On the Subject of Dice

This past week, I’ve been thinking about dice. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about dice-based resolution in role-playing games, i.e. determining success or failure through a dice roll. I’ve recently played a few sessions of Dragon Age, which uses 3d6 as the resolution dice rather than 1d20, and I’ve been led to question the relative merits of different assortments of dice. I even went so far as to create an Excel document to compare probability curves.

The d20 system

I like using a d20; there’s a beautiful simplicity to just rolling a single die and adding a bonus. Another feature of using a single die is that there is an equal chance of getting any individual value. I say feature, rather than benefit, because I’m not really convinced that it is a benefit. I’ve read a lot of criticism about the idea that 5% of the time, you just fail completely. Now this is not a huge problem in a system where the penalty for crit failing is just that you fail; it becomes a more complicated issue if you play in a group that has decided to implement any kind of critical fumble rule.

On the other hand, people don’t seem to mind that they are making a critical hit an equal amount of the time, but it makes you think nonetheless. Should characters who are well trained in combat have an equal chance of complete failure (natural 1) as they have of simply performing well (natural 10 or 11)? And it was this thought that led me to do a survey of different options and compare them.

Other Options

I mentioned Dragon Age above, which uses 3d6 as the resolution dice. Now 3d6 does have more difference than just its probability curve, it also has a higher minimum result and a lower maximum result. While 1d20 can roll anything from 1 to 20, 20 possible results, 3d6 is restricted to 16 possible values from 3 to 18. Those details are not irrelevant, but in the context of this discussion I’m going to push them aside for the moment. As a note, the percentages I give in the rest of this post are not all exact; I’ve rounded them to one decimal place for simplicity’s sake.

The more relevant consequence of using multiple dice is that the probabilities of getting different values form a curve rather than a flat line. With 1d20, each possible result has a 5% chance of being rolled. With 3d6, the extremes of 3 and 18 have a 0.5% chance of being rolled, while the middle results of 10 and 11 each have a 12.5% chance of being rolled. This happens because there are more possible combinations of numbers that add up to those values. All this means that spectacular failure and spectacular success are both less likely to happen.

But 3d6 isn’t the only possible option; approximations can be made with any size of die. 2d12 and 3d8 are perhaps poor options because their maximum result is 24, which might have further ranging effects than are intended for this change. With 2d12, the extremes (2 and 24) each have a 0.7% chance, while the middle value of 13 has an 8.3% chance. With 3d8, the extremes (3 and 24) each have a tiny 0.2% chance of occurring, while 13 and 14 in the middle each have a 9.4% chance each. The two other options have a more useful maximum of 20, with minimums of 2 for 2d10 and 5 for 5d4. 5d4 might also prove to be more extreme than desired, as 5 and 20 each have a miniscule 0.1% chance of appearing, and 12 and 13 in the middle combining for a whopping 30.2% (15.1% each) chance of being rolled.

The 2d10 system

This all leads me to the last option that approximates 1d20 while giving a more middle-weighted probability curve; replacing 1d20 with 2d10. There are quite a few things I like about this option. While there is slightly more adding involved than with a single die, it is still simpler than using 3 (or 5) dice, and so there is still some of that clean simplicity that I like about the d20 system. The maximum (2o) is the same as a d20, and the minimum (2) is only 1 higher.

While the extremes of 2 and 20 are far less likely than they are with 1d20, they still seem like very real possibilities at a 1% chance (down from 5%). On the flip side, the middle result of 11 (and it is actually the middle now rather than 10.5) has a 10% chance of occurring (up from 5%). While this adjustment makes the middle more likely and the ends less likely, the less likely values still seem possible.

If you were to implement this house-rule in 4th edition, a few smaller adjustments would need to be made as well. Saving throws currently succeed on a result of 10 or more, which means an unmodified roll has a 55% chance of success. With 2d10, however, you have a 64% chance of rolling a 10 or higher on an unmodified roll. This is easily compensated for simply by raising the target number from 10 to 11, which would give you the same chance (55%) of success as with 1d20.

