Building an RPG system
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@Atazhaia and there are no munchkins who save up all level points (or whatever is used for that purpose) so they can buy the most powerful skills immediately at the cost of really sucking early on? I know tabletops are a different environment, but that's what I always do in video games whenever they let me.
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@Gąska From playing it I learnt that the best strategy for spending skill points is to get the commonly used basic skills (which are cheap for everyone) to 15-ish asap to have a reliable source of XP, and then focus on weapon skills and spells and such things. XP in DoD is gained on succesful skill use.
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@Atazhaia said in Building an RPG system:
@Gąska From playing it I learnt that the best strategy for spending skill points is to get the commonly used basic skills (which are cheap for everyone) to 15-ish asap to have a reliable source of XP, and then focus on weapon skills and spells and such things. XP in DoD is gained on succesful skill use.
Some releases of DoD also tell the DM to give general XP for playing well, such as playing your character even when detrimental. Or just doing awesome things. I kinda like doing that, as it not only makes the game more roleplaying, but also lets people build skills that are not in common use.
Then there's the whole HP deal in DoD as well, and the sort of stuff you can buy or roll with those.
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@Carnage I know we're gonna play a newer edition of DoD in the future, but for now it has just been the ´91 rules. And our DM doesn't do heroic points, because he finds the whole thing stupid. He also decided to not use the crit effects as in the book, and instead do plain double damage like D&D because rolling more dice is fun!
Although for fun with damage rolls using many dice there's always Eon...
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@Atazhaia said in Building an RPG system:
@Carnage I know we're gonna play a newer edition of DoD in the future, but for now it has just been the ´91 rules. And our DM doesn't do heroic points, because he finds the whole thing stupid. He also decided to not use the crit effects as in the book, and instead do plain double damage like D&D because rolling more dice is fun!
Although for fun with damage rolls using many dice there's always Eon...
Games with unblimited die rolls are also fun if you like rolling. I DMed a short bit for a Viking that had unlimited damage rolls. It was an interesting system that aimed for realism and historical accuracy.
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@Carnage Viking and Eon are made by the same people, so the basic system is quite similar. Just Eon is high fantasy and has a lot more variables. As seen by the character sheet being 4 pages...
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@Gąska said in Building an RPG system:
Goddamn you're so hard to talk to. You don't want minute 1 character to use
high-levelhigh-power spells. Better now?I’m not trying to be, honest :) But I got the impression we were talking past each other a bit, with you apparently feeling a game should have levels.
In any case, I don’t have a problem with starting characters having powerful spells — provided there is something limiting their use. In a system that uses magic points to cast spells, that might be a high enough cost that players could cast the spell, if they don’t care about doing without spells for a good while while the MP pool recharges, for example. Or they could cast cheaper spells instead and so have be able to cast more of them.
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@Gurth In my experience, that sort of thing leads to unsatisfied players. They either over-specialize (casting only those big spells) and then complain that they have nothing to do or they only do the little things and complain that nothing they do matters.
A scaffolded acquisition cost (could be "build points", could be "levels", whatever) fixes this so it flows nicely.
More choice at character creation isn't always better, because things get boiled down to hard numbers. And then it becomes a solved problem and everything else is a trap.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Building an RPG system:
@Gurth In my experience, that sort of thing leads to unsatisfied players. They either over-specialize (casting only those big spells) and then complain that they have nothing to do or they only do the little things and complain that nothing they do matters.
You may be right, but keep in mind that my perception of magic systems for games is (fairly heavily) coloured by Shadowrun, which gives you fatigue if you cast spells. This generally means players think twice about a casting powerful spell unless they need to, because they’ll be not worth much (not just magic-wise but in general) for a good while if they don’t manage to resist the heavy fatigue from that powerful spell. Not to mention risk knocking themselves out by doing more magic.
If casting spells only limits your ability to do more magic, then the cost is not so severe and players would be more likely to just use up their magic points and then contribute in other ways.
More choice at character creation isn't always better, because things get boiled down to hard numbers. And then it becomes a solved problem and everything else is a trap.
That rather depends on the players’ mindset as well, though, as has already been talked about. Sure, min-maxers would just take the optimum solution (for whatever they’re looking for), but players wanting to get into character are a lot less likely to do that.
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@Gąska said in Building an RPG system:
Goddamn you're so hard to talk to.
