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Playing the Odds
21 Plays1 month ago
In this episode, Mark and Ben discuss the power and pitfalls of dice in tabletop RPGs. Dice introduce suspense and uncertainty, becoming the "third storyteller" at your table. Dive into Dice 101, and discover how probability affects the stories you tell at your table. We discuss the implications of averages on test rolls and effect rolls, and share storytelling tips for handling skill checks, group rolls, and damage calculations. Different dice mechanics can shape narratives in different ways, so we talk about techniques for adjusting rolls—static modifiers, advantage, exploding dice, and meta-currencies—to keep the suspense high and the story engaging. Tune in and get ready to master dice probability, balance your gameplay, and discover how you can let the dice help you tell your story.
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Transcript
Opening and Jim Carrey Reference
00:00:00
Speaker
Hit me with it. Just give it to me straight. I came a long way just to see you, Mary. Just... Least you can do is level with me. What are my chances?
00:00:11
Speaker
Not good.
00:00:17
Speaker
You mean not good like one out of a hundred? I'd say more like one out of a million.
00:00:32
Speaker
So you're telling me there's a chance. Yeah!
Music Preferences: A Reggae Discussion
00:01:00
Speaker
Well, Mark, it may be that Jim Carrey had a very remote chance with Lauren Holley. Actually, they got married for a while. One in a million, apparently. There's an even lesser chance that I will ever sort of be a big fan of, um I think, reggae.
00:01:15
Speaker
It's not my jam.
The Role of Silence in Film and Episode Preview
00:01:16
Speaker
Yeah, I got to tell you, you got to respect that long pause in that scene. Yeah. Like they just dragged that silence out a bit longer than anybody else would have. It was perfect.
00:01:29
Speaker
It sure hits harder when you're listening to it as opposed to watching in the movie. It's true. It's great. And you don't like reggae? You don't like reggae? I'm not a reggae guy, man. They Bob Marley strike you down.
00:01:41
Speaker
um Bob, I call upon you. Strike Ben down for his transgressions. Are you a reggae fan yo You got Bob Marley albums or something? mean, yeah. Who doesn't like a good Bob Marley album? Come on.
00:01:54
Speaker
Come on, Ben. All right. Listen, going have to give me the tour someday. All right. Well, let's, speaking of tours, we got a tour of an episode here today, right?
Dice as Storytellers in RPGs
00:02:03
Speaker
Yeah, friends, we worked on this one real hard, actually, because it's such an abstract concept. Today, we're going to talk about...
00:02:10
Speaker
Math. We're going to talk about dice. We're going to talk about these things that could turn into a lecture, a college lecture in a boring classroom, and we don't want that. So yeah we're doing our best here today. And ah we're going to talk about how to work with the the odds, playing the odds, working with your dice so that they can be kind of charmed help you tell your stories. Yeah. You know, dice aren't just... Dice are the third storyteller, Ben. Like, we talk about this all the time.
00:02:36
Speaker
There are three... You know, entities at the table, the player, of the GM, and there's a dice and the dice don't care about your story. You don't care about the
Understanding Dice Probabilities
00:02:47
Speaker
player's story. You don't care about the GM story.
00:02:49
Speaker
You don't care. They have their own story to tell. And we're going to try teach people a little bit how to massage those dice to tell the type of story you want them to tell. Right?
00:03:00
Speaker
Exactly. Something that's interesting about dice is that for people that are really interested in RPGs and the G part, right? Games, the element of this that's game-like, ah dice give you a sense of fair play.
00:03:13
Speaker
Ben, let's get into it. Let's talk about one of my favorite things.
Impact of Dice Rolls on RPG Story Progression
00:03:17
Speaker
Dice. You know I love dice. I buy them. I'm a goblin. They call me goblin. You're a dice goblin. ah do have Have you counted how many? Do you have like a display case for dice?
