[dice pools] - swapping 10 dice for Y # of successes

[Thierry Michel]

Could you guys - in another thread if inappropriate to this one - go into more detail on applying risk and market modelling to game mechanics?

I'm intrigued, but don't know enough to follow through to the implications.

( First, on this specific example, equating a lottery (die roll) with a fixed value is a basic concept of microeconomics - the so called "certain equivalent".  It is only when someone is risk-neutral that the certain equivalent is equal to the expected value of the lottery).

In RPGS with dice mechanisms, the amount of risk that the players bear is given by the rules but not necessarily correspond to the players' preferences (for instance in AD&D the rules said to roll 3d6 but most players I knew  rolled 4, keeping the best 3).

Now, the goal of a financial market is to allow the participants to transfer risk between themselves.  So it's natural to speculate on what existing instruments could be applied to RPGs. In the AD&D example, the instrument might have been options, giving the player the right - for a price - to replace a die roll under a certain value by that value.

[JamesSterrett]

I think the concept clicked now - thanks!

Seems to me this would work best in Gamist games that have more explicity currency (I'm not seeing how to apply it to The Pool, which is probably a matter of my simply not see how yet.)

So you might, following your example, trade a guaranteed stat of X in exchange for a Y% reduction in the rate at which experience points were gained?  (I've seen mechanics like this in RPGs before - the CRPG Fallout comes to mind - "buy this advantageous trait at the cost of earning N% fewer EXP".)

Or you trade some of your dice to another player in exchange for N% of that player's experience points.

Play with protagonization by tying your character's advancement explicitly to some other character's (you level up/gain dice/whatever when and as they do)?

In Donjon, you'd trade some of your available successes to another player in exchange for N of their level-up dice at the end of the session?  (This would require some careful narration to make sure the supporting character was appropriately involved and at risk?)

Looking over The Pool, does the "gamble your dice pool" mechanic introduce an element of a futures market?  You're making an explicit statement about the importance of getting a 1 by the number of dice you throw in; and the "At Death's Door" mechanic allows other players to give dice to save another character, valuing that character's survival against their own future/potential difficulties.

[Thierry Michel]

Seems to me this would work best in Gamist games that have more explicity currency.

It might be easier if there is a game currency, be it XP or character points. But that's not strictly necessary - you could also make the player "pay" by simply lowering the stat unconditionally (ending with, say a roll 3d6 -2, with a minimum of 8, the 2 points would be the premium of the option).

All of your examples work too (though I'm not familiar with Donjon). And spending/saving dice for later certainyl can be analyzed that way also.

All of this is firmly gamist, a meta-mechanism to fine tune the risk exposure of players.

[Christopher Weeks]

you could also make the player "pay" by simply lowering the stat unconditionally (ending with, say a roll 3d6 -2, with a minimum of 8, the 2 points would be the premium of the option).

If I'm getting it then 'certain equivalency' would be the point at which players were equally likely to take or not take the modified option.  Is that right?  How is that transferring 'risk' among the players (or characters, or whatever)?  And what exactly is 'risk?'

It seems like some kind of auction market mechanism would be ideal for finding the sweet spot on the scale of points lost/gained to compensate so that you'd know what the certain equivalent was.  (Unless I'm all wet.)

Chris

[Thierry Michel]

If I'm getting it then 'certain equivalency' would be the point at which players were equally likely to take or not take the modified option.

Sorry, I was a bit confusing by answering several things at once.

* First, there was the original question of substituting a value for a die roll.

The certain equivalency is just the exact value that you don't mind swapping for a dice roll: say, for instance, I'm indifferent between writing a 10 instead of rolling 3d6 for Charisma, but I would turn down a 9 and definitely prefer a 11 to rolling. That of course is a subjective value; when it is equal to the expected value of the dice roll (10.5 here) the player is said to be risk neutral.

How is that transferring 'risk' among the players (or characters, or whatever)? And what exactly is 'risk?'

