With all this talk of difficulties and optional actions, it stands that we really need to talk about dice. So let's do that this week .
Another Day is a die pool system. Yes, another. I like them. Sue me.
In this case, it's a pool of d6s. I tried this originally with d10s but didn't like the results as much. Given that target numbers only go above 10 in the rarest of circumstances, it seemed necessary to keep the die to a d6.
Your character has skills. I have a sample, list, and it's pretty specific, but you can go as specific or general as you like. Whenever you attempt to do something, you roll your skill in dice. Look for the single highest die. That's your result.
Now, there's one small wrinkle in this. And that is like dice combine to higher number. Add 1 to the result for every like die. That means if you roll a pair of 5s, your actual result is 6. If you roll four 5s, your actual result is 8. Thus more dice is better. Skills top out at 5 dice, by the way.
And this is where cooperation comes in. Players working together on a problem can merge their results, getting more matching dice and driving that final result higher. They don't even have to be using the same skill, as long as they're working together on the same problem.
And that's all there is to die rolling.
You should look at the Silhouette system by Dream Pod 9. They used that system for games like Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, etc.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip. I checked out a number of reviews on Silhouette that describe the basic system, and I do see a number of similarities. It seems quite a bit more detailed than I was shooting for, but that makes sense since I'm tieing an entire day's worth of activity into a single roll and they're taking a much more granular approach, but it remains a die pool system with low handling time and quick resolution, so I thank you for the referral. Food for thought as I continue work.
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