"2d6 is 'less swingy' than 1d13." Do you mean 1d11+1, rather than 1d13?

Am I correct in summarizing your question as "how does the distribution of the conflict resolution entropy source used in a system impact the system from a game-design perspective?"

I'm fairly sure this is answerable. To do so, I would need several years and a large grant, and I would expect the answer to be as substantial as most theses. It may not be a good question for SE.

Yeah -- while this is a good question, there's just too much here for a Stack answer to have a hope of scratching the surface :) it'd be an awesome research paper topic though -- I actually wonder if anyone's studied this in detail?

I think restricting this to published academic literature would be appropriate and reduce the breadth sufficiently to reopen.

@Shalvenay ...sort of. It's more of 'how do the stochastic characteristics of of conflict resolution('s entropy source, sure), of which distribution is one, impact the system from the consumers' perspective. P.S. I need to know b.c. game design (and the people who know are probably game-designers).

@Thanuir Better? I think just restricting it to 'published' material is probably enough. I'm more interested in academic literature for this, but if, like, a dedicated and credible RPG blog published a series of articles addressing this I could see that being an acceptable, albeit lower quality, answer.

I still think this is far too much for this format. Even an overview could easily be pages long

@thedarkwanderer -- what I don't get is your implication that the distribution of an entropy source does not completely characterize it...

Yeah that's the thing, a discussion like this is going to require lengthy sub-dicussions on many subpoints for everyone to make sense of it and define terms and start putting something together that will need to get discussed and revised - that's not what the Stack format is for.

@mxyzplk couldn't people just not answer if they lack the necessary knowledge/experience? I mean, if the question is unclear that's one thing, but if the problem is that it'll lead to me explaining the basics of the topic in comments I can just not do that instead.

One classic guide for "is it too broad?" is "would it need a book to answer?" This seems to hit that heuristic dead-on. (I don't think asking for an overview or off-Stack resources rescues it either — that's asking for link-only answers, so good non-link-only answers would still have to write pretty much a book to not depend on their links.)

@SevenSidedDie That first quote refers to questions that would require a book's worth of material to be posted as the answer. Questions answerable with reference to a book are not generally too broad, as can be seen from our 'product identification' tag. An answer requiring a link is not the same thing as a link-only answer-- first of all, a reference and a link are not necessarily the same thing and 'link decay' is hardly a concern for proper citations, and furthermore a good answer would address why the references provided were good.

@SevenSidedDie If it is true that, in order to support the applicability of referenced material to this question's needs, answerers would generally need to write a book's worth of material, then it is indeed too broad. But I don't see how the rest of your comment is applicable (and also I disagree that that last thing is the case, obviously, but that's a different thing altogether).

Some more academic sites have a reference-request tag for this kinds of questions. Mathoverflow, at least, and possible matheducators.

@Thanuir Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. Unfortunately is sounds like the lack of those sorts of questions here is because of de facto policy, not just cause we don't get very many of them :(

@thedarkwanderer I have edited the question because I found the prose to flow somewhat awkardly, and for organizational reasons. Please review and if you do not care for the edit, feel free not to use it. Your last comment has to do with policy, and perhaps would be well raised on meta. As I read the question, I got a sense of "is this a list question" but I may be understanding that term/category incorrectly as related to your question.

This can be answered with something that is less verbose as a book. I'll try and write one up some time this week. It's a pretty good question. +1 from me.

"I'm looking for a published overview of ways that different features of a conflict resolution system (in terms of stochastic analysis) are relevant to the feel of the overall game system from a game-design perspective". I'd suggest bing or google over asking a largely non academia group about the topic. I'd presume that the papers you seek are behind paywalls.

@JimB If Brian Ballsun-Stanton drops by again, he may be able to offer an academic sort of answer ... we'll see.

@JimB There are academic users and interested amateurs on the site, but there is no article of the requested type in IJRP or Analog game studies (that I am aware of); there likely is none in Solmukohta books, but maybe something related. There might be something in the literature on digital games; I am not familiar with that field.

So, on the face of it, you want a formal academic study of how it feels to roll 1d20 vs. 2d6 — but just the randomizer itself, none of the RPG-specific mechanical bits like modifiers or scope of effect?

@AlexP Yeah. Not just 1d20 and 2d6. though, obviously.

@KorvinStarmast I think your edit is fine.

@AlexP He also wants a way to use those differences to describe an RPG. (At least, that's how I read the question as edited), which include a variety of dice mechanics.