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Last time I asked a question of this nature it was regarding Point buy and if that system is inherently bad game design, I never really found any argument one way or the other compelled me.

I've had more fun with systems that were random gen or some simple array method. however I've enjoyed some point buy systems as well.

The reason I asked is simply because being that the OSR can be argued to be one of the most successful schools of design in the hobby space, I wanted to challenge some of the presumed stances it has on certain mechanics, as for the most part the OSR community tends to put it's nose at Point Buy.

As for Dice pools

My only main experience with dice pools is Westend's Star Wars, and D6 legends, both systems I think are really good and even beloved, I have also read Chronicles of Darkness and the old Hunter the Reckoning games, both which had slightly different versions of the storyteller system.

Chronicles was not bad, and while I love the premise of Hunter the Reckoning, it suffered the same issues every other storyteller system game had, which is having exploding or imploding botch based dice pools is like sucking ass threw a stray.

Besides having exploding and imploding / Botches in a dice pool, I don't quite understand why much of the OSR crowd seems to not fancy them? at least even as a sub-mechanic or a skill system?

The problem I have with dice pools is kind of dumb, tbh.  There's too many things for a player to sort out for a check.

If I've done my job as a GM right, every check has meaning and thereby putting stress on the player.  The more dice a player has to check under stress the longer it takes to sort out and in turn hurts the game's flow and pacing.  I find that three dice is as big as a dice pool gets before it starts to have a negative affect at the table.

By the same token, my favorite dice mechanic is 2d6.  This is the most familiar dice mechanic to most non RPG games and so it's easy to get players on board with it no matter what their experience.  It's comfortable for my players therefore it's easy to use therefor, my game runs better.

These are my observations of the various games I've run and played over the years so it isn't scientific.  If I had my way, every roll would be a % roll but that's not what seems to work for most players.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on January 08, 2024, 05:04:48 PMHunter the Reckoning... suffered the same issues every other storyteller system game had, which is having exploding or imploding botch based dice pools is like sucking ass threw a stray.

Besides having exploding and imploding / Botches in a dice pool, I don't quite understand why much of the OSR crowd seems to not fancy them? at least even as a sub-mechanic or a skill system?

I can't speak for the OSR as a whole, obviously, and I myself am not averse to dice pools as a mechanic, but the things about pools that I have either heard complained about or can see as difficulties include the following:

- Lack of easy odds transparency.  This is especially griped about in games like the original Storyteller system where the TN each die had to match or beat for a success was adjustable, so figuring your chances of success at any one roll on the fly was harder than simply comparing a d20 to a DC or a percentile roll-under. One thing I've noticed about a lot of OSR gamers is that they like to be able to figure out what the tactically best option is, and difficulty figuring the odds is an obstacle to that.  Fixed-TN systems like Burning Wheel or the Aeon White Wolf games have less of a problem on this, but it's still an approximation.

- Lack of room for progression.  To keep dice pools to manageable sizes, ability scores usually tend to be fairly strictly limited so that players seldom have to roll more than 10 dice at once, and usually less -- both the 7th Sea/L5R and World of Darkness games had both Attributes and Skills ranging only from 1 to 5 as a result. OSR players tend to prefer games where you have more room to grow and progress from starting power to high-power -- the classic 1st- to 20th-level development arc.

- Excessive granularity of result.  This is more for dice pools which count successes (e.g. Storyteller) rather than total up all dice values (e.g. Star Wars), but as the former is measurably quicker for most, it tends to be more popular in practice. When a roll can be successful with anywhere from 1 to 5 successes, there is a natural impulse on players to want to know exactly what each quantity represents in practical result, and most games in practice leave this to the GM to wing, which can get frustrating or boring.

It's less about what's "wrong" with dice pools, and more about whether they work to deliver typical OSR gameplay goals, part of which is usually evoking the feeling of the old school gaming experience.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 08, 2024, 05:26:57 PM
- Lack of room for progression.  To keep dice pools to manageable sizes, ability scores usually tend to be fairly strictly limited so that players seldom have to roll more than 10 dice at once, and usually less -- both the 7th Sea/L5R and World of Darkness games had both Attributes and Skills ranging only from 1 to 5 as a result. OSR players tend to prefer games where you have more room to grow and progress from starting power to high-power -- the classic 1st- to 20th-level development arc.

- Excessive granularity of result.  This is more for dice pools which count successes (e.g. Storyteller) rather than total up all dice values (e.g. Star Wars), but as the former is measurably quicker for most, it tends to be more popular in practice. When a roll can be successful with anywhere from 1 to 5 successes, there is a natural impulse on players to want to know exactly what each quantity represents in practical result, and most games in practice leave this to the GM to wing, which can get frustrating or boring.

Agree with all of it, but will add that it's the interaction of these two points that really can set a dice pool as the wrong thing for me for some games.  Games with dice pools that ignore either or both points do so at their peril. Even with a well-designed, appropriately used dice pool, you can't merely tack it onto a D&D-style game and expect it to work.  Of course, the opposite is true too.  Whatever one thinks about Burning Wheel, even the people who appreciate it would find that it stinks using a d20.  We all know how Star Wars d20 measured up against WEG--and that's an area where I could see either working with the right design.  That is, Star Wars might work as a d20 game, but WEG would not.

Since I rarely want either a course grain or a narrow progression, naturally dice pools rarely work for me, even if I can appreciate the mechanic for games that have both.

In the "poorly executed" category, you can do d20, d100, dice pools of various types, and other mechanics equally poorly.  However, a poorly executed dice mechanic will tend to have different set of problems.  This is true even when you limit it to scaling.  A d20 game with bad scaling is because someone thought that because you could have +2 or +3 modifiers, that you could stack them indefinitely, and it would just work as long as you kept bumping target numbers.  Whereas a similar dice pool error is to think because your design will support 5 dice easily and 10 dice rarely, that you can bump to 15+ and nothing will change.  They are both bad, but bad in different ways.  Some people who won't mind the rough edges on one may hate the other, and vice versa.  It takes a little better appreciation of the math to see why why dice pools fall apart past some point. So I think the artsy types are a little more likely to screw one up.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 08, 2024, 05:26:57 PM
It's less about what's "wrong" with dice pools, and more about whether they work to deliver typical OSR gameplay goals, part of which is usually evoking the feeling of the old school gaming experience.

I find it weird that stuff from the 1980s like dice pools should be considered new-fangled and not part of old school. Is there is better terminology to distinguish game design that evokes the feel of 1980s games like Star Wars and Shadowrun?

Quote from: jhkim on January 08, 2024, 06:06:03 PMI find it weird that stuff from the 1980s like dice pools should be considered new-fangled and not part of old school. Is there is better terminology to distinguish game design that evokes the feel of 1980s games like Star Wars and Shadowrun?

This is a good point -- people tend to associate dice pools with the '90s because of the World of Darkness (Vampire 1E came out in 1991), but they were introduced earlier than that.

I might suggest that if we were picking a time period for the original games the atmosphere of which the OSR is most interested in evoking, it would run from 1974 to 1985; 1986 was the year that Ghostbusters, GURPS and HarnMaster all first came out (Star Wars D6 first came out in '87 and Shadowrun in 1989).  Maybe games from 1986 to 1991 could be called "OSR Next-Gen"?

I strongly prefer dice pools over xDy + z vs TN systems.

The thing with your more conventional D20-esque system is that they don't actually perform that well for adults who tend to play tired. I remember vividly from high school a friend of mine trying to do a Call of C'thulu all-nighter for Halloween. It didn't go well because once players get tired, even basic arithmetic can become really hard. These days most of the play time I have comes when one player or another is coming off a stressful 10+ hour shift or a deadline or this is the first time they've had away from the baby in a week. If I rescheduled every time a player felt tired, we would almost never play.

Dice pools function about as well during unimpaired play, but they continue to function well even when players are not quite at 100%. There's also the fact that because the core mechanic tends to not require as much attention to use, it allows for more eyeballs up gameplay. You can also do some really nifty things with cleverly dice pools which aren't possible in other systems. Not to toot my own horn, but the custom dice pool I posted a few years back on the Design board has stamina mechanics baked in as part of the core mechanic. What's more, this is a step die pool and the stamina mechanic gives you rerolls on your best dice first. Not only does the value of the stamina reroll scale in proportion to the dice used in the initial roll, but the value of adding more stamina to an action decreases the more stamina you add.

Let me repeat this. The stamina mechanic simultaneously scales up to the stats involved, down based on how much stamina has already been added, and all the complex math behind how that works gets buried on the designer end of the game. From the player or GM perspective, this is just fishing for dice--which admittedly takes notably longer for a mixed die pool than D20--and rerolling a few of them to see how many times you roll a 3 or lower.

Good luck doing that with D20.

This is consistently the tale, too. Yes, there are a lot of ho hum dice pools out there, but the vast majority of games which have interesting features in their die mechanics tend to be dice pools. That's not to say that there are no problems with dice pools, but I generally think that the better examples of dice pools have bonkers features which are worth quite a bit.

The worst problem most dice pools have is that because they scale up by adding dice, the bell curve flattens out and successes tend to become too numerous to really mean anything. Dice pools with more than about 8 dice are too large to comfortably use.

The only real problem, as opposed to bad implementation or preference zealotry, is speed of multi-roll resolution. If the GM needs to make hidden check for the party, rolling a handful of color coded d20s for the party is much faster then multiple dice per player.

Scalability is only a problem when everything is on one scale. A fast jet, a car, and a human can all have a speed of 2 dice and roll resolvable dice pools against their own kind with automatic success added when competing out of scale without needing to give the car 20 dice and the jet 200.

Complicated probability is only a problem when all parameters are adjustable, dice count, target number, and success target. Who can tell if its more appropriate to subtract a die, add on to the dc, or ask for an extra success in a given situation? Solved by limiting it to only one axis of adjustment. The odds of success being unapparent to the player makes the decisions more interesting, instead of only taking the optimal course on autopilot.

Excessive granularity, an extra success in dice pool can mean as much or as little as beating the dc with a d20 by several points. No one complains about the granularity of a d20 in a binary test and it can give up to 20 point success versus a 10 dice pools ten maximum successes.

I like dice pools. D6 and Shadowrun 2e are two of my all time favorites.

I do agree about the odds not being obvious, though in D6 you can figure you basically have a 50% shot of rolling 3.5 per d6 or higher. Shadowrun it's trickier because for higher target numbers you need a 6, and then another number added to it.

The downside of D6 is that many people cannot add. They had to invent that D6 legend with the special dice so people could just count instead.

Quote from: jhkim on January 08, 2024, 06:06:03 PM

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 08, 2024, 05:26:57 PM
It's less about what's "wrong" with dice pools, and more about whether they work to deliver typical OSR gameplay goals, part of which is usually evoking the feeling of the old school gaming experience.

I find it weird that stuff from the 1980s like dice pools should be considered new-fangled and not part of old school. Is there is better terminology to distinguish game design that evokes the feel of 1980s games like Star Wars and Shadowrun?

I think Retro works better. But bear in mind, some OSR people don't even like using d100% and insist on using d6s for things like skills. Hell, a lot of them even find skills new fangled.

There is nothing wrong with dice pools if what you enjoy doing at the table is playing with dice. I have played games with a variety of dice pool systems and they all include unique and clever ways to use dice. Some are quite impressive in their subtle complexity. But that isn't why I sit at the gaming table. I play to conquer the enemy, rescue the princess, or make off with the loot. Every second I have to think or talk about dice is time I don't get to enjoy what is happening with my character in the game world.

In most circumstances I just want the dice to answer a simple question, usually as simple yes/no and I want them to do it as quickly as possible so I can get back to what is happening with the characters. I can get that from d20 and d100 very efficiently.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 08, 2024, 06:33:53 PM

Quote from: jhkim on January 08, 2024, 06:06:03 PMI find it weird that stuff from the 1980s like dice pools should be considered new-fangled and not part of old school. Is there is better terminology to distinguish game design that evokes the feel of 1980s games like Star Wars and Shadowrun?

This is a good point -- people tend to associate dice pools with the '90s because of the World of Darkness (Vampire 1E came out in 1991), but they were introduced earlier than that.

Probably because WoD popularized dice pools.

GM Emulators were around as early as the 90s but did not take off till 2010 or so.

Possibly because it takes time for an idea to percolate and people to feel it out enough to try their own.

Quote from: JeremyR on January 08, 2024, 09:52:23 PM
I like dice pools. D6 and Shadowrun 2e are two of my all time favorites.

I do agree about the odds not being obvious, though in D6 you can figure you basically have a 50% shot of rolling 3.5 per d6 or higher. Shadowrun it's trickier because for higher target numbers you need a 6, and then another number added to it.

The downside of D6 is that many people cannot add. They had to invent that D6 legend with the special dice so people could just count instead.

I never got fully into 2e SR but have played it and the SR MUD used the 2e system fully.
 
Player illiteracy is appalingly rampant in RPGs for some reason. You do not see it half as bad with board games. How do people even function if they can not do even basic math? I am really bad with math and can still do 3+4=7.

Think one of the earlest dice pool systems I ever encountered was Tunnels & Trolls. Though it is I think more like a neo-dice pool system.

I thought WoD's dice pool system was ok. For me it was just another system in a growing list of systems. Aberrant though warmed me up to it as it just seemed to present it a little better somehow to me.

Troubles with Sanguinne soured me in dice pools for a long time.
 
The Torchlight edition of Metamorphosis Alpha used a dice pool system.

And as mentioned. I played some 2e Shadowrun and the SR MUD that recreated the system. Probably the implimentation I've had the least hassles with after Aberrant.

I think the big problem comes when you have would-be designers trying to come up with a dice pool system and not understanding how it works.

For you game designer types, it is worth learning how to use Anydice so you can get a better grasp on the percentages of the various die mechanics out there.
https://anydice.com/ (https://anydice.com/)

Quote from: Wisithir on January 08, 2024, 08:58:23 PM
The only real problem, as opposed to bad implementation or preference zealotry, is speed of multi-roll resolution. If the GM needs to make hidden check for the party, rolling a handful of color coded d20s for the party is much faster then multiple dice per player.

Scalability is only a problem when everything is on one scale. A fast jet, a car, and a human can all have a speed of 2 dice and roll resolvable dice pools against their own kind with automatic success added when competing out of scale without needing to give the car 20 dice and the jet 200.

Complicated probability is only a problem when all parameters are adjustable, dice count, target number, and success target. Who can tell if its more appropriate to subtract a die, add on to the dc, or ask for an extra success in a given situation? Solved by limiting it to only one axis of adjustment. The odds of success being unapparent to the player makes the decisions more interesting, instead of only taking the optimal course on autopilot.

Excessive granularity, an extra success in dice pool can mean as much or as little as beating the dc with a d20 by several points. No one complains about the granularity of a d20 in a binary test and it can give up to 20 point success versus a 10 dice pools ten maximum successes.

