Glad you're finding it useful. Many rules and components have some degree of history either in or out of the hobby game world. A great example is the use of decks of cards in some wild west set games which instantly evoke the feel of cowboys playing poker.
This is the second dice mechanics video I've watched today and the second to slander the d8. I love them. I find the slight overhangs cute and the way they almost tesselate interesting
Great discussion! When I think of dice pools I always think about d6 because it is the most standard die, and also young kids love rolling a lot od dice together. I my game which is a d6 dice pool I don’t use addition because it’s more friendly to my 4yo. It’s basically the more are you skilled in a thing the more dice you throw and if you get at least one 6 you succeed. My kids love it 🙂
Certainly dice pools with single success minimums are very easy and quick to engage with, you don't even need to keep once you've found a single success. It also gives you a lot of space to make "expansions" for your kids once they can handle a bit more complexity by introducing additional effects for more than one success or changing the target number. Its a really flexible system.
Imagine rolling a D4 and a D6. For exemple, a trrpg where instead of rolling and adding bonuses, your attributes or equipment grants 1d4 extra to your rolls The maximum is a 10 Min 2 1 and 6 2 and 5 3 and 4 4 and 3 4 pairs that sums up to 7 1 and 5 2 and 4 3 and 3 4 and 2 are 4 pairs that sums up to 6 There are also 4 pairs to roll 5 To roll a 10 there is only one option To roll a 9 there are 2 (6-3, 5-4) To roll a 8 there are 3 (6-2, 5-3, 4-4) To roll a 7 there are 4 To roll a 6 there are 4 To roll a 5 there are 4 To roll a 4 there are 3 (1-3, 2-2, 3-1) To roll a 3 there are 2 To roll a 2 there is only one Total 24 possibilities of dice combinations and a flat middle with 5, 6 and 7 having a possibility of 8% each. 2 + 3 ++ 4 +++ 5 ++++ 6 ++++ 7 ++++ 8 +++ 9 ++ 10+ Sounds cool, this shows that adding a 1D4 instead of giving a fixed amount of bonus to a roll is much more interesting
A couple of interesting games: Congo (Adventures in the heart of Africa) and Pulp Alley use dice pools with a fixed success number. (4 or 5 - I forget which success for which game). Characters (Pulp Alley) or Units (Congo) roll a number of dice and count the successes. Powerful units/characters roll big dice (d10) for things they're good at (Congo's Hunters or regular soldiers shooting their rifles) and smaller dice for things they're less good at (Tribal archers in close combat). The number of dice in the pool reflects the strength of a unit (Congo) or the "level" of the Pulp Alley Character. Summary: No. of dice faces - reflects competence. No. of dice - reflects unit strength. Seeking successes against a fixed target number.
@@RuleofCarnage 5 each of d6, d8 and d10 (Plus d12 for Pulp Alley if you're going all sci-Fi and Monsters). The first time in years that I had to buy dice for a specific game. Pulp Alley allows adjustment of less/more dice, and also up one/down one die type. Example: One less die each time a character brawls or shoots per turn. Other example: Never roll bigger dice than your health. (Reduced form 10 to 6 health, all your skills are rolling d6s). It really cuts down on those annoying tables of plus and minus factors.
My game has a little tray of four dice for each figure so that players can see the target numbers without having to consult a table or chart (which is boring and involves maths).
Great discussion. One thing I am not a fan of with dice pools is the time to collect and count - and then possibly count a second time to check - a big pool of 20 or 30 dice.
That's reasonable and again its one of those reasons why making sure that your dice pool is a fairly widely available shape is a big help. It can be annoying finding 20 dice, but finding 12 and needed to re-roll 8 of them to make the remainder every time can be a killer.
I dont know, but dice are random. If you dont want randomness to impact your game, prabalbly we should look for a different combst system. For exemple, could we play a ttrpg with a mechanisma like slay the spire? Where you have a small deck of cards that you are certainly going to draw what you want frequently
You can want randomness to impact the game, but as a designer you might want to keep control of how much oddness and where it lands. Its like you can want salt in a meal, but you want to control how much.
