If I keep posting at this rate, I’m gonna have to put up some actual plays or session reports, haha.
Dragonslayer Adventures can be run with a single d6 and only needs one player to roll. All of my near-diceless ventures have veered this way. D6 Universal goes this way.
When I started reading about Matrix games both on Chris’s blog and on other corners of the internet, I found this chart that falls in the same category of judging player arguments to see if they’re successful. Notice that “average” falls to a 50/50.
Lizardman Diaries advocates for a similar dice structure in their FKR games:
What about our freeform styles suggests using a single d6 with similar outcomes? Convergent thinking, I suppose…
Back to Matrix games, others in that vein advocate for a 2d6 resolution with 7 or higher as the target. This makes it so that the dice favor the player taking action. I suppose that could ease frustrations a bit to favor the person whose turn it is.
Then you just give +1 for each PRO and -1 for each CON.
Wait. 7+ on 2d6?
Could we do a Powered by the Apocalypse roll?
- 10+ is a full success, “yes, and”
- 7-9 is a partial success, “yes, but”
- 6- is a failure, “no, and”
The roll still favors the acting player, but now there’s more room for twisting the results and giving them those perfectly imperfect little bumps and wrinkles that inject so much flavor without making it too “storygame-y.”
Guess that’s my dice engine of choice for Matrix games now. 🙂
Converging story-driven wargames and genre-driven role-playing games…
Interesting thoughts! I have a suspicion that the +1/-1 for pros and cons won’t feel that good in play. More likely, you’d have the outcomes changed based on what is at stake and what can be brought to bear. The best/worst possible outcomes, rather than the likelihood of those outcomes.