This is very insightful! You've summed up thoughts I couldn't put my finger on.

Dice pool game designer here. (Simple Superheroes (https://composedreamgames.com/pages/simplesuperheroes.php), I also use a modified d12 version in Dungeons Unleashed!)

Dice pools can be a little slower (more so if designers aren't careful). What they do is provide a different feel to a game. They are less well suited to fighting large groups (without custom rules for those) or having a bunch of minions helping you (again without different rules for that.)

I am not fond of roll a bunch of dice add them all together. It tends to be a little slower. If most rolls are 2-3 dice it's fine.

Some games let you roll a bunch of dice, but then pick only a few to keep. Marvel Heroic (Cortex version) does this, as does Nefertiti Overdrive (https://composedreamgames.com/marketplace/index.php?route=product/search&search=nefertiti) which mirrors the dice system.
In this the your roll a pool of different sized dice. You add two to get your "attack" but pick a third to be your level of effect -- which is based on the dice size. So a d10 that rolled a 1 is still a d10 effect.

I generally like success based dice pools. i.e. each die generates a success at X threshold and above.
[ur=https://composedreamgames.com/marketplace/random-alien-gamesl]Free Spacer[/url] does this, having threat dice generate "misses" and task dice generate "hits." Misses cancel out hits. I prefer to roll misses as the GM and then have the player roll for hits (RAW players roll all dice, but IMHO this seems slower and less tense.)

World of Darkness has you remove dice before a roll based off your opposition (at least sometimes).

Simple Superheroes has active defense. A villain or hero should feel like they have the opportunity to counter and action, you you compare your highest die to their highest, next highest to next, and ignore 2s and 1s.  Dice pools are small d6 pools. Rankings are 2-5 (but you can always roll 1 die), and in rare cases you can pool talents and or spend strainpoints to get extra dice. A high number of dice is 7. I have seen and employed 9 dice but rarely, and I'm not sure I have ever seen a 10.
Getting a single success is good; but transitory. Someone can easily take an action to change it. (You disarm someone, but he can just pick it up.)
Two successes is a lot harder. A normal person probably can't overcome this (at least in the near term -- that gun you disarmed is encased in ice.)
Three successes is almost permanent or does more. A super can likely only counter it if they have a specific power, or spend multiple actions and resources. (That normal guy you said you were disarming? Yeah, you got his gun and his knife, and tied him up.)

You can also split dice against foes. Maybe you want to disarm the whole gang? Ok, roll you 4 dice against four guys and see how many you get.

I don't see anything actually wrong with dice pools but I prefer single roll and adding stuff where needed.  I can add and subtract sets of two and three digit numbers almost instantly, so that's quicker than counting out multiple dice to use for a check.  If I was slower with my math, my preference would probably run the other way.

One place I absolutely loved the implementation of dice pools was in The Riddle of Steel, and the successor games which used the same model: player scores produced a dice total called the Combat Pool wherein one allocated dice to manoeuvres, attacks and defenses as desired, and where bonuses for PC motivation/commitment added dice while penalties for wounds and fatigue physically reduced the size of the pool.  I've yet to see any game system which did such an amazing job of reproducing the second-by-second feel of resource management, gambling, and on-the-fly odds sensing while simultaneously integrating narrative-driven dramatic awesomeness as TROS, and I've tried to incorporate that element of resource commitment into combat designs ever since, wherever I can.

There are weaknesses in the original implementation, as other critics have pointed out. The primary one in OSR terms, I think, is probably that TROS's system doesn't make it easy to track "multi-polar" fights that aren't broken up into individual duels.  Fights where a group of players gang up on a single big foe, and every player wants to be individually resolved rather than treated as one part of a mob, is something that most dungeon crawls wind up with sooner or later, and OSR games tend to do better at this.

Quote from: Wisithir on January 08, 2024, 08:58:23 PM
The only real problem, as opposed to bad implementation or preference zealotry, is speed of multi-roll resolution. If the GM needs to make hidden check for the party, rolling a handful of color coded d20s for the party is much faster then multiple dice per player.

Yes and no. Most dice pool systems interpret one roll as being equivalent to three or four rolls in D20 systems, and many come with GM advice discouraging liberal use of die rolls. However, dice pools can definitely be slower. It typically takes a few seconds to assemble a pool even if they're all the same die size. Often you'll see big dice pool systems offer alternatives to rolling. I think it was Shadowrun 3e which let you trade dice for successes, so if you were overmatched for the task and rolling wouldn't accomplish anything, you could simply buy success. Another is the One Roll Engine, where a single die roll very nearly emulates the whole of your character's actions in combat.

My point is that you are supposed to roll dice less frequently in a dice pool and leverage the fact that each individual roll can do more. That said, I do think that many dice pool systems could use an alternate core mechanic for when the full pool isn't actually desirable or all you want is a quick yes or no answer. There's also an argument to be had that more dice pool mechanics should scale complexity to player desires rather than doing their own thing; one of the key problems with Genesys is that it always prompts you with symbols but these are not always easy to interpret into the situation.

Dice pools are only really a problem when the dice pools get so large that they become cumbersome.  Storyteller worked okay for werewolves but became cumbersome when people were playing Lunar Exalts and rolling 10s of dice. 

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 09, 2024, 06:15:46 PM
Dice pools are only really a problem when the dice pools get so large that they become cumbersome.  Storyteller worked okay for werewolves but became cumbersome when people were playing Lunar Exalts and rolling 10s of dice.

This is pretty much my position. 

At three dice, it's as natural as a single die for the vast majority of people.  It gets a little harder and a little slower with each additional die.  Seven seems to be the point where I see signs of frustration in my players.  Beyond ten and I start getting actual complaints.

We seem to have glossed over something really big, and it happens to be a pet peeve of mine, so here we go...

Rolling a bunch of dice and adding some or all of them together is what I'd consider a dice pool.

Rolling the same dice over and over to see if it succeeded is, IMO, not.

And doing the above in a single muscle motion by putting all the dice in your hand at the same time doesn't change the outcome.

A quick test for me is, does adding a die guarantee a different result (even if just one point higher).  If "yes", that is what I would call a dice pool.

The chief cause of this is those pieces of plastic being uninformed that they're supposed to confirm to probability.  They all behave independently without regard to how many you have in your hand at once.

Quote from: Thondor on January 09, 2024, 12:06:53 PMDice pools can be a little slower (more so if designers aren't careful). What they do is provide a different feel to a game. They are less well suited to fighting large groups (without custom rules for those) or having a bunch of minions helping you (again without different rules for that.)

This has been my experience as well. In my OD&D game, I routinely have 20 or more combatants at a time. But with dice pools (or opposed rolls in general) that becomes extremely tedious. So, this is a case where the game system more or less enforces that combats will all be of one type (four PC vs a similar number of equally powerful opponents). It isn't a complete restriction (as you can create "mobs" of enemies acting as one), but it is something you need to consider when designing a game of this type.

Quote from: Wisithir on January 08, 2024, 08:58:23 PM
The only real problem, as opposed to bad implementation or preference zealotry, is speed of multi-roll resolution. If the GM needs to make hidden check for the party, rolling a handful of color coded d20s for the party is much faster then multiple dice per player.

Scalability is only a problem when everything is on one scale. A fast jet, a car, and a human can all have a speed of 2 dice and roll resolvable dice pools against their own kind with automatic success added when competing out of scale without needing to give the car 20 dice and the jet 200.

Complicated probability is only a problem when all parameters are adjustable, dice count, target number, and success target. Who can tell if its more appropriate to subtract a die, add on to the dc, or ask for an extra success in a given situation? Solved by limiting it to only one axis of adjustment. The odds of success being unapparent to the player makes the decisions more interesting, instead of only taking the optimal course on autopilot.

Excessive granularity, an extra success in dice pool can mean as much or as little as beating the dc with a d20 by several points. No one complains about the granularity of a d20 in a binary test and it can give up to 20 point success versus a 10 dice pools ten maximum successes.

Nailed it.

I would add to your third point (complicated probability...) that dice pool systems often have gimmicks like "exploding die" or "wild die" that add to the "who can tell?" factor.

I enjoy Dice Pool RPGs when they are done well.

They are a tricky mechanic / engine to create and requires designers who understand racist Nazi math and even worse, lots of playtesting at various power levels to see how those stats models function in actual play.

Thus, those kind of RPGs are rarely done well. 

The solution is simple:
5mm dice.

Ironically, I'm in the midst of constructing a dice pool game and working on the basic mechanics right now.  A couple of observations:

1)  Dice pools work very well to regulate extreme swings in randomness.  As opposed to a linear roll like a d20 or d100, dice pools allow for some results to show up way more than others.  It's why 2d6 and 3d6 games tend to be a little more "grounded" math-wise (in my opinion), because the 12 or 18 is really rare.  Honestly, 3d6 is getting into "dice pool" territory, anyway.  This is even more true as you increase dice instead of bonuses.  D&D 3.5 quickly became bonus plus dice instead of dice plus bonus (when you have a +23 to your roll, it's definitely 23 + 1d20), so the bonus becomes far more important than the dice, especially against fixed target difficulties.  But adding another die gives a steady probabilistic increase in the average rolled.  It just "feels" smoother in progression.

2)  Another advantage is scaling results.  I've always found calculating the total of a 1d20 plus bonus plus modifier, then figuring out margin of success to be very slow for my players (i.e. an additional effect for every 10 they are over their target number).  If you use dice pool successes versus a target number (my game is using d10s with a general target of 7 or higher), figuring out how many "effects" you get is as simple as counting how many dice show a 7 or higher.  It really makes a difference in the ease of scaling.  And, if you only need pass or fail, the player simply stops counting the moment they see a 7+.

3)  I also like that I can fold damage into the attack roll, cutting one additional roll out of the loop.  And trying to tie attack and damage together in a single-roll d20 type system always ends up using some form of scaling based on the total roll (see #2).

4)  This one is probably completely subjective, but I feel like it reflects ranged/missile/firearm attacks better than the traditional to-hit plus damage.  Maybe this is something that I picked up from playing WEG Star Wars for so many years, but dice pools just give me more options to handle modern weapons (like bursts or suppressing fire) than a d20 really does.  To see how awful the d20 rules can get with these, read any 1e Palladium game...

So that's how I feel about dice pools and what they do well.  Obviously there are drawbacks in time to roll, etc., but I feel like most of these are minimizable with tight rules.  I do have some questions for the folks that are into this topic or are open to dice pool games (I'm using xd10 dice pools, with each roll equal to or over a target number, normally 7, awarding a "success," which the player then spends for effects.  This reduces the number of rolls in combat, and, if you allow successes to be spent defensively, works the same as a static defense score... I think the greatest weakness of WEG SW was the opposed rolls):

First, I have considered using two different methods to manipulate the die rolls (and, yes, I've got spreadsheet after spreadsheet from anydice.com to prove it!).  I've considered having anything that gives you a bonus adding a die to your pool.  Anything that makes your task harder will increase the target number (so I'd probably start the target number at 5+ if I went this route).  Mathematically, increasing the target number has a larger effect than increasing the number of dice.  This means the GM can be a little more liberal with bonuses, because anything that adds a penalty will have an outsized effect (so a couple of extra dice won't really offset being prone and blinded, for example).  I know that folks have expressed concerns upthread about not being able to discern the effects of varying multiple features of the die rolls.  Do you think I can get away with this, or would it put you off or cause consternation?

Second, I am structuring the dice pools to average between 3 and 5 dice (d10s), usually with only a couple of bonus dice available.  I don't foresee any rolls being over 7 dice.  But I am looking at mechanics that might play into the number of dice, like losing dice each time you do something strenuous (and regaining dice at a rate each round you don't... sort of a fatigue or stamina mechanic).  Will varying the number of dice each round be too much, especially with varying target numbers?

I'm curious as to your reactions and reasons...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 10, 2024, 10:11:46 PM
First, I have considered using two different methods to manipulate the die rolls (and, yes, I've got spreadsheet after spreadsheet from anydice.com to prove it!).  I've considered having anything that gives you a bonus adding a die to your pool.  Anything that makes your task harder will increase the target number (so I'd probably start the target number at 5+ if I went this route).  Mathematically, increasing the target number has a larger effect than increasing the number of dice.  This means the GM can be a little more liberal with bonuses, because anything that adds a penalty will have an outsized effect (so a couple of extra dice won't really offset being prone and blinded, for example).  I know that folks have expressed concerns upthread about not being able to discern the effects of varying multiple features of the die rolls.  Do you think I can get away with this, or would it put you off or cause consternation?

It's not so much as not being able to discern the effects for me (though that is present to some degree) as once you introduce multiple ways to modify the pool, it vastly increases the confusion for casual players.  If the system is such that you don't expect to support casual players, then I wouldn't worry about that so much. With any player, I also find a slight handling time penalty for moving the target number.  Since handling time and casual players are both important to me, I'd never design a dice pool system with anything other than fixed target number and simply changing the dice as the means of scaling.

There is, however, one exception that I have flirted with for some mild success in handling large pools:  After a set number of dice, give average successes instead of rolling them.  To me, the max number to roll should be somewhere between 6 or 10 (depending on how much you want to focus on ease of use with a lower number or allowing the trend towards average with the higher number).  Not surprising, I settled on 8 for a max last time I tried it.  Since I conveniently was using d6s with 4+ as success, it was easy to say that every 2 dice you had over 7 instead gave you one automatic success.  Map that out in any dice, and it's not all that different than rolling it.  Of course, this kind of thing doesn't have to be exactly average either.  You can skew it in a way that fits the system.  D10s with a success on 7+, you might arbitrarily trade 3 dice over the threshold for an automatic success, cheating the character a bit.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 11, 2024, 12:01:28 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 10, 2024, 10:11:46 PM
First, I have considered using two different methods to manipulate the die rolls (and, yes, I've got spreadsheet after spreadsheet from anydice.com to prove it!).  I've considered having anything that gives you a bonus adding a die to your pool.  Anything that makes your task harder will increase the target number (so I'd probably start the target number at 5+ if I went this route).  Mathematically, increasing the target number has a larger effect than increasing the number of dice.  This means the GM can be a little more liberal with bonuses, because anything that adds a penalty will have an outsized effect (so a couple of extra dice won't really offset being prone and blinded, for example).  I know that folks have expressed concerns upthread about not being able to discern the effects of varying multiple features of the die rolls.  Do you think I can get away with this, or would it put you off or cause consternation?

It's not so much as not being able to discern the effects for me (though that is present to some degree) as once you introduce multiple ways to modify the pool, it vastly increases the confusion for casual players.  If the system is such that you don't expect to support casual players, then I wouldn't worry about that so much. With any player, I also find a slight handling time penalty for moving the target number.  Since handling time and casual players are both important to me, I'd never design a dice pool system with anything other than fixed target number and simply changing the dice as the means of scaling.