00:03:27
Speaker
Shut your mouth right now. Okay. All right. So friends, here's the thing. Dice 101. ah The first thing to talk about here, If you're gonna get smart about dice, then start by getting to know each dice's average value.
00:03:40
Speaker
And I'll give you a really quick little trick you can use to help yourself out. The trick is, think about what half of the value of that dice is, and then add 0.5. point five So if you're thinking about a D6, for example, it's 3.5.
00:03:55
Speaker
That's how you know what the average value of a dice is. A lot of systems might round up. So for example, when you're looking at, D&D has kind of a rule where you can add the average value of a dice as your minimum hit point bump per level. So like for a D8, it's five.
00:04:09
Speaker
In reality, it's like a 4.5, but of course you can't have rule of that. Ben, what is the, knowing the average dice can help us out? How is that going to assist us? Well, so here's the thing. The reason you want to know about average dice values is because you need to know what to expect when you roll a whole bunch of dice.
00:04:24
Speaker
And there's a couple versions of this that I think are important. One is when it comes to test rolls. And when you multiply a fraction by a fraction, end up getting an even smaller fraction, right?
00:04:36
Speaker
In other words, your probability goes down the more times you roll checks on top of checks. So one of the things you can do if you're trying to make your players feel oh so not heroic is you can give them a sequence of three or four or 10 roles or whatever it's going to be to get some tasks done. And gosh darn it, wouldn't you know the third role they made? Turns out they're always failing.
00:04:57
Speaker
And this is something you see. I've seen GMs do this. I'm going to name names. You know who you are. And we know who you are. Yeah. Yeah. No, anyway, this is, this would be the thing where the player, like the GM wants you to open a door or lock a locked door.
00:05:13
Speaker
and they all of a sudden say, Hey, I need you to roll a perception check to look, you know, to discover the lock. Okay. All right. We rolled that perception. We know there's a lock there.
D&D Fireball Spell Mechanics
00:05:23
Speaker
Now they're like, I need you to make a investigation check to see what kind of lock it is.
00:05:28
Speaker
Well, okay. Now I need you to make a dice roll to see if you open the lock. Okay. We've done three checks now just to get past locked door.
00:05:40
Speaker
Yeah. What does that do for odds, Ben? ah Really bad. Really bad. yeah So, you know, think about what your margin of success is in each of those. You can then sort of start multiplying decimals by decimals.
00:05:51
Speaker
and look I'm not going to bother you with the math. The point is it's lower than any one of those rolls, which means that, you know, the more you do this, the the worse it's going to be. The basic idea is the most, the more dice you ask a player to roll in order to achieve a goal, the more likely they're going to fail.
00:06:08
Speaker
You were talking before about storytelling import. Yeah. Yeah. my example of this was, uh, I remember a game I was playing where I'm, uh, this is like the, uh, how about a shout out to the old teenage mutant Ninja Turtles and other strangeness, uh, book, uh, from Palladium.
00:06:23
Speaker
You hit me right my heart, man. I got some ah really fond memories around that game. yeah So we're in this urban environment. There's some stuff going on. I don't know which of two buildings to go up into. And so I go up into this one building looking for the bad guys, realize that in fact, they're in the other building.
00:06:40
Speaker
And fact, as I look across, I can see through the window, they're up to no goods and stuff like that. So I'm like, oh, I got to get over there fast. But luckily, Mark, I have one of those kind of gas powered grappling hook, Batman type guns.
00:06:52
Speaker
And I'm going swing over there. It's going to be great. going to crash through the window. It's going to be so cool. That sounds amazing, Ben. I cannot wait to see you make that one roll and get over there. That's exactly right. How many rolls you think I made?
00:07:06
Speaker
I had to make a roll to place the grappling hook gun on the thing. had to make a roll to essentially successfully execute the swing. had to make a roll to break through the glass.
