Coin flipping mechanic

[migo]

This thought just came to me. It originally stemmed out of a thought of playing Reversi with coins - one player is heads, the other is tails, and at the end of the game each player collects their set of coins. Except, not all the coins have the same value, so even if you lose the game, if you end up with all the high value coins you have more money. So I'm thinking of something similar in a coin pool mechanic.

The character has a stat (ability, attribute, talent, skill, whatever) which determines how many coins get flipped. The player then decides how much to risk by flipping either pennies, nickels, dimes, etc (possibly some sort of limiting factor for the max currency a character can flip) or a combination thereof. The result is tallied as heads minus tails. Positive results are good, big positive results are really good. Big negative results are comparitively really bad. So a player can be conservative, flipping only 5 pennies and getting at worst -5, but also at best +5, reasonable if only +1 or so is needed. A player could also be risky, throwing in a nickel and a dime with the 3 pennies. It might turn out really good, but might also turn out really bad.

Anyway, this is a really fresh idea in my head, about 5 minutes old or so. I haven't had a chance to really do any number crunching, and there'd probably be something I'd overlook. I'm also not at all sure if it's at all as interesting as doing it with reversi, So, thoughts? Would it work out to being something worthwhile?

[GregStolze]

I'm all about systems with manifold axes of success.  So suppose I have a pool of five coins and I'm Heads.  If I try to do something and flip all five, I succeed as long as I get at least one Head.  BUT!  If I flip five pennies and get five Heads, that should be a different type of success than if I flip five quarters and get only one Head. 

-G.

[migo]

Somewhat different than what I was thinking of, but I like that line of thinking better.

Perhaps something like what imPresa has going, with the base attribute being how many dice you roll, but your skill determining what you need to beat to get a success. So either the base attribute (raw ability) is the number of coins flipped and the skill (finesse) is the type of coins flipped. Or vice versa.

I guess another thing could be grabbing on some iterations of ORE and doing stuff like expert dice being nickels and wiggle dice being dimes. Not quite the same thing given there's no guaranteed success with them but it would have most of the coin flips being pennies, with a few bigger types thrown in for some potential massive success.