There is, however, one exception that I have flirted with for some mild success in handling large pools:  After a set number of dice, give average successes instead of rolling them.  To me, the max number to roll should be somewhere between 6 or 10 (depending on how much you want to focus on ease of use with a lower number or allowing the trend towards average with the higher number).  Not surprising, I settled on 8 for a max last time I tried it.  Since I conveniently was using d6s with 4+ as success, it was easy to say that every 2 dice you had over 7 instead gave you one automatic success.  Map that out in any dice, and it's not all that different than rolling it.  Of course, this kind of thing doesn't have to be exactly average either.  You can skew it in a way that fits the system.  D10s with a success on 7+, you might arbitrarily trade 3 dice over the threshold for an automatic success, cheating the character a bit.

That's a really good idea.  It also gives the players a sense of reward, in that they have swung the odds in their favor so much the dice can't completely screw them anymore.  I like it.  Thanks for the suggestion!

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 11, 2024, 06:48:26 AM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 11, 2024, 12:01:28 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 10, 2024, 10:11:46 PM
First, I have considered using two different methods to manipulate the die rolls (and, yes, I've got spreadsheet after spreadsheet from anydice.com to prove it!).  I've considered having anything that gives you a bonus adding a die to your pool.  Anything that makes your task harder will increase the target number (so I'd probably start the target number at 5+ if I went this route).  Mathematically, increasing the target number has a larger effect than increasing the number of dice.  This means the GM can be a little more liberal with bonuses, because anything that adds a penalty will have an outsized effect (so a couple of extra dice won't really offset being prone and blinded, for example).  I know that folks have expressed concerns upthread about not being able to discern the effects of varying multiple features of the die rolls.  Do you think I can get away with this, or would it put you off or cause consternation?

It's not so much as not being able to discern the effects for me (though that is present to some degree) as once you introduce multiple ways to modify the pool, it vastly increases the confusion for casual players.  If the system is such that you don't expect to support casual players, then I wouldn't worry about that so much. With any player, I also find a slight handling time penalty for moving the target number.  Since handling time and casual players are both important to me, I'd never design a dice pool system with anything other than fixed target number and simply changing the dice as the means of scaling.

There is, however, one exception that I have flirted with for some mild success in handling large pools:  After a set number of dice, give average successes instead of rolling them.  To me, the max number to roll should be somewhere between 6 or 10 (depending on how much you want to focus on ease of use with a lower number or allowing the trend towards average with the higher number).  Not surprising, I settled on 8 for a max last time I tried it.  Since I conveniently was using d6s with 4+ as success, it was easy to say that every 2 dice you had over 7 instead gave you one automatic success.  Map that out in any dice, and it's not all that different than rolling it.  Of course, this kind of thing doesn't have to be exactly average either.  You can skew it in a way that fits the system.  D10s with a success on 7+, you might arbitrarily trade 3 dice over the threshold for an automatic success, cheating the character a bit.

That's a really good idea.  It also gives the players a sense of reward, in that they have swung the odds in their favor so much the dice can't completely screw them anymore.  I like it.  Thanks for the suggestion!

I've looked into on AnyDice after first encountering it as an option in WEG's d6 Space, but apparently once you hit about 5 rolled dice the variance above that between "Xd" and "5d+averaging the rest" is truly negligible.

So long as it kicks in at or above 5d, the number of times it'd vary outside that window is for practical matters nonexistent.

It amuses me because if the probability for a success on each die is 50% it's ALMOST the Fudge dice (the four dice with equal chances of +1, 0, -1 basically create the same sort of standard deviation around a set number).

There is nothing wrong with dice pools and I can think of at least two vaguely OSR examples:

- In BECMI, one option for ability checks is rolling 2d6/3d6/4d6/5d6 under ability (which I find a good idea because the numbers work for me).
See here:
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2016/12/roll-xd6-under-ability-yet-another-d.html

- In the new LotFP draft, it seems that saves are now dice pools (which I find a bad idea for different reasons).

There might be something wrong with some specific implementation, but basically you can get what you're looking for with dice pools: predictability, granularity, dice pools, rare results... just adjust how you use them.

The reason that they don't fit well with OSR (there are a few exceptions as mentioned) is because OSR is meant to be compatible with D&D products that are usually d20.

But if you really want it, it could be done IMO; you could start with using OD&D HD for combat, for example.

In general I really prefer dice pools over a single d20, both because they tend to be more granular in the outcome and because they can help avoid the d20's failing feature that 5% of the time Einstein fails a math check so badly that he impales himself with his slide-rule and dies.  Most d20 rulesets have no means to circumvent that 5% crit fail even if someone is a master at what they're doing, which is ridiculous to me.  I really like Fantasy Flight's Star Wars dice pool setup for a bevy of reasons:

* More granular than pass/fail.
* Resistance is treated as increased difficulty on the actor instead of the defender rolling their own attempt to dodge/block/whatever.
* High stats/skills upgrade dice rather than add dice, so you aren't rolling like twenty dice on a check even at higher levels.
* The presence of minion groups streamlines things so you aren't rolling ten times for a bunch of stormtroopers and bogging down the encounter.

The whole custom dice/counting icons bit is a flat negative for a lot of people, but I think the other aspects of that dice pool system are solid gold and could be built into a more traditional dice pool with standard dice and a target number.

Savage Worlds is also a pretty solid dice pool setup since it keeps the pool down to two dice.

Shadowrun is, well, I've been playing since it came out, so I have a soft spot for it.  It can definitely get too deep in the weeds sometimes in the name of simulationism, but I feel the pros outweigh the cons.  I know my opinion is somewhat in the minority there.

Quote from: Valatar on January 11, 2024, 02:47:28 PM
In general I really prefer dice pools over a single d20, both because they tend to be more granular in the outcome and because they can help avoid the d20's failing feature that 5% of the time Einstein fails a math check so badly that he impales himself with his slide-rule and dies.  Most d20 rulesets have no means to circumvent that 5% crit fail even if someone is a master at what they're doing, which is ridiculous to me.

That's not dice, and a die pool can have similar issues, even if in slightly different places.  That's a failure of GM adjudication, calling for rolls when success should be ruled automatic or impossible, and moving on without touching the mechanics at all.  Or in many cases, a failure of the game to teach GM adjudication in any kind of coherent fashion.

There are very few GM's, even horrible ones, that would call for a roll when a character walked slowly across level ground, with nothing else happening, and no time limit.  Or call for one to keep breathing.  Somehow, that basic fact fails to register as a general principle, though.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 11, 2024, 02:55:10 PM
That's not dice, and a die pool can have similar issues, even if in slightly different places.  That's a failure of GM adjudication, calling for rolls when success should be ruled automatic or impossible, and moving on without touching the mechanics at all.  Or in many cases, a failure of the game to teach GM adjudication in any kind of coherent fashion.

There are very few GM's, even horrible ones, that would call for a roll when a character walked slowly across level ground, with nothing else happening, and no time limit.  Or call for one to keep breathing.  Somehow, that basic fact fails to register as a general principle, though.

If the examples are more in doubt, the issue still exists in any system that uses 'number of successes' rather than 'cumulative results'.

To wit, my introduction to the 2d20 system was Fallout game hosted by a guest GM.  I made a character specialized in treating injury, to the point of excluding everything else.  I failed my first and only Medicine check to treat a routine injury.  The unskilled player behind me made the roll easily.

It's a flaw.

One difficulty with adoption but not use is unfamiliarity.  I've been gaming for decades, run a lot of systems, played a few more, and I just realized I've never played a dice pool game.  I'm not against trying it, but when I'm looking at two systems to learn and one is a dice pool, I've always thought "maybe next time."  I'm sure it ain't rocket science, but figuring out a new dice mechanic when I'm already learning a whole new system is enough to tip the balance scale.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 11, 2024, 02:55:10 PM
That's not dice, and a die pool can have similar issues, even if in slightly different places.  That's a failure of GM adjudication, calling for rolls when success should be ruled automatic or impossible, and moving on without touching the mechanics at all.  Or in many cases, a failure of the game to teach GM adjudication in any kind of coherent fashion.

There are very few GM's, even horrible ones, that would call for a roll when a character walked slowly across level ground, with nothing else happening, and no time limit.  Or call for one to keep breathing.  Somehow, that basic fact fails to register as a general principle, though.

I was exaggerating in my example, because of course there shouldn't be rolls to climb out of bed.  But in the d20 system say a level 20 rogue confronted with a DC 10 lock still has that 5% failure chance.  Or, if you go the scaling route of 4e or Pathfinder 2/Starfinder, the level 20 rogue will inexplicably only encounter DC 40 locks at that stage in their career as the entire world has been upgrading their security systems behind the scenes as the rogue has gained levels.

Quote from: Valatar on January 11, 2024, 04:12:44 PM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 11, 2024, 02:55:10 PM
That's not dice, and a die pool can have similar issues, even if in slightly different places.  That's a failure of GM adjudication, calling for rolls when success should be ruled automatic or impossible, and moving on without touching the mechanics at all.  Or in many cases, a failure of the game to teach GM adjudication in any kind of coherent fashion.

There are very few GM's, even horrible ones, that would call for a roll when a character walked slowly across level ground, with nothing else happening, and no time limit.  Or call for one to keep breathing.  Somehow, that basic fact fails to register as a general principle, though.

I was exaggerating in my example, because of course there shouldn't be rolls to climb out of bed.  But in the d20 system say a level 20 rogue confronted with a DC 10 lock still has that 5% failure chance.  Or, if you go the scaling route of 4e or Pathfinder 2/Starfinder, the level 20 rogue will inexplicably only encounter DC 40 locks at that stage in their career as the entire world has been upgrading their security systems behind the scenes as the rogue has gained levels.

Still not seeing it.  Yeah, the whole 3.5/4E/PF crazy scaling is a problem trying to always have a mechanical solution to an adjudication problem.  So of course it doesn't work well.  There's no free lunch around this.  If in adjudicating you think there's no way that a level 20 rogue will fail against DC 10 locks under normal circumstances, then you rule that he doesn't need to roll. 

Now, if you are saying there should still be a chance of failure, but not 5%, then that is a granularity issue.  My answer however would be that if the chances are less than 5%, I'm probably going to rule no roll is needed.  So mechanics to handle 3% or 2% or 1% chances don't help all that much.  In any case, it's part of the baggage that comes with any system--finding the lowest level chance of failure that still requires a roll, then requiring a roll for it.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 10, 2024, 10:11:46 PM
First, I have considered using two different methods to manipulate the die rolls (and, yes, I've got spreadsheet after spreadsheet from anydice.com to prove it!).  I've considered having anything that gives you a bonus adding a die to your pool.  Anything that makes your task harder will increase the target number (so I'd probably start the target number at 5+ if I went this route).  Mathematically, increasing the target number has a larger effect than increasing the number of dice.  This means the GM can be a little more liberal with bonuses, because anything that adds a penalty will have an outsized effect (so a couple of extra dice won't really offset being prone and blinded, for example).  I know that folks have expressed concerns upthread about not being able to discern the effects of varying multiple features of the die rolls.  Do you think I can get away with this, or would it put you off or cause consternation?

Second, I am structuring the dice pools to average between 3 and 5 dice (d10s), usually with only a couple of bonus dice available.  I don't foresee any rolls being over 7 dice.  But I am looking at mechanics that might play into the number of dice, like losing dice each time you do something strenuous (and regaining dice at a rate each round you don't... sort of a fatigue or stamina mechanic).  Will varying the number of dice each round be too much, especially with varying target numbers?

I'm curious as to your reactions and reasons...

Let me speak as someone with experience tinkering with dice pools which are about as complex as they can get without breaking.

First, about players not being able to discern features; this is a half truth. The root problem is that you are trying to deliver game feel through the metaphorical rubber hose that is RNG. If your RNG is too strong relative to your game mechanics, it will not deliver game feel particularly well and players won't be able to sense the mechanics. This creates a Catch-22, where the RPG trope is that the player character is not the player and the difference is (usually) abstracted out with dice, but the player can't feel a thing of what the player character is experiencing through the dice. This is the root reason I dropped rolls to cast spells from my game. A shield spell where you roll 2d4 and target's DR increases by the result feels slow and sloppy because the effect of casting the spell is being squeezed through the hose of rolling those dice. "Pay 2 Mana: target's DR increases by 6," feels sleek, sharp, and crisp in comparison. So if you actually want a mechanic to deliver game feel to the players, I suggest you think long and hard about if you really want to pass it through RNG at all. 

Most features of core mechanics are majority placebo. That isn't to say that they deliver no game feel, but players tend to think themselves into sensing things in the mechanics which aren't actually there in the math. A common thing I've heard experienced D&D players say is that the advantage die which didn't count is "what you would have rolled." No, it's not. The first die you rolled is the one you would have rolled, so odds are 50-50 the higher roll would have actually been what you would have rolled. At the end of the day, the player knows that rolling 2d20 and keeping the higher improves their roll, and that expectation is what creates game feel like you're creating a dry martini by whispering "vermouth" over a glass of gin rather than actually adding any.

For some players that's all that's needed and for others...not so much.

In general, mechanics where players do things have much greater game feel potential than mechanics where players passively allow the mechanics to play themselves. Rolling 1d20 and adding a modifier is boring. It's somewhat better to roll 2d20 and choose the higher result. But it is far better to roll 5 successes, mark 2 off to hit your target, add 1 to deal extra damage, and then spend the last 2 to stun your target. The player is least active in the first example and just executing the actions required to make the game run. The player is most active in the last example, with the inevitable tradeoff being that the last one takes a whole lot of gameplay time.

Because of that, I am cautiously optimistic about your game having stamina affecting the number of dice in a roll. I suggest that you need a physical token of some sort (a poker chip?) to mark stamina penalties because the big issue will probably be remembering your current Stamina status. Rapidly twitching variables are something you must intentionally design around.

The thing which puts me off is you suggesting that you are using a variable target number. If by some chance you mean the success count, ignore this because requiring higher success counts for some actions is a no-brainer.

Dice pools really don't like having the value which determines if a die succeeds or fails change because it disrupts how players view the results. For comparison, my own system uses the full array of step dice, all the way from the d4 to the d20 (being one of only a few games which sensibly includes both in a single core mechanic). Messing with the TN is roughly as disruptive as introducing step dice. Less disruptive in that it's notably faster to vary the TN than fish for step dice, but also more disruptive because the player's viewpoint of the system changes when you change the TN.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 11, 2024, 10:18:19 AM
There is nothing wrong with dice pools and I can think of at least two vaguely OSR examples:

- In BECMI, one option for ability checks is rolling 2d6/3d6/4d6/5d6 under ability (which I find a good idea because the numbers work for me).
See here:
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2016/12/roll-xd6-under-ability-yet-another-d.html

- In the new LotFP draft, it seems that saves are now dice pools (which I find a bad idea for different reasons).

