“Dice of Destiny” was one of my earliest professional sales. Written in late 1999, it was published in Pyramid on June 16th, 2000. It proved remarkably popular and, until I wrote “D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations” and “The Three Clue Rule“, was the single piece of writing for which I received the most feedback from readers. In fact, enough people told me that they specifically re-upped their subscription to Pyramid on the basis of that article that I am absolutely positive that the $170 Steve Jackson Games paid me for it was money well-spent.

Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – Qualities
Part 3 – Examples of Application
Part 4 – Adaptation

Reading the article from a distance of eleven years, I am forced to occasionally twinge at particularly awkward bits of writing. I have, however, resisted the urge to rewrite it. With the exception of noting that Feng Shui is now available from Atlas Games (when the article was written, Feng Shui was a recent smash success that had driven its original publisher out of business because they were reportedly losing money on every copy sold), the article remains unchanged.

I’m also struck, however, by how misleading the published works of an author can be. “Dice of Destiny”, for example, clearly demonstrates my early appreciation of the fact that roleplaying games are improv structures (among other things). It would seem to be totally of a piece with my recent musings on wandering monsters as a mode of procedural content generation.

But if you had actually asked Justin the Younger about wandering monsters, he would have scoffed at the crudities of a primitive and bygone age. Wandering monsters made their way back into my game when I started using them to model “living complexes” that were too large for me to track every individual NPC group in real time, and it was only from there that I eventually realized that a properly constructed wandering monster table is a great improv structure.

In a further bout of irony, it was only a few months after this article was published that the 3rd Edition of D&D was published. Dice pool systems had dominated my gaming during the late ’90s, but for the past decade D&D has taken their place. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve actually GMed even so much as a single session of a dice pool system since this article was published. (Although I’m sure something will probably occur to me as soon as I hit the “publish” button.)

Perhaps because of that, one of the things that particularly caught my eye on this read-thru was the idea of using die qualities while generating ability scores to give you some idea of what a score really means. It really is incredibly easy to just pluck out keywords from the description of ability scores and assign them as qualities. To that end, here’s a quick table you can use when generating D&D characters.

OBSERVATION

The monster lists in the 1st Edition Monster Manual are basically 100 pages long (page 6 to page 103).

CONCLUSION

Gimme a d100. Let’s see what’s lurking in these 124 miles of wild mystery.

Go to Part 1

ADAPTATIONS

There are a number of simple modifications and adaptations of the basic concept found in this system. The Hit Locations system described earlier is one possibility. This section  of the article will try to point out a few more of these – even if complete mechanics for each of the adaptations are occasionally left up to the GM’s discretion, creativity, and personal needs.

RESOLUTION METHODS: Many games have different resolution systems depending on what type of action is being attempted or the circumstances under which the attempt is made. The most obvious and common of these is the distinction made between “normal” skill resolution and “combat” skill resolution.

Even when the two systems of resolution are practically or entirely identical in game terms the descriptive needs of the GM may alter drastically between, for example, combat and non-combat situations. The simplest adaptation of the systems in this article is to simply use different qualities at different times.

For example, a GM may feel that in non-combat situations he will be most aided by the qualities of Time Required, Outside Influences, and Finesse. On the other hand he might find Skill, Style, and Luck to be more useful for combat situations.

This modification is as easy as simply using those qualities at those times in which you will feel they will be most useful.

DAMAGE:  Many systems on the market today continue to follow the example of D&D and use a separate dice roll to determine the damage done by a weapon. In several cases multiple dice are used and it therefore becomes easy to create a list of “damage qualities” which would help you describe not only the severity of damage, but the type of damage done.

CHARACTER SCHTICKS: Not all characters are the same – and in several genres (particularly the pulp and superhero ones) each “type” of character is possessed of a very distinct, personal style. Superman, for example, behaves and operates in one manner, while Batman behaves and operates in a quite different manner. This system can be easily adapted to such situations.

Instead of having one set of universal qualities which all characters use, let each player decide on a “character schtick” – a set of qualities which he feels would best result in the type of descriptions he feel would be appropriate to his character. The GM, of course, would set schticks for NPCs as he so desired.

For example, in a game set in 1920s Chicago, your typical mob thug might have the qualities of Power and Luck. Al Capone, on the other hand, would have Style and Finesse. Elliot Ness might want Skill and Luck.

CHARACTER GENERATION: Although this is no longer true of many systems, there are still several systems out there that use dice for parts of or the entire character creation process. If you wanted to give even greater control to the dice during character creation it would certainly be a relatively easy task to create a list of qualities for any attributes or statistics which you roll for during character creation.

