Building an RPG: Dice Mechanics and Statistics
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ค. 2024
- Ilmari Karonen - did the calculation. Link below
rpg.stackexchange.com/questio...
Welcome! My name is Jface and I'm a TTRPG & Board Game enthusiast. I'm in the midst of creating my own game, and as I go through the process i'm exploring what makes other games work so well. We are analyzing mechanics, and the math behind it as well as the general feel. If you are also building a game then come along for the ride!
What am I also doing?
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Language note - it’s a bell curve not a parabola.
Haha, thanks. That was an example of early word finding issues during the act of being filmed 🤪
The problem with multi-same dice systems (D6's, D10's, whatever) is 'regression toward the mean.' The more dice you roll the higher chances of rolling a 1 on any one of them, and if the number of dice are in any way tied to character progression, this becomes extraordinarily counter-intuitive.
Don’t disagree with that sentiment. I suppose it’s how you use that multi dice dice pool. I’ve probably moved very far from these sentiments at this point. Will be fun to go back and watch this video
@@jfacegames7354upgrade dice size as a skill = less 1s means you can also increase your average mean by +1 per dice up 4/6/8/10
Thank you for sharing.
Appreciate the video.
Rather than the one stunt die, if you color coded all three dice, you could bury a lot more information. For instance if you have a red, yellow and blue die, one roll could give you the the standard 3d6 (bell curve); the individual numbers on the red, yellow and blue; you could take the lowest of the red and yellow (steeply declining distribution) which we can call orange; you could add the yellow and blue to give us a green value (a standard 2d6 distribution); and we can multiply the blue and red to give us a purple value ( a wildly variable distribution.
Perhaps a 1 on the red indicates a complication, and a 6 on the blue a benefit. This would allow you to approximate success with complications as with the fantasy flight dice system. You could use the yellow dice for special effects on equipment, say on a 6 on the yellow, your flaming sword lights them on fire. Don’t want it to happen as often, use the orange value. You can use the green to determine hit location. Have a wild magic spell that incredibly varied damage, use the purple value.
With all the colors, you could call it the spectrum system…or because it is needlessly complex it must be on the spectrum. Just some of my own musing. Thanks for doing this series. It gets me thinking.
This is a pretty great concept overall. I love the idea that the dice can power different things with one role, which could give lots of decisions, as long as it doesnt lengthen turns and cause paralysis analysis. I think the use of prime colors, and then using green, orange, and purple is just inspired though. Well done. I’m going to have to think on this one awhile. Making bring this idea up in a video and cite you for it!
@Jface Games I suspect it might lengthen things, at first anyway. Might be a barrier to entry.
I think an info graphic might make it more clear for newer players. Something like this:
drive.google.com/file/d/1H-VfsF96bsTeeBsxptrMH4XWOD3_12Yi/view?usp=drivesdk
I also figured you could add grey and black if you wanted to do tables. Again two different types of distribution. I sat down one day and tried to think of all the different ways you could read a roll of 3d6, and tied to incorporate the widest range of unique results.
@@jfacegames7354 The „One Roll Engine“ in Greg Stolze‘s „Reign“ also generates different information at once.
It is a d10 dicepool System, doubles (or triplets or …) are successes, the higher the roll, the better and more elaborate the success, the wider the roll (e.g. five instead of four equal numbers) the earlier you act or succeed. By the way, the number stands for hit location (10: head, 1: right leg …). So you may have rolled a nice hit on the head with three 10s (which would be fatal for your enemy, because the head has only a few hitpoints), but you won’t have a chance to kill him, because he rolled four 3s and hits your arm first. Reign also has a profound system for building and leading large groups or nations (thus the name).
🤯. But how does that scenario work? You hit the dude in the head, but he hits your arm. Does that negate your attack? Or does it just reduce it significantly? Fascinating system
@@jfacegames7354 When an attack hits, it immediately does damage. As soon as a character gets hit, that character loses a die out one of his sets (his choice). So the other one will lose one of his three 10s, so with a double it‘s still a hit to the head (but with less damage). Or he might sacrifice a dice from another set (and thus losing his ability to block or …).
This is really fascinating, this looks so similar to where I had been a few years ago, only that I called the stunt die an effect die. But in the end I moved away from that, since even though I am a maths person, I wanted to create a narrative focused game, and well most people that are into narrative play are not into maths and thus probabilities and mathematical consideration during character creation of how useful certain traits and feats would be like is a huge turn off for such players. And thus I shifted my design approach towards one in which the players have not to worry about maths.
Yeah, I ditch the stunt dice mechanic pretty quickly, haha. I feel like the stunt dice are great in theory, but end up being cumbersome.
Me and one of my friends talked about D&D 5e. On same topic:
D&D 5e you have 5% chance to miss/hit by rolling 1 or 20 and you can't get over that.
Path finder you needed like +10 to crit and I don't remember what the -10 thing was? miss? So you have where commoner will never hit a dragon and dragon always hits the commoner.
Cypher System commoned who is master fighter and gets help could technically hit lvl10 task difficulty dragon but normally there is no chance as not being master fighter just trained would lower the task difficult by 1 and help by 2 making it task lvl 7 requiring roll of 21 or higher. . . not possible on D20
The talk ended up being:
What if we tried D&D 5e using 3d6?
