Topic: A philosophical question regarding chance

[Doridian]

From time to time I come back to wonder about the following: consider a character trying to dupe another one. I would expect that the resulting chance is the same in both of the following two cases: 1) the success of the Duping skill resolution opposed by the Lie Perception skill of the target; 2) the failure of the Lie Perception skill resolution of the target opposed by the Duping skill of the liar.
If you prefer, you can choose another pair of opposing skills.
The point is that in RMSS the above is not true the way I believe the game suggests. The perspective seems to be always from the Playing Character point of view: if a PC is the liar, the player will roll for skill success subtracting the Lie Perception skill bonus of the target; if a PC is the target of a lie, the player will roll for skill success subtracting the Duping skill bonus of the liar. Just to make things plain, suppose that both the PC and the NPC have a 30 skill bonus: so the net difference is 0. If the PC is the liar he/she needs an open ended roll to get 110 or more. So, from this perspective the lie has less than 5% of success; if the PC is the target of the lie he/she needs the same 5% to detect the lie. So from this perspective, now the lie has more than 95% of success.
How should it work? 
Any ideas?
Ale 

[Ecthelion]

We had the same issue with Stalking & Hiding vs. Perception. We solved it by adding another +50 to the maneuver roll in such cases where you have a skill vs. skill resolution. You can find a bit more on this topic in the RM House Rules document on my homepage (in the section on Stalk & Hide).

[markc]

 IMO I would do an opposing skill roll with each person having the task difficulity set by there argument. IE if someone is trying to convince someone that the sun is not shining they would have a very tough task convincing another person it is not.

MDC

[Doridian]

Thank you for your quick replies!

We had the same issue with Stalking & Hiding vs. Perception. We solved it by adding another +50 to the maneuver roll in such cases where you have a skill vs. skill resolution. You can find a bit more on this topic in the RM House Rules document on my homepage (in the section on Stalk & Hide).

I think I'll follow this way. Do you think that it should work also using the Static Maneuver Table (with a +55) and with the partial results in effect? Or do you use it only with an all-or-nothing approach and the threshold of success set to 100 ?

[Ecthelion]

We used this with Static Maneuver Table and the partial results and it worked fine.

[Dr. Joe]

How so? Doesn't the type of action performed simply depend on who takes the first step?

So if PC1 starts to dupe PC2, success is determined by PC1's Duping skill minus PC2's Lie perception skill. If PC2, for example, simply by the looks of PC1 say s "I don't trust this guy", it'll be the other way around!? Similar for guards on watch versus stalking attackers, where the former declare to be on the lookout, so by nature, it is their roll: Observation skill minus the attackers stalking skill?

[Viktyr Gehrig]

That's why I resolve skill vs. skill as a direct roll-- both sides roll their skill and the higher total succeeds. It just makes more sense to me.

[Ecthelion]

How so? Doesn't the type of action performed simply depend on who takes the first step?

There may be actions where the order is important, but often this is not the case. E.g. in case of trying to sneak past a guard it is important that we have a contest of skills (perception vs. stalking) but from a purely statistical POV it does not matter who does the dice rolling.

So if PC1 starts to dupe PC2, success is determined by PC1's Duping skill minus PC2's Lie perception skill. If PC2, for example, simply by the looks of PC1 say s "I don't trust this guy", it'll be the other way around!? Similar for guards on watch versus stalking attackers, where the former declare to be on the lookout, so by nature, it is their roll: Observation skill minus the attackers stalking skill?

OK, let's leave the statistics area. We also have a natural choice in our group who does the roll: It's always the PCs whereas the NPCs normally don't roll. This simply ensures that the GM has less dice rolling to do and the players feel empowered because they have thrown the dice. But we could handle it the other way around, or we could always have both sides roll and the higher result wins the contest. The result would be the same.