00:07:17
Speaker
And then I took some damage, by the way, breaking through the glass. And basically, i regretted the whole thing. and i felt stupid. this Why did Neil do this to you? It wasn't Neil, I will say. But at any rate, yeah. All right. No offense, Neil. No offense, Neil.
00:07:34
Speaker
Love you. Love you, guy. Hey, um so they just had you to melt. Too many rolls created too many obstacles. Right. Yeah, it happens a lot. Like there's an idea like we always would say, and we we kind of joked about like you couldn't sneak into any sort of like enemy base because there's too much dice involved.
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah. There's going to be like three or four or five or 10 like stealth rolls and somewhere in there going screw up. Yes, somewhere it's going to happen. So let's let's talk a about the about like yeah you had mentioned something we were talking about a little bit.
00:08:07
Speaker
You called it the disappointing fireball. Like what is what is the discipline what is a sad fireball you're talking about? Yeah, the disappointing fireball. Okay, so we've talked about test rolls and what happens when you start throwing a bunch of dice around for that and how – Um, you know, the implication there is that you're going to have a lower and lower chance of success. The more of those, your role with an effect role, that's a test role that we were talking about a moment ago with an effect role, which is how much damage did I do? Or how long does this thing last?
00:08:33
Speaker
The more dice you roll, the more likely it is that you're going to get the middle part of the average. Right. Um, so yeah, if you think about it for a moment, a fireball in D and D is eight D six.
00:08:45
Speaker
Every D6, we already said that's about 3.5. So if you just say, all right, well, okay, 3.5 times two is seven. And then that times four more to get eight is 28 points, right?
00:08:56
Speaker
Yeah. So the average Fireball score is 28 points. Now, the thing that's interesting about this is your chances of getting a somewhat number that's closer to a 28 than it is to a 48, which is the maximum you could get from 8 eight d six is really high. The chances of you getting 48 point damage fireball is super low. But of course, when you look at 8d6, you're thinking, oh, this is epic.
00:09:24
Speaker
Oh, yes. It's tumbling around. But you know at the end of the day, Ben, it's just not enough butter spread over too much bread. yeah you know It always comes up a little a little underwhelming, doesn't it?
Group Stealth Checks in RPGs
00:09:37
Speaker
Yeah. So one of the things that I think it helps you to do then is to kind of go, wait, wait, wait, what is the real value of this thing? And you ask me, the real value of that fireball is not the 8-to-6. I mean, it kind of is.
00:09:48
Speaker
But the real value is the fact that it's got a 20-foot radius. And I can collect five, 10 maybe people in there if I'm lucky. That's where the real joy of that, that and the lightning bolt, you know, how many people can you get in that lightning bolt? How many people can you get in that fireball?
00:10:02
Speaker
That's where... that's where the gigo giggles come out of the player you know they're like they're cackling maniacally when they see everybody lined up in that lightning ball formation lightning formation and you're like oh did i really just did i really just line them up like that yeah oh my god well and then relatedly right this means that when you do see a player role i think you and i were playing a game one time where i think somebody threw a fireball and it did like 43 or 46 points of damage or something like that.
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah. and Because we knew like what the odds of that happening were being very low. I didn't know the exact odds, but like, I just knew that's like a really rare result. Yeah. And you just go, wow, that's so amazing.
00:10:45
Speaker
Yeah, and those don't happen very often with the fire. The fireball is typically a little underwhelming. So, ah you know, if you want to increase the joy of your fireball, make sure you get more people in it.
00:10:57
Speaker
Get them all involved. So anyway, that's that's where the probability and all that stuff comes out. So think about that, you guys. Think about how old that all that works.
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah. Something else i want to mention is that When we're talking about how multiple dice tend to create more probability at the center of that curve, one of the things that that's relevant to as well is other systems that don't use single dice for their test results.
00:11:21
Speaker
So, for example, if you're playing GURPS or you're playing Champions or some of these games that might use, let's say, a 3D6 roll or in Traveler, they use a 2D6 roll. It's valuable to know that the results in the center of that, right, for 3D6 would be a 10 11. For Traveler, would be a 7.
