Why are dice pools a favored idea here?

[asdfff]

I heard it mentioned on the wizards D&D boards that indie rpgs look favorably upon dice pools instead of straight up percentage modifiers. Can someone tell me why this is? The only thing I can guess is that dice pool rolling is more tactice (storyteller vs d20), but I'm sure there's much better reasons than the amatuerish one I just gave.

[northerain]

No idea really. I like dice pools alot myself. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you can ''visualize'' your traits.

[Narf the Mouse]

Because everything else (Dice rolling, anyway) has to be broken down into levels of success anyway.

Take D&D. DC 25. All the DCs go up by 5. Therefore, meeting a DC25 means 5 actual levels of difficulty. This is the only way to make sense of it, other than vague relations to gameworld tasks like swimming up a waterfall (Which is an example in one of the books).
Difficulty 5 is easier for me to work with, at least, than DC25. Difficutly 2 being a normal human task and Difficulty 1 being easy, I then know that Difficulty 5 is very difficult - Which matches with needing a +15 modifier to have a 50/50 chance at it.

On the other hand, Difficulty 5 and 8 dice with a 50% success chance is easily understood at a glance. At least for me.

That is not to say that it is 'The ultimate dice technique'; there are other considerations for dice mechanics. D20 and add fits the tactical, math-based and incremental advancement nature of D20 better than a dice-pool.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Actually, this isn't a good topic for the Forge. This is the First Thoughts forum, which primarily concerns your own notions or ideas for a game design. The other forums are similarly focused.

Tell you what - I suggest that you post in Actual Play regarding any of your own experiences with any role-playing resolution system, and we can use that a basis to discuss the different math underlying different dice systems. I like that stuff a lot and so do a number of other folks who post here a lot. But really, it's way, way easier to begin the discussion from a foundation of actual play than it is to start abstractly.

I hope to see you post a new thread along those lines soon. There's no need for anyone to post in this thread again.

Best, Ron