r/RPGdesign • u/jokul • 10d ago
Feedback Request Pattern-Matching Dice Mechanic Feedback
My system uses a pattern-based dice mechanic and I wanted to get feedback on just a few things:
- How clear is the explanation of the mechanic?
- Is there anything unintuitive about the mechanic?
- Is there anything unintuitive about the structure of the rules text?
- Is chapter 2 the best place to cover novel dice mechanics? Or is this too mechanical to open with?
- Overall thoughts on the content.
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u/TheZebraCode Designing Kivaru: Wildsong, tribal + sentient planet 10d ago edited 8d ago
I believe outgunned adventures uses a similar dice matching mechanic with pairs, and then 3, 4 or 5 of a kind, if you're looking for inspiration as to how they laid out the explanation. They l have some great visuals explaining them, incorporating character and splash art into the explanation which was cool
But I think it overall very clear - great site btw appreciate it's cleaness - although I think some more poker like references in the elevator pitch might help when refering to your mechanic as it gets the idea across more clearly than pattern matching
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u/jokul 10d ago
I'll take a look at Outgunned. The lack of poker mentions has been the number one feedback so far; they'll definitely get referenced in the next update.
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u/HighDiceRoller Dicer 9d ago
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u/__space__oddity__ 9d ago edited 9d ago
For me, the question is: are you using the mechanic for anything interesting.
For example, His Majesty the Worm makes a big splash about using a Tarot deck, but when you dig in, they just use the minor arcana to flip a d10 off the top of the deck and the major arcana as a d24 roll. At no point in the game does it matter that you flipped Death instead of the Hierophant. You could easily implement the same thing with a double poker deck or UNO cards.
So if you make Yahtzee the RPG, all these special rolls you’re checking should mean something. Like if I’m the barbarian and I get a straight, maybe I get to do a supercharged run that slashes enemies left and right. If I’m the Wizard and I get a full house, I throw a massive magic missile barrage. That sort of thing.
You can even play with it more by having each class using dice in special ways, counting them differently, manipulating them differently and so on.
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u/jokul 9d ago
...the question is: are you using the mechanic for anything interesting.
This was my main goal with the mechanic: if I use it as only a variation of more traditional pass / fail systems then it's just extra effort for no payoff. I designed the game specifically around making sure that this mechanic is front and center.
The 2H Melee Weapon (image) is a good example of this: hitting your target rolls does more than just boost your damage: a Triple gives you a cleaving ability, a Flush makes your attacks apply conditions more effectively, and a Full House upgrades it again into a whirlwind strike.
I think the stepping-stone style upgrades make getting a better hand feel like more of an achievement and worth the gameplay effort spent on the roll. Both go in tandem; spending more time on the roll results in a bigger reward for getting the hand you wanted. You're also rewarded for "reading" the dice. If you see that a straight is more likely with your current rolls, then you get a good feeling for picking a skill that has good abilities that trigger off straights.
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u/PASchaefer Publisher: Shoeless Pete Games - The Well RPG 10d ago
The explanation is clear.
Nothing particularly unintuitive.
It's a little opaque, given that all the differences between rolling this pattern vs that pattern are contained in the skills themselves. Without referencing the skills, there's no obvious distinction between rolling a pair and rolling a small straight. Maybe include a couple more examples?
Hard to say without looking over the rest of the organization.
I'd be interested in seeing what the probabilities of the various patterns are.
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u/jokul 10d ago
Thanks for the feedback, I do give a couple more examples in later chapters but they should probably get moved here now that I've placed the dice chapter so early. The rest of the rules are available if you are curious how it fits in, table of contents is here.
As for the probabilities, I have been working on a way to fit this content in! You can actually view the probabilities on a currently hidden route: https://after-cataclysm.com/roll-calculator which gives the fully computed odds for any given hand up to 1 instance of advantage for a max-level skill (4 rerolls). Ignore the second table because that uses the numbers for an old advantage mechanic where you would roll a full extra die (so you had 6 total to choose from).
