Under the Hood - An examination of dice mechanics
Вставка
- Опубліковано 11 тра 2018
- A podcast style video , about dice mechanics and how they are used in board games.
To support us on Patreon please head over here www.patreon.com/user?u=9257332
And, if you just want to buy us a coffee for a good job, pop over here ko-fi.com/B0B27OIZ
"Ever mindful" (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Sound effects from www.zapsplat.com
That was the longest 3 minutes I ever spent. But it was excellent!
Ha, cheers. I sometimes feel i've backed myself into a corner with the brand name. But sometimes, you gotta ramble past 3:59
@@3MBG Well, yes you did. There was a famous podcast (among the Doctor Who podcast community) called Two Minute Timelord. Wow he broke that often, and called those episodes "time-dilated" but it remained very popular.
Visually, your mascot really helps more than your three-minutes, so keep it up.
ya know, I loved this video and I agree with almost everything you said. with most good games, the better player will win more often, regardless of dice rolls. HOWEVER you are absolutely wrong in one aspect. luck absolutely does exist... now, an argument can be made that you make your own luck, but that is different to saying that it doesnt exist.
Agree to disagree. I think luck is mostly people just attaching too much significance onto a random string of events.
Think of this vid as a podcast, its primarily an audio thing, and the images are just there as points of reference.
I also feel like my old university lecture giving self a bit after this vid.
Just played race for the galaxy for the first time. Agree that the reason the rolling is fun because the balance of control lets you take advantage of most any role while still having to optimize reassignments. Which makes a "bad roll" an interesting challenge instead of a wasted round.
I like this podcast format. Looking forward to more!
This was an extremely well made video. You managed to change my mind about most dice game now.
Awesome. Dice can be fun :)
Terrific video! Part of the reason that I enjoy this hobby so much is because I love dice. I agree with everything you said regarding how they can enhance a game if used well. I can understand why folks don’t like the luck element if it comes across as cheap, but if done well it can add a superb tension to a game. It’s a great feeling when you get that die roll that you need and it can be deliciously satisfying when you opponents role fails!
I found this video because I'm working on a dice roll mechanic for resolving a large ancient strategic level battle with less rolls then the system I was using ( which became very tedious after a while). So, firstly, I wanted to keep the importance of having a mix of troop types (for instance Cavalry, archers and melee infantry). I initially borrowed the mechanic from Risk Europe which worked fine at first. But after a while, the number of rolls ( not the number of dice), bogged down the game, slowing it down greatly. With a large army, getting a few hits per round meant many more rounds of rolling. I wanted a system that would still make those individual troop types matter, but with less rounds to get there. I did come up with a solution and playtesting seems to work. I can resolve a battle within 2 or three dice rolls. Thanks for this video. I love studying game mechanics. Especially dice.
Great video! I think you make an excellent point about dice, they can create great stories. I think anyone who has played many games has experienced that moment in a game where your back is against the wall and the odds are against you but somehow you manage to pull off that perfect roll of the dice and save the day. You feel like a hero. Now you have created a story to be told around the gaming table. "Remember that time you were surrounded by zombies and needed a 6 to evade death...". You don't want that kind of thing to happen all of the time, but it sure is fun when it does.
Yeah man, exactly. They just have a knack of making moments you remember
Excellent video. I loved every bit of it. Really well paced and very thorough.
Great video! I look forward to seeing more of these in-depth explorations of game mechanics.
Please do more!
Almost certainly will. But they will be infrequent, possibly monthly. Just so I don't burn out on them, and because they take a bit of research.
I'll be running a pole on the Patreon for what to do next.
There's one factor about dice that I think got missed... They're perfect for keeping track of moderate-sized, or frequently-changing numbers. That's what Magic the Gathering players use dice for most of the time.
True.
Fantastic video, lots of useful information.
Reality exists as a subset to consciousness. Consciousness creates reality. Your mind has far more control over dice outcomes then simple mechanistic probability. You create your own reality.
I see you also watched my snakes and ladders in 3 minutes video, where i have that conclusion about that game
Nice exploration of Dice - I often end up listening to videos rather than watching so enjoyed thd conversational and infomational style.
I agree that dice add a necessary uncertainty to games and create space to adapt and think around problems. I also think that playing big games with kids adds this kind of randomness too 😉😂
We are really enjoying the channel - thank you
This is a great video and covers all the games I play and have played. Plus some I've never looked at. I'm 2 years or so into the world of Tabletop gaming, I'm also the age of 38 and the attraction was a social environment. My inquiring mind always wonders about these elements of games. I'm also considering creating some games or scenarios within existing games and this video is thought provoking. Thanks for creating it.
