Prof. Dungeon Craft released a new discussion video on YouTube talking up that a lot of new games coming out recently are using rules based around the humble D6.  In particular is the upcoming Victorian paranormal genre game from the Critical Roll/Darrington Press called Candela Obscura.

Or do you love your d20 games?

For me I have no particular love or attachment to any dice.  In fact, if I were to write an RPG right now I am tempted to make it a D10 system for three reasons.  It's percentile-ish, so getting it tuned ought be easier as you can see the percentage, it's not normal, which I like.  It makes a +1 mean more.  And you could play using poker cards by removing the jokers and face cards if no dice are available. 

I do know one thing.  Getting super clever and creating a unique and new way to roll dice and determine success or failure is annoying.   Those games can be a bit pretentious, or just irritatingly confusing. 

So what do you like?

a 2D6 gives you more of a bell curve and much less chance of a crit or a fumble compared to the D20 system.

https://www.thedarkfortress.co.uk/tech_reports/2_dice_rolls.php

I prefer the many possibilities; using 1d6, 2d6, or 3d6, etc.

Quote from: Jam The MF on May 30, 2023, 11:50:39 PM
I prefer the many possibilities; using 1d6, 2d6, or 3d6, etc.

The DCC dice chain with their funky die is also pretty interesting as well.

I prefer the d20 for:

• Tactile/Aesthetic Reasons: Just like the way it looks and feels.
• Even 5% increment distribution
• Largest single die type that's practical to use in actual play (actual d100s SUCK and d30s are too rare)

But d6s are my second favorite for:

• Tactile/Aesthetic Reasons: Just like the way it looks and feels.
• Classic, widespread, commonplace, easier to find
• Preferred die type for dice pools

If I was gonna make a game without a d20, it would only use d6s alone. My ultimate preference is d20 for task resolution, d6 for damage (increasing at 1d6, 1d6+2, 2d6, 2d6+2, etc.), d100 for random tables, and no other die types.

IMO the d6 is the most underrated die in the arsenal. My RPG homebrew uses nothing but d6s in a result-counting dice pool and I'm very happy with it.

I like a few things about the d6:

• The limited range of numbers forces you to reign in the rest of the math in the game, which is good to keep things grounded. Constraints are great for creativity with a design.
• You can do interesting things like exploding dice where a d20 or other die with many faces it would be too complicated or just not worth it because it's too low probability.
• The d6 is available almost anywhere and fits nicely in the hand, rolls nice, and there are lots of custom colors and patterns available in matching sets compared to alternative polyhedral dice.
• A dice pool generates a nice curve of outcomes and if you do result-counting it's essentially free of arithmetic. Plays very fast. With the d6 in particular it's just so easy to read the "pips" on the dice at a glance.
• You can get very ambitious with encounters with lots of enemies (like goblins). 12 goblins slinging stones in D&D can be slow to resolve in D&D if you roll it out (especially rolling damage). With a d6 I just roll the pool, sort them, and the result is right there. There's a reason so many wargames use pools vs. d20 roll-over. Thac0 is actually better than the modern roll for large numbers of combatants because it can resemble a result-counting pool.
• The math around the d6 actually works out very nicely for a lot of common probabilities you may need to represent. The hardest thing is representing really rare outcomes, but you can do that with a 2d6 roll or a d66 or even a d666 roll depending on your game. I personally use d66 for those cases but I prevent them from being player-facing.

One other big thing about using a single die for everything: you never have to explain which dice to roll to a new player. People don't think about it too often, but I onboard a LOT of brand-new players and one of the hurdles they face is remembering which dice to roll and which shape corresponds to which number of faces. d12 vs. d20 is a big confusion in particular. People also get wizard envy over fireballs and how many dice they get to roll compared to rolling 1d20 and hoping for the 20. They're kind of qualitatively different experiences and I think rolling a fistful of d6s tends to be more exciting for people around the table.

