Mechanical issues w/ Donjon?

[timfire]

Somewhere else, Mike Holmes said:

there are some mechanical problems in Dunjon. Many of which Clinton has addressed on his forum.

As I'm new to Donjon (I own the game but haven't actually played it yet), could someone point out common mechanical issues that pop up in play? Mike, could you elaborate?

[Mike Holmes]

Open my big mouth...I mostly remember discussions of problems having been discovered, and don't actually know them myself.

Well, a check of this forum would be the first thing. For instance, in this recent thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11773

The problem of adjusting magic power aquisition was touched on again. A problem that, IIRC, Clinton has commented on before. In fact, I think that if you look long enough here all of the potential problems have probably been addressed.

In point of fact, I don't think that there are any breakers in Donjon. But there are some quirks that one might do well to know about, and which some might want to adjust. Again, I'm not an expert on this subject, so anyone else who might want to throw in would be appreciated.

Mike

[JamesSterrett]

We had trouble figuring out what to roll when, and made the cheat sheet of which a draft (and it's still a draft :) ) is here.

[aplath]

Problems we faced so far in my group (and how we solved them):

The first thing was that combat was taking a really loooong time. Each flurry was taking 40 to 50 minutes. Considering that our sessions have a time constraint of two to two and a half hours, that was considered way too much.

The solution made us feel really dumb though. :-)

First of all, we realized that all players (including DM) were trying to calculate optimum aproach to combat based on when each character would act in the flurry. That was taking up sometime, so we simply decided that each would roll iniciative in secret. That helped a bit.

Then, to what made us feel really dumb, was the handling time necessary to figure out how many dice one should roll in an action. Each of us had a cheat sheet saying stuff like "to attack roll Adr+Ability+Roll over dice". So every time one had to attack he would look up his Adroitness score, and his ability score, and add them up, and then roll.

What we did ? Each noted in his char sheet things like "Attack with Sword: roll 6 dice". Seems pretty dumb right ? Well, flurries started to be resolved in five minutes. ;-)

Also, in a similar manner, spellcasters started to keep spellbooks with commonly used spells, how many dices to roll, effects, what to roll to resist, etc... Since 90% of the spells cast in combat are recurrent, this also helped to speed things a bit.

One thing that wasn't exactly a problem but that frustrated players a bit was that in lower levels it is very easy to roll attributes alone and be succesful.

So we had a player that would roll his Discernment score without any relevant ability to spot enemies that turned out to be as successful as the player who had a special ability for that (but a lower Discernment score).

We figured out (as is stated in the Donjon book) that this problem would vanish as the group climbed the experience ladder. Once the group understood that, frustration vanished too.

Also, in the first sessions, players were a little overwhelmed by stating facts. They were trying too hard to find the cooles things to state. Once everyone understood that there was no need to be ultra-cool every time facts were stated, things went on much smoother.

That's pretty much all the problems we had so far.

Andreas

[tk421]

My main issues with Donjon's "roll pool and compair" system can be summed up as follows:

It's kinda slow.  

This is caused by a number of factors, of which the LEAST important is the buckets of dice problem.  What we found that slows things down is that doing anything is a multistep process that involves at least two people rolling dice.  

1) Player determines appropriate Attribute + Ability + other to roll.  Usually quick, but some players may slow things down by lobbying for strange applications of abilities.  

2) Donjon Master does likewise.  Usually quick.

3) Roll dice.  Easy

4) Look for highest and start comparing.  Using d10s, as it seems many many groups are doing, you get a lot of ties, which makes this more complicated.  As a DM, I prefer to handle this step by calling out my highest number and how many of them I have ("I got two 9s").  The Player will answer with a) how many they have above this, b) their highest below this, ar c) how many of that number they have.   A and B allow you to determine successes, but C requires further comparing.  

5) Determine successes from step 4 and apply and victor sees fit.

The only roll that doesn't work like this is Initiative.  Regardless, the above 5 step process is slooooooow.  Having experienced Donjon players certain mitigates this somewhat, but it's still a ton slower than most other systems I can think of.  

Anybody have ways to get this to move more quickly?

My worry is that, although this system is slow, I think it's FUN.  How can we speed things up but keep the excitement that it's randomness engenders?

[DevP]

For one thing: bonus points if someone gives me a rational single-die alternative to the Donjon system, because I'm just a sort of person who does prefer singledice to multidice, just because I'm anal about having handling_time<=0. So, yeah.

I've played Donjon twice, once with straight rules and the other with the d2 method (i.e. roll a fistful of ANY dice with an even number of sides, and odds = success, substract winner-loser to get the winner's successes). They both worked fine, although I think that the d2 method worked slightly more regularly. The d2 method is somewhat less random (i.e. bigger pools more often defeat smaller pools), but I think this is alright; again, my time playing Donjon, players felt a bit irked about me just having really, really wicked good luck in an even fight. <g>

(Another dice thought: picking the single highest die is in fact faster than counting successes from a pool; how bad would it play out if (using, say, d10s) you subtracted the high-values from each other?)

Also,when I introduced Donjon to my hometown friends (old-school D&D folks, among other things), I just used the standard 6 d&d stats, since those are more immediately understandable than "Adroitness" et al.

[tk421]

A little thinking and I may have a solution to my own problem.

Firstly, my current gaming group does a lot of WW style gaming.  Pools of d10s rolled against a set target number (7, in most cases), try to have successes equal to or greater than a set difficulty.  

To keep from confusing my players more than I absolutely have to, I'm thinking of blending this mechanic with Donjon's in the following way:  On any given roll (except Init), 7 or higher is a successes.  Subtract the Donjon Master's successes from the player's.  If the player still has successes, hurrah, he won and has successes to deal with in the normal way.  If the result is a negative number, that's the successes of the DM.  Easy-peasy.  

I think this method keeps the "GM vs. Player" feel of Donjon and some of the good randomness, but is quicker and doesn't have the weird ties problem you get when playing with d10s.

Edit: Yep, this method is very similiar to d2, but I prefer this as it uses a concept (7 and higher are successes) that my group's used to.