First rule chances:
- 3 is crit miss
- 18 is crit hit
- advantage/disadvantage roll 4d6 drop the lowest/highest roll
- For examples Champion subclass for Fighter would need re workding "roll of 19 crits now" to "rolld of 17 crits now"
What happens?
Rolling a crit would drop from 5% to under 0.5% ;)
Getting 17 crit would rise the crit chance from less than 0.5% to 1.8% a hughe leap :D
more AC would get less value when considering the 5% where rolling a 10 or 11 would be 12,5% chance while 17 would be 1,38% chance ... ofc to roll 17 or higher would be 1,84% ;)
This would be interesting idea but I think Cypher System where you can spend your "vitality" to lower the required task is amazing idea.
Closest in D&D 5e is to play Lore Bard at lvl 3 and considering "Do I lower the Hold Person save by 1d6?"
going with roll of 3d6 Advantage/Disadvantage 4d6 is super interesting idea and I wish we had time to setup it.
There were few problems like if you keep normal numbers someone at lvl 1 with dex roll of 18 getting 20 dex would be +5 and proficiency +2 making the roll be 3d6+7 ... rolling 11 would be 18 and the chance you miss against someone with AC 11 is insane! so the numbers might need tweaking like not allowing to roll stats and point buy only....
TL;DR: 3d6, advantage/disadvantage 4d6 drop the lowest/highest is an interesting system.
I think I like the Cypher System the most but not everyone likes how the Recovery works in Cypher System, which can take several in game days.
I’ve never thought about that, but its an interesting concept. You ever try 3d6 dnd?
@@jfacegames7354 we play 3 times a year.... so have not had time nor friends to try it. Instead fall love with Cypher System and the ways you can lower the difficulty task is also fun take and if it goes to 0 you just succeed.
@@xezzee Glad you fell in love with Cypher! It’s a pretty cool system. I actually picked up the Monte Cook light version of it to run with my kids recently “No Thank you , Monsters”.
Sorry about the limited game time. You should join the discord channel of FantasyGrounds, Foundry, or Roll20. There are groups always being formed or 1 shots going on with those. You mind find a full digital group! My current group are childhood friends that we play on Fantasy Grounds 1x a week
This is fantastic since in design a rpg inspired card game. I Can avoid the analysis paralysis requiring the skillto be on the character or at past in players hand.
Thanks man. I appreciate you enjoyed it. I haven’t watched this one in forever!
Thinking about how to generate “stunt dice,” I was thinking maybe you can take some ideas from riddle of steel. It has some pretty interesting ideas, but I don’t necessarily think they are well implemented. Also the writing style is self aggrandizing. I recommend reading a review and mining it for concepts and not full fleshed ideas.
One of the more interesting things is the spiritual attributes, which are essentially dramatic hooks. They are things your character cares about, things they are destined to do…that kind of thing. They are rated one to five. If the scenario you are in touches one an aspect of that attribute, you get that number of dice to add to your dice pool, and you can have multiple ones firing at the same time.
They also double as experience. If you are doing things in service of those hooks, following what the character believes in, the attributes get stronger. As you get more dice you can turn them in for skill improvements.
As I said it might be worth looking at. I don’t recommend reading the rules.
Hahahaha, this was hilarious. Check out this game, but for the love of God don;’t actually read the rules! Fantastic. I’ll take your advice and find a video ;)
@@jfacegames7354 In 1915 Roland Garros fixed a machine gun to the front of his plane and shot down a German plane. The Germans were amazed that he was able to shoot at them head on. Somehow he had figured out how to shoot through the propeller. So they got Anthony Fokker to figure out how to do it for the Germans. He developed the synchronized machine gun using cam system…which was good since Rolands system involved a few strips of metal on the propeller to deflect bullets. I think he even shot his propeller once. The point is, sometime it is more important to have the idea than the details.
4:10 was what im here for. Thanks.
Glad to have you! Let me know what you think of the full series, and off there are any other video types dig
@@jfacegames7354 workin on a ttrpg. 1v1 like warhammer. Ttrpg with some chess and fire emblem movement. (Also, Risk style dice battle)
For the record, I'm not math inclined. Lol! (More of a narrative inclined RPGer).
Your idea here looks fun! Thinking about all of this with my narrative glasses on... Makes me think of success or failures with benefits or complications. This takes a GM outside the simple "hit or miss" trap. Your stunt dice/ stunt points could really add awesome flavor.
Critical hit plus a stunt bonus would be very sweet at just the right moment. 👍
I really would love to get back into the Stunt Dice concept, but I just couldn’t figure out how to streamline it so that people were making quick decisions. It always kept ending up with paralysis analysis
I will come back to it sometime though, cause I love the concept still
To me this seems a bit like trying to redesign the wheel instead of trying to make an engine
Yeah, I went away from this pretty quick. Didn’t fully settle on it. I went away from stunt dove in general pretty qyicjly
You didn't actually give credit to the people who did tge math...you just called him "this dude"
I highlighted the names of the people. I said the name of the first, but probably didn’t know how to pronounce the second name so therefore just highlighted it. I’m doing these fast and loose and was grateful to those who helped me way back when
Added him and link in the description
Personally I hate all dice gimmicks--too gamey. I'm of the opinion that while a game's rules are important to setting the tone they should be largely invisible, not draw attention to themselves.
I don’t disagree with this. I think the perfect mechanics are ones that grant the feel they want, but are smooth and intuitive and almost invisible. Hard marriage to create for sure