That Randy Brown

Dice Mechanics

Variations #

A dice game comes in two variants[1]:

  1. roll the correct symbol (in this case, comparison isn't important)

The numbers on the die are irrelevant, or are merely representative of an outcome (like success) and any other roll isn't compared: it either is or is not. Zombie Dice and similar dice games are also of this sort. In this case, the only comparative value is 'equal'.

  1. Roll the correct comparative evaluation (greater or less than the target number)

The number is treated as a target with one of the comparative relationships: greater than, less than, greater than or equal to, or less than or equal to.

Managing Probabilities #

The central conceit of a dice game is to make some things more probable, and others less. A 50/50 dice game on a ten sided dice would be 'odds / evens' in the first case, and 'above 5' in the second.

Generally, there are two ways to increase the likelihood of success (or decrease it):

  1. Increase the number of valid targets

By making it so that all numbers that are multiples of two or three denote success, two additional success targets are added. Similarly, saying any roll greater than or equal to five adds one additional target. I include the idea of roll modifiers into this category.

  1. Increase the number of attempts

Enabling mechanics that allow re-rolls or multiple rolls can increase the chances that one of the dice rolled lands on a valid target.

Considerations #

Variation 1 tends to leverage option two more frequently than option 1. In many cases, this is because the dice used in the dice game are 'hard coded' and don't use numbers as a proxy for symbols. Like, I cannot imagine an instance where in zombie dice, for one round, feet count as brains. But maybe in Tales from the Loop, I could imagine a scenario where a 3 or 6 constitute a success--but it is more likely that a game that has a target symbol will leverage a dice pool mechanic--roll lots of dice, hope one of them lands on the correct symbol.

Games that leverage comparative evaluation (like Mausritter) often use both: changing the number of valid targets or adding additional dice through advantage / disadvantage.

From a mechanics standpoint, it seems that comparative evaluation gives more tools for tweaking the probabilities, but targeting is simpler and more consistent.

Footnotes #

  1. It is important to note that how the target is selected is mostly irrelevant to this distinction--targets generated through opposed rolls, ranges, or static values can apply to both roll mechanics. ↩︎