00:11:41
Speaker
you know When you see results coming up around there, you know how much more rare that 3 or that 18 is or the 2 or the 12 is, right? And so that's really important to know because what that tells you is that like if I'm rolling a single dice roll like a d20, I'm going to hit 20 more often than ah four d six for example, is going to roll more than 20.
00:12:02
Speaker
Okay. You're getting into a lot of numbers here, Ben. and And I appreciate that. But let's let's talk about like how the dice can tell stories. Let's talk about storytelling with the dice. So I yeah i think that's when we come down to it as a GM, from the GM side, when we're asking of the players to roll something...
00:12:22
Speaker
In our heart of hearts, we we essentially, we want them to succeed, right? That's right. For the most part. I mean, that's what we tell the players. That's what we tell the players. Sometimes, I'll be honest, sometimes I want them to fail. But, know, that's beside point. But 90% the time, 85% of that time,
00:12:37
Speaker
eighty five percent of that time maybe even 70% of the time want them to succeed. Speaking multiplied probability. But generally most of the time I want them to succeed. So when we're talking about these dice, we're we're going to talk about like, what are ways we can allow them to succeed and how do these dice tell different stories?
00:12:57
Speaker
right You have some interesting options here. You have some interesting thinking around um an example of the group stealth check. And I'm sure we've all had that moment where we we go through the game and whatever the rules are for how groups do stealth, there's that moment where something either seems too easy or too hard or maybe weird. You didn't expect that result.
00:13:15
Speaker
Mark, what are the options when it comes to this and how does that tell us a different story with these different options? I've seen three big options be used at the table most of time. And I'm going to go through those three and I'm going to present a fourth option as what I think is a ah better idea in any case. so So option number one, this is kind of old school D&D at its finest.
00:13:38
Speaker
Individual rules, single failure ends it all. This is a A realistic approach. If one person stumbles and makes a noise, the group's cover is kind of blown.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yeah. At least those eyes are looking at that one person in the plate armor who messed up the role. This happens in movies all the time, right? Like that one guy who sneezes. Yeah. The downside of this is that, again, what we talked about like the more dice you have people roll, the more likely that failure failure is going to be.
00:14:06
Speaker
And there's always that one person who did not put anything in stealth. Right. And he's going to drag everybody down with him. Well, and and relatedly, right, like this does, I guess, kind of undercut that thing where a lot of the... We talked about balancing the party. And when you're talking about people that maybe didn't put any points into
Enhancing Group Skill Checks
00:14:22
Speaker
stealth, mean...
00:14:23
Speaker
People don't intend to put points into stealth because they think that other people are covering that, right? Yeah. So we're talking about a group stealth check here, though. We all need to sneak in. You know, we want to sneak into this place. It's kind of part of the story.
00:14:37
Speaker
Even Conan snuck into that's right the place. Even after hitting that chain, we all saw it. His foot hit that chain, and we know that would have made a lot of noise. But the score was so loud you couldn't hear it.
00:14:48
Speaker
But now I'm just digressing. right So option number two, here we go averaging the rolls. This is where everybody rolls and the results are averaged to determine that group's success. This allows those people who have really good stealth checks to kind of skew the entire average of the party.
00:15:06
Speaker
Right. Offset the weaker players. The good news is it it smooths out those extreme roles. It mitigates the impact of a single bad role. The downside is it it's just not that realistic.
00:15:19
Speaker
It doesn't really even tell a very good story. Like when you're when you're telling this at the table, it doesn't narratively make a lot of sense, does it? Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is for the individual roles, the example you covered a moment ago, that's maybe good if you're trying to do something really realistic and make it feel really dangerous. And boy, everybody's got to succeed.
00:15:38
Speaker
Yeah, the tension's high in that first one. Whereas the second one, ah people, it's lacking drama. It's lacking that tension that the first one offered. But what it does allow is more success.
