Dice roll : an attempt at something new [imajica]

[Philippe Tromeur]

For one of my projects (Imajica in its very early stage : http://imajica.tk ), I'm devising a new way to roll six-sided dice.

Here are the main ideas :
- the character has got 3 dice pools associated to their attributes (Body, Mind, Imajica) from 1d to 5d
- to every dice pool is associated some specialties ; those are not numbered, it's just a list of names

For example :
- Body 2d (sex)
- Mind 3d (history,seduction)
- Imajica 2d (painting)

To try an action, the character rolls their dice pool and add the dice together, respecting those 2 rules :
- "6" are discarded
- you discard doubles, but you can bring back one of those duplicate dice if you've got one specialty associated to the action

e.g. when rolling 3 dice
- you roll 2,4,5 : the result is 11, wether you have a specialty or not
- you roll 3,3,5 : the result is 8 without a specialty, and 11 with a specialty
- you roll 4,4,4 : the result is 4 without a specialty, 8 with one specialty, and 12 with two specialties
- you roll 6,6,6 : the result is 0 (it's a fumble) whether you have a specialty or not

Ideas :
- everybody can roll 0, and it's more likely when you have few dice.
- I loved the Whispering Vault idea of keeping only some of the dice you roll, but the way of rolling the dice (only keep dice which are equal) gives a strange curve of results
- high rolls should be rare (5d without a specialty give a maximum roll of 15, with one specialty it climbs up to 19)

What do you think of it ?
Can you see some problems ?

[Jesse Paulsen]

- you discard doubles, but you can bring back one of those duplicate dice if you've got one specialty associated to the action

e.g. when rolling 3 dice
- you roll 3,3,5 : the result is 8 without a specialty, and 11 with a specialty

Can you see some problems ?

Wouldn't a roll of 3,3,5 be 5 without a specialty, and 8 with a specialty?

One of us has become confused, which might indicate things are a bit complex.

[Philippe Tromeur]

Wouldn't a roll of 3,3,5 be 5 without a specialty, and 8 with a specialty?

One of us has become confused, which might indicate things are a bit complex.

Ah yeah, sorry, I meant "You only keep one instance of each number. When two or more dice come up with the same result, keep only one of them."

Though ... what you understood is interesting too ... but then there will be a lot more fumbles then.

[Jake Norwood]

I think that you're going for a die mechanic that's "fun," a venture which I support whole-heartedly. I think "fun" die rolling got lost to a large degree when people started streamlineing systems...a lot of color got lost. On the other hand, I'm not sure if it was ever really there. I'm really proud of my "Gods of War" die mechanic, which is a blast to actually use (check it out on a thead on this forum of the same name).

You said that fumbling will be more common with your die system, and you say it with pride. Does that mean that you want characters to fumble, that this is a goal for your system? If so, why. If not, how can you fix it?

Jake

[Philippe Tromeur]

You said that fumbling will be more common with your die system, and you say it with pride. Does that mean that you want characters to fumble, that this is a goal for your system? If so, why. If not, how can you fix it?

Ah, no ... I don't want MORE fumbles, I just want fumbles which are easy to determine (with no calculation), which happen more often if the character is unskilled, etc.

What is interesting with suppressing all equal dice (not keeping one of them) is that, then, specialties can have an impact on fumbles.

For example : you roll 3,3,6 => you discard the "6" (because ... well ... it's a six), you discard both "3" (because they did not come up as singles)
If you have a specialty, then you bring back one of the "3" ; the roll is not very good (it's a 3) but at least, it's not a fumble.

I don't know if I'm clear ... mmh ... I think I'll have to re-phrase all this.

[Philippe Tromeur]

Wouldn't a roll of 3,3,5 be 5 without a specialty, and 8 with a specialty?

One of us has become confused, which might indicate things are a bit complex.

Ah yeah, sorry, I meant "You only keep one instance of each number. When two or more dice come up with the same result, keep only one of them."

Though ... what you understood is interesting too ... but then there will be a lot more fumbles then.

Thinking about it ... no, discarding all combinations would be a very silly idea, the more dice you throw, more likely you are to roll combinations, and the more chance you have to fumble ....

[Philippe Tromeur]

OK, let's summarise :
- you've got dice pools (Body, Mind, Imajica) and Specialties
- you roll a pool of 6-sided dice
- you discard all "6"
- when you roll combinations of identical dice, you only keep one of them
- you can bring one discarded die for every adequate specialty you have ; you can't bring back a "6" (it's like they have a "0" face)

When you roll zero (you rolled all "6"), it's a fumble.

I have to find a solution so that specialties have an impact on fumbles, but fumbles must still be possible when you have specialties ... errr ... I have to think about it.

[ks13]

It's an interesting mechanic and fairly straight forward (once you made the clarification).

I have to find a solution so that specialties have an impact on fumbles, but fumbles must still be possible when you have specialties ... errr ... I have to think about it.

My suggestion is that a specialty allows for a reroll on a complete fumble. The type of reroll depends upon what kind of success probability you want to have. Maybe something like needing to roll a natural 1, or a total of 10 using 2 dice with any other applicable specialities giving an additional die (6's are still thrown out and you add only 2 dice, hence you need 2 fives). Should the chance of negating a fumble with a specialty be 50/50? Higher? Lower? Decide that, and then look at ways to generate it.
[/quote]

[ks13]

It's an interesting mechanic and fairly straight forward (once you made the clarification).

I have to find a solution so that specialties have an impact on fumbles, but fumbles must still be possible when you have specialties ... errr ... I have to think about it.

