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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 7999308" data-attributes="member: 6779310">The first few dicepool-count-successes I encountered (Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader, Space 1889, Shadowrun, VTM 1E) were all using them as skill dice vs difficulty number. WH40K:RT and WHFB used tables to hide the difficulty calc, but many players intuited it. Space 1889 was co-released with a pair of minis games (and a hexmap version of one of them), and the combat mechanics are pretty close between them. Shadowrun and VTM are  just a bit after as S:1889, and I know the guys at FASA knew Frank Chadwick of GDW... because we see the FASA guys in the credits of many Traveller products. While the probabilities are a bit opaque, the intent stated by Frank (in Space: 1889) was to keep it compatible with the minis games and board game. It's a standard of minis games to roll a pool vs a fixed TN by die to resolve a unit-on-unit action, and so the combat systems in the RPG are exactly the same as in the other games.(This same rationale is apparently why the various mechwarrior games do math to make the RPG rolls 2d6 roll high against a TN by skill, where the skill goes down as the character improves... it's because BattleTech does that.)It's worth noting as well: Chainmail also used a pool of dice vs a TN matrix of Attacking troop type by Defending troop type....  indicating both how many men per die, and the individual results on the d6 which are needed to kill one target. This is fairly standard stuff in minis games. It reentering in the late 80's after TSR abandoned it in 1977... almost an inevitability. And the D&D minis rules in Dragon E-Zine use it, as well...I don't agree that there's evidence of effort in writing. I do agree that the resulting discussions are worthwhile. I'd concede that some effort may have been made to find a controversial subject.I also agree that knowing the odds really isn't always a good thing from a story standpoint. There are times when it's great, and times when it's not so great.</blockquote>

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