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Monday, August 30, 2021
Cards and Dice
I was watching the D&D Beyond Honest Trailer, and remarked how awkward the service sits between the two chairs of real life gaming and digital gaming. I spent a lot of money on D&D Beyond, mostly to buy digital versions of books I already own in physical form. But I prefer the legal digital version to some pirated pdf version. Plus the character creation tool and database are nice. But the one feature that is now most heavily advertised is the one I never use: Chucking digital dice. I don't mind digital dice on Roll20, but there the whole D&D game is online. D&D Beyond doesn't have a virtual tabletop; and if I am sitting with friends around a table, real dice are an important part of the experience, and a lot more fun than digital ones.
I am a big fan of dice. Yes, they create randomness, and some people don't like it. But the impact depends on the game system. Often board games have means to mitigate the randomness, like rerolls. And ultimately the fun comes from the outcome not being certain, and the dice creating a risk to be managed. In D&D, dice ideally become the "third party" around the table, next to DM and players; especially lucky or unlucky outcomes turn into memorable story moments that weren't foreseeable by neither the DM nor the players.
Another popular method to create randomness in games are cards. However, cards are slightly different than dice, in that earlier results impact future results. Imagine a hypothetical deck of 6 cards, simply numbered 1 to 6. Drawing 3 cards from that deck isn't the same as throwing 3d6. Even if you had a thicker deck, with 18 cards, each number from 1 to 6 appearing 3 times, the chance of "drawing" an 18 is lower than the chance of "rolling" an 18 with 3d6. Every time you draw a card, you change the probability distribution of the remainder of the cards, until you reshuffle. The thinner the deck, the bigger the impact.
As a result, cards don't work well for slim decks. For example my experience with LOTR: Journeys in Middle-earth, where the decks are very thin and have to be reshuffled very frequently. I was trying to play that game solo, and ultimately gave up, because then I had to constantly reshuffle the decks of every character. Dice would have worked better for me there, although I understand that it isn't possible, because the deck manipulation of keeping or returning cards with successes to change probabilities is an important part of that game. But while I am good at shuffling large decks (to the horror of some other players I riffle-shuffled by Magic the Gathering decks, without using sleeves), I find shuffling thin decks repeatedly extremely annoying.
In the end, it is probably a question of numbers: Cards scale down badly to thin decks, because of the shuffling, and the extreme impact of a single card draw on the probability of the rest. Dice work well in small numbers, but you wouldn't want a game system that requires you to physically roll 60 dice.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:52 AM Permanent Link
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I do not like randomness in games- especially single player video game or competitive tabletop -, as I see it as unfair, but I love them in RPG : I saw them mainly as story generator ( the high and low roll you mentionned) and as a GM, it can provide player a third party to blame for the failure : difficulties and failure are necessary for a good story, but I prefer to avoid beeing seen as an antagonist by the player.
I know some GM love to be the Evil master that challenge the player, I prefer the story master role ;-)
It is also interesting as a GM how you can manage the randomness : the usual 'I roll behind my board', but also deciding on the difficulty of the action. In the game I play ( Quest RPG), I also decide the bad consequence when rolling badly.
I know some GM love to be the Evil master that challenge the player, I prefer the story master role ;-)
It is also interesting as a GM how you can manage the randomness : the usual 'I roll behind my board', but also deciding on the difficulty of the action. In the game I play ( Quest RPG), I also decide the bad consequence when rolling badly.
I mostly play co-operative board games, not competitive ones. So, yeah, I can see your point. Randomness is more annoying if it determines "who wins".
Sometimes the tech goes too far. In fantasy grounds, the GM can target your character with a spell and the program will roll your save automatically and then say whether you saved or failed. It will also roll your death saves for you as soon as it gets to your turn in the combat tracker. I can't stand it and have basically had him turn off those features for my character. I don't mind the pretend dice, I don't even mind some rolls being hidden, but I do want to be the one that clicks the button! Lol.
I can see the appeal of a digital helper for the maths bit of D&D, but I agree if I was playing with person I'd want to use actual dice as they are part of the fun.
It's interesting to me how people tend to accept randomness in board and tabletop games while generally not liking it in video games.
Baldur's Gate 3 added a loaded dice system for players who dislike the pure randomness of dice rolls so it seems even D&D based video games aren't immune from the player dislike of randomness.
It's interesting to me how people tend to accept randomness in board and tabletop games while generally not liking it in video games.
Baldur's Gate 3 added a loaded dice system for players who dislike the pure randomness of dice rolls so it seems even D&D based video games aren't immune from the player dislike of randomness.
The online/PDF vs. physical is one of the things I appreciate about Paizo's Pathfinder series -- from their site you can purchase either hardcopy or PDF. The PDFs are often noticeably cheaper. If you have the subscription for any of their product lines (e.g. adventure paths) then you get both for a price that is a slight discount from the physical only. For me, I find that it brings real value to the table. I wish Hasbro / WotC did the same thing.
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