Great Stuff~! I like multiple poly dice pools. Polyversal, Silent Death style. Uses d4 to d12s. Total vs DEF to see if you Hit. You get three based on skill, weapon, and morale. Damage is also found from those 3. Based on the Weapon Type. Doubles and Trips are your Crits. One set of Dice rolled outcome and damage known. A few DEF systems like Anti Missile requires a roll to intercept. Force on Force used d4-d12, with 4s being needed to Succeed. Cover and such mods by shifting die type up or down. These systems allows the rules to cover a large spread, from Primitive Weapon, Next to No Training, and about to give up, to Decent Weapon, Basic Training, and Standard Morale, to Best Tech Known, Highest Trained, and Over the top motivation. And all the combos in between. Thus most any Force can be set by a few dice of different types. In all three, 4s are rare :) How can you not have at least 15-20 D20s. Roleplay some :) I get the it has to be a d6 to get GW player to look, just do not like it. I do not like the GW system at all. Really do not like constraints of D6s. Most systems 1 Always Missed, 6 Always Hits. So Only 4 Slots matter and any modifier becomes very powerful. I would be fine with most D6s never used again. Then Layer on the GW ReRoll, 1s then Misses, then Wounds, Then Foe, Rerolls 1's to save and throw another one Reroll anyway. But if we all liked the same stuff it would be dull. Worse die roll I have seen, 30d6, no 6s.
I really think that the GW experience has done a lot to slander the humble d6. It sometimes feels like people discount them due to the worst possible implementation of their variance and affordability. I don't think its a question of using d6 to attract GW players so much as not using other dice to avoid driving away non-hardcore players. I think that d6 are the default, so moving away from that really needs to be justified.
I'm designing a TTRPG inspired by Pokerole, which uses a d6 dice pool where you must roll 4+ to achieve successes, and DC depends on number of successes. I want to modify this so that the dice increase like in DCC [D6->d8->d10->d12->?] for epic levels of play. The Difficulty Class would also slowly improve to needing 5+ or 6+ on top of needing more dice to succeed [meaning commoners could never do this, essentially] I just need some examples of how this would work in practice
This was my first time viewing...I think. I've been sifting RUclips for talks and takes on dice systems. No surprise I'm faffing about with my own game. I'm pretty secure in using d6 dice pools. Like Mike, I'm familiar with buckets-o-dice; the 'o' is for Orks. So, my question is: How many D6s are too many for a dice pool using numbers of success to scale the degree of success? We've been pretty set with 5 as an upper limit. If your 'hits' are 6s for instance.
Personally, I'd say that 5 is quite low, at that point its still impossible to get a full spread of results so, maybe counter intuitively, things get less chaotic with more dice. Of course, if you're scaling success a lucky result can seem quite spikey, but I'd be inclined to cap that on the degrees rather than on the number of dice.
I so agree about the abomination that's a D4. Doesn't roll, drops and sticks, and any that miss the table become lethal caltrops. d8, d12 and d20 could all be marked with 1-4.
7:28 I rolling two n sided dice and adding their result will always have a most probable result of n+1 with 2 and 2n being the most rare. I'm not sure about rolling two dice that don't have the same number of sides though.
Sure, but the question is whether a player can calculate the odds of rolling, for example, over 11 with 2d8 in the middle of a game, or whether the spread of odds for 2d6 from 6 to 8 is roughly the same as the spread from 8 to 10 for 2d8. Players have a good feel for the odds of not only a 2, 7 and 12 on 2d6, but for a 9, 4, 10 or any other possible number. While they can have a sort of sense of 2, 9 and 16 for 2d8 I don't think they can have the same handle on 4, 6 and 13, for example.
Let me try, you're rolling D4 and D6 The maximum is a 10 Min 2 1 and 6 2 and 5 3 and 4 4 and 3 4 pairs that sums up to 7 1 and 5 2 and 4 3 and 3 4 and 2 are 4 pairs that sums up to 6 There are also 4 pairs to roll 5 To roll a 10 there is only one option To roll a 9 there are 2 (6-3, 5-4) To roll a 8 there are 3 (6-2, 5-3, 4-4) To roll a 7 there are 4 To roll a 6 there are 4 To roll a 5 there are 4 To roll a 4 there are 3 (1-3, 2-2, 3-1) To roll a 3 there are 2 To roll a 2 there is only one Total 24 possibilities of dice combinations and a flat middle with 5, 6 and 7 having a possibility of 8% each. 2 + 3 ++ 4 +++ 5 ++++ 6 ++++ 7 ++++ 8 +++ 9 ++ 10+ Sounds cool, this shows that adding a 1D4 instead of giving a fixed amount of bonus to a roll is much more interesting
I don't know why, but hearing people talk about their emotional reactions to dice is a fascinating discussion, and I'd like to nominate the D16 recently forced upon bloodbowl players - it is a crime against good sense and should not exist! Does the love/hate apply only to the die, or is it an instinctive reaction to something fundamental to the polyhedron? Does Mike also hate the Egyptian pyramids 🤔 (There's a game idea - Egyptian rulers racing to build the most magnificent mausoleum using a D4 pool!)