For example, when rolling 3d6 for Strength in AD&D you could have three different qualities: Muscle Mass, Power, and Physique. Although these would have little or no effect on actual gameplay, they would – just like the qualities for skill resolution described above – be hints as to how your character is strong, not just how strong he is.

DICE POOLS: Dice pools, used in many popular games such as West End Games’ Star Wars and the World of Darkness games from White Wolf Games, are a mechanic under which – instead of raising a number you roll against as you increase your character’s skill – you increase the number of dice which are rolled against a stationary target number as your character’s skill increases. Clearly the basic system described in this article does not work with such systems: you can’t assign a set of qualities to the dice if the number of dice is constantly in flux depending on what is being resolved. There are three ways, however, to alter this system to make it usable in games which employ dice pools.

First, and simplest, is to simply choose two qualities. Have two specially marked dice – each representing one of the two qualities – and make sure these are included in any role. On any die roll in which only one die is involved, ignore the qualities.

Second, you can expand this concept by having a laundry list of qualities. The first might be Skill, the second Style, the third Finesse, the fourth Outside Influences, and the fifth Power. If three dice were rolled you would use the Skill, Style, and Finesse dice. If five were rolled you would use Skill, Style, Finesse, Outside Influences, and Power.

Finally, you can create a “quality pool” from which players may select the qualities they want. Combining the second option above with variable choice you can either limit the choice to pre-campaign (like Character Schticks), or let the players decide on each roll which qualities they want. The only problem with this latter potential is that it can sometimes bog down the session as players deliberate over which qualities to pick (“Let’s see, do I want power and finesse – or finesse and style – or…?”).

CONCLUSION

The system is incredibly versatile and very effective as a tool that almost any Gamemaster can use effectively as an aid to his game. That being said, it is important to realize that this tool is not for everyone. Those who have no difficulty describing the results of action resolution will have no use for this system. There will be those who simply don’t find the system to be particularly helpful. Finally, I have found no way of adapting this system or some variant of it to resolution systems involving only a single die.

However, for those GMs who can use this system, and who find it useful, I think that it can be safely said that you will find your campaigns improved, and not lessened, for its inclusion so long as you remember that this is merely a system of guidelines, and not absolutes.

Reflections on “Dice of Destiny”

This is something I started touching on a couple of days ago, but I decided it would be better served if left to stand on its own.

In the ’90s, the RPG industry embraced the supplement treadmill. Led by TSR, White Wolf, AEG, Pinnacle, and a host of others, publishers discovered that they could monetize their game lines by turning out a constant stream of supplements. If you’re cynical you can describe this as “greed”. If you’re realistic, you’ll realize that a lot of great games got produced and supported which would otherwise not have existed in a shrinking marketplace.

What most of these publishers realized was that player-focused content sold better than GM-focused content. (The simplistic explanation is that there are more players than GMs.) And that gives us the era of the supplement treadmill driven by splatbooks and the class books.

THE WRITING ON THE WALL

By 2000, however, there were clear signs that this supplement treadmill was a short-term solution that led to long-term burnout: Eventually you saturate your market (when your players have more options than they could play in a lifetime), and then the only solution is to burn it all down, revise your rulebooks, and start over again. After several cycles of this, for example, White Wolf eventually had to reboot the entire World of Darkness in an effort to restart their treadmill.

But, ultimately, this isn’t smart business: You’re needlessly tossing away thousands or millions of dollars in development costs every time you burn down your previous edition. And you’re risking alienating your customer base (or losing them altogether).

Right around this time, Ryan Dancey tried a radical new strategy for selling RPGs. The better known part of that strategy was the OGL, but let’s ignore that for now and focus on the other part of the strategy: Evergreen products. Dancey wanted WotC to get out of the supplement business and instead focus on the evergreen products — the products that produce significant sales for significant periods of time.

To cut a long story short, Dancey’s strategy failed: The first two evergreen products WotC launched (Psionics Handbook and Epic Level Handbook) were spectacularly poor in their design and landed with wet, dull thuds. So ’round about 2002, WotC discovered that their evergreen strategy wasn’t working and their B&W, softcover class supplements were being blown away in production value by third party developers.

So WotC did what every major RPG publisher had been doing for the last 15 years: They rebooted the rule system so that they could reboot their supplement lines. In 2003, 3.5 was released and it was followed by a line of full color, hardcover class supplements.

THE DILEMMA

Fast forward a few more years and WotC discovers that the market for 3.5 class supplements has become saturated: Their second (and third) passes through the core classes just aren’t selling as well as the first pass did. Cue the rules reboot.

