Help me with a dice mechanic

[jp_miller]

Hi all,

Just wondering if you could help me with a simple concept.

I'm using a kind of Reverse Pool (as first proposed by Milk Holmes regarding James V. Wests The Pool) for my game.

I'm thinking I might be able to replicate some cinematic play by using this method.

Basically you roll a pool of dice (d6) in a contest/conflict and hope for a 1, which will grant you instant success. All the dice from your pool are lost – indicating that you have had your limelight in the scene, done your 'cool thing', now it's someone else's turn.

If you don't roll a 1 you fail and are awarded 1 dice to your pool.

At this stage I'm thinking it could be interesting if you allowed players to make multiple rolls. In this way they will keep losing and gaining dice until inevitably they will no doubt roll a 1.

This is very much like what some may call 'cinematic'. So often we see the protagonists beaten to a cliff hanging pulp until they suddenly come back with a glorious victory. Rocky movies are absolutely notorious for it, but let's face it; it's a staple of Hollywood action.

The trouble is it's pretty meaningless having the characters always come back from a win if they weren't risking something. RPG's are NOT cinema and I would like to include the possibility of character death or at least incapacitation.

The players should make the decision to accept the loss and an extra dice and call it quits or continue hoping for a win but escalating the possibility of a nasty failure as well.

Trouble is I'm not sure how to do it. One way would be something like 3 strikes and you're out but this is pretty boring. I'd rather some type of dice mechanic but as I am a hopeless mathematician I'm not sure how to work it out.

Any help from the probility gurus/statisticians out there?

[Anders Gabrielsson]

Just to see if I have understood correctly what you want:

Player rolls dice, doesn't get a 1. He can either accept the failure and gain one more die, or try again with the risk of more serious consequences. If that roll also fails, he can accept the more serious failure, or once more try again (and maybe more times after that, depending on how finely you want to tune it).

Is that it?

[jp_miller]

Yep, you got it.

I'm not sure whether I really want a scale of failure but certainly I want the chances of a complete failure to increase. As it is the chances of succeeding increase, obviously, all you need to do is roll a 1. But how can I make the chances of failing increase, and what determines the point of complete failure where a player may not roll anymore?

I thought maybe rolling 3 sixes might work.

For example, in your first roll you roll a 3,2,5
It's a failure so the GM gives you another dice
Then you roll a 4,4,2,6
Another failure you get another dice and the six is recorded (maybe by a token or something)
If you then roll 5,3,3,6,6 then you have rolled 3 sixes before a 1 and it means FAIL, end of rolls
If you were to roll 1,3,3,6,6 then the 1 will nullify the sixes and it's a success.

Would this work or am I missing something probability wise?

[jp_miller]

BTW, feel free to suggest an alternative method!

[jp_miller]

Sorry, whether he accepts the failure or rolls again he always gets an additional dice.

[Anders Gabrielsson]

I thought maybe rolling 3 sixes might work.

For example, in your first roll you roll a 3,2,5
It's a failure so the GM gives you another dice
Then you roll a 4,4,2,6
Another failure you get another dice and the six is recorded (maybe by a token or something)
If you then roll 5,3,3,6,6 then you have rolled 3 sixes before a 1 and it means FAIL, end of rolls
If you were to roll 1,3,3,6,6 then the 1 will nullify the sixes and it's a success.

Would this work or am I missing something probability wise?

I think it would work, though there may be some side effects with unusually large or small dice pools.

For example, if you start out with just the one die and get 2-5, then it's completely without risk to try again - you'll roll two dice and there's no chance of getting three sixes.

Generally, with a small dice pool you'll have some warning before things go permanently south unless you roll very badly, while with a larger pool you could easily get three sixes on your first roll. That may or may not fit with how you want the mechanic to work thematically.

The chance of success will increase a lot if you get several re-rolls. If you start with five dice, the chance of rolling at least one 1 with two re-rolls and one extra die each roll is over 95%. (This is discounting the risk of getting three sixes, but since you're making a choice for each roll that's a bit involved to calculate and depends on how willing you are to take a risk. However, even with two "stored" sixes you'll always have better odds on getting a success than a failure, if a 1 trumps the third 6.)

I like that there's a push-your-luck element to this as that can help create tension and excitement.

[Jasper Flick]

Hi jp,

Are you familiar with The Questing Beast? You're practially halfway between that game and The Pool with your failure mechanic (not the rerolls, but the failure on 6s).

TQB works like the pool, except a failure occurs if you roll any 6s when not rolling any 1s. Rolling neither results in a "guided event". You could use the no-1s-but-6s criteria for complete failures.

The odds up to ten dice are listed here for convenience.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi JP,

Play Lacuna.  (Link to purchase is here.)

It is an excellent implementation of a solution to your conundrum.  Players are empowered to "go back to the well" as often as they like, and are constrained in only two ways:

• the parameters of the fiction
• how expensive they're willing to make their success

It's a very good solution to the age-old issue of "I pick the lock.  I pick it again.  Ok, I'll pick it again.  Listen, I've got all day, just let me in!"

Cheers,
Darcy

[jp_miller]

Hiya,

No, I've never seen The Questing Beast rules. I just thought of making the rerolls a little more interesting for entertainment - especially in a combat situation.

Well, cool, Lacuna's idea of dealing with repeated attempts is just what I was thinking, that repurcussions should escalate on repeated attempts. I'll check it out.

Any other ways to do it?

[microphil]

Hello!

I'm coming from the thread "The oddness of dices", and I would like to help you out with dice mechanics.
But I need detail and structure of your proposed mechanic. This include (but not limited to):
a) Scale: In what range a player can get results (x to y or x to endless but normally (90% of cases) in a range of x to y - and so on)
b) Dice: What dice are you going to use (Think its D6)
c) Dice: What rules do you apply to dice throwing (number, reroll-rules, etc...)
d) What is your mechanical aim: I read some (so, tell me what) kind of escalation between your lines
e) Random Element: What weight would you give the Fortune in your game? (Close to predictable - certain - uncertain - close to unpredictable)
f) what feeling or gameplay do you want to evoke (please keep it short and crispy)

Once you give it to me, I will response how I would operationalize your dice-mechanic and give you the statistical implications you're looking for.

Hoping to be able to throttle your project, Greetings,
Phil

[jp_miller]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the help, I'll try to answer your questions:

a) Players need to roll a 1 for a success on 1 to up to 20 dice
b) D6's
c) Players can add any number of dice form a trait (e.g. 3) and gamble any dice in their Pool (usually no more than 10). Players gain a dice when they loose and loose all dice they gambled when they win.
d) Initially to empower players to choose when to loose and win but now I'm thinking some escalation in the risks of re-rolls could be interesting
e) Not sure what you mean by rate but it's 1 in 6 on 1 dice and increasingly getting easier with the more dice added.
f) Flavoursome narration is the goal but also Hollywood style comebacks for the victor.

Hope this helps.

[charles ferguson]

Hi jp

Another way to approach it is to make the level of Risk numerically determined by the number of dice they choose to throw. So the more dice you throw = more chance of success but higher level of risk.

This probably wouldn't work with a success only occurring on a 1 though. You might have to increase likelihood to a 2 or even 3 in 6 chance of success, so this may well be moving too far away from the pure "Pool" mechanic for your liking.

Charles

[thadrine]

What if you use a simple skill set as a base pool, and make using the "Cinematic Dice" optional. And maybe make it so that players can voluntarily take a penalty to their pool when they do not us the Cinematic Dice to earn the more CD.