I'm pretty sure all my close friends have emotional reactions to dice, so it feels pretty natural, like having an emotional reaction to great music. I'm not aware of Mike having a great dislike of the pyramids at Giza, though I will say that were I ever to see two of them jammed together I suspect I would not be glad to witness it.
I also find d4s to be revolting, but I also despise d8s and d10s. I began gaming with D&D in 1987 and therefore feel a nostalgic affection towards the d20, as do almost all roleplayers.
In the new version of the Cortex system (e.g. Firefly RPG), you roll a bunch of dice for your dice pool, but only use the top two results which are added. So getting a d12 or d10 in a dice pool made up of a bunch of d6, is a big deal. You gain a decent chance to hit a total, the other side just can't reach. Warm regards, Rick.
That's an interesting idea that puts me in mind of the 7TV dice pool system, but certainly dropping in poly dice mixes that up. I'm not sure about pushing it out of another player's reach in a minis game unlike an RPG, but as one of an incremental set of results it could work.
@@RuleofCarnage Well I over simplified a bit. In that game, whenever possible, the NPC's roll first, then the PC's try to beat them. But the point is that getting medium sized dice (d6, d8) is not that hard, but getting larger dice is a big deal. You would need 4 or 5 d6 and d8, and a couple more of the other sizes is plenty. Warm regards, Rick.
need an opinion somewhat related to that: Is it weird to resolve 95% with one die-type (like D10) and just for specific things ask the player to roll 2D6? Because that would solve a "problem" i have... but it feels weird somehow^^
Frankly, yes, it would be weird. I assume that's because you want to make one result more likely and others less likely, is there no way you can do it with 2D10?
"That's a lot of d20s for a person to own. ... That's like 15 d20s." I did a quick count of the number of d20s I have just on the bookshelves within arm's reach of the chair I sit in to GM. There are at least 135. I probalby missed a few. There are more in in a cupboard and on shelves in another room...🤣
It’s far more entertaining to have a target number and a binary outcome, rather than having to do the maths involved with comparing two characters’ scores and determining success level based on the difference, which involves maths and charts.
Its tough, particularly outside of boxed games, but it is possible in theory. For example a set of custom dice with colour coded faces where a dice pool coming up mostly red would mean failure could give that effect when you see a sea of red. That would be tricky to do mechanically since it would limit some design space, but it could be at least possible.
@@MisterWebb Those choices about granularity are always a matter of taste, I personally believe that so long as you know what you're going for and the work results in rewards then it can be okay.
Today I watched a video of two guys playing an old school D&D module, and there were shouts of joy when a panther rolled a series of very low numbers, allowing the PC to survive. You just can’t get that with a d6, unless you go for the ‘exploding dice’ mechanic where a critical hit allows another roll, but even that cannot compare to the thrill of rolling a natural 20. Look at how many roleplaying-related brands incorporate the d20 into their name or logo - maybe that doesn’t mean so much to you guys thanks to those nasty knobs at GW, but rest assured, it’s a thing. I recently introduced my system to a friend who had never even heard of tabletop gaming or D&D and he was immediately hooked on the d20 - he kept just rolling it for fun (he also thought the d4 was cool, so clearly has poor taste in regards to dice, however).
I totally get the attraction of d20s, and their history in RPGs, but in relation specifically to the usage of dice pools they're pretty horrible. For the roll of a single dice, sure, but if you ask someone to possess 60 D20, much less roll them, then they're kind of a nightmare. Not to mention that reading 60 D20 results at speed is no fun at all.
Use a pool of d12 and have it become a pool of d10 slowly and then a d8 and then a d6 and then a d4. you just build up an intuition for how the distribution works. its not that far from human performance in general.
