Dice pool mechanic I'm curious about.

[izlear]

I am new to this forum and am really looking forward to being here and seeing all of the great things that come out of here.  I have been toying with RPG design for sometime but only playing with it here and there.  I couldn't get my head around some of the more (non D&D ish theories.)  Now I feel like I have began to broaden my horizons and have a few sytem ideas I am beginning working with in terms of a dice mechanic.  So I ask you first am I ripping any one off, and second will it work.  It is still really rough, just wanted some peoples opinions before I go further with it.

The basic idea is that of a dice pool system using d6.
Success pool
5-6 is a success
1 is a botch
If a is rolled the die goes into the success pool.
The success pool is a "bowl" in the middle of the table, and when ever a 3 is rolled a die goes into the bowl.  Players can then draw from the success pool and use dice to help their rolls.  The idea is that this will be a group managed pool.  Players can take dice but they need to think about the group as a whole.

Another similar mechanic is the Magic pool.  The idea is that magic must be drawn from existing magic around you, when it is gone . . . no more magic.
There is a predetermined amount of magic dice in the magic pooland puts that amount of dice into a "bowl"
This represents the effectiveness of magic (defines the outcome of said spell.)  To access this magic pool a user must roll some attribute/skill/whatever (Magic usage) to determine how much magic can be accessed.
The user then can take that number of Dice from the Magic Pool.  Spells call for a particular # of magic Dice.  If the # obtained is not enough then the spell does not make.  If the # is more than is needed there are two options.  You can choose to hold a number of magic dice equal to your appropriate magic skill/ability for up to a turn(?)
Option two allows you to use the extra dice to attempt a s greater success but if you botch even one die the caster will be burned and the spell will be useless.

If there is a botch in the initial magic roll then the number of dice needed to cast the spell is taken out of the magic pool.  Each additional botch takes one more die from the die pool.

Tug of war
in the line of initiative if there is a tie between two magic users neither can pull from the magic pool.  on the next turn they must roll against each other and see who wins (they still stand in the same overall initiative order but their new initiative changes.)

Thank you for any feedback you may have for me. 
Specific Questions:
Does this work?  how can I improove it?  What should I add to this?

[izlear]

Ok I have had a chance to take this to a few more of my friends and of course they punched wholes right through it.  Not very balanced.  But I'm not giving up on this.  I just need to refine my thoughts.

If there is any interest my "living" thoughts can be found at the site below, as well as the rest of the system components I am working on. 

http://ashleysworlds.pbwiki.com/The-System-for-the-RPG


Thanks again for the opportunity to post here,

[Castlin]

Tug of war
in the line of initiative if there is a tie between two magic users neither can pull from the magic pool.  on the next turn they must roll against each other and see who wins (they still stand in the same overall initiative order but their new initiative changes.)

This, I think, is very interesting and flavorful. Try to keep this as you work through your revisions.

[izlear]

Thanks for this positive feedback.  We will be sure to take this along to various revisions.

Thanks again.

[masqueradeball]

So, looking at your revisions, I think your removing both the "1" is a botch and the 3's go to the success pool ideas. I think this is a mistake, and here's why:

Originally, botches in the White Wolf system occurred when you rolled more 1's than success. As you gained larger and larger dice pools, the chances of botching increased. The reason for this was to encourage players to rely on the automatic success rules whenever possible (the automatic success rule read that if your die pool was greater than the difficulty of the action, you didn't have to roll, but you were treated as only gaining a single success). In my mind, this was a great mechanic that simply didn't work w/ most games/gamers because of issues unique to the White Wolf line/player base. In your game system, I see botches occuring more often with higher die pools serving another purpose, it discourages players from taking dice from the success pool. It in effect, encourages them to hedge their bets. The player has to ask themselves "Do I take a lot of dice to try to get A LOT of successess and risk a serious botch, or do I just roll what I have." Depending on the genre, it could be a great idea. It also penalizes selfish players who boggart all the dice in the success pool.

Also, the idea of 3's going into the success pool seems like a really cool way to simulate "near success." I'd probably make it 4's instead. All those 4's would represent near hits and near successes that could be drawn upon later to hopefully become complete successes. If you go this route, then I'd limit access/accumulation to the success pool on a scene-by-scene or task-by-task basis and limit sharing of the success pool to those characters actually working together in the scene.

I don't know if these suggestons help your system better encourage the style of play your after, but mechanically, I think they're really sound.

[izlear]

So, looking at your revisions, I think your removing both the "1" is a botch and the 3's go to the success pool ideas. I think this is a mistake, and here's why:

Originally, botches in the White Wolf system occurred when you rolled more 1's than success. As you gained larger and larger dice pools, the chances of botching increased. The reason for this was to encourage players to rely on the automatic success rules whenever possible (the automatic success rule read that if your die pool was greater than the difficulty of the action, you didn't have to roll, but you were treated as only gaining a single success). In my mind, this was a great mechanic that simply didn't work w/ most games/gamers because of issues unique to the White Wolf line/player base. In your game system, I see botches occuring more often with higher die pools serving another purpose, it discourages players from taking dice from the success pool. It in effect, encourages them to hedge their bets. The player has to ask themselves "Do I take a lot of dice to try to get A LOT of successess and risk a serious botch, or do I just roll what I have." Depending on the genre, it could be a great idea. It also penalizes selfish players who boggart all the dice in the success pool.

