Dice Mechanics for Games of All Kinds

See Ben's followup presentation on designing roles for games - A Class on Classes - at • Designing Roles in Gam...
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Interested in creating board games, RPGs or anything that involves dice or random number generators? This easy-to-understand workshop offers the basics of dice math, reviews a variety of existing dice mechanics, and explains the effects they have on your gameplay.
Find out how to judge what is best for your board game, RPG or random number generator.
Presented by Ben Sandfelder, creator of Lightning War www.drivethrur...
This was first presented at Virtual SIEGE 2020 as the Loads of Dice workshop

[@dontyodelsohard2456]

I like to toy with the idea of making my own rpg, but ya' know, I probably will never finish it... But for a few months, I obsessed over how to make it both unique, interactive, and to fit the tone of the game... It was a dark monsterhunting game a bit like Vaetian but not so married to the spirit premise. Also, I had yet to learn about Vaetian. But, so, I wanted it classless and levelless. You got better at skills by rolling well and putting a point in one of the three tiers of skills (the broades taking 5, the narrowest taking 3) and once you had the required points that skill improved by one. But see, I ended up with what I started calling a variable-dice-pool, target-number system. Where there's a target number (like D&D), but you're aiming for it with a pool of various dice... You always rolled 3 dice, but the type of die depended on how good each tier of your skill was. Now, this was a *terrible* system in the end because I wanted a smooth curve from 1d1 (+1) to 1d13 (1d8, reroll 8, 1d4 1-2, add nothing, 3-4, add 7; if the total is 14 reroll everything)... See the problem? Now imagine you had three 1d13s... Or maybe a 1d4, 1d8, and a 1d13. It would be a nightmare. Although, interestingly, I found that multiplying results by 11 and 33 got to pretty close approximations of real-world... I think. It was just a weird thing I found when looking up maximums for lifting, throwing, and running and trying to see how it would line up to my system. But, yeah, it would be a bad system to try and use. I then thought, what if I limited it to even numbers, keeping a +1 as the minimum? So 1d1, 1d2, 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12... Eh, it's closer. Or what if I scrapped the target numbers and instead did a true dice pool with success thresholds? And then, also, the better your skill, the smaller your dice? But then the problem is 3 successes are the best you can do... Hm... Maybe also have a sort of critical success? My latest idea, which I never recorded, was the maximum of a die -1 is a success, the maximum is a critical succes which counts as 2 success (so 6 success max)... And that's the system. But see, the problem is I wanted monsters to have a way to just be stronger than players... I guess I could just give them more dice... Huh... I, uh, I just thought of that just now. Anyway, I really like dice systems. They interest me greatly.

[@the81kid]

This is a really interesting presentation, even for people who aren't majorly into rpgs. The info on dice mechanics is very well done. Many thanks!

[@ChronoHarvester]

Ben Sandfelder did pretty well here. I’m really happy I stumbled on this video and liked learning some new terms. The Jenga tower and poker examples surprised me. That Lightning War link in the description seems okay… I like the core mechanic and the squad setup, but I just don’t think I’d enjoy the setting.

[@ranfan1820]

I really needed a video like this. All the others I saw fall short. Thank you.

[@JGraylion]

Amazing video, love your points!

[@Tiyev]

6:58 I hadn't even thought of that twist on using different sized dice. I like how new player friendly it could be, for starters. Like Call of C, the players have what they need to roll, or under, on their sheet, rather than adding some mods. Second, I love how the GM would have to tell them which die to roll, which means players automatically have to wait for the GM's call before rolling, a nice hidden little bonus...

[@gordonfreeman6305]

Awesome video, ty

[@miki537]

Great video! To be honest I'd love to see more math and statistics. So few videos that do that on this topic, especially so well made.

[@miki537]

If anybody is interested - I found a cool, short paper on the topic of RPG mechanics. It has the math™ but it's also quite approachable. It's called: Dice Rolling Mechanisms in RPGs by Torben Mogensen

[@BanjoSick]

You have not talked about exploding dice mechanics like in Rolemaster/Merp.

[@wbbartlett]

Great vid. Clear explanations & informative. Nice.

[@alandcapelari]

I want to talk about probability and math again. Great video!

[@GgdaOrganic]

We are trying to line up another talk by Ben Oct. 7 or 8, 2022 during our SIEGE conference. That will be livestreamed as well

[@alandcapelari]

@@GgdaOrganic Nice! I'll be looking forward to it!

[@ladyofpain]

writing a book on this, great stuff for notes

[@rango5537]

In my homebrew game degrees of success is equal to the 10s unit of the percentile dice. It could be strange for some, as you want to roll low but not too low. Though this keeps the target number the highest they can roll for success relevant, and shows how many degrees they can get. This might help for opposed test and players coming from something like dnd, like my players.

[@Demonskunk]

You called d&d a 'roll and keep' system, but I've heard 'roll and keep' used for games with pools of dice where you roll multiple dice, and can choose dice to keep some of those rolls and reroll the rest.

[@junglejoe40]

Such a great presentation!

[@mikehowlett7373]

On the question of card-based RPGs. You mentioned Malifaux. One of the most criminally underrated RPGs is actually Malifaux's TTRPG - Through the Breach. Fantastic game. Hard to run online (ran my last campaign during lockdown) but it is one of my group's favorite campaigns.

[@ספיראלוני]

thank you very much!

[@josephmcguire8503]

Amazing video.

[@raff3486]

great video

[@arielle2745]

Excellent!

[@DareToWonder]

i think 10 pages is the ideal length for a game, not too short as to be repetitive and single dimensional, not too long as to be impossible to wrap your head around quickly.

[@jefferyestes]

One roll engine system inclusion comparison would have been super cool.

[@martinbowman1993]

The thing with Call of Cthulhu, like Traveller, there is only one class - investigator, and in the case of Traveller the class is Traveller. This means the skill mechanics are designed specifically for the class at hand.

[@kevinjheath]

But "Travellers" may be former military/soldier, or merchanter, or medic, or scientist, or explorer...the classes are built into the career paths.

[@martinbowman1993]

@@kevinjheath the backstory in single class games is very important. Otherwise there wouldn't be a difference

[@kevinjheath]

@@martinbowman1993 It is more than a backstory though as it has direct mechanical effects as to how the character interacts with the world and the abilities they possess. By choosing a military path you are effectively choosing to be a "fighter" same as medical would equivalate to "cleric." Changing paths part way through is more or less "multi-classing." A person who never took any military or mercenary paths/tours will not be able to face a "fighter" in combat with any reasonable chance of success.