That's certainly an interesting option, also if it's the same number of dice I would assume that results get more stable as the number of faces decreases. I guess the main issue would be how many odd polyhedrals you're asking people to acquire. Asking someone to hunt up 30D12 is one thing, asking them to round up 30D12, 30D10, 30D8 and 30D4 is quite a request.
@@DareToWonder So, you're not really trying to leverage a dice pool as such, more the dice themselves. I can see how that would have some strong interesting affordances available, cool.
Whilst I love infinity I hate how inscrutable the calculations are. If you have two weapons to aro with that have different damage burst and range mods, it can be impossible to know which to pick to achieve the result you want. If all I need is to win the f2f but I don't mind not wounding vs I don't care if its a long shot I need to roll a weapon that if it hits it will likely kill... Nearly all players can't work that out by themselves. To make those decisions I have to commit a bunch of examples of weapon comparisons to memory so I can guess at the option that is more likely to be the actual dice odds I want to roll... But that's not great is it
I really think that's a significant part of selecting a dice or any random generation system, you need to make sure that players have a solid grasp on what the odds are of their actions succeeding or failing for them to be able to intelligently choose plans of action. Once players lose that grasp they can have a sense of shooting into the dark or just working on a vague sense that "this character is meant to be good at this, so its probably a good idea", which yes, can be an issue.
@@RuleofCarnage My game design revolves around a high level of randomness and not much decision making, because I want a quick, lighthearted game whereby players are not trying to outwit each other with cunning strategies and gotchas, but are rather just having two squads charge and hack each other to bits. I’m too old and too busy to be pouring over lists or developing complex plans, so I just want cool minehs fighting on the table without any high level of emotional investment.
@@MisterWebb It sounds as though Hobgoblin would work very well for you, Mike is quite a fan of that sort of "sit back" fun in tabletop gaming, while I think I'm usually more interested in things being a bit more "sit forwards".
Sorry to be a pedant, but two d4s stuck together would only have six sides, not eight. I totally agree that d8 are horrid, but I also dislike d10s … I agree that d12s are underrated and underused, but have to disagree about d20s, which is so revered that it has some taken on some kind of supernatural power. D20s are superior to d12s because they make it easy to calculate percentage probabilities. I don’t see how a d12 being divisible by three is somehow advantageous. One does one ever have to divide the result of a die role? D20s are divisible by 2, 4, 5 and 10, which is (marginally) easier than the d12’s 2, 3, 4 and 6.
Well, only if the D4s were stuck together by a side. Point to point like an hourglass and you're all good. More divisibility with fewer faces results in greater affordance with smaller effective dice pools. If we want at least three times the number of faces in our dice pool, a D12 dice pool only requires 36 dice to get fairly stable results while a D20 dice pool needs 60, which is a significant difference.
@@MisterWebb The D20s I have already take up storage space far in excess of their usage. Those buggers do not pull their weight. Mmm D12, the connoisseur's dice of choice.
![[RPG] My Favourite Game System](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HKFLW-Vnl7Y/mqdefault.jpg)
The thought of connotations being had for different dice (like d20s for Frostgrave to evoke D&D) is a genius observation. God this podcast is so good
Glad you're finding it useful. Many rules and components have some degree of history either in or out of the hobby game world. A great example is the use of decks of cards in some wild west set games which instantly evoke the feel of cowboys playing poker.
This is the second dice mechanics video I've watched today and the second to slander the d8. I love them. I find the slight overhangs cute and the way they almost tesselate interesting
There can be few concepts more defining of a true geek than that of finding the overhang on a D8 cute.
Ill try to design a dice system for combat similar to king of tokyo, where you'll always do stuff, but you may reroll once any number of dice
Great discussion! When I think of dice pools I always think about d6 because it is the most standard die, and also young kids love rolling a lot od dice together. I my game which is a d6 dice pool I don’t use addition because it’s more friendly to my 4yo. It’s basically the more are you skilled in a thing the more dice you throw and if you get at least one 6 you succeed. My kids love it 🙂
Certainly dice pools with single success minimums are very easy and quick to engage with, you don't even need to keep once you've found a single success. It also gives you a lot of space to make "expansions" for your kids once they can handle a bit more complexity by introducing additional effects for more than one success or changing the target number. Its a really flexible system.
