Dragon Quest, and it's mechanical descendant, James Bond 007, both use nothing but d10s.  Although hilariously in the DQ rules, it was first written when the authors only access to "d10s" were the old d20s that had 0-9 twice, and you colored them in a different color to distinguish (so as not to bias the die by having different weights for the 2 digit results).  So the section on materials needed tells you got get d20s in a game using only d10s--and this was never changed in the later editions when d10s were by now a thing. 

Quote from: Fheredin on May 31, 2023, 05:59:41 PM
The D12 is the die I would pick if I were to do a vanilla D20-style game. At roughly 8% per side, you can actually feel a +1 modifier a fair bit better than with D20. You can also use it for time of day or compass directions.

Just so. It also maps nicely to the Beaufort Wind Scale for weather, the Yosemite Decimal System for climbing difficulty, and anything else with 3, 4, 6, or 12 ranks.

One of the "selling points" I see above for using the D20 is that it maps to level. But in D&D there are only 9 or so "real" levels, and after that you get pseudo hierophant levels. More to the point, you can pick any number of levels to describe in your game to claim "it matches the core die!", but the number of levels people actual play in real life -- at least in my experience -- is much closer to 12 than it is to 20.

Dice mapping to levels is kind of a dubious benefit regardless of die type, TBH. Unless there's some kind of mechanic that directly ties to levels, which I can't think of any.

A +1 bonus having more weight on a d12 is a real benefit at least, but I still prefer d20, cuz I can think of it in percentages at a 5% per +/-1, and it gives me a bit more range for ability progression and such, assuming it's used for task resolution (the only reason I want a d20, at least). Otherwise I'd just rather use d6s for everything.

Quote from: Ruprecht on May 31, 2023, 10:26:18 PM
Try using multiple D6s for your die chain. Either remove all die that roll 1 (and usage can drop quick) or only remove a single die no matter how many 1s are rolled.

I've tried that and it works well enough for certain cases. The big problem is that if the number of dice is dictated by something positive and desirable, you have competing incentives (more dice might yield some positive, but more dice also increases the chance of depletion).

At this point I still use the "things deplete if any 1 is rolled", but only in cases where I'm trying to model some kind of risk/reward because then these competing incentives are brought into conscious focus. It's a useful tool, though.

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 01, 2023, 08:23:30 PM
Dice mapping to levels is kind of a dubious benefit regardless of die type, TBH. Unless there's some kind of mechanic that directly ties to levels, which I can't think of any.

Speaking personally, trying to align the scale of numbers in a design is super useful when you're iterating on your game. If none of the scales can be easily reconciled, it's hard to make connections between different subsystems with all these different scales. The alternative is allowing different attributes, levels, skills, etc. to interact with each other differently as you learn new things about the design. It's hard to explain further without showing an example in detail, but if my scale maps to the dice and comports with any other scale in the system, it's no longer a ton of work to hook one system into another in a way that can be interesting.

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 01, 2023, 08:23:30 PM
Dice mapping to levels is kind of a dubious benefit regardless of die type, TBH. Unless there's some kind of mechanic that directly ties to levels, which I can't think of any.

Not sure what you mean by "can't think of any", are you talking about existing published games? The OP appears to be talking about designing new games.

Any game that provides a "+ level" bonus to specific actions is leveraging the fact that a +1 bonus is equal to one level higher. It allows for class-based actions, skill-based, or magic-based bonuses to scale equally.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on June 02, 2023, 03:31:50 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 01, 2023, 08:23:30 PM
Dice mapping to levels is kind of a dubious benefit regardless of die type, TBH. Unless there's some kind of mechanic that directly ties to levels, which I can't think of any.

Speaking personally, trying to align the scale of numbers in a design is super useful when you're iterating on your game. If none of the scales can be easily reconciled, it's hard to make connections between different subsystems with all these different scales. The alternative is allowing different attributes, levels, skills, etc. to interact with each other differently as you learn new things about the design. It's hard to explain further without showing an example in detail, but if my scale maps to the dice and comports with any other scale in the system, it's no longer a ton of work to hook one system into another in a way that can be interesting.

Yeah, but I'm not talking about mapping certain things in general, but mapping die type to character levels specifically. And even then, "it depends" on what you're mapping, why you're mapping it and what you're getting from mapping it.

