Not really. If the ingot was better, the sword would be better, hence correlation (better ingot, better sword), hence non-random.

So why not 'factor it out', but do different qualities of ingot from the NPCs? If something like a forging system is easy to program, then it's probablary easy for the player to rip his hair out.
Then again, random factors used in things like this can add to the game - Sana'te uses a brickmaking system which has a random number of bricks cracking in the mold. Why? Maybe the player didn't put the clay into the mold properly. Maybe is was to wet? To dry? Had lumps? Maybe the player was hungry/tired/bored? It's virtually impossible to take into account every possible factor in determining if a 'skill check' is successful.

I would like to point out that this has very little to do with an RPG forging system. Remember that in an RPG, you are playing a role, a character. You and your character are not synonomous. Your character can do things you can't, and vice-versa.

I think that pure randomness is as evil as pure determinism in RPGs. Yes, a high level craftsman is going to very rarely make a mistake with a simple item. I could happen though. There is always a chance for failure, and there is always a chance for success through sheer stupid, blind, luck. It happens in real life, it might as well in a game.

I generally use a random system that Lexy turned me onto a while back. You add your skill to your opponent's skill (or difficulty), and generate a random number between 1 and that. If the random number is less than or equal to your skill, you succeed. This automatically scales itself to the character's skill such that as s/he gains skill, the simple tasks almost never fail. But they do occasionally.

For example, on a skill system where skill is measured from 1 to 100, Bob has a Smithing of 1 (he's new). Making basic materials such as ingots has a difficulty of 1-5, depending on the ore (better ore is more difficult to work. Not neccessarily realistic, but it maintains the RPG system of better is harder). This will give a random number between 2 and 6, giving the new smith between a 50% chance to a 16% chance of success. The smith grows in his/her trade. Now he has a Smithing skill of 50. Making ingots now has a 98% chance to an 89% chance of success. Much, much easier.
Moving up in skill, he caps out at 100. Ingots now take almost no effort at all. 99% - 94%

You might also notice another trend with this system: the amount of improvement slows as you get higher in skill. The difference between 50 levels is about 5%. The reason I like this is that it has built into it the perfection cap. By that I mean that the closer to perfect you are, the less gain you get. Differences in skill are obvious within about 10 levels. After that, it slows down.

The guy with a level 50 sword skill is going to trounce the poor newbie with level 1 sword only slightly less than the guy with level 100 sword. However, should the level 50 and level 100 fight, things would be much more varied. The level 100 guy would have a 66% chance of hitting the level 50, where as the level 50 would have a 33% chance of returning the blow. It is very likely that the level 100 player will trounce the level 50 player, but it is also possible that the level 50 player will outsmart the level 100 player and beat him/her.

How about this: You all stop arguing, and agree on a GOOD system. Do it the old fasioend way! roll a die for a skill check, that way you dont have to factor in anything, its all in the roll of A die.

I think that pure randomness is as evil as pure determinism in RPGs. Yes, a high level craftsman is going to very rarely make a mistake with a simple item. I could happen though. There is always a chance for failure, and there is always a chance for success through sheer stupid, blind, luck. It happens in real life, it might as well in a game.

There is also the chance the a player will get struck by lightning and instantly die. There is a chance that the player is unlucky enough to have been born with an unfortunatie terminal birth defect that causes the player to suddenly die. There is the chance that the player accidently trips falls on his sword and dies. Do you know why you haven't seen this type of stuff in games? It's not fun to randomly die from uncontrollable causes. Likewise it's not fun to spend an hour collecting rare resources have a 95% chance of success only to fail and have to do it all over. It may be realistic but it sure isn't fun.

I generally use a random system that Lexy turned me onto a while back.

The best part is you can take that system and easily make it deterministic. Just solve based on the percent chance of success how many tried on average it would take that person to suceed at the given task. Multiply this by the time it takes to do the task once and the resources needed to do it once. Then make it take that long and require that many resources to complete. That way a person with only 5% chance of success doesn't need to repeat a macro over and over until he succeeds and someone with 95% chance of success just has to get a little bit extra materials to compensate for his few random screw ups.

Your main argument here has been that randomization threatens to take away your precious, precious victories.

No I played and lost 95% of the games against a friend at Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. I think we played for nearly 10 hours straight and I had no problem losing. But I lost because of how I played not because the game decided to make me lose that often. And as such I had plenty of room to become better. After much playing I'm now on pretty much equal footing with my friend. If to make the game fair it did stuff to make me win half the time because of so much random junk I probably wouldn't have improved nearly as much since it wouldn't be nearly as clear why I was losing or winning. Winning or losing isn't what makes the game fun but if you aren't playing to win then you missed out on how you are supposed to play the game :P.

You see a bad roll and only see a tally mark being drawn under the "losses" column, but there's more to a game than that.

Yeah generally there is but the larger the random band is the more that bad roll contributed to my loss. This loss doesn't help me improve my playing ability nor was it fun. If I lose I want it to be because I screwed up.

Though occasionally this misconception from random winning and losing has its benefit. At the Mario Kart 64 tournament my college held a while back everyone scoffed at the game because they thought the winner was more determined by random odds than skill. I ended up dominating the competition with a perfect win streak and the only close match was one of the intial ones because it was a simpler track :P.

Neither.
Here's an idea:

For forging, you specify how good you want it. Then you'd get to work at trying to make it. (Perhaps you'd need specific designs made by an inventor, architect, or whatever makes these designs, to make a sword of specific strength.)
Then it'll repeatively roll every minute to see if I suceed at making it.
(For exaxmple, say I want a sword that's sharpness is level 24, and swiftness that's level 42 (sharpness being a factor in damage, swiftness being a factor in attack delay.
I would get out my hammer, go to my forge, get a lot of resources (Enough for about 10 swords.)
Then it'll, using the sharpness and switftness I want in a very advanced formula, as well as my own skill, will roll repeatively. If I fail, it'll take up a few resources, if it suceeds, then I got the sword I wanted, or at least the closest I could get it to (basically, the sharpness being anywhere from probably 20 to 28, and the swiftness being anywhere from 35 and 49 (or something different, varying on my skill.))

But what if you're making a shield or some armor or something?

Foomer wrote:

Apparently you missed the "Random success is evil!" part of my earlier post.

I wouldn't say random success itself is evil, it's more a factor in making an evil system.
I think the real painful parts are: "You lose twelve ingots, your cat gets hit by a bus and you're girlfriend dumps you" and the fact that it all happens instantly.

You spend fifteen minutes gathering resources, click "Forge Sword" then they just dissapear with a little "You suck" message.
I wouldn't mind random failure if doing the task was a process* which you could fail at certian parts while still being able to recover.
Ie, you screw up making the handle. You have to go out and make a new handle but the blade is still usable. You can't move onto the next step in the process until you've made a new handle, but you haven't lost everything on one random roll either.



*Something like gather the parts, stain the metal, make the parts, assemble the parts, perminantly attach the parts to each other, get it a mage to put a spell on it. Not just gather resources, select a design, fail/succeed.