Buckets of dice rules ?

[Conquistador]

Top Post that man  
<snip>

True that!

Gracias,

Glenn

[matakishi]

whats true line of sight?

Okay, remember you asked.
Ready?
It's when you position yourself at the shooting miniature's eye line and see if you can actually see the intended target.
...
Just think about that for a moment.

[Diakon]

The main problem, as I see it, with Buckets Of Dice rules is how much the games are slowed down by dice rolling. I play WH40k with a group of friends (I'd rather play fast and simple skirmish type games but unfortunately I have to play what my friends play if I want to play at all. I have talked a couple of them in to IHMN though so let's see how that goes...) and the sheer amount of dice used is ridiculous. As an example, one of my friends is an Ork player. His squads are 30 strong. Their ranged weapons are Assault 3 which means h he get's to roll 3 dice for each model in that unit. 90 dice!!! For one roll!!! (we don't even have that many dice so he has to roll several lots) And for any that hit he then has to roll to wound!Then for any that wound his opponent has to make saving throw's. It can take upwards of five minutes to resolve one unit's shooting.

My experience of this type of game is what makes me long for simpler more elegant rule sets.

[Lowtardog]

I  mind them to be honest, part of the flavour of fnatasy having cut teeth playing WFB 1st edition, always takes me back.

TQW uses quite a lot of dice but tey are opposed rolls and have lethal dice etc built intoweapon types, rather like that option

[redzed]

I play WH40k with a group of friends ..... I have talked a couple of them in to IHMN though

try this  LINK

[dijit]

Having played a few 'elegant wargames', I find myself disliking them more than buckets of dice wargames and for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don't feel they're as good for giving me a narrative, I like the feeling of knowing if something hits, if the blow crushes flesh and bone.

Secondly, single dice mechanics ala SoBH et al, just can't really model some situations well. Take a heavily armed knight with a huge sword. He doesn't hit often, but when he does it hurts. He is faced of against a lightly armed elf, who has no problem hitting, but just can't break through his armour. Two extremes. Should the knight have a high or low attack, as he hits hard, but hits not so often? Should the elf have a high or low attack, he hits often and would down a less well armoured foe quickly, but just can't get through? Another example would be machine guns should have high attack vs infantry, but against tanks low, but should still be able to damage light vehicles. Whilst, RPGs should be the opposite, how do you model this? Which has a high attack and why?

Thirdly, single dice mechanics often lack taste, an Orc axeman is not much different from a dwarf axeman, who is as good as a elf axeman, they just often don't feel different. So what do many games do (and SoBH is a perfect example) they add a ton of special rules instead, when just adding a few more stats and dice rolls would solve many of special rules.

Fourthly, I hate things resting on a single dice, they are very fickle things. Having a few dice, introduces a greater sense of average, and generates a bell curve of what ought to happen. I'm too tired to write much more and can't remember enough of my probabilities stuff to fully argue it through, but just three dice improves stability within the system.

However, I can whole heartedly agree that warhammer has taken something that was fine and turned it into a monster of dice rolling excess.

[Conquistador]

I watched  a few of those kind of games and almost fell asleep waiting for each melee to be completed.

Gracias,

Glenn

[Lowtardog]

Cannons shooting Matchsticks...its the only way to be sure

If you dont like em, dont play them

[dijit]

TBH I would actually use a 2 dice system to get a bell curve and better control due to it with the results. (7 is a great number on 2D) but you can see how you can have the flavour without the bucket of dice.

and I think I might use that system myself as I think its pretty damm good for on the spot thinking.

Thinking a bit more nothing wrong with rolling a few dice. The optimal word being few. or to put it better no more than what will start to slow down the game.

Where 40k falls over (have not played enough warhammer to give that fair comment) is they have huge numbers of figs and every figure is treated like a figure in a skirmish game in terms of detail yet the forces move and act in squad scale. Its a hangover from the much smaller rogue trader forces of yor when you could do that without the game grinding to a dice festival inspired halt.

I have to agree with you whole heartedly here.

Dice pool mechanics, like the one you've put forth and Goalsystem, Dreadball, etc, are in my mind a great middle road, they avoid the pit falls of single dice mechanics and the boringness of buckets of dice mechanics.

And your points about Warhammer are spot on.

In fact I think we probably agree on this, but just come at from different angles.

Duncan

[matakishi]

There is a scale with 'no dice' at one end and 'more dice than you own' at the other, not just two choices.
You can have more than one dice before it gets silly and you can have modifiers before it gets silly. No matter what you use though, the dice rolling should be the culmination of events, the finale to the struggle, not just a step on the path.

