Forums » Smalltalk » Dice Roleplay ? (please explain?)

I've always heard of dice roleplay, for certain actions, attacks, and other stuff. However in my time in Furcadia, I've only seen it used in (do that or this choices) or (does this fail or happen) things and not really more then that.

Can anyone who knows more about the subject perhaps teach me a few of these things?

Dice typically become involved for two reasons, usually simulatanously:

1) To make sure everyone is playing fair, and everyone has a chance
2) To add an element of random spice to RP, so even the character's player can be surprised sometimes by what happens.

There are literally hundreds of different systems of using dice, but most of them share a few things in common:

• A gaming group will set up a chart of skills and what it costs to purchase those skills. New characters are each given an identical number of points with which to buy skills -- so everyone is able to specialize in what they like, but will not have enough points to specialize in everything. More points can be earned. How they are earned depends on what behaviors that group wants to reward.
• There is a chart of difficulty. This can take many forms, but I'll just offer one example here.
  
  In this example, Imagine characters can buy skills ranging from 1 (heard about the topic once) to 100 (Legendary, best in the world).
  
  Then there's a difficulty chart that looks like this:
  
  1-20 No skill required
  20-30 Easy, basic familiarity required
  30-40 Some skill required
  40-50 Intermediate, a few years of experience
  50-60 Difficult, a great deal of experience needed
  60-70 Requires mastery
  70-80 Nearly impossible
  80-90 Legendary skill
  90-100 Legendary skill and a ton of luck
  
• So, every major task in the game will have a difficulty rating. For example, you might choose these difficulties for different tasks:
  
  2 - Asking someone for directions in a nice part of town (Normally you don't even bother rolling for something this easy)
  30 - Baking a decent birthday cake from scratch
  40 - Winning over an impatient stranger with your witty banter
  75 - Cracking a bank vault
  85 - Cracking a bank vault without setting off the alarm
  
  The game master will tell you what the target number is when something comes up. So, you might roll a 1d100, and see if you get to the target number or higher.
  
• BUT, since whether someone succeeds isn't totally random, you would get to add whatever skill you had purchased in that area. So if you had purchased 25 points in lockpicking skill, you could roll 1d100 +25. That would give you a major boost toward achieving that goal!
• Traditionally, rolling the lowest number on a die (1) is called a "botch". Normally, you aren't allowed to add any skill points to that roll; it is considered a total failure, or the worst bought of luck a person could have. If you were rolling to see if you successfully shot someone, a botch might mean that you slipped and shot your best friend instead.
• By the same tradition, rolling the highest number on a die is considered a "critical hit", or a huge success, a stroke of amazing good fortune. Obviously, a critical hit on a d100 is worth more than a critical hit on a d6.

Failing might not mean that the character did anything wrong; it might just mean that luck was against them, and something very unexpected happened.

This can add a huge amount of spice to a game, and it makes sure that everyone is playing with the same set of rules, and is able to play a character that is specialized in one or a few areas but not good at everything so you have to share the limelight and team up with people of different skills. Plus, it makes sure that even grand masters have occasional fumbles, and even the underdog can occasionally just make a great roll and fall into some amazing luck.

Another method of dice roleplay is Talzhemir's Orical system. What happens with that is you start with a simple yes or no question. For example, let's say, "can I tell if this person is lying to me?"

Then everyone throws in their reasons for yes or no, and once all the reasons have been counted, everyone in the RP votes on the "odds" of the roll. The odds are on a 3 to 17. 3 being extremely unlikely, 17 being almost a sure thing.

So, reasons for yes? The character is being twitchy. They've got a tell!

Reasons for no? My character is kinda gullible, they tend to believe things people tell them.

The odds are looking to be pretty even, my character isn't suspicious but theirs is a bad liar. So let's make the odds 11, that's a toss-up. I'm going to add a dice roll to this post and we'll see what happens!

This is a way for dice to govern quite literally anything a character does, it's simple and flexible. It won't work with more complicated systems but I actually quite like it for deciding the outcomes of general events. Here's a link to Talzhemir's system. http://www.thegenieslamp.com/rp/orical.htm

Okay we got an 8. Since 8 is less than 11, then my character can tell that the other one is lying. A result less than the agreed odds is always a yes.

Hm, I just wonder how this works in say a small group rp or one on one rp.

Can you show me some good examples of this really in use? I like to research it a bit more, like how and when its used, what kind of sided dice, or other stuff ect

I think Ben showed excellent example how it could work in one on one game, if the two players don't discuss everything down to smallest details, or small group role plays. Of course, it takes both to be interested to do it with dices and maybe toss 2 comments back and forth to decide on the odds, but otherwise it's pretty good idea.

I was actually wondering how dice thing could work in forum role play, and had come to a similar thoughts, but it's good to see them clearly explained and everything. I might even consider doing this with one of my role play partners (if they are interested, of course).

Ben's example was one I knew of.
I wanted to look into the more complex version of it. Like the old board games, dice with more sides ect. I just want to know that bit

If you want to get into the more complex systems, it's kind of hard to tell you in general terms about complex things. It really depends on the system. I can tell you that most systems use a d20 as a base, other dice will vary for things like damage calculations and percentile rolling... But most systems use a d20 more than any other.

The dice systems in use here seem to be 100% in private groups, where they have used the extra pages to establish their rules and charts.

It works for any size group. I'm in a few RPs right now that are 1:1 and dice based.

Ben is absolutely right, there are SO many systems that it's hard to tell you anything general.

D&D 3.5 for example governs pretty much everything a character does, from running to gathering information to swimming. When you make a character sheet in D&D 3.5 you put points into those skills, which translate directly to bonuses or negatives on a dice roll. Then, depending on the difficulty of the action, it will be assigned a number you need to beat on a roll. So you roll a d20, count up your bonuses, take any negative modifiers for the circumstances, and see if you make the number you need. As I said, that can apply to literally everything a character does. On the other hand I've had game masters who allow good roleplay either in place of, or adding modifiers to rolls. You might get a +4 if you speak particularly eloquantly, to convincing an NPC that he should follow you. A rule I like to use when I run D&D is the epic roll, which is simply this: you can request an epic roll when attempting to do something that you shouldn't really be able to, but is so unbelievably awesome and innovative that the gods smile kindly upon your panash and style. You get a +20 to that roll.

All dice systems, no matter how strict the rules are, are ultimately very flexible to any RP situation. But you need to work out how in depth you want to get, how complex you want the math to be, and how much you want to leave things to chance. Because depending on the system, absolutely everything in the game could be totally random, even down to the monsters you encounter. There are tables for random encounters on d100 percentiles.

EDIT: HI KIM!