“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.

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”

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…

Go to Part 1

QUALITIES

TIME REQUIRED: This quality is used to determine the amount of time an action takes to complete. For example, a good roll on this die will indicate that the action took less time for the character to perform. A bad roll on this die will indicate that the action took more time. Of course, the exact amount of time in question is a factor of what type of action is taking place.

OUTSIDE INFLUENCES: This quality is used to determine whether or not outside influences (i.e., things beyond the character’s control and/or experience) had the greatest or least effect on the outcome.

A character is attempting to pick a lock and succeeds, rolling very high on the outside influences die. The GM says, “Well, some day you’re hoping you’ll run into a challenge – but this isn’t it. A clear example of why government contractors should never be hired, the lock clicks open almost immediately.” If, on the other hand, he had had a marginal failure and rolled poorly on the outside influences die, the GM might have said, “Although you do your best, this lock is tough. Clearly a custom-made job, the tumblers have disguised trips and keep slipping off your pick. You might be able to crack it eventually, but you’ll have to start over from ground zero.”

KNOWLEDGE: The knowledge quality addresses that little memory bank everyone carries around with them – high influence from the knowledge die would suggest that either the character possesses some little piece of knowledge that makes the difference (success) or lacks a piece of knowledge that would help them (failure).

To return to our lockpicking example, a character succeeds with the knowledge die having the largest effect on that outcome. The GM might say, “Normally this lock would have been more than adequate security for this type of facility, but you just spent three weeks practicing on a lock off the same assembly line. Within seconds the door swings open.”

SKILL: This one is probably one of the most obvious of the qualities – it refers to the skill of the character and the impact it had on the outcome. If the skill roll was highly beneficial, it means that the character was performing at the best of his ability (even if he still subsequently failed). If the skill roll was extremely poor, it indicates that the character wasn’t doing his best (even if he proceeded to succeed at the action).

Rozel, a character involved in a fencing match attempts to strike his opponent, Benalt, and manages to succeed, although his skill roll is rather low. The GM shakes his head, “Rozel feints to the left and manages to draw Benalt’s block, but then doesn’t come back far enough to right. Only because Benalt’s foot slips does your blade manage to slash across his arm.” On the other hand, if the skill die had been higher, the GM might have said, “Rozel feints expertly to the left and Benalt moves to respond, only to be caught completely off-guard as the tip of your saber loops under his blade and tears a bloody gash into his arm.”

LUCK: Sometimes the biggest reason a character succeeds is because he has gotten lucky. If the most influential die result turns out to be on the luck die the GM should have the resolution of the action come about because of something completely out of the character’s control.

In a science fiction game, Laatzu, a fighter pilot, is attempting to blast one of the evil Bengai’s out of known space with his lasers. He fails, largely due to the poor roll on the die assigned the luck quality. “Laatzu loops his ship in behind the Bengai Tiger Scout and lets loose two searing bolts of death . . . only to meet with disappointment as his expertly placed shots strike an unnoticed piece of space debris.”

STYLE: Unlike the qualities discussed so far, the style quality doesn’t attempt to shed light on how or why something succeeded or failed – but how the success or failure took place. It asks the question, “Just how good did that look?”

Billy the Gangster attempts to leap over a stack of boxes, coming out of a rolling somersault, and fire two shots at some anonymous mug taking shots at his pals on the other side of the warehouse. He rolls a success, despite the abysmal result on the die assigned to style. The GM smirks, “Billy takes a couple of loping steps and leaps over the stack of boxes . . . knocking the top two over, stumbling, and falling flat on his back. His pistol slips out of his hand as he lands and skitters across the floor, sending him after it in a wild crawl. Snapping it up he manages to squeeze off a couple of shots and fill the mug full of lead just before he gets a face full of lead from the shotgun pointed at his head.” On the other hand, Sarah, an acrobat, is trying to walk across a beam. Her action resolution roll is a failure, but her style die is high. “Sarah is crossing the beam when suddenly she feels her balance slip. As she falls off she pushes a little bit with her leg and manages to land gracefully on the floor after a flip instead of falling flat on her butt.”

POWER: Sometimes people succeed just because they put more power into the attempt, or fail because they didn’t. This quality is particularly useful in combat situations.

Conan attacks an NPC with his sword and rolls a success with a particularly beneficial result on his power die. The GM grimaces, “Conan brings his mighty blade around. Although the guard raises his sword to parry it is completely ineffectual as your mighty arms push his blade out of the way and crush his skull.” Alternatively, you might have Gabrielle, a thief with an attitude, throw her dagger at a hapless orc, failing to do any damage with a particularly ineffectual score on her power die. “Your graceful throw is perfectly accurate, but glances ineffectually off the hard leather encircling the orc’s chest.”

FINESSE: This quality reflects on the precision with which a given action was taken, and its impact on success. For example, a poor roll on this die would show clumsiness, while a positive roll on this die would grace and perfection.

The Wizard, a hacker in a Cyberpunk game, is trying to get past some Black ICE which is preventing him from reading the data files he needs to reveal a corporation’s corruption. Rolling a marginal failure on attack he has a particularly poor result on his finesse die. “Getting a little overconfident, huh?” says the gamemaster. “The ICE swallows those simple macros with ease. You’re going to have to have to bring out the big guns if you expect to get past this guy.” Later on he gets a stunning success with a high finesse roll, “Nice work. That blackie was pretty effective, and usually your progs would have had some problems, but by slipping past his I/O channels and hitting his processor directly you take him out, smiling in satisfaction as his data-scream of death reverberates through your skull.”