Imagine rolling a D4 and a D6. For exemple, a trrpg where instead of rolling and adding bonuses, your attributes or equipment grants 1d4 extra to your rolls
The maximum is a 10
Min 2
1 and 6
2 and 5
3 and 4
4 and 3 4 pairs that sums up to 7
1 and 5
2 and 4
3 and 3
4 and 2 are 4 pairs that sums up to 6
There are also 4 pairs to roll 5
To roll a 10 there is only one option
To roll a 9 there are 2 (6-3, 5-4)
To roll a 8 there are 3 (6-2, 5-3, 4-4)
To roll a 7 there are 4
To roll a 6 there are 4
To roll a 5 there are 4
To roll a 4 there are 3 (1-3, 2-2, 3-1)
To roll a 3 there are 2
To roll a 2 there is only one
Total 24 possibilities of dice combinations and a flat middle with 5, 6 and 7 having a possibility of 8% each.
2 +
3 ++
4 +++
5 ++++
6 ++++
7 ++++
8 +++
9 ++
10+
Sounds cool, this shows that adding a 1D4 instead of giving a fixed amount of bonus to a roll is much more interesting
Why does it show that its more interesting?
A couple of interesting games: Congo (Adventures in the heart of Africa) and Pulp Alley use dice pools with a fixed success number. (4 or 5 - I forget which success for which game).
Characters (Pulp Alley) or Units (Congo) roll a number of dice and count the successes.
Powerful units/characters roll big dice (d10) for things they're good at (Congo's Hunters or regular soldiers shooting their rifles) and smaller dice for things they're less good at (Tribal archers in close combat).
The number of dice in the pool reflects the strength of a unit (Congo) or the "level" of the Pulp Alley Character.
Summary:
No. of dice faces - reflects competence.
No. of dice - reflects unit strength.
Seeking successes against a fixed target number.
Its a cool system, though I guess it requires quite a range of dice in fairly high quantities.
@@RuleofCarnage
5 each of d6, d8 and d10 (Plus d12 for Pulp Alley if you're going all sci-Fi and Monsters).
The first time in years that I had to buy dice for a specific game.
Pulp Alley allows adjustment of less/more dice, and also up one/down one die type.
Example: One less die each time a character brawls or shoots per turn.
Other example: Never roll bigger dice than your health. (Reduced form 10 to 6 health, all your skills are rolling d6s).
It really cuts down on those annoying tables of plus and minus factors.
My game has a little tray of four dice for each figure so that players can see the target numbers without having to consult a table or chart (which is boring and involves maths).
Great discussion. One thing I am not a fan of with dice pools is the time to collect and count - and then possibly count a second time to check - a big pool of 20 or 30 dice.
That's reasonable and again its one of those reasons why making sure that your dice pool is a fairly widely available shape is a big help. It can be annoying finding 20 dice, but finding 12 and needed to re-roll 8 of them to make the remainder every time can be a killer.
Dice pools involve maths and are therefore bad.
I dont know, but dice are random. If you dont want randomness to impact your game, prabalbly we should look for a different combst system. For exemple, could we play a ttrpg with a mechanisma like slay the spire? Where you have a small deck of cards that you are certainly going to draw what you want frequently
You can want randomness to impact the game, but as a designer you might want to keep control of how much oddness and where it lands. Its like you can want salt in a meal, but you want to control how much.
Great Stuff~!
I like multiple poly dice pools.
Polyversal, Silent Death style.
Uses d4 to d12s.
Total vs DEF to see if you Hit.
You get three based on skill, weapon, and morale.
Damage is also found from those 3.
Based on the Weapon Type.
Doubles and Trips are your Crits.
One set of Dice rolled outcome and damage known.
A few DEF systems like Anti Missile requires a roll to intercept.
Force on Force used d4-d12, with 4s being needed to Succeed.
Cover and such mods by shifting die type up or down.
These systems allows the rules to cover a large spread, from Primitive Weapon, Next to No Training, and about to give up, to Decent Weapon, Basic Training, and Standard Morale, to Best Tech Known, Highest Trained, and Over the top motivation.
And all the combos in between.
Thus most any Force can be set by a few dice of different types.
In all three, 4s are rare :)
How can you not have at least 15-20 D20s.
Roleplay some :)
I get the it has to be a d6 to get GW player to look, just do not like it.
I do not like the GW system at all.
