Questions about a kind of fortune mechanic

[Christopher Weeks]

Are there games in which the player has a pool of dice from which she must allocate some number for each task resolution roll and the pool regenerates through some mechanism?

If you know of games like this, I'd like to know:

How are dice selected by the player?
How many dice are used?
How/when are dice added to the player's availablel pool?
Is this system integrated with character development at all?
Does it promote player/character behavior of some kind?
Is it a good mechanic for the game?

And also, does this general idea have a commonly accepted name?

thanks,

Chris

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Christopher,

To some extent, The Pool itself is based on this mechanism. Unless I'm missing what you're talking about.

And splitting one's pool of dice for multiple actions in a turn, from the original Star Wars, seems to qualify as well (although the pool "refreshes" automatically). As do the fighting and magic pools in The Riddle of Steel, in which the former "refreshes" automatically but the latter does not.

If you consider that the system in The Dying Earth is really a dice pool system - you just roll them one at a time, that's all - then it does too.

I'm not aware of a particular name for the technique, though. Hell, "dice pool" itself seems to mean any number of unrelated things. (See Dice pool definition.)

Best,
Ron