HIT LOCATION

Using a system similar to that described above for qualities, a simple hit location system can be added to any multi-dice combat resolution (although it probably means removing the normal qualities from combat resolution).

Essentially you assign to each die in the resolution a different hit location. In the case of a successful attack, whichever die was most influential on the outcome (usually the highest roll, although in some systems the lowest) is the location of the hit.

This system, like most hit location systems, works best for humanoid creatures – although it can be easily adapted to non-humanoids.

Although the examples list different possibilities based on the number of dice typically used in the resolution, it’s just as easy to show the likelihood of hitting each location by – for example – having a single die for “head” and two dice each for “torso” and “limbs”.

If the GM wishes to add damage bonuses based on this hit location system he may, or he can simply use it as a descriptive aid like the other qualities.

Continued…

This article was written in 1999 and originally published in Pyramid Magazine.

All roleplaying systems have a method of resolving action. Most use dice to check against a numerical value in one fashion or another to determine the success or failure of those actions. Few systems, however, provide any framework for interpreting those successes and failures.

This lack is surprising. The roleplaying experience relies entirely on the ability of the Game Master and players to communicate the reality of a fictional world and the characters therein as believably as possible. The real world, and the vast majority of worlds of fiction, do not exist in a binary fashion – when Conan swings his sword he does not “hit” or “miss”, he “swings his mighty blade and with thews of steel crushes the skull of his hapless captor” or “brings his sword about in a massive sweep, narrowly missing his hastily retreating opponent”.

Yet, beyond some mumbling of how a “higher margin of success means the character has had a greater success than if he had succeeded by a slimmer margin” roleplaying systems on the whole do not provide any intuitive clues for the GM to describe the outcome of a resolved action to his players.

This article attempts to rectify this lack by providing a meta-system – a system which can be applied to many different systems. In this case, any system which uses more than a single die for action resolution. It is not an attempt to “lock” GMs or players into an unalterable scheme of description, however. The system is designed to provide more than the crudest outlines of exactly how success was achieved, but it attempts to supplement, not usurp, the creativity of the play group.

OVERVIEW

Before looking into what this new system consists of, let us first look at what is provided by the action resolution systems typically found in most current games.

Any action resolution mechanic must provide, at a minimum, two degrees: A success and a failure for any action attempted under its auspices. Many of these systems, whether they acknowledge it or not, also contain a simple evaluation of how “well” or “badly” the success or failure of the action was. This takes the form of a “margin of success” or a “margin of failure”. In short, the greater the difference between the number you wanted to roll and the number you did roll the better the success or the worse the failure. If, for example, you needed to roll at least a 10 on 3d6 to succeed and you roll a 16, the GM would conclude that your character easily succeeded at what he was attempting to do. On the other hand, if you rolled exactly a 10, he might make your success much more slim – instead of clearing the canyon with room to spare, the character’s foot hits right on the edge and he teeters for a moment on the edge of balance before, finally, stumbling forward.

And this is where the vast majority of resolution systems stop – which is good in itself, but incredibly limiting. The GM is left with a vast void to fill in describing the outcome of actions. When confronted with a system which doesn’t even possess a margin of success, the GM is left with the arduous task of attempting to reconstruct a Picasso painting from a black and white sketch – and even with a margin of success you’ve barely established a grayscale.

What’s missing? In short, the GM knows that you succeeded or failed – and the margin by which you did so – but why did you succeed or fail? What form did that success or failure take? If you succeeded exceptionally, why? If you failed marginally, why? Should a marginal failure ever be catastrophic? Marginal success be akin to slight failure?

The system proposed in this article fixes these problems by giving the GM a wider grasp of what effects led to the success or failure of the PC. Beyond the simple margin of success involved, implementing this system will tell the GM a great deal of information on any number of topics on which he wishes to seek more guidance: How much time was required to accomplish the action? Was it bad luck or a lack of skill that caused a failure? Even a simple hit location system is provided for games without them – without adding a single die roll!

The only proviso to this system is that the resolution mechanic of the system in question must use more than one die. A GM using a percentile system should use 2d10 for percentile dice (instead of a single d100). A GM using a single die system will not be able to use the system found in this article without modification to his resolution mechanic. GMs whose resolution mechanic uses different types of dice (a d20 and a d6 together, for example) may also need to make a few modifications to the system in this article before it functions smoothly.

In short, each die roll is assigned a different quality. To keep track of the different dice, each die should be a different color or have some other form of easy identification mark. Making the decisions after rolling about which die represents which quality doesn’t help the GM at all.

After assigning desired qualities to the dice of his resolution mechanic, the GM then analyzes each roll. The die which is “best” (for success) or “worst” (for failure) had the most influence on the outcome.

For example, if the die which has been assigned the quality of “Time Required” is rolled with the best result, then the action took very little time. If, on the other hand, it was a comparatively poor result, then the action took more time. Quickly might be “an hour” for fixing a car, of course, and a long amount of time might only amount to a couple of minutes instead of a few seconds when picking a lock.

The GM should never feel bound to the results of the dice in describing what happened, nor should the players attempt to point to this system and “force” desired outcomes. The system is designed to be a guideline to feed the creative impulses, not a straitjacket to strangle them with.

Continued…