At some point every dice based system that I've played has had issues. Not many, but they're there. While working on my own would be game I decided on the d100 percentage system because it best suited what how I envisioned the game working. And then during creating I realized that I had to include a d10. After the fact I came to realize that I could only tweak things so much, but sometimes it falls short.
I make alot of dice systems for fun. A couple of months ago I was trying to make something that had the in play simplicity of a 2d6 system that had some granularity in skill level without things becoming a guarantee at either end. This is what I came up with; All d10s explode. Each roll is given with two dice on the following chain or two attributes, which are coincidentally also given values of dice on this chain. -1d6, 0, d3, d6, d6+1, d10, d10+1 The average die is d6. If the higher dice in the roll is less than a d10, increase it to a d10, then roll both dice and add the results. If all dice rolled (not counting -1d6) roll a 1 then the roll fumbles. If the GM wants some complication may arise or the system may state a specific outcome for specific rolls but a fumble could also result in nothing worse than a regular failure. Rolls are made versus one of the following target numbers (TN) that you want to meet or beat. The GM decides for each situation a roll is required which TN is apt. Challenging: 9 Hard: 12 Very hard: 15 I haven't tested this in play yet but statistical it folls everything I want from it while maintaining much of the simplicity
Because of the nature of the probability curve (using just 2d6, not 3d6 take highest/lowest) if your target number is a 10, adding a +1 will give you an 11% increase in chance of success. Adding a +2 will give you a 25% increase. A +3 will give you a ~42% increase. If your target number is a 12, a +1 will give you a 5.6% increase, a +2 will give you a ~14% increase and a +3 will give you a 25% increase. (I hope my math is correct there.) EDIT: It's also important to note that, after that +3 on a TN of 10, the chances are going to increase of course, and it will still be significant, but the rate will lower and lower as bonuses keep going up. +4 is a 55.56%, a +5 is a 66.66%...
Randomly caught this in my feed and decided to add some thoughts. First off, good, short explanation. 2d6 is very touchy. I hack a lot of Traveller (Cepheus Light by Stellagama in particular) and when doing so I get very deliberate with what I'm doing. Understanding your goals with the game first and foremost is key. My assumptions when hacking are: Characters are competent and thus low target numbers are never needed, they can have those successes and we can avoid making rolls for the sake of rolling. I don't want "criticals" or automatic successes or failures, the dice should decide that. Lastly, someone with no modifier (+0) should be able to do the things that someone with the highest modifier can, and we can protect against freak occurrences with negative modifiers. I ended up deciding that I could use three difficulties (8+, 10+, 12+) in conjunction with a maximum +5 modifier per roll. Most of the time we're rolling vs. 8+ which means even the most highly skilled individual can still fail on a roll of 2 so every roll we make is meaningful without having that artificial construct of auto-hit/miss. It also means that a baseline skill of +0 (familiar) can hit the toughest challenges (barely) but someone with no skill can be locked out of that with a negative modifier (-3 is typically used with Traveller). This works out very well in play (using a more simulationist attitude than narrative, that is, "the world sets the TNs rather than the drama") with the most common difficulties being 8+ followed by 10+; a character with a +2 skill can hit those fairly reliably and feels competent but 10+ is still tough to meet, adding stakes without artificially deciding on 12+ just to make things hard. Important to note that these were just my goals and how I achieved them. Game design is hard and you should be deliberate, understand what you want to do before you go looking for how to do it!
@@ivanmike1968 I did. Regarding PbtA, to increase the difficulty of something you require additional Moves be made rather than alter the modifiers. You follow the fiction rather than alter difficulty, or at least that's how it's been explained by other who enjoy those kinds of games more than I do. PbtAs are designed to hit the middle result more often (partial hit, success with complication, whatever they're calling it) which typically adds to the drama. In the original Apocalypse World no characters had a stat higher than +3 which preserved that desire to favor the middle result (7+3 = 10 so you're getting that full hit more often, but you've still only got a ~60% of 10) Also, take highest/lowest lines up with +2 for _most_ results but using my goals above, take highest doesn't help someone with a -3 hit 12+ (which preserves my goals!) Point being, as you note, game design is hard! Be deliberate, know what your goals are, find approaches that achieve those goals, and _other games can provide great inspiration_.
@regex74 what’s very interesting is that virtually none (very little) of the accepted wisdom regarding PBTA games can be found in Apocalypse world. Nor does this advice usually show up in the written games themselves. There are some exceptions, but it’s kind of interesting.