00:15:50
Speaker
All right. So number three, this is the one that you use in the dy player's handbook. Okay. This is the one see most times at the game table. If half from more of the group half or more of the group succeeds,
00:16:01
Speaker
the whole group succeeds. This is like codified in the rules, right? Yeah. um This is a very high chance of group success. It keeps the game moving, prevents one or two people's bad rules to spoil everything.
00:16:16
Speaker
But I don't know. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Okay. Like narratively, like why would three people's success negate the two horrible rules we just saw? So let's talk about ah fourth option.
00:16:29
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So you don't like that one, but you do have a, what do you call this fourth option? I think we're just going to let the skills lead the way here. So what we would typically do, there's different ways you can go about this. There's, there's a few different avenues. I'm going present two different ways.
00:16:45
Speaker
This is where you'd let your best stealth character go first. Okay. So high skill role person goes first. And I suppose if you were doing a ah different kind of thing, instead of stealth, you'd say whatever the high skill is for that.
00:16:56
Speaker
Correct. It could be any, keep in mind guys, I'm using stealth as an example. It could be any skill in any game, in any place. This could be applied to anything. Got it. So I'm using stealth because it's probably the most common one.
00:17:09
Speaker
So you send your your best stealth person first. Imagine this person is identifying the quietest path. People are watching him move from shadow to shadow.
00:17:21
Speaker
They're getting an idea like that's where I need to move. their success should directly influence the rest of the group and in in a couple different ways. One, if you're playing Dungeons and Dragons, maybe you give advantage on the following people's stealth should the first person succeed.
00:17:37
Speaker
That would allow even those people with clunky armor to be able to kind of mitigate that horrible you know role they might have by giving them advantage.
00:17:48
Speaker
And to your point too, right? That means that there's kind of an in-game dramatic rationale, right? Like the guy with the clunky armor is watching and he sees how that works. Correct. And then there's another example. I like this one a lot.
00:18:01
Speaker
We've been playing Traveler. Traveler does a thing called task chain. And when you succeed, you can give your other party members a bonus. So like, let's say you're playing a D20 type game and you roll that dice and you succeed by, let's say you succeed by five.
00:18:17
Speaker
Well, then you can kick that five over to the next person. And if that person succeeds, they can kick that over to the next person. So, or you could just have that five be a static bonus given to everybody who goes behind them. What's interesting about the way they do it in Traveler is that the last person to roll is the person who determines whether or not this task is successful or not.
00:18:37
Speaker
Every role that precedes that is just creating a modifier for that last role. And it's interesting to think about what would happen if you applied that to some other systems, right? Like what if the group stealth check in D&D, you started with Conversely, like the worst off person and then whatever the modifiers ultimately should got to be with whatever house rule you're going to make for that. Right. That meant that your super stealthy character would go into their role with like ah I don't know, a minus four. Let's say if everybody was awful or something or disadvantage or you could pick out what it was going to be. But the point is everything then gets decided on that one role, which becomes really dramatic.
00:19:12
Speaker
So my concept here, Ben, I had the the person with the best score go first so they can show the others. We're we're talking about telling a story. yeah This person is showing them where to step, where the shadows are.
00:19:26
Speaker
Follow me. I'll lead you there. And so you could do this with a lot of other skill checks. it It makes more narrative sense. It tells a story. But here's the thing. You wanted them to succeed differently.
00:19:38
Speaker
And you've stacked the dice in the favor of the person with the best chance to succeed. And you've carried on that success into the other people who have a less chance.
Adjusting Dice Rolls for Storytelling
00:19:50
Speaker
So you're you're basically stacking the dice at the same time you're making a very dynamic scene and getting the players engaged and getting them excited about that skill check.
00:20:03
Speaker
Now, one of the things you and I talked about as we're looking at some of these examples is that all of these examples can work for you in different circumstances, right? You might decide that you don't necessarily want to make an extended exercise out of this stealth check or this skill check that you're making or what have you.