Funny how you keep saying this to so many different people!
If everyone around you is hard to communicate effectively with...
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Building an RPG system:
@Gąska said in Building an RPG system:
Goddamn you're so hard to talk to.
Funny how you keep saying this to so many different people!
Whole three of them!
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So after some more pondering I am getting closer to having a draft for a magic system, only that I got sidetracked onto other mechanics on the way too, as it kinda all floats together. So I have been looking at skill checks and how to do them. Most would be familiar to D&D and the d20 -> higher is better system. But I like the lower is better systems more. DoD uses d20 -> lower is better, with roll equal to or lower than your skill to succeed. But I also like how Eon solves difficulty checks.
Basically, stats in Eon works like in D&D/DoD, having the usual range of values. But instead of using a d20 they use d6, with more or less dice to do difficulty. So a normal difficulty skill check is 3d6. Something is harder? Add a dice to make it 4d6. Very hard? 5d6. And can keep going like that. Making easier isn't that many available steps, though, going down to 2d6 and 1d6. I like that system because it makes changing the difficulty of something a bit more elegant than a flat modifier to the roll. And the goal is to roll equal or below you skill. Crit would be something like half or more dice showing 1 on a successful roll and critical fail being half or more showing 6 on an unsucessful roll.
The thing I'm removing from the Eon system is unlimited rolls, where every 6 is rerolled with two dice. That can go both ways, either turn a successful roll into a fail or turn an unsucessful roll into succeeding depending on luck.
Me and my DM also talked a bit about soft and hard limits the other day. The overly punishing DoD where running out of psyche (MP) will kill you isn't very fun, combined with running out of HP will just make you faint. It's a bit silly. I looked a bit at Eon combat mechanics there. While overly complicated, they make it progressively harder to stay alive/stay conscious the more damage you take. There is a hard limit, but hitting it without failing a check before it is very difficult. So I think HP and MP is more of how far you can push yourself before it becomes a bad idea to continue, that keeping on going while HP or MP is below 0 is possible but may cause permanent damage.
The tl:dr for Eon combat is:
There is blood loss (HP), bleeding, pain and trauma. Each comes in "ranks" where every time you go up a rank you have to roll against constitution to not faint (pain) or die (trauma). First rank is 1 dice, second is 2, etc all the way up to 7. Hitting what would be rank 8 is the hard limit of instant death/fainting. Being hit mostly causes a bit of blood loss, but the dangerous stuff is the serious damages, one for every 10 points of damage inflicted. Which tend to range from flesh wound to decapitation, causing various degrees of blood loss, bleeding, pain and trauma. An arrow to the face tend to rank rather highly on the not-good list, with a high risk of causing a lethal amount of trauma. Each rank reached also adds a dice to the difficulty of skill checks, meaning combat gets harder and harder the more damage you take. Also bleeding is the other one that will kill you fast, because that goes to losing blood per round of combat and running out of blood is also very much lethal.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Building an RPG system:
More choice at character creation isn't always better, because things get boiled down to hard numbers. And then it becomes a solved problem and everything else is a trap.
Back when I played (a very long time ago) we had a simple system for dealing with this: GM rolled the characters for us. The rest of us just had to play from what we were dealt. There was no super-optimising munchkin-nery possible. The experience was actually pretty good too.
Naturally the game went totally off the rails in the first session due to a string of really bad rolls for almost the whole team.
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@Atazhaia said in Building an RPG system:
Basically, stats in Eon works like in D&D/DoD, having the usual range of values. But instead of using a d20 they use d6, with more or less dice to do difficulty. So a normal difficulty skill check is 3d6. Something is harder? Add a dice to make it 4d6. Very hard? 5d6. And can keep going like that. Making easier isn't that many available steps, though, going down to 2d6 and 1d6.
One major problem I have with systems where you add and remove dice, is that it makes it very difficult for the GM to adjust the difficulty without telling the players. If the difficulty can vary rather than the number of dice, you (as the GM) can do so very easily, for example to take into account things you would like to keep from the players, so as to surprise them later, or to give them a break.
