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Why are dice pools a favored idea here?

Started by asdfff, May 28, 2007, 03:50:38 PM

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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