservative estimate, that’s 150 steps to take each round (ignoring reverse initiative), and 150 steps per round. With an average dice-pool of 5 per roll, that’s over 80 individual dice rolled and read, for a single round. At 2 rounds, this entails 160 dice rolls, each coordinated, with stages decisions between each roll.

Fate Core

(P: 3) Roll 4DF (that’s ‘4 Fudge Dice’)
(A: 1) Add combat modifier
(R: 3) Record the result

Total Steps: 3

Faff Score: 7

Into the Odd

(D: 2) Roll Damage.
(A: 1) Subtract armour.
(R: 3) Record the result? (someone’s probably dead already)

Total Steps: 3

Faff Score: 6

Personal Conclusions

Everything has 3 or more steps.
D&D isn’t too bad, but gets much worse as levels raise.
More detailed results do not imply more faff (compare D&D to A,D&D)

Therefore, less faff does not imply less detail.

Initiative is a massive drain.
Like them or not, super-simple systems resolve quickly, and don’t slow down when characters gain experience.
Apparently people managed to arrange art, editing, and printing for White Wolf without ever noticing that the combat system doesn’t work.

These result may not summarize an entire combat system with a single number, but personally, I’d like to see some kind of faff-rating on every RPG review. It doesn’t have to be this particular rating - other measurements may be more enlightening. But I would really like to see something there, warning the reader about how much attention and time combat will demand.