Quote from: chaosvoyager;590535This thread troubles me, as it implies the designers don't know what's important about their game system. Dice pools only matter if they add to gameplay. For systems like Storyteller and Shadowrun they add nothing*, and I've easily converted these to single die rolls with no loss. For systems like Dogs in the Vineyard, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and Don't Rest Your Head however, the die pools are an intrinsic part of play, and you can't play the same way without them.

And while the last three are some of my favorites, having a dice pool is NOT the reason for it.

Evaluating the Sixcess mechanics so far, it seems the die pool brings the possibility of unbound results which get more likely the higher your skill (the more dice you roll). That would be hard to facilitate without dice pools or different denominations of dice like Savage Worlds uses (but we've seen the probability arguments for that one), so it makes sense to use them if that's a feature you want.

I think you've got it backwards, sorry.

Dice pools are usually quite deterministic compared to the single linear distributions you see in games such as the d20 system - # successes follows a bell curve. Unlikely results may be thousand-to-one or even millions-to-one occurrences.

Dice pools in Storyteller do perfectly what it says on the tin; PCs don't roll natural 20s and autosucceed, the archmage doesn't roll a 1 on their save vs. the magic item you forget the PCs had and explode - the PCs  get around the expected number of successes and follow the plot, dangnamit. Results that derail your plot can be minimized to occur on thousand-to-one rolls.

Conversely, while unbounded results that get higher the higher your skill are tricky, unbounded results in general aren't hard to achieve with various rolling-up methods (e.g. if you get a maximum result, add and roll again).

In theory anyway I did start a thread on rpg.net awhile back on that topic, where I fished and found a few people exploding games by making billion-to-1 rolls.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?640605-Dice-Pool-Games-Freak-rolls-that-shook-up-the-game

Hi Harsh.


My opinion on dice pools is that if you have to roll too many dice it gets annoying.

Especially if you have to add, subtract, multiply, note margins, etc...

Too much of all that and it gets distracting from the actual game.

I also find 'dice pool poker minigames' to be distracting.



Essentially I play rpg's to enjoy the characters and events in the game, not to fiddle with dice.

My answer basically amounts to - Dice Pools are just another type of resolution mechanic.  If there's no gaping hole in the probability, then it's the game itself that will sell it.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;590657I like Dice pools, but not the typical dice pool that most people think of.  I use this type:

Spoiler

The biggest reason why I like it is because there's no math during the actual combat phase, which speeds things up a lot.  When you don't have to add or subtract things on every dice roll, it keeps things going.

Hmm, why are there the jumps from 3d to 4d in places?  To fix a gap in the probability curve?

Quote from: Sacrosanct;590657I like Dice pools, but not the typical dice pool that most people think of.  I use this type:

The biggest reason why I like it is because there's no math during the actual combat phase, which speeds things up a lot.  When you don't have to add or subtract things on every dice roll, it keeps things going.

That is more of a step dice mechanic than dice pools to me.  I think of dice pools as rolling fistfulls of the same die and matching against the task resolution number.

Quote from: CRKrueger;590817Hmm, why are there the jumps from 3d to 4d in places?  To fix a gap in the probability curve?

Yep.

Quote from: Harsh;590651I've noted a wide variety of play styles and preferences in other gamers, especially on boards, in that some are very nit-picky about the dice and how they work, others could care less as long as the game has that 'cool factor', and still others are fairly well entrenched in what their experience or preference allows them to know/like. It's interesting to me to see all the various types of gamers out there and their takes on things.

Seriously, while fascinating, people like this have most likely found the game they're looking for already. Trying to base your game on their requirements will just lead to another of the same game.

The tricky thing is that the opinions you really want need to be from the disenfranchised who DON'T know what they want (tricky), and RPGs are such an insular hobby that there's not a lot of crossover (gamers tend to play lots of different settings, but people into specific settings do not tend to play lots of RPGs, if any at all) to do that in.

Thankfully though, that's changing.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;590680Conversely, while unbounded results that get higher the higher your skill are tricky, unbounded results in general aren't hard to achieve with various rolling-up methods (e.g. if you get a maximum result, add and roll again).

Indeed, but the key IS that they scale with your skill.

I can't stand dice pools.

RPGPundit

I tend to dislike anything cumbersome, and dice pools lean in that direction.

Some dice pool systems are as cumbersome as Rolemaster even.

Not to mention that they're often thought up with notions of "coolness" in mind and no actual consideration to probabilities or math.

RPGPundit

Probabilities are a potential issue with dice pools, but it can also be a source of strength for them. The gm ought to understand the basic probabilities because he is in charge of reality (and dice pools can be misleading in this respect). But as a player i prefer to have probabillities to be a bit clouded on my end during play. I real life i eye ball my chances of success at anything, i dont neccesarily know that I have a 70% chance of jumping a gap in the road, though i may look at it and think the odds are good. So for me eyeballing the odds with a dicepool works well when i am a player. But as a GM i like to get the various probabilities on them because it can lead to weird results in play if you set challenges too high or lowfor what they ought to be.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;591427Probabilities are a potential issue with dice pools, but it can also be a source of strength for them. The gm ought to understand the basic probabilities because he is in charge of reality (and dice pools can be misleading in this respect). But as a player i prefer to have probabillities to be a bit clouded on my end during play. I real life i eye ball my chances of success at anything, i dont neccesarily know that I have a 70% chance of jumping a gap in the road, though i may look at it and think the odds are good. So for me eyeballing the odds with a dicepool works well when i am a player. But as a GM i like to get the various probabilities on them because it can lead to weird results in play if you set challenges too high or lowfor what they ought to be.

Sorry, I didn't mean to try to oblige you to jump in defense of dice pools, I know you use them in  your system.  I'm sure YOU gave some consideration to the probabilities and math; I'm just saying that I think a lot of other people who make dice pool systems don't very much.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;591785Sorry, I didn't mean to try to oblige you to jump in defense of dice pools, I know you use them in  your system.  I'm sure YOU gave some consideration to the probabilities and math; I'm just saying that I think a lot of other people who make dice pool systems don't very much.

RPGPundit

No worries. I didn't feel like I had to defend dice pools at all, just found the subject interesting.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;591878No worries. I didn't feel like I had to defend dice pools at all, just found the subject interesting.

Well, cool then!

RPGPundit

I think I am blind to 'dice pool' or 'not dice pool'

But, I am very consious of clunkyness and metagaming mechanics.


So I find Rolemaster and Marvel Heroic Roleplay about equal in 'Irritates Bill' severity.