Roll Attribute Display

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So! I know that rulingattr isn’t a thing anymore. From what I understand, it’s maybe because it wasn’t used enough or things were just being simplified? ANYWAYS, I miss it, but that’s okay, it’s gone! But it’s also made me think more about how rolls are displayed when an attribute isn’t specified.

That is: the default attribute isn’t shown at all. And I think this can actually be misleading to players who don’t even really realize there is a default attribute set for all of these things. They’re never really reminded that all their BG skills roll with Wits by default and that they can actually change it up based on the situation. They might see at some point what their action skill defaults are, or they might not.

So my suggestion is this: change the roll output display to just always show the attribute when it’s being rolled as the default. So if I roll Basketball, instead of this:

<FS3> Garrett rolls Basketball: Success (8 4 4 3 3 2 2)

I’d get this:

<FS3> Garrett rolls Basketball+Wits: Success (8 4 4 3 3 2 2)

It’d be a good reminder that attributes are in fact always being included in rolls even when you don’t specify them. It would prompt people to say, oh hey, I don’t ACTUALLY want to roll that with Wits, I should do something else. Or same with action skills being used in cool/different ways.

SO THAT IS MY SUGGESTION.

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Thanks for the suggestion. I understand where you’re coming from, but I’d rather not do that. I prefer to keep the system simple. (That’s why the rulingattr command was removed. People rarely used it even when it existed, and it just confused people who didn’t really understand how rolls worked).

The tiny bit of statistical difference you get from using Wits instead of Brawn when playing Basketball is just not that important - especially when you consider that they’re background skills and not likely to be rolled in conflict situations. If Garrett sees Joe rolling “Basketball+Brawn” he might say: “Oh hey I should use my Brawn too.” And if they both use Wits, it’s really just not a big deal.

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Just to follow up - I did actually look into what it would take to make this a configurable option and unfortunately the part of the roll code that figures out what things to roll is buried several levels deep. Right now the roll commands just spit out what you typed, and changing that structure so it has the necessary information to show you what all was actually rolled (including attr. plus any modifiers) would be a pain.

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