00:20:19
Speaker
And in those cases, you might want to go with just something quick where, Everybody rolls. We see the majority. That's fine. We're going to move on. In other cases, you might want to make this a really kind of interesting narrative obstacle.
00:20:30
Speaker
So I think it's really great that that, you know, these are all just different tools in your toolbox. Yeah. And also think about how do we stack the dice in the favor of the players without it being so obvious, maybe? Right. Is the word I'm saying? like Like, these are ah little sneaky ways to give your players that edge that you want them to have.
00:20:49
Speaker
Like this actually makes them feel more heroic. If they're managing to roll the dice, the and the outcome is uncertain, but you've given them a little bit of an edge. Well, guess what? When they succeed, they're going to feel like, that was really cool. I did something.
00:21:02
Speaker
It's kind of the opposite of the, what do you call your your mountain? which I called it the multiplied probability mountain. We're now using the multiple probabilities in the favor of the players rather than against. What are some other things we can do? We've been talking about the import of storytelling, and now we're going to kind of zoom in a little bit to just some of the mechanical things you can do.
00:21:22
Speaker
And we're kind of breaking this out by test roles. What kinds of ways can you modify test roles or damage roles? And what kind of ways can you modify damage roles or how can those work? And so I'm just going to go down this list. It's going to be real quick.
00:21:34
Speaker
um With test roles, If you want to change the chances of success for your players, you can raise or lower whatever that static difficulty is, right? Your locked door could have a difficulty of 15 or 25.
00:21:47
Speaker
Static modifiers, right? This is when you add a plus one or a plus two or a plus specific number to somebody's roll. That's kind of the flip side of it, right? Because now you're modifying the dice roll. You're not modifying the difficulty number.
00:21:58
Speaker
One thing to keep in mind about that is that You remember the thing we were saying earlier about how there's a curve when you're using multiple dice rolls? If I add a, say, plus three to a D20 roll, my odds are better by about 15%. If plus three to, say, a
00:22:18
Speaker
They're higher than that, much higher than that. Keep in mind that when you're using those kind of multiple dice test systems, that static modifiers can get disproportionately influential the more, the higher they get.
00:22:29
Speaker
And if you don't want to mess with that, you can always do the thing that D&D and Traveler do, where they talk about advantage or disadvantage. you can just add dice. That's a way of kind of simplifying modifiers and keeping it simple, which is kind of nice. I really liked when they did advantage and disadvantage, because all a sudden i didn't have to remember quite as many things.
00:22:44
Speaker
yeah are you Are you a fan or did you prefer like the older system with more static modifiers? No, I was advantage, disadvantage. It was real revelation, honestly. I thought it made a lot of sense. i don't I think it might be overused a bit at this point, but I liked it. I thought it was very simple and it was a very way to give a real tangible, I want this to succeed kind of vibe.
00:23:07
Speaker
Another thing you can do is you can also let people roll group checks. And we've just talked about an example of those kinds of group checks. Group checks can be things where everybody's working on the same problem, or it could be more like one character is helping another character. And so other kinds of bonuses that we're going to talk about could be given to them.
00:23:25
Speaker
When you're doing things where characters are helping each other, remember the thing about multiplied probability. If the person has to roll a dice to see if they're eligible to help the other person, because then you can make it more difficult than it's worth.
00:23:36
Speaker
You can add minor dice, right? In D and D, they do this with blessed spells. You can add a D four to your ability checks. You can also multiply test opportunities. If it's usually a single point of failure, if you think that it's something that um you want to give them a chance to recover.