Really do not like constraints of D6s.
Most systems 1 Always Missed, 6 Always Hits.
So Only 4 Slots matter and any modifier becomes very powerful.
I would be fine with most D6s never used again.
Then Layer on the GW ReRoll, 1s then Misses, then Wounds, Then Foe, Rerolls 1's to save and throw another one Reroll anyway.
But if we all liked the same stuff it would be dull.
Worse die roll I have seen, 30d6, no 6s.
I really think that the GW experience has done a lot to slander the humble d6. It sometimes feels like people discount them due to the worst possible implementation of their variance and affordability. I don't think its a question of using d6 to attract GW players so much as not using other dice to avoid driving away non-hardcore players. I think that d6 are the default, so moving away from that really needs to be justified.
I'm designing a TTRPG inspired by Pokerole, which uses a d6 dice pool where you must roll 4+ to achieve successes, and DC depends on number of successes.
I want to modify this so that the dice increase like in DCC [D6->d8->d10->d12->?] for epic levels of play. The Difficulty Class would also slowly improve to needing 5+ or 6+ on top of needing more dice to succeed [meaning commoners could never do this, essentially]
I just need some examples of how this would work in practice
I assure you, that is not a lot of D20s for a person to own. It has to be, or I have a problem.
Not a problem as such, just a bit much to assume a random gamer will have.
@@RuleofCarnage agreed. I was just self-deprecating. :)
This was my first time viewing...I think. I've been sifting RUclips for talks and takes on dice systems. No surprise I'm faffing about with my own game. I'm pretty secure in using d6 dice pools. Like Mike, I'm familiar with buckets-o-dice; the 'o' is for Orks. So, my question is: How many D6s are too many for a dice pool using numbers of success to scale the degree of success? We've been pretty set with 5 as an upper limit. If your 'hits' are 6s for instance.
Personally, I'd say that 5 is quite low, at that point its still impossible to get a full spread of results so, maybe counter intuitively, things get less chaotic with more dice. Of course, if you're scaling success a lucky result can seem quite spikey, but I'd be inclined to cap that on the degrees rather than on the number of dice.
I so agree about the abomination that's a D4.
Doesn't roll, drops and sticks, and any that miss the table become lethal caltrops.
d8, d12 and d20 could all be marked with 1-4.
It's not hard to find d8 or d12 dice marked 1-4, I have a few of each. Probably are some d20s out there as well.
7:28 I rolling two n sided dice and adding their result will always have a most probable result of n+1 with 2 and 2n being the most rare. I'm not sure about rolling two dice that don't have the same number of sides though.
Sure, but the question is whether a player can calculate the odds of rolling, for example, over 11 with 2d8 in the middle of a game, or whether the spread of odds for 2d6 from 6 to 8 is roughly the same as the spread from 8 to 10 for 2d8. Players have a good feel for the odds of not only a 2, 7 and 12 on 2d6, but for a 9, 4, 10 or any other possible number. While they can have a sort of sense of 2, 9 and 16 for 2d8 I don't think they can have the same handle on 4, 6 and 13, for example.
Let me try, you're rolling D4 and D6
The maximum is a 10
Min 2
1 and 6
2 and 5
3 and 4
4 and 3 4 pairs that sums up to 7
1 and 5
2 and 4
3 and 3
4 and 2 are 4 pairs that sums up to 6
There are also 4 pairs to roll 5
To roll a 10 there is only one option
To roll a 9 there are 2 (6-3, 5-4)
To roll a 8 there are 3 (6-2, 5-3, 4-4)
To roll a 7 there are 4
To roll a 6 there are 4
To roll a 5 there are 4
To roll a 4 there are 3 (1-3, 2-2, 3-1)
To roll a 3 there are 2
To roll a 2 there is only one
Total 24 possibilities of dice combinations and a flat middle with 5, 6 and 7 having a possibility of 8% each.
2 +
3 ++
4 +++
5 ++++
6 ++++
7 ++++
8 +++
9 ++
10+
Sounds cool, this shows that adding a 1D4 instead of giving a fixed amount of bonus to a roll is much more interesting
"Most people don't own enough D20s" - Hooold my Beer!!!
Whatever method you used to record seems to only be pushing audio out of the left channel
Yeah, Zoom only records in mono, generally I remember to pan to center, but not always.
