[Carry] Those dern small dice

[Nathan P.]

There are a couple of issues with Carry that have come up across playtests. The one that I'm having some trouble figuring out is something valuable to do with small dice.

Quick system recap: everyone has a pool of dice - d4s, d6s, d8s, d10s, d12s - that fluctuates over the course of play. Whenever you roll a die for a conflict, you give that die to another player or the GM, and it goes into their die pool. The actual amount of each die size is determined in the beginning of play, and the rules get a distribution across size into various die pools. There's some system stuff that puts a cap on the size of die you can roll for any given conflict, but there's pretty much no direct reason to roll anything other than the largest dice you have. The indirect reason is that that large die will then go to someone who might oppose you, but in play, most people go for the direct reward of winning a conflict rather than a vague penalty of possibly losing a future one.

The current system document is available here. For reference, there are AP posts here, here and here.

So. Right now, there are small dice (d4s and d6s, I'm primarily thinking about), and you don't really want to use them if you don't have to. So they're a passive thing that you avoid. I want them to have some purpose and have an active role in the system. But I'm having trouble with appropriate ideas.

One suggestion from a playtester was making a rule that a Grunt can contribute a "support die" to one side or another in a conflict. Which is kind of a middle ground - its a way to get ride of unwanted dice, but not to use them in and of themselves.

Another thought is that Grunts can give small die to Fodder in order to establish them as "supporting cast," and the GM has a Fodder pool that he can use for....something.

I dunno. I'm looking to bounce around some ideas here. All thoughts and ideas welcome.

[catmorbid]

Hello,

I don't know all the rules you have in the game, but the way it seems, you don't have anything in your game that would give the slightest reason for a character to use the small dice. Your game is about vietnam war, right? Well, the way I imagine it, war is messy, and surviving the moment is justified to be the most important thing at the moment. So it's natural the characters use all the resources they have just to survive a little longer, until they come to the point that they have nothing left but the small ones.

So, I have some type of proposal.

In general, perhaps using the dice should have consequences that make the characters seriously think about using the dice. Perhaps the consequences of failing would be bigger when using the bigger dice?

Does using the dice somehow consume the character? I mean, what do the different dice represent? I would imagine them to represent the effort they put to the task at hand. Well, if so, you could have some sort of mechanic, which measures the characters' loss of effort. Motivation, inner strength, willpower or something similar that would determine how much effort they want to put at play. If having very bad motivation at the time, the only thing the character could put into the game would be a d4, meaning he's just too tired to even try. I don't know how this would work with the rest of the rules though.

I hope this helps :)

[Josh Roby]

Two thoughts spring to mind:

1) Strengthen or add to that "system stuff" that puts a cap on the size of die you can roll.  Are you referring to wounds, light level, and loss of sleep?  That sort of stuff seems like it should be pretty prominent in a game about Vietnam.

2) Allow players to charge up something else by rolling smaller dice than the maximum.  If I can roll a d8 but I roll a d6 instead, I get a point of willpower/inner strength/player resource back.  This can reflect how not going gung-ho full-bore all the damn time can help you catch your breath.