For example: say there’s a spell that makes its subject harder to hit. NPC casts this on himself and a then PC attacks. In a DoD-like system, you would have to tell the player to roll an additional die, meaning everyone around the table knows something is up here that they didn’t expect. In a D&D-like system, you’d increase the difficulty for the roll and nobody would be the wiser, until they perhaps start noticing that attacks they feel should have hit, don’t …
Same with fudging the rolls to help the players: in a system where the difficulty gets adjusted, you can always add a secret little modifier, but if the difficulty is fixed and players can see the rolls, they always know how well or poorly they did.
Of course, even better is a system in which you can do both: change the number of dice and the difficulty. (Combined, this is one of my reasons for not liking Shadowrun 4th and later editions: they moved from dice pools with variable target numbers, to dice pools with fixed target numbers.)
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@Gurth The DM still got hidden rolls and can just roll additional dice behind his screen. But yeah, I may need to think a bit about how to solve hidden modifiers. I'm used to playing more transparently, where the players gets to do some rolls that are supposed to be hidden. We even get to do the occasional roll for the DM, like if an enemy rolls a 20 (total fail) we get to roll for how the enemy fucked up.
Also, Eon uses d6 (skill checks and damage) and d100 (everything else). DoD uses d20 for skill checks and a regular set of dice. So Eon is the one doing difficulty by number of dice, DoD is regular +/- on roll.
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@Gurth said in Building an RPG system:
DoD-like system,
@Gurth said in Building an RPG system:
D&D-like system,
This is not confusing at all.
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@PleegWat Yeah. I blame the people who named it Drakar och Demoner (Dragons and Demons). Makes it a bit confusing when talking about both that and Dungeons & Dragons at the same time.
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@Atazhaia said in Building an RPG system:
@Gurth The DM still got hidden rolls and can just roll additional dice behind his screen.
Giving away that something is going on, and deducting dice this way is difficult — the only way is for the GM to roll the whole test behind the screen, possibly while letting the players roll one with more dice, that the GM disregards entirely. Neither is ideal.
But yeah, I may need to think a bit about how to solve hidden modifiers. I'm used to playing more transparently, where the players gets to do some rolls that are supposed to be hidden. We even get to do the occasional roll for the DM, like if an enemy rolls a 20 (total fail) we get to roll for how the enemy fucked up.
Since I’m the GM all the time in my group (I’ve played from the other side of the screen for exactly one session in the last
… 12? years — something like that) my perspective is very much that of a GM who feels a system that doesn’t easily allow hidden modifiers is difficult to work with :)Also, Eon uses d6 (skill checks and damage) and d100 (everything else). DoD uses d20 for skill checks and a regular set of dice. So Eon is the one doing difficulty by number of dice, DoD is regular +/- on roll.
Got them mixed up, sorry — I never played or read either :)
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Been thinking a bit more and decided on d20 for skill checks. While I like the Eon system of d6 * difficulty, I also want to keep it playable with a standard set of dice (or a double standard set), so it's not arbitrary number of d6 just for the skill checks. In Eon it works since it uses just many d6 + d10/d100 but I feel I have use for more types of dice, so I'll just base my system around having two of each regular dice instead.
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@Atazhaia I may be a heretic, but here's how I feel.
The differences between a flat (ie 1d20 base) system and a bell curve (ie 3d6 base) are most significant as the target number approaches the bounds, because a linear approximation to the top of the curve is pretty decent in that small area. But IMO, if you're routinely asking for checks where they need a near-boundary-value to pass (in either direction), the system is already in a bad place. IMO, base success rates should hover around 50-60% for "normal" things (for whatever value of normal the system is designed for). Almost always "hitting" isn't fun, neither is almost always "missing". Actions that don't have much chance of failure should just be allowed to happen IMO.
Couple this with the fact that people are really really bad at statistics, especially if they're not tracking the numbers carefully over a long period of time. I ran a 4 hour D&D session yesterday. Each person maybe rolled a dozen total checks (2 5-round combats, plus a few other checks along the way). And the target numbers and the involved skills (including attacks) were so varied that they're distributions with quite different means. This means you'd need multiple sessions tracking all the rolls from each person to really assemble a good curve--any given session is firmly in the small-number regime.
So the differences between a flat and a bell curve aren't nearly as big as theorycrafters tend to believe. Sure, you can do the statistics, but talking about small (1-10%) differences over thousands of rolls means that for most campaigns (and especially most sessions) the differences are in the noise.