There might be something wrong with some specific implementation, but basically you can get what you're looking for with dice pools: predictability, granularity, dice pools, rare results... just adjust how you use them.

The reason that they don't fit well with OSR (there are a few exceptions as mentioned) is because OSR is meant to be compatible with D&D products that are usually d20.

But if you really want it, it could be done IMO; you could start with using OD&D HD for combat, for example.

Outside of core mechanics such as combat or saving throws, I actually can't see why a skill based task resolution, or some sort of magic or subsystem created via a dice pool would be incompatible?

I'm currently designing an OSR RPG where the core "powers" so to speak are resolved by a dice pool, though it only requires a single success to activate them, and duration/damage/special are determined by how many successes you got.

I also count subsystems within this question.

Quote from: Valatar on January 11, 2024, 04:12:44 PM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 11, 2024, 02:55:10 PM
That's not dice, and a die pool can have similar issues, even if in slightly different places.  That's a failure of GM adjudication, calling for rolls when success should be ruled automatic or impossible, and moving on without touching the mechanics at all.  Or in many cases, a failure of the game to teach GM adjudication in any kind of coherent fashion.

There are very few GM's, even horrible ones, that would call for a roll when a character walked slowly across level ground, with nothing else happening, and no time limit.  Or call for one to keep breathing.  Somehow, that basic fact fails to register as a general principle, though.

I was exaggerating in my example, because of course there shouldn't be rolls to climb out of bed.  But in the d20 system say a level 20 rogue confronted with a DC 10 lock still has that 5% failure chance.  Or, if you go the scaling route of 4e or Pathfinder 2/Starfinder, the level 20 rogue will inexplicably only encounter DC 40 locks at that stage in their career as the entire world has been upgrading their security systems behind the scenes as the rogue has gained levels.

Not to be a pendant, but by the 3e, 4E and 5e rules, natural 1s only automatically fail for attacks and saving throws (similarly except for attacks and saves, a natural 20 is not an automatic success either).

Further, outside of combat, many skills in 3e and 4E allow you to take 10 for the check (5e has "Passive Values" for a smaller list of things and a general guideline that you shouldn't even have a roll unless the DC would be 15+ to begin with) and, if there are no consequences for failure, you can take some extra time to take 20 for the check.

A +9 Open Locks modifier vs. a DC 10 lock will always succeed and there's literally no need to ever roll, even in combat.

Outside of combat, a +0 modifier is sufficient to open a DC 10 lock without even rolling.

With no time pressure, a +0 modifier is sufficient to open an untrapped DC 20 lock without rolling in about 2 minutes.

A reasonable starting Rogue probably starts with somewhere between a +5 and a +8 to their Open Locks check. So outside of combat a DC 15 lock is an action and a DC 25 is two minutes without rolling. The only reason to ever roll in 3e or 4E is if a lock within your take 20 ability is trapped or needs to be opened in less than two minutes.

Edit: and the level 20 4E Rogue won't only encounter DC 40 locks; the rules say those are just the only ones you should even bother rolling for (easier ones automatically get opened and harder ones are impossible).

Quote from: BadApple on January 08, 2024, 05:21:47 PM
The problem I have with dice pools is kind of dumb, tbh.  There's too many things for a player to sort out for a check.

If I've done my job as a GM right, every check has meaning and thereby putting stress on the player.  The more dice a player has to check under stress the longer it takes to sort out and in turn hurts the game's flow and pacing.  I find that three dice is as big as a dice pool gets before it starts to have a negative affect at the table.

I don't understand what you're referring to. There's nothing to "sort out". You roll a number of dice equal to your rank.

My favorite RPGs are mostly dice pool systems.  But, I like ones that most people never heard of. 

D6 Star Wars was already mentioned, but my favorite version is the Mini-Six Bare Bones.  Nuff said. 

Dungeons and Delvers Dice Pool.  First, there is a regular D20 game too, so don't confuse them.  The dice pool version is simplified, but that's a good thing to me.  This dice pool system has stats and skills rated as dice sizes, often with additional dice from specialist abilities. Roll them all, but here is the genius bit.  You only pick the highest 2 dice to be your roll.  Everything is a skill check, including spells.  A fireball spell or a throwing knife are both the same.

Tiny D6 series.  This one is exceptionally simple.  Roll 1D6 for difficult things, 2D6 for normal things, and 3D6 when it's easy.  Get a 5 or a 6 on any dice, you win.  That's it.  This time the percentages are not hard to work out.  33%, 55%, or 70% chances to succeed.  I mostly like it because it covers many genres like superheroes and Mecha pilots.

Quote from: Fheredin on January 11, 2024, 06:10:44 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 10, 2024, 10:11:46 PM
First, I have considered using two different methods to manipulate the die rolls (and, yes, I've got spreadsheet after spreadsheet from anydice.com to prove it!).  I've considered having anything that gives you a bonus adding a die to your pool.  Anything that makes your task harder will increase the target number (so I'd probably start the target number at 5+ if I went this route).  Mathematically, increasing the target number has a larger effect than increasing the number of dice.  This means the GM can be a little more liberal with bonuses, because anything that adds a penalty will have an outsized effect (so a couple of extra dice won't really offset being prone and blinded, for example).  I know that folks have expressed concerns upthread about not being able to discern the effects of varying multiple features of the die rolls.  Do you think I can get away with this, or would it put you off or cause consternation?

Second, I am structuring the dice pools to average between 3 and 5 dice (d10s), usually with only a couple of bonus dice available.  I don't foresee any rolls being over 7 dice.  But I am looking at mechanics that might play into the number of dice, like losing dice each time you do something strenuous (and regaining dice at a rate each round you don't... sort of a fatigue or stamina mechanic).  Will varying the number of dice each round be too much, especially with varying target numbers?

I'm curious as to your reactions and reasons...

Let me speak as someone with experience tinkering with dice pools which are about as complex as they can get without breaking.

First, about players not being able to discern features; this is a half truth. The root problem is that you are trying to deliver game feel through the metaphorical rubber hose that is RNG. If your RNG is too strong relative to your game mechanics, it will not deliver game feel particularly well and players won't be able to sense the mechanics. This creates a Catch-22, where the RPG trope is that the player character is not the player and the difference is (usually) abstracted out with dice, but the player can't feel a thing of what the player character is experiencing through the dice. This is the root reason I dropped rolls to cast spells from my game. A shield spell where you roll 2d4 and target's DR increases by the result feels slow and sloppy because the effect of casting the spell is being squeezed through the hose of rolling those dice. "Pay 2 Mana: target's DR increases by 6," feels sleek, sharp, and crisp in comparison. So if you actually want a mechanic to deliver game feel to the players, I suggest you think long and hard about if you really want to pass it through RNG at all. 

Most features of core mechanics are majority placebo. That isn't to say that they deliver no game feel, but players tend to think themselves into sensing things in the mechanics which aren't actually there in the math. A common thing I've heard experienced D&D players say is that the advantage die which didn't count is "what you would have rolled." No, it's not. The first die you rolled is the one you would have rolled, so odds are 50-50 the higher roll would have actually been what you would have rolled. At the end of the day, the player knows that rolling 2d20 and keeping the higher improves their roll, and that expectation is what creates game feel like you're creating a dry martini by whispering "vermouth" over a glass of gin rather than actually adding any.

For some players that's all that's needed and for others...not so much.

In general, mechanics where players do things have much greater game feel potential than mechanics where players passively allow the mechanics to play themselves. Rolling 1d20 and adding a modifier is boring. It's somewhat better to roll 2d20 and choose the higher result. But it is far better to roll 5 successes, mark 2 off to hit your target, add 1 to deal extra damage, and then spend the last 2 to stun your target. The player is least active in the first example and just executing the actions required to make the game run. The player is most active in the last example, with the inevitable tradeoff being that the last one takes a whole lot of gameplay time.

Because of that, I am cautiously optimistic about your game having stamina affecting the number of dice in a roll. I suggest that you need a physical token of some sort (a poker chip?) to mark stamina penalties because the big issue will probably be remembering your current Stamina status. Rapidly twitching variables are something you must intentionally design around.

The thing which puts me off is you suggesting that you are using a variable target number. If by some chance you mean the success count, ignore this because requiring higher success counts for some actions is a no-brainer.

Dice pools really don't like having the value which determines if a die succeeds or fails change because it disrupts how players view the results. For comparison, my own system uses the full array of step dice, all the way from the d4 to the d20 (being one of only a few games which sensibly includes both in a single core mechanic). Messing with the TN is roughly as disruptive as introducing step dice. Less disruptive in that it's notably faster to vary the TN than fish for step dice, but also more disruptive because the player's viewpoint of the system changes when you change the TN.

Thanks for the feedback.  The more I get the more I'm rethinking variable target numbers.  Maybe I can add something like additional successes necessary to represent more difficult tasks.  I'll have to ponder it.

Quote from: jhkim on January 08, 2024, 06:06:03 PM

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 08, 2024, 05:26:57 PM
It's less about what's "wrong" with dice pools, and more about whether they work to deliver typical OSR gameplay goals, part of which is usually evoking the feeling of the old school gaming experience.

I find it weird that stuff from the 1980s like dice pools should be considered new-fangled and not part of old school. Is there is better terminology to distinguish game design that evokes the feel of 1980s games like Star Wars and Shadowrun?

It was the mid 90's, before I was exposed to the games and rules of the 70's.

Quote from: mcbobbo on January 10, 2024, 07:08:20 AM
We seem to have glossed over something really big, and it happens to be a pet peeve of mine, so here we go...

Rolling a bunch of dice and adding some or all of them together is what I'd consider a dice pool.

Rolling the same dice over and over to see if it succeeded is, IMO, not.

And doing the above in a single muscle motion by putting all the dice in your hand at the same time doesn't change the outcome.

A quick test for me is, does adding a die guarantee a different result (even if just one point higher).  If "yes", that is what I would call a dice pool.

The chief cause of this is those pieces of plastic being uninformed that they're supposed to confirm to probability.  They all behave independently without regard to how many you have in your hand at once.

For me a Doce Pool is when you can select how many dice to spend on an action from a pool of dice on hand.
Shadowrun was the first I think I ever really got into. Aberrant is the second.

Past that its just variants in how a success or fail is had. Do you count successes? Or add the dice?

But just rolling dice and adding them up is not a dice pool. If that were true then D&D would be a dice pool game. Unfortunately as usual there are people who slap a name on something that is not. Pick your Path books declaring themselves RPGs was one way back.

Quote from: mcbobbo on January 10, 2024, 07:08:20 AM
Rolling the same dice over and over to see if it succeeded is, IMO, not.

What system lets you roll as many times as you want for a single attempt?

Quote from: mcbobbo on January 10, 2024, 07:08:20 AM

Rolling a bunch of dice and adding some or all of them together is what I'd consider a dice pool.

Rolling the same dice over and over to see if it succeeded is, IMO, not.

What would you call rolling multiple dice and counting results above a target number? I would contend that your dice pool is an additive dice pool, while what I describe is is a success based dice pool. Both are pools so long as the number of dice that get rolled is subject to modifiers.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 10, 2024, 10:11:46 PM

So that's how I feel about dice pools and what they do well.  Obviously there are drawbacks in time to roll, etc., but I feel like most of these are minimizable with tight rules.  I do have some questions for the folks that are into this topic or are open to dice pool games (I'm using xd10 dice pools, with each roll equal to or over a target number, normally 7, awarding a "success," which the player then spends for effects.  This reduces the number of rolls in combat, and, if you allow successes to be spent defensively, works the same as a static defense score... I think the greatest weakness of WEG SW was the opposed rolls):

First, I have considered using two different methods to manipulate the die rolls (and, yes, I've got spreadsheet after spreadsheet from anydice.com to prove it!).  I've considered having anything that gives you a bonus adding a die to your pool.  Anything that makes your task harder will increase the target number (so I'd probably start the target number at 5+ if I went this route).  Mathematically, increasing the target number has a larger effect than increasing the number of dice.  This means the GM can be a little more liberal with bonuses, because anything that adds a penalty will have an outsized effect (so a couple of extra dice won't really offset being prone and blinded, for example).  I know that folks have expressed concerns upthread about not being able to discern the effects of varying multiple features of the die rolls.  Do you think I can get away with this, or would it put you off or cause consternation?

Second, I am structuring the dice pools to average between 3 and 5 dice (d10s), usually with only a couple of bonus dice available.  I don't foresee any rolls being over 7 dice.  But I am looking at mechanics that might play into the number of dice, like losing dice each time you do something strenuous (and regaining dice at a rate each round you don't... sort of a fatigue or stamina mechanic).  Will varying the number of dice each round be too much, especially with varying target numbers?

I'm curious as to your reactions and reasons...

Opposed rolls have their place, but most rolls should be faster to resolve than making two rolls. A penalty pool or an opposed roll can be nice when players make a roll and neglect to apply dice penalties, but players should not be rolling until they are told to.

For messing with both the target number and the number of dice, it's something early oWOD did that nWOD got a way from, and I prefer the speed and consistency of nWOD. I even reinked my dice to white out irrelevant numbers and make counting faster. Any time spent playing with dice is time not spent roleplaying, and from that perspective a static TN is better as it is faster. 

Depleting a dice pool by a universal penalty is simple enough. Wound penalties in WOD are easy enough to apply and remember. If the penalties are per skill or attribute, then that would be far more annoying to track and subject to error.

One of the WW mechanics I particularly liked was Scion's Arette, which would award bonus success if the initial pool succeeded. Likewise, OnyxPath did scaling right by having the dice pool be relative to power tier, so two giants arm wrestling would roll their flat, sensible dice pools against each other, but a giant arm wrestling a mortal human would get automatic successes because of the power game.

I would consider capping dice pools and having anything extra be a depleting pool of successes that could be added to a roll and is refreshed upon rest. Vaguely like luck or maneuver pool in Mekton.

I often feel like dice pool systems are clunky for a couple of reasons.

1.  The author is trying to make an RPG based on just D6 dice because you can't physically get any gaming dice with D8's, D20, ect.  They were only sold in specialty hobby shops.

That isn't the case anymore.  You can get gaming dice from Walmart.  Hell, if you have to you can download a free dice rolling app for your phone.

But, back in the 80's you may have had some trouble getting weird dice, so you wrote your game to only use cube shaped D6 dice.

2.  You have a "cool and innovative" way to roll dice and make them needlessly complex.   If you roll 3 dice, but need them to both be added up and to be counted as "successes", but only if no 1's are rolled, ect, ect,  Sweet baby Jesus, please, no.  I don't need to re-invent how you roll dice.  One game I know uses D10's, and you roll it once, but the "width" of the dice roll (how far apart the numbers are) is one thing, and the "height" of the roll (the largest rolled number) are both significant to a standard dice roll.  Just shoot me now.

