Game Design based on cool dice: Is this a Bad Idea?

[Mike Holmes]

Count sixes as zeros, perhaps?

Mike

[Jonathan Walton]

Count sixes as zeros, perhaps?

You could... if you covered it up with a sticker or could find some numberological or in-game reason to (maybe the chief enemy really likes the number "6").

Otherwise, it's kinda hard to ignore the big "6" written on the die, just like it would be in any other game.  Of course, YMMV.

Later.
Jonathan

[Andy Kitkowski]

Now I've just got to sit down and hammer out some mechanics.
I spent 20 minutes last night rolling dice.  ROLLING DICE.

I can do 10,000 rolls in just a minute on my machine here. About ten times that on the Mac at home.

Heh.  I know who to come for when I have questions on probability (^.^)

Actually, I needed to roll those dice- Just to get the feel for it, you know? See how it feels to roll X amount of d6es or d12s.

After all, I thought Star Wars/d6 was an excellent system, loved it to death- Until the players started getting skills into the 8+ dice range, then using Force Points on top of that... a handful of dice like that just doesn't feel right, y'dig?

The Groove of Dice.  Get the Mystical Feng Shui of the Dice in the Palm going.  Then, and only then, will I sit down and calculate probabilities (^.^) .

-Andy

[Mike Holmes]

Now I've just got to sit down and hammer out some mechanics.
I spent 20 minutes last night rolling dice.  ROLLING DICE.

The Groove of Dice.  Get the Mystical Feng Shui of the Dice in the Palm going.  Then, and only then, will I sit down and calculate probabilities (^.^) .

Cool. Whatever it takes. Personally, tho, a huge pile o' dice is a good thing in my book.

Mike

[Andy Kitkowski]

The only problem with Chinese D6's is that "6" really isn't a very significant number in Chinese culture.

Ahhh, very good point.

Thing is (sorry I didn't provide background on this earlier), I'm actually making a Post-apocalypse martial arts game with heavy Japanese influences. There's gonna be some serious Kung Fu going down, but mostly the cultural influences will be Japanese (Mikkyo/Esoteric Buddhism, and "Ninjas").

6 isn't significant in Japanese culture, either, but kanji are, which is the reason I was going for these dice.

Additionally, many sets, like the one I have at home, have an additional die with The Five Directions printed on it, which is used to determine the "wilds" for a particular round.

Heh- At my old job, there'd be hours where there was nothing to do- For a few days, I actually brought my entire Mah Jongg set into work and worked on RPG resolution mechanics with it.  Mah Jongg pieces, the "real" Bamboo-backed ones, feel incredible to the touch (almost like stone) and are just dying to be made into an RPG mechanic... But I think here I'm going for something that can be used by people who don't have the cash to blow on even a cheapo set.

"Alternate" rules system using Mah Jongg tiles?  That's a thought, especially since they are numbered 1-9, 9 being a very significant number in esoteric Buddhism...

-Andy

ps- Saw your site.  Really dug the characters- Almost as if written on an Atari 2600! Nifty!

[Jonathan Walton]

For a few days, I actually brought my entire Mah Jongg set into work and worked on RPG resolution mechanics with it.  But I think here I'm going for something that can be used by people who don't have the cash to blow on even a cheapo set.

True.  Maybe for my Chinese-language RPG (which is, at this point, still a pipe dream), I could pull off a Ma Jiang-based mechanic.  Don't know if many Chinese youth are allowed to play Ma Jiang, though, since it has such strong gambling connotations on the mainland.  Unfortunately, there's probably not enough Western gamers out there who already own sets to make it work.  Dominos, now, that's another story...

ps- Saw your site.  Really dug the characters- Almost as if written on an Atari 2600! Nifty!

Thanks.  Even the new MX versions of Macromedia's stuff won't handle Asian-fonts (which pisses me off), so I had to write all the characters myself using Freehand 10.  I really liked the way they turned out, but it's too time consuming to do as much bilingual stuff as I initially wanted.

Ah well.  It'll have to wait until I get back to China and can buy the Chinese version of Photoshop or something.

Later.
Jonathan