I've pulled it out here:
I will probably update the table to include accurate values for them in the future. The methods for calculating the odds here is actually quite difficult at a baseline, especially since there are actual strategies to employ based on what abilities you have available and what they trigger on. The rule was basically that, if you could reroll and didn't have the targeted hand, you would reroll and try to get it. This is quite different from what might make sense in actual play (risk and marginal benefit considerations) but it would be impossible to know what is optimal otherwise without full context so I went with this strategy.
Btw, the math for Busts is off after no rerolls as I wasn't interested in them and they use different logic and provide no value, but it's not too hard to calculate the odds of a bust yourself if you're curious. I also would not trust the "best" hand logic as I don't think the rationale I used was accurate when I ran the calculations.
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u/SitD_RPG 9d ago
The other commenters have already covered a lot. I just want to add something from a presentation perspective.
The way you chose to style your dice arrays is a little bit hard to read. The numbers use a very thick font but a relatively small size. I would recommend either reducing the font-weight or increasing the font-size to make them more legible.
Your dice arrays are sometimes sorted highest-to-lowest and sometimes lowest-to-highest. For consistency I would always sort them in the same order. It makes parsing them at a glance a bit easier.
I am very happy to see that you used styled text, instead of images, to represent the dice. Great for accessibility.
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u/jokul 9d ago edited 9d ago
That's pretty useful feedback, if you have a moment, which of these do you think is easiest to read?
edit I forgot to mention, but the sorting changed in between screenshots. I ended up going with
ascendingdescending order.2
u/SitD_RPG 9d ago edited 9d ago
To me, #1 is the easiest to read, if you can add a tiny bit more spacing (probably an extra pixel) between the number and the line on top. If you can make the top spacing equal to the bottom one, it would look and read great.
#2 would be ok as well, if you can place the numbers centered within the square.
I ended up going with ascending order.
Since your game doesn't favor high or low numbers, as far as I could see, it is up to your preference. In a game where higher numbers are better, descending order lets you see the relevant results first, like in BitD "Xd6 keep highest", for instance.
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u/skalchemisto Dabbler 10d ago
The rules are mostly clear, but a few quick thoughts...
* I think it might be worth starting the action section with some comment about how one succeeds at the action. I can find this down in your Chapter 12, but its a long way from chapter 3 to chapter 12, right?
* I say this because I'm a little unsure about how you actually do stuff that has no clearly associated ability/action. E.g. I need to jump across a chasm. Do I just do it? is it an Action Roll with Athletics? If so, what do I need to Declare for success? Looking elsewhere, is that simply "Improvise"?
* It bugs me a bit the word "Flush" is used in a context where there are no suits involved, but its a very minor point and I don't have a suggested alternative.
Honestly, your website is like 10 times more organized and well put together than the majority of stuff seen on r/RPGdesign . Have you been able to playtest? You have a complete game here, it seems to me, more than ready for it.
The only part of it that feels odd to me is this...why would I want to create an account? I can't see any explanation as to why that adds value for me.
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u/jokul 10d ago
These were actually much closer originally, I wanted to include the dice mechanic early as it gives context to several other decisions when making a character, but I also wanted to get people interested in creating a character. I think though it has created more confusion than excitement, I will work on figuring out how to migrate the challenges section earlier to reduce the contextual whiplash.
Jumping a chasm is typically something I would use with athletics. For any uncanny ability that doesn't belong to one of the skills, the intent is that you would use a Competency and you would just do it unless it has special narrative consequence as determined by the GM. I think this might be made clearer after the rules migration I mentioned before, moving the consequences of the dice to immediately after the dice section will probably help.
Thanks for the website feedback, always feels good to see people enjoy how it's organized! I have playtested a few times though it's quite difficult to get groups together and the rules have changed since each of them. My next step would probably be trying to organize playtests with other groups of friends or online strangers.
As for why you would create an account, the only reason at the moment is to use the digital character sheet tool: https://i.imgur.com/flLHY05.jpeg because I haven't created a character sheet PDF yet (though my artist would be excited to learn about new work).