I'll use an imaginary fantasy game for my example of tons of dice with a process driven rules set:
Each dice roll involves rolling dice for every model present.
Remember too that at each step tables need to be referenced to find the target number required.
The first dice roll is to hit but there is no outcome that affects the game, hit models are still on the table.
The second dice roll is to damage but still, the models remain.
The third roll is to save, made by a different player (lets hope he's still around and not wandered off bored).
Finally some models are marked for removal from play but the combat isn't over, we can go through all this again for the opponent's go.
At the end of the process models (not too many) are removed and a table is consulted to decide a 'winner'.
The winner hasn't actually won though, usually he watches the opposing unit retreat a few inches to stand facing him again.
Soon we can look forward to replaying this whole exciting process again...

This added dice play doesn't do anything that far fewer dice wouldn't do yet takes forever to do it. What it does do is allow the target rolls to be low rather than high and keep expectations of success around for a little longer whilst keeping the resulting effects low enough to need an aggregate built over time from a collection of averages to actually resolve a conflict.

All that dice rolling is just a series of steps on the long road to deciding the fate of a single unit, not even the outcome of the game.
Some people love this process-centred approach and revel in the time it takes.
Not me, I'm a results person.

My other imaginary fantasy game uses a single die with a results driven rule set:
Units are designated by their weapon type/fighting style and are considered to contain enough people to be effective in combat.
A single die is rolled for each of the two units involved modified for unit type and situation (a small table, easily memorised). The higher roll wins and the opponent is pushed back unless the winning roll is twice the losing roll in which case the loser is removed from play.
There's a result there that makes a difference, the loser is destroyed or running.

The interest and fun here comes from the decisions the players make, not from how many dice they roll. Where an attack is made, what, with and when are all important decisions and players need to manoeuver to an advantageous position before committing because, once committed, something will happen and second chances are rare.
This kind of game appeals to people who like to influence the game directly with their actions not rely on the luck of many dice. It will make some people feel out of control and they'll hate it. Different strokes.

Both games can recreate any given scenario. Which one a player chooses is just down to taste and style.
Personally I like to spend my game time making decisions not waiting to count pips. There are many, many games that strike a happy medium and they're the ones I choose from for the games I play.

[Conquistador]

Chainmail (skirmish mode) by Gygax and Perrin had a very slick (for the day) system based on 2D6 and the weapon armor relationship.  I really liked the battle mode for truly outlandish sized battles but that was a different probability system IIRC.

Operating strictly from memory, chainmail and sword needed an 8 or better [15 out of 36 combinations] or better to hit leather and battle axe who needed a 7 [21 out of 36] to take out the chainmail guy.  Advantage Leather and Battle Axe.  For the time (1970s) it was very quick and deadly.  You can argue with exact numbers for each combination (though I thought relatively accurate) and the morale system was crude but for a quick and flowing game it worked.

As for the narrative aspect - if you can't make up a story to match the game fluff on the spot don't go into being a DM/GM or writing fantasy literature!  Narrative is critical once you get past the winning for it's own pleasure aspect of gaming.

Gracias,

Glenn

[Westfalia Chris]

Having started with BoD rules in the shape of the various Warhammer clones, I do admit to having a soft spot in my gaming heart for those.

Still, nowadays I prefer those rules that either reduce the number of dice while maintaining a decent result range, have hits generate a suppression effect that may include physical damage if the success is big enough (or a further test is passed) or have the hit and damage resolution resolved in a single roll. A decent example of the latter would (in my book) be the Dystopian Wars mechanism that rolls a pleasingly-large number of dice (I like the haptic aspect), resulting in basic damage if one hit threshold is passed, critical damage if a second threshold is reached, and allows for multiples of the latter. It has its own deficiencies, but is quite tense and exciting and works reasonably well and fluently.

Furthermore, I think that games that link the number of dice to an instantly visible unit strength (e.g. figure number) may be more easily understood and be less error-prone than more abstract rulings (especially if the latter feature [perceived] arbitrary design concepts).

Finally, as I keep getting older, I prefer those rules that reduce modifiers to a minimum. Cannot be bothered to do that much math anymore (Battletech, I'm looking at you). That one is a tricky path, though, and since many game designers don't really account for the statistic implications of various approaches, it may result in odd issues.

[Dolmot]

Until now, I saw this topic and thought it was about a rules system called "Buckets of Dice". I was disappointed to find out that there's no such system. It's a catchy name.

Regarding the presence and significance of dice: It reminds me of the endless argument between "hard", "German" and "ameritrash" boardgames. Greatly simplified, the first one uses no randomisation whatsoever. The second may have a random setup and shuffled decks but rarely die rolls. The last relies heavily on dice and other chaos elements. I have no strong preference. Sometimes I want to test my skills and play chess-like games where a move happens exactly like you choose. On the other hand, sometimes I want to switch my work-burdened brain off in my free time and just roll dice for laughs. In the latter case, rolling dice is a central part of the entertainment. I remember how a good chunk of boardgames until the 90s were essentially just curved tracks where you advanced with die rolls. They were largely "spectator sports", where you watch the outcome with an illusion of affecting it. A bit like lottery where you can pick your own numbers but it doesn't really make any difference. It may be entertaining if you prefer "playing by just watching". Leaves more time for food, drinks and chatting than games that require constant and intensive concentration.