Now, that's the question of financial instruments. Risk is generally defined as the dispersion of the results.

In my simple option scenario, the player who buys the option transfers the risk of having a roll under (say) 9 to the issuer of the option (here the GM).

One could also imagine transferring that risk to another player. For instance, a somewhat complicated contract saying: you agree to take my attribute roll if it's 9 or less and I'll give you x% of my XPs whatever.

You are perfectly right in advocating some sort of auction mechanism, since the risk adversions of players are individual and subjective, and that such mechanisms would evolve to allow players to swap risk as they like.
The big difference with the stock market is that the players differ only in their preference for risk, while in the real market they also have different expectations and exposure to the risk.

[Valamir]

There are a lot of potential approaches...mostly interesting as an intellectual exercise and not necessarily as a killer mechanic.

But take as one approach, Put and Call options:

To put them in simple non jargony terms:  When you buy a Put, you're paying for the privilege of foisting your bad luck off on someone else (Putting it onto them)  When you buy a Call, you're paying for a chance to take someone else's good luck (Calling it to you).

When you sell a Put you're accepting the risk of having someone foist their bad luck on you in exchange for a fee (which you get to keep, even if that bad luck never happens).  When you sell a Call you're accepting the risk of having your own good luck cut short and taken by someone else in exchange for a fee (which you get to keep, even if you don't experience the good luck, so no one takes it from you).

The "Fee" (or premium in jargon terms) depends on alot of factors so complicated people have won nobel prizes trying to figure out a way to calculate what's "fair" by a formula.

Conceptually though, the fee is pretty simple.  The more bad luck you're trying to foist with a Put or good luck you're trying to take with a call, the more expensive it is.  The longer the term that the arrangement is good for, the more expensive it is.  The greater the chance that something bad will happen (to foist) or good will happen (to take), the more expensive it is.


So, from here one can get an inkling of the type of mechanic you could develop that would mimic an options market.  Define "good luck" "bad luck" as being "good roll", "bad roll".  Charge the "fee" in some game resource (XPs, damage, whatever).  And then allow the players to buy and sell Puts and Calls amongst themselves, foisting off bad rolls on to others and taking others good rolls for themselves.  The fee that players would negotiate for this would be a good measure of the value they are assigning to risk.

Of course, what makes a real options market (or any security market for that matter) work is liquidity...which basically means having enough people willing to sell a Put for all the people that want to buy them, and vice versa.  A handful of gamers around a table, isn't going to be enough to form a "market" to make this work.  But, a MMORPG, with several thousand players very well might.  

Further, in markets where liquidity is important but there may not always be enough of it, there is the concept of a "specialist" the person whose job it is to provide liquidity (required to handle all trades for which one can't find another party to match) in exchange for certain privileges.  In an RPG, this person would obviously be the GM, so the GM would have to be the "counter party" on such deals.


Now of course, its difficult to imagine exactly what the purpose of such a mechanic is, in game terms.  I think it would be interesting as a novel idea in the way that playing a hand of poker makes for an interesting novel mechanic...but not one broadly suited to most games.

BUT, I do think, that there is a potential there to use something like this as a magic system.  Many cultures idea of magic basically centers on the notion of making deals with spirits.  "Oh spirit of rain, I promise to sacrifice two loaves of bread and a young lamb if you bring fertility to my fields"...that sort of thing.

I think one could take the above Put Call mechanic idea and use it in such an enviroment to model the "I'll pay you to take away the bad stuff" / "I'll accept your bad stuff in exchange for a fee" kind of nature of it.

[Thierry Michel]

Now of course, its difficult to imagine exactly what the purpose of such a mechanic is, in game terms.  I think it would be interesting as a novel idea in the way that playing a hand of poker makes for an interesting novel mechanic...but not one broadly suited to most games.

I think it would be useful in some situations, such as character creation, where players might have different preferences and thus might want less or more risky options. The good thing with character creation is that it involves all player simultaneously as well.

Transferring "play" luck between players is interesting, but would need some contrived explanation.