There are several games out there I won't play because i just based on weird dice mechanics like that.  They're not for me.  I don't want to fight with the rules and struggle to remember how it all works.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 14, 2024, 12:08:04 PM
I often feel like dice pool systems are clunky for a couple of reasons.

1.  The author is trying to make an RPG based on just D6 dice because you can't physically get any gaming dice with D8's, D20, ect.  They were only sold in specialty hobby shops.

That isn't the case anymore.  You can get gaming dice from Walmart.  Hell, if you have to you can download a free dice rolling app for your phone.

But, back in the 80's you may have had some trouble getting weird dice, so you wrote your game to only use cube shaped D6 dice.

2.  You have a "cool and innovative" way to roll dice and make them needlessly complex.   If you roll 3 dice, but need them to both be added up and to be counted as "successes", but only if no 1's are rolled, ect, ect,  Sweet baby Jesus, please, no.  I don't need to re-invent how you roll dice.  One game I know uses D10's, and you roll it once, but the "width" of the dice roll (how far apart the numbers are) is one thing, and the "height" of the roll (the largest rolled number) are both significant to a standard dice roll.  Just shoot me now.

There are several games out there I won't play because i just based on weird dice mechanics like that.  They're not for me.  I don't want to fight with the rules and struggle to remember how it all works.

Point 2 doesn't feel to me as an argument or giving any mathematical, table related, or imperative reason as to why.
other than you can't be bothered to remember another set of rules or mechanics, which is a valid reason, except in a vacuum and relative to others.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on January 14, 2024, 02:14:23 PM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 14, 2024, 12:08:04 PM
I often feel like dice pool systems are clunky for a couple of reasons.

1.  The author is trying to make an RPG based on just D6 dice because you can't physically get any gaming dice with D8's, D20, ect.  They were only sold in specialty hobby shops.

That isn't the case anymore.  You can get gaming dice from Walmart.  Hell, if you have to you can download a free dice rolling app for your phone.

But, back in the 80's you may have had some trouble getting weird dice, so you wrote your game to only use cube shaped D6 dice.

2.  You have a "cool and innovative" way to roll dice and make them needlessly complex.   If you roll 3 dice, but need them to both be added up and to be counted as "successes", but only if no 1's are rolled, ect, ect,  Sweet baby Jesus, please, no.  I don't need to re-invent how you roll dice.  One game I know uses D10's, and you roll it once, but the "width" of the dice roll (how far apart the numbers are) is one thing, and the "height" of the roll (the largest rolled number) are both significant to a standard dice roll.  Just shoot me now.

There are several games out there I won't play because i just based on weird dice mechanics like that.  They're not for me.  I don't want to fight with the rules and struggle to remember how it all works.

Point 2 doesn't feel to me as an argument or giving any mathematical, table related, or imperative reason as to why.
other than you can't be bothered to remember another set of rules or mechanics, which is a valid reason, except in a vacuum and relative to others.

I can totally see the reason why people do things like design dice pools like that and why it irritates people like weirdguy564. It's easier to do something weird on the designer end than it is to design a game which is both mechanically innovative and mechanically tight, and because of that a lot of these mechanics are...of questionable utility.

As a matter of personal preference, I tend to like dice mechanics which give me complex options, but don't actually compel me to do something complex. This puts me in a strange place where that kind of mechanic is clearly what dice pools are good at, but I usually find myself at odds with most dice pool game designers because they like constantly forcing me to figure out what the dice are telling me like I'm reading tea leaves.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 14, 2024, 12:08:04 PM
I often feel like dice pool systems are clunky for a couple of reasons.

1.  The author is trying to make an RPG based on just D6 dice because you can't physically get any gaming dice with D8's, D20, ect.  They were only sold in specialty hobby shops.

That isn't the case anymore.  You can get gaming dice from Walmart.  Hell, if you have to you can download a free dice rolling app for your phone.

But, back in the 80's you may have had some trouble getting weird dice, so you wrote your game to only use cube shaped D6 dice.

2.  You have a "cool and innovative" way to roll dice and make them needlessly complex.   If you roll 3 dice, but need them to both be added up and to be counted as "successes", but only if no 1's are rolled, ect, ect,  Sweet baby Jesus, please, no.  I don't need to re-invent how you roll dice.  One game I know uses D10's, and you roll it once, but the "width" of the dice roll (how far apart the numbers are) is one thing, and the "height" of the roll (the largest rolled number) are both significant to a standard dice roll.  Just shoot me now.

There are several games out there I won't play because i just based on weird dice mechanics like that.  They're not for me.  I don't want to fight with the rules and struggle to remember how it all works.

Neither of these describe any dice pool system I've played

Quote from: Domina on January 14, 2024, 04:15:57 PM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 14, 2024, 12:08:04 PM
I often feel like dice pool systems are clunky for a couple of reasons.

1.  The author is trying to make an RPG based on just D6 dice because you can't physically get any gaming dice with D8's, D20, ect.  They were only sold in specialty hobby shops.

That isn't the case anymore.  You can get gaming dice from Walmart.  Hell, if you have to you can download a free dice rolling app for your phone.

But, back in the 80's you may have had some trouble getting weird dice, so you wrote your game to only use cube shaped D6 dice.

2.  You have a "cool and innovative" way to roll dice and make them needlessly complex.   If you roll 3 dice, but need them to both be added up and to be counted as "successes", but only if no 1's are rolled, ect, ect,  Sweet baby Jesus, please, no.  I don't need to re-invent how you roll dice.  One game I know uses D10's, and you roll it once, but the "width" of the dice roll (how far apart the numbers are) is one thing, and the "height" of the roll (the largest rolled number) are both significant to a standard dice roll.  Just shoot me now.

There are several games out there I won't play because i just based on weird dice mechanics like that.  They're not for me.  I don't want to fight with the rules and struggle to remember how it all works.

Neither of these describe any dice pool system I've played

In fact, those sound like distinct outliers. Most dice pools are just, roll and add them up, or count all the dice that do at least X. Sometimes you have a special die, and sometimes you have rules about counting the successes. Typically dice pool systems are straightforward.

Number 2 is a (bad and grossly misunderstood) description of ORE (the One Roll Engine), the system used in Wild Talents (one of the best superhero games out there). In ORE you roll a D10 pool and look for matched sets (three sixes or two eights, for example); the value on the die is the height and represents the quality of your action, the number of matching dice is the width and represents speed or quantity (depending on the situation). In combat, the height is the hit location and the width the damage inflicted (the system has hit location based wounds), with 10 being the head.
In actual practice the system is fast as hell since you simply need to group your dice by result and count them, usually on your fingers since the pools are generally not very big and give you a ton of information at a glance.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 14, 2024, 12:08:04 PM
I often feel like dice pool systems are clunky for a couple of reasons.

1.  The author is trying to make an RPG based on just D6 dice because you can't physically get any gaming dice with D8's, D20, ect.  They were only sold in specialty hobby shops.

That isn't the case anymore.  You can get gaming dice from Walmart.  Hell, if you have to you can download a free dice rolling app for your phone.

The clunky ones are 99% of the time the ones where the designer read about dice pools or just herd the word and slapped together a game without actually understanding what a dice pool is. Others just slapped the word dice pool on something that isnt just for marketing.

The d6 is alot easier to find. Outside of game shops nowhere local, and this is a big city, has RPG dice just racked. But I can wal into a Wallgreens or such and fet some rather nice quality d6s for a buck or two. Bycycle d6s are pretty good really.

Also some people just dont like the polyhedrals other than maybe the d8 whuch pops up in some board games for some reason.

Quote from: pawsplay on January 15, 2024, 06:51:04 PM
In fact, those sound like distinct outliers. Most dice pools are just, roll and add them up, or count all the dice that do at least X. Sometimes you have a special die, and sometimes you have rules about counting the successes. Typically dice pool systems are straightforward.

That's been my experience as well but I'm a bit biased likely due to how I started gaming.  I started gaming in the early 90s and found the legacy systems popular back then with the combo d20/percentile systems (specifically D&D pre-3rd edition and anything Palladium) very unintuitive and cobbled together because that's effectively what they were in practice.  The d6 dice pool systems (whether Star Wars, Shadowrun, or Heavy Gear) felt much more cohesive because they were designed to be an all in one mechanic at the expense seemingly only of rolling more dice which I didn't mind.  Pure percentile systems didn't fall into either category but honestly at the time I didn't have much experience with them.   I'm repeated surprised that some folks have such an intense dislike of dice pools and I never know if it's just a vocal minority that despise them or if I'm the weirdo.  Whatever the case, their heyday seemed to be in the 90s though they definitely persist as a notable minority core mechanic to this day for which I'm glad as I've started to move away from anything d20-based in recent years due to WOTC's generally consistent and increasing douchebaggery. 

That said... I fully admit that the base mechanic was taken to the extreme in years past (like with the Shadowrun Pornomancer face build throwing a bucket of several dozen dice for social tests in editions past) that probably contributed significantly to opinions against the mechanic.   While I don't want to go back to rolling more than a dozen D6s, I don't personally find up to that number burdensome and the variety of modern mechanics like variable target numbers and rerolls add alot of versatility to the system to account for player abilities, difficulty levels, and environmental factors in game.   At the low end, I'm ok with the 2d6 systems popular in rules light systems as well as 2d10 replacing the d20 as long as you do the math to fine tune the success probabilities to match expectations.

(https://www.enworld.org/media/edge-of-the-empire-symbols-dice-min-png.89821/full)

Anytime you have a dice result called "Despair", you should reconsider your system.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 16, 2024, 11:07:21 AM
(https://www.enworld.org/media/edge-of-the-empire-symbols-dice-min-png.89821/full)

Anytime you have a dice result called "Despair", you should reconsider your system.

I know there's people sold on the Genesys system but man is it clunky.  It just takes time to sort out the results of a roll.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 16, 2024, 11:07:21 AM
(https://www.enworld.org/media/edge-of-the-empire-symbols-dice-min-png.89821/full)

Anytime you have a dice result called "Despair", you should reconsider your system.

Genesys is a shitty system, a thinly veiled excuse to sell proprietary dice. The fact that it uses a pool of those dice is simply a business decision.

Genesys is definitely not for me.

Ditto.  I was fine with custom dice in Xwing but I've never been a fan of custom symbols that need to be deciphered in an rpg.  At that point, you might as well save yourself some money and just use chicken bones and tea leaves left over from dinner.  :)

I've never had any difficulty tallying up the Star Wars die symbols at a glance, but for people for whom that causes difficulty there are dice apps out there that will just display the final result immediately, or of course most VTTs also summarize the rolls, I know for sure that Fantasy Grounds and Foundry do.  That said, if you need a program to do your dice rolling for you, the system's probably a poor fit.

I don't see the appeal of a dice system that requires that much dice reading, and then gives you a result that is mostly narrative anyway.

Quote from: Valatar on January 16, 2024, 02:32:53 PM
I've never had any difficulty tallying up the Star Wars die symbols at a glance, but for people for whom that causes difficulty there are dice apps out there that will just display the final result immediately, or of course most VTTs also summarize the rolls, I know for sure that Fantasy Grounds and Foundry do.  That said, if you need a program to do your dice rolling for you, the system's probably a poor fit.

Even if you don't need a program to do your dice rolling, enjoying the feel of the dice in your hands is a thing.  Of course, enjoying that feel is what causes some people to decide that more is better, and leads to bigger pools. :)

Quote from: RNGm on January 16, 2024, 10:18:58 AM
I'm repeated surprised that some folks have such an intense dislike of dice pools and I never know if it's just a vocal minority that despise them or if I'm the weirdo.

To be fair, I don't hate dice pools, but they're damnably inconvenient for the way my groups tend to play these days with the extremely limited table space that the tv dinner stands next to or in front of or beside sofas, love seats and recliners have.

Anything bigger than about four dice is inevitably going to find half the pool on the floor at least once or twice a session.

As such, I've grown to like the fixed target number dice pools with the odds for each die right around 50% because you can sub in half the pool + 4dF (Fudge dice; equal shot at -1, 0, or +1 result) will have almost the same distributions but not go flying off the tables nearly as often.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 16, 2024, 06:58:40 PM

Quote from: RNGm on January 16, 2024, 10:18:58 AM
I'm repeated surprised that some folks have such an intense dislike of dice pools and I never know if it's just a vocal minority that despise them or if I'm the weirdo.

To be fair, I don't hate dice pools, but they're damnably inconvenient for the way my groups tend to play these days with the extremely limited table space that the tv dinner stands next to or in front of or beside sofas, love seats and recliners have.

Anything bigger than about four dice is inevitably going to find half the pool on the floor at least once or twice a session.

As such, I've grown to like the fixed target number dice pools with the odds for each die right around 50% because you can sub in half the pool + 4dF (Fudge dice; equal shot at -1, 0, or +1 result) will have almost the same distributions but not go flying off the tables nearly as often.

You, sir, need a dice tray.  I have a nice one I got on Amazon for less than $20.  It looks nice on the table and it keeps those pesky pieces of plastic off the floor.

I have no personal issue with dice pools but I avoid them at the table because it slows the game down when I have a math challenged friend trying to figure out his results.  Hell, I got a set of polyhedrals where each size is a different color so I can give them to noobs and kids and tell them what one to roll by the color.

Surely you guys understand that you don't need to own as many dice as you have in your pool right?

Quote from: Domina on January 16, 2024, 11:19:50 PM
Surely you guys understand that you don't need to own as many dice as you have in your pool right?

That sounds like it would make an already slow process, counting/figuring results, even slower. And add in that I'll forget the current count when I reroll.

Quote from: Domina on January 16, 2024, 11:19:50 PM
Surely you guys understand that you don't need to own as many dice as you have in your pool right?

I bought a huge bag of d6's because I want to have enough dice for any single roll at a time, for WEG D6.
I also got a neat Star Wars dice bag because I like to have stuff.

Quote from: Domina on January 16, 2024, 11:19:50 PM
Surely you guys understand that you don't need to own as many dice as you have in your pool right?

Look, I don't need this kind of negativity in my life.

Are there freaks out there that haven't casually gathered together a big ol' bag of dice over the decades just by existing and gaming? I have dice I bought, dice I was gifted, and dice from various boardgames over the years.

Quote from: Grognard GM on January 17, 2024, 01:05:16 PM
Are there freaks out there that haven't casually gathered together a big ol' bag of dice over the decades just by existing and gaming? I have dice I bought, dice I was gifted, and dice from various boardgames over the years.

Exactly. I have a an old checkbook box full of "other dice" I set on the table whenever there's a new player.

Quote from: Grognard GM on January 17, 2024, 01:05:16 PM
Are there freaks out there that haven't casually gathered together a big ol' bag of dice over the decades just by existing and gaming? I have dice I bought, dice I was gifted, and dice from various boardgames over the years.

