Rolling gobs of dice... yet another alternative

[John Harper]

I'm developing a system for an upcoming game project (Danger Patrol) and it sometimes calls for great handfuls of dice to be rolled, much like Donjon can. My "solution" is simply this: When you roll your dice pool, you are looking for even numbers. Each even number is a "success" -- the dice showing odd numbers are set aside.

Of course, what this means is, you can roll any size dice you like, and they don't have to all be the same size. If I need to roll 28 dice for some reason, I can just empty my dice bag onto the table and look for even numbers. My buddy Jake likes to use cards instead of dice, so he draws 28 Tarot cards and flips them over. Upright cards are successes, and inverted cards are discarded.

I'm not sure what this approach will do to the Donjon probabilities, but I imagine that things will even out if both the GM and players are using the same system. And this way, you can use all the dice you own, instead of having to go out and buy a few dozen d20s.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

John,

Damn it. I like this much better than the Donjon system, especially because it means you can use every die in the bag (well, except those d7s), just like D&D was meant to do.

[John Harper]

Always happy to help. :)

Maybe rules-tweak stuff like this could be added into a free Expert Donjon PDF on the bookshelf. Someday.

[Spooky Fanboy]

Yay Danger Patrol!

To be honest (and on topic), I have difficulty understanding this whole "too many dice" thing I hear in regards to this game. Dice collecting is, as addictions go, not the worst thing in the world. Why is it so wrong to have so many d20s?

So the dice act flaky. So? Never met a dice pool game where they didn't. Watching the game diverge wildly from reality is what makes it fun.

No room for those dice? Shame on you! And you call yourselves gamers! Your addiction (RPGs), like a healthy plant, must have both nourishment and space to grow! Make room!

Hmm. Looking over this post, maybe I shouldn't mix alcohol with my meds. Oh,well...

[ethan_greer]

How do the odds with this method compare to the Donjon mechanic as written?  Are they about the same?

[Valamir]

The odds for same number of dice should be the same, but the tails will be alot fatter.  The Sorcerer/Donjon system truncates the possibilities for multiple successes pretty sharply.  I suspect using this system, one could scrap the Count Ties as Successes rule which had been introduced to deal with this.

BTW:  What changed Clinton...IIRC, you considered this idea way back during the Krawl days and scrapped it for the original Sorcerer mechanic.

[Rich Forest]

To be honest (and on topic), I have difficulty understanding this whole "too many dice" thing I hear in regards to this game. Dice collecting is, as addictions go, not the worst thing in the world. Why is it so wrong to have so many d20s?

I'll take a shot at answering your question, Spooky--

I think the "too many dice" thing most people talk about with Donjon has more to do with handling time than with not having enough dice.

We played Donjon quite a bit when it was in the playtest stages, and we've played it a fair number of times since, and oh, the handling times!  It just takes a long time to resolve those big rolls, and there are lots of 'em.  

Now, John's idea doesn't actually do away with all the dice.  I'm not even sure that it would greatly affect handling times.  But it does something else very neat, which Clinton pointed out--it lets you use all those dice, just like in D&D.  That's just cool.  In fact, I think I'll try it out next time we play Donjon.

Rich

[Clinton R. Nixon]

One thing to consider (and why I didn't use this to begin with): are your number of successes the amount of successes you have over your opponent, or does the winner simply get his number of successes. (The former would be my choice.)

In addition, how do you resolve ties - where both sides have the same number of successes?

[Spooky Fanboy]

I'll take a shot at answering your question, Spooky--

I think the "too many dice" thing most people talk about with Donjon has more to do with handling time than with not having enough dice.

Oh, I know. I'm sorry, Rich. I was actually just being silly when I posted that. In all honesty, I wanted to cheer on the fact that Danger Patrol was getting closer to completion, and was desperately trying to come up with something to keep the post 'on topic.' So I went on a silly tangent. Hence the remark about mixing alcohol with meds (which, in real life, I'm no longer on, btw.)

And yes, with that many dice, handling time slows to a crawl. I know this, even though it is a fairly quick and intuitive mechanic, it just gets clunky to hunt for the high numbers and then put them in order and then count them off... But it's still a fun game, and I think that's what counts.

[John Harper]

One thing to consider (and why I didn't use this to begin with): are your number of successes the amount of successes you have over your opponent, or does the winner simply get his number of successes. (The former would be my choice.)

I agree. The number of successes over the opponent makes sense to me.

In addition, how do you resolve ties - where both sides have the same number of successes?

In Danger Patrol, ties go to the player. In a player vs. player roll, ties go to the party with the bigger dice pool. If that doesn't settle it, roll again.

I'm glad to hear you're psyched about DP, Spooky. I almost have enough system-stuff ready to start posting to the Forge for feedback. Expect to see it soon.

[ethan_greer]

Another way to do ties would be to roll off - each participant adds a die until someone wins.

[Russell]

The rule in my group is that in a tie,  the aggressor wins with one success.

[Michael S. Miller]

Aaargh! "Place them in order and then count them off?" You don't need to do that! People are still intentionally slowing the handling time of these dice pool v. dice pool systems! I posted this in another thread, but it bears repeating. Heck, I think every game that uses this type of system should have a sidebar on how to do this! Mine will. Just remember: Each and every die doesn't matter, just the highest:

Sheesh! I've seen this practice in a number of posts and reviews about Sorcerer/Donjon and I've had to reprimand several of my players about it as well. I think it's a leftover from WoD/Storyteller when the player doesn't know the target number. This is a very inefficient way of reading Sorcerer dice. Here's how I do it:

[Player and GM roll dice and glance at them.]

GM: What's your highest?

Player: um, 8

GM: Dagnabbit! My highest is a 6. How many do you have that beat a 6?

Player: 4. Cool.

And that's it. Everything else could be 1s and it wouldn't matter. This is amazingly quick and it kinda irks me that people intentionally slow down an elegant process by paying attention to low-rolling dice that mean nothing. [/rant off]

[Bailywolf]

For some reason, I always have trouble getting my head around the Sorcerer die system.... I don't know why.. objectively, it ain't that hard... but for some reason my brain sort of goes herkaherkaherkaherka and I have to think much harder than I should to figure out who wins, and with how many successes.  Its like figuring a hit with THAC0 in a way... not hard really, but somehow confusing.  

I like Feng's roll for even better than any solution I've heard- and as has been said- it opens up play for every die in the bag.  I'm using this from now on.

-Ben

[Rich Forest]

In prepping to use this for a Donjon game on the weekend, I noticed one of the ripples caused by switching over to John’s system—it requires a revision of the initiative rules.  You can’t keep the current Donjon initiative system, even as an exception, because you’re using a bunch of different sized dice, giving the player with more d20s, d12s, etc. higher possible results.  

As a temporary solution, we just extrapolated from John’s system.  Roll, count evens as successes, and count down from who has the most successes.  When multiple characters have the same number, it just goes around the table as per the standard rules, with the NPCs coming last.

This leads to much fewer actions in a single flurry.  If anyone has any other ideas, I’d love to hear them.  I’m fairly committed to using John’s tweak, mostly because I like the idea of rolling mixed pools of dice.

Rich