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What Does the Choice of Dice Mean for the RPG? (+)
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8943006" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I'm going to quibble with the entire essay at some point, but unfortunately I have to work and when I'm not working I have to finish writing the adventure for this weeks D6 Star Wars session. So I probably won't have time to actually think about this or argue it in great detail, but in a nutshell I think you missed the real assumptions built into different fortune mechanics are and what their impact is.</p><p></p><p>a) Fixed dice, fixed difficulty, varying bonus. This includes most "roll under systems" that do the process of play different but achieve the same results (Think how THAC0 with descending AC is mathematically equivalent to ascending AC bonus) such as for example BRP or GURPS. </p><p>b) Fixed dice, varying difficulty, varying bonus. Think D20.</p><p>d) Varying dice, varying difficulty. These are the dice pool games where you are trying to get the highest total to beat some target, either set by the DM or set by an opposed check. Think D6 or DitV.</p><p>e) Success based systems where the dice act as coins or complex coins. Varying dice. Generally Fixed difficulty. Think FUDGE, FATE, Alien. (Alien uses a 6 sided "coin" with only one side having a "head" on it.)</p><p>f) Success based systems where the dice act as coins or complex coins. Varying dice. Often varying difficulty. Think Storyteller where you can effectively change out the coins by altering the number of success faces they have.</p><p>g) Card based systems either with literal cards or dice acting as cards. These systems are a hybrid of the 'dice' and 'coin' systems in that they care like the dice based system about ordinal rank (9 is better than 6), but as an example multiples of the same result trump single values. These systems usually involve selecting your best result from a pool of available results.</p><p>f) Skill based fortune systems where some player skill determines fortune such as throwing darts or playing Jenga etc.</p><p></p><p>Finally, I propose that in dice based systems the size of the dice determines the largest bonus the game can provide since fortune mechanics tend to become less interesting as the size of the bonus approaches the size of the range of possible fortunes. In other words, a D20 game starts to break with the bonuses at the table start to hit +19 or higher and the fortune starts being relatively meaningless compared to the size of the bonuses. You can sort of deal with this by ensuring the gap between the bonuses at the table is small so that only relative differences in the bonuses matter, but even if you do that you've effectively implied that no improvement is possible greater than the relevant gap. For example if your system allows a +27 bonus, but no bonus smaller than +19 is observed when +27 bonuses are available then effectively you've created a system where the largest bonus is +8. Dice based systems tend to be in a sweet spot when the bonus tends to be no more than 3/4 of the size of the dice. </p><p></p><p>Choice of a D100 means more increments of skill before the fortune is meaningless, while at the same time means a longer era where luck dominates. Choice of a D6 means fewer increments of skill, and a shorter era where luck dominates.</p><p></p><p>Fixed dice based systems have the advantage of having easy, transparent and intuitive math and thus being easier to run than dice pool systems, coin-based systems, etc. Variable dice and coin based systems usually have unintuitive math where the odds of success are hidden from all participants - including the GM - and often therefore encourage play based on expected failure or illusionism.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8943006, member: 4937"] I'm going to quibble with the entire essay at some point, but unfortunately I have to work and when I'm not working I have to finish writing the adventure for this weeks D6 Star Wars session. So I probably won't have time to actually think about this or argue it in great detail, but in a nutshell I think you missed the real assumptions built into different fortune mechanics are and what their impact is. a) Fixed dice, fixed difficulty, varying bonus. This includes most "roll under systems" that do the process of play different but achieve the same results (Think how THAC0 with descending AC is mathematically equivalent to ascending AC bonus) such as for example BRP or GURPS. b) Fixed dice, varying difficulty, varying bonus. Think D20. d) Varying dice, varying difficulty. These are the dice pool games where you are trying to get the highest total to beat some target, either set by the DM or set by an opposed check. Think D6 or DitV. e) Success based systems where the dice act as coins or complex coins. Varying dice. Generally Fixed difficulty. Think FUDGE, FATE, Alien. (Alien uses a 6 sided "coin" with only one side having a "head" on it.) f) Success based systems where the dice act as coins or complex coins. Varying dice. Often varying difficulty. Think Storyteller where you can effectively change out the coins by altering the number of success faces they have. g) Card based systems either with literal cards or dice acting as cards. These systems are a hybrid of the 'dice' and 'coin' systems in that they care like the dice based system about ordinal rank (9 is better than 6), but as an example multiples of the same result trump single values. These systems usually involve selecting your best result from a pool of available results. f) Skill based fortune systems where some player skill determines fortune such as throwing darts or playing Jenga etc. Finally, I propose that in dice based systems the size of the dice determines the largest bonus the game can provide since fortune mechanics tend to become less interesting as the size of the bonus approaches the size of the range of possible fortunes. In other words, a D20 game starts to break with the bonuses at the table start to hit +19 or higher and the fortune starts being relatively meaningless compared to the size of the bonuses. You can sort of deal with this by ensuring the gap between the bonuses at the table is small so that only relative differences in the bonuses matter, but even if you do that you've effectively implied that no improvement is possible greater than the relevant gap. For example if your system allows a +27 bonus, but no bonus smaller than +19 is observed when +27 bonuses are available then effectively you've created a system where the largest bonus is +8. Dice based systems tend to be in a sweet spot when the bonus tends to be no more than 3/4 of the size of the dice. Choice of a D100 means more increments of skill before the fortune is meaningless, while at the same time means a longer era where luck dominates. Choice of a D6 means fewer increments of skill, and a shorter era where luck dominates. Fixed dice based systems have the advantage of having easy, transparent and intuitive math and thus being easier to run than dice pool systems, coin-based systems, etc. Variable dice and coin based systems usually have unintuitive math where the odds of success are hidden from all participants - including the GM - and often therefore encourage play based on expected failure or illusionism. [/QUOTE]
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