All of this means that I prefer simpler over more complicated. Complex dice systems are "more accurate", but only on the margins. But also take more time and effort, slowing down play. I strongly prefer more, simpler, less-impactful checks to fewer, more complex, higher-impact checks. But that's personal preference.
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@Benjamin-Hall Checks by their nature always have a boolean distribution. This even applies in the case of checks against a hidden pass or opposing checks. The only difference is that 3d6 has more granularity at the ends of the curve, so it has more options to represent lower odds than a 1d20.
As such I'd go for a flat curve (1d20 or 1d100) which expresses the chance to pass more clearly.
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@Benjamin-Hall Yeah, that's another problem with Eon. It's too complicated overall. The choice between 1d20 and 3d6 is not that big, but another benefit of d20 is you see straight away what the value is, only thing you may have to add is a difficulty modifier. Eon you have to add together all the values of the dice. Then Eon also has unlimited rolls, meaning any 6 is rerolled with one additional dice, keep going until no 6 or no way of passing the skill check. And if it's an attack, you roll damage (unlimited d6 damage roll), where you hit (d100) and for every 10 damage inflicted a bonus damage (d10). And depending on the effect of the damage the DM has to roll saving throws for the monster to see if it can keep fighting, which is also an unlimited skill check vs chock value...
What I am planning to nab from Eon is the concept of bonus damage effect, but rework it to be based off damage inflicted with a single strike, so damage inflicted above a certain value will have an extra effect from broken bone to decapitation (depending on body part hit), with an increased chance for worse effect the more damage is inflicted instead of being one effect for every x damage. I am not a fan of breakpoints, I want every point to be useful.
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The problem I have with the d20 system is that it makes the d20 essentially supreme. It introduces a huge amount of randomness that overrides other factors to a highly unrealistic degree.
Imagine an arm-wrestling contest between a 90-pound weakling and a bodybuilder at peak human strength. In reality, everyone knows the scrawny guy has no chance whatsoever at winning. Under the d20 system, though, you'd expect him to win about 25% of the time, because randomness.
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@Mason_Wheeler so don't call for rolls when the outcome isn't significantly uncertain.
The rolls aren't there to simulate reality, they're to resolve uncertainty in a simple way to keep the action flowing. Like rules, rolls are tools to be used, not dictators.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Building an RPG system:
Imagine an arm-wrestling contest between a 90-pound weakling and a bodybuilder at peak human strength. In reality, everyone knows the scrawny guy has no chance whatsoever at winning. Under the d20 system, though, you'd expect him to win about 25% of the time, because randomness.
https://youtu.be/oSynJyq2RRo?t=1840
Edit: Oh, and of course from ca. 26:15 minutes as well.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Building an RPG system:
The problem I have with the d20 system is that it makes the d20 essentially supreme. It introduces a huge amount of randomness that overrides other factors to a highly unrealistic degree.
Imagine an arm-wrestling contest between a 90-pound weakling and a bodybuilder at peak human strength. In reality, everyone knows the scrawny guy has no chance whatsoever at winning. Under the d20 system, though, you'd expect him to win about 25% of the time, because randomness.
Had to look up what the d20 system says about those checks.
When two characters arm wrestle, for example, the stronger character simply wins. In the case of identical scores, make opposed Strength checks.
The other way of resolving is by going with success difference. Using base ability modifiers that would be d20-1 vs d20+4, or if doing it like a regular skill check d20+8 vs d20+18 if I have been reading the rules correctly. I am however not using the d20 system because I think it's a stupid system, I'm going with DoD which counts success as
result <= skillat normal difficulty so the winner would be whoever has the highest score ofskill - resultusing highest skill as a tiebreaker.
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@Atazhaia ...wow, does it actually give that specific example?
The other way of resolving is by going with success difference. Using base ability modifiers that would be d20-1 vs d20+4
Yes, that's the point I was using arm wrestling as an example to illustrate, not realizing that the rules explicitly covered that specific concept.
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The problem with rules giving specific examples like that is whether they apply more generally. Should a D&D Strength 18 character automatically beat a Strength 6 character in weightlifting? Yes. Should a D&D Intelligence 18 character automatically outsmart an Intelligence 6 character? I kind of doubt it …
I’m not a fan of automatic results, though, unless it’s really obvious that would be the case. IMHO characters should be allowed to at least attempt feats that are within reasonable human ability. A PC trying to lift a railway locomotive will fail (unless you’re playing a superhero game, of course) but other than extremes like that, I prefer rolling the dice. If results get skewed too far into the unrealistic, though, that indicates to me that the rules don’t give sufficient weight to one side or the other.