Loved it! Some games there I need to check out more. I'm fond of using dice pools for my games but looking at expanding to include other mechanics.
More vids like this would be great.
Good job.
Cheers. I'll see how this does over the next few days and make the call then. This took a fair bit more time than a normal video.
I think digging into solo mechanics, or co-op mechanics might be the next topics i want to dive into.
Thank you for your amazing work! May Nuffle bless your dice!
Spoken like a true Blood Bowl player :)
Nuffle gives, and Nuffle taketh away
Ghost Stories: " yeah stop blaming the dice! Get gud scrub 🤡"
On a serious note this is a brilliant video and I've been enamored listening to your reviews but I didn't know I would enjoy a 3 minute video on dice mechanics and its various mutations. GOLD MEDAL VIDEO.
Cheers. Dice systems are something i find fascinating. The whole thing about blaming dice is a bugbear of mine, just because its always the same people blaming them when they lose, but never crediting them when they win.
@@3MBG or when they do credit them it is because of some celestial force that blessed them with an advantage. Not probability and math. It's just not intuitive of a default position to take when you can just blame it on chance rather than statistics and the variables you can control.
Heh, you should watch my snakes and ladders in 3 minutes video.
@@3MBG Oh I will. I can't binge your content fast enough.
Ha, cheers. The reason i mention it is it relates hugely to your comment above and i think you will find it funny
Really enjoyed this video. Would love to see the series continue.
Me too, but they are so much work ;)
Just gonna chime in and say this is a GOOD idea for a series. One more disembodied voice in the aether nodding in approval
I'd do more but they take a shed load of research and writing.
@@3MBG ...and only now do I realize this was released 4 years ago lol
No pressure, but at least nice to know that the algorithm considers this one an evergreen!
I love dice games and dice mechanics. Nothing is more fun than watching grown adults getting angry at some plastic cubes. Also after a while, people begin to curse certain dice in particular. Great analysis of dice mechanics, great stuff
Cheers, its a pet peeve of mine. Gaming superstition. It's just math and they are just plastic cubes. But hot damn do some people put a lot of "magical thinking" into it.
@@3MBG I actually love the tactile aspect of dice as well, it adds a certain charm especially if the dice are good. Aggression around games is never great, I have had a few first & last games around wargaming. Apparently humans are poor at understanding chance, so dice will always be to blame.
Rpg's really miss the fog of war, or friction, as you say. Dice help add the uncertainty, but the confusion that can set in is hard to replicate, probably because it stems from the psychology of the situation more than logistics. We can now add DCC to the group of games that use odd sided dice. They've really gone all out with that system.
Your videos are fantastic!
This was a great overview!
Very intresting video.
I feel that X-wing had the best dice system i've seen so far. Custom dice are very good as you can have various results on one roll, rather than a success or fail (although you sometime see in warhammer something like 'a six on a roll to hit ignores armour), and a d8 just gives a bit more gradation than a d6.
The one issue with x-wing is that you had differentiated dice between attack and defend; if they could of had the SAME dice for attack and defence, just different strenghts of them, I think they would have got it perfect.
I've designd games based on d8 and d12, and d12 is surprisingly good as a custom dice as you can divide it by 2, 3, and 4.
Impressive & request an update
These vids are a bunch of work. But i think i will do another one on dice if i ever design a dice focused game. My first 2 are mostly card driven
In the name of all that is holy... die is singular, dice is plural.
Get over yourself Thomas. Take a big deep breath and exhale and realize you didn't need to interrupt my day over this foolishness, and then pop outside for a spell. Okipoki
@@3MBG I feel better now. Nice video.
Like for rolemaster. New edition just came out.
Brilliant. Thank you.
For another example of dice in a "worker placement" is Kingsburg, I haven't actually played it myself but has been on my wishlist for a long time.
And as a dice collector with most of my favourite games being dice driven (Dice Forge, Bang! The Dice Game, Dice Masters) I think this was an amazingly well studied and thought out video.
Cheers Daniel. Kingsburg is one I have no real idea about either. Will have to take a look at it.
Nicely designed
This was very helpful. Thanks for putting this video together. I now feel like a better game designer.