My suggestion is that a specialty allows for a reroll on a complete fumble. The type of reroll depends upon what kind of success probability you want to have. Maybe something like needing to roll a natural 1, or a total of 10 using 2 dice with any other applicable specialities giving an additional die (6's are still thrown out and you add only 2 dice, hence you need 2 fives). Should the chance of negating a fumble with a specialty be 50/50? Higher? Lower? Decide that, and then look at ways to generate it.

[Philippe Tromeur]

OK, let's summarise :
- you've got dice pools (Body, Mind, Imajica) and Specialties
- you roll a pool of 6-sided dice
- you discard all "6"
- when you roll combinations of identical dice, you only keep one of them

By the way, without considering specialties, here is a curve for 2d rolls :

and her is the curve for 3d rolls :

The results of the rolls are comprised between 0 and 9 for a 2d roll, and between 0 and 12 for a 3d roll.
Those curves look a bit like classic bell curves ...

[Mike Holmes]

Thinking about it ... no, discarding all combinations would be a very silly idea, the more dice you throw, more likely you are to roll combinations, and the more chance you have to fumble ....

That's only sorta true. The total expected value still goes up. That's because the chance of rolling tripples is less than rolling doubles, and so forth. Thus, with two dice you have a one in six of doubles which means a fumble. With three dice you have only a one in thirty six chance for tripples meaning the fumble will occur much less often. Sure you'll get doubles a lot, but that means you still have a third die to rely on, meaning you don't fumble.

So I think that dropping all similar dice is better. It means that there is a much greater chance that more than one speciality will come into play. As it stands, with keeping one of a set as the default, you have to roll tripples before you get any effect from having more than one speciality (won't happen much unless you are rolling five dice). And forget three specialities having an effect very often. Four (I realize this would be a rare circumstance) can only have an effect in one out of 7776 rolls (all five dice come up the same). By saying that all similar dice drop, and getting back one per speciality, you make it much more common for multiple specialities to have an effect, and make those effects more pronounced, proprortionally. Still, not common, but you'll see it more in play.

Mike

[Philippe Tromeur]

Thinking about it ... no, discarding all combinations would be a very silly idea, the more dice you throw, more likely you are to roll combinations, and the more chance you have to fumble ....

That's only sorta true. The total expected value still goes up. That's because the chance of rolling tripples is less than rolling doubles, and so forth. Thus, with two dice you have a one in six of doubles which means a fumble. With three dice you have only a one in thirty six chance for tripples meaning the fumble will occur much less often. Sure you'll get doubles a lot, but that means you still have a third die to rely on, meaning you don't fumble.

You might be right ...
I've made some stats about a 3d rol with the basic system above (keeping only one die in a combination of equal dice), and I realise that the impact of specialties is quite ridiculous ...

(Sorry if the image is a bit too big).

Well ... I'll make stats about discarding combinations and bringing back dice.
I think the results will be far more interesting...

[Philippe Tromeur]

OK, I've tried the system and it sucks ... selecting dice, discarding some of them, etc, it's really confusing.

Hop ... tabula rasa ... I'll come up with something radically different (I'm thinking of a "single d6 roll" system ...

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Two thoughts, not only on the system Philippe has investigated, but also on dice-design schemes in general:

1) Increasing handling time in order to make things "fun" is a dangerous game. Not saying it can't be done ... but the curse is the potential to increase handling time relative to the degree of complexity of the situation. In other words, one fixed higher level of handling time might be cool beans - but a system which allows handling time to "bloat" depending on (say) an increasing number of dice in the pool tends to decrease the fun.

2) Perhaps the issue of "fumbles" should not be permitted to take center stage. In fact, I suggest that the very concept of fumbles is a holdover that should only be included in a particular design if it increases the fun (ie there's a metagame or in-game benefit or coolness to them, especially for the person who gets one).

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

It seems this topic opened and closed all in one day, before I even got a chance to see it. O.K., the idea has been dropped--but I think someone along the way missed an important point.

Mike wrote:

The total expected value still goes up. That's because the chance of rolling tripples is less than rolling doubles, and so forth. Thus, with two dice you have a one in six of doubles which means a fumble. With three dice you have only a one in thirty six chance for tripples meaning the fumble will occur much less often. Sure you'll get doubles a lot, but that means you still have a third die to rely on, meaning you don't fumble.

That's true for three dice; but when you move to four dice you don't just have the problem of four of a kind; you also have the probability of two pair--which any poker player will tell you is not that difficult a hand to draw (and they've got a lot more possible cards).

On five dice, you've got 1/6 that the second will match the first and 1/6 that the fourth will match the third; that's 1/36 of getting two pairs. The odds that the fifth die will match one or the other of these is 1/3, which means overall you're looking at 1/108 chance of a fumble based solely on matches, not taking into account the elimination of all 6's (which ups the odds of a fumble significantly here). [Caveat: I'm doing all this off the top of my head, so I could have missed something important here.]

In thinking in terms of four and five of a kind, you miss the fact that there are only so many possible numbers. On five dice, there is only one chance in 7776 that all will count (they must roll 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, or else one is eliminated as a six or two match). Thus the increased probability of dice being eliminated by matching does exist.

The unanswered question is whether the probable results rolled are impacted such that they decrease, or merely so that they increase more slowly. If the latter, then the mechanic may have merit on the basis of diminishing returns for character improvements; if the former, then the system breaks itself, as the character who should statistically be better proves to be worse.

--M. J. Young