To stick with the example: if a Strength 6 character wins at arm-wrestling from a Strength 18 one a quarter of the time, there needs to be some kind of modifier that accounts for the relative Strengths, to penalise the Strength 6 character. In cases like this, it should probably result in the Strength 6 character having no chance of winning anyway, but what about a Strength 17 character arm-wrestling a Strength 18 one? IMHO the 17 character should have a chance of winning and not lose by fiat like in the d20 rules, but by a straight-up roll their chances would be almost equal, which doesn’t feel right either.
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@Gurth said in Building an RPG system:
Should a D&D Intelligence 18 character automatically outsmart an Intelligence 6 character? I kind of doubt it …
Is the task in question something done by raw INT or is there some modicum of other factor as well (such as specific learned knowledge)? The randomness might represent the chance that the low-INT guy happens to actually know the answer to this one anyway (or that the high-INT guy doesn't know it).
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@dkf said in Building an RPG system:
@Gurth said in Building an RPG system:
Should a D&D Intelligence 18 character automatically outsmart an Intelligence 6 character? I kind of doubt it …
Is the task in question something done by raw INT or is there some modicum of other factor as well (such as specific learned knowledge)? The randomness might represent the chance that the low-INT guy happens to actually know the answer to this one anyway (or that the high-INT guy doesn't know it).
I'd suggest rather than doing away with the roll entirely, to amplify the modifier for pure skill tests. Say, for armwrestling, you use a ×3 modifier amplification so a character that normally gets +3 on his roll now gets +9, and a character that normally gets -2 now gets -6.
And in D&D context wouldn't a trivia quiz be WIS rather than INT?
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@PleegWat int is about memory. Wis is perception and self/other distinction. So trivia is pure int.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Building an RPG system:
All of this means that I prefer simpler over more complicated. Complex dice systems are "more accurate", but only on the margins. But also take more time and effort, slowing down play. I strongly prefer more, simpler, less-impactful checks to fewer, more complex, higher-impact checks. But that's personal preference.
While I agree with your intellectual analysis, I've got to say that in my personal experience, the dice system also somewhat impacts the actual gaming experience.
Let me explain with an example: I played a lot of Star Wars D6, where you roll a variable number of dices (to try and get a result higher than the difficulty of the action), usually somewhere between 2 and 5. I've noticed several times that when players have a once-in-a-scenario (or campaign) opportunity to use a huge dice pool (because they're using a unique item (weapon) with a large dice number, or whatever one-off bonus they can get), the simple fact of gathering all those objects in your hand and throwing them does make it feel like it's a unique moment, much more than simply rolling a single dice and adding a huge bonus. I remember one occasion where a player threw something like 20 or 25 dice (I was the GM and kind-of cheated to get them to grow the dice pool unreasonably, but actually that just goes to show that I was also feeling this effect!) and everyone was jumping excitedly on their seat while we scrambled around the table trying to find that many dice.
Conversely, in a d20 system, there is something more powerful in rolling a 1 (or 20) than in rolling e.g. all 1's on 3d6. Dunno why, but it seems to be more noticeable and talked about after the game. It also lends itself better to all kind of funny/stupid superstitions about a "lucky" dice or "burning through the 1's" etc.
It's purely psychological (and this specific example above obviously relies on a system where you roll a variable number of dice!), but in the end a game is just about our minds, so it is relevant.
I'm not saying that to favour one specific dice system, but just to say that there is more than the purely analytical numbers you get in a given system. The dice can (possibly, sometimes, depending on people, etc. etc.) contribute more than just being an RNG to a game.
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@remi in d20 systems that often happens with damage dice. I had a player whose eyes would light up every time he got to fireball (8d6) or a crit sneak attack (had one that was close to 20 dice once).
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@Benjamin-Hall Yes, any system where you can throw different dice (or number of) depending on situations tend to have this effect (I used "d20" above as a shortcut for any system that uses a d20, not specifically the canonical d20 system...). I vaguely remember a system where the skill level was basically the dice you threw, from d4 for beginner to d20 (or maybe even more?) for masters. That also had the same effect of "finally I can reach for the big dice!" with a spark in the eye.
