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, 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 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!