And this is where WotC made several missteps which has badly fragmented their former market. I’m not going to dwell on that again, but I am going to make a couple of points here:

1. As long-tail economics and the digital era lead to creative material being available in perpetuity, the viability of rebooting your rule system every couple of years in order to reset your supplement market becomes increasingly problematic. The old stuff is still available. (Even if you pull all your PDFs off the market, the used market has become global. And, of course, there’s also piracy.)
2. WotC does not want to risk a repeat of 2008: I’m guessing they would like to do absolutely everything in their power to avoid a 5th Edition because it runs of the risk even further balkanizing their customer base.

I’ve seen many people describe WotC’s recent actions as “flailing”, but I don’t think that’s strictly true. I think they’re experimenting. They are trying to figure out if there’s any way to make D&D profitable in a long-term, sustainable fashion.

And that, IMO, is a good thing.

CHARTING NEW WATERS

Nor is WotC alone in this. There are a lot of publishers trying to chart a new course. Unfortunately, IMO, the solution a lot of those companies have found is settling down into a mindset of “produce little, coast on the marginal revenues from the long-tail of PDF”.

But there are other paths.

Paizo, for example, seems to be having success keeping their core system relatively contained while creating product churn through material which is inherently perishable: Not everyone needs adventure modules, but the people who do will want a new one when they finish the one they’re currently using.

Back at WotC you have the Essentials line as an effort to create a stable set of core products. You have boardgames tapping markets where long-term sales and stocking are more of the norm. You have Fortune Cards as a collectible (and as a way of monetizing organized play without, theoretically, seeming draconian).

Of course, you also have the DDI. Unfortunately, WotC’s execution of the DDI has also been infamously (and repeatedly) botched. The ideal would be charging a subscription fee for a set of useful evergreen tools (the most obvious of which would be the virtual table). In practice, however, it has been a digital subscription to the same burn-out content as the supplement treadmill (and may have arguably hastened the speed of that burn-out for 4th Edition). WotC’s decision to move the character builder online can be best understood as an effort to prevent saturated customers from saying “thanks, I’m good now”, canceling their subscriptions, and continuing to use the builder offline with the content they already purchased.

Personally, I suspect the most successful course would include returning to Dancey’s vision of evergreen products and studying what went wrong with those efforts. And I think a large part of that will be understanding that toolkits don’t sell unless people have projects that require those toolkits: It’s not enough, for example, to provide rules for ship-to-ship combat or mass combat… You need to offer people a mode of gaming in which ship-to-ship combat or mass combat are integral to their games.

This will also begin to tie back into open game tables. But open game tables will also be important because monetizing your existing customers won’t be enough; we also need to figure out how to grow the RPG market again. And I think a large part of the problem has been that the viral speed of the RPG meme has been reduced to molasses by the modern paradigm of gaming. Most games appear to get sold because of actual play experiences: You buy Monopoly or Arkham Horror because you played it with somebody else and enjoyed it. If Monopoly or Arkham Horror had an expected play mode where you got together with the same group of 6 people for 6-18 months before starting a new game to which you might invite new people to join you, then Monopoly and Arkham Horror would not be as popular as they are. Notably, D&D exploded during a time period when this wasn’t the expected mode of play.

Go to Part 1

EXAMPLES OF APPLICATION

This system is incredibly easy to implement and use, but it does require the GM to make a few up-front choices about what he wants in the way of help. No resolution system to my knowledge uses exactly eight dice for action resolution – and even if they do a GM will easily find himself getting continually confused about which die represents which quality (“Green… green is… err… ahhh…”) which removes the whole advantage of having the system in place. So the question becomes which qualities the GM thinks will serve his campaign best, and will help him the most.

To help towards that end, I thought I’d include a few examples of putting the system into effect using existing systems on the market.

FENG SHUI: Feng Shui, the game of Hong Kong Action moviesoriginally published by the apparently defunct Daedalus Games (and now available from Atlas Games), uses a resolution mechanic of rolling 2d6 – one positive, one negative – to get an action total. A GM decides that the two most appropriate qualities for this type of game would be Style and Luck and he assigns one to each die. He further decides that due to the peculiarity of the system he’ll let his players choose which die (positive or negative) will represent Style and Luck before each roll.

Marcia, a Karate Cop, has her back against a wall in an underground garage as some big bruiser blasts holes out of the concrete from around the corner. She decides the concrete’s taken enough punishment for her sake, and tries to roll out from behind her cover and plant a few big holes in the guy taking potshots at her. She easily succeeds, with a low roll on Luck (which she chose to put on her negative die) and a high roll on Style (which she chose to put on her positive die). Rolling out from behind her cover perfectly she catches the muscle-bound clod completely unawares as her .45 takes out some important sections of his chest, “twirling the gun around her finger as she pulls off each shot”.