The worst thing I see a lot is that many games which require the full polyhedral set don't make meaningful use of all the dice. If you roll damage 100 times, the difference between the d6 and the d8 just wash out. The closest thing I can think of that uses the full polyhedral range are something like a usage-die mechanic, but I have big problems with that mechanic too, mostly around the probability of rolling a 1 compared with how frequently somebody is going to be asked to roll that thing. You also have to wonder how much it really is going to matter if the game doesn't clamp down hard on other aspects of the game like your gear encumbrance. If I can carry 4-5 chunks of supplies with a d12 usage die, it's not exactly super likely that I'm going to run dry unless we are rolling the hell out of these all the time.

I like d20 well enough, it's a good die to represent a nice range of linear probability and it's the right level of granularity if you want to get down into it. I'll certainly play any OSR game and enjoy myself. I think the only dice systems I hate are percentile systems, just because they're so granular but that granularity almost never matters. Once again, explaining to a new player the distinction between the percentile-die and the d10 and getting them to consistently report their numbers properly is a pain, no matter how brief. Or if somebody accidentally rolls 2d10 and forgets to call which is the 10s digit. I also see a lot of people get confused about counting "001" or "100" properly. It just slows down the game. All that said, I love some d100 systems in spite of their dice systems because they have other good stuff going on.

I like both. I like Mini Six/D6 System, I like Dragonbane's D20 BRP, and WoTC D&D's d20 system to a lesser extent these days. I also like OD&D/S&W where you only use d20 & d6, no d4 d8 d10 d12.

I don't much like d10 systems IME like Eden Studios' or Cyberpunk. I don't like d%. Not a big fan of Savage Worlds either. But d20 & d6 systems both work well for me.

I don't necessarily favor one die over the other.  I don't like it, however, when a designer gets too cute.  Whatever dice are used shouldn't need a bunch of exceptions to make the intended math work out--or worse, the designers doesn't even work out the math. For example, don't get so fixated on using a single die that you have to twist some sub systems into pretzels to get it to work with that die, when you could easily use another die and/or pool to get approximately the same outcomes.

Beyond that, the more often a certain check/test will be rolled, the more likely it should be a single die--especially if the game will expect the GM to run many NPCs/monsters.  Note that the die rolling frequency is more about per hour than relative to everything in the game.  If there are a fair number of fights, but a few rolls resolve each action, then multiple dice aren't such a big deal.  If the game has more attrition or whiffing, along with a lot of fights (per hour) then it begins to matter.

I'm not a fan of pools that routinely go above 10 dice, and even more than 6 is pushing it.  The differences between outcomes in an 8 die and 10 die pool are almost always trivial compared to the differences between, say, 3 die and 4 die pool.  (Part of the point of many pools is diminishing returns as you pile on dice.  So once you get over some meaningful number, I'd rather drop some dice in return for N automatic successes.)

As far as single d6 or d8, it is very rare that I will play a game that has that constricted of a range.  Chances are, it's either got a narrow range on purpose, or it has modifiers that make the die roll almost meaningless after a while, or it is oblivious to these nuances.  Such a game can be done well or poorly, but even the ones done well are unlikely to appeal, since I prefer a wider range in which to operate.

While it is true that roll and count success or smallish dice plus small modifiers make for the fastest play, I find that as slice of game time, there's not much difference between those and any well-designed mechanic.  D20 + mod vs TN doesn't appreciably slow down in my experience until you let the mods and TNs get as out of control as you see them in parts of D&D 3.*/PF, for example.  Such minor differences are dwarfed by other system concerns, such as how initiative is handled, how to make weapon choices meaningful without confusing everyone, etc.  This is all about chasing performance in handling times.  If it takes a typical player 5 minutes to handle 1 round of combat, then it's likely not just the dice causing problems.    OTOH, once you get the obvious dice problems worked out, along with the obvious system problems, and get it down under 1 minute, then I'd care a whole lot more about a system change shaving off 15 seconds than I will a dice change shaving off 1 second.  Once you get down into the 10-20 second range, then it starts to be a trade between the intended complexity of the system versus handling time, and those trades don't always come out in favor of speed at all costs.

