Table of Contents
How the Core Mechanic Bell Curve Works
OK here is a glimpse “under the hood” of how the GoldenSword “bell curve” works.
Basically, we compare the difficulty, vs the skill. If they are equal, there is no change in the statistics. If the difficulty is greater that the skill, we adjust the difficulty down a little bit, by the value indicated. If the skill is greater than the difficulty, we adjust the difficulty up a little bit.
You will notice that if the difference is small, we only make a minor adjustment, but as the difference becomes larger, the adjustment itself becomes larger. The effect of this is that the game takes into account the “level” of the characters. It is similar to how many video games work. They are easier at the beginning, but get more difficult as the player levels up.
Once we have the “adjustment value” we simply add it to the “average roll” which is a 10 on a d20, to give us the core mechanic lookup table.
Note to Game Designers. This algorithm is copyrighted under creative commons attrib sharealike. Feel free to steal this mechanic, but please attribute the work and it's derivatives.