Less is More ... Help Needed

[Hasimir]

Playtesting my Tactical Ops game I've found out that, just after the intial stages of the game, Players can easily end up rolling a HUGE amount of dice... even 25 or 30 six sided dice all in one go.

On one hand, they are unanimously exilerated by that, they love rolling a storm of dice.
On the other hand, I find this is "too much"; it's unwieldy and time consuming... I want to lessen this thing in my design.
Besides, rolling "a lot" of dice happens also if you roll just 10 of them.

So I need a hand in finding a way to lower my dice count >_<

Some things I can't do without:
- I need a way to give mechanical relevance to a lot of small "+1" both positive and negative
- I need a way to produce a discreet amount of results... not just one Hit/Fail ourcome, but a congruous amount of many little Hits and Fails
- such results should be of 4 different types: Crit-Fail, Fail, Hit, Crit-Hit

Right now each "+1" translates into +1d6 of different colour depending on it being a positive or negative modifier.
This builds up quickly :P

Also you add dice for every point in the MODE you are using (from 0 to 5) and the SKILL you are using (from 0 to 5).
TOOLs also add a variable amount of dice, usually from 1 to 3, but can easily add more.
Then you have PERKs also adding a small amount of dice.

How can I circumvent this?

I'm thinking, maybe MODEs SKILLs PERKs and TOOLs may just grant you 1 die each (maybe of different size to represent various degrees of quality).
But how to handle all the small "+1" of the game?

[Ron Edwards]

There might be some way to use Fudge dice. That won't decrease the number of dice but will instead make them much easier to read and use.

The only problem is that you can't just substitute Fudge dice for standard ones, as many game designers have discovered to their sorrow. Each Fudge die has two negative, two blank, and two positive. That means that no matter how many you roll, the mode (most common result) is always zero.

Clinton's solution in The Shadow of Yesterday, inspired by Over the Edge and which many Italians saw first in the Solar System, is to add extra dice, but always count a standard number (three if I remember correctly; or you could go with standard Fudge and count four). So you begin with all your bonuses and penalties. Let's say you get 9+ and 3 -, for a total of +6. So you add six dice to your standard roll, and count only the best four. If the sum of bonuses and penalties give you a negative number, you do the same thing but only count the worst four.

The more I think about it, the more this looks like your best solution. It's true that you'll need to buy a handful of Fudge dice, but you'll notice that I did knock down the number of dice you need (because the bonus/penalty comparison occurs before the roll, not after), and if you're not familiar with Fudge dice, you will be quite surprised at how easy these dice are to read. You can always use ordinary dice too, counting 1-2 as minus, 3-4 as blank, and 5-6 as bonus.

Best, Ron

[Hasimir]

mmm... dunno...

This setup was actually how my first draft worked.
Positive and Negative elements elided eachother ... but as Negatives are much more frequent that Positives, it meant you ALWAYS ended up with Negatives, only sometimes a bit less so.

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I'll rant a bit here, to help myself (and maybe the readers) to have a clearer picture of the situation.

In an average roll you can end up with this figures:
- you act in a MODE that you are quite proficent in ... +3 Action dice
- you use a SKILL you have a bit of a Specialty in ... +3 Action
- you use a very baseline TOOL or maybe two ... +2 Action
- let's say that such tools each have one DRAWBACK ... +2 Danger dice
- you manage to rely on one of your basic PERKS ... +1 Expert die
- now you look at the OBSTACLE and see that all three basic details apply ... +3 Danger
- someone also added a couple more negative details to the current situation ... +2 Danger
- you feel like gettime a bit extra help, so you burn a few EFFORT points ... +3 Action
- you also had a CLARITY charged up ... +1 Expert

This alone sums up to 20 dice (11Action, 2Expert, 7Danger).
If another Player used his roll to provide SUPPORT and scored, let's day, 6 Hits you now would also get +6 Action dice, for a total of 26 dice to roll in one go.

That would be 17 Action dice ... they are the balanced ones.
1 2 3 = FAIL
4 5 6 = HIT
1 = Opposition (read it as Crit-FAIL)
6 = Influence (read it as Crit-HIT)

Just 2 Expert dice ... the unbalanced positive ones.
1 2 = FAIL
3 4 5 6 = HIT
all results are Crit.

And finally 7 Danger dice ... the unbalanced negative ones.
1 2 3 4 = FAIL
4 5 = HIT
all results are Crit.