I love the aesthetics of 2d10 + mod vs TN.  I love the range of outcomes, the elegance of how it maps to percentages, and the relative simplicity of only having 2 dice in a flattish curve.  However, I've yet to see a single game in practice that works to my satisfaction, including ones I've designed myself.  I think part of it is that it sits in a grey area where you get all the disadvantages of using more than 1 die but not many of the perks of multiples.  Perhaps the only theoretical design where I can see it being a great choice is bolting a better skill system onto BEMCI/RC (than the one in the book, d20 roll under vs attribute).  However, I have no interest in developing such a hybrid.

I prefer percentile dice.

But the d20 gets the job done very nicely and gives just enough spread to make easy roll tables for.

The d6 is a bit too small a range and adding more introduces the bell curve possibly when you do not want it. But d6s are crazy easy to come by.

I like single die (different sizes) opposed rolls, without pluses or minuses for roll resolution.
So I like all six die sizes.

If forced between a 1d6 and a 1d20, it's a toss up. I'm assuming this is 1dX versus a target number. But it really comes down to, how complicated are the rules?

The limitations of only six outcomes make things simple but very granular. Something I'm probably OK with for the d6. This assumes you don't have old style Traveller rules for modifying the target number, that require 1d6 + 1d6 cross references for every roll.

But the 1d20 adds a bunch of outcomes, which to me means a bunch of extra rules about when each number should or could be used as a target. But at the same time, it gives you more find grained outcomes. If the system wasn't to complicated, I'd be fine with this too.

It really depends on the design goals of the game the dice are used for. If you prefer outcomes the skew towards average results then 3d6 is the way to go. If want very swingy results then a d20 is great. The problem with a d20 is bonus proliferation. 3rd edition got so ridiculous that rolling the D20 was merely icing on the cake to the piled on bonuses. That in turn drives up difficulty numbers to the stratosphere making anyone not hyper specialized automatically fail at an attempted task. If a single die of any type is used for resolution then bonuses or penalties to the roll must be severely restricted to keep the roll from being a joke. I would go so far as to say that if a single d6 is used for resolution that any sort of permanent bonus to the roll not be part of the game and only situational bonuses used.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on May 30, 2023, 11:31:44 PM
I do know one thing.  Getting super clever and creating a unique and new way to roll dice and determine success or failure.   Those games can be a bit pretentious, or just irritatingly confusing. 

The Troubleshooters and Mothership are two examples that got too clever by half with their systems. Both are d100-ish, but they added so many options and edge cases, they lost the natural intuitiveness of d100 systems.

Any dice are fine with me, but ideally the result will be immediately apparent after rolling. For that reason, I tend to prefer dice pools, which are typically d6 but also d6, d8, d10, d12 (Free League style) and percentile systems.

I like the d20 as a die. It's got useful 5% increments. It's nice looking. It rolls nice. But I'll be dammed if most d20 systems don't have some fussy arithmetic after you roll. I play a lot of d20 systems but this aspect really annoys me. Just let me figure out a target number and then let me roll to beat it.

d20 is generally the best IMO

It's generally best if the modifers in question are not often too swingy though.  For instance, if some event, given the levels and classes or whatever in general should be about 25% likely to happen, it becomes unfortunate if something routinely buffs or debuffs it to 10% or 40%, as these are huge swings from +3 or -3.

This isn't a problem with the die, but it is an issue that systems that use the die very frequently fall into.

d6 is the best because you can steal them from an old Monopoly set at your grandparent's house and people will just think you're playing some boardgame instead of super nerd nonsense like D&D.

d20 are fine, but I prefer the d6.  A +1 bonus on a d20 is small enough that I don't really perceive it.  It makes a differnece once in a while, and if you get a bunch of them it can make a big difference, but it's small enough that while I know it intellectually, I don't really feel it.  A +1 on a d6 however frequently makes a difference and feel significant.  So d6s make small mods significant in the game.  With a d20 games usually pile on a bunch of mods, but I don't much care for that design philosophy.  I'd rather deal with a a few significant numbers than a whole bunch of piddly ones that are only important when added together (which you have to do for each roll :-(  ).  Also you can find d6s anywhere.