My wife has all sorts of dice. Especially d6s.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 16, 2024, 11:07:21 AM
(https://www.enworld.org/media/edge-of-the-empire-symbols-dice-min-png.89821/full)

Anytime you have a dice result called "Despair", you should reconsider your system.

Not a bad point. While I don't despise Genesys, I also am not a huge fan. I probably won't ever run the game again, but I don't mind the thought of reading the book for parts or inspiration. The problem is basically that everyone understands numbers pretty easily, but Genesys uses a Byzantine set of hieroglyphic symbols. The process of learning the system is atrocious, because it requires rote memorization, and by and large Forged in the Dark games provide most of the same narrative game experience at a fraction of the effort.

Quote from: RNGm on January 16, 2024, 12:07:17 PM
Ditto.  I was fine with custom dice in Xwing but I've never been a fan of custom symbols that need to be deciphered in an rpg.  At that point, you might as well save yourself some money and just use chicken bones and tea leaves left over from dinner.  :)

It also works fine in the One Ring, though it's just a couple of symbols added in that one (and very familiar ones to people who are into Tolkien)

Quote from: Fheredin on January 17, 2024, 04:04:03 PMThe problem is basically that everyone understands numbers pretty easily, but Genesys uses a Byzantine set of hieroglyphic symbols. The process of learning the system is atrocious, because it requires rote memorization....

This may be a lingering misperception of the creators about the typical RPG audience.

Arcane rules that required a lot of mental work to commit to memory and master used to be a major selling point in gaming, so this may have been expected to have more appeal than it turned out to, especially given the novelty factor. However, the payoff for investment in mastering a complex rules system is being able to better manipulate the system to your PC's advantage. The payoff here isn't anything more than reading the dice faster. (And, of course, the gamer demographic who liked mastering rules for their own sake is usually precisely the demographic not interested in narrative-driven rules anyway.)

Bespoke dice are a dice problem, not a pool problem, but they are magnified by pooling the dice.

Mechanics or dice shenanigans posing a barrier to entry is not a problem in and of itself. Too much of a barrier to entry is a problem, but a non zero barrier, like actually reading the book, is good for keeping out tourist that cannot commit to a 5-6 session mini campaign. "Looks complicated, I am too lazy to try" is a feature for self selecting players just as a 400+ page book is a feature for self selecting systems.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 17, 2024, 06:53:09 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on January 17, 2024, 04:04:03 PMThe problem is basically that everyone understands numbers pretty easily, but Genesys uses a Byzantine set of hieroglyphic symbols. The process of learning the system is atrocious, because it requires rote memorization....

This may be a lingering misperception of the creators about the typical RPG audience.

Arcane rules that required a lot of mental work to commit to memory and master used to be a major selling point in gaming, so this may have been expected to have more appeal than it turned out to, especially given the novelty factor. However, the payoff for investment in mastering a complex rules system is being able to better manipulate the system to your PC's advantage. The payoff here isn't anything more than reading the dice faster. (And, of course, the gamer demographic who liked mastering rules for their own sake is usually precisely the demographic not interested in narrative-driven rules anyway.)

I am familiar with systems that do that (I remember a system which deliberately used custom dice with Nordic runes for aesthetics, but the name escapes me.) That may have actually been the intent back when this was a Star Wars only game in the form of Edge of the Empire. However, I think this was more misguided attempt at streamlining. Edge of the Empire and the generic follow-up Genesys are pretty recent games, 2012 and 2017 respectively, which means the big fad game when FFG was designing it was Apocalypse World. I don't think that any designer would intentionally make something more cumbersome when cheap PbtA games were everywhere.

I appreciate the attempt to reduce arithmetic. Math in the core mechanic can add a surprising amount of drag to a game, and being able to avoid that is a key reason I do generally like dice pools. But I also think that Genesys sticks so tightly to it's narrative game mandate that it becomes difficult to play on that account instead.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 17, 2024, 06:53:09 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on January 17, 2024, 04:04:03 PMThe problem is basically that everyone understands numbers pretty easily, but Genesys uses a Byzantine set of hieroglyphic symbols. The process of learning the system is atrocious, because it requires rote memorization....

This may be a lingering misperception of the creators about the typical RPG audience.

Arcane rules that required a lot of mental work to commit to memory and master used to be a major selling point in gaming, so this may have been expected to have more appeal than it turned out to, especially given the novelty factor. However, the payoff for investment in mastering a complex rules system is being able to better manipulate the system to your PC's advantage. The payoff here isn't anything more than reading the dice faster. (And, of course, the gamer demographic who liked mastering rules for their own sake is usually precisely the demographic not interested in narrative-driven rules anyway.)

Complex rules, or at least rules complex enough for players to demonstrate system mastery, are still popular amongst a lot of people.

For many of us, we get paid to work with complex rules. We want a break from that in our games.

Dice pools are overkill if the mechanic is designed to generate a single number.

Dice pools might be overkill if the mechanic is designed to generate multiple numbers. Because ultimately that takes a minimum of two dice anyway.

Only if the mechanic is designed to treat abilities as resources, reduce the need for math, provide an avenue of shared information at the table, or do anything which presents choices after the roll as opposed simply generate numbers do dice pools become advantageous.

However attempting to raise/resolve multiple situations in a single roll is a related but separate problem. And yes #Genesys goes overboard.

Quote from: Domina on January 16, 2024, 11:19:50 PM
Surely you guys understand that you don't need to own as many dice as you have in your pool right?

Then it becomes a reroll mechanic, not a die pool.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 18, 2024, 04:52:28 PM

Quote from: Domina on January 16, 2024, 11:19:50 PM
Surely you guys understand that you don't need to own as many dice as you have in your pool right?

Then it becomes a reroll mechanic, not a die pool.

Pretty sure they mean that if your dice pool is 8 dice, but you only have 4 dice on hand, you can roll the four, count the total or successes, then roll them again, count and add those to the first four. It takes slightly longer, but it's still a valid dice pool, not a reroll mechanic.

Hell, it'd take even longer, but you could roll one die eight times and just add the results and it's mechanically the same. I remember way back in the day having to do that for fireballs because I only had 3d6 on hand (I was 12 and my mom didn't want me stealing dice from the board game boxes because then they'd get lost) but the damage was 6d6.

Which in a way really highlights that there's not THAT much difference between a dice pool and various fast resolution for multiple attacks methods (rolling multiple different colored dice, each representing a single attack... Lord knows having multiple different colored 2d6 sets helps speed up Battletech cluster hits immensely).

I mean, a fighter's 4 attacks for 1dX+Y damage each is basically a dice pool of how many successes (each dealing damage) you have on a target. It even has the typical dice pool trick of splitting your dice to make attacks on multiple targets in the same turn.

It's just not explained that way, but really the difference between 4 attacks per round using single die for each and 4 die dice pool where each success does a unit of damage is largely just in those descriptions and specific expressions (8 dice doing 1 hit each vs. 4 dice doing 2 hits each).

This isn't really to advance any specific argument, it's just an observation about how presentation and order of operations matters. A six-second round with one attack per round and each hit doing 1 damage and a 60-second round using a 10 dice pool with each success doing 1 damage are different in scope (the latter you'd more likely see in a dice pool game where an entire combat might resolve in 1-2 turns with a lot of narrative description of the outcome... the former is the sort of round by round detailing you expect from D&D type systems).

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 18, 2024, 04:52:28 PM
Dice pools are overkill if the mechanic is designed to generate a single number.

Dice pools might be overkill if the mechanic is designed to generate multiple numbers. Because ultimately that takes a minimum of two dice anyway.

Only if the mechanic is designed to treat abilities as resources, reduce the need for math, provide an avenue of shared information at the table, or do anything which presents choices after the roll as opposed simply generate numbers do dice pools become advantageous.

However attempting to raise/resolve multiple situations in a single roll is a related but separate problem. And yes #Genesys goes overboard.

Quote from: Domina on January 16, 2024, 11:19:50 PM
Surely you guys understand that you don't need to own as many dice as you have in your pool right?

Then it becomes a reroll mechanic, not a die pool.

I think these are half-truths because you assume that the output is the only part of the mechanic. In my experience, most players are actually interested in the inputs more than the outputs because you control the inputs. The outputs are filtered through RNG. Dice pools can produce a lot of outputs, but they can also take a lot of inputs. A dice pool with one input and one output is a complete waste, but a dice pool with 5 inputs and only one output is probably as valuable as one which takes only one input and produces several outputs.

In fact, I would actually argue the former is generally better for most playstyles. The input side can be thought out beforehand, but the output side is always about improvising, so focusing on inputs can lead to a game feeling faster and deeper while focusing on outputs will slow the game down.

Rerolls. Not all rerolls are equal. I would suggest that there's a semantic difference between rolling a die again (keeping it's previous value) and rerolling a die (erasing it's previous value.) As most players are not particularly precise in their terminology, this is probably something we will never be able to consistently articulate precisely. Suffice to say that not all rerolls are created equal.

As a general rule, rerolls are used to shrink the dice pool. I actually don't recall seeing that many reroll mechanics in proper dice pool games because most dice pool games use homogeneous dice, usually D6s or D10s. When you are using a super-plentiful die, there's almost no value to a reroll. I suppose you could argue that Savage Worlds die explosions are a dice pool with rerolls, but that stretches the spirit of the definitions in both cases.

Step dice get massively more mileage out of reroll mechanics than homogeneous dice pools because the one mechanical effect (a reroll) hits the different dice differently. I think it's almost not worth bothering with step dice pools if you don't have a reroll mechanic and it's probably not worth including a reroll mechanic if you don't have step dice.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 16, 2024, 11:07:21 AM
(https://www.enworld.org/media/edge-of-the-empire-symbols-dice-min-png.89821/full)

Anytime you have a dice result called "Despair", you should reconsider your system.

Is it really a dice pool system? Thought you rolled consistently the same dice for specific situations and there was no option to say spend 2 dice on attack and 1 on defense as a guessed example?

Quote from: Omega on January 20, 2024, 02:15:41 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 16, 2024, 11:07:21 AM
(https://www.enworld.org/media/edge-of-the-empire-symbols-dice-min-png.89821/full)

Anytime you have a dice result called "Despair", you should reconsider your system.

Is it really a dice pool system? Thought you rolled consistently the same dice for specific situations and there was no option to say spend 2 dice on attack and 1 on defense as a guessed example?

It's a dice pool. For example, and yes this gets crazy convoluted, when making, say, an attack roll, you roll a number of ability dice equal to your stat. If you are skilled in the weapon, you change one or more of the ability dice to a proficiency dice. You may gain one or more boost dice for favorable circumstances. The GM then builds a dice pool to match the difficulty of the task. Difficulty dice, challenge dice and setback dice to match ability, proficiency and boost. Then the player rolls their pool of dice, and the GM rolls their pool of dice.
Obviously the Star Wars game adds a Force dice.
I'll stop there. The next step is to interpret all those symbols, and that's anudda thing...

You don't split the dice, but then you don't technically split dice in Star Wars D6, and that's considered a dice pool system.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 20, 2024, 03:10:01 AM
I'll stop there. The next step is to interpret all those symbols, and that's anudda thing...

Then there's the player figuring out how they are going to spend their advantage and what their options even are for this check for this skill.  Here's a cheat sheet somone made to give people who don't know the system an idea of how convoluted this can be.  This is where players who are prone to analysis paralysis just lock up.
https://forum.swrpgcommunity.com/t/threat-advantage-tables/511/2 
player.exe has crashed.

Quote from: BadApple on January 08, 2024, 05:21:47 PM
The problem I have with dice pools is kind of dumb, tbh.  There's too many things for a player to sort out for a check.

If I've done my job as a GM right, every check has meaning and thereby putting stress on the player.  The more dice a player has to check under stress the longer it takes to sort out and in turn hurts the game's flow and pacing.  I find that three dice is as big as a dice pool gets before it starts to have a negative affect at the table.

By the same token, my favorite dice mechanic is 2d6.  This is the most familiar dice mechanic to most non RPG games and so it's easy to get players on board with it no matter what their experience.  It's comfortable for my players therefore it's easy to use therefor, my game runs better.

These are my observations of the various games I've run and played over the years so it isn't scientific.  If I had my way, every roll would be a % roll but that's not what seems to work for most players.

I see what you're saying and I guess the problem you have will be valid for certain kinds of dice pool games but not others.

I'll compare SWD6 and VTM. In SWD6 you roll a lot of D6s but all you're really doing is adding them up and that total passes or fails a check. It's pretty accepted that anything more than 5D is starting to get into super human territory. So 5 dice per roll is usually the maximum you'll see. Just add up the five numbers and you've either passed or failed. Fairly binary and fast paced. I can absolutely see your problem occurring with VTM though. Where each individual dice is a success or failure and you have botches that you need to subtract from the pool and potentially various other mechanics you need to keep in mind like Soak for combat and stuns, and so much other shite. And don't even get me started on Shadowrun or Battletech AToW.

Whether a game is dice pool or not. A simple action should at the very maximum take the seconds it would take to resolve in real life. Five seconds to shoot a gun IRL and 2 - 5 minutes to resolve that with RPG mechanics is not acceptable and drags down a game. I wish more games understood this.

Quote from: Wisithir on January 17, 2024, 07:37:55 PM
Bespoke dice are a dice problem, not a pool problem, but they are magnified by pooling the dice

Are there are games that use bespoke dice that are not dice pool systems?  I can't think of one. 

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 22, 2024, 03:19:27 AM

Quote from: Wisithir on January 17, 2024, 07:37:55 PM
Bespoke dice are a dice problem, not a pool problem, but they are magnified by pooling the dice

Are there are games that use bespoke dice that are not dice pool systems?  I can't think of one.

DCC makes use of d5, d7, d14, d16, d24, and d30. 

Quote from: Wisithir on January 22, 2024, 03:48:33 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 22, 2024, 03:19:27 AM

Quote from: Wisithir on January 17, 2024, 07:37:55 PM
Bespoke dice are a dice problem, not a pool problem, but they are magnified by pooling the dice

Are there are games that use bespoke dice that are not dice pool systems?  I can't think of one.

DCC makes use of d5, d7, d14, d16, d24, and d30.

Those are odd sizes but I wouldn't call those bespoke dice.  They aren't made just for that system like the FFG dice.

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 22, 2024, 03:19:27 AM

Quote from: Wisithir on January 17, 2024, 07:37:55 PM
Bespoke dice are a dice problem, not a pool problem, but they are magnified by pooling the dice

Are there are games that use bespoke dice that are not dice pool systems?  I can't think of one.

One could make a case for FUDGE/FATE. You roll 4dF (Fudge die is six-sides; with two +, two -, and two blank faces) as a randomizer and add that to your stat value to see if you beat the target number. You get a nice bell curve with a median result of your skill value as a result.