Right now all elements ADD UP.
This means that if it is pitch dark (DETAIL:+1Danger) but you use a torch (TOOL:+1Action) you get both dice.
And this is how I want it to work... every detail, every idea, everything counts... but just because you have "something helpful" it doesn't make the situation any better... having "a torch" doesn't make the cave any less darker, it just HELPS you see better in an otherwise dark dark dark environment.

As it is, it works great... I just think rolling 26+ dice in one go is... too much.
You have to HAVE such amount of dice (and split into proper colors to distinguish Action/Danger/Espert to boot!), and then its cumbersome and unwieldy.

Even using the Cards-insteadof-Dice mechanic you end up drawing 26 cards, the problem is the same :P

Maybe I'm making too much of a fuss about it.
I don't know.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Alessandro,

I think you're trying to answer too many things, or maybe what I said wasn't clear enough.

First, I don't see what your point about "usually the outcome is negative" has to do with anything. It seems completely irrelevant to the issue of dealing with so many dice.

Second, my suggestion about the Fudge dice would cut down the number of dice you're using, but you would still roll many dice for that fun feeling. I'm not sure if you really understood the method of arriving at how many dice to roll - it will almost always be more than the "base" number.

Third, the Tweet/Nixon modifier to the Fudge dice is especially brilliant because no matter how many dice you roll, you always read the same number of them, so the handling time (post-roll) is always the same.

Am I misunderstanding anything?

Best, Ron

[RosenMcStern]

Alessandro, my impulse reply to your last statement is "no, you are not making too much of a fuss about it". The problem was there when we playtested the game, and I have read comments from other playtests that express doubt, too.

First thing that resulted from our playtest is that you may need a lot of successes to overcome an obstacle, and so you actually need a lot of dice to even hope to win. You should revise the number of successes corresponding to each difficulty level as a prerequisite to decreasing the number of dice.

I am quite unsure about using an "add up dice result" model instead of the current "count successes" model. I have noticed that people who appreciate dice pools tend to prefer "number of successes" dice mechanics, and I have seen at least one playtest report for TOps that explicitly said "You roll many dice, but at least you do not have to add them up." When I played The Fantasy Trip back in the days, even the five dice pool used for Very Hard tasks felt clumsy, as you had to add up five results.

The different die colors are a nice feature of TOps that make it feel unique, I would suggest you to try and salvage this game mechanics even if you change something. The trade-off between complexity and fun is in favor of fun.

Now, coming to what to change to avoid littering the game table with dice...

One possible solution could be elision between dice, as suggested to you elsewhere. You could limit the number of dice thrown to 10 (after adjusting difficulty level numbers) and leave the player with the choice of what to do to elide dice: one red for one blue, two white for one red, one red. The drawback is that all players would immediately eliminate red dice, and bad consequences with them. So you have to study a method that guarantees that the players do not simply discard all "reds". It will take some math to find good algorithms for this.

Anothe solution that you may use is to make things bi-dimensional, and allow + and - bonuses to be applied to the target number for the dice pool. For instance, drop five white dice to lower the TN of the whole pool by one: 1s and 6s are still crits on all dice. This method is not very well suited for d6, it works better on d10, but I woudl be rather reluctant to require buckets of d10 for a game. YMMV.

All in all, I agree that a change is needed, but not necessarily a radical one. You have still plenty of room to improve the game, and I am confident you will find the right way to do it. Once you have implemented this change and the "inspiration card" one, I think I will give the game another try. By the way, Iacopo has provided a free space for self-publishing authors at Indie GdR Palace in Lucca, and this is open to beta playtest versions of new games, so you might be willing to book a slot for TOps.

[ndpaoletta]

(Similar to Ron's suggestion, but avoiding Fudge dice) What if you just roll your action dice, and the Expert and Danger dice tell you which ones to read?

So, in your example, you roll your 17 dice, and your 2 Expert things means "take the best two" and the 7 Danger things means "take the worse 7", and then you read those 9 dice for your results.

So if you roll 17 numbers: 6, 5, 6, 2, 2, 4, 6, 2, 1, 3, 2, 5, 3, 2, 5, 5, 1

Take the best two (6, 6) and the worse 7 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2). Then you apply your hit/miss with 1s being a crit-fail and 6s being a crit-hit - 2 cit-hits, 2 crit-fails and 5 fails.

You still roll a large number of dice, but not as many, and you don't have to separate out different colors.

This only makes sense if those failures and successes are not canceling each other out functionally, of course. But it would seem to me to make those Expert and Danger numbers really matter.

[Hasimir]

First of all, thanks for the suggestions.