Awesome Jesse. Dice probability and manipulation are two systems i love in games. So glad to be of help
Enjoyed that but if I may offer some technical suggestions: the sound was very compressed (like the old days of the internet) and the pace way too fast. I was pausing it a lot and rewinding to note the game titles - if it’s intended to be audio only, it’s too quick and lacking in inflection. If it’s intended to be accompanied by video, add the game names. However, it’s easy to criticise. Please feel free to have a go at the many videos and podcasts I have never quite got around to making 🤣
One is the points of a well designed game is that if the dice bring bad luck it adds to the drama and allows the player to use skill to overcome it - a bit like a good story where the hero meets an obstacle and, in overcoming it, becomes better. So a game should reward replaying it. A game that just throws bad roll after bad roll without the potential for redeeming yourself... especially if you spent half an hour setting it up... that’s just painful. Nothing worse than knowing the event that just happened is inevitably going to kill your character in three turns. I learned to hate dice with Steve Jackson books back in the 80s.
I notice from everybody’s comments that I’m in a minority with the criticisms so...
All g. The sound is a legacy issue from when i had the cheapest microphone on earth, most of those issues are sorted on later vids.
As for my cadence, that's my style. I talk fast and that's not really going to change.
It's defintely different to many American presenters in particular, who talk so slowly I feel like screaming "get on with it" at them. Call it a cultural peculiarity.
Video number 2 of yours today! :) Xia is a favourite of mine. It was not so until the expansion though.
One of the best expansions ever. I played XIA the first time and thought "this would be great if it had X, Y and Z". Then I went online and saw the expansion was coming out soon, and it had fixed everything I thought needed to be fixed. Instant purchase.
I still haven't played with the economy board (only managed 3 plays so far) and I thought that would be the key to fixing my issues with it. However, I have found that the added tiles mostly solve the issues of insanely close trade routes. The added variety to missions has seen me adopt a heavy missions strategy for the first time as well.
Yeah, it was the economy board that was the big fix. But also I really liked the extra modules, the changes to how you get missions, more missions, the extra tiles and the new start location.
"Doice!"
This is exactly the video I needed. Thank you!
I really love this video. Is there an "Under the Hood" playlist?
That's the only one i've done sorry
I really enjoyed your explanation of the various mechanics and I really hope that you do produce more videos along the same lines.
While I have no problems with the 'podcast with slides', I hope you're not too offended if I suggest that you work on introducing a little more interest into your delivery, I think that you just need a bit more rise and fall in your intonation and perhaps a few ad-libs if you can manage it. It's not as important in short videos but when you're recording over twenty minutes, it will help to maintain people's attention.
Thanks again for sharing this.
Yeah, i was working off a script and there is not a lot of add libbing at all. Quite the opposite. But I totally get what you mean.
Doing an hours worth of recording was a new experience for me.
from what game are those characters at 5:50 and 6:25 ?
great video btw
Defenders of the last stand. One of those weird out of print games in my collection that i somewhat love
@@3MBG thanks
"...learn to love the stories they tell..." Favorite line. I love my dice pools.
Cheers. I find dice games have a tendancy to have better memories and stories than games without chance elements. I love anachrony/caverna and other low luck games. But i'm less likely to vividly recall a play of those games.
(D100):[10’s & 01’s]: modifications & odds can be shifted tremendously and allows percentages to be altered
The issue for me, is even if you have a high percentage you can still occasionally fail incredibly easy tasks in a % system. Which is why in RPGs at least, i always do a "ok, you have 60% medicine as a doctor, you dont need to roll to put on a sticking plaster"
Dice made interesting; thanks. I look forward to the rest of the series.
I get that in some games where a player is more skilled then dice aren't necessarily the defining factor and the skilful player can win despite the dice. But in my experience most players are pretty equal in skill therefore luck of the dice in these games is a very definite factor and I just can't come around to thinking otherwise. I have seen many games where extremes of rolls tainted the enjoyment for all involved because they just didn't average out.
Imagine a game of Xia (pronounced 'z eye ah' as in 'my-a' say the makers) where one player gets 8 out of 15 points for luck from a D20 but the 'other' player, who rolled the D20 more than the first, gets 0. Try telling that second player that their losing is not the fault of the die rolls and you will find one heading toward your face at speed xD
But seriously, I know you are generalising and use words like 'should' and I generally agree but I don't think I would be as comfortable as you saying dice are not to blame, even in a well made game. I can think of many games where dice rolling lead to some extreme results.