The critical hit system might also need adjustment, as rolling a natural 20 (two 10’s) now has only a 1% chance of occurring. This might suit your purposes, but if you want to stay closer to the current chance, you can extend the crit range down to 19 (for 3%) or 18 (for 6%). Another option takes a cue from Green Ronin’s system for Dragon Age, where rolling doubles gives you a boost. Since there is a 10% chance of rolling doubles on 2d10, rolling doubles wouldn’t always be a crit; rather, doubles would only count as a crit if the roll hits. In this system crits do not count as auto-hits but instead just as damage-maximizing hits. If you want double 10’s to be extra special, you can have that result maximize crit dice as well (from high crit and magical weapons).

In Conclusion

I’ll finish this off by saying that none of these suggestions have yet been playtested, but doing so is my next mission. If you choose to use my suggestions, I would love to hear feedback and comments that I can use to further refine the house-rule. I can be contacted at fedosu@gmail.com.

The State of the Game

If you pay attention to the community, particularly the Wizards boards, you’ll know that the fandom, or at least a vocal few are in turmoil over the future of 4th edition. Some books have been cancelled, the magazines are being changed, the minis are cancelled, and this is all on top of the new online character builder and essentials and the strong reactions that those evoked. Much of the furor seems to centre around WotC’s ability to communicate effectively with the community, or rather the lack of it. At the very least, they have handled the past six months... poorly, in terms of communication.

What’s Happening?

While reactions to the online Character Builder and Essentials were decidedly mixed, the majority of the reaction to the current events has been negative. In fact the matter of dispute doesn’t seem to be whether things are going down the drain, but rather how far down and how fast it is going. The problem with all of this is that it is still all just speculation. Wednesday's announcements in Ampersand and the FAQ that came shortly after told the community very little that they hadn’t already worked out themselves. That is, that the primary minis line was now over, with only occasional special releases such as the recent Beholder set and the slightly less recent Orcus; as well as the fact that Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium, Class Compendium: Heroes of Sword and Spell, and Hero Builder’s Handbook are not going to be released in print.

So then... what is happening going forward? Heroes of Shadow has shifted to hardcover and been pushed back a month, and the Dragon and Dungeon magazines will no longer be compiled into a single PDF at the end of each month. And what else? Well... we don’t know. We don’t know because Wizards hasn’t told us, which naturally has led to speculation. And also there’s been speculation. Finally, some people have chosen simply to speculate. In short, Wizards isn’t telling us anything, so people have fallen back on wild mass guessing and paranoia.

The Theories

Much of the speculation revolves around three basic theories. The first is that 4th Edition is over; some people say that essentials fell flat on its face, or alternatively that it did well but that Wizards needed it to do spectacularly. The solution is to do the simplest thing possible to encourage people to buy new books, which is to start over from the beginning again. Oddly, much of the speculation in this vein suggests that Wizards will simply expand on the core concepts of Essentials for the next edition. This seems logical at first, but remember that many of the advocates of this theory blame Essentials for the edition’s downfall, so why would Wizards continue with the product that killed the last edition when starting a new one? We are left only to wonder.

The second theory is that Wizards is planning on going all digital with 4th Edition, or as far as they reasonably can. Some even say that they’re planning on going the MMO route so that in order to maintain access to anything you have to continue to pay your monthly subscription. With the recent shift in tack with the character builder, the ongoing beta testing of the virtual table, and an online version of the monster builder expected this theory is not entirely without merit. At first glance it doesn’t seem a horrible notion; Blizzard is able to make a significant amount of money by squeezing their player base each and every month, but many other MMOs are taking the lesson of the Battle.Net of Blizzard’s previous RTS games and charging for the content but not the access to actual play. The question Wizards would have to ask itself if this were the route they were planning to take is “How committed are the fans to D&D?” In other words, is it D&D that people like, or would they be just as happy or happier playing Pathfinder, or Dragon Age, or Earthdawn? This would be a dangerous route to take, and if the edition isn’t on its way out already, such an action could very well be the final nail in the coffin. On the other hand, great reward often comes from taking great risks, and this potential shift to a primarily digital format might just be the realization of all the promises that Wizards failed to fulfill with D&D Insider in the past few years.

