Scrappa wrote:what would you consider fair metrics to determine whether something is unbalanced?
The metric chosen by the people who designed the game.
The "making a die" idea Wulfyn brought up earlier. When you are making a fair d6 you have several criteria:
1. It matches the basic design of a die - cubic, numbered sides 1 to 6
2. The distribution of each side when rolling the die is even.
3. Opposite sides add up to 7.
4. A suitable size to be rolled, described by a selection of the side length.
Those pretty much define what a fair d6 is. If it does those things then it is a d6. Two of those are not things which the creator of the die has any say over. If it doesn't match 1 or 2 then it's not a fair d6: it is either not rolling 1 to 6, or it is not rolling them evenly; the main difference between the two is that 1 is discernible immediately while 2 requires testing to ensure it is met. 3 is optional: it doesn't really matter but it is a convention we all know, sometimes to the extent that we don't want to use dice which are otherwise configured, even if it makes no difference to the ability to produce random numbers from 1 to 6 with an even distribution. The precise metrics used for 4 are also optional: you can make the die as large or as small as you physically can, but it's up to the creator to choose the actual dimensions he wants so long as the die is rollable then it will achieve the aim. There are other things like colour and material which the creator can choose as he wishes.
So Wulfyn makes his die. It meets criteria 1 and 2: it's a cube with numbers 1 to 6 on it, and the distribution after extensive testing is even. But the 3 is opposite the 6, the 1 opposite the 2 and the 4 is opposite the 5. It's also about the size of a coffee cup (his choice) and made of solid steel. It can be rolled, but it's quite heavy. Oh, and he's painted it a nasty shade of lime green. Is it a fair d6? I would say it is, but I would also say I don't like it. I
prefer my dice to have opposite sides add to 7, I
prefer them to be made of plastic, and I
prefer them to be small enough that I can use a dice tower which won't double as a defensive fortification. It's not a broken d6 though. It's just one I don't like.
Taking that back to BB, we can say there are some criteria which are what make it recognisable as BB (e.g. a turn-based fantasy football game which involves coaches manipulating players on a board to put a ball into the endzone); that's a convention of what BB is. There are other criteria which are wholly down to preference of the game designer, such as the number, type and composition of races, the way certain mechanisms work, size of pitch, players per team etc etc. Those are all defined by the game designer and are easily met by simply writing the rules: a type 1 rule as per the d6 example above. The only type 2 criterion, the performance criterion, we have is "lifetime win percentage". The rules designers chose that as their metric for performance just as d6 performance is based on distribution. To that end if that criterion is met then it is not, by definition, broken. Had they chosen other criteria and they had not been met then the designers would have created a game which did not achieve their goals: it could reasonably be said to be broken, just as a d6 which rolls more 1s than other numbers can reasonably be said to be broken. Choosing other criteria is just like claiming Wulfyn's die is broken because you think it's too big: it's not broken, you just don't like it. Go get another die, or adjust the one you have until you do like it.