Not complaining, just giving my 2 cents :)
"But in my experience most players are pretty equal in skill "
That experience is very different to mine and that's probably where we differ. I win consistently more games than I lose, and a lot of the time I play soft to give my opponents the feeling of a close game, before closing it down. It makes sense, I've been gaming and thinking about games for over 30 years and have a masters degree in strategy.As mentioned in another video, I dind't lose a game of warhammer40,000 in over 2 years, and that game is buckets of dice.
Playing in tournaments especially, there are players who win most of their games, and players who don't. And its almost always the same people. We had one guy who won every warmachine tournament for 3 years running just before i started playing. Same is true of any game with a tournament or competitive scene. The top players are simply better than the bottom ones, regardless of the dice.
And if a player would come at you for talking about how luck is over-rated, I also wonder if they also acknowledge it when they win.
Xia is a Chinese word, i checked the Chinese pronunciation, that was what I found. It might be ze-eye-ah, interesting, ill look that up.
I'm clearly not as good as you :P
I think I can agree that a better player could show that it's not about the dice in most cases (and your experience seems to prove this) but in my case things are definitely more even but maybe given the experience you have I would see otherwise.
"And if a player......when they win"
This was something else that you touched on in the video where my experience seems to differ. I find myself (and others) to say fairly equally that bad luck on the dice cost them/me the game and that good luck on the dice gained them/me the win. Not exclusively of course but fairly evenly I would say.
I also suffer from the new gamer syndrome (as do most people I play with) where I am consistently trying out new things rather than playing one particular game a lot so that is a large factor in not getting good at a particular game.
Cody Miller did a setup video where you can hear the Xia pronunciation ua-cam.com/video/hkRl80dpoEI/v-deo.html
You are technically correct on the Xia pronunciation but I guess that in this case it is a made up fictitious word so doesn't follow the Chinese pronunciation.
Ha, probably not. And playing a lot of games will make the differential between skill smaller. Try playing twilight struggle against someone who's played it 30+ times. You'll still be wondering how you lost so badly a week later :)
It's probably most pronounced in mini wargames with army lists. Even something as simple as X-wing, a tournament player will kick your butt regardless of what you roll as they have skill in list building, and skill in playing that far out weights the result of rolls.
I recommend trying to dig deep into a game and see if more plays give you a different view on dice rolls.
I also have a rule, where possible, if a word belong to another language, try to pronounce it that way. Part of a habit of being in a country where we have two official spoken languages. So i'll probably say it the way I do, because the Xia dynasty predates the game by a few thousand years :)
Thanks. I feel I'm getting closer to the point of digging deeper with one or more games so I should see this difference as you say.
Thanks for uploading this video! As a designer I'm always tinkering with dice mechanisms when I can.
(BTW, there are actually 4 types of sides on X-Wing Miniatures attack dice: hit, *critical hit*, focus and blank)
Did i say 3? Its been a while since i recorded that one
Great video, but I think you have the "swinginess" vs modifiers thing backwards, in a sense.
A d30 is fine, as long as a +3 modifier is as common as a +1 in a d10 system, it's sort of equivalent.
As long as you make those adjustments, the swinginess is the same.
The difference is that the d30 allows for much more granularity, while the d10 is arguable easier to conceptualise in your head.
Of course, greater granularity may not be a good thing, as it usually means more tiny modifiers, which may become a hassle.
This is all assuming a target number system or something related, I'm not sure how this changes with other methods.
If i ever saw a d30 system that used +3 modifiers as a minimum i could see your point. But i never have. I stand by my point. In your scenario, i'm not sure what the benefits of that extra level of granularity would be? Passing by 11 vs passing by 12 for example. Because if the level of granularity is equal to or larger than bands of 3, you might as well just use d10s and if it is doing bands of 1 or 2, why?
@@3MBG (long post, soz)
Cheers for responding to my comment on such an old video, I wasn't expecting that.
A +1 in a d30 still does SOMETHING, even if very little, whereas you can't really go lower than a +1 in a d6, so the designer is stuck with changing chances by units of 1/6.
So a d30 system could be about strategically amassing as many small +1/+2 bonuses as you can, which cumulatively make a significant difference.
In a d6 system the design would be more restricted in that bonuses can't be as small percentage-wise, unless you get creative.
Again, this isn't "better" per se, because all those small bonuses may seem like bloat, especially in tabletop.
Passing by +11 vs +12 matters as little as +4 or +5, in the typical target number system, but passing or failing by one will make a difference... in the event that it shows up.