GURPS: A GM designing a fantasy campaign decides to use GURPS from Steve Jackson Games with its 3d6 resolution mechanic as his game system of choice. Knowing his own weaknesses in description (he usually found himself focusing on how skilled the action was and little else) he decides to emphasize some other areas, choosing the qualities of Time Required, Outside Influences, and Knowledge for his three dice.

Dreyldor, a lithe female elf with a body to kill for, decides to try seducing the king for her own sinister purposes while the Queen is out of town. She fails, rolling high on her Knowledge die, but low on her Time Required and Outside Influences dice. “You’ve worked on kings before and know exactly what a man like this is feeling,” the GM says, “But it simply takes you too much time. On the day before the Queen is to return he lets you steal a kiss, but nothing more, and once she returns you have no hope of succeeding.”

CHAMPIONS: Champions, the premiere game of superhero roleplaying, uses a 3d6 mechanic. A GM running this system decides that he’ll choose the qualities of Power, Finesse, and Style because he feels the combination will bring about good descriptions for a superhero campaign.

An asteroid is flying towards a doomed Earth. Chuck decides he wants his character, the Living Reactor, to stop it by flying up and pushing it out of the way. He rolls a mediocre Style die, a poor Power die, and a great Finesse die – succeeding. The GM smiles, “The Living Reactor launches himself into space and straight towards the asteroid, but the asteroid’s mass is just too much and it continues on inexorably. You think for a moment and then remember something about vector mathematics from high school physics – you were studying it just before your homemade reactor blew up in your basement, giving you amazing powers beyond the ken of mortal man, but I digress . . . You’re not able to stop the meteor, but you are able to alter its course so that it will harmlessly pass by the Earth.”

FUDGE: FUDGE, the Freeform Universal Do-it-yourself Game Engine, designed by Steffan O’Sullivan and published by Grey Ghost Games, uses an interesting mechanic of 4dF (“F” for Fudge Dice) which is functionally equivalent to 4d3-8. One GM using the system for science fiction decides to take advantage of this large number of dice to have a more holistic selection of qualities – Outside Influences, Skill, Knowledge, and Luck.

Rawthlar, a ferocious cat-creature from the planet of Purrtend, whips out his blaster and tries to blow a few holes in an offensive Lizardman from the planet Hisstery as the ship they’re in begins to fall apart. He fails despite his decent rolls on the skill and knowledge dice due to a poor showing on his luck and outside influences dice. The GM describes his attempts as such: “Rawthlar, although being one of the better shots this side of the Andromeda Cluster, has the unfortunate luck to be standing on a deckplate as it suddenly lurches to one side. Your shot goes wild and the Lizardman hisses in grim pleasure.”

Later, after dispatching of the Lizardman through other means, Rawthlar commandeers a shuttle and is now attempting to pilot it out of the shuttlebay before the spaceship blows itself to pieces. The GM requests a roll against his piloting skill and gets back a success with great results on the luck die and the skill die. “As the shuttle lifts slowly off the pad the support beams of the shuttlebay begin to collapse. You bring the engines on-line in a horrible, mechanical growl and the shuttle speeds forward. Doing an amazing roll to avoid being crushed by one of the heavy beams you bring the shuttle out through the bay doors just as the bay collapses behind you. Seconds later a horrendous explosion consumes the remnants of the dying ship. You made it out just in time.”

FUDGE HORROR: Another GM using FUDGE for horror decides he doesn’t want to juggle that many qualities, so he only uses two – style and skill – assigning two dice to each.

Benedict, a Catholic priest with an edge, has been cornered by undead hordes in the basement of the old mansion. His player, Joe, decides that escape is now the better part of valor and says, “Benedict pushes over the stack of dusty crates into the path of the zombies, simultaneously dropping a grenade at his feet, smashing the sunken window behind him and crawling out as quickly possible.” The GM rolls his eyes, “Only trying three things at once tonight, Joe? Sure you wouldn’t like to try three dozen? Roll against your Dex, plus triple action penalties for the round.” Much to the GM’s discomfort Joe is as lucky tonight with the dice as always, rolling his two style dice exceptionally well, one of his skill dice fairly well and the other with average results. “Not bad, huh?” Joe chuckles. The GM rolls his eyes, “As the zombies close in, dripping ichor, Benedict drops to a crouch, performs a perfect spin-kick on the stack of boxes, knocking them into the first line of zombies who promptly fall over. Without a second glance he finishes the spin, simultaneously loosening one of the grenades on his belt, removing the pin, and letting it drop. No sooner has it hit the ground then he springs up through the window, smashing it, and coming out on the grassy lawn in a perfectly committed somersault. Coming to his feet and into a run he easily gives himself plenty of distance before the basement becomes a raging inferno behind him.”

Continued…