Also, the idea of 3's going into the success pool seems like a really cool way to simulate "near success." I'd probably make it 4's instead. All those 4's would represent near hits and near successes that could be drawn upon later to hopefully become complete successes. If you go this route, then I'd limit access/accumulation to the success pool on a scene-by-scene or task-by-task basis and limit sharing of the success pool to those characters actually working together in the scene.

I don't know if these suggestons help your system better encourage the style of play your after, but mechanically, I think they're really sound.

Thank you sp much, this is exactly the feed back I have been looking for.  Some people I have spoken to about the success pool thought that it didn't make sense, "is it potential lost into the ether left to be picked up by some one else." yes kind of.  But the way you described it makes it sound much more apealing, although the other option of being successes you don't have to take but in stead put into the pool works too I think,  I'll be working on this.

Also I was still unsure about taking the botch system out.  so thanks for that.

What do you think about the magic pool system, good, bad?

as for style/ setting in my mind it is gritty, (and for lack of a better tag line) Fantasy Post apocalyptic, but a little different than traditional, I'll add a link to the setting at the top of the rules.       

[xenopulse]

Hi Izlear and welcome to the Forge. I'm Christian.

First, I don't think you have to justify the success pool in those terms. One of the biggest evolutions in game design that we've gone through is to separate game mechanics from fictional causality. Game mechanics are there to make the game work, to make it fun, to encourage certain behaviors among the players. It absolutely does not have to represent anything that happens in the fiction. If you really need to, however, you can just say that the pool represents the group coming together over time (as it will automatically increase over the course of a scene), finding their mojo, figuring out how to help each other, etc.

An alternative to taking dice is to let other people give you dice from the pool. That's somewhat similar to fanmail in Primetime Adventures, and it encourages different behavior: it rewards each other for doing cool things. But if you want to go for making "me vs. group" decisions, your way is the way to go. So it depends on what you want to promote with your mechanic.

Other than that, I'd need to know how this ties into the rest of your system to give you more feedback.

[izlear]

Hi Christian and thanks for the welcome and feed back,  I have the beginings of the rest of the system at the link above.  I guess its really a mess at the moment though, as I am trying to sort things out.

Right now (and all of this is tentative) the character involves 4 state (physical, Mental, Social, and spirit) and then back grounds grant you speacial skills (which you can buy points with, and then there are kind of secondary skills.  From ehtere it is a attribute + skill system.  but with in that there are all of these pools.  the magic pool (which every one pulls from remenicent of castle Falkenstien) the success pool, and the peleife pool (which is a personal pool.)

This is a quick and dirty run down of what I am thinking at the moment, but It is very early in the process, and I'm not 100% happy with it.

Thanks so much for your feedback.
     

[izlear]

My concern now is how magic should work.  I've got an idea behind the mechanic but I'm not sure If I should go with spontaneous/abstact spells (define your own) or with a predefined spell list. 
As Always thanks.

[masqueradeball]

I really like the magic pool idea, and with more development as to what effects require what number of dice, etc... I think its a great idea. Its very similar to, and maybe an improvement on, the system used in Pendragon. That's a big compliment from me, considering that I think Pendragon's designer (Greg Strafford) is one of the greatest of all time. Keep up the good work and I think you should have a really good system on your hands.

[izlear]

Wow thanks, right now we are hashing out how all of these systems should integrate, and I feel we are getting close.  We'll probably be play testing and working on balancing characters who may not be magic users, and how they will balance out to this.

[izlear]

Question/Update:
Ok we are working on the Magic Pool Mechanic and this is how we've figured usage.  Ok Mental + Wisdom = max amount of Magic you can pool.  Wisdom = Max amount of dice you can pool per turn.  Wisdom + Magic Skill= pooling.

Later Mental + Magic Skill = casting.

Question, what does the Magic Pool represent?  How should it be used in game.  A couple ideas: the pool could be completely representative of the magic in the area and has no acual in game effect.  Another idea is that a successful skill + ability roll = a success but you have the chance to better the outcome of that spell by rolling the dice of the Magic Pool.

Alternately should the Magic pool be used a s player narative device to give the player narative powers over the spell outcome?

Hope this all makes sense, Thanks for any feed back     

[izlear]

I have recently updated the site above if anyone is interested on where/ if this is going anywhere.

Thanks.

[vgunn]

I would like to necro this thread, since I have been thinking of doing something very similar. I would like to propose an alteration to the mechanic. By no means is it original (I first saw it mentioned by Black Sheep at rpg.net), but I think it could fit your system.

The result on each d6 you roll counts as:

1 = 0 success
2-5 = 1 success
6 = 2 successes

If the player rolls a 6 they have the options of putting one of the successes into a Confidence Pool that they can use later; putting one of the successes into a Trust Pool that other PCs can use; or keep the 2 successes and use immediately.

Another thought (again something I've been thinking about as well) is to combo the d6 pools with resource allocation -- like that found in the Dying Earth RPG or MURPG.