Donjon criticals

[razar]

Has anyone thought of any good ways to change the critical success/failure system in Donjon?  I notice that criticals are much more likely to happen at low numbers of dice, and adding dice to your pool actually reduces your chance for a critial.  Its also very wierd that you have more chance of a critical failure when rolling against one dice than if your oponent was rolling more dice.

One alternate system I considered was changing critical successes to requiring 2 20's.  The result being that greater skills gives more criticals, but if your oponent is rolling a lot of dice as well it is likely that he will negate your critical.  Along the same line critical failures could be changed to all 1's so that you critical fail more often at low numbers of dice.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I'm currently working on the new version - and this is fixed in there. Promise. I don't have the text in front of me, or I'd type in the entire dice system.

Notes, though:

- I know this is weird, but I don't particularly care about the statistical chance of Total Success or Total Failure. They're boring, to be honest, and I may drop them completely.
- The game's set up so that, usually, the GM and player will be rolling the exact same number of dice, +/- 1. I've never really talked about that, and shouldn't now because people will go, "But, no1" and "Wait!" and "I don't think so!" and stuff. But it is. Really. So, normally, you're rolling a 50/50 chance of one success, and Total Success is rather unlikely, but balanced.

[Valamir]

I've noticed that.  In Donjon its not really a huge problem because the spirit of Donjon is such that people who'd worry about such things are probably playing the wrong game.  However, there are some techniques that I've used regarding.

1) Make Total Success not require ALL dice but instead either all dice OR as many or more dice than the opponent rolled.  That way 8 dice vs 3 has a better chance of critical than 5 dice vs 3.

2) Instead of using Successes you've rolled to ADD additional dice to a future roll, allow Successes you've rolled to SUBTRACT dice from your current roll (i.e. after you've rolled).  For instance:  I roll 8, 13, 15, and 20
Your highest die is a 10.  I have 3 Successes...but since my 8 Failed its not a total success.  

So I use one of my 3 successes to discard my own 8 leaving me with only 3 dice...all of which are successful.  I essentially spent a success to gain complete narrative authority over the scene.  I think this idea came up once long ago in a Sorcerer thread (which uses essentially the same mechanics).

As for Total Failure, that is simply the reverse of Total Success.  Total Failure occurs when your opponent rolls Total Success.

[Tim C Koppang]

So I use one of my 3 successes to discard my own 8 leaving me with only 3 dice...all of which are successful.  I essentially spent a success to gain complete narrative authority over the scene.  I think this idea came up once long ago in a Sorcerer thread (which uses essentially the same mechanics).

Whoa!  Does anyone else think that a gamist game toting narrative control seems a bit contradictory?  Don't get me wrong I love the game concept and I plan to run and/or play a game in the near future, but it occured to me that this seems like the perfect type of gamist game for narrativist players - if that makes any sense.  Or maybe it will get the two groups together, all playing happily.  :-)

Maybe I'm drawing my boundaries to tightly.  In fact, yes I am assuming too much about the division between N and G, but I thought I'd post the thought anyway.

[Ron Edwards]

Glowy-One,

I think that "narrative" in the section you are quoting is best considered "narration" in the neutral sense, meaning "someone says something" and specifying who that someone is. I'm pretty sure it has little or nothing to do with Narrativism as such.

Best,
Ron

[razar]

I'm currently working on the new version - and this is fixed in there. Promise. I don't have the text in front of me, or I'd type in the entire dice system.

Glad to hear this.  Im looking forward to seeing the new version.  To most people it might not matter but it gets very irratating for me when I play an rpg that has rules that are broken but could have been easily fixed.  I come from a maths and computer science background and although I play a lot of less mainstream rpg's I am sometimes amazed by how little thought was put into some of the dice rolling systems.  Designers should at least get someone familiar with statistics to go through their system once.  Don't get me wrong im not the type of player who likes hardcore rules and charts etc.  In fact the games that I own and play are things like everway, big eyes small mouth, feng shu, hkat, ote etc.  I just prefer that the system doesnt create wierd results that distract me from the game.  A small amout of system is good, but a small amount of broken system is very bad.  (I should stop ranting now)

Btw did anyone else find that BESM system got tiresome after playing for a while with its set damage amounts?  I played a sci-fi game with that system for a while that involved very little dice rolling but once we did have a few combats it was frustrating to always do the same damage.  A little variability would have been nice.

[Tim C Koppang]

Glowy-One,

I think that "narrative" in the section you are quoting is best considered "narration" in the neutral sense, meaning "someone says something" and specifying who that someone is. I'm pretty sure it has little or nothing to do with Narrativism as such.

I'm always amused by the nicknames people come up with for my handle.  Thanks for another.  :-)

That said, I wasn't trying to get into a whole "this game is really for these type of players" argument.  In fact, after posting my comment I realized some basic flaws in the logic.  So many times I think I see myself attaching play styles with specific mechanics.  Bad Tim, bad!

More or less, I was only intending to use the quote as an excuse to bring up a thought I had while reading Donjon Krawl - that being, "narrativists would really enjoy this game."  I feel that with all of the story, theme, character development, and other narrativist stuff floating around at the Forge, it's interesting to see a gamist design emerge.  I think the game was influenced, in a good way, by some of the same mechanics that narrativist designs normally employ; and I'm wondering if those elements couldn't work to bring different players together... bottom line is: Donjon Krawl just seems like it would be so damn fun to play!

[Valamir]

I think the game was influenced, in a good way, by some of the same mechanics that narrativist designs normally employ; and I'm wondering if those elements couldn't work to bring different players together... bottom line is: Donjon Krawl just seems like it would be so damn fun to play!

I have, it does, it is :-)

If you you haven't I recommend it highly.
Check out a recent thread in Actual Play about the game I got to play.[/url]