The third theory seems to be that Wizards, or perhaps Hasbro, has decided that they don’t know how to make money from Dungeons & Dragons and so are going to cancel the game, either literally or effectively. This may simply be a down-time of a few years until the franchise can be revitalized with a new vision (ie 5th Edition) like Star Trek had following the failure of Enterprise, or it could mean that they plan to get what they can out of D&D by publishing board games and other tangential products before selling it off to someone else. Many people have cited similarities between what appears to be happening to 4th Edition and Wizards’ treatment of Star Wars: Saga Edition before they let go of their license agreement, suggesting that it heralds the end for D&D.

And So...

All this of course is ultimately just guesswork. I find myself concerned by the state of the game, and worried about the fate of the game in these uncertain times. It would certainly be nice if Wizards were to let us all in on the secret, whatever it may be. But perhaps the secret is that they have no more idea where they’re going than we are and letting that out of the bag would be potentially even more damaging to the game and the community. Hopefully at the D&D Experience, coming at the end of this month, we’ll learn more.

I’ve said very little about what I actually think so far in this post, and the truth of it is that I’m not entirely certain myself. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised at any of the theories being correct, but the truth could just as easily be something we don’t know about, perhaps something brilliant and revolutionary that will make everyone sit up and say “Oh”. I’d like to hope that maybe there is some insane and brilliant new path they’re going to take, but I’m not really expecting that to be the case.

What I really think is that to Wizards, publishing D&D isn’t really about making a great game, it’s about making a great deal of money, and in a world that is changing as quickly as ours, they’re having a difficult time figuring out how to actually accomplish that goal. The cost of publishing physical books are high, especially when compared to publishing PDFs, but a PDFs strengths are also its weaknesses, it is easily copied and redistributed, and even pulling PDFs of their books from online vendors hasn’t stopped pirates (at best it has slowed them.)

People always point out that corporations are... well... corporations, and that their main goal is to make money, but perhaps that’s putting the cart before the horse. Wizards might have been banking on the strength of the D&D brand to hold onto their customers, but with so many other RPGs out there, and PDFs making it easier than ever for newcomers to publish and distribute their own products, the brand may not be enough to keep the game alive. I think that money has become too much of a focus, and that the focus should, even must, be shifted back toward making a high-quality game that bolsters the strength of the brand rather than sapping it. As the line goes, “If you build it, they will come.” Maybe that’s naive of me, maybe it’s foolish to ignore that a company exists largely to make money, but Wizards became the company it is by making quality games, maybe it would do them well to focus on what makes the game good, rather than just what makes the game profitable.

Announcement

Alright, so here's the thing. I greatly enjoy writing this blog, it has resulted in me writing over 30 000 words about the Frozen Over setting. Frankly I'm impressed with myself. I have, however, found it to be quite taxing to write three posts a week. In addition, I have other thoughts and ideas about D&D that I'd like to share. Notions of other campaign settings, adventures I've run, papercraft constructions I've made for my games, or just editorial thoughts on D&D. This is really two problems, the first being that writing 3 times a week is often tiring, and the second being that focusing just on one narrow topic can also be tiring. So I have made a decision, this blog will be changing.

As of today, this blog is now being opened up to other Role-Playing related topics that I wish to write about, and it's name will be changing. Along with this change is a change in address. I don't want to just change the name and address though and make it difficult for people to find me, so this blog will remain in place, and I've set up a second one with the new name and address. The other shift is that there will only be one regularly scheduled post each week, will be appear on Friday. On the other hand, I will be putting up other posts whenever I see fit, so some weeks might only have one post, while others might have many more. I hope these changes don't put readers off and that they'll continue to visit and hopefully enjoy my posts.

The new form of this blog is called Corriver's Lantern and can be found at http://corriver.blogspot.com you're already on it.

Thank you for bearing with me, and I hope you continue to enjoy the blog in it's new form.

~Sincerely, Colin B. Schaeffer