[Spellbound Kingdoms] A lock of hair and a stuck pig

[FrankBrunner]

[Krippler]

What is exploding dice? Sounds like a system a game I played had, when a die showed it's max you disregarded it and rolled two new dice. They too are handled the same way so you could end up with an awfully high roll even if you only rolled one die. Those were D6 so it happened pretty often, but if you count woth 1s and 10s you'll achiece a similar effect.

[FrankBrunner]

Yeah, it's close to that. Basically what I meant was when you roll the maximum on a die, then you roll it again and add. If you roll maximum again, you roll yet again and add all three results. Keep rolling until you don't get a maximum. So let's say that Harad rolls an 8 on an 8-sided die. That's max, so he rolls again. He gets another 8. That's max, so he rolls again. He gets a 3. His total for the roll is now 8 + 8 +3 = 19.

There are two reasons why I'm leery of exploding dice. First, math turns some people off. Even what many gamers would consider simple addition is a turn-off for many other gamers. Not to mention that it slows play, at least a little bit. Comparing the numbers rolled on dice is faster and doesn't require math. So I prefer comparisons to addition. My second issue with exploding dice is that it feels weird that the die explodes less often as you get better. That is, an attack that is rated at d8 is a more powerful attack than one rated at d4, but the d8 explodes less often. Mathematically, it is still always better to roll the higher die. But it doesn't always feel that way. Sometimes it's more fun to explode a 4-sider than to roll a single 8-sider. But I definitely want to reward players for rolling high.

[Creatures of Destiny]

What do you mean by "Whose Line is it anyway"? Like the TV show? So the players get given a style and play that for the scene? How do the rolls tie to the conversation?

Daniel

[FrankBrunner]

Yep, it's like the TV show. The style and theme are set by a variety of factors including the location (dungeon, castle, zeppelin, submersible, tepui of the sun goddess,etc.), the stakes of the scene (humiliation, a fortune in gems, the mummy of the last elf, reputation, the queen's arm at the ball), the moods of the participants (mood is a characteristic akin to hit points), the motifs of the story arc (fugitives, cherry blossoms, blood), and the genre (epic, comedy, tragedy, caper, adventure, etc.). So I wouldn't say that the players are given a style. The GM is not Drew Carey. The players themselves have more control over the "rules" for a dialogue than the GM does, unless it is a scene that the GM is creating. In SK, all players, including the GM, take turns creating scenes, similar to MLWM.

The rolls tie into the conversation through a dialogue battlemat and your character's abilities. So dialogue has an improv type feel. It's been a lot of fun in playtest. I recommend Graham Walmsley's rpg-improv blog... but I can't seem to find the link anywhere atm. Maybe someone can help out?