Also I noticed the opposite effect with the D6 system: a player used to rolling 4-5 dice who suddenly got a malus and could only roll 1 dice looked utterly miserable letting that tiny single piece of plastic fall out of his hand, rather than confidently and noisily rolling a handful.
Younger players tend to be more sensitive to this effect (as a very broad rule), which is one reason why I used almost exclusively D6 when I GM'ed for younger (usually new) players. The basic system is simple enough to be understood quickly, and there is this very tactile and material aspect of rolling dice that generally appeals to young ones.
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@remi More dice is fun. But always rolling a bunch of dice is time-consuming. IMO, things that happen frequently should be simple, while things that happen less frequently can be more complex.
So "tests" (which are the mainstay) should be simple, but since many (if not most) rolls don't involve damage/effect size rolls, those can be bigger.
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@remi said in Building an RPG system:
I vaguely remember a system where the skill level was basically the dice you threw, from d4 for beginner to d20 (or maybe even more?) for masters. That also had the same effect of "finally I can reach for the big dice!" with a spark in the eye.
A few off the top of my head:
Deadlands (the original editions anyway) work a bit like that: each ability (strength, toughness, etc. — though the names are different) has a die type associated with it, and each skill a level. You use the die type for the ability that the GM thinks is most appropriate to the task at hand, and a number of them equal to the applicable skill; abilities also have a level, which you roll in the same way when making a check with just that. The dice are open-ended, and only the highest-rolling die in the check is used — the individual rolls are not added together. Difficulty is determined by the GM and modifiers added, but adding or subtracting dice is rare.
That is, if you have Cognition 3d8 and Trackin’ 2, you roll two eight-sided dice when trying to follow someone’s trail, but three dice for a “pure” Cognition check. (You could also use those three dice to substitute for Trackin’ skill if you don’t have that, but at a penalty.)Earthdawn assigns levels to everything, and each level has a combination of dice associated with it. Skills have levels and add to the level of an associated ability (generally, always the same one), and you roll the dice for the sum of the ability, skill, and other bonuses you may have. The rolls of each of the individual dice is open-ended, and their final totals are added together. For example, 3 is 1D4, 4 is 1D6, 5 is 1D8, 6 is 1D10, 7 is 1D12, 8 is 2D6, 9 is 1D8+1D6, 10 is 1D10+1D6, and so on (off the top of my head, I may be slightly off). Difficulty is adjusted by either giving the character modifiers on the dice value (that is, the type of dice rolled, not the total roll), or by changing the target number, or both.
Thus, if you have Dexterity 5 and Lock Picking 4, you would roll the dice for a total of 9. (Incidentally, I have seen a roll of 1D10+1D8 reach a total of 77 under this system!)The Deadlands system doesn’t so much cause the effect you describe, because the number of dice rolled doesn’t change that much, but players do often derive some satisfaction from rolling more dice than an opponent, for example, or from raising a skill level so they get more dice permanently. The Earthdawn system sees players rolling higher and/or more dice quite a lot, and my impression is that people like it when they get to roll, say, 1D10+1D8 instead of their normal 1D8+1D6 because they have some special bonus from somewhere.
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@Gurth I might have been remembering Earthdawn, which I do remember seeing around (Deadlands, I know about it but have never seen it played, so it's unlikely that it would have popped up in discussions in my gaming circle). Though I never played Earthdawn either, but that fit my memories of that system (that I very vaguely remember from having heard/read about, not from having used it myself).
I think I would also like that very specific aspect of Earthdawn, nursing the unusual dice and reaching for it when I finally get the opportunity.
@Benjamin-Hall said in Building an RPG system:
@remi More dice is fun. But always rolling a bunch of dice is time-consuming. IMO, things that happen frequently should be simple, while things that happen less frequently can be more complex.
100% agree. It kind of works with D6 because usual actions are 1-5 dice (and even more often 2-3), and because d6 are easy to sum (you group pairs reaching 5 or 10, numbers are small enough you can do the maths instinctively, it's the kind of dice everyone is familiar with etc.), but even then with people more... let's say "mathematically challenged", it sometimes is a bit of a drag on the flow of the game.