I haven't seen such a system either, let alone a d30, but I just mean that a larger die isn't imherently more swingy so long as the rest of the game is adjusted accordingly.
What about the theory of fair dice? 🤔
Not heard of that theory. Explain?
Great Vid
Today I learned something new... That's neat
Hey, I'm a huge fan of your videos! I've come back to this one several times for inspiration. The exhaustive but whistle-stop tour is perfect to give me ideas for designing systems of my own. So.. This is a huge long shot, and I'm fully not expecting a response to a random comment on a five year old video, but do you happen to know what game the cards at 4:13 are from? The system looks interesting but searching for 'contrary lava-monster' doesn't bring up any useful results. Anyway thanks my dude, keep up the good work!
Near and far i think
I'd really like another under the hood video
Fair, they are a lot of work, but I have been thinking about doing some more.
@@3MBG may I suggest deck/pool building?
Good idea, but deck building is one of my weak spots, although i've been playing more of late (aeons end and legendary aliens in particular)
I was thinking either co-ops and semi-co-ops or Solo games for the next one.
@@3MBG that be great! Solo game design is really interesting
Really enjoyable video, thanks for making this! Hoping I can become one of your Patreon supporters in the near future. My wife and I have gotten a few great suggestions from your 3 minute reviews. Maybe one of these 20 minutes videos every 5-8 of your 3 minute reviews would be ideal? Also, you may have missed this (or just thought they aren't important enough to mention), but just in case take a look at Dice Coins: www.kickstarter.com/projects/1719872687/dice-coins-2019 . I like the idea and decided to order some, but it seems like they wouldn't work well for frequent rolling.
Cheers tarek, those dice coins look odd.
The reason I havent done more of these is this took a lot of writing and research. Far more than any other video i've made. I liked doing it, but its a big job.
You *had* to mention Quantum, now did you? So on my WannaHave list and totally unavailable. English versions start at 190€ ebay last time I checked. Bah. :-)
Really? Jeez, I had no idea it was out of print and that hard to get.
Dice forge has bad dice to fix.
More please
Ha, some day. That vid took a silly amount of work.
When you take everything into Pearl Harbor as Japan in Axis and Allies, and you lose, the dice made you lose that game. When you have to play a game 100,000 times to balance out the rolls, you can claim that the outcome was statistically unlikely. That is what I say instead of saying I was unlucky.
I believe I cover that off when talking about primacy and recency. You could make up the difference elsewhere, picking 1 set of important rolls in a long game and saying "see that's me being unlucky" is just an emotive crutch and hoodwinking yourself. If you can't win A&A after a bad pearl harbour, um, get good at the game?
@@3MBG I would rather just play Gaia Project. Then I don't have to worry about dice.
How do you call upgrading dice d4 > d6 >d8 ... ?
Time 10:47
Dice boosting?
Well. There is a reason that in many TTRPGs you do not roll too many dice of any type at once. Say you roll the D20 in D&D5e and the number is lower than your enemies armor value, you are not going anywhere no matter how many dice a Berserk can roll at level 6 in rage mode.
This is why I prefer backgammon to chess. The dice provide an element of chance that mimics real life, while the "luck" element cancels out over the course of a match.
I honestly hate those stupid custom picture dice. If your game needs 6 different colored custom d6s with the symbol layout slightly changed then I’m comfortable saying your game is probably shit. At that point I’d rather just roll regular d6s and have a chart on hand. It seems simpler.
It’s especially infuriating if the dice don’t come with the game and you’re expected to get them separate.
Nice! ...but, FFS: it's one die, two dice. Seriously.
Not to be that guy. But dice and die are both singulars for dice according to Oxford Dictionary.
Dice based games are fucking awful. They remove all skill entirely and bring everything down to dice rolls. It's totally possible to make all the right moves and decisions but have your dice rolls come up failing.
I'm really thankful that I have videogames and don't have to play games based off the roll of the dice.
1.) I get you didn't watch the video, if you did you would know i address your points and specifically call out people with your beliefs.
2.) Video games have RNG in them all the damned time. Just because you don't see the dice, doesn't mean they were not rolled.
@@3MBG
Same difference. Bulls**t is still Bulls**t. In other words you're full bulls**t.
Loved this video. Listened to it while getting ready for work! Looking forward to more in the future!
Id love to do more, but these take some real work. The kinda thing that i'd do more often if i was not working full time