I don't know why, but hearing people talk about their emotional reactions to dice is a fascinating discussion, and I'd like to nominate the D16 recently forced upon bloodbowl players - it is a crime against good sense and should not exist! Does the love/hate apply only to the die, or is it an instinctive reaction to something fundamental to the polyhedron? Does Mike also hate the Egyptian pyramids 🤔 (There's a game idea - Egyptian rulers racing to build the most magnificent mausoleum using a D4 pool!)
I'm pretty sure all my close friends have emotional reactions to dice, so it feels pretty natural, like having an emotional reaction to great music. I'm not aware of Mike having a great dislike of the pyramids at Giza, though I will say that were I ever to see two of them jammed together I suspect I would not be glad to witness it.
I also find d4s to be revolting, but I also despise d8s and d10s. I began gaming with D&D in 1987 and therefore feel a nostalgic affection towards the d20, as do almost all roleplayers.
In the new version of the Cortex system (e.g. Firefly RPG), you roll a bunch of dice for your dice pool, but only use the top two results which are added. So getting a d12 or d10 in a dice pool made up of a bunch of d6, is a big deal. You gain a decent chance to hit a total, the other side just can't reach.
Warm regards, Rick.
That's an interesting idea that puts me in mind of the 7TV dice pool system, but certainly dropping in poly dice mixes that up. I'm not sure about pushing it out of another player's reach in a minis game unlike an RPG, but as one of an incremental set of results it could work.
@@RuleofCarnage
Well I over simplified a bit. In that game, whenever possible, the NPC's roll first, then the PC's try to beat them. But the point is that getting medium sized dice (d6, d8) is not that hard, but getting larger dice is a big deal. You would need 4 or 5 d6 and d8, and a couple more of the other sizes is plenty.
Warm regards, Rick.
need an opinion somewhat related to that:
Is it weird to resolve 95% with one die-type (like D10) and just for specific things ask the player to roll 2D6?
Because that would solve a "problem" i have... but it feels weird somehow^^
Frankly, yes, it would be weird. I assume that's because you want to make one result more likely and others less likely, is there no way you can do it with 2D10?
@@RuleofCarnage thanks for the feedback... and i guess there will be a way, i just have to think about it more^^
@@tofu4634 Its a little clunky, but 2D5 is basically 2D6 and wouldn't need new dice.
"That's a lot of d20s for a person to own. ... That's like 15 d20s." I did a quick count of the number of d20s I have just on the bookshelves within arm's reach of the chair I sit in to GM. There are at least 135. I probalby missed a few. There are more in in a cupboard and on shelves in another room...🤣
That feels as though it might be more d20s than are entirely necessary.
@@RuleofCarnage You may be correct. Maybe it's about time I gave some dice away.
@@marktaylor7162 Or glue them all together into a massive and nightmarish D80?
@@RuleofCarnage I think I'll pass on that suggestion, but it did make me laugh out loud. 😆
One can never get an instant (and visceral) reaction with dice pools, because the result is not instantly apparent.
It’s far more entertaining to have a target number and a binary outcome, rather than having to do the maths involved with comparing two characters’ scores and determining success level based on the difference, which involves maths and charts.
Its tough, particularly outside of boxed games, but it is possible in theory. For example a set of custom dice with colour coded faces where a dice pool coming up mostly red would mean failure could give that effect when you see a sea of red. That would be tricky to do mechanically since it would limit some design space, but it could be at least possible.
@@MisterWebb Those choices about granularity are always a matter of taste, I personally believe that so long as you know what you're going for and the work results in rewards then it can be okay.
Today I watched a video of two guys playing an old school D&D module, and there were shouts of joy when a panther rolled a series of very low numbers, allowing the PC to survive.
You just can’t get that with a d6, unless you go for the ‘exploding dice’ mechanic where a critical hit allows another roll, but even that cannot compare to the thrill of rolling a natural 20.
Look at how many roleplaying-related brands incorporate the d20 into their name or logo - maybe that doesn’t mean so much to you guys thanks to those nasty knobs at GW, but rest assured, it’s a thing.
I recently introduced my system to a friend who had never even heard of tabletop gaming or D&D and he was immediately hooked on the d20 - he kept just rolling it for fun (he also thought the d4 was cool, so clearly has poor taste in regards to dice, however).