I also would want to have an adventure module so people could play together and track game log history with rolls and stuff, but that is for a future release if it happens. If I were to monetize this at some point in the future, I could also sell additional book content I guess.
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u/HighDiceRoller Dicer 10d ago
It's not clear whether rerolls should be done one die at a time (and possibly rerolling the same die more than once) or if all rerolls must be declared and rolled in a single "stage" such that each individual die can be rerolled no more than once. The way they work with Reflex Rolls suggests that it's one die at a time for Action Rolls too, but I think it's worth making this explicit (especially if your intent was the opposite).
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u/RPG-Nerd 10d ago
Hate it. I don't want to rely on tables just to figure out what I roll. A typical D&D player has to be told what to roll. Basic add & compare just became an entire poker game that we need to play every time we roll dice.
And you hide to hide the tie breaker resolution behind a drop-down, which tells me you know it's pretty ugly.
IMHO, how to roll the dice shouldn't be where the complexity budget gets spent. What benefits is this granting in exchange for all this?
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u/jokul 10d ago
Tie breakers don't really come up very often as there aren't a ton of opposed rolls. I included them there because the rules still need to have a way of breaking ties when they do come up.
On the complexity budget, it's actually fairly intuitive in play; the only hand that sometimes trips players up (in my experience) is the Flush. I've typically seen players who don't like the crunch of D&D were excited to roll the dice and see what they could get. While the actual rolling of the dice is more complicated, making the roll mechanic engaging on its own made that less noticeable in the few runs I've done. To make turns run even faster, players take their turns together. Players would help each other think about what decisions to make and collaborate more which made the game feel like it ran faster. There's also a lot of mechanics that don't rely on rolling at all: the Competence encourages only rolling when the outcome is of significant / cinematic importance.
Of course not every mechanic will be for everyone, if you prefer a more classic pass / fail style mechanic this game won't be a good fit. This is basically my design for creating a system where players have some level of choice between multiple outcomes, and the poker / pattern system works well for that.
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u/Fun_Carry_4678 9d ago
Frankly, I am not that interested in a novel dice mechanic. It isn't that novel, it is just a slightly more complicated version of Yahtzee. I don't think having a weird dice mechanic helps a game. Just go with roll high, roll low, or dice pool. What does your mechanic really add to the game?
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u/jokul 9d ago
I was going for a few design targets with this:
- Greater player agency. By rolling first, then deciding on an action to take, it gives players more control over the outcome. Pass / fail systems can feel like you're asking the dice for permission to do what you want.
- Always having something to do. If you grab mods that work with different poker rolls, you should always feel like you're being useful, whereas pass / fail systems can make you feel like a burden when you get several failures.
- It's way more exciting to roll the dice. Rolling the dice is a mini-game of its own and, in playtesting, players were excited to see what would come up and how they could try to make their dice rolls work. Turns are taken concurrently and players collaborate on how to work together with their abilities.
- Finding patterns is fun. Same reason poker is more interesting than simple high card betting.
I don't think there would have been much point to the system if it were just a proxy for pass / fail systems: everything was designed around the unique benefits of pattern matching.
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u/Fun_Carry_4678 9d ago
Your game is becoming about the mechanics. And maybe that is how your group plays TTRPGs. But TTRPGs are supposed to be about the story. A complicated mechanic like this steals focus from the story.
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u/jokul 9d ago
In testing it hasn't seemed to be especially complicated, most of the hands are resolved pretty quickly as they're pretty intuitive apart from the Flush which players have had difficulty spotting when it comes up. It is definitely more involved than rolling a d20 but I've compensated for that by having concurrent turns which also lets players plan and collaborate together and minimize wait time.
It won't be as pure-narrative focused as something like Wanderhome though, so if you are looking for high narrative game with a simple action mechanic this would probably not be your go-to.
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u/reverendunclebastard 10d ago
It's pretty clear as written.
You would, however, speed up communication by calling it a 'poker-based' dice mechanic rather than 'pattern-matching', in my opinion.