Quote from: Zalman on June 02, 2023, 06:18:03 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 01, 2023, 08:23:30 PM
Dice mapping to levels is kind of a dubious benefit regardless of die type, TBH. Unless there's some kind of mechanic that directly ties to levels, which I can't think of any.

Not sure what you mean by "can't think of any", are you talking about existing published games? The OP appears to be talking about designing new games.

Any game that provides a "+ level" bonus to specific actions is leveraging the fact that a +1 bonus is equal to one level higher. It allows for class-based actions, skill-based, or magic-based bonuses to scale equally.

Even if we're taking about hypothetical, yet to be designed games for pure theory crafting purposes, having established examples can be useful to establish WTF people are talking about when they claim something.

In the case of a game that grants you a "+Level" bonus to certain rolls (as various editions of D&D have done to some degree or another, sometimes +1/X Class levels rather than "+Full Level") having the character level map to die type used is kinda besides the point. The point of those bonuses is not to map to the die type, but to help you beat some target number or opposed roll.

If anything, mapping die type to character level in those instances can lead to roll modifier inflation (specially when you also get bonuses from other stuff, like Ability Scores or whatever), like it happened in D&D 3e particularly, and to a lesser extend other editions of D&D before 5e. Which is part of the reason that Proficiency Bonuses in 5e only go up to +6 as part of the idea of "Bounded Accuracy". But mapping level to die type and granting a bonus equal to level means that you're going to end up with a higher bonus than the die variable range at some point. Which means that higher level characters are gonna end up beating average or even high target numbers before even rolling. If anything level bonuses (or the levels themselves) need to be lower than the die type used for it to work (assuming a Roll+Modifier vs TN structure).

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 02, 2023, 07:26:51 AM
In the case of a game that grants you a "+Level" bonus to certain rolls (as various editions of D&D have done to some degree or another, sometimes +1/X Class levels rather than "+Full Level") having the character level map to die type used is kinda besides the point. The point of those bonuses is not to map to the die type, but to help you beat some target number or opposed roll.

That's correct, matching the die type to the expected level range is not the point of the bonus itself, that's a total non sequitur. It is the point of the game rules though. It allows you to instantly asses that a +1 sword is equivalent to +1 level of combat ability.

By way of specific example, LotP does this (using D20), as does my own long-running homebrew (on a D12).

It still gets ridiculous in 5e with the modifiers.

I'm in the d6 camp with Brad, except, instead of Monopoly I prefer Yahtzee because you have paper and pencils already in the box.

Whatever else we can say, I bet we can agree that no one wants to roll a big pool of d4s.  With the possible exception of early D&D magic users, on the grounds that this reinforces for the player that the stuff his character does is harder than what mere fighters do. 

Quote from: Zalman on June 02, 2023, 07:41:29 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 02, 2023, 07:26:51 AM
In the case of a game that grants you a "+Level" bonus to certain rolls (as various editions of D&D have done to some degree or another, sometimes +1/X Class levels rather than "+Full Level") having the character level map to die type used is kinda besides the point. The point of those bonuses is not to map to the die type, but to help you beat some target number or opposed roll.

That's correct, matching the die type to the expected level range is not the point of the bonus itself, that's a total non sequitur. It is the point of the game rules though. It allows you to instantly asses that a +1 sword is equivalent to +1 level of combat ability.

By way of specific example, LotP does this (using D20), as does my own long-running homebrew (on a D12).

What allows you to assess that a +1 sword is equivalent to a +1 combat level is combat ability granting you +1 per level. The die type used doesn't figure into it. And like I mentioned in the part of my post you cut out, matching the level/modifier range to die type can have undesirable results. So having the die type map to level is not necessarily a benefit, making it "dubious" as I originally said.

Could it theoretically be done? Sure, I suppose (still don't think it necessarily works in this example). But that doesn't make mapping the die to level a benefit outside some very specific designs.

Neither.

d10s are best dice.

While I like D6s and tried to use them in my own system, they lack granularity while d20s are only popular because of D&D IMHO.

1d10 works as a more glandular d6.
2d10 is like a d20 with a bellcurve (something I love) but not one as severe as 3d6 (which I find to be too extreme)
1d% is basically two 10 siders in a row.

I'll second that.  When Cyberpunk/Mekton Zeta (d10 based) gave way to Fuzion (3d6), I was in open revolt and refused to play the latter.  :-)