[Solar System] Replacing Fudge Dice with 3d6

[oliof]

Eero mentioned in some other thread he is considering removing Fudge Dice.

Here is one way by a friend of mine:

– Double Ability scores.

– Roll 3d6, using bonus and penalty dice as is.

– Add the Ability score and look up the results on the table below.

– re-roll if 3 or 18 is the result of the roll.

Roll	Result
4-11	Failure
12-13	Marginal
14-15	Good
16-17	Great
18-19	Amazing
20-21	Legendary
22-23	Penultimate
24	Transcendend

This is statistically very close to the original results, and the table may be simple enough to be memorized quickly.

[Corvus69]

My friend considered fudge a dealbreaker because there are really impossible to buy in Slovakia. Then he and his buddies tried using regular d6 counting 1,2 as -; 3,4 as 0; 5,6 as + and it seemed natural even to new players.
and there is no need to loop up the table and recalculate values to success level.

[oliof]

Yes, that's certainly doable. But it is way to straightforward for some naysayers.

Some people hate the "clamp to zero" for results and the funky dice, this approach might be right for them (although they technically clamp to 11 and exchange funky dice for a funky table).

[Eero Tuovinen]

The 3d6 solution is actually what I'm considering for the aforementioned hypothetical "simple version" of the game. My design priority for that sort of thing wouldn't be servicing the ticks of experienced gamers, though - rather, I'd want to get rid of the Fudge dice simply because they're a specialty tool that would be in the way of first-timers choosing the system.

Considering the goals, I've been thinking that I'd probably just drop the success levels and use the numbers directly. So 12+ is a success, abilities are 0-8 and so on. Perhaps make "triple ones" and "triple sixes" critical results that have special rules or something. Makes the system much more basic overall to drop the named success levels from the equation.

[Corvus69]

I like d6-d6 system that uses Starblazer Adventures (based on Fate). no table, very quick and elegant.

[oliof]

Corvus: The d6-d6 system does not care for bonus and penalty dice, which I like for their soft scaling.

Eero: With double skill levels, you need to take care of advance cost, if you don't want to jump. On the other hand, you could beef up otherwise 'weak' Secrets by giving them some special effect and a +1 to a skill.

[Corvus69]

Corvus: The d6-d6 system does not care for bonus and penalty dice, which I like for their soft scaling.

I like bonus/penalty dice too.. I was thinking about it and I came with few systems (like rolling multiple positive (white) dice as bonus dice and multiple negative (black) dice as penalty dice and always taking the highest numbers... or some kind of rerolling) but I was not completely satisfied.

[oliof]

Two more thoughts:

Double advance levels are probably a good fit for people who think advancing goes to fast. You could then double all costs for non-ability advances, effectively scaling the XP per Advance to 10.

If you want to use 3d6 and give 3 and 18 special meaning without distorting the probabilities, make 3 "fail + spend 1 pool point" and 18 "succes and regain one pool point".