@@ivanmike1968 It's because "Powered by the Apocalypse" only really signifies that a game was _inspired by_ Apocalypse World. They do not have common best practices or play wisdom because there is no SRD or common rules between them. Most share the same structure but, for instance, if you read into Vincent Baker's blog you'll see that contrary to popular wisdom, Baker never intended for all Moves to be "triggered by fiction". Consider every PbtA to be different even if they look the same. That being said, the basic Move structure, while appearing pretty static, can be fairly flexible in play if you know what you're doing. For instance, im Dungeon World fighting a dragon can appear to be a straightforward Hack and Slash affair, but if you take the fiction of the dragon into account you can say that Hack and Slash simply isn't possible unless you're in a position to do it, and that requires you to Defy Danger, the danger that the dragon represents by being a large, imposing magical creature with immense strength and bulk. A lot of that sort of wisdom may not appear in the rulebooks because it takes a lot of words to explain it, but people have written many guides and addendums to help. In older games, take Traveller as an example, you didn't even get any wisdom about that either. Maybe some procedures, maybe some lip service about how Traveller was a generic sci-fi system, but ultimately you had to make your own laser pistol.
Interesting discussion Ivan, given I'm designing and testing my own Medieval rpg Action economy. Once I decided which design aspects I wanted to feature, I quickly found that a a single D20 with a cluster of modifiers was just not going to work.... My project was literally stalled, because I couldn't even decide upon a dice system, to start to test with. Then I found the Perilous D6 Basic rules (on Drive Threw) , and then just started bolting on my features. The D6 Dice pool started to grow from 3 -5 dice to ... a lot more. So I programmed my custom character sheet into foundry, so I could automate the rolling and counting...of successes. What I've found is that this allowed me to at least test drive my contested dice pools, and the other core mechanics to get a sense of my ideas.... So Far I'm very encouraged, as my combats run very smooth and are rich with game play values.... for myself at least. I'm writing this game engine for myself. Now here is the kicker: What if I've landed upon a really sexi design, but my dice pools are so god damb unwieldy you can only really run the game using an automated character sheet? LOL I'm fine with that, given I only play online due to isolation up here in the Yukon... lol You are right, game design is extremely challenging.
Hello Ivan, have you ever used other dice besides the d20 for Saving Throw or even other Saving Throw mechanics? I've seen some that use d% but I've never tried it, do you have any advice on that?
Well, lots of games have a mechanic that’s like a save or reflective action. Lamentations of the flame princess has a pretty interesting alteration of saving throws and I forget if it’s either the VAM or the EC free RPG day supplements. It’s based on using D6 and you need a six to save. Depending upon your ability score you get to role a certain number of D6 dice in the hopes that at least one of them comes up with a 6
Love your videos.
At some point every dice based system that I've played has had issues. Not many, but they're there. While working on my own would be game I decided on the d100 percentage system because it best suited what how I envisioned the game working. And then during creating I realized that I had to include a d10. After the fact I came to realize that I could only tweak things so much, but sometimes it falls short.
I make alot of dice systems for fun. A couple of months ago I was trying to make something that had the in play simplicity of a 2d6 system that had some granularity in skill level without things becoming a guarantee at either end. This is what I came up with;
All d10s explode.
Each roll is given with two dice on the following chain or two attributes, which are coincidentally also given values of dice on this chain.
-1d6, 0, d3, d6, d6+1, d10, d10+1
The average die is d6.
If the higher dice in the roll is less than a d10, increase it to a d10, then roll both dice and add the results.
If all dice rolled (not counting -1d6) roll a 1 then the roll fumbles. If the GM wants some complication may arise or the system may state a specific outcome for specific rolls but a fumble could also result in nothing worse than a regular failure.
Rolls are made versus one of the following target numbers (TN) that you want to meet or beat. The GM decides for each situation a roll is required which TN is apt.
Challenging: 9
Hard: 12
Very hard: 15
I haven't tested this in play yet but statistical it folls everything I want from it while maintaining much of the simplicity
Because of the nature of the probability curve (using just 2d6, not 3d6 take highest/lowest) if your target number is a 10, adding a +1 will give you an 11% increase in chance of success. Adding a +2 will give you a 25% increase. A +3 will give you a ~42% increase.
If your target number is a 12, a +1 will give you a 5.6% increase, a +2 will give you a ~14% increase and a +3 will give you a 25% increase.
(I hope my math is correct there.)
EDIT: It's also important to note that, after that +3 on a TN of 10, the chances are going to increase of course, and it will still be significant, but the rate will lower and lower as bonuses keep going up.
+4 is a 55.56%, a +5 is a 66.66%...
Randomly caught this in my feed and decided to add some thoughts. First off, good, short explanation. 2d6 is very touchy.
I hack a lot of Traveller (Cepheus Light by Stellagama in particular) and when doing so I get very deliberate with what I'm doing. Understanding your goals with the game first and foremost is key. My assumptions when hacking are: Characters are competent and thus low target numbers are never needed, they can have those successes and we can avoid making rolls for the sake of rolling. I don't want "criticals" or automatic successes or failures, the dice should decide that. Lastly, someone with no modifier (+0) should be able to do the things that someone with the highest modifier can, and we can protect against freak occurrences with negative modifiers.