@ Ron
I assure you I'm very familiar with Solar System and The World of Near rules ;)

@ Rosen
All comments duly noted.

@ Nathan
Interesting suggestion... but what if the amount of Expert/Danger elements happens to be greater than the Action dice total?
Like... I have an Action pool of 6 dice and should roll the 3 best and 5 worst? :P

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Anyway, right now I found a way to reduce the dice pool by a sensible amount of dice, through changing how SUPPORT rolls work.
You can still end up rolling a sizeable basic dice pool, but it should not be so easy to see it "explode" :P

I'll keep you posted on further developments.

[Hasimir]

Nothing.
Even with the latest modification to how Support rolls work, the other session I ended up rolling 42 dice.

I mean, it's good, it works and it's fun ... but damn! ... 42 dice! >_<
And the others also rolled around 30 dice each time.

I was thinking about isolating the various elements that make up the pool (MODE, Skill, Perks, Tools, Effort, Details) and to have  every element contribute with just 1 die to the roll ... but with dice of different size: d4 d6 d8 d10 d12

But in this way the problem will only shift from having a huge amount of common dice (50d6) to having half as much dice but of uncommon type (about 5 dice for every size, in the end it's still 25 dice).

Problem is I really can't find another way to make RELEVANT every single +1 produced by the game.
I'm starting to consider leaving everything as it is, and instead develop an easy and accessible DICE ROLLER app ... available on the web and also offline and maybe on mobile too (in theory if I use HTML5 I can get all that in just one sweep).

[RosenMcStern]

Percentile die? Holmes & Humphreys dropped the "simpler" D20 from HeroQuest and went back to D100 for Other Worlds, and I have heard a lot of good reviews about OW. One of the comments is that it makes all rolls more significant.

A D100 might even help you deal with positive and negative crits, keeping the "uniqueness" of Expert and Danger modifiers. Suppose you have 2 Expert and 1 Danger, you roll D100 and add your total score in Exp+Dang+Action vs. a difficulty level. Every die counts. But if you roll your Danger or less on the unit die, you suffer a Consequence. Similarly, if you roll 10-(your Expert total) on the unit die, you got a critical result. So with a diff. level of 70 and 42 dice (with 7 exp. and 4 Danger) any roll of 32+ is a success, but any roll ending in 2-9 will get you a critical advantage, while any roll ending in 0-1 will give you a botch. 2-3 will give you both - a consequence paid as the cost for a critical achievement.

Apart from my suggestion above, which may or may not suit your taste, I think the best way to go is to find a die combination that allow you to read information multi-dimensionally on a single die. You already have such a system in TOps, as dice come in three colors, but you need find a way to have modifiers do "other things" than just adding dice to the pool, or else a climactic conflict will always end in 50 dice or more. Once something is at a stake, players always become nitpickers for "that little extra bonus". It is in the gamer's nature - and you show you understand it very well when you say "I want all bonuses to count".

[Hasimir]

I may have found a solution! :D

The idea is to use a single set of poly-dice instead of thousands of d6.
It would work like this:

All relevant elements all end up translated as either Danger/Action/Expert dice.
So, instead of rolling a die for each element, I'll add up all elements to BUILD the dice to be rolled.

Es..
if I have to factor in 6 Danger elements, I will roll 1d6 Danger
if I have to factor in 10 Danger elements, I will roll 1d10 Danger

Dice are built using the biggest die possible.
So if I have to factor 12 Danger elements I won't roll 2d6 but just 1d12.
Dice will be as follow:
d1 (a special way to read a d4)
d2 (any die read as Even=HIT and Odd=FAIL)
d3 (a special way to read a d6)
d4
d6
d8
d10
d12
d20

Danger and Expert dice are read not as a result, but as a quantity.
In this way the bigger amount is always made of FAIL (for Danger) or of HIT (for Expert), and the rest is made up of the other result.
This also takes into account that ALL such results will be "critical" thus scoring Influence and Opposition along the normal HITs and FAILs.

Es.. rolling 1d6 Danger I score a "2" this means 2-out-of-6, so a quantity of 2 and a quantity of 4 ... being a Danger die it reads as 4 FAILs and 2 HITs.
score 1 = 5 FAILs and 1 HIT
score 2 = 4 FAILs and 2 HITs
score 3 = 3 FAILs and 3 HITs
score 4 = 4 FAILs and 2 HITs
score 5 = 5 FAILs and 1 HITs
score 6 = 6 FAILs and 0 HITs

On the other hand the Action die reads as a normal score of successes, so a roll of "2" means 2 HITs and that's it.
This represents the fact that Action dice are not automatically critical, so normal FAILs just don't matter.

