What is the best kind of dice & dice mechanic, and how many are rolled at once in the optimal game system?
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Dice
What is the best kind of dice & dice mechanic, and how many are rolled at once in the optimal game system?
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>What is the best kind of dice
The ones you like the most.
>What is the best kind of dice mechanic
The one that fits the theme and tone of the game the most.
>and how many are rolled at once in the optimal game system?
Exactly as many as the mechanic describes.
gaytard OP.
...so what dice do (You) like the most?
You first. Be specific and detailed.
Designing an rpg system resolution first is dumb. You don't even know what you are going to resolve and in what context.
The way you separate a game designer from a algebra enthusiast is that you ask them what their project is going to make people feel. They might trick you by saying that the system is supposed to feel "fair" or "immersive", because they don't know how to answer a question about what someone else might feel.
I like these dice
You should be using Fudge Dice and you would never use more than 4. Roll 4dF always.
1d6-1d6 (subtract low roll from high roll).
Difference between 2d6 is arguably twice as good as 4dF because it requires half as many dice, but Fudge Dice are based and I enjoyed reading the rulebook.
It takes at least three dice, whatever number of sides, to get anything with a remotely proper bell shape. Two just gives you a triangle.
My system is a straight 4d6, single roll in combat. You add your mods and give the number (and weapon damage rating, if not already established) to the DM, DM looks it up on a chart.
Your system is good, and I like your system... so (unironically) maybe I should just help you turn this into a Fudge zealotry thread, and try to get everyone onboard with what just might be the niftiest dice system on the open market.
That's what I'm saying!
/tg/ stands at a crossroads... before designing *this* new game system (being created in this thread right now), we must decide upon DICE -- what kind to use, how many to use, how to use them -- in order to have a unified central mechanism around which to build this tabletop tactical simulation & roleplaying game.
We want this to really slap. It's got to be the kind of game that you can get a "normie" playing at a basic level within five minutes of introduction, but allow for more.
Percentile systems, although easily grokable, aren't the *best* dice -- the "roll these dice, then multiply the red die by ten before adding the blue die to get your score" isn't 100% intuitive, and I've seen more than one non-gamer struggle with it. What do you think?
D6 -- everyone is familiar with the most conventional dice, which are plentifully available almost everywhere humans can be found. Six-siders are probably the most normie-friendly dice, because they're used in Backgammon, Parchisi, Trouble, Sorry, Monopoly, Cee-Low & Craps, as well as practically every other game with dice your typical "normie" would ever encounter throughout an unperturbed baseline contemporary "normie" life.
Other dice are also nice, like D20 & D30, but they tend to keep rolling right off the table in the wrong hands, and the bigger numbers can take a while for slower players to read. There are some fun combinations, such as 2D30* (*: calculate difference, or simply take lowest unless you have advantage to take higher, and use this number for your to-hit roll, then apply the other roll to the subsequent damage roll).
I'm just spitballing here, trying to generate conversation, because I'd like for us to work together on somehow capturing proverbial lightning in a bottle.
Ive already got a homebrew system and you soulless breadtubers can pry my mechanics from my cold dead hands
They make dice with more than 6 sides? That's not even really dice, then, is it gubna?
Flat distribution is okay, a curved distribution let's you get reasonable crit / botch odds with smaller dice, but more of them. Baked in degrees of success / failure are nice too. And then, for flat distribution dice: bonuses that can get close to the size of the dice result's range if you specialize (at the low level) and at high levels, triple the dice range. If it's curved distribution, the bonuses won't need to go as high for good gameplay.
But this is largely down to preference, maybe you're into three-stooges mudcore.
I'm always a fan of dodecahedra.
I like their wide faces and 12 is the first number with 6 factors, which is so useful for tables that need some simple divisibilities. Great rolling, too. I even have some d12 Fudge dice.
I've been developing a game for some time and just improved gameplay - not the rules as such - by going from d6 to d10. The mechanisms have remained more or less the same.
Why?
In this game, an attack by up to 42 elements (but usually up to 7, unusually up to 14) takes place against a defending force of up to 7 elements. As part of the outcome, the "loser" must roll for each of his elements involved to check for "disruption". Originally, the test was made against a 2d6 value. Now it is against a 1d10 value.
Not much difference? Well... imagine you have seven elements who all need to check against disruption. Using 2d6, you have to select an element, roll 2d6, select the next element, roll 2d6 etc. Using 1d10, you choose all the elements of the same "type" and roll that number of d10s as many times as there are different types of elements.
It sounds like a big nothing, but... In playtesting, I'm finding combats re resolved significantly faster and the pace of play is maintained.
So the answer to the thread question is: as few as possible while retaining simplicity and credible outcomes.
>2d6+1d10-2
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
>2d6+1d10-2
>7+5.5-2
wait a minute
this... is smushed 3d6? with 1 - 20 range?!
You can actually put together quite a variety of dice pools that give a 1-20 range, assuming their totals add up to 19+n (n being the number of dice in the pool), then subtracting [n-1] from the total result rolled. For example 2d8+1d6-2; or 1d9+1d12-1 (though the only way I know of to get a fair d9 is to use a specially-numbered pair of d6s, so this is actually three dice in total).
Genius
I got 5d20-6+1d6
This thing yet again.
How about I [middle 1 of 3d20] your shit!?
I hate d10s
you can only get 100
with 10 and 90.
00, 0 is a lie and you know it
The more I play with my 5e group and play stuff like bg3 the more I hate flat probability with 5e's low modifiers. If you build a system with a flat probability you should have ways for the characters to feel consistently competent. Larger modifiers are the easiest way to do this. A high level rogue should be able to pick a simple lock 100% of the time
Personally, for that reason I like systems that are on a curve of some kind. Even 2d10 is better than d20.
Agreed: flatness kills immersion and fun.
One other way to fight it is to use some sort of player resource like, say, luck, that a player can expend to boost a roll. But this feels like a cheat.
This could easily be solved by using take 10/20 from 3e.
There's a reason why 2d6 is the single most common dice usage out there. It's that good.
For widest possible audience, and considering how much more available six-sided dice are than any other kind, I'm thinking 3d6 is the way to go for *everything* in the game, from randomly generating characters (with choices along the way following each 3d6 roll) to every aspect of play, but am toying on whether or not to complexify it from simple roll & sum; let me know what you think about this:
3d6, but one of the three dice is a different color than the other two, or otherwise easily distinguished from them; "sixes" rolled on this special die "explode" (roll the special die again, rerolling if more "sixes" are rolled, until something other than another "six" is rolled, then sum this last roll with all previous "sixes" -- who has a more terse description of exploding dice)?
System would be roll & add (with the exploding die allowing for the occasional David vs Goliath) against a target number, and adjusted by stats et al.
>who has a more terse description of exploding dice
You don't need a terse description. People either know the term "exploding dice" and understand immediately, or they're newfriends who would benefit from a thorough explanation and multiple examples.
1D20 for everything. Because it hard filters the autists who can't get an erection if they aren't looking at a bell curve.