Question about optional dice method.

[Sword of Spirit]

I'm going to completely disagree with everyone on here and say, "bring it on".

First, I'm going to assume that there is a reason -- ie, that the numbers have some sort of meaning, and that the results have some sort of meaning. Then I'm going to assume that those meanings are connected. For instance, rolling snake-eyes on 2d6 has psychological impact. If snake-eyes represented a really bad failure, that would work very well.

The key is the psychoaesthetic (I declare that a real word for the duration of this post, yeah verily says I) quality of the system.

Now, if the results attached to the numbers were arbitrary, or if the system was complicated for little benefit, then I'd say it was a mistake in design.

I think there is a lot to be said for resolution objects (including dice, cards, special dice with colors, etc) and terms (Intelligence or Brains or Psyche) and conventions (round up or round down) and all sorts of other elements of the system--pretty much all of them--having a greater or lesser effect on the psychoaesthetic of the play experience.

And after all, isn't creating the desired experience the point of system design?

If a player doesn't like a game itself (ignoring issues like bad GMing or other circumstantial things) it is either going to be because they don't like the experience the game is intending to create, or because the game isn't doing a very good job at creating it.

So does the existence of such less common resolution mechanics turn me off to a game? Absolutely not. It all depends on whether they assist in creating the intended experience (and I like that experience) or whether they hinder creating that experience.

 

[pdzoch]

But deciding to institute a mechanic where you roll +/-5 around a single target number is no different than just saying, "Roll 10 or higher." But the latter is VASTLY easier to figure out what is needed, to apply bonuses to, etc. And it even introduces new "WTF?" flaws into things to set your range of success AROUND a target number like that. For example, if the number on the combination is "2", where do the +/-5 results fall? I mean, you can't roll 5 less than 2 on a d20, right? So if the combination number is within less than 5 of either end of the d20 scale do you wrap possible results around to the other end (so that a 18-20, and 1-6 would be your successful results)? What good is the mechanic is the combination were 50 numbers on the dial? Or only 12 numbers? It ends up being a HIGHLY specialized, situational mechanic that isn't adaptable. It may be okay for a genuine one-time thing, but even then it STILL ends up being simpler, and therefore much more likely to be conducive to flow of play, to just say, "Your target number is X, roll high." Unless the point of the use of the mechanic actually IS obfuscation.

Not saying simpler is ALWAYS better, but pick a die roll to set a degree of granularity for success/failure, set a target number in that range, roll the die and adjust with bonuses/penalties as applicable is hard to improve on mechanically.

It was definitely a one time situation. The Game master had to take time to explain the new mechanic for this situation to us, and I am sure that we had plenty of questions as he explained it to us. It was interesting to do for the situation, but I would not have liked it to be how all the rolls were being done.