[WoD & Exalted] Currency and Dice Pools
Erik Weissengruber:
After a session of Sorcerer a player and I got into a casual discussion of dice probabilities and system.
His contention was that in the recent White Wolf WoD games, with stable target numbers and with the magic of exploding 10's factored in, committing 3 dice to a roll is equivalent to 1 certain* success (* "certain" = 18.5 times out of 20, let's say).
Has this equivalence (3 dice = 1 certain* success) been observed empirically in your WoD play?
Has this equivalence affected practical gameplay decisions?
Has anything like this been raised to a consciously-manipulated currency? (In practice, mind you: the word "currency" might never have come up but currency-inflicted behaviours might have taken place).
If this is the case I have to revisit my gameplay with WoD. I got caught up in the minutiae of all the powerz and the details of the factions, and got lost. But seeing a functioning virtual currency at work int them game might allow me to step up my game on those occasions when I step into the WoD.
Abkajud:
Since you mentioned Exalted, I would add that in a game I played several years ago, my Abyssal (eclipse caste?) had a Devil of a time getting anything done at all, when it came to rolling dice to do it.
I don't know if my build was suboptimal or what, but one thing that seemed to hamstring the dice system was a lack (iirc) of some resource I could spend to affect the outcome of the roll, after the roll had been completed. Willpower refills were hard to come by in this particular campaign, and I may have been tapped out pretty quickly.
My memory is regrettably hazy on the subject; forgive me if there's a hole in this argument. Also, lack of sleep.
Erik Weissengruber:
Thanks.
Your case is the same as mine.
I make these builds and I am not sure if I am really utilizing the mechanics.
I build these funnycars with chrome and extra lasers and air-brush art but I can't seem to pop the hood and jimmy with the engine.
Abkajud:
I think part of the issue is that the system's priorities are either muddled or unclear.
If Exalted were laid out more like 4th ed. D&D, and we were explicitly told, "Hey, so design a character that's badass, so that he can kick asses in GM-provided scenarios," then I'd have been thinking about character optimization.
But Exalted's "how to play" text (not the rules, but what you do with them) is kind of a mess - like a lot of games out there, it claims to be part storytelling, part game, part Imagination Station, all things to all people. That's a product of its time period more than any specific fault of the writers, imo.
Anyway - something tells me that if you approach Exalted from a "power-gamer" perspective, i.e. trying to maximize resources, basically treating character creation like a puzzle to solve with the greatest amount of payoff you can get, it'd probably work just fine. I would consider it an element of Stepping On Up to see how well you can pop said hood and jimmy with the aforementioned engine.
Just so I know, is that what you're after? Based on this line from the "Why Dungeons?" thread,
Quote
Erik said,
I used to think that I was interested in stories that D&D couldn't tell but what I was really frustrated with was people who were messing with the parameters that made a game gamey...
I'm inclined to think that getting a good challenge *is* what you're after. Certainly, it doesn't have to be the only thing, ever, that you're after, but it's worth noting what priorities you have and what you want a given game to fulfill.
Exalted was my "a-ha" game, wherein I realized I wanted to take an active role in telling stories through games, and then realized that any potential the system might have for such a purpose was obfuscated, or at least not articulated in terms I could comprehend.
Regardless of what priorities a given design supports, however, I think it's worthwhile to notice the little tricks and reward cycles it contains. "3 dice ~ 1 auto-success" is pretty generic, but it's well worth knowing, and it informs choices that we make while interacting with the system - for example, anything that grants an auto-success, such as spending a Willpower point, is like adding three dice to your pool. That, in turn, gives you an idea of how outmatched you can get, and still maybe win, provided you have currency left to spend.
There's a prevailing mainstream attitude (or at least there has been one) that it's somehow "cheating" to optimize mechanics, and I think a lot of games; ones made before, y'know, the concept of Gamism was hammered out; might not have been handled roughly enough or with sufficient rigor to really keep the games "gamey", as you put it. Oddly, I've noticed a parallel conceit regarding "traditional" design - there's a crowd that thinks game mechanics should be brutal and unmerciful, and there's a (perhaps younger) crowd that thinks it actually kind of sucks to have to go outside the rules to increase your chance of surviving the session. Y'know, that strategy of asking for enough details and plugging away with logic to avoid having to roll a save or enter combat.
I think that's a perfectly feasible strategy for overcoming challenge, if it's acceptable to the play group and doesn't screw with the game's systems, but in my case, and that of many others, I'm sure, doing this was really a reaction to the "challenge" part of play being too much or uninteresting or what have you.
Hm. That went on a bit long.
Callan S.:
If it is like an auto success, then it kind of ends up like Amber, from what I've heard? Ie, compare static value against static value. Though I don't understand that - to me it just seems alot of waving numbers around to obscure how the GM decides utterly (as he decides the number your comparing against).
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page