00:23:50
Speaker
So like an example of this would be like climbing rolls. i don't know about you, but like, you know, you want to give players that occasional thing where they're, they're hanging on some rope over a precipice, but then if they script their climbing role,
00:24:02
Speaker
like That would be it. That would be death. In life, you're done. yeah But in a D&D game, that means your your companion who's near you gets a chance to grab you. Right. It could mean that, or it could mean maybe you're going to roll a ah saving throw to see if you can grab the edge of ah something. or yeah Usually when i'm I'm in a kind of ah like a fail or die, you know, succeed or die kind of thing, I will try to find something that lets the the players make a reroll if they can.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah, don't put your players in precarious situations that they can't get out of. If you know if death is on the line and you don't want it to be on the line, don't put it on the line. That's right. That's a good way to put it.
00:24:39
Speaker
Now, the last thing i want to mention here is something that I actually think more people should do more with. And I think it's great. And we've we've seen more of this. We've talked about metacurrencies and examples of this would be inspiration in D&D or heroic action points or resolve or any of the other kinds of things that let you reroll a dice or make a small dramatic edit, right? And what's great about these options as ways to kind of modify the world a little bit is you've given them to the players in a limited quantity.
Creative Dice Roll Modifications
00:25:06
Speaker
And so usually these are way of representing their luck or their innate heroism being the kind of the main characters. And so if you give them that opportunity, I think what's great is that you then don't have to worry about it too much because that's just an opportunity for the players to spend that currency. And it heightens the ah ah situation a bit more when, you know, I get down to the final room where the big bad guy is and I've got like maybe one point left.
00:25:30
Speaker
saving up all my bennies for this battle, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So wonderful. Okay. So we've talked about test rolls, damage rolls, um some interesting stuff to know about ah damage rolls when it comes to how those kinds of things get modified to maybe things worth mentioning here.
00:25:44
Speaker
Some systems have what they call exploding dice. And ah i was curious about what happens to the average damage that dice do when they've got exploding dice. So an example, if you haven't come across the exploding dice concept, sometimes some systems will have a ah mechanic where if you throw the dice,
00:26:00
Speaker
And let's say I'm throwing four D six. If I get a six on any of those dice, then I actually get to reroll that dice and add the new result to the old result. And so. That's really fun. we just aside tangent, I think Ben, you had made a game and we had played it online and you had auto the thing so that the dice would explode.
00:26:20
Speaker
Should they explode? Yeah. And I just remember rolling some dice and having a D six. Absolutely have a seizure on the table. Yeah. And it just kept rolling.
00:26:31
Speaker
It must have rolled three times in a row. We were all like, whoa. That's great. um That is not usual. i found this fascinating. It makes sense when you think about it, and i won't unpack it all. But essentially, the lower the denomination of the dice, the more it's going to tend to add over time. And if you think about it's because the odds of you coming up with that exploding number are higher. so like it It is a bit fun way to kind of solve that fireball problem with it being boring.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. you know A friend of mine says it makes things swingy. which you think is a nice way to put it. That's a great way to put it. um The other thing you can do, i learned this trick from Chris Perkins of D&D fame. um He will actually, instead of rolling lots of dice, he'll just sort of figure out what the averages are for a handful of the dice that would be part of a roll, and then he'll make that a static modifier.
00:27:17
Speaker
So, for example, let's say I've got a six d six attack that I'm going to hit you with, and I don't want to do the math all the time. Here's what I'm to do. i know that the average for 4d6 14, So what I'm going to do is I'm going to roll 2d6 and add 14 and that's it.
00:27:32
Speaker
Or maybe I'll even roll one d six and add 17 and that's it. But the point is I'm making it really fast. I get a little bit of variability, but I'm exchanging dice for ah static value. What's the point, Chris Perkins?
00:27:45
Speaker
You know, what I think it makes him feel like he's moving faster. Okay. yeah All right, friends.
Creating a Pulp Character: Aviation and Hollywood
00:27:52
Speaker
We have talked about all the different ways that you can modify the dice. We've talked about the importance of thinking through the storytelling implications of this.
00:28:00
Speaker
We've talked a bit about probability so that you can think through what happens when you multiply dice rolls when you're doing tests or why it is that high numbers of dice to roll may or may not suit your purposes.