I ended up deciding that I could use three difficulties (8+, 10+, 12+) in conjunction with a maximum +5 modifier per roll. Most of the time we're rolling vs. 8+ which means even the most highly skilled individual can still fail on a roll of 2 so every roll we make is meaningful without having that artificial construct of auto-hit/miss. It also means that a baseline skill of +0 (familiar) can hit the toughest challenges (barely) but someone with no skill can be locked out of that with a negative modifier (-3 is typically used with Traveller).
This works out very well in play (using a more simulationist attitude than narrative, that is, "the world sets the TNs rather than the drama") with the most common difficulties being 8+ followed by 10+; a character with a +2 skill can hit those fairly reliably and feels competent but 10+ is still tough to meet, adding stakes without artificially deciding on 12+ just to make things hard.
Important to note that these were just my goals and how I achieved them. Game design is hard and you should be deliberate, understand what you want to do before you go looking for how to do it!
Glad you found something that worked for you. Did you check out the original video linked in the comments?
@@ivanmike1968 I did. Regarding PbtA, to increase the difficulty of something you require additional Moves be made rather than alter the modifiers. You follow the fiction rather than alter difficulty, or at least that's how it's been explained by other who enjoy those kinds of games more than I do. PbtAs are designed to hit the middle result more often (partial hit, success with complication, whatever they're calling it) which typically adds to the drama. In the original Apocalypse World no characters had a stat higher than +3 which preserved that desire to favor the middle result (7+3 = 10 so you're getting that full hit more often, but you've still only got a ~60% of 10)
Also, take highest/lowest lines up with +2 for _most_ results but using my goals above, take highest doesn't help someone with a -3 hit 12+ (which preserves my goals!)
Point being, as you note, game design is hard! Be deliberate, know what your goals are, find approaches that achieve those goals, and _other games can provide great inspiration_.
@regex74 what’s very interesting is that virtually none (very little) of the accepted wisdom regarding PBTA games can be found in Apocalypse world. Nor does this advice usually show up in the written games themselves. There are some exceptions, but it’s kind of interesting.
@@ivanmike1968 It's because "Powered by the Apocalypse" only really signifies that a game was _inspired by_ Apocalypse World. They do not have common best practices or play wisdom because there is no SRD or common rules between them. Most share the same structure but, for instance, if you read into Vincent Baker's blog you'll see that contrary to popular wisdom, Baker never intended for all Moves to be "triggered by fiction". Consider every PbtA to be different even if they look the same.
That being said, the basic Move structure, while appearing pretty static, can be fairly flexible in play if you know what you're doing. For instance, im Dungeon World fighting a dragon can appear to be a straightforward Hack and Slash affair, but if you take the fiction of the dragon into account you can say that Hack and Slash simply isn't possible unless you're in a position to do it, and that requires you to Defy Danger, the danger that the dragon represents by being a large, imposing magical creature with immense strength and bulk.
A lot of that sort of wisdom may not appear in the rulebooks because it takes a lot of words to explain it, but people have written many guides and addendums to help. In older games, take Traveller as an example, you didn't even get any wisdom about that either. Maybe some procedures, maybe some lip service about how Traveller was a generic sci-fi system, but ultimately you had to make your own laser pistol.
I've got absolutely zero context entering this video.
See link in description
Yeah sorry, i meant i got the video recommended without any basis but watched it anyways.
Interesting discussion Ivan, given I'm designing and testing my own Medieval rpg Action economy.
Once I decided which design aspects I wanted to feature, I quickly found that a a single D20 with a cluster of modifiers was just not going to work....
My project was literally stalled, because I couldn't even decide upon a dice system, to start to test with.
Then I found the Perilous D6 Basic rules (on Drive Threw) , and then just started bolting on my features. The D6 Dice pool started to grow from 3 -5 dice to ... a lot more. So I programmed my custom character sheet into foundry, so I could automate the rolling and counting...of successes.
What I've found is that this allowed me to at least test drive my contested dice pools, and the other core mechanics to get a sense of my ideas.... So Far I'm very encouraged, as my combats run very smooth and are rich with game play values.... for myself at least. I'm writing this game engine for myself.
Now here is the kicker: What if I've landed upon a really sexi design, but my dice pools are so god damb unwieldy you can only really run the game using an automated character sheet? LOL I'm fine with that, given I only play online due to isolation up here in the Yukon... lol
You are right, game design is extremely challenging.
Thing is exactly how many modifiers do you want to account for? Because there's potentially an infinite number of them.
Hello Ivan, have you ever used other dice besides the d20 for Saving Throw or even other Saving Throw mechanics? I've seen some that use d% but I've never tried it, do you have any advice on that?
Well, lots of games have a mechanic that’s like a save or reflective action. Lamentations of the flame princess has a pretty interesting alteration of saving throws and I forget if it’s either the VAM or the EC free RPG day supplements. It’s based on using D6 and you need a six to save. Depending upon your ability score you get to role a certain number of D6 dice in the hopes that at least one of them comes up with a 6