/gdg/ Game Design General

What do you want to achieve with the explosion?
Do you just want to add crit excitement or is it to give a trace of possibility to achieve very difficult actions?

The main goal is to add an extra level of excitement to dice-rolling. This could really take either or both forms (exciting to get big crits, exciting to turn failure into success with the lucky bonus roll). I suppose I'm leaning towards the doubles option? If I go that route, not sure if it should be rolling 1 or 2 bonus d10s (1d10 is more reasonable and means that you could still fail the crit, 2d10 would mean much larger explosion bonuses).

Consider that you don't want to trivialize the crits by making them too often.

That is one of the concerns of the doubles route, as it makes them a 1 in 10 chance. I'm not sure how to better handle them, though; the X+ route could make them actually rare, but feels too arbitrary.

I don't see where it is arbitrary. It has a clear logic that high is good and extends the possible results upwards.
The doubles are more arbitrary because low doubles can turn out good, which is counter to the desired results of the base resolution.

Working on a mecha skirmish game, trying to shoot for a more gundam/anime feel, with an action/reaction system for evading, blow for blow melee combat, returning fire and so on.

Anywho, I kinda got the idea to use proprietary dice.
A combat action would use two dice rolls, a Hit roll, then a Damage roll.

The first type of dice would be a D8, with 2 blank spaces, 5 hit locations (legs, left arm, right arm, body, and head), and an Accurate hit. The idea of this is to roll shooting and hit location into one roll (originally, before wanting to use special dice, these were two seperate rolls, a X+ to hit, then a D10 hit location check).

The second set of dice would be 6 sided damage dice, similar to the dice from imperial assault. A basic one would have 2 blanks, a 'surge' of sorts for triggering abilities, 2 single damage spaces, and a critical hit. Other variations may have more surges, or double damage spaces.

Damage will be checked against the hit location's armor value, overflowing damage is applied to the part.
Say the armor is 4, and 5 damage results are rolled, one damage is done to the part. A critical hit however, ignores armor. This is so small arms will always have a chance of damaging heavy armor.

How does everyone feel about proprietary dice? Ive heard ffg getting a lot of flak for it, yet x-wing is doing quite well. Do my systems make sense? Any feedback?

I recently read about FFG Star War system of hit/miss, despair/glory and such. Maybe doubles is a good event, even if a miss.

I think I read the same post, which is where I got the idea. My system is on the simulationist side though, so vague narrative concepts don't really work for me. Still considering the doubles for a bonus d10, as it could give the extra oomph to a success, or give a chance of turning failure around.

>still using the old pasta

I'm trying to get ideas for things you can add to a character that plain old stats and skills can't do. D&D has feats, Shadowrun has qualities, GURPS has advantages, WoD has merits. Which game would y'all recommend to get good ideas for those kind of things?

All the ones you listed are fine examples. PF probably has one of the largest selections to browse through for inspiration. I was reading Blue Rose recently and was interested to find that they merged their skill/feat systems, where "talents" have only four levels, with discrete effects at each level, covering both skills and special abilities.

Neat. Thanks, user.

>Does any of your games use dice alternatives? How?
Mine uses playing cards for everything. Actions, checks, attacking, defending, health, stamina, initiative

There's a new one?

Found me notes

Game timeframe in Scenes
>For any scene, conflict is resolved by placing dominoes together on a board, just like regular dominoes.
>You have objectives you must reach by making trails with the dominoes
>Conflict is resolved once all dominoes have been placed
>Consequences are determined by total objectives completed.
>Board design and placement of objectives will determine conflict difficulty (requires pre-designed board)
>The amount of dominoes each player gets is determined by stats
>For each number in a stat, you'll get one domino for your pool
(Stats determined in some way with dominoes)
>In order to place a domino, the player describes an action and how that stat would help complete the action (i.e. My Strength will allow me to move this boulder").

Still has some promise

Proprietary dice kind of sucks, but its not the worse. I can't speak for all of the games I've seen use them, but X-wing does it okay, where the number needed and used at one time is still pretty low. Armada is a bit annoying with all the different kinds, and a bad example of how to do it is ST:AW, where they don't even give you enough in to use with the starter set.

The best way to handle it is to look at what a minimum "purchase" would be for a player. Even with a homebrew and a conversion chart for basic dice, you need to look at how many they'd need on hand and how many the average gamer would have. A handful of non-D6 isn't bad, since many gamers would have some from other games like DnD, or could get a few from online or a local gaming store. As long as the amount you suggest or say a player needs doesn't heavily undercut the possible amount needed in easy to achieve scenarios. Going back to the ST:AW example, they Klingon ship in the starter has a high enough attack stat that basic modifiers from the core rules took it over the 5 dice they give you in the set.

Its honestly a weird fallacy thing when you look at it. The reason most people hate the idea of proprietary dice outside of a board game is that they look at it as an extra cost for the game that only works for that game. But if you are going into any new game, those little extra costs exist already. Hell, they exist in the same systems sometimes (I've had to go out and buy a new set of paints to fill gaps in my collection for new army paint schemes).