I totally get the attraction of d20s, and their history in RPGs, but in relation specifically to the usage of dice pools they're pretty horrible. For the roll of a single dice, sure, but if you ask someone to possess 60 D20, much less roll them, then they're kind of a nightmare. Not to mention that reading 60 D20 results at speed is no fun at all.
Would love to see a game that used a D4 dice pool, just sayin...
Oh god no, why would you do such a thing? Just so that you always come equipped with caltrops? No no no no...
Too many digs about Imperial vs Metric.
34:40
Use a pool of d12 and have it become a pool of d10 slowly and then a d8 and then a d6 and then a d4. you just build up an intuition for how the distribution works. its not that far from human performance in general.
That's certainly an interesting option, also if it's the same number of dice I would assume that results get more stable as the number of faces decreases. I guess the main issue would be how many odd polyhedrals you're asking people to acquire. Asking someone to hunt up 30D12 is one thing, asking them to round up 30D12, 30D10, 30D8 and 30D4 is quite a request.
@@RuleofCarnage the MOST it would be 3 of each. I think every dnd player has them.
@@DareToWonder So, you're not really trying to leverage a dice pool as such, more the dice themselves. I can see how that would have some strong interesting affordances available, cool.
@@RuleofCarnage yes, no, well kinda im gonna have to show you more to explain, I'm paul in the discord
Whilst I love infinity I hate how inscrutable the calculations are.
If you have two weapons to aro with that have different damage burst and range mods, it can be impossible to know which to pick to achieve the result you want.
If all I need is to win the f2f but I don't mind not wounding vs I don't care if its a long shot I need to roll a weapon that if it hits it will likely kill... Nearly all players can't work that out by themselves.
To make those decisions I have to commit a bunch of examples of weapon comparisons to memory so I can guess at the option that is more likely to be the actual dice odds I want to roll... But that's not great is it
I really think that's a significant part of selecting a dice or any random generation system, you need to make sure that players have a solid grasp on what the odds are of their actions succeeding or failing for them to be able to intelligently choose plans of action. Once players lose that grasp they can have a sense of shooting into the dark or just working on a vague sense that "this character is meant to be good at this, so its probably a good idea", which yes, can be an issue.
@@RuleofCarnage My game design revolves around a high level of randomness and not much decision making, because I want a quick, lighthearted game whereby players are not trying to outwit each other with cunning strategies and gotchas, but are rather just having two squads charge and hack each other to bits.
I’m too old and too busy to be pouring over lists or developing complex plans, so I just want cool minehs fighting on the table without any high level of emotional investment.
@@MisterWebb It sounds as though Hobgoblin would work very well for you, Mike is quite a fan of that sort of "sit back" fun in tabletop gaming, while I think I'm usually more interested in things being a bit more "sit forwards".
LEFT EAR
Yeah, I missed panning across on a few videos over time since Zoom went from recording stereo to mono only.
Dice pools/games... CRAPS, learn the game and you hae no choice but to understand dice and probabilities.
Sorry to be a pedant, but two d4s stuck together would only have six sides, not eight. I totally agree that d8 are horrid, but I also dislike d10s …
I agree that d12s are underrated and underused, but have to disagree about d20s, which is so revered that it has some taken on some kind of supernatural power.
D20s are superior to d12s because they make it easy to calculate percentage probabilities.
I don’t see how a d12 being divisible by three is somehow advantageous. One does one ever have to divide the result of a die role?
D20s are divisible by 2, 4, 5 and 10, which is (marginally) easier than the d12’s 2, 3, 4 and 6.
Well, only if the D4s were stuck together by a side. Point to point like an hourglass and you're all good.
More divisibility with fewer faces results in greater affordance with smaller effective dice pools. If we want at least three times the number of faces in our dice pool, a D12 dice pool only requires 36 dice to get fairly stable results while a D20 dice pool needs 60, which is a significant difference.
@@RuleofCarnageFunny looking back at this now, as I am currently designing a game that uses D12s.
Also 21:52 you need more D20s.
@@MisterWebb The D20s I have already take up storage space far in excess of their usage. Those buggers do not pull their weight. Mmm D12, the connoisseur's dice of choice.
Playing online - the math is automathic with computer dice rollers.
Even phones now have dice apps
True, but that's not really something to be able to rely on people using, particularly when trying to achieve openness and fairness.