Hello!

@DukeZhou I'd love to hear about that

Right now I'm playing around with a unified "do you want to settle for the average score, or roll for a distribution around that average" mechanic

both randomness and complexity are easier to run in a computer game in a board game

rolling dice for every action really slows down a board game, but it's free (in time) in a computer game

plus in a board game, about the only math you want people to do is adding a few small numbers together.

with a computer game you can roll arbitrary dice, and perform arbitrarily complex algorithms with them to get an exact result you want, like a logarithm or a perfect bell curve or etc

As for complexity, let's take a unit tactics or RTS game as an example. It's easy to have a "miss chance" mechanic in either a computer game or a board game - it's just randomness. But if you want to make shots miss in a more interesting way, in a computer game you can simulate ballistics and units moving, but doing that in a board game leads to silliness.

@doppelgreener it's also a lot easier to fake the probabilities, to make long-tail "awesome" combos more likely than they seem they should be, or rescue a player who is in trouble

@DanHulme there are tabletop RPGs that have decided they want to simulate these actual mechanics: if you have a gun, there are exact stats for rate of fire, recoil (vs your steadiness and control), bullet type and size; you make a roll to see if you hit your target, then you roll to see how many bullets hit and where, and then your target has individual health and injuries tracked for each body part as well as on the whole.

i have never yet come across someone who actually prefers to play those games over one that says "roll to see if you hit or miss, roll to see what it does".

yes, and you even get some with actual projectiles, like old-fashioned tin soldiers

you get the richness without the slowness

probably, or they just play D&D and fate and monopoly and other games that aren't a PITA to play :P

monopoly isn't a PITA to play?

@DanHulme relatively speaking to these games, no :D

@AlexMitan Hmmm after reading Doppel's linked answer it occurred to me, have you considered using different dice for the swingy/risky rolls? ie: 4d6 for something a bit more stable and 2d20 for the risky play? On average you will get more resources from 4d6 but you have the possibility to get more total on a lucky roll with the 2d20

well, the numbers would need to be tweaked. 4d6 averages to 14 whereas 2d20 averages 21

ya, he is using a web app to look at distribution

Things to keep in mind is how common dice of different sizes are if you are expecting people to provide their own. I would probably rank them: d2, d6, d20, d8, d10, d4, d12, d100

Ask Urza is up now, apparently there is a PDF of all the abilities somewhere but I haven't found it yet.

magic.wizards.com/en/products/unstable/askurza

Just through clicking around it looks like it is pulling abilities off of existing planeswalkers

kinda like a one card planeswalker version of everythingamajig

Yeah, each has 20 options, all from existing planeswalkers, except that one makes a gold dragon token instead of a red one

All available options for Urza, Academy Headmaster

They've said that there is going to be a PDF with all of the abilities, but I don't think it's been published yet

Ya I am looking for the PDF now, but the reddit post is good enough at any rate

Apparently the abilities might change at any time as well...

markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/168327030228/…

heh... interesting interaction with party Crasher: It is your opponents turn, they have 2 Hill Giant (3/3). You have a Party Crasher (3/3) that has been given vigilance and lifelink. During combat your opponent attacks with one Hill Giant (A), you attack with your Party Crasher. During blocks you assign your Party Crasher as blocker for Hill Giant (A), and your opponent assigns Hill Giant (B) as blocker for Party Crasher. Now what happens?

I would say that you pick an order for the Hill Giants, and the Party Crasher assigns damage to them in that order

And that would be wrong. Mark Rosewater says "It does its full damage to each creature and takes full damage from each creature. It’s simultaneously fighting."

yup

I think I will put that into a Q actually

kind of a strange interaction

That also implies that a Party Crasher and a opponent's creature, both with vigilance, can both attack and block each other, and deal double damage to each other.

true

Alright Q is up

these are the two sources I found useful:

markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/168282875383/…

markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/168290237333/…

@AlexMitan I'd be happy to discuss it. I'd also like to hear more about your game. (Is it a physical boardgame, or a computer game?)

re: the dice configuration, Murgatroid got me thinking about how I might implement various weather systems for physical boardgames, where, although each individual roll is random, the rolls don't produce actual effect, just move a counter on a weather scale. This way, even though there's a "quantum effect" in the rolls, there is a causal relationship in regards to the weather actually manifested.

There are various ways to implement this, particularly in regard to thresholds, and "polarity" shifts in terms of which way the weather counter would move. d6's are optimal imo, but the effects of a roll could be mitigated by using "bipolar" integers [-3,-2,-1,1,2,3] for instance

This mitigation of the max absolute values would even allow for 2d6, and rolls with duplicate numbers could produce a special effect. In that case, asymmetric dice could be utilized: [-2,-1,0,1,2,3] & [-3,-2,-1,0,1,2] which would stabilize the system significantly.

What the weather counter might look like is a scale from 0 to 6, where 0 is "halcyon" and 6 is "stormy". When the counter breaks max or min threshold, a major weather event would occur. (Could be a blessing event if <0, massive crop and productivity boosts, or a hurricane if >6. When a threshold is broken, the counter can move to the opposite side of the scale, or the scale can be rotated so that incrementation moves the opposite direction.)

Implementation of a bipolar weather scale [-6,...,0,...,6] could be used to increase variation. In that case - could be wind, and + could be rain. These further be integrated with a "season wheel", so that effects are increased or reduced depending on time of year.

Obviously there'd be a "weather master" player managing that system in a physical boardgame (likely the organizing player who would be the most motivated;)

This is distinct from the intractable, deterministic weather system I'm working on for [M] games, but it does utilize some of the same concepts and techniques in terms of thresholds, polarities, max magnitudes and symmetry/asymmetry.

It's a physical board game

...I mean

i's dice on some cork coasters for now

I want actions to not lead to the certain cancelling of a previous action

If I mine for something, and then I get attacked and lose the very same something, and we're in the same game state as before, that's a red flag in my opinion

Homeworlds is interesting that way: "Red" always captures ships, instead of destroying, so it never decreases the escalation level. Destroying is handled by too many of any colour being in the same star system, and is usually a highly tactical choice that everyone can agree is well-deserved

As in, every time pieces are only destroyed in homeworlds, players bite their fist, but they agree they have it coming

if you lose resources in Homeworlds, you either deserve it or you command it for a tactical purpose

..ok, also be honest with me

even if you're not rolling dice every turn

expending dice statically, like there's a d6 on this ship, let me subtract 2 from it or something

is that too fiddly to happen at almost every turn?