Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3813729" data-attributes="member: 4937">Emmm... 'rolling dice is generally not fun' is a statement of such obvious truth that I don't see why it needs an elaborate explanation.&nbsp; 'Rolling dice' is the reason D&amp;D tends to crowd 20 minutes of fun into 4 hours of play.&nbsp; Mechanical resolution is a necessary part of an RPG, but the actual mechanics of resolving it aren't in and of themselves fun - only the scenarios and outcomes.&nbsp; This is the reason that high realism games tend to lose out to 'rules medium' games.&nbsp; The high realism game just ends up with so much dice rolling and table lookups and math, that the enjoyment of the outcome is overwhelmed by the tedium of figuring out what that outcome is.Ideally, mechanics would resolve themselves almost instantly.Have you ever played the board game 'Risk'?&nbsp; Can be fun, but with six people it takes 6-8 hours to resolve.&nbsp; If you ever played Risk on a computer interface that rolls the dice for you, what you discover is that a 6 player game can be resolved in 40 minutes.&nbsp; That's 40 minutes of fun crammed into 6-8 hours of play.&nbsp; That 5 hours and 20 minutes of dice rolling is the tedious part.&nbsp; The fun is deciding what to do and seeing what happens.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 3813729, member: 4937"] Emmm... 'rolling dice is generally not fun' is a statement of such obvious truth that I don't see why it needs an elaborate explanation. 'Rolling dice' is the reason D&D tends to crowd 20 minutes of fun into 4 hours of play. Mechanical resolution is a necessary part of an RPG, but the actual mechanics of resolving it aren't in and of themselves fun - only the scenarios and outcomes. This is the reason that high realism games tend to lose out to 'rules medium' games. The high realism game just ends up with so much dice rolling and table lookups and math, that the enjoyment of the outcome is overwhelmed by the tedium of figuring out what that outcome is. Ideally, mechanics would resolve themselves almost instantly. Have you ever played the board game 'Risk'? Can be fun, but with six people it takes 6-8 hours to resolve. If you ever played Risk on a computer interface that rolls the dice for you, what you discover is that a 6 player game can be resolved in 40 minutes. That's 40 minutes of fun crammed into 6-8 hours of play. That 5 hours and 20 minutes of dice rolling is the tedious part. The fun is deciding what to do and seeing what happens. [/QUOTE]

Verification