[S/lay w/me] Mechanical design decisions

[Christoph]

Hello Ron

If you've got the time, I'd love to understand some of your, erm, "mathematical" design decisions for S/lay w/me. I get that the d6 is useful for stacking purposes and questions of availability, but you could have done away with that colour and still kept the "toppling". Seems to me that smaller dice would make getting more dice than your "opponent" really important with respect to winning the match, whereas it'd be more difficult to get pairs of good dice for the hero player. Large dice introduce more variance into the end-of-match sum, but the chances of the monster & lover player rolling a low number which the hero player can then best easily is increased (so more good dice). Did you fiddle around with these questions or where they ultimately not important enough compared to the stackability and availability of the d6?

Then, fixing the number of monster dice seems to be a question of influencing the length of an adventure, and indeed, 4-6 works for me. However, why are the goal dice unrestricted, whereas the lover dice are limited to 1 or 2? I find it hard to believe that there's such a thing as too much "loving" in your point of view, but I can buy that there's such a thing as not enough adventuring (which unlimited lover dice would allow). But why "1 or 2", and not "1 or 2 or 3", for example?

Thanks!
Christoph

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Christoph, I'll treat it as a list.

1. Your comment about the stacking is correct. The physical stacking and toppling is only in the game because it's fun. When physical circumstances intrude to make it not fun (not enough room on the restaraunt table, don't want dice in your pad lad naa), then don't do it.

2. You are also correct that the smaller the dice, the better. My way to phrase it is that a "you" die needs to have a double-digit percent chance of being equal to or higher than a given "I" die even when the latter is at its highest value. This idea is related to my unscientific but generally-useful notion that the human mind cannot distinguish between single percents in terms of assessing risks, but that 10% units are within its working range for doing so.

By that logic, six-sided dice are excellent as the percent chance for a given side exceeds 15%. Eight-sided dice are at least possible, being just over 12% per side, but 15+% is way better. I think ten-sided and above are too "fiddly" for the human mind in this case, or to put it differently yet again, each die introduces too much wiggle room into the outcomes for it to merit its link to the narrated content. Which is pretty much what you said, although you emphasized the reverse situation. My concern was whether an "I" player's die was insurmountable at the high value end, in terms of assessing risk and whether working for another die was statistically worth it.

I originally chose six-sided dice and worked from there regarding the rules, so the game might have turned out differently if I'd started with different dice. Later, once many more rules were in place, I reflected on the whole thing and considered the math-based principles to be sufficient, so I did not playtest dice with more sides.

3. Your phrasing about the fixed number of "I" dice isn't quite right. The number of dice doesn't influence the in-fiction length of the adventure but rather the length of the session of play. People sometimes confuse the issue of the number of dice with the issue of how episodic the resulting story is, because the first time playing the game, people tend to run the Goes as rounds in a single fight. Once they get over that model, which I don't discourage as such because (i) there's nothing wrong with a single-fight story and (ii) it serves its purpose as a learning curve device, they can think about the role of the fixed number of dice more clearly.

4. The Lover dice are restricted effectively as a sincerity gate. If one's personal engagement with the Lover hasn't sufficiently been reinforced (or "mechanically confirmed" if you like) by one or two dice, then the third isn't going to do it.

[Christoph]

Hi Ron

Thanks a million for your insights. My bad for mixing up adventure and session, I was meaning what you're saying. I hadn't thought about #2, and I'm thinking this could prove a very useful rule of thumb for me. Great reasoning on the lover dice too.