00:28:14
Speaker
And i hope this gives you all a sense of how the dice can be charmed and this third storyteller can be helping you tell your story instead of thwarting it.
00:28:29
Speaker
All right, Ben, I got tune-up for you. This is my tune-up. Oh, we're tuning you up today. Yeah, because you're my pulp expert here. I have a pulp character I'm working on for a game.
00:28:40
Speaker
Okay. The idea is this is a stuntman who's also a pilot. We'll call him a pilot stuntman. um Okay. Yeah. so he' is Is he a stunt pilot? Does he do trick flying? Well, he's a stuntman, but he likes to fly on the side, we'll say.
00:28:58
Speaker
He's just a reckless dude. All right. So we've got this this stuntman character in the game. Think about the 1930s, early Hollywood era, maybe kind of out of the Buster Keaton kind of mold.
00:29:14
Speaker
And I'm trying to think of ideas for this character that would be that would give him a little bit of life, a little bit of like... pizzazz And i'm I'm struggling here a little bit.
00:29:25
Speaker
All I can think of is Brad Pitt and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. don't want to just do Brad Pitt and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But like, I'm thinking like maybe this guy's been in the industry for a while. Maybe he's got a few injuries.
00:29:39
Speaker
Help me out, man. what what do What do you got for me? I'd say lean into the aviation piece because aviation at this time is incredible. And there's really no FAA at this point, right? If you can put a plane together, you can fly it at whatever else you can think of.
00:29:53
Speaker
The skies are not crowded. I don't even think there's like established traffic lanes up there at this point. So, you know, navigation is kind of by map and looking around. They don't have radar navigation for a little bit yet. I think they get some of that like later in the 30s or maybe it's late 20s, but it's certainly not widespread.
00:30:09
Speaker
So the other things I would think of when you're thinking about movies to reference, obviously the Rocketeer, it's well-known thing. Oh yeah. You could be doing stuff where your character is a stunt pilot, where he's a racer, where he's somebody who does aerobatic stunts for crowds.
00:30:25
Speaker
That kind of stuff would draw a crowd back then. wing walker. A wing walker. Yeah. great yeah So that would be one thing you could do that i think could be kind of fun. Being ah a daredevil pilot, emphasis on the daredevil piece.
00:30:38
Speaker
And then another thing you could do is think about how his Hollywood contacts might need to get driven around. And so you might actually have an interesting network of people because that that one head of the studio or that one bombshell actress, you know, they need to get from...
00:30:54
Speaker
LA to San Francisco or San Diego or. Yeah, no, I could totally you see leaning into the pilot aspect of his, his stunt work, particularly when you look at like maybe those early movies where they're doing, like maybe they want to do a film, a dog fight or something like that. This would be the guy they they hire for.
00:31:10
Speaker
Exactly. I mean, they have stunt drivers today and they have stunt pilots today. And so you were probably one of those prototypical characters. Thank you, man. I got a little of vision. i got a way to go.
00:31:22
Speaker
Consider me tuned up, man. All right. That's great.
Conclusion and Listener Interaction
00:31:26
Speaker
Well, you guys, we're going to consider you tuned up until next week, but we would love to hear your ideas for tune-up questions and so forth.
00:31:32
Speaker
Send us... ideas, comments, crazy thoughts that you might like us to talk about with you through this podcast, you can email us at tabletop tune up at gmail.com or leave us a comment on our YouTube channel. When we post this on YouTube, Mark, the last word is yours.
00:31:47
Speaker
Keep those guys rolling guys.
00:32:34
Speaker
West is now vivo
00:33:24
Speaker
Come get your tuna. It's time to be a tuna. You can't be a tuna. Tuna. Tuna.
00:36:32
Speaker
Never love your fun. Tuna. Your place has now begun. Tuna. We gon' show how it's done. Tuna. Tuna.