And systems using variable dice (like Earthdawn) tend to magnify this effect as before each roll you have to think about, and find, the appropriate dice. More fun in rolling, but more drag on the game. Single-dice systems (usually d20 or 2xd10 based) don't have this problem, but miss on the fun as well. As always, I guess a lot is about balancing conflicting aspects of the whole gaming session, and personal preference...
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@remi said in Building an RPG system:
I think I would also like that very specific aspect of Earthdawn, nursing the unusual dice and reaching for it when I finally get the opportunity.
The dice system turned out to transplant very well into D&D3, when we did that in a campaign once. This because we had some players who wanted to play that game, while some — mainly me — weren’t overly big fans of its dice rolling system. On my suggestion we used ED’s instead, simply using the D&D bonus to determine the dice to roll directly as per ED, and ended up with what I felt to be a much better game system than d20.
100% agree. It kind of works with D6 because usual actions are 1-5 dice (and even more often 2-3), and because d6 are easy to sum (you group pairs reaching 5 or 10, numbers are small enough you can do the maths instinctively, it's the kind of dice everyone is familiar with etc.)
You would (or probably wouldn’t) be surprised how few people seem to “get” that part of dice-rolling, even if their hobby heavily involves it … Most I’ve seen add up the individual dice in some random order, doing the counting (semi-)out loud.
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@Gurth said in Building an RPG system:
You would (or probably wouldn’t) be surprised how few people seem to “get” that part of dice-rolling
I indeed amn't, I did witness it very often. When I was introducing young ones to RPG (with D6), I usually pointed this out to them on the first few rolls to help them count quickly, but then it all depends how maths-savvy they are. Some get it almost immediately, others will always count dices one by one, which sometimes takes forever...
Up to 2d6, after enough rolls most people semi-instinctively "know" the results (I suspect we basically learn the visual patterns and the numbers associated, without really counting). Some people seem to manage it with 3d6, given how fast they are to call the result, but I think from 4d6 onwards, it's always some form of counting.
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@remi said in Building an RPG system:
Some people seem to manage it with 3d6
I can, most of the time. Doing a few test rolls just now to ensure I only post truthful information here, though, I observe that part of the trick to this is probably because with 3D6, one of dice keeps rolling a little longer than the other two, so you can already “see” the 2D6. It’s then easy to add the third to it once that is also clear. But
to rolling the dice with my eyes closed and only looking when I hear they’ve stopped rolling :)I think from 4d6 onwards, it's always some form of counting.
Same. There probably are people who can add them up almost instinctively too, but they’re probably very few and far between.
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@remi Based off my experiences with Eon, the large damage rolls and high difficulty rolls can get very annoying fast. Critting and you get to roll 10d6 damage may be fun, but then you need to add together all the dice too, reroll any 6 which adds more dice, then take the damage and divide by 10 to get all the extra damage, and the DM has to do additional math based off the extra damage. So, yeah...
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@Atazhaia said in Building an RPG system:
@remi Based off my experiences with Eon, the large damage rolls and high difficulty rolls can get very annoying fast. Critting and you get to roll 10d6 damage may be fun, but then you need to add together all the dice too, reroll any 6 which adds more dice, then take the damage and divide by 10 to get all the extra damage, and the DM has to do additional math based off the extra damage. So, yeah...
That’s why a system like that of Deadlands works better: you don’t care about all the dice, only about the one that rolled highest (open-ended). Something like Shadowrun’s is similar: you don’t care what the total roll is, only how many of the dice beat the target number.
(Of course, both also have cases where you do add up the rolls, like in damage rolls in Deadlands, but that’s not usually a very large number of dice or rolls.)
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@Gurth One thing about the dice pool (and other variable-dice) games that's left out is that you're offloading a lot of the complexity into determining how many dice to roll in the first place. And that can be exceedingly complex, because it's situational.
As I see it, there are a few phases of steps in making a check. Some systems eliminate some of them, while others have the whole spectrum.
Deciding what dice to roll
In the d20 systems, this is generally trivial. Either a d20 or whatever the weapon/spell says to roll. It rarely changes. Same with a 3d6 system. 5e D&D mutates that to add advantage/disadvantage (in either case, roll 2d20, the difference is in which of the results you keep). But those cancel out at the stack level--N advantage and M disadvantage == normal roll for all N, M > 0. Dice pools, on the other hand, have significant and situational rules as to how many dice you can roll in any given scenario, and require active decision making. Which is slow.Rolling the dice and generating a dice result
This generally is O(N), where N is the number of dice. The rolling part is trivial, as long as you have enough dice. And if you don't, get more. It's the adding or examining step that matters. For small N (1-3), adding is pretty darn trivial, about the same cost as looking at each die and comparing to the target number. It quickly gets obnoxious as N increases.Of course, if you have exploding dice, the overhead goes up a lot, because you need a comparison and possible reroll for a whole bunch (and an unpredictable number) of dice.
