Author Topic: On the use of dice mechanics without vanishing failure  (Read 11071 times)

Offline Bozwevial

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Re: On the use of dice mechanics without vanishing failure
« Reply #20 on: November 10, 2011, 08:52:41 PM »
As an example, take the task of driving to the store to get milk. Every driver can do that with relative ease even though (since they're mostly NPCs) they probably don't have any particular skill at driving from a game mechanic standpoint. If they had to roll they'd have a good chance of failing even a very low difficulty check, but you don't roll to drive out to the store because it is a mundane task that people do every day and 99% of the time it's not a big deal. The 1% of the time it is, you have someone making a relatively easy check with a skill they aren't very good at, which is why on average there are something close to 20,000 traffic accidents daily in the US.
If it were me I'd go a step further still, removing the 1% of failure too and considering the incidents that DO happen a result of external modifiers (windy, rainy, slippery road, a kid jumping out, you being sleepy, whatver...). But that's just me being crazy I guess.
That's exactly what it is. It's not a task with a 99% chance of success; it's a task which probably has a much higher chance of failure for your average driver that isn't rolled most of the time because it's trivial. Throw in a police chase going by or a bad thunderstorm or a flailing baby in the backseat and then you have something which does require a check, and then that reasonably large chance of failure comes into play.
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Offline veekie

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Re: On the use of dice mechanics without vanishing failure
« Reply #21 on: November 11, 2011, 12:31:04 AM »
Well, with the reverse dice pool it seems simple enough.

Driving on a highway: Difficulty 2
Minimum driver competence: Wits 1 Drive 1
Dice rolled: 0

Bad weather: Difficulty +1
Reducing travel time by raising Difficulty: +1
So now you're speeding on a highway in the rain. You have two dice worth of failure.
If instead you intentionally go slowly to adjust for the weather, you might lower difficulty.
The tricky bit comes in that you have to bet your pool before you roll, the Gm might reveal hidden modifiers to the base situation(like your brakes having been sabotaged).

Basically if theres nothing at stake you might as well take the difficulty reducers, check that you indeed do have more bonus than pool, and say so. It works automatically.
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Offline professorgear

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Re: On the use of dice mechanics without vanishing failure
« Reply #22 on: November 15, 2011, 12:58:37 AM »
Bard, I actually would be interested in your idea of the ideal system, you should post it somewhere.