So, if the game relies heavily on rolling dice and that's where the entertainment arises, does it mean "the more, the merrier"? I can hardly deny that at some point it was amusing to pick up 100 dice for a shooting roll. It's like diving in coins, while in harsh reality a single banknote would be more convenient for its actual purpose. But I guess after your 50th game of WH40k it simply becomes tedious to count whether you have 73 or 74 dice in your hand, to find a rolling area for them, and to count the hits just to find out that nothing really got through the final extra save.

One of GW's designers told that their save roll (made by the opponent) is there for involvement and to give the owner of the model a chance to affect its ultimate fate. Otherwise you'd just sit and watch while the other guy moves his whole army and tells you to remove models. You can easily argue for or against that. Yes, yes, modern alternative activation games are vastly better. We all know that one already. Going back to boardgames, a major trend there is letting all players do something instead of giving them dedicated turns while others wait. This is not that closely related to the original topic of dice, though.

But if the game has little substance beyond dice rolling and then you start reducing those, eventually you'll get into a situation where a single D6 is rolled and 4+ wins. That's result-oriented, right? Game finished in five seconds. No need to even move the units. (Some say 40k could be played like that but I digress again.) Obviously I jest, but the point is that the actual game happens in details at some level, smaller than "you win" or "you lose". It's all about deciding the level you prefer. After decades of serious game design and playing, there's still request for 15 min fillers, 12 hour micromanagement sessions and near-endless campaigns. There's no decisive "right" or "wrong" there.

Rolling dice or adding other randomisation may also speed up some games. Fully deterministic ones can get stuck into enormous analysis paralysis. If it's possible to plan your moves ten turns ahead, a winning player will do exactly that. If randomisation turns precise long-term planning futile, players will do things that look "about right", which is usually faster. A semi-complex dice system with several rolls quickly makes precise planning impossible and reduces metagaming. For example, I can calculate exactly the probabilities of a single Blood Bowl player activation and pick the best move, but for a 40-dice multi-weapon WH combat roll I can only give rough average results with no clear idea of the distribution and all possible outcomes. In the latter case I have to play by a rough instinct, which is faster than going through the eight possible "Dodge or Go for it" combinations in BB. Fewer dice isn't necessarily faster.

I can't remember any more, what was the point I was trying to make. Maybe I'll try to figure it out for the next post. Meanwhile...

[Vermis]

I'm not opposed to BoD in principle, though I can understand opposition to it (kinda moving away from it meself); but from what I read here it seems the finer problem is rolling BoD multiple times to achieve one simple result, à la Warhammer. That I can well understand! Eventually drove me nutty too.
So I'd second Chris' example of Dystopian Wars. Dice can build up, what with linked guns, squadrons and 'explosions' (sometimes a little too much, for my tastes), but the result is immediate. Bish bash bosh.

Compared to something like FoG, where I couldn't even read a few pages at a time. (Years ago. Might give it another look now.) And I've moaned about Malifaux before: no dice, but a lot of hmming and hawing over a stack of special rules for each figure, initial card flips, a round or two of 'cheating fate', soulstone burning, result card flips, and triggers - which might 'trigger' most of the process again.  I was kind of pleased that some gamers I know got interested in it, because it wasn't 40K and the card mechanics sounded interesting. Nowadays it almost seems like 40K by another name - or at least, part of the 'inelegant' set that draws players in by making the process seem involving and rewarding. (leading to things like the awful mathshammer phenomenon*)
There's a lot made of Malifaux's 'tactical' aspects too, positioning crew members to get off special abilities and combos. I don't have much experience to say a lot about that, but I'm not entirely convinced.

I think playing card mechanics could make for a pretty elegant and good game, though. Thought about it for Wild West skirmish, maybe, after a few games of Gutshot. A bit differently to how Dead Man's Hand handles it too, tho.

Matakishi: so is that how many combat dice you use for HOTT? Been scratching my head, trying to figure it out from the rules. Ta!

*

for a 40-dice multi-weapon WH combat roll I can only give rough average results with no clear idea of the distribution and all possible outcomes.

Doesn't stop 'em trying, tho.

And Larry Leadhead sums it up very well.

[redzed]

I think playing card mechanics could make for a pretty elegant and good game, though.

back to the 70's we go

As for cards I'm not a fan for combat, but I do like them for unit activation.
Muskets & Tomahawks use of them is both simple and elegant and they also add  to the whole game in itself.
TFL's use of the tea-break or double Tea-Break to end the turn is also really good for games.