Determining and including modifiers
Some systems don't generally have modifiers separate from the dice themselves. Others have very complex and situational modifiers. In 3e D&D, for instance, this is where things bog down for a couple reasons. First, the modifiers are small and situational. +1 from this (which depends on X, Y, and Z, unless Q or P), -2 from that (which also has its conditional steps), etc. Second, the combination of the modifiers is generally very large. Often to the point of swallowing the dice roll almost entirely. So you have to constantly track all these changing variables (so you can't just note them as static things on your sheet) that are individually small but collectively huge.So dice pool systems move the complexity from the modifier step to the decision step. Sure, the actual counting is easy (a 20-dice pool where you just have to check which ones are > TN is easier than adding up 20d6, for instance), but the cost got moved into deciding that you're rolling 20, not 15, or 23 dice. And when that varies based on conditions, etc, and you have to do it for every single roll...it's a major source of overhead.
I will note that the thing that absolutely kills game flow is having to look up results on tables. Especially where the result of the table is just an index to which other table you then have to roll on. If I need a flow-chart and 3 tables to adjudicate a single action, especially when that's a common action, I'd rather not play that game at all. No amount of "fidelity" or "granularity" is worth the pain.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Building an RPG system:
Rolling the dice and generating a dice result
This generally is O(N), where N is the number of dice. The rolling part is trivial, as long as you have enough dice. And if you don't, get more. It's the adding or examining step that matters. For small N (1-3), adding is pretty darn trivial, about the same cost as looking at each die and comparing to the target number. It quickly gets obnoxious as N increases.Of course, if you have exploding dice, the overhead goes up a lot, because you need a comparison and possible reroll for a whole bunch (and an unpredictable number) of dice.
One extra level of hilarity: when the system wants to to generate a "poker hand" from your results. Longest run, most dice of a particular count, you name it, it's much more painful to add up the results. Related: roll-X-keep-Y. So for 6k4, you roll 6 dice, and then have to determine which 4 are the highest, and add them up. It's extra pain and effort to add up, and you have to do it on every single roll.
I will note that the thing that absolutely kills game flow is having to look up results on tables. Especially where the result of the table is just an index to which other table you then have to roll on. If I need a flow-chart and 3 tables to adjudicate a single action, especially when that's a common action, I'd rather not play that game at all. No amount of "fidelity" or "granularity" is worth the pain.
Yeah, I played a homebrew at a con a couple of years ago, and looking up results on a table completely turned me off to it. Especially since the table was just "everything increases by 1 per step, except sometimes it's 2!". Apparently, the designer was a grognard, and loved his tables a little too much.
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@PotatoEngineer I hate tables unless they can be rolled as part of session prep. For active use, it darn well better both be rare and consequential.
And that poker hands system sounds miserable unless you only roll once or twice per session.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Building an RPG system:
@PotatoEngineer I hate tables unless they can be rolled as part of session prep.
I read your post without reading context and thought you're talking about moving furniture.
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@Gąska well. That too. Wednesday will be moving day, part 1. And then I'll be without most of my stuff for 2 weeks. And then more moving.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Building an RPG system:
@PotatoEngineer I hate tables unless they can be rolled as part of session prep. For active use, it darn well better both be rare and consequential.
I've played Rolemaster, and it's made of tables. So our character sheets became character binders, with a copy of all the tables our character used. (Because Rolemaster has a crit table for each of... 20? different damage types...) Mind you, the campaign I played in was heavily intrigue/roleplay based, to the point that we only had a combat every 2-3 sessions. It wouldn't surprise me in the least that the GM engineered the game that way so that we wouldn't have to do as many table-lookups.
(I only played Rolemaster for about 3-4 sessions. Then everyone graduated and moved.)
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@PotatoEngineer said in Building an RPG system:
we only had a combat every 2-3 sessions
I only played Rolemaster for about 3-4 sessions.