In this way the whole system can run on the roll of 3 (or very little more) dice.
I intend to also implement the use of a play-mat to roll dice on, so that the actual dice color becomes irrelevant (Danger are not the "black" dice, but the dice rolled on the Danger-Area of the play-mat).
Also, in this way the results of any one roll are much more clear-cut and easy to keep in mind or write down... so if I need to roll 1d8 Danger and 1d8 Action I can roll my one d8 for Danger, note the result, and re-roll the same die for Action.

In this way a single set of dice of any colour is enough for the whole table.

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Right now the only problem I can see is represented by the chance of critical results in Action elements.
Using this one-die system I end up with an Action roll that only tells me about HITs and FAILs... not about Influence and Opposition :P

One solution could be to roll the Action die... and then (after HIT/FAIL assesment) read it as the base element for a new roll that only determines the amount of Influence/Opposition generated.

Es..
I need to factor 11 Action... it turns into 1d10+1d1... which produces 6 HITs and 5 FAILs.
So I roll 1d6 for the HITs scoring a 2: I have 2 Infleunce.
Then I roll 1d4+1d1 for the FAILs scoring a 3: I have 3 Opposition.

Maybe I could account for the fact that Action dice have a lesser % of scoring criticals, and also simplify the die rolls, by scaling the dice to the nearest whole level.
So 1d6 becomes 1d4.
And 1d4+1d1 becomes 1d3 (just remove any +something and scale down 1 step)
This way the "crit-roll" is simpler and cleaner.

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Extended Example

The Obstacle is a monster and I, as a shiny paladin, have to plow its ass.
I describe my heroic action and then start gathering my pool.
MODE = 3 Action
Skill = 4 Action
Tools = 6 Action and 4 Danger (between my sword, armor and the amulet of my god, which I somehow put to good use here)
Perks = 2 Expert
Details = 3 Danger

I end up with 13 Action, 7 Danger and 2 Expert.
This translates to:
d10+d3 Action
d6+d1 Danger
d2 Expert

I roll'em:
Action scores 9 HITs (6 from the d10 + 3 from the d3) which also means 4 FAILs
So I roll 1d6 for Crit-HITs (9 HITs = d8+d1 = d8 = d6) and 1d3 for Crit-FAILs (4 FAILs = d4 = d3) ... scoring 2 Influence and 2 Opposition
Danger scores 2 HITs and 5 FAILs (all critical)
Expert scores 2 HITs (all critical)

My total result is 13 HITs and 9 FAILs with 6 Influence and 7 Opposition.

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It sound much more complicated and laborious than it actually is.
But I'll test it thouroughly this evening and then this sunday morning and evening.
I'll keep you posted ;)

[Hasimir]

Ooook... so... Playtest is a tough bitch and my poly-dice idea crashed & burned in no time :P

Good news is, thanks to a wargamer friend of mine I have a NEW new rolling system!
And at least by the first playtest it seemed to work pretty fine.
It basically took the best of some previously mentioned ideas and mixed them up in one juicy thing.

Basically, everything remains as it was before... lots of +1 elements that translate in lots of d6.
But...
You can only ever roll a maximum dice pool of up to 6 dice for each type.
That is: 6 Action + 6 Danger + 6 Expert for a maximum total of 18 dice.

18 is a big satisfactory pool, but not huge and explodingly out of control... I can live with it.

So you factor in all your little +1 and you build your base pools but you end up with more +1 than the pool-allowance ... what happens is that all excess dice MERGE becoming better dice, until your pool is within it's maximum size.
3 Danger = +1 Action
3 Action = +1 Expert
3 Expert = +1 Crit HIT

Example:
I gather a total of 13 Danger and 16 Action and 4 Expert.
First I fill up my Danger pool of 6 dice, then I merge the excess 7 dice... 3D become 1A, another 3D become 1A, and I am left with an odd Danger die that I have to merge, so I take 2 from the legal base pool to complete the 3-to-1 merge.
This means I end up with a pool of 4 Danger and +3 Action.

Now on to Action... 16+3=19... excess is 19-6=13... I fill up the base 6 Action pool and merge the rest... the end result is a 4 Action pool +5 Expert.

Now on to Expert... 4+5=9... excess is 9-6=3... I fill up the base 6 Expert pool and merge the rest... the end result is a 6 Expert pool +1 Crit HIT.

So instead of 13+16+4=33 dice I end up rolling just 4+4+6=14 dice (with +1 Crit HIT already in my pocket).