The reason I'd say not a dice pool is that you always roll 4dF for checks.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 19, 2024, 02:18:14 PM

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 18, 2024, 04:52:28 PM

Quote from: Domina on January 16, 2024, 11:19:50 PM
Surely you guys understand that you don't need to own as many dice as you have in your pool right?

Then it becomes a reroll mechanic, not a die pool.

I mean, a fighter's 4 attacks for 1dX+Y damage each is basically a dice pool of how many successes (each dealing damage) you have on a target. It even has the typical dice pool trick of splitting your dice to make attacks on multiple targets in the same turn.

Nope. When you take multiple actions in a turn, your rank is reduced by 2 on all of them for every action beyond the first. No splitting involved.

Quote from: Domina on January 22, 2024, 12:13:40 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 19, 2024, 02:18:14 PM

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 18, 2024, 04:52:28 PM

Quote from: Domina on January 16, 2024, 11:19:50 PM
Surely you guys understand that you don't need to own as many dice as you have in your pool right?

Then it becomes a reroll mechanic, not a die pool.

I mean, a fighter's 4 attacks for 1dX+Y damage each is basically a dice pool of how many successes (each dealing damage) you have on a target. It even has the typical dice pool trick of splitting your dice to make attacks on multiple targets in the same turn.

Nope. When you take multiple actions in a turn, your rank is reduced by 2 on all of them for every action beyond the first. No splitting involved.

You do realize that there are more than one set of rules for dice pools (and other games)?  ::)

The thing about dice pools is that it makes you a bit more conscious you're playing a game. You always are, of course - but if it's always percentile or 2d6 or whatever, then the mechanics start to fall into the background a bit and you focus on what's happening in the game. Whereas if you're rolling 3 dice now and 10 dice later, that multiple clatter makes it really obvious it's just a game.

A lot of DMing and rules systems in practice is concealing from ourselves the fact that it's all abstract, and that really the rules are resolution systems are just an elaborate version of, "Why does the horsie move in an L-shape and jump over other pieces? Because that's what the horsie does." Abstraction.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 22, 2024, 08:20:26 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 22, 2024, 03:19:27 AM

Quote from: Wisithir on January 17, 2024, 07:37:55 PM
Bespoke dice are a dice problem, not a pool problem, but they are magnified by pooling the dice

Are there are games that use bespoke dice that are not dice pool systems?  I can't think of one.

One could make a case for FUDGE/FATE. You roll 4dF (Fudge die is six-sides; with two +, two -, and two blank faces) as a randomizer and add that to your stat value to see if you beat the target number. You get a nice bell curve with a median result of your skill value as a result.

The reason I'd say not a dice pool is that you always roll 4dF for checks.

These do not really sound like dice pools though? Just rolling lots of dice, adding mods and either adding it all up or counting successes?

Quote from: Omega on January 22, 2024, 11:57:16 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 22, 2024, 08:20:26 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 22, 2024, 03:19:27 AM

Quote from: Wisithir on January 17, 2024, 07:37:55 PM
Bespoke dice are a dice problem, not a pool problem, but they are magnified by pooling the dice

Are there are games that use bespoke dice that are not dice pool systems?  I can't think of one.

One could make a case for FUDGE/FATE. You roll 4dF (Fudge die is six-sides; with two +, two -, and two blank faces) as a randomizer and add that to your stat value to see if you beat the target number. You get a nice bell curve with a median result of your skill value as a result.

The reason I'd say not a dice pool is that you always roll 4dF for checks.

These do not really sound like dice pools though? Just rolling lots of dice, adding mods and either adding it all up or counting successes?

I was answering the question; "are there any systems using non-standard dice that aren't dice pool based?"

FATE/FUDGE was an example of a non-dice pool system, because you always use the same number or dice regardless of skill or other factors (the primary dividing point for me between a dice-pool and non-dice-pool system) and is actually just as fast a resolution system as rolling and adding 3d6 together (which is definitely not a dice pool system).

I wasn't trying to claim it as a dice pool game; the opposite was actually my intent.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on January 22, 2024, 08:25:05 PM
The thing about dice pools is that it makes you a bit more conscious you're playing a game. You always are, of course - but if it's always percentile or 2d6 or whatever, then the mechanics start to fall into the background a bit and you focus on what's happening in the game. Whereas if you're rolling 3 dice now and 10 dice later, that multiple clatter makes it really obvious it's just a game.

A lot of DMing and rules systems in practice is concealing from ourselves the fact that it's all abstract, and that really the rules are resolution systems are just an elaborate version of, "Why does the horsie move in an L-shape and jump over other pieces? Because that's what the horsie does." Abstraction.

Rather, constantly remembering modifiers to add to your d20 reminds you you're playing a game. Just rolling a single set of dice and then narrating based on that is far more immersive.

Quote from: Domina on January 23, 2024, 12:13:30 PMRather, constantly remembering modifiers to add to your d20 reminds you you're playing a game.

That can do it, too. GURPS4e was terrible for this. If you have to spend a lot of time looking up charts and calculating modifiers and the like, it all comes to seem abstract. The fewer the steps, the better for the purposes of forgetting it's all just an abstraction.

Good GMing can of course overcome this.

Quote from: Domina on January 23, 2024, 12:13:30 PM
Rather, constantly remembering modifiers to add to your d20 reminds you you're playing a game. Just rolling a single set of dice and then narrating based on that is far more immersive.

Ah yes. "Muh Immershun!"

The question of which system is more or less immersive is basically a variation of personal taste. Most players who find D20 "more immersive" do so because they have habituated themselves to it through extended use and the mechanics feel like they disappear. It's about like when you drive a car and the car starts to feel like an extension of your body.

This is not an inherent trait of either system; it's a product of the human brain and your experience level with one particular system.  Some people do have better natural affinity to certain mechanics than others, and some mechanics are not particularly immersive for anyone (but rolls for anal dimensions are a topic for another day.)

Dice pools do tend to be slower, and that can lead to a loss of immersion, but they can also do things which D20 systems can't--or at least seldom do--to increase immersion, and whether or not you appreciate these features depends a lot on your affinity to those specific vectors of immersion and how much time you spend with the system for your brain to wire into it.

I'm not comfortable with the phrase "immersion." What I mean is that the game mechanics fall into the background, rather than being prominent in your mind as you play.

For example, in a game like chess or poker, the game mechanics are very prominent as you play, because they're the entire point of the game. Whereas in a game like tennis, you're so busy chasing or anticipating the movement of the ball, you don't think about the exact rules. Of course the tennis rules are still there, but if you are skilled enough to have any chance at all of going more than a couple of exchanges then they'll be grooved into your brain so much you don't think of them.

This doesn't mean that tennis is more "immersive" than chess, it's just a different experience, one where the mechanics aren't foremost in the person's mind as they play.

For rpgs, the mechanics falling into the background doesn't mean you're "immersed" in the game. After all, the mechanics could fall into the background and you're just saying, "I hit him with my sword, pass the cheetos, by the way did you see the new MCU movie on the weekend?" 

Quote from: Omega on January 22, 2024, 11:57:16 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 22, 2024, 08:20:26 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 22, 2024, 03:19:27 AM

Quote from: Wisithir on January 17, 2024, 07:37:55 PM
Bespoke dice are a dice problem, not a pool problem, but they are magnified by pooling the dice

Are there are games that use bespoke dice that are not dice pool systems?  I can't think of one.

One could make a case for FUDGE/FATE. You roll 4dF (Fudge die is six-sides; with two +, two -, and two blank faces) as a randomizer and add that to your stat value to see if you beat the target number. You get a nice bell curve with a median result of your skill value as a result.

The reason I'd say not a dice pool is that you always roll 4dF for checks.

These do not really sound like dice pools though? Just rolling lots of dice, adding mods and either adding it all up or counting successes?

Yeah, you have a pool of dice you roll to determine how well you perform. What were you imagining?

Quote from: Omega on January 24, 2024, 04:03:22 PM

Quote from: Domina on January 23, 2024, 12:13:30 PM
Rather, constantly remembering modifiers to add to your d20 reminds you you're playing a game. Just rolling a single set of dice and then narrating based on that is far more immersive.

Ah yes. "Muh Immershun!"

You don't have to post if you have nothing to say.

Two of my favorite games are dice pool. 

Mini-six Bare Bones is a simplified variant of West End Games D6 rules.  Simplified means four stats, not six, and combat defensive rolls are replaced by pre-calculated averages, cutting down the dice rolling in half, speeding up gameplay. 

The other is Dungeons & Delvers Dice Pool edition.  This is not a well known game, but it's based on classic D&D.  Five stats and twenty skills are all 1D4 to start with, but better ones use bigger dice.  Roll a Stat and a Skill dice to beat a target number.  Additional bonuses, like being good with a two handed weapon, or hearing an ally's Bard song allows you to roll extra dice, usually 1D4's to start with.  Roll them all, pick the best two, and that's your dice roll. 

I liked Delvers for more than that, but the dice mechanics are consistent and easy. 

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on January 22, 2024, 08:25:05 PM
The thing about dice pools is that it makes you a bit more conscious you're playing a game. You always are, of course - but if it's always percentile or 2d6 or whatever, then the mechanics start to fall into the background a bit and you focus on what's happening in the game. Whereas if you're rolling 3 dice now and 10 dice later, that multiple clatter makes it really obvious it's just a game.

I find this too. I find Free League 'Year Zero Engine' dice pool system very gamey & non-immersive, wherea their Dragonbane d20-roll-under BRP variant suits me very well. The funny thing is that with Banes or Boons you are often rolling multiple d20s & choosing the best or worst, not really all that different from YZE rolling lots of d6s & looking for 6s. But it feels different to me.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on March 07, 2024, 01:53:25 AM
Two of my favorite games are dice pool. 

Mini-six Bare Bones is a simplified variant of West End Games D6 rules.  Simplified means four stats, not six, and combat defensive rolls are replaced by pre-calculated averages, cutting down the dice rolling in half, speeding up gameplay. 

I love Mini Six but rolling lots of D6s & adding them up isn't a dice pool system per the OP, it has plenty of addition which OP says dice pools avoid.

Quote from: S'mon on March 07, 2024, 03:11:26 AM
I love Mini Six but rolling lots of D6s & adding them up isn't a dice pool system per the OP, it has plenty of addition which OP says dice pools avoid.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on January 08, 2024, 05:04:48 PM
As for Dice pools

My only main experience with dice pools is Westend's Star Wars,

?

Quote from: S'mon on March 07, 2024, 03:11:26 AM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on March 07, 2024, 01:53:25 AM
Two of my favorite games are dice pool. 

Mini-six Bare Bones is a simplified variant of West End Games D6 rules.  Simplified means four stats, not six, and combat defensive rolls are replaced by pre-calculated averages, cutting down the dice rolling in half, speeding up gameplay. 

I love Mini Six but rolling lots of D6s & adding them up isn't a dice pool system per the OP, it has plenty of addition which OP says dice pools avoid.

I'd say the OP is wrong.

I'd say the defining feature of a dice pool system is that it is resolved using a variable number of dice proportional to a variable character trait.

If everyone rolls the same number of dice in the same situation (everyone rolls 2d20 and uses the better result for a Climb check with advantage) it's not a dice pool. HERO with its always roll 3d6 for resolution is not a dice pool. Fate with its always roll 4dF is not a dice pool.

WEG Star Wars where your stats are literally variable numbers of dice to roll is a basic additive dice pool. WoD is a count successes dice pool system. Jovian Chronicles is a "take best" dice pool.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 07, 2024, 05:52:57 AM

Quote from: S'mon on March 07, 2024, 03:11:26 AM
I love Mini Six but rolling lots of D6s & adding them up isn't a dice pool system per the OP, it has plenty of addition which OP says dice pools avoid.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on January 08, 2024, 05:04:48 PM
As for Dice pools

My only main experience with dice pools is Westend's Star Wars,

?

Looks like when I clicked on the thread I got https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/what-s-wrong-with-dice-pools/msg1273227/#msg1273227 and assumed it was the OP.

Like everything in this world, not everyone agrees on definitions. 

To me a dice pool is 3 or more dice, each added to the roll from a different character trait, or temporary situation to affect the outcome roll.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on March 07, 2024, 12:57:49 PM
Like everything in this world, not everyone agrees on definitions.

Which is fine, as the only thing is how they're meaningfully different at the table. And while they're both technically d6 pools there's a huge difference in feel between systems which count successes vs add results. And then you have #Cortex which does both.

I don't think these broad and ambiguous definitions help anyone.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 20, 2024, 03:10:01 AM

Quote from: Omega on January 20, 2024, 02:15:41 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 16, 2024, 11:07:21 AM
(https://www.enworld.org/media/edge-of-the-empire-symbols-dice-min-png.89821/full)

Anytime you have a dice result called "Despair", you should reconsider your system.

Is it really a dice pool system? Thought you rolled consistently the same dice for specific situations and there was no option to say spend 2 dice on attack and 1 on defense as a guessed example?

It's a dice pool. For example, and yes this gets crazy convoluted, when making, say, an attack roll, you roll a number of ability dice equal to your stat. If you are skilled in the weapon, you change one or more of the ability dice to a proficiency dice. You may gain one or more boost dice for favorable circumstances. The GM then builds a dice pool to match the difficulty of the task. Difficulty dice, challenge dice and setback dice to match ability, proficiency and boost. Then the player rolls their pool of dice, and the GM rolls their pool of dice.
Obviously the Star Wars game adds a Force dice.
I'll stop there. The next step is to interpret all those symbols, and that's anudda thing...

You don't split the dice, but then you don't technically split dice in Star Wars D6, and that's considered a dice pool system.

Correction: In SW/Genesys, for any given action only one player rolls the dice. The player of the acting character (which is the GM when NPCs take actions) rolls both the positive dice (ability, skill, positive modifiers, etc.) and the negative dice (difficulty, negative modifiers, etc.) for the action and then resolves the roll.

I think a lot of dice pool systems can be pretentious.

In fact, I would say many of them exist just because of a few factors.

1.  The author thought up a way to roll and count dice results that nobody else has.  Good or bad, the author wrote a game around that idea, because why not?

2.  Those funky polyhedral dice are hard to come by.  Let's write a game using only D6's because that's all any normal people can find.  This is not true anymore, but old school games using D6's seemed a good idea back in the day, probably correctly.

3.  The most popular games used up all the obvious dice mechanics, so to avoid plagiarism they came up with funky dice rolling to avoid lawsuits. 

4.  They're a hipster.  Known dice mechanics are for all those boring square brains.  We need to set our game apart from the pack to be the next king of the alternative scene.  Let's make dice rolling stand out just like we do, unique, bold, and cutting edge cool!

5.   I needed the math to work a certain way and give me results I wanted.  It added up to having a weird dice system. 

Things like that. 

But again, I like dice pool games.  But.   And that's a big caveat.  But, it has to work well and be easy to learn.  If you have custom dice, then it's an automatic no. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on March 07, 2024, 05:42:11 PM
I think a lot of dice pool systems can be pretentious.

In fact, I would say many of them exist just because of a few factors.

1.  The author thought up a way to roll and count dice results that nobody else has.  Good or bad, the author wrote a game around that idea, because why not?

2.  Those funky polyhedral dice are hard to come by.  Let's write a game using only D6's because that's all any normal people can find.  This is not true anymore, but old school games using D6's seemed a good idea back in the day, probably correctly.

3.  The most popular games used up all the obvious dice mechanics, so to avoid plagiarism they came up with funky dice rolling to avoid lawsuits. 

4.  They're a hipster.  Known dice mechanics are for all those boring square brains.  We need to set our game apart from the pack to be the next king of the alternative scene.  Let's make dice rolling stand out just like we do, unique, bold, and cutting edge cool!

5.   I needed the math to work a certain way and give me results I wanted.  It added up to having a weird dice system. 

Things like that. 

But again, I like dice pool games.  But.   And that's a big caveat.  But, it has to work well and be easy to learn.  If you have custom dice, then it's an automatic no. 

That's a good list, but I'd add

6. Designers are bored with the same old dice mechanics they've been using for decades

7. Rolling some d6s and counting successes is just better

Quote from: Mishihari on March 07, 2024, 08:22:48 PM
6. Designers are bored with the same old dice mechanics they've been using for decades

This comes up for me professionally. I work as a trainer, and there are really just a few basic movements which, if you do them right and progress the effort over time, it improves people's lives. Squat, push, pull, etc. But how entertaining is it for me as a trainer to teach yet another person to squat, and to watch yet another set of squats? After a few years and a few hundred thousand repetitions it gets old. It's boring.

But here's the thing: yes, it's boring for me, but it's not boring for the person getting under the bar to unrack and then grind out a heavy squat. They might feel fear or apprehension, but not boredom. And it's not about me.

Same for a game designer or GM - it's not about me. It's about the players. The game designer or game master is there to help the players have fun. And once you help other people have fun, guess what, you have fun, too.

Excellent example of why you should not use d20, thanks

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 16, 2024, 11:07:21 AM
(https://www.enworld.org/media/edge-of-the-empire-symbols-dice-min-png.89821/full)

Anytime you have a dice result called "Despair", you should reconsider your system.

I tried to play this one time. It was a demo at my FLGS. It took so long to decode the chicken bones every time someone made a roll that I never attempted to try and play again.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on March 09, 2024, 09:30:40 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 16, 2024, 11:07:21 AM
(https://www.enworld.org/media/edge-of-the-empire-symbols-dice-min-png.89821/full)

Anytime you have a dice result called "Despair", you should reconsider your system.

I tried to play this one time. It was a demo at my FLGS. It took so long to decode the chicken bones every time someone made a roll that I never attempted to try and play again.

There's a bit of  learning curve, but once you get over it, the game actually plays pretty smooth. However, I have noticed that people new to RPGs tend to pick it up faster than those that have played more traditional systems for years. I guess it takes a bit to "unlearn" and adapt, ut if you're willing to try, it can be fun.

Addressing the original post, I think most of the dislike I've seen of dice pools is either aesthetic (personal taste or sometimes loyalty to tradition) or the argument that dice pools make probabilities too opaque. A lot of people like the statistical transparency that something like a d% or d20 provides. D20 is also hard to screw up by comparison, so maybe there's some of that influencing people's opinions. Dice pools can be onerous when they have overly cute or complex ways of handling dice, tweaking TN and pools independently, constant rerolls, rolling too many dice, that sort of thing.

Personally, I prefer good dice pool systems (roll and count, at least). My homebrew uses a d6 dice pool for resolution. The lack of statistical transparency is a net benefit to me - players should not be thinking about the statistics underlying their choices but rather what their character would do in a given situation. Players should be able to get a gut feel for their skill based on a predictable scale (novices roll X dice, a master rolls Y dice) and that should be enough to gauge their confidence in a course of action as far as the stats go. My system only allows players to directly influence the number of dice they roll depending on their approach (and the GM can likewise add or remove dice). The TN is otherwise static for any given task. The few cases where the TN can vary, players were only ever asked to make a one-time choice and that choice is more or less determined by the kind of character you're playing.

One thing I really like about dice pool systems is that they usually scale up better. They're common in wargaming for that reason. It's just easier to roll like a dozen or two dozen d6 in one go for an arrow volley than it is to roll that many d20, add mods, compare to AC, and then independently roll and sum damage. I also have my own aesthetic preferences. I love the visveral satisfaction of rolling damage on a fireball and want that for non-casters too. I like how dice pools tend to keep numbers small (especially d6 pools). The small numbers make fiddly +1 bonuses obsolete, keeps monsters and players from becoming totally untouchable, and encourages stuff like magic items and spells to focus more on how they interact with the world or represent a new tool instead of just pumping a stat or whatever.

The non-linearity of dice pools also satisfies my need for lightweight simulation and verisimilitude. The real-world is defined by non-linearity, by bell-curves, by pareto distributions. The diminishing returns of adding more dice to a pool, the bell curve distribution of outcomes and the consistency this provides, these things often align with reality more than a linear d20 roll. The swinginess of a d20 can be fun in games like D&D, but it can also introduce a comedic element when the group hits a run of bad luck or a player fumbles their roll in a really critical situation. After a critical fumble everyone is going around the table making jokes about what stupid thing the character did to get that outcome. It can be fun, but it comes down to taste and genre for how tolerable that sort of thing can be. I prefer humor to fit in other places, rather than undercutting an actual tense moment where a character's fate might hinge on a roll.

While you'll have to pry my d20 out of my cold dead hand, I will concede that dice pools are the superior mechanic.

Dice pools can accommodate a much wider range of power levels with some semblance of balance. They are extremely easy to use and newbies pick them up quickly.

I prefer the most simple and direct implementation of dice pools: Roll X vs. Target Number.  You calculate X by the characters abilities and the circumstances. Result is the number of successes counted, usually each 4+'s on the d6's.

I don't mind too much systems that use different polyhedrons to scale the effectiveness, such as Deadlands where your ability could range from d4 to d12, but I think that unnecessarily complicates the beautiful simplicity of dice pools.

And there is just something satisfying about picking up fistfuls of dice and throwing them on the table.

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 10, 2024, 01:32:41 AM
There's a bit of  learning curve, but once you get over it, the game actually plays pretty smooth. However, I have noticed that people new to RPGs tend to pick it up faster than those that have played more traditional systems for years. I guess it takes a bit to "unlearn" and adapt, ut if you're willing to try, it can be fun.

The same is likely true of Braille but I don't want to game using it as a sighted person.   The complicated dice combos with unique faces are primarily an excuse to sell you overpriced variants of dice you likely already have as a gamer but wouldn't use because it would be even more cumbersome to decode without the custom markings.  I say that as a person who actually prefers dice pools compared with a single die mechanic to rule them all but who recognizes that each method has its strengths and weaknesses.   The FFG system for Star Wars (later genericized into an equally pretentiously misspelled so its trademarkable Genesys system) highlights the flaws of dice pools in my opinion.   People are free to like it though but I reached my limit of custom dice with Xwing.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on March 09, 2024, 09:30:40 AM
I tried to play this one time. It was a demo at my FLGS. It took so long to decode the chicken bones every time someone made a roll that I never attempted to try and play again.

Not saying there aren't other issues involved, but I'd say the big problem with Genesis dice is that whatever good idea is there is being drowned by taking it way too far. 

In principle, a d20 + modifier versus target number, is fine.  Then you take it where high level D&D 3.* takes it, and it breaks.

In principle, a few carefully chosen symbols on special dice that make a game's resolution sing and do a lot in a an easy roll is fine.  Then you take it where Genesis goes, and "broke" is so far in the rear view mirror that it might create the impression that all custom dice are horrible.

Quote from: RNGm on March 11, 2024, 11:34:33 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 10, 2024, 01:32:41 AM
There's a bit of  learning curve, but once you get over it, the game actually plays pretty smooth. However, I have noticed that people new to RPGs tend to pick it up faster than those that have played more traditional systems for years. I guess it takes a bit to "unlearn" and adapt, ut if you're willing to try, it can be fun.

The same is likely true of Braille but I don't want to game using it as a sighted person.   The complicated dice combos with unique faces are primarily an excuse to sell you overpriced variants of dice you likely already have as a gamer but wouldn't use because it would be even more cumbersome to decode without the custom markings.  I say that as a person who actually prefers dice pools compared with a single die mechanic to rule them all but who recognizes that each method has its strengths and weaknesses.   The FFG system for Star Wars (later genericized into an equally pretentiously misspelled so its trademarkable Genesys system) highlights the flaws of dice pools in my opinion.   People are free to like it though but I reached my limit of custom dice with Xwing.

The dice pools in FFG's Star Wars/Genesys do something that no version of D&D does: it generates results on 2 axis (Success---Failure and Advantage---Threat) with additional possiblities too  (Triumph and Despair). This allows every dice pool to give six possible outcome (and that's not including Triumph & Despair). You might not like it, but it does offer mechanics and outcomes that most dice systems simply do not.

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 11, 2024, 06:45:33 PM
The dice pools in FFG's Star Wars/Genesys do something that no version of D&D does: it generates results on 2 axis (Success---Failure and Advantage---Threat) with additional possiblities too  (Triumph and Despair). This allows every dice pool to give six possible outcome (and that's not including Triumph & Despair). You might not like it, but it does offer mechanics and outcomes that most dice systems simply do not.

It most certainly does do that but then that brings up two additional questions/points. 

1)  Do other systems want to do that? 
Most apparently don't since they don't incorporate that type of mechanic.  I'm not opposed to a multiaxis result on a roll but rather the method that FFG's system used.  YMMV.

2) Could they just do that rolling two to three d20's (for example) simulateuously?  Whether just from the results of the pass/fail roll or a combo of margin of success or doubles or odd/even results, I think the answer is yes but admittedly I'm not familiar enough with FFG's game mechanics after a single demo to say for sure.   I assume having multiple pass/fail tests in a single roll of a couple of d20's would simulate the same thing without resorting to having to interpret various hieroglyphs unique to the game on custom dice priced at a premium.   I know you can technically use a cheat sheet with regular dice to figure it out with their system using yet another additional step (something IIRC ad hoc'ed by fans during its exclusive Star Wars use but it may have been made a core option in the genericized version).

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 11, 2024, 12:12:34 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on March 09, 2024, 09:30:40 AM
I tried to play this one time. It was a demo at my FLGS. It took so long to decode the chicken bones every time someone made a roll that I never attempted to try and play again.

Not saying there aren't other issues involved, but I'd say the big problem with Genesis dice is that whatever good idea is there is being drowned by taking it way too far. 

In principle, a d20 + modifier versus target number, is fine.  Then you take it where high level D&D 3.* takes it, and it breaks.

In principle, a few carefully chosen symbols on special dice that make a game's resolution sing and do a lot in a an easy roll is fine.  Then you take it where Genesis goes, and "broke" is so far in the rear view mirror that it might create the impression that all custom dice are horrible.

Reading the rulebook, I got the impression that they hoped that all the interacting dice results would somehow cause amazing emergent situations from the soup of symbols.
If I were to GM Genesys, I would likely rein it in to a success/fail system with some mods on the side. (the combat section gets more of a handle on what to do with all the different results)

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 11, 2024, 06:45:33 PM

Quote from: RNGm on March 11, 2024, 11:34:33 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 10, 2024, 01:32:41 AM
There's a bit of  learning curve, but once you get over it, the game actually plays pretty smooth. However, I have noticed that people new to RPGs tend to pick it up faster than those that have played more traditional systems for years. I guess it takes a bit to "unlearn" and adapt, ut if you're willing to try, it can be fun.

The same is likely true of Braille but I don't want to game using it as a sighted person.   The complicated dice combos with unique faces are primarily an excuse to sell you overpriced variants of dice you likely already have as a gamer but wouldn't use because it would be even more cumbersome to decode without the custom markings.  I say that as a person who actually prefers dice pools compared with a single die mechanic to rule them all but who recognizes that each method has its strengths and weaknesses.   The FFG system for Star Wars (later genericized into an equally pretentiously misspelled so its trademarkable Genesys system) highlights the flaws of dice pools in my opinion.   People are free to like it though but I reached my limit of custom dice with Xwing.

The dice pools in FFG's Star Wars/Genesys do something that no version of D&D does: it generates results on 2 axis (Success---Failure and Advantage---Threat) with additional possiblities too  (Triumph and Despair). This allows every dice pool to give six possible outcome (and that's not including Triumph & Despair). You might not like it, but it does offer mechanics and outcomes that most dice systems simply do not.

This is true, but you could also do all of this with a deck of cards or an odds or evens over or under TN mechanic. I don't actually think Genesys needed the custom dice for anything except flavor, and making a minor usability concession for a minor flavor increase is generally an annoyance.

My other complaint about Genesys is that it compels you to think about these additional possibilities even if you don't feel like it. Now, yes, generally this is partially a familiarity with the mechanic problem, but Genesys doesn't work particularly well in edge cases where Triumph or Despair are hard to interpret, it doesn't work well when you are having an off day as a GM, it's an annoying system to learn, the flavor it delivers is ho hum...and it's all gated behind custom dice. This is kind of a death by a thousand cuts scenario where a truly great game could have pulled off any one of these tradeoffs, but when you add them all together it makes for a pretty ho hum game.

It's memorable for being strange more than it's memorable for being good.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on March 08, 2024, 12:57:14 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on March 07, 2024, 08:22:48 PM
6. Designers are bored with the same old dice mechanics they've been using for decades

This comes up for me professionally. I work as a trainer, and there are really just a few basic movements which, if you do them right and progress the effort over time, it improves people's lives. Squat, push, pull, etc. But how entertaining is it for me as a trainer to teach yet another person to squat, and to watch yet another set of squats? After a few years and a few hundred thousand repetitions it gets old. It's boring.

But here's the thing: yes, it's boring for me, but it's not boring for the person getting under the bar to unrack and then grind out a heavy squat. They might feel fear or apprehension, but not boredom. And it's not about me.

Same for a game designer or GM - it's not about me. It's about the players. The game designer or game master is there to help the players have fun. And once you help other people have fun, guess what, you have fun, too.

That metaphor makes sense to me.  I've been weight training on and off for over 30 years, and I'm not bored with the basics.  I generally just want to get my sets in and get on with my life.  I'll see a trainer occasionally for ideas, but I'm not super interested in learning unusual exercises unless it gets me significantly different results, which usually isn't the case.

On the other hand, I've been playing RPGs a